Fonn na Tìre
The Land-Song of Scotland
April 20-24 2026
With Madge Brae, Brid Walsh, Malin Lewis
Hosted by Rachel Fleming, Jackie Thoms & Land Stewards of Bute
Course Structure
Dates
Location
Isle of Bute, Scotland
More information on the location will be coming soon.
Fees
An Invitation
Land-Songs of Scotland
Join us for this ceremony of deep listening, sound-making and immersion in the indigenous traditions and sounds of Scotland as we honour our grief for what has been lost, celebrate what we remember and cultivate our gifts in service of the land.
We will gather our circle on the sacred Isle of Bute, an ancient place of potency and reverence, near the Healing Loch below the Ridge of Lamentations, where the land holds both grief and vitality. We will walk within the island’s ancient native forests, whose enduring presence invites us into awe and connection. We will work with the natural harmonics of the landscape, blending new and traditional ways of attuning to the land and the subtle energies that flow between ourselves and the living world.
At the heart of this gathering is dùthchas, the Gaelic sense of deep belonging to place, community, ancestry, and the living world—a recognition that the land shapes us as much as we shape it. Through dùthchas, we are reminded that the living world, including the earth, water, and stones, carries memory and song, and that we can listen for these subtle harmonies and use our human voices to express them, to respond and offer back, to evoke them for others.
Join us as we slow down and listen to the living soundscape and resonance of the land around us. How do we hear these ancient harmonies and express them through our own voices, entering into the song of place that surrounds us? How do we give voice to the depths of our grief, joy and relationship with the land and evoke this beauty for others through traditions steeped in the land and its people?
Is this for you?
This is for those who wish to deepen their reciprocal relationship with the land with others, perceiving the voice or the song of place through their own bodily sense. It is for those who wish to hear, to listen, in a very deep way which will be different for everyone, and to respond using the human voice. It is not necessary to be a singer, or a speaker, this is about our relationship with the land, ourselves and each other.
We intend to be out on the land, weather permitting, each day walking and being in practice with sounds and music.
What to expect
We will be spending our days together on this beautiful and remote island in Scotland in ceremony and deep listening.
We will be working with the body and attuning it to perceive the subtle energies of landscape.
We will be using the old Scottish traditions of listening for songs, using our voices to sing with the natural harmonics of place and keening our grief and joy.
We will be sharing our experiences and offering ourselves to whatever the land is asking of us at this time and place.
Your Guides
The lead guides of this course are Madge Brae, Brid Walsh, Malin Lewis, hosted by Rachel Fleming, Jackie Thoms & Land Stewards of Bute.
Madge Brae
Born Margery Allan into a family of traditional Scots singers, poets and musicians, song transmission came to Madge with the breastmilk. She went on to work internationally pioneering creative approaches in trauma resolution with children.
Deeper explorations into sounds of human suffering and the realization that human harmony was manifest in sound and vibration brought her into the study of indigenous musical grief ritual practices in the High Caucasus, as a tool for the transformation of intergenerational trauma and the realization that Scotland had its own, now virtually obsolete form of musical grief tending .
She is now immersed in the cultural retrieval of the sounds of ancient Scots keening ritual, handed down through the Scottish bagpipes in Piobaireachd lament, weaving the transformational potential of this ancient musical medicine into our deeply fragmented human landscape.
Malin Lewis
One of Scotland’s most exciting innovators, Malin melds West coast tradition with a newly invented, self-made bagpipe. Hair tingling, philosophical and dance inducing melodies inspired by European folk traditions, human nature, queerness and the universe.
Inspired by the captivating sounds of bagpipes from a young age growing up in Moidart and Skye in north west Scotland, Malin began creating their own instruments in their teens, starting with simple experiments of drilling holes in sticks and inserting chanter reeds.
Aged 15 they discovered the innovative Lindsay System Chanter, a two-octave 3D printed smallpipe. Enthralled by the instrument’s possibilities, Malin collaborated with its inventor Donald Lindsay to create the world’s first wooden version of the instrument.
Brid Walsh
Bríd Walsh grew up in rural Ireland, in West Cork in the South Western part of Ireland. She was immersed in traditions of language, culture and deep connections to land and environment – listening to the rhythms of the land. She is the third generation in her family to carry close communication with land and trees.
Bríd has worked to remove blockages to the flow of energy in land, property and also when working with individuals – on their personal journey. Her connections have supported the removal of trauma from landscapes and also using this supportive dialogue with nature forms part of decision making when it comes to next steps for properties/land.
Jackie Thoms
Jackie Thoms’ work spans many fields: from corporate work to regenerative agriculture, climate change and cultural revival; weaving what wants to come back into integrity in people, spirituality and the land. She brings her experience as a somatic practitioner working with the body, mind and emotions and a systemic practitioner working with the interdependencies of our entangled and entangling worlds to retreats and gatherings. Ranging from connecting with soul, to re-imagining our worlds, to conversations on regenerative agriculture and land use. She is an ongoing learner weaving insights from her immersions in animism, intuitive herbalism, Scottish Gaelic and in land listening.
Rachel Fleming
Rachel Fleming has worked with animist education for many years, designing and delivering educational programmes for Schumacher College, University of Wales Trinity St Davids and Embercombe, with a focus on the meeting place between human, spirit and nature, between ‘ecology’ and ‘spirituality’. She is co-founder and curator of the Contemporary Animism programmes and loves to convene conversations that explore the deepest depths of why we are here, the ways we find belonging to the world and how to be in service to soul. She is committed to scholarship, word magic, creative imagination and the medicine of circles.