Unit 12: Scots song

Introduction

In this unit you will learn about the way in which the Scots language features in the song traditions of Scotland, and in particular the regional distinctiveness of song in terms of repertoire, song content and song type. The Scots song tradition has been an important touchstone for the use of Scots language as a means of cultural expression.

This unit will look at songs by region, and consider some of the ways in which Scots songs have helped develop and strengthen the Scots language.

Apart from well-known songwriters in Scots such as Robert Burns, there are major collections, localised traditions and resources – as well as individual singers – who have all played their part in developing the rich tradition that continues today, against a background of growing access to online digitised archives of Scots song, in both print and audio form.

Important themes to take notes on throughout this unit:

• Scots song collecting over the centuries – how collections came into being, including ways in which Scots songs have been passed on, collected and published
• the various types of Scots song
• the distinctive song traditions of particular areas of Scotland
• ideas of the “oral tradition”
• the influence of print and recorded media on Scots song traditions
• the recently-digitised resources which help to underpin the study and learning of Scots song
• the importance of the Scottish Travellers in preserving traditional songs
• how Scots song is used in the 21^st century.

12. Introductory handsel

A Scots word and example sentence to learn:

• Sangster

• Definition: A person who sings, a singer, freq. a professional singer. Also as a surname.

•  

  • Example sentence: “She’s an affa bonnie sangster, wi a voice like a lintie.”

  • English translation: “She’s a lovely singer, with a voice like a linnet.”

Activity 2

Click to hear the sentence above read by a Scots speaker.

You can then make your own recording and play it back to check your pronunciation.

You can record your response here, but this facility requires a free OU account. Sign in or register.

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Transcript

Listen

She’s an affa bonnie sangster, wi a voice like a lintie.

Model

She’s an affa bonnie sangster, wi a voice like a lintie.

End transcript

 

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Go to the Dictionary of the Scots Language for a full definition of the word

Scots singer Julienne Taylor.

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This is an image of Scots singer Julienne Taylor. It is a close up image of just her torso, shoulders and head. She sings with her eyes closed, holding a microphone in her right hand.

Scots singer Julienne Taylor.

Related word:

• Lintie

• Definition: n. 1. A linnet, a songbird.

•  

  • Example sentence: “She’s an affa bonnie sangster, wi a voice like a lintie.”

  • English translation: “She’s a lovely singer, with a voice like a linnet.”

12.1 Oral vs printed tradition

Scots song exists in large part via what is known as an ‘oral tradition’, that is to say, people often learned songs through their family and social circle without necessarily writing them down or learning them from printed sources.

The majority of Scots songs are considered to be ‘traditional’. In other words, they have no known author, as the songs are often centuries old and authors’ names have been lost over time. It is important to bear this in mind when thinking about Scots song, because it helps explain why there is no ‘fixed text’ or ‘right’ way of singing most Scots songs.

Yet, there are songs for which there is an established author and definitive published text, e.g. in the case of people like Robert Burns, Robert Tannahill or Lady Nairne (Carolina Oliphant), as well as modern songwriters writing in the Scots idiom. But even then, the ‘tradition’ often means these words become altered through time as people interpret and adapt them in their own way. In many cases, songwriters, including Burns, were building on older songs found in the tradition to produce their own work.

Portrait of Robert Tannahill in Paisley Museum

It is for these reasons that we sometimes talk about ‘versions’ or ‘variants’ of traditional songs. Variants can be influenced by the region in which they are found, either through the localising of particular place names in a song, or changing the dialect in which it is sung. That said, the language of Scots song can differ from place to place and does not necessarily follow dialect areas, as the Scots Language Centre website’s Scots Song section explains:

The process of printing songs may also have meant the language was corrected or mis-spelled by publishers and editors – made more difficult with Scots not having an official or standardised spelling system.

It is also important to view Scots song in the wider context of English-language song from across the British Isles – especially Ulster which shares some repertoire - and further afield in places like Appalachia in the United States, which have their own variants of some of the same songs (particularly classic ballads or ‘muckle sangs’, see song types in section 11.3). In many cases, these songs will have travelled with emigrants from Scotland in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Similarly, Scottish people brought songs back with them from their travels, e.g. those who worked on the sea.

