The BBC, for whom Peter Kennedy was working part-time in 1955, had more or less left Orkney alone in its recording activity, except for some recordings about local customs and beliefs made on location in 1954. At the time, Orkney was seen as being at the extreme edge of Great Britain, and was virgin territory for a music collector such as Peter, who traveled there in 1955, recording singers and musicians in informal circumstances, amassing a wealth of songs, dances and some speech excerpts that still exist, and this CD presents a representative selection of the instrumental pieces from that treasure trove of traditional music.