Margaret Fay Shaw (1903–2004)

Margaret Fay Shaw was born near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the youngest of five sisters in a cultured family of Scottish origins. Beginning in childhood, she loved the piano and played throughout her life.
She was orphaned at age 11 and was raised by her older sisters, attending various boarding schools. In 1921, at age 16, she made her first visit to Scotland and spent a year at St. Bride's School in Helensburgh, outside Glasgow, where she first heard Gaelic song. She wanted to hear more, and undertook an epic bicycle journey from Oxford, England to the Isle of Skye. She took up photography to earn a living, selling prints to newspapers and magazines. She learned to speak Gaelic and worked to record and preserve Scottish oral traditions. In 1935, she married John Lorne Campbell, whom she had met the previous year when he sought her out on South Uist, in the Outer Hebrides, for her assistance in illustrating The Book of Barra. They lived and entertained on the island of Canna for many years. Among her published works was Folksongs and Folklore of South Uist (1955).