Hi all,
Facebook is the place to be! Or so it would seem. Since the demise of the folklore forum I found out where a'body was - on FB.
So I've joined the Social Network Revolution - firstly have set up an oral history/reminiscence group. I'll do a folklore one later. But for now, the Aberdeen & Region Oral History Association presents the first Facebook Oral History Group - obviously you need to be registered for Facebook to join.
Do please join up, I know alot of you folkie ppl are on FB. Oral reminiscence is the backbone of folklore, so we need to make sure it's recognised as a proper source by traditional historians.
And don't forget the Oral History Society's conference at Strathclyde Uni, Glasgow in 3 wks time 3-4 July, 2009: See link
also - Voices in Visual Art (VIVA) is an on-going oral history project based in London College of Arts.
Thursday, 11 June 2009
Monday, 8 June 2009
Shop Signs
Just started a new Flickr site for recording 'material culture' - started with shop signs - here do please let me know if you have any good ones I can link to!
Of course, I saved on just for this post!
Not got a shot of the shop yet, but this is the bag that rowies are transported from the great shop in!!
Dinna tell ma ye dinna ken wot a rowie is!!
Heating on my shiny new toaster's crumpet rack!!
And they are sooo fine that people will pay alot o money for them!!
So, get out your I-spy books and look for some nice signs!
Of course, I saved on just for this post!
Not got a shot of the shop yet, but this is the bag that rowies are transported from the great shop in!!Dinna tell ma ye dinna ken wot a rowie is!!
Heating on my shiny new toaster's crumpet rack!!And they are sooo fine that people will pay alot o money for them!!
So, get out your I-spy books and look for some nice signs!
Thursday, 28 May 2009
Papa Stour Sword Dance
As performed at the Shetland Museum & Archives, Lerwick, May 2007.
George Peterson, former teacher from Brae High School, Shetland, introduced the dance. He had taught it to some of his pupils a few decades back which they very much enjoyed. The dance he suggested could have been influenced by servants of the earls from Northumbria who would have been familiar with sword dances. The figures are very much like the 'Rapper' dances of NE England, especially the end figure where the swords are put together to make a 'shield' which is much more like a star - Star of David perhaps?
Anyway, though not so energetic as the rapper dances I've seen, this one features another medieval tradition - the Seven Champions of Christendom the seven 'saints', George of England, Andrew of Scotland, David of Wales, James of Spain, Denis of France, Patrick of Ireland and Anthony of Italy. St. George - wearing the red sash - is the dance master and recites all the poetic material between each feature at the beginning. I find it quite a hoot to hear 'St George' speaking in a broad Shetlandic twang! Mind you, if the 'real' George was an Anglo-Saxon, he'd have Viking blood anyway!
Ok, so Sir Walter Scott (he of the nice slippers), famous usually for the 'Tartanisation' of Scottish culture, records the text of the dance in his 1822 novel The Pirate, which he claimed had come from an 'ancient text' dated 1788. At the Shetland 'Out of the Box' conference there was a great ballyhoo about this text and the editing thereof between Paul Smith and Michael Preston (Colorado) and others. It was great fun, but very little other than George Peterson's suggestions as to where it came from.
Guess that's another debate waiting to happen. It seemed a bit too much of 'the text' (literally) is the thing! But fascinating that, like the Mari Lwyd last summer, here's another traditional 'play' which has re-emerged into modern day to be performed. Terry Gunnell also presented a great paper about guising, which also informs the folk play discussion (He was even asking the wifie in the shop at Tangwick Haa about it!).
So if anyone wants to tell us any more - do email me and I'll add it.
I've actually submitted this to Shetlopedia as well, since they don't have an up-to-date film!
George Peterson, former teacher from Brae High School, Shetland, introduced the dance. He had taught it to some of his pupils a few decades back which they very much enjoyed. The dance he suggested could have been influenced by servants of the earls from Northumbria who would have been familiar with sword dances. The figures are very much like the 'Rapper' dances of NE England, especially the end figure where the swords are put together to make a 'shield' which is much more like a star - Star of David perhaps?
Anyway, though not so energetic as the rapper dances I've seen, this one features another medieval tradition - the Seven Champions of Christendom the seven 'saints', George of England, Andrew of Scotland, David of Wales, James of Spain, Denis of France, Patrick of Ireland and Anthony of Italy. St. George - wearing the red sash - is the dance master and recites all the poetic material between each feature at the beginning. I find it quite a hoot to hear 'St George' speaking in a broad Shetlandic twang! Mind you, if the 'real' George was an Anglo-Saxon, he'd have Viking blood anyway!
Ok, so Sir Walter Scott (he of the nice slippers), famous usually for the 'Tartanisation' of Scottish culture, records the text of the dance in his 1822 novel The Pirate, which he claimed had come from an 'ancient text' dated 1788. At the Shetland 'Out of the Box' conference there was a great ballyhoo about this text and the editing thereof between Paul Smith and Michael Preston (Colorado) and others. It was great fun, but very little other than George Peterson's suggestions as to where it came from.
Guess that's another debate waiting to happen. It seemed a bit too much of 'the text' (literally) is the thing! But fascinating that, like the Mari Lwyd last summer, here's another traditional 'play' which has re-emerged into modern day to be performed. Terry Gunnell also presented a great paper about guising, which also informs the folk play discussion (He was even asking the wifie in the shop at Tangwick Haa about it!).
So if anyone wants to tell us any more - do email me and I'll add it.
I've actually submitted this to Shetlopedia as well, since they don't have an up-to-date film!
Wednesday, 27 May 2009
Shetland - land of sea... and well, sea!
