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A modern Gaelic love song, ’S tu mo ghaol, from the Bi Beò (nach maireann) archives forms the musical centrepiece for Island Voices’ Valentine’s Day message. You can hear it above without a transcript, or if you would like to read the words while you listen you can try this new Clilstore unit.

For a local visual celebration of the same sentiment we still find it hard to beat this message in Russian, beautifully crafted out of Grimsay scallop shells at Poll nan Crann in Benbecula. The story behind it is quite touching, and you can read all about it in this Facebook thread.

Meanwhile, and for one day only, An Radio, the new bilingual Uist community station, will be running specially themed playlists all day today. Just follow this link and click on the “An Radio Player”. Wherever you are, and whichever languages you like to use, Island Voices wishes you all a Happy Valentine’s Day!

Following on from the “Tug of War”, here’s a second helping in this series of occasional samplings of old Bi Beò songs re-presented on Clilstore for the benefit of Gaelic learners – Sgath Sgitheanach.

Music from this track was used in the Series 2 Generations documentary about Sabhal Mòr Ostaig itself, so this view of the college, taken from the video, seems an appropriate image with which to illustrate the song. There are still plenty of Uibhistich at the college, both staff and students – no doubt happy to share enthusiastically in the spirit that the song celebrates…

PS. Here’s the “raw” track, if you’d like to hear it first before reading the lyrics on Clilstore:

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/119758202″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

The Bi Beò songwriting partnership of Kevin de Las Casas and James MacLetchie featured with one of their earliest songs in Series 1 of the Guthan nan Eilean project. Extracts from subsequent recordings were also used on the soundtracks of various Series 2 Outdoors, Generations, and Enterprise films. Later still, the Bi Beò band “went the way of the Beatles”, and is no longer performing.

However, the original writers have kindly consented to having a selection of their compositions placed online, in case they may be of benefit as listening material for Gaelic learners. Here, as an experiment, is “Tug of War” – from the “Ma Sgaoil” collection – rendered as a Clilstore unit. You can listen and read at the same time, and click any word for an instant dictionary entry. What do you think?

And there’s an extra challenge for Island Voices afficionados! On which Series 2 documentary were extracts from this track used on the soundtrack? (Clue – think “outside” the box…)

PS. Here’s the “raw” track if you want to hear it first before reading the lyrics on Clilstore:

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/115636817″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]