His granny’s fluency in Gaelic, together with her warming plate of soup every day, helped a ferryman sail to success at the Royal National Mod Inverness.
Hector MacKechnie, a deckhand on the Lochaline to Mull CalMac ferry won the Katie Stewart Memorial Trophy, the qualifying competition for the men’s silver pendant.
Appropriately it was a song by the Mull Bard Dougal MacPhail about the Battle of Alma in the Crimea War that was one of his prescribed songs.
He said: “I did Gaelic as part of my masters degree at Glasgow University many years ago, but I became interested in the language again a couple of years ago when we started a choir in Lochaline, conducted by Rhiona Whyte, one of the top singers in Scotland.
“I was helped greatly by my granny Margaret Kennedy who is a fluent Gaelic speaker from Tiree who at the age of 91 is still very much on the go and makes me soup every day.”
