Frances Tolmie

Frances Tolmie
Born 13 October 1840
Duirinish, Skye
Died 31 December 1926, 1926
Dunvegan
Nationality British

Frances Tolmie (13 October 1840 – 31 December 1926, 1926) was a British folklorist. She was born and died on the Isle of Skye. She gathered Gaelic songs which were published in 1911.

Life

Tolmie was born on a farm on Duirinish on the Isle of Skye in Scotland in 1840. Her father was John Tolmie whose family had been associated with the MacLeod clan at the nearby town of Dunvegan. Her mother was Margaret MacAskill and she had been born on the Isle of Eigg. By 1854, her father had died and she and her family moved to Strontian where her brother was to be the minister. Over the next two years she extended her education to music and she seems to have taught herself the language of Gaelic.

Tolmie spent many years gathering together traditional songs in Gaelic.[1]

She gathered Gaelic songs which were published in 1911 in the Journal of the Folksong Society.[2] The collection was introduced by another folk song collector (Lucy Broadwood) and she supplied notes to explain the Gaelic musical scales to readers.[3]

Tolmie returned to Skye and died in Dunvegan at the end of 1926.

References

  1. Frances Tolmie, AJPpublications, Retrieved 7 January 2016
  2. Derick S. Thomson, ‘Tolmie, Frances (1840–1926)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2006 accessed 7 Jan 2016
  3. Dorothy de Val, ‘Broadwood, Lucy Etheldred (1858–1929)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Oct 2007 accessed 7 Jan 2016


This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 7/9/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.