Magda Sagarzazu obituary

My friend Magda Sagarzazu, who has died aged 70 of cancer, was a woman from the Basque region of Spain who moved to the Hebridean island of Canna and made it her mission to preserve and popularise the work of the married Gaelic scholars John Lorne Campbell and Margaret Fay Shaw.

John, who bought Canna in 1939 and farmed it for 40 years before gifting it to the National Trust for Scotland in 1981, had known Magda's father, Saturnino, since before the war. After Saturnino's wife, Vicenta, died in 1958, John invited his friend and his two daughters to spend the summer on Canna - it was the beginning of an annual trip that lasted until Saturnino's death in 1974. Saturnino did odd jobs, farm work or fishing with John and the girls played with the Canna children.