12.2 Scots song collecting over the centuries

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This is a hand drawing called “The Weavers Wife”, which depicts a man and a woman sat together holding hands. The woman looks at her husband, whilst the man looks out the window.

In starting to consider the Scots song tradition, it is vital to understand from the outset that songs have been collected in a number of different ways over the past few centuries up to the present day. They have been collated, classified and presented in a variety of forms as technology has changed.

Most commonly, Scots songs would be published in print, although the tension between the ‘oral’ and print versions was already apparent around 1800. A number of problems arose when printing songs in written form, that came from the oral tradition in the non-standardised language of Scots.

A telling example of these problems, which go well beyond finding the ‘right spelling’, is that of Margaret Laidlaw’s songs published in a collection of songs Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border was compiled and edited by Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832).

Activity 4

In this activity, you will be engaging with a much-quoted condemnation of the methods used in publishing songs in the Minstrelsy. The famous complaint came from James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd’s mother, Margaret Laidlaw, who reproached Sir Walter Scott, who had come to collect a ballad from her.

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Part 2

In this part of the activity, you will again practise your spoken Scots by saying Margaret Laidlaw’s words yourself and comparing your pronunciation with our model.

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Transcript

Listen

There war never ane o’ my sangs prentit till ye prentit them yoursel’, and ye hae spoilt them awthegither. They were made for singin’ an’ no for readin’; but ye hae broken them charm noo, and they’ll never (be) sung mair. An’ the worst thing of a’ they’re nouther richt spell’d nor richt setten down.

Model

There war never ane o’ my sangs prentit till ye prentit them yoursel’, and ye hae spoilt them awthegither. They were made for singin’ an’ no for readin’; but ye hae broken them charm noo, and they’ll never (be) sung mair. An’ the worst thing of a’ they’re nouther richt spell’d nor richt setten down.

End transcript

 

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It does not come as a surprise to read Margaret Laidlaw’s angry words, when we consider how Sir Walter Scott approached publishing the songs in his Minstrelsy.

And, last but not least, there was a major flaw in Scott’s collection, as he did not record the music together with the words of the songs, thus making them appear as poems rather than songs and losing their musicality.

While there were countless collectors down through the centuries, some of the most famous printed collections include – David Herd’s Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs from 1769; The Scots Musical Museum (6 vols, 1787–1803) by James Johnson and Robert Burns; Francis James Child’s English and Scottish Popular Ballads (5 vols, 1882-1898); and The Greig-Duncan Folk Song Collection (8 vols, 1981–2002, but collected 1902–1914).

Francis James Child’s collection – prepared from print and manuscript sources from his base at Harvard in the United States, rather than his own field collecting – categorised classic ballad texts into a classification of 305 types that are known today as the ‘Child’ ballads, and each has an identifying number attached, e.g. Sir Patrick Spens is Child ballad number 58.

An important point to note is that the vast majority of collections (as well as broadsides and chapbooks) were originally published without tunes, in other words text only, with the notable exception of the Scots Musical Museum. This was either because of the prohibitive cost of setting music for print, or the fact that it was assumed many of the tunes were already well-known. As such, tune names would often be given alongside. In the 20^th century, the Greig-Duncan collection was published with musical notation, and Child’s collection was expanded by Bertrand Bronson’s Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads published from 1959-1972.

From 1902-1914, schoolmaster Gavin Greig and minister Rev James B. Duncan collected songs around their native Aberdeenshire and also partly through correspondence. This resulted in a large collection of over 3,000 song versions, which is housed at the University of Aberdeen. The collection was eventually published in the late 20^th century in collaboration with the School of Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh, in eight volumes from 1981-2002.

The School of Scottish Studies had been co-founded by, amongst others, folklorist and poet Hamish Henderson in 1951, spurred on by the work of the Irish Folklore Commission in Ireland and the collecting of American folklorist Alan Lomax, who visited Scotland in 1951. It has collected around 12,000 hours of folklore field recordings, many of which are now available online through the trilingual Tobar an Dualchais / Kist o Riches / Well of Heritage project. Similar fieldwork recording has been done in recent decades by the Elphinstone Institute at the University of Aberdeen.

