Context, Structure, and Meaning in the Scottish Ballad
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Singing Families of Aberdeenshire: Context, Structure, and Meaning in the Scottish Ballad Thomas A. McKEAN The North-East of Scotland is sometimes called “the cold shoulder of Scotland”, with the cold winds coming off the surrounding North Sea. Cold and windy it may be, but it is also home to one of the most remarkable singing traditions in the world: the classic ballad tradition. In Francis James Child’s The English and Scottish Popular Ballads fully two-thirds of the primary texts come from Aberdeenshire. １） The ballad in Scottish tradition is a song that tells a story, a compact narrative communicating history, experience, and happenstance along with the human emotional responses to them. The songs contain some of the most distilled and powerful poetic language to be found anywhere, in the service of dramatic, and sometimes horrifying plots. Before reflecting on the form and structure of the Scottish ballad, I want to focus on the people who sing. There has been extensive research on ballad texts, their background history, and the melodies to which they were sung, but comparatively little attention spent on who sings, why they sing, what it means to them, and how the songs function in their lives. The following may be considered a brief introduction to four prominent Scottish Traveller families, people for whom song is a part of daily life, a part of regular human communication, rather than for performance on a stage. On the way, we will encounter their society and consider their singing style. Families are the basic unit of folk song. Songs are sung in the home in everyday life. They are not just for a formal evening, but rather sung casually by the fireside on an evening, or perhaps with a small gathering of friends. But for the most part, the songs are sung as people go about their daily lives: cleaning, working, taking care of children. Songs have a deeply symbolic role in the lives of those raised with them. In singing songs, memories are evoked of where they were heard, who sang them and what it felt like at the time. Jane Turriff recalls, “My granfather, he used tae come in about an [he’d be] goin away tae his work an that: very, very happy singin, always singin”（Turriff 1996: 8）. She talked, too, of her father, his way of being, singing as he readied himself for work. This is not about the song, as such, but about the person and about memory. And it is not a performance, but a man living with a song under his breath（see McKean 2014 for more on Jane’s father and the texture of song in singers’ lives）. Before we meet our families, a word about Scottish Travellers, a semi-nomadic people considered native to Scotland with a pair of intertwined origin legends:（1）they are Scotland’s oldest indigenous people, itinerant metalworkers（tinsmiths）and current families descend from those who no longer had employment after the breakdown of the clan system（Douglas 2006: 1, 5, －59－ 立命館言語文化研究28巻 1 号 7–11）, and（2）that they have possible cultural and genetic kinship to the Gypsies, or “Egyptians” as they were called due to their misunderstood origins, Romany Gypsies who arrived in Scotland in the early sixteenth century, during the reign of James IV（Nord 2006: 3）. Even today, Travellers are victims of virulent prejudice in the media and the settled population’s attitudes have been characterized as “the last acceptable face of racism in modern Scotland”（Amnesty 2013）. Although they were itinerants, Travellers were also an important part of Scottish life for many years, working as seasonal farmhands and dealers in used and recycled materials. Since the 1950s, they have also been valorized for preserving traditional stories, songs, and customs（Henderson 1980: 85–87）. The Stewarts of Blair Our first family is the “Stewarts of Blair”, a family of singers who came to a wide listening public when journalist Maurice Fleming recommended to folklorist Hamish Henderson that he record them in 1954 for the School of Scottish Studies in Edinburgh. In the seasonal berry-picking camps, Henderson recorded the Stewarts and found a lively tradition of song after the work was done. He said recording songs at the berryfields was like holding a “tin-can under Niagara Falls”（Henderson 1992: 102）. Belle Stewart was born in 1906 on the banks of Loch Tay, in a little bow tent. Belle was raised in this life of seasonal and itinerant work. When not working and taking care of her family, she sang and played with her husband Alec, who played the “goose”, a bagpipe without the over-the-shoulder drones. The family was already performing as a concert party, booking their own halls