“Word came home that renewed sorrow and sadness for us” 

My father, Alasdair, came from Tiree, a low, sandy, fertile island, farthest out into the Atlantic of the Inner Hebrides – the first port-of-call on the Shipping Forecast. He would have been quietly satisfied at seeing this Tiree collaboration. 

 In 2015, I had the honour of writing the soundtrack to a BBC documentary following fellow Tirisdeach, Prof. Donald Meek, in the footsteps of his great-uncle John MacDonald, killed in the Great War, and those of the man whose life he saved in sacrificing his own – 2nd Lt. Jock Stewart. At the heart of the music were two poems, one of which was this one. Ìrig’s words are as poignant and eloquent as any in the great Gaelic poetic tradition of eulogy and elegy. 

Jock spent most of his post-war life in Ghana and South Africa: I used a Tswana song about homeland, ‘Ko Gae, Ko Gae’, as the basis of the melody. Our huge thanks to Michael Baird and SWP Records for allowing us to use the sample from the legendary Hugh Tracey archive. Donald Meek: Effie’s elegy was published on a ‘broadsheet’ and circulated among relatives. She uses the poetic form which, at the outset, described clan chiefs, with the image of the tree at the beginning. John is a ‘branch’, and a ‘sapling’. 

The family is the clan. But in every note we hear a woman’s voice, lamenting a fine young man for whom she had the greatest esteem. Everything she says about John’s bravery is confirmed by the magnificent letters which his officers wrote about him..