12.3 Types of Scots song

This third section will give an overview of the different types of Scots song and ways in which they evolved or were used in Scottish society as a means of cultural expression, documenting events, or simply for storytelling or entertainment.

It should be stressed at this point that not all Scots songs are necessarily grand narrative ballads, but can also be simple short ditties; all these songs play a different role and function within their local context. This is underlined by the late Norman Buchan, folk activist and former MP, wrote about Hamish Henderson’s collecting approach:

The main types of Scots song are:

• Classic ballads, or the Muckle sangs (aka ‘Child’ ballads)

  Longer narrative songs, usually with many short verses and a repeating chorus, often telling stories of historical events (although not always accurately), e.g. Sir Patrick Spens, Edom o Gordon, The Bonnie Hoose o Airlie. 305 of these were classified as distinct types in the 19^th century by Prof Francis Child, and a numbering system is used to help identify versions.

  The muckle sangs are considered of great importance not only because of their age – usually they have a history stretching back several centuries – but also because versions of the same stories are found in other European traditions and further afield. For example, the ballad of the Twa Sisters, where a jealous sister drowns her sibling in order to steal her lover, exists in Sweden as De Två Systrarne, with many of the same motifs and similar storyline.

• Bothy ballads

  Farmworkers’ songs, often satirical or comic, relating to life on particular farms, usually written between 1830 and 1890. More recent compositions from the 20^th century are of a more comical character, written for the stage or recording for public release. See the case study in section 4 for more information.

• Broadsides and chapbooks

  Cheaply printed versions of songs stretching back to the 1600s, these were mass-produced song lyrics that were an easy way for songs to spread amongst the population. The Scots Language Centre website’s Scots song section describes them as follows:

  • Broadsides and chapbooks have a long history over several centuries. Printed crudely and cheaply, broadsides were typically single sheets while chapbooks were folded into small pamphlets. They were sold by street criers, travelling 'chapmen', and by 'balladeers' at markets and fairs. […] They first came to prominence in 16th-century England, when they were known as 'blackletter' broadsides, owing to the gothic typeface used. With the growth in literacy and the industrial revolution, the demand for street literature increased, and song lyrics became readily available to the masses. (https://www.scotslanguage.com/ Scots_Song_uid65/ Scots_Song_Collections )

  These songs became known as broadside ballads, although ballad in this case usually just meant song. In Scotland, there were printers across the country who produced copies of these sheets, and the most famous of these was “The Poet’s Box” in Dundee, which existed into the 20^th century. The National Library of Scotland has a large collection of broadsides digitised online at http://digital.nls.uk/ broadsides/, and increasingly more institutions are making their collections available in digital form.  

• Children’s songs

  While playground songs and rhymes might seem short and insignificant, they are as valid a source of Scots song as any other. Several important collections have been made in Scotland. Schoolteacher James T. Ritchie collected songs sung in Edinburgh playgrounds of the 1950s and '60s, releasing two books, The Singing Street (1964) and The Golden City (1965). A film of the children at Norton Park School was also made and the children were recorded by the American folklorist Alan Lomax. The film can be viewed at the National Library of Scotland’s Moving Image Archive.

  Ewan McVicar has worked extensively in schools collecting and sharing children's songs, and has published several books, including Doh Ray Me, When Ah Wis Wee (2007) and ABC, My Grannie Caught a Flea (2011), as well as contributing to several websites including Scots Sangs fur Schools. Other collectors of note include Iona & Peter Opie, Emily Lyle, Norah & William Montgomerie, Hamish Henderson, Kenneth Goldstein and Jean Rodger.

• Homeland songs, songs of emigration or transportation

  Songs written about Scotland from across the sea, or of people about to depart Scotland. The Toon of Arbroath is an example of a man in exile reminiscing about his home town, that was also published as a broadside: http://digital.nls.uk/ broadsides/ broadside.cfm/ id/ 14898 Sometimes the leaving is not voluntary, e.g. Jamie Raeburn describes a man being transported for a crime he claims he did not commit: http://digital.nls.uk/ broadsides/ broadside.cfm/ id/ 15846

• Love and courting songs

  As in many other traditions, Scotland has a good store of love songs. They often involve a dialogue between two lovers with one describing the riches they can offer the other – or not, as the case may be, as in Hey Donal Ho Donal:

  • Oh I've nae gowd tae offer ye
  • For I've gaithered little gear
  • But we'll hae love an freedom
  • Gin ye'll follow me my dear

  Listen to a rendition by Barbara Dymock and Maureen Jelks.

