Màiri Ceit Mhóir

Mary Ann MacMillan (Màiri Ceit Mhór) was a fine singer from Ben Eoin, on the south-east side of Cape Breton. She was passionate about her Gaelic language and culture and contributed 34 songs to the Cape Breton Gaelic Folklore Collection. She was descended from Uist folk who emigrated to Cape Breton in two different waves. Her great-great-grandfather, Iain Allan MacDougall, emigrated with his brother and settled first in Prince Edward Island before moving to Ben Eoin. He was granted 200 acres of land on what is still known as MacDougall Mountain. His son, Ailean Òg, married Marie MacAdam and their son Alexander was born in 1830. Alexander, in turn, married Mary MacIsaac who had emigrated from Scotland aged five.

In an interview for Cape Breton’s Magazine (vol. 39), Mary Ann remembers how her grandmother’s people arrived from Scotland with nothing and were very poor, but they were hard workers and benefitted from the kindness and generosity offered by their more established neighbours. “Everybody was so good to each other then. They were really good. They built a log cabin for them. [...] And there was another nice person. She had two cows. And she came over, and she brought one of the cow’s over to mum’s grandfather. And she said, ‘Look, you’ve got nothing. Here is a cow with milk.’”

Among Alexander and Mary’s children was Mary Ann’s mother, Kate (Ceit ni’n Alasdair ’ic Ailein ’ic Iain Ailein), born at Ben Eoin. She was described as a strong woman who would think nothing of going into the woods to cut her own firewood. Mary Ann was her only child, born on February 1, 1906. Kate was herself a fine singer and there are some recordings of her in the Beaton Institute collection (Item T-1160). She had no formal education and little material possessions but held a precious internal treasury of songs and dùthchas from her people. Mary Ann inherited her mother’s strength and love of singing. On April 16, 1942, Mary Ann married Donald Norman MacMillan, who worked in the Steel plant in Sydney, and the couple lived with Kate in her home at Ben Eoin.

When Mary Ann was recorded and interviewed for the Cape Breton Gaelic Folklore Collection (1980) and Cape Breton’s Magazine (1985), she was in her mid-to-late-seventies and living alone. In the interview for Cape Breton’s Magazine, she laments that people seem to be turning their back on Gaelic and she has no one to speak the language or share songs with anymore:

“I wish you knew what that meant. . . . I know another verse, if I could think of it. And those are songs that had been composed here, right around this neighbourhood. And nobody knows them but old Mary Ann. See, I don’t know that’s the matter with people here, if they lost their Gaelic, or don’t want to hear it. They don’t remember. But I do. But I lost a lot of it. No dear, I see or hear not a word of Gaelic. Not a word.”

We hope, somehow, that she knows how people are still listening to and appreciating her songs today, and that she is no longer alone in remembering them, loving them and singing them.