The Horsieman

The Horsieman PDF Author: Duncan Williamson
Publisher: Birlinn
ISBN: 0857905279
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 434

Get Book Here

Book Description
Duncan Williamson was the son, grandson and great grandson of nomadic tinsmiths, basket makers, pipers and storytellers. In this book, he describes his life as a traveller with verve, candour and intimacy, recounting a childhood spent on the shores of Loch Fyne, work on the small hill farms in the summer, walking with barrows and prams and later with horse and cart, the length and breadth of Scotland. He recalls camping with hundreds of traveller families from the 1940s to the 1960s, his marriage to his cousin, Jeanie Townsley, and all the various traditional skills and arts which must be perfected for a man to maintain his family adequately. The Horsieman is the story of traditions long vanished - of traveller trades, of building tents, of routes travelled and traditional camping sites, of stories, songs, music and cures which have been the heritage and tradition of travelling people in Scotland through the ages. Set mainly in Argyll, Tayside and all stations in between, Duncan Williamson's story is told with great warmth and humour and in the inimitable style of one Scotland's master storytellers.

The Horsieman

The Horsieman PDF Author: Duncan Williamson
Publisher: Birlinn
ISBN: 0857905279
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 434

Get Book Here

Book Description
Duncan Williamson was the son, grandson and great grandson of nomadic tinsmiths, basket makers, pipers and storytellers. In this book, he describes his life as a traveller with verve, candour and intimacy, recounting a childhood spent on the shores of Loch Fyne, work on the small hill farms in the summer, walking with barrows and prams and later with horse and cart, the length and breadth of Scotland. He recalls camping with hundreds of traveller families from the 1940s to the 1960s, his marriage to his cousin, Jeanie Townsley, and all the various traditional skills and arts which must be perfected for a man to maintain his family adequately. The Horsieman is the story of traditions long vanished - of traveller trades, of building tents, of routes travelled and traditional camping sites, of stories, songs, music and cures which have been the heritage and tradition of travelling people in Scotland through the ages. Set mainly in Argyll, Tayside and all stations in between, Duncan Williamson's story is told with great warmth and humour and in the inimitable style of one Scotland's master storytellers.

Webspinner

Webspinner PDF Author: John D. Niles
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 149684159X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Get Book Here

Book Description
Born in 1928 in a tent on the shore of Loch Fyne, Argyll, Duncan Williamson (d. 2007) eventually came to be recognized as one of the foremost storytellers in Scotland and the world. Webspinner: Songs, Stories, and Reflections of Duncan Williamson, Scottish Traveller is based on more than a hundred hours of tape-recorded interviews undertaken with him in the 1980s. Williamson tells of his birth and upbringing in the west of Scotland, his family background as one of Scotland’s seminomadic travelling people, his varied work experiences after setting out from home at about age fifteen, and the challenges he later faced while raising a family of his own, living on the road for half the year. The recordings on which the book is based were made by John D. Niles, who was then an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Niles has transcribed selections from his field tapes with scrupulous accuracy, arranging them alongside commentary, photos, and other scholarly aids, making this priceless self-portrait of a brilliant storyteller available to the public. The result is a delight to read. It is also a mine of information concerning a vanished way of life and the place of singing and storytelling in Traveller culture. In chapters that feature many colorful anecdotes and that mirror the spontaneity of oral delivery, readers learn much about how Williamson and other members of his persecuted minority had the resourcefulness to make a living on the outskirts of society, owning very little in the way of material goods but sustained by a rich oral heritage.

Fireside Tales of the Traveller Children

Fireside Tales of the Traveller Children PDF Author: Duncan Williamson
Publisher: Birlinn Ltd
ISBN: 0857909592
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 203

Get Book Here

Book Description
Duncan Williamson was a Scottish traveller who went on to become one of Britain's master story-tellers. During his lifetime he was acclaimed 'the greatest English-speaking storyteller', 'the national monument of British storytelling' and, at his death, Scotland's 'greatest contemporary storyteller'. Fireside Tales, his first book, reveals this artistry and mastery in all its glory. This new edition is edited by his wife, Linda Williamson. Fireside Tales is narrated with an intense commitment to generations of the travelling people, who used animal fables, wonder tales and splendid horror stories to instil in their children moral judgment and a knowledge of right and wrong. At every corner the technical skill of the narrator is revealed, his ingenious mixture of conversation and action, frequent change of pace, use of the first person – all attributes of the born storyteller which compel attention, where tension and excitement are at fever pitch throughout. With a universality that can relate to every reader, this book represents one of the great collections of traveller stories.

Jack and the Devil's Purse

Jack and the Devil's Purse PDF Author: Duncan Williamson
Publisher: Birlinn
ISBN: 0857900536
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 221

Get Book Here

Book Description
Devil stories are always fascinating, entertaining and disturbing. These twenty tales, re-told by one of Scotland's master storytellers, are a fascinating insight into Traveller beliefs about evil, temptation and suffering in which the Devil exists not to punish, but to outwit you in a contest of intelligence and knowledge. This collection is an expanded edition of Duncan Williamson's best-selling May the Devil Walk Behind Ye!, originally published by Canongate.