  Songs such as The Rigs o Rye feature a lover’s test, where one partner tries out the other’s loyalty. Sometimes love songs originating in Victorian times are called ‘pastoral’ songs.

• Mouth music in Scots

  Usually comic lyrics used to support the rhythm of a dance tune, similar to port à beul (port = tune, beul = mouth) Gaelic-speaking traditions. The Smith’s a Gallant Fireman, Tail Toddle and Brose and Butter are all examples of lyrical mouth music in Scots. This is separate from diddling, which uses vocables rather than words to sing a dance tune, and has something of a parallel in canntaireachd in Gaelic (sometimes called cantering in Scots) which is a way of learning tunes, often bagpipe melodies, by mouth using particular sounds.

• Music hall songs

  Usually comic songs in Scots, with exaggerated characters, language and dress, sung and written by Sir Harry Lauder, Harry Gordon and others. Performed on the concert stage in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, these were often recorded on wax cylinders and gramophones for public consumption. Listen to Harry Lauder singing “Hey Donal!” in 1908, from the University of California at Santa Barbara Cylinder Audio Archive.

• Political and protest songs

  Scotland's history ensures that political and protest songs make good use of the Scots language. One of the most iconic is of course Robert Burns' song of equality and fraternity, A Man's A Man For Aa That, it was sung by Sheena Wellington at the reconvening of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. The CND movement in Scotland was strongly led by songs and singers during the 1960s with new songs written by the Glasgow Song Guild, released on the recording Ding Dong Dollar, such as We Dinna Want Polaris. A song that has come back into currency in recent years is Hamish Henderson's song written originally for the Glasgow Peace Marchers in 1960, The Freedom Come-All-Ye.

• Songs of soldiers and war

  Songs of recruitment are very common, such as Twa Recruitin Sergeants, where young men are convinced to go off to join regiments as an alternative to their life in the countryside. Other songs give accounts of battles, such as the classic ballad The Battle of Harlaw, or 19^th century broadsides from the Napoleonic Wars. Jacobite songs also fall under this heading, although the songs are so numerous as to warrant a category on their own. More recently, Hamish Henderson's song The 51st (Highland) Division's Farewell to Sicily, recalls the troops leaving Sicily during the Italian campaign in World War II.

• Work songs

  Songs about weaving, mining, and songs of the sea amongst others. Mary Brooksbank’s Jute Mill Song, also known as Oh Dear Me, was written from phrases heard from fellow mill worker women in Dundee:

  • Oh dear me, the mill’s gaen fest
  • The puir wee shifters canna get a rest
  • Shiftin bobbins coorse and fine
  • They fairly mak ye wark for yer ten and nine
  • (Scottish Country Dancing Dictionary, The Jute Mill Song)

  Songs about weaving stretch at least as far back as David Shaw of Forfar (1776-1856) who wrote The Wark o the Weavers about handloom weaving. Mining songs go back several centuries, with The Collier Laddie already considered an old song when Robert Burns reworked it in 1792. Some songs relate to mining disasters, such as The Blantyre Explosion, a tragedy near Hamilton in 1877.

  The singer and songwriter Ewan MacColl, whose parents came from Auchterarder in Fife, sang many work-related songs and wrote several which became well-known through his radio ballads productions for the BBC in the 1950s, including The Shoals of Herring, Song of the Fishgutters, also called Come Aa Ye Fisher Lassies, from his ‘Singing the Fishing’ episode.

12.4 Case study: The distinctive song tradition of north-east Scotland

In this section, you are going to focus on the songs of north-east Scotland as examples of distinctive song types and a highly distinctive tradition that has rich resources documenting its history.

