The Mòd is a festival focusing on Gaelic music, art and literature held every year in Scotland.
Inspired by the Eisteddfod festival in Wales, The Mòd (Royal National Mòd) celebrates Scottish literature, traditional music and culture. The seaside town of Ayr is the location for the Mód this year.
It's a week-long festival of music and song, a bit quieter than our own Oireachtas and not as full of pageantry as the Welsh Eisteddfod.
The Mòd has competitions for solo singers, choirs, instrumentalists including harpists and pipers. Visitors to the festival include native Gaelic speakers from the Highlands and learners from the Lowlands. The visitors this year included a group of Irish poets Pearse Hutchinson and Mícheál Ó hUanacháin and musicians including Tony McMahon and singer Máire Nic Dhonncha.
One of the highlights was a concert featuring the festival prize winners including a performance from the Greenock Gaelic Choir. The winning songs in the folk singing competition were written for the young folk groups by a 72 year old poet Murdo Macfarlane (Murchadh MacPhàrlain) from the Isle of Lewis in the Hebrides. He talks to Doireann Ní Bhriain about his early years, his native language and the challenges of learning English.
English is not my mother tongue but Gaelic is.
This episode of 'Tangents' was broadcast on 30 November 1973. The presenter is Doireann Ní Bhriain.
