Marjory Kennedy-Fraser

(1857-1930)
Collector and arranger of Gaelic songs

Marjory Kennedy was the daughter of the well-known singer David Kennedy who died in while on tour in Ontario, Canada in 1886. Herself a singer, she took a keen interest in the songs of the Hebrides, where she recorded them and noted them down from the declining island populations. She later arranged them for voice and piano (sometimes for harp or clàrsach for her daughter Patuffa) and published them with the words translated by the Rev. Kenneth MacLeod. "Songs of the Hebrides" appeared in three volumes between 1909 and 1921 with a fourth volume, "From the Hebrides", a few years later. In 1928 the University awarded her the honorary degree of Doctor of Music, and in 1930 she presented to the University Library her archive of song, including her original wax cylinders of recordings which have been re-recorded on tape for the Sound Archives of the School of Scottish Studies.