The Scots song tradition of the north-east of Scotland is arguably the best documented and resource-rich in terms of the recordings and collections of songs that exist from a single area. This richness has had a major influence on the Scots song tradition as a whole, in particular the versions of classic ballads or ‘muckle sangs’ found there. A great deal of fieldwork collecting on audio tape was done in the north-east from the 1950s by the School of Scottish Studies and the Elphinstone Institute, often finding songs still in the oral tradition that were collected by Greig and Duncan some fifty years before.

A unique song type found in great number in the north-east is the bothy ballad, a term which is much-debated. A ‘bothy’ was the basic accommodation of farmworkers – who often wrote and performed such songs – mainly during the 19^th century. Usually unmarried workers would live in self-catering bothies, although this was only true in some areas; other areas used the ‘kitchie’ system, where the workers would get their meals in the farm kitchen.

While Aberdeenshire is best known as the home of bothy ballads, there were actually more bothies in Angus. Bothy ballads are found to a small degree in other areas of Scotland as well, e.g. Kintyre, but are most closely associated with the north-east.

There are two distinct types of bothy ballad, which we might call ‘traditional’ and ‘cornkisters’:

‘Cornkisters’ tends to be the name used for the more comic ‘stage’ bothy songs written in the 20^th century by Willie Kemp, G.S. Morris and George Bruce Thomson and others. The cornkist was the wooden storage chest of oatmeal found in the bothy, and the loons or chiels might sit on their kist to sing, sometimes beating out a rhythm with their heels. These compositions from the 1920s and ‘30s were performed in concert and featured on gramophone recordings and printed songbooks, including The Muckin o Geordie’s Byre; A Pair o Nicky Tams and MacFarlane o the Sprotts o Birnieboosie.

The language of cornkisters is usually in dense north-east dialect which can be viewed on the one hand as enhancing the rhythm, comedy and colour of the songs, but on the other hand potentially exposes north-east Scots (often locally called ‘Doric’) as only being used for non-serious purposes.

While bothy songs were fairly widespread in their heyday, they are seen more as a curiosity nowadays, restricted more to specialist events and singing festivals.The tradition of bothy ballad singing is supported every year through an annual competition called the ‘Champion of Champions’ in Elgin, organised by the TMSA (Traditional Music and Song Association) and Elgin Rotary Club.

Some of the best-known bothy ballad singers of recent times include Joe Aitken (Kirriemuir), Shona Donaldson (Huntly), Jock Duncan (New Deer / Pitlochry), Scott Gardiner (Forfar), Geordie Murison (Netherley by Stonehaven), the late Tam Reid (Cullerlie, Echt), and Hector Riddell (Leochel Cushnie / Finzean).

Although traditionally sung by men, Shona Donaldson became the first female winner of the competition at Elgin in 2016. Cairn Production produced a half-hour documentary called “Beyond the Bothy” which is now available to watch online. It features many of the leading bothy ballad singers in preparation for Elgin in 2005.

Activity 7

Volume 3 of the Greig-Duncan Folk Song Collection features many of the best-known bothy songs, and the map below shows place names, which are mentioned in songs from the collection.

1. Find the place Mains o Culsh on the map below.
2. Then listen to Kath Campbell perform ‘Mains o Culsh’. Can you work out the meaning of the lyrics?

Maximise

12.5 The importance of Scottish travellers in preserving traditional songs

This section will consider the role of members of the Scottish Traveller community in helping to preserve traditional Scots songs through their mainly oral family traditions.

In the 1950s Hamish Henderson was made aware by the journalist and fellow Blairgowrie native, Maurice Fleming, of Traveller families in the berryfields around Blairgowrie in Perthshire who sang traditional songs. Henderson described his fieldwork there as like “holding a tin can under the Niagara Falls” (Henderson, 2004, p. 2). It was soon discovered that among their singing tradition, the Traveller families had classic ballads such as Andrew Lammie, (Child 233), the story of which supposedly dates from the 1600s.

In 1953, Henderson discovered possibly the most prolific contributor to his fieldwork, Jeannie Robertson, in Aberdeen. Recent research has shown that some songs in Jeannie’s repertoire extend back to print versions from the 1600s found in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (Byrne, 2010, pp. 295–97).

Listen to Jeannie Robertson sing ‘My Son David’, a version of Child ballad 13, ‘Edward’.