The Land of the Seal People

The Land of the Seal People PDF Author: Duncan Williamson
Publisher: Birlinn Ltd
ISBN: 0857909657
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 197

Get Book Here

Book Description
No stories were more potent, more engaging, more subtle or profound than these half-animal, half-human tales of the sea. Time and time again listeners enthralled by Duncan Williamson's lore would ask him for the silkie tale. Duncan grew up with the seals, slept nights stranded by the tide in their colonies, heard countless stories from crofters, fishermen and travellers alike about the strange people who were related to the seal; the silkie stories magically link the two worlds, animal and human, sea and land. This new and expanded edition contains twenty-four stories, including thirteen that are previously unpublished, with a new introduction by Linda Williamson which examines the background of the West Highland belief in the seal people. The Land of the Seal People is a work of a master narrator, Scotland's greatest contemporary storyteller. The book is adult fiction of high intellectual and literary standards, and, as Scottish folk tales, suits children and adults alike. From the oral tradition of the West Coast, these stories are a vital part of Scotland's heritage.

Scotland's Hidden Harlots and Heroines

Scotland's Hidden Harlots and Heroines PDF Author: Annie Harrower-Gray
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1781592713
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 201

Get Book Here

Book Description
Annie Harrower-Gray opens up an alternative view of Scotland's turbulent history, revealing three centuries through the eyes of the nation's women. The whole of society appears, from ordinary labourers, prostitutes and factory hands to their more celebrated sisters and even witches, bodysnatchers and female Jacobites. ??All their tales are freshly researched and told with a sense of humour. Colourful characters abound! Step inside the boudoirs of Edinburgh's ladies of pleasure, whose civilised manners so confused one church minister that he 'accidentally' took tea in a brothel. Creep into the graveyard with Helen Torrance and Jean Lapiq, convicted of bodysnatching half a century before Burke and Hare. Uncover the murky history of Scotland's last witch Helen Duncan, whose eerily accurate wartime predictions led to her imprisonment. This book offers an exciting and erudite voyage through the social history of Scotland. ??Honour the heroines who helped to shape Scotland, yet rest in unvisited tombs!??As featured in Alloa & Hillfoots Advertiser and Scottish Memories Magazine.

Hamish Henderson: Volume 2

Hamish Henderson: Volume 2 PDF Author: Timothy Neat
Publisher: Birlinn
ISBN: 0857904876
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 715

Get Book Here

Book Description
Hamish Henderson lived one of the great lives of twentieth-century Scotland, a dramatic life of epic European scale, a life of major artistic, political and spiritual achievement. Well-known as a songwriter, a poet and a pioneer in the field of Scottish folksong, Henderson was also a highly original translator of poetry - from Gaelic, French, German, Latin and Greek - much of it into Scots. He also translated the work of the Italian socialist Antonio Gramsci, whose "Prison Letters" he published in English in 1974. Born in Blairgowrie, Perthshire, in 1919, Hamish Henderson spent his early years in Glenshee before moving to Ireland and then Devon. He won a scholarship to Dulwich College and went on to study Modern Languages at Cambridge. During the Second World War he served in North Africa and Italy with the 51st Highland Division. He died in March 2002. This book, a major study of this charismatic and fascinating man, presents both a detailed biography and an assessment of his place in the context of the twentieth century. It is based on first-hand interviews with those who knew Henderson both personally and professionally as well as detailed research of published and unpublished sources.

History of Scottish Women's Writing

History of Scottish Women's Writing PDF Author: Douglas Gifford
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748672664
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 741

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is the first comprehensive critical analysis of Scottish women's writing from its recoverable beginnings to the present day. Essays cover individual writers - such as Margaret Oliphant, Nan Shepherd, Muriel Spark and Liz Lochhead - as well as groups of writers or kinds of writing - such as women poets and dramatists, or Gaelic writing and the legacy of the Kailyard. In addition to poetry, drama and fiction, a varied body of non-fiction writing is also covered, including diaries, memoirs, biography and autobiography, didactic and polemic writing, and popular and periodical writing for and by women.

An Evolving Tradition

An Evolving Tradition PDF Author: Dave Thompson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1493068245
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 545

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Child Ballads are a series of over 300 traditional ballads from England and Scotland that, along with their American variants, were anthologized by folklorist Francis James Child in the nineteenth century. An Evolving Tradition is the story of the Child Ballads—the world’s best-known and most highly regarded repository of traditional English folk songs, and the wellspring for approximately 10,000 recordings over the last century, from obscure musicological archives to classic releases from Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, and Led Zeppelin. Drawing on interviews with numerous scholars and musicians, author Dave Thompson explains what a ballad is, outlines their dominant themes, and recounts how these ballads survived to become a mainstay of field recordings made by Cecil Sharp, Alan Lomax, and others as they traveled the English and American countryside in search of old songs. Thompson traverses the entire spectrum of rock, pop, folk, roots, experimental music, industrial, and goth to reveal the remarkable legacy and incalculable influence of the Child Ballads on all manner of modern music.

Scottish Traveller Tales

Scottish Traveller Tales PDF Author: Donald Braid
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 9781578064502
Category : Scottish Travellers (Nomadic people)
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Get Book Here

Book Description
The only book that closely examines this fascinating storytelling culture of Scotland