The 12 songs recorded on Cuilidh are a mixture of traditional songs that Fowlis and her fellow musicians have arranged and songs she's learned from other musicians on the islands over the years. Although, truth be told, I think the only difference between the two is that on one hand she's given a traditional song her own arrangement and on the other she's followed someone else's arrangement. Of course a great deal of the delight to be found in this disc comes from the stories associated with the songs themselves, for they give you a sense of the history behind them and the people.
Take "'Ille Dhinn, 'S Toigh Leam Thu," the fourth track on the disc as an example. We're told that it was written by Mairead nighean Ailein (lower case n in the second name is not a typo) who was the great aunt of Domhnall Ruadh Choruna, one of the most famous bards from the island of North Ulst. She composed the song for the man who would eventually become her husband, Julie's Great-Great-Grandfather's brother. A great many of the songs on the disc are similarly taken from actual events that have occurred in the history of the island, some being as recent as only ten years ago, while others 500 years ago.
Some events are more infamous then others of course and as a result there was more then one version of the song. The story that's recounted in track three of the album, "Ant-Aparan Goirid 's an t-Aparan Ur: Oran do Sheasaidh Bhalile Raghnaill", is of a young woman named Jesse who takes advantage of her engagement party to run away with a man from Skye island who is not her fiancee. If you check the disc you'll see that she's included another version of the song as well, for as she ruefully points out in an interview, she could have included six or seven versions of it.
You'll notice something a little odd about the lay out of the disc in that everything is Gaelic with English being treated as the second language. Gaelic on this disc is a living language, not something mystical or spiritual with secret powers of divination or whatever other bullocks you might have heard. One thing though, the translations for some of the songs aren't going to be that helpful, because they don't really translate that well. These are what Julie calls mouth music songs, or what we might call nonsense. Yet these aren't really nonsense because they were composed to have a purpose in that the tongue twisting lyrics were written to match specific dance tunes. The sounds of the words are important as they become another layer of the rhythm of the song.
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