Young ballad singer Ruadhan watches in distress as the traditional fabric of life in his small Scottish village is inexorably eroded. With fish dying and no jobs on land, the young people are escaping to the cities. Meanwhile, the old people of the town, to whom Ruadhan feels closest and whose traditions he wants to preserve, are dying off. A rich, delicate, and powerful film with superb cinematography and a stirring soundtrack filled with traditional ballad singing.
Cultpop raconteur Aidan Moffat sets out to explore Scotland's past by rewriting and touring its oldest songs. But he doesn't count on running into 79year old force of nature Sheila Stewart - a travelling balladeer who upturns Moffat's folk assumptions. He believes the old songs are ripe for updating. She does not. With Stewart's wrath ringing in his ears, Moffat embarks on a road trip that finds him dressed for battle in a Highland graveyard, caught between feuding monster hunters at Loch Ness, and singing in a dismissive farmer's kitchen - before facing Stewart in his hometown of Glasgow for an unlikely final showdown, in this funny wee film about music and death.