and travelling all over the north-east of Scotland, as far north as Banff（for more on Belle Stewart, see Douglas 1992）. Belle learned some of her songs from her brother Donald, as well as her parents and became a real matriarch, known in folk song circles after one of her best known songs, “The Queen Among the Heather”. Every year, Travellers from all over Scotland would gather in Blairgowrie to harvest the raspberries, strawberries and blackberries in the fertile Figure 1. Belle Stewart, surrounded by four fields which supplied fruit for the huge generations（photo by Thomas A. Dundee jam industry and further afield. Belle McKean, 1991） －60－ Singing Families of Aberdeenshire: Context, Structure, and Meaning in the Scottish Ballad（McKEAN） Stewart tells the story in her own composition, “The Berryfields of Blair”. When berry time comes roond each year Blair’s population’s swelling, There’s every kind o picker there And every kind o dwellin. There’s tents and huts and caravans, There’s bothies and there’s bivvies And shelters made wi tattie-bags And dug-outs made wi divvies. Latterly, Belle and Alec rented berryfields and put the crop in themselves, becoming settled entrepreneurs. Belle was given the Order of the British Empire in the 1960s for her services to traditional music. Travellers had “arrived” and become respectable, though some in the village despised her for getting above her station. Sheila Stewart（1935–2015） Belle’s daughter, Sheila, lived – as far as singing goes – very much in her mother’s shadow. To tell you the God’s honest truth, when me, my mother and Cathie was out singing, me and Cathie werenae our own persons in wir own right. We couldnae speak. We had to go forward, sing the song, and then step back. My mother was the head of the family, she was the mouth- piece, because she was the “Queen Amang the Heather” and it was expected of her and we knew our place.（Pegg, “Sheila Stewart”） Sheila felt that she was not allowed to sing the “Queen Amang the Heather”, because of her mother. It was classed as her song – she was the “Queen Amang the Heather” – and I was never allowed to sing it in public; until I knew my mother was failing a wee bit, and one day I sung it on stage and she whispered, “It’s my song”. I says, “So?” ... “Oh carry on then darlin’”!（Pegg, “Sheila Stewart”） Sheila grew into her role as a doyenne of Scottish traditional ballad singing, taking complete mastery of “The Twa Brithers”（Child 49）, her mother’s song. Sheila picked some songs directly from her mother, but many from her uncle Donald, from whom Belle also learned: My greatest memory was my Uncle Donald. He comes top of the list every time wi me －61－ 立命館言語文化研究28巻 1 号 because he was the one that I practically lived wi – brought up wi – and because he taught me the ballads. To me, the first love in my life is ballads.（Pegg, “Sheila Stewart”） Note that phrase, “the first love of my life is ballads”, a telling indication of the importance of traditional songs to Traveller families which we will see played out elsewhere, too. Robertson-Higgins Our next group is the Robertson-Higgins family from Aberdeen, cousins to the Blairgowrie Stewarts: Jeannie Robertson, Lizzie Higgins, Donald Higgins and Albert Stewart. The best-known of these by far is Jeannie Robertson（1908–1975）, called by American collector Alan Lomax a monumental figure in the world of folk song. Jeannie Robertson was famous, in particular, for “My Son David”（Child 13）, another ballad of murder and fratricide in Figure 2. Jeannie Robertson（photo from LP, which a younger son is jealous of the Jeannie Robertson: The Great Scots Traditional Ballad Singer, TOPIC Records, older’s inheritance（see Robertson 1952 for TSDL052, 1963） a rendition of the song）. The rivalry over inheritance is not made explicit in the song, but rather explained in contextualizing narratives that Travellers tell alongside the songs. Before or after singing “Son David”, Jeannie’s nephew, Stanley Robertson, would invariably explain the younger brother’s motivation: My mither used tae aye tell me the stories o the ballads. She said they were twins, the twa laddies were twins, ye ken? And there’s only like minutes between them. They were like kings, so one’s gan tae get the best o aathing. But I think the elder one canna get his younger brother to dee fit he’s tellt; he winna rule by him. Naebody could take him tae trial, cause he’s the big shot. [...] It’s a moral fight wi his ain conscience and he’s contemplatin suicide.（Robertson 2009） So the song does not contain the whole story, a little background knowledge is required to unpack the full meaning of a ballad, a strong tradition in the Travellers’ world and one I will return to later.