The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #165034   Message #3956986
Posted By: Gallus Moll
16-Oct-18 - 05:45 PM
Thread Name: Origins: Searching for Scottish Navvy Songs
Subject: RE: Origins: Searching for Scottish Navvy Songs
It is from the Gaelic Gleann Siara (Wikipedia so better check the spelling!!!) and wiki claims it means glen of the eternal river (wiki again so - check!)
There are quite a few articles and pictures and engineering info if you google glen shira dam.
I vaguely recall somewhere else reading about the grave of a dog being somewhere on the the roadside up to the dam- --
Perhaps also Neil Munro wrote about the glen? -- prior to the dam which was completed in 1956. He was a novelist and poet who was born and raised in Inveraray, became the editor (I think) of the Glasgow Herald in the days when it was a well respected newspaper (unlike now sadly)

If you are into dams then check Cruachan hydro scheme - they were building that when I was a student working in Inveraray, it is the most amazing scheme with a dam and lochan high up in a corrie and the hydro power station in a huge carved out hollow within the mountain. when electricity not required the turbines reverse and pump water back up the mountain to replenish the lochan!
I don't remember any songs about it tho there may well have been some - but there were plenty of stories!