Confused ecology!

The Aberdeen Christmas lights... can anyone spot the problem with this picture?

Penguins live in the Southern Hemisphere, Polar bears in the Northern Hemisphere, thus it would be impossible for them to ever meet!!

The Polar Foundation has a sweet little animation to show the basic differences between the habitats of the species.

Whoever it was who built the lights - I tried to Google it, but to no avail - was subscribing to the children's myth. Even Happy Feet managed to get it right, showing the penguins approaching giant seal lions, but kept bears out of it! Nigel Marven's recent series over the holiday TV schedules has been very informative about polar bears, though how he ever got so close to them, I don't know! The man has no fear!


Back to Christmas myths - the greatest of all being that Christ's birth is NOT December 25th at all!

The date was chosen to deflect 3rd century Romans from worshipping pagan god Mithras, who was supposed to be born on that date 'The Invincible Sun God'. Snopes, the good old Urban Legends database has a nice little description of this issue and how it was resolved by Emperor Constantine's deathbed conversion to Christianity, making the Roman Empire Christian. So, since AD337, we've celebrated the birth of the Son of God on the Sun god's birthday - neat, huh?

Of course, Pope Gregory later told his missionaries not to tear down the pagan temples of Britain, but to tell the people to sanctify these places to the one True God.

The Scots didn't bother celebrating Christmas until the 1960s! My parents both remember getting their presents on New Year's Day, as 'Suntie Claas' came on Hogmanay night! Was it because of hyper-Calvinistic preference not to celebrate a 'Roman' holiday? No, the Scots were bigger pagans than the romans themselves! They were celebrating using the old Julian calendar right into the late 1800s in some cases, hence Burghead's Clavie ceremony is held on the OLD NEW YEAR - January 11th, rather than the first, since the new calendar was 9 days out of date!

Links for the above-mentioned:

• Mithras


• Burning the Clavie


• Hogmanay


• Hyper-Calvinism (a very good fictional representation of this theological mindset can be found in James Hogg's The Confessions of a Justified Sinner. (One heck of a scary book!)

So, Happy Hogmanay!

Guid Yule!

At this most folkloric time of year... Merry Christmas,

a Happy Hogmanay and lang may yer lum reek wi ither folk's coal

Winter Dawn - Duthie Park 2006

• Today's entry in Chambers' Book of Days: December 24th
• Wikipedia's entry on Christmas
• Santa Claus & the Reindeer welcome you to Northpole.Com
• And... Christmas Dinner 1937!
  from Scotland on Film
  

Scotch Broth - no, not foodlore...

...but my show on Aberdeen Student Radio!

http://storyquine.pbwiki.com/ScotchBroth

Like the dish itself, the Original Folk Music Show - which was first aired on Peterhead's hospital radio Radio Eastward in 1994 - is a rich mixture of Scots, Irish, English, Welsh and Global folk music, lore and stories.

My main aim as well as entertaining people with the classics, like Runrig, Wolfstone, Steeleye Span, the Albion Band etc, is to present as much contemporary artists as possible to the airwaves, as we broadcast online, so anyone in the WORLD can hear them!

I've already featured music from two Aberdeen bands - Paddyrasta and JingBang (formerly Shindig), and will be recording interviews with Danse MacCabre, the Conglass Ceilidh Band, Clarsach player Irene Watt (also Elphinstone student); singers Graham White, Shona Donaldson, Maggie & Dick Trickey, who all hail from Aberdeen and the shire.

If you know of any folk artists - singers or musicians that could feature on the show, please let me know! If you have your own band or you sing, again, tell me! There are details on the webpage how to get in touch specifically about the show.

To listen - get online at www.aberdeenstudentradio.com Wednesdays 12noon-1pm (GMT)

For now, spot 'weel-kent' faces in Paddyrasta's video for the song Meditation which I played last week.

Meditation by Paddyrasta

Very funny music video by Celtic Reggae Band Paddyrasta by award winning director Mark van Hugten

Highland Music School - Plockton

Yes, yes, I know, long time no blog?