I utterly LOVED my trip to Shetland on the ferry to take part in the Taking Shetland Out of the Box Island Identities Conference. My first trip in 2007 was by plane, but the boat is the way to go! This is the first in a series of mini-movies I'll be posting about my trip - mainly scenery accompanied by fantastic Shetland music - courtesy of www.shetland-music.com, who I big up as I'm less likely to get into trouble for using music downloaded from their site otherwise!!
As you can see from the film, the weather's much better when leaving! Huh! But I love Shetland's weather, it's insane. Shetlanders I know say 'if you don't like the weather, just wait five minutes', cos it does change that fast. We had rain, wind, sun, sleet, sun. It was magic!
So - Journey to Shetland - featuring the Cullivoe Fiddlers from Yell
As you can see from the film, the weather's much better when leaving! Huh! But I love Shetland's weather, it's insane. Shetlanders I know say 'if you don't like the weather, just wait five minutes', cos it does change that fast. We had rain, wind, sun, sleet, sun. It was magic!
So - Journey to Shetland - featuring the Cullivoe Fiddlers from Yell
Friday, 1 May 2009
Another Folkie Blog
Just launched in the last few days, http://humphreywithhisflail.blogspot.com/ by fellow folklorist, Paul Cowdell. Paul's current researching ghost belief in contemporary England, much to my delight! So far he has a couple of witty limericks and a May Day observation. Paul's a graduate of Sheffield University, and now doing his PhD at Hertfordshire. He is also a committee member of the Folklore Society in England.
I met Paul at the Third Postgraduate Ethnology Students' Conference when we hosted it at Elphinstone. He and the Sheffield contingent really inspired the foundation of this blog, and you'll probably see his photo amongst the others at the beginning of the blog. We're all now communing on Facebook, which is a much better alternative than a forum! Anyway, do visit Humphrey with His Flail (no, I don't know what that means either, you'll have to go look!!!) and support a fellow folklorist!!
And, as this is May Day, here's a link to Dale Jarvis, folkorist and storyteller in St John's, Newfoundland, who is looking for May Bushes!
Dale is also planning a storytelling conference in NF next July. Details to follow.
Monday, 6 April 2009
Star Spangled ...Pint??
One of the coolest tunes is The Star-Spangled Banner, and yes, I know, it's the American national anthem (or one of them), but it's such a stirring tune, in the same vein as La Marseillaise or Flower of Scotland, and it does have beautiful words... I'm a sucker for a good tune whatever its origins (though I make exception to Take That's new pop songs, how dare they write proper catchy tunes?? Argh! Boy-band tripe!) so it was with massive surprise I discovered the origins of this very American tune...
It came from ...
An ENGLISH DRINKING SONG!!!
Although the words were written by American Francis Scott Key in the 19th Century, he borrowed the tune from The Anacreontic Song, a song celebrating Bacchinalian exploits which was such in the gentleman's club of the same name which existed in London during the 1700s.
Anacreon was a Greek poet who sounds a bit like yer standard pub singer who wrote and sang the usual 'wine, women and song' stuff in the tavernas of the 6th Century BC. Here's the chorus:
It was often used as a sobriety test (in the days before Lion Alcometers! ;-)), if you could sing the whole verse in tune, then you were sober enough to order another round! A mite more difficult than '99 Bottles o' Beer'! The tongue-twisting tune was fiendishly difficult for a teetotaller, so you can imagine what it was like for a bunch o' bleezin Georgians!
Key's song and tune were adopted by the nation in 1931 as the national anthem, even though it had been used by the US Navy since 1889.
AND funnily enough, the previous anthem, 'My Country, Tis Of Thee' had been derived from God Save the Queen!
So, perhaps the best tunes belong to the old country! Still, I love it, it's fabulously patriotic and I defy most people not to want to belt out the last couplet! Keep on flying, star-spangled banner!
It came from ...
An ENGLISH DRINKING SONG!!!
Although the words were written by American Francis Scott Key in the 19th Century, he borrowed the tune from The Anacreontic Song, a song celebrating Bacchinalian exploits which was such in the gentleman's club of the same name which existed in London during the 1700s.
Anacreon was a Greek poet who sounds a bit like yer standard pub singer who wrote and sang the usual 'wine, women and song' stuff in the tavernas of the 6th Century BC. Here's the chorus:
And besides I'll instruct you,
Like me, to intwine
The Myrtle of Venus
With Bacchus' Vine
It was often used as a sobriety test (in the days before Lion Alcometers! ;-)), if you could sing the whole verse in tune, then you were sober enough to order another round! A mite more difficult than '99 Bottles o' Beer'! The tongue-twisting tune was fiendishly difficult for a teetotaller, so you can imagine what it was like for a bunch o' bleezin Georgians!
Key's song and tune were adopted by the nation in 1931 as the national anthem, even though it had been used by the US Navy since 1889.
AND funnily enough, the previous anthem, 'My Country, Tis Of Thee' had been derived from God Save the Queen!
So, perhaps the best tunes belong to the old country! Still, I love it, it's fabulously patriotic and I defy most people not to want to belt out the last couplet! Keep on flying, star-spangled banner!
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
Wednesday, 11 February 2009
Peterhead Remembered
A new forum has been set up to discuss memories of Peterhead, the Blue Toon -
Peterhead Remembered
If you are interested in joining up - please go to the forum and register.
The Blue Mogganer story is going to appear on the Storyquine Blog in a wee while.
Peterhead Remembered
If you are interested in joining up - please go to the forum and register.
The Blue Mogganer story is going to appear on the Storyquine Blog in a wee while.
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