Dr. Margaret Fay Shaw


1903 - 2004

Gaelic folklorist and photographer. Born in Glenshaw, Pennsylvania (USA), Shaw came to Scotland as a teenager and spent a year at St Bride's School in Helensburgh. She went on to study music in Paris and New York but, returning to Scotland, she cycled through the Hebrides and settled in South Uist. She met the Gaelic scholar John Lorne Campbell (1906-96) who was living on Barra and the couple married in Glasgow in 1935. Shaw is known for her photographic record of the Hebrides and, along with her husband, collected Gaelic songs and folklore.

In 1938, the couple bought the island of Canna, which they gave to the National Trust for Scotland in 1981. Shaw continued to live there, in Canna House, following the death of Campbell in 1996, although she died in Fort William.


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