What should be remembered, however, is that Travellers, much like the settled population, did not sing only Scots songs in isolation, but as part of a wider repertoire of songs sung for entertainment. Although often viewed as an ‘oral’ culture of a less-literate part of society, in fact some Travellers had access to gramophone recordings and featured songs as diverse as Scottish music hall star Sir Harry Lauder and American country singer Jimmie Rodgers in their repertoire.

Most Travellers singing in Scots are associated with Aberdeenshire, Angus and Perthshire. Some of the most celebrated Traveller performers include Jeannie Robertson, Lizzie Higgins, Stanley Robertson, Betsy Whyte, Duncan Williamson, the Stewarts of Blair and the Stewarts of Fetterangus.

The Travellers also sang songs in their own tongue, Cant, a mixture of Romany, older Scots and elements of Gaelic. Jeannie Robertson sings the Cant song Bing Avree Barra Gadgie with a transcription and translation in the notes.

While Travellers still suffer discrimination in wider society today, it is fair to say that they are held in high regard by members of the Scottish folk music community who realise the important role Travellers have played in helping Scots song and oral traditions to survive.

12.6 Scots song in the 21st century

There are many performers still singing Scots songs in their communities today, but more readily there are events and festivals across Scotland (and further afield) dedicated to the art of traditional song. Often with Scots song at their heart, such festivals also celebrate singing traditions from other parts of the world.

In some cases, there are semi-formal competitions for singing, e.g. the local TMSA festivals which select winners who go on to compete for the Bothy Ballad Champion of Champions title in February each year.

Scots song also features in the current professional folk scene in Scotland, with singers such as Shona Donaldson, Siobhan Miller, Emily Smith, Steve Byrne and Fiona Hunter some of the best-known young performers, although there is generally a dearth of younger male singers in Scots.

Today students can elect to study traditional song at the National Centre of Excellence in Traditional Music at Plockton High School, at university, including the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow, as well as folklore courses with a focus on Scots song at Edinburgh University’s Celtic & Scottish Studies and Aberdeen University’s Elphinstone Institute.

Further research

A wide variety of Scots Song resources is now available online. 

• Kist o Riches / Tobar an Dualchais is home to over 38,000 digitised field recordings in Scots and Gaelic mainly from the archives of the School of Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh.
• The Scots Language Centre website has a Scots Song section.

The Scots Language Centre is an online resource with the purpose of promoting Scots. The resource expands on this unit and includes many audio and video samples, as well as links to online collections of Scots song. It also has a dedicated Scots Song Resources page with an expanded selection of links to visit.

• Sangstories is an informative resource for song texts and song histories collated by Linda McVicar on behalf of Sangschule, a folk choir from West Lothian.

• Hamish Henderson, 'At the Foot o Yon Excellin Brae: The Language of Scots Folksong', in Scotland and the Lowland Tongue, ed. J. Derrick McClure, Aberdeen University Press, 1983. 
• The Scots Language Centre provides an overview of the wide variety of ‘Scots Song Resources’ now accessible online.

References

Acknowledgements

Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders. If any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources:

Photograph of Scots singer Julienne Taylor: *** josearce3 via Flickr. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Photograph of a linnet: Joe Pell via Flickr, This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Generic Licence, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Portrait of Robert Tannahill in Paisley Museum: *** Stephencdickson. Taken from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_of_Robert_Tannahill_in_Paisley_Museum.JPG, This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Text extracts from Scotslanguage.com: Courtesy of The Scots Language Centre

The Weavers Wife image: *** Mechanical Curator's Cuttings via Flickr. Image from 'Select Scotch Songs; being choice specimens of Northern minstrelsy, with a glossary and illustrations', 003310145. Taken from https://www.flickr.com/photos/106138792@N02/10454834895. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Generic Licence, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Extract ***Renée Prud’Homme (2017) “They were made for singin’ an’ no for readin’!”, Worcester College Library, Oxford. Available online at: https://worcestercollegelibrary.wordpress.com/2017/01/31/they-were-made-for-singin-an-no-for-readin/

Buchan Extract: ***© The School of Scottish Studies.

Extract from The Jute Mill Song: The estate of Mary Brooksbank

Activity 7 map: © Google Maps