We’re delighted to announce Mary MacMillan, Gaelic teacher and singer from South Uist, will join us this year as an instructor at the Grandfather Mountain Gaelic Song and Language Week.

Mary taught at the 2010 Gaelic Week and now she’s coming back by popular demand. This week’s program runs from Sunday, July 2 through Friday, July 7, 2017 at Lees-McRae College, Banner Elk, North Carolina. (Register here).

Mary MacMillan was born and raised on the island of South Uist in the Western Isles of Scotland. Scottish Gaelic is her first language. She has been singing Gaelic songs all her life and was a regular singer at the local Uist Mòd and cèilidhs from the age of five. As a teen, she competed and sang nationally.

Mary now has a career teaching in Gaelic medium education. Gaelic singing is an important part of her life and she regularly sings at cèilidhs and festivals throughout Scotland and Ireland. She is also an experienced fèis tutor. In 2007, she won the Traditional Singing Gold Medal at the Lochaber Mòd and the following year she was runner up in the Pan Celtic Festival in Donegal Town, Ireland.

Mary sings many songs collected from South Uist tradition bearers, and she is interested in a wide range of contemporary and traditional songs. She is one of the singers featured along with Seumas Campbell, Margaret Callan, and her younger brother Gillebrìde MacMillan, on the CD “An Lorg nam Bàrd: In the Footsteps of the Bards: Traditional Gaelic Singing from the Uists”. Mary has also sung with the renowned waulking group “Bannal.”

Mary joins two other instructors, Angus MacLeod of Cape Breton and Alasdair Whyte of the Isle of Mull.

We are delighted to welcome Mary back to Beinn Seanair!