Here are some videos - taken by mobile phone - of the most excellent students from the Sgoil Chiùil na Gàidhealtachd, the National Centre of Excellence in Traditional Music. They were our entertainment one night at the 37th Annual Ballad Conference held just down the road from the music school in Balmacara, near the Skye Bridge. More about the conference later.

The Highland Music School has amongst its students Naomi Ballantyne, daughter of Pat & the late Bob Ballantyne, who some folk will remember was a survivor of the Piper Alpha oil rig disaster, but sadly lost his fight against cancer a few years ago. Naomi is a star fiddler, piper, singer and step-dancer! And here she is showing off her fancy footwork!

Naomi was joined by her fellow students:

And again...

Our overseas delegates were bowled over by the sheer burst of talent in the room that night!

I hope to feature some of the students' material on my ASR show later next year, just written to their director, Dougie Pincock to ask!

Link to Sgoil Chiuil Gaidhealtachd

Some examples of material culture...

... around Aberdeen.

Gallus Graffiti - observed off Holburn St/Gairn Terrace. Something Banksy would approve of!

The edge of one of Fittie's famous fisher squares. Footdee, or Fittie, as it is rightly known, was the earliest example of a council-designed development to replace old wooden hovels for the fisherfolk there. They were finished in about 1807. The folk moaned so much about lack of good sanitation, overcrowding etc, that the cooncil in its infinite wisdom got scunnered of it, and auctioned off the houses to their tenants by the 1840s! Today it is a protected historical site.

Is it material culture? Is it art? The folk at RGU know! I liked to call them the wee hoosies, which appeared in Castlegate and elsewhere during summer 2005, but they call them bothies, and positively encouraged people to draw on them. The ones outside M&S seemed to attract the graffiti artists, who drew on windows, doors, satellite dishes, etc! These stayed rather pristine, and did I want one!!

I just love how the old man is looking at them as if they are invading Daleks or something! They are brilliant and RGU should do it again!!

The Folklore Crew

A couple of pics from the Graduate Conference in Aberdeen, March 2007, all taken on my camera phone.

Tom looks puzzled as ever, while Sara and others mill around in the background

Somebody said 'He's in his cups' - we-ell, cup singular, anyway!

Dr Milton I presume? PhD not MD, that's the Mrs!

Our retired second-in-command, Colin Milton has gone to live in Edinburgh.



Fellow Aberdeen PhD-student, Shirley Watson is massively camera-shy!

Margaret (Bennett) and Jenny have a blether on the lawn in front of the MacRobert Building at the end of the Conference.

Smile please!

Next year...Edinburgh!!

The Road to the Isles

Where we went on the 37th annual Ballad Conference with a crowd of folk fae all over Europe! Organised by my supervisor, Dr Thomas McKean, it was so good I thought here, I can write about ballads! So I'm going to present a paper next year when they go to Cardiff, whereas this year I was chief technician and taxi-service!

I'll get this post edited properly later, but here is a pic of me and Tom, he sporting the most amazing tie featuring tie-dyed frogs, which he says his sister made. Is sis having a wee joke with our folklorist fae New England? Frogs in fairy tales are usually princes in disguise! ;-)

Anyway - sin agad e!

Welcome fellow folklorists!

Welcome to the Folklore & Ethnology Students' Blog - this is another strand of the Elphinstone Institute Graduate Student Folklore Forum, but being a blog, we can display photos, You-Tube movies and the like.

This isn't exclusively for students, we're happy to share the blog with academics, researchers, and amateur enthusiasts. Please leave comments, but be aware that they are moderated. No spammers, please!

Foklore comes in many forms - song, story, material, tradition, superstition, belief, charm, urban legend, etc, and this Gaelic proverb sums up our discipline nicely:

Is iomadh rud a chi an duine a bitheas fada beo -
Many's the thing a man will see if he lives long enough!

Best wishes,
FJ - Forum & Blog Admin