From the Alleghenies to the Hebrides: An Autobiography - Tapa dura

Margaret Fay Shaw's life has spanned a century of change. Today she is lucid, eccentric and an inspiration to others. This autobiography, accompanied by photographs, traces the author's life from America in 1906 to the Isle of Canna today. Born in America early this century, Margaret Fay Shaw was witness to a way of life now unrecognizable. Orphaned in her early teens, she was despatched to a distant cousin near Glasgow for her schooling. It was there that her love for Scotland was born. After studying music in New York in the 1920s, she returned to Scotland. For six years she lived with two weavers in a "black house" on South Uist, a small island in the Outer Hebrides then largely untouched by the changes of civilization. In 1938 Margaret married the renowned Gaelic scholar and author, John Lorne Campbell. Soon after, they bought the island of Canna where they have lived ever since.