Biography

Catriona MacCormick (née MacPhee) (Catrìona nighean Ghilleasbaig Ghriomasaigh/ Bean Phàdraig) was born in Grimsay, North Uist, in 1893.

Catriona Garbutt [1685] fondly remembers Catriona:

"She had three sisters – Mary, Kate, and Mary Margaret – and a brother named Calum. Their home was a small thatched house by the shore in Grimsay. I understand that Catriona, as an adult, worked in domestic service on the mainland, but at home she married Patrick MacCormick [2275] who lived in Hacklete on the east side of Benbecula. Patrick and Catriona's house was very neat and tidy, everything shining, with beautiful rugs on the floors that Catriona herself had made. They had no children of their own, but their home was a real ceilidh house. Catriona was well known for singing and Patrick was a storyteller. She said that she learned her songs from her mother."

In a programme on BBC Radio nan Gàidheal in 1993 Margaret MacKinnon spoke about her own knowledge of Catriona:

"Catriona was married to Pàdraig mac Alasdair, and they lived in Hacklete and had a nice little house there, with a beautiful garden too. I used to go there often when I was young and sometimes stayed with them. They had no family of their own. But, when I knew Catriona, I never realised that she was good at singing or that she knew songs. I would never hear her sing, but I remember her once waulking. She would spin herself and I don't know where the loom was, whether it was at Lochcarnan or Benbecula. I'm not sure. But I remember being at the waulking, and the women of the village being there, Penny, Angus John's wife, another woman who was good at singing, all singing waulking songs there."

Catriona knew songs that no one else knew, and Margaret MacKinnon had an idea of who she learned some of them from:

"She learned the waulking songs from my grandmother's sister, Flora, and Flora and my grandmother were sisters of Lachlann Bàn, Am Pìobaire Bàn. She came from a musical family. It's possible that Flora knew many songs and that Catriona learned the songs from her."

Margaret also described what Catriona was like:

"She was fairly tall. She wasn't particulary big, just natural in shape. She had poor eyesight. She always wore quite thick glasses. She worked in the hotels in Oban, as many of the women did in those days. And she was a very good housewife. She was good with her hands, and everything was always very neat. She was good at baking and everything like that."

In his diary, the folklorist Calum Iain MacLean [273] told how he first recorded Am Bròn Binn from Catriona on 20 January 1948:

"At seven o'clock Calum a' Bharraich came in the car to collect me to go to Hacklete. I took the ediphone and the wax cylinders and we left. It was a beautiful night and the moon was high in the sky. Angus John MacLellan's house was full to the brim when we arrived. There was singing going on for much of the night and there was one woman there, Patrick MacCormick's wife, and she recorded Am Bròn Binn for me on the wax cylinder. She sang it very well, and then sang another beautiful song after that, a song I had never heard before."

Calum Iain MacLean took great interest in Catriona because of how great her repertoire was, with songs like Am Bròn Binn (adapted to be based in Borve Castle), 'S Daor a Cheannaich mi 'n t-Iasgach, and Na h-Eileanan Diùrach, a song his brother, the bard Sorley MacLean, was particularly fond of. On 5 December 1949, Calum Iain wrote: "She knows the best songs I have heard in Benbencula. She still knows many more that I haven't recorded at all." Catriona is also mentioned in the lament Sorley composed when Calum died as "the one from whom you got the two marvels, Mrs MacCormick of Hacklete."

Before Catriona MacCormick died in 1965, she sent for Catriona Garbutt to come and see her so she could pass on some songs, as she was afraid that they might be lost when she died.

We are very grateful to Catriona Garbutt for helping with this information.