WITH affectionate care Mrs. Kennedy-Fraser has collected and made available for all who love expressive melodies and imaginative words the songs of the simple Hebridean folk. There are songs of labour, fairy songs, legends of mermaids and water-kelpies, mothers' songs, funeral chants, ballads of the pirate days, and love songs, one of which we are now to hear. It was sung by one of the folk singers of Eriskay, on the Isle of South Uist. The adaptation by Mrs. Kennedy-Fraser and Kenneth Macleod begins with a Gaelic invocation (which is repeated after each verse) and goes on :- ' Sad am I without thee When I'm lonely, dear white hear1,
Black the night or wild the sea, By love's light my foot finds
The old pathway to theeThou't the music of my heart.
Harp of joy, oh cruit mo chridh, Moon of guidance by night,
Strength and light thou'rt to me,Sad am I without thee.'