Aberdeenshire Folk Tales
Aberdeenshire Folk Tales

Author: Grace Banks

Publisher: The History Press

Published: 2013-11-01

Total Pages: 186

ISBN-13: 0752497855

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The folklore of the North East provides a rich tapestry for the tales within; from Celtic and Pictish origins meet witches, selkies, smugglers, fairies, monsters, despicable rogues, riddles and heroes. Tragic events, spellbinding characters, humour, romance and clever minds are bound together by two well-established storytellers living and working in the city and shire of Aberdeen. Some of the tales in this collection are based on historical fact while others are embedded in myth and legend. All the stories are set against the backdrop of this lovely and varied landscape. Sheena and Grace have both been inspired in their storytelling and singing by the traveller, raconteur and balladeer, Stanley Robertson.

The Ballad and the Folk Pbdirect
The Ballad and the Folk Pbdirect

Author: David Buchan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-02-11

Total Pages: 343

ISBN-13: 1317552903

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The ballad is an enduring and universal literary genre. In this book, first published in 1972, David Buchan is concerned to establish the nature of a ballad and of the people who produced it through a study of the regional tradition of the Northeast of Scotland, the most fertile ballad area in Britain. His account of this tradition has two parallel aims, one specifically literary – to investigate the ballad as oral literature – and one broadly ethnographic – to set the regional tradition in its social context. Dr Buchan applies the interesting and important work which has recently been done on oral tradition in Europe on the relationship of the ballad to society to his study of this particular part of Scotland. He examines a nonliterate society to discover what factors besides nonliteracy helped foster its ballad tradition. He analyses the processes of composition and transmission in the oral ballad, and considers the changes which removed nonliteracy, altered social patterns, and seriously affected the ballad tradition. By demonstrating how people who could neither read nor write were able to compose literature of a high order, David Buchan provides a convincing explanation of the ballad’s perennial appeal and an answer to the ‘ballad enigma’. His book is also a valuable study in social history of this culturally distinct region, the Northeast of Scotland.

Rural Life in Victorian Aberdeenshire
Rural Life in Victorian Aberdeenshire

Author: William Alexander

Publisher: Mercat Press Books

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13:

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The published work of William Alexander is the surest contemporary guide to the social history of the countryside of North-East Scotland in the nineteenth century. In this selection of his writing, which includes essays from the Aberdeenshire Free Press and chapters from his masterpiece Johnny Gibb of Gushetneuk, Ian Carter shows how Alexander's writing reflected the lives that real people enjoyed and endured in the countryside of Victorian Scotland and thus contributed to vital debates about the proper shape of that countryside. Taken as a whole, Alexander's writing is a matchless account of the aspirations of a peasantry resisting full integration into capitalist agriculture. It runs directly counter to the policies that we have taken for granted for two generations, and this selection may encourage North-East folk - and other Scots - to challenge these assumptions. It will certainly help them reclaim some of their history.

Gender in Scottish History Since 1700
Gender in Scottish History Since 1700

Author: Lynn Abrams

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2006-01-25

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0748626395

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Scottish history is undergoing a renaissance. Everyone agrees that an understanding of our nation's history is integral to our experience of its present and the shaping of the future. But the story of Scotland's past is being told with little reference to gendered identities. Not only are women largely missing from these grand narratives, but men's experience has tended to be sublimated in intellectual, political and economic agendas. Neither femininities nor masculinities have been given much of a place in Scotland's past or in the process of nation-making. Gender in Scottish History offers a new perspective on Scotland's past since around 1700, viewing some of the main themes with a gendered perspective. It starts from the assumption that gender is integral to our understanding of the ways in which societies in the past were organised and that national histories have a tendency to be gender blind. Each chapter engages with one key theme from Scottish historiography, asking what happens when women are added to the story and how the story changes when the meanings of gendered understandings and assumptions are probed. Addressing politics, culture, religion, science, education, work, the family and identity, Gender in Scottish History proposes an alternative reading of the Scottish past which is both inclusive and recognisable.

A Dash O'Doric
A Dash O'Doric

Author: Robbie Shepherd

Publisher: Birlinn Ltd

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 128

ISBN-13: 0857909576

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The old man looked down at his lifelong friend, now lying in his coffin, and said: 'Man, there's even a smile on his face.' 'There is,' said the widow, 'bit Jock wis aye a bittie saft. He disna ken fit's happened til him yet.' And then there was the hapless crew from Sky TV on one of their periodic visits to check Highland reactions to various news stories. Spotting a likely interviewee in Academy Street, the reporter approached and said: 'Excuse me, have you got a few words for Sky TV?' 'I have,' snapped the man. 'Stick your microphone up your nose and bugger off back to Portree.' Or what about the Banffshire congregation who welcomed a new English member and were horrified to discover that at the end of every hymn or prayer the newcomer would cry: 'Praise the Lord and Hallelujah!'? The beadle scurried up to the new man's pew and hissed: 'Jist behave yersel. We dinna praise the Lord here.' Norman Harper and Robbie Shepherd are back with a third collection of stories which show the wit and wisdom of North-east Scotland at their finest. Find out inside why the ice-skating scoring system at a Donside tournament went so badly wrong; read of the forgetful railway guard at Fyvie and how the old passenger on the Culter train was celebrating her birthday; marvel at one Buchan oilman's tip for improving your love life on holiday. It's all here, and more.