The Kennedy family toured the world with a show which celebrated Scottish culture and music. David Kennedy (1825–86) has been described here as ‘a concert singer who combined traditional Scots song with oratorio and sacred music’. Here is a report of one of their shows, at the Ulster Hall in 1877, one of at least three nights they performed in Belfast on this particular tour.
His daughter Marjory published this biography in 1887, detailing the family’s Perthshire and Presbyterian origins, as well as page after page of Scots language dialogue. It would be interesting to chart all of their appearances in Belfast, as 1877 was around the time of a fresh upsurge in local Ulster-Scots creative writing and publishing.
In 1881, three of his children, all members of the performing family, died in France when the Opera House in Nice was burned to the ground. Kennedy’s Wikipedia entry is here
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