Fonn na Tìre
The Land-Song of Scotland
April 20-24 2026
With Madge Bray, 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
We invite you to an intimate gathering on the sacred and remote island of Bute, where we will explore how to work with the subtle energies of this potent place. Over the course of our time together we will be using different modalities to work with the resonance and the landsong of the island, placing ourselves in service to it, letting the land lead us. We will be using our voices, our bodies, our perceptions of the subtle flows of earth energy. We will be observing, immersing, and spending time with the guardians and stewards of this land.
Because we are on the wild coast of western Scotland we will be drawing on the indigenous traditions found here. We will be walking in the native ancient forests, hearing from those who have lived here for generations, working with the power points and old stone circles, and we will be guided by those who hold the age-old traditions of sound-making and grief-keening. We will be deeply listening to what is required of us here, from the humans and the other-than-human, we will engage in ceremony and vigil and we will make our communal response to what is required.
This will be an emergent process in which we will all bring our sensitivities, perceptions and gifts, it is a communal apprenticeship to this place.
Is this for you?
This gathering is for all those who are interested in exploring, in a group situation, how to deeply listen and respond to places, in a time when finding our belonging with the land and the more-than-human we live alongside is becoming ever more important.
It is for those who are interested in land-based indigenous traditions and how these relate to our contemporary world.
It is for those who wish to practice their skills, alongside others, in listening to the land, through our bodies, our intuition, our dreaming, our voices and our songs.
It is for those who want to further their exploration of working in subtle ways with the land in the company of others, in a beautiful and potent place that has called us forth for this work.
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, through the widening of our own perceptions, and we can make a response.
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 Bray
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.