Madeline Green was a force of nature who blazed an idiosyncratic trail.
The bright-as-a-button Moray youngster was dux of Hopeman School in the 1950s, Gala Queen for Elgin in 1960 and embarked on a career as a speech therapist.
Yet she was also an arts lover, somebody who formed a close bond with her second husband Alex Green and the couple launched the Aberdeen branch of Scotland’s Traditional Music and Song Association, organised popular concerts in Portknockie, and performed at myriad festivals and other events as Airs and Graces.
There was never any of the latter with Maddy, who loved her family, was passionate about politics, and whose death at 81 has sparked a series of heartfelt tributes.
And they paint a picture of a woman who never took a backward step in her life.
As the only child of Charles and Meg McGown, Madeline, born in 1942, moved about in the early days, flitting between Glasgow, Elgin and Hopeman, but the youngster made an impression on many of her fellow students.
One of them, Richard Bennett, recalled: “Maddy was, for us 15-year-old boys, an icon of glamour and brains. (She was way, way, way out of my league).
She didn’t go to university
Eyebrows were raised when she decided to study speech and language therapy rather than head towards the anticipated route of moving into campus life.
But, as Richard said: “I remember the reaction of some of us snooty boys who thought University was everything, rolling our eyes when Maddy became a speech therapist.
“It never crossed our minds that she chose it because she wanted to study something that would directly help people to live better lives.”
It was not long after she began her therapy training that she found herself in Aberdeen Royal Infirmary visiting a patient. Her path crossed with a junior doctor who asked her out on a date. And, at the age of 21 in 1964, she married Stanley Miller.
Between 1965 and 1972, the duo were blessed with five children: Stephen, Caroline, Judith, Andrew and Ellen. But their relationship didn’t last and Madeline moved on.
She and Alex were a happy couple
There was a happier outcome when she tied the knot with Alex Green in Dufftown in 1985 – Robbie Shepherd spoke at their wedding – and the pair started making sweet music together, at home, on the concert stage and running the TMSA together.
They made records, organised events, she sung in choirs and he appeared with the likes of Aly Bain and Isla St Clair. (Which was remarkable since he had lost two fingers as a child when his hand was caught in machinery at the Mill of Minnes in Udny).
Her son Stephen recalled how they became a well-known couple, not just in the north east of the country, but on their trips to Glasgow.
He said: “Mum and Alex were regular visitors. They were walking on Queen Margaret Drive towards the Botanic Gardens one weekend and passed the old BBC building.
Life was to be savoured
“Robbie Shepherd was broadcasting live that day and told his surprised listeners that he had just seen Alex and Madeline walking past the studio.
“They really enjoyed re-telling that story.”
They were founder members of the long-running Portknockie Music Night and, prior to moving to Stonehaven, were stalwarts of the weekly traditional music sessions in Dunning in Perthshire. Every evening was packed with song and a lurking ceilidh.
She had a great love of words and the source of their meaning – whether English, Scots or Doric – and was so good at solving crosswords that Alex forbade her from tackling the P&J cryptic puzzle until he had a chance to study every clue.
Madeline also relished political satire and topical comedy programmes such as Have I Got News for You? and Just a Minute and, as a committed socialist, was proud of how her aunt, Nan Milton, was a daughter of John MacLean, the famous Red Clydesider.
Toasting MacLean’s prison release
Stephen said: “At Alex’s tribute concert in the Lemon Tree in 2018 [he died in December 2017], Danny Cooper sang Hamish Henderson‘s ‘Freedom Come A’ Ye’.
“Mum wrote to us all afterwards to make sure we had registered in particular that the line – ‘when MacLean meets wi’ his freens fae Springburn’ was a reference to John MacLean‘s release from Peterhead Prison in 1918.
“That story brings together the two great passions she pursued – music and politics – beyond family, to whom she was devoted all her life.”
Aberdeen University’s Elphinstone Institute paid tribute with the words: “Madeline’s love of traditional music stemmed from the family music she grew up with as a child.
“Her sympathetic playing style and her musical dedication brought great enjoyment to audiences throughout Scotland, and she will be sadly missed.”
The tandem made the P&J front page
She spent the last few years at Edenholme care home in Stonehaven, with her children and grandchildren making regular trips to talk to her and reminisce.
Stephen recalled: “During those hours, we pored over her collection of old photographs, cards and letters including the wedding albums. And, tucked at the back of her second album was a photograph I had long forgotten.
“Due to Alex‘s celebrity, the photographer at their wedding understood that, if he took the right eye-catching photograph, it might be taken up by the Press and Journal.
“Sure enough, the following Monday – and on the front page no less – there was Mum and Alex in their wedding finery astride a tandem bicycle.”
You can read more obituaries on this page of our website.
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