Scottish Studies

Front Matter

Virginia Blankenhorn — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Traditional Sources of Four Burns Songs: ‘The Posie’, ‘Craigie-burn Wood’, ‘Ae Day a braw wooer’ and ‘A waukrife Minnie’

Katherine Campbell, Emily Lyle — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Robert Burns devoted much effort to the collection of tunes which he expected to be published in James Johnson’s Scots Musical Museum and George Thomson’s Select Collection. The tunes were often accompanied by the words of songs and Burns related to these sources in different ways. This article studies in detail his relationship to four songs and demonstrates how the partial information that he gives explicitly can be developed to give an impression of these source songs as wholes, so increasing our knowledge of traditional Scottish song in the eighteenth century. The study also throws light on Burns’s method of composition when he was using a traditional base.

The Last of the Great Auks: Oral History and Ritual Killings at St Kilda

Andrew Fleming — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The story of the killing of the ‘last’ great auk (Pinguinus impennis) in Britain, apparently put to death as a witch at Stac an Armin in the St Kilda archipelago c. 1840, is well known. However, other accounts claim that an auk was killed on the main island, Hirta, having been condemned to death by the celebrated men’s ‘parliament’. The historical veracity of three differing stories, which recount discreditable deeds in a deeply Christian community, is evaluated; it seems that fewest difficulties are raised if two great auks were killed, one on Hirta and the other on Stac an Armin. It is argued that this kind of avicide was a ‘ritual’ killing, to be understood in its historical context. The auk-killing probably took place in the mid to late 1840s, after the St Kilda minister had departed in the wake of the Disruption of 1843 - a particularly unsettling time within this small island community. A possible sighting of a pair of great auks on Soay (St Kilda) in 1890 is also briefly discussed.

Bàrdachd Baile – Ath-mheasadh

Iain G. Howieson — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In the twentieth century, several prominent Gaelic scholars argued that nineteenth-century bàrdachd baile (‘township poetry’) was cliché-ridden, and therefore of limited literary merit. In reassessing such opinions, this article considers a representative sample of the poetry from two points of view. First, it demonstrates through close analysis that these local poets used a wide range of literary techniques to convey meaning and sentiment. Second – and perhaps more important – it shows how expressions which some have considered clichés are in fact vital to the effect of the poetry. The argument is informed by insights from the field of ethnopoetics, and by a detailed consideration of the imagery used. Finally, the author argues that proper evaluation of this poetry, much of it orally composed and transmitted in a society in which the oral traditions were still strong, requires different aesthetic criteria from those applied to poetry that depends upon the written word.

Digital Developments in Scottish Studies

William Lamb, Natasha Sumner, Gordon Wells — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Beyond the intricacies of audio recording equipment and the electric typewriter, technology hasn’t always been a big part of Scottish Studies. The past few decades, however, have witnessed the growing impact that digital technologies are having on our field. To get a sense of what lies ahead, this essay examines the efforts of three scholars involved in transforming access to source materials and reshaping the terms of scholarly enquiry

Volunteer Bands and Local Identity in Caithness at the Time of the Second Reform Act

Jane Pettegree — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Caithness lay outside the national railway network in 1868, but as this article demonstrates, used the band music of its local volunteer military units, embedded within a wider contemporary British context of imperial music-making, as a means to express and shape local political identities. The second Reform Act of 1867, enacted in Scotland by the Representation of the People (Scotland) Act 1868, prompted wider reimagining about what it meant to be a citizen of Scotland and Britain. Regular references to civic bands in contemporary newspapers and carefully posed photographs in local archives provide evidence for the popularity of Silver and Brass bands connected with the Caithness Volunteer movement. As they marched around towns, villages and countryside, especially around the time of the national elections and local by-elections of 1868-9, their music created powerfully affective soundscapes that connected traditional local identities with the modern British fiscal-military state, helping people to imagine their place as citizens in a period of widening political engagement. The county’s band music provides a microhistory that allows exploration of contrasts between rural and civic patterns of political behaviour in this period.

Singing and the Dùsgaidhean: The Impact of Religious Awakenings on Musical Creativity in the Outer Hebrides

Frances Wilkins — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The evangelical revivals (known in English as ‘awakenings’ and in Gaelic as na dùsgaidhean) of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had an immediate impact upon singing and music-making in Presbyterian communities in the Western Isles as well as a significant long-term effect on both traditional and sacred musical practice and performance. Awakenings often led converts to re-evaluate their participation in traditional music-making and singing and compelled many to give up their secular music practices upon conversion. Even so, music-making itself was not discouraged, and these religious revivals created an environment which encouraged converts to replace their secular repertoire with spiritual songs and hymns, and to embrace the singing and new composition of spiritual songs to express their newly experienced Christian faith. This article examines the impact of religious revivals on music-making in the Outer Hebrides – particularly Lewis – and the significant musical shifts, including the composition of new repertoire, which took place within communities as a result.

Book Reviews

Virginia Blankenhorn — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000