Sittin' on the gymnasium floor, gathered around the piano with all the other third grade kids, I watched my third grade teacher introduce a young woman with waist-length wheat-colored hair and a matching guitar. This was my teacher's daughter, a fledgling folksinger, and I remember listening to her sing "500 miles" with tears pouring down my face. Made it kind of embarrassing to sing along with my voice all quavery, but I did try. Third grade sing-alongs were an important part of my schooling.

A few years later, my third grade teacher let on that her daughter, Kat, had gone off to the British Isles, collecting songs, and that she'd learned some in Scots Gaelic. I thought that was the coolest thing I had ever heard of, and vowed to myself that someday (I figured, say, around age 80) I would go to Scotland and learn to sing in Gaelic. The next year I had Kat's first tape in hand, with one piece of Gaelic mouth music on it...riviting. The tape got worn out on family road trips, kept my brother annoyed, and made me very happy.

Two years ago (about 17 years after third grade), I started Scots Gaelic classes. Before we knew it, we had formed a Gaelic Choir (four-part, 30+ voices) and started performing at the Highland Games and the Seattle Folklife Festival doing tweed-waulking songs as we waulked real hand-woven lengths of woolen cloth.

I met my third grade teacher's daughter, Kat Eggleston, on the ferryboat a few months ago. She's a singer-songwriter living in Chicago now. As we headed across the water to our dear island, I told her how much she'd inspired me and how I was now studying and singing a great deal of Scots Gaelic song, all because of her one bit of mouth-music on her first tape. She laughed derisively. "That old thing?" she said. "Hell, I learned it phonetically. I don't even know what I was singing. Do you think you could teach me?"

I remain, well, rather shocked. But it's part of the wild whimsey of the folk process, and I aim to keep on singing and sharing songs forever. You never can tell who's gonna teach somethin' and who's gonna learn!

A h-uile beannachd ort,

--Cuilionn