Travellers' Songs from England and Scotland

Ewan Maccoll, Peggy Seeger

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138183896
• eBook ISBN: 9781317292265
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Originally published in 1977. The Travellers, from those living in bow-tents and horse-drawn caravans to those dwelling in motor caravans and permanent homes, are an important source of traditional music. Their society means that songs that have died out in more settled communities are preserved among them. Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, widely known as two of the founding singers of the British and American folk revivals, here display a vast fund of folklore scholarship around the songs of British travelling people. Resulting from extensive collecting in southern and southeastern England and central and northeastern Scotland in the 1960s and 70s, this book contains 130 songs with music and comprehensive notes relating them to folkloristic and historical points of interest. It includes traditional ballads and ballads of broadside origin, bawdy, tragic and humorous songs about love, work and death. Most are in English or in Scots dialect with four in Anglo-Romani.

THE SINGERS

EMILY BAKER

Emily Baker was born in the Poole district of Dorset in 1894. ‘I’m a proper Romani born and bred, been a-travelling all my days … different towns – Ramsgate, Margate, Whitstable, Herne Bay, Sandwich, Deal, Folkestone, Canterbury, Chatham, right down to Devonshire, Cornwall, Plymouth, Bristol. All parts I’ve a-been, in a horse-drawn caravan.’ She learned her songs from her mother and has contributed ‘The Little Beggar Boy’ (No. 122) to this collection. (Collected 1962)

WILLIE CAMERON

Willie Cameron (known as ‘Pipe-Empty’) is the youngest son of Sandy and Maggie Cameron, Argyllshire Travellers. Both his parents are fine storytellers; indeed, Mrs Cameron is one of the most gifted narrators of tales that we have ever encountered. We recorded them one cold, wet night late in September at the Cookson Field, near New Alyth, Perthshire. They had spent a long, hard day in the potato-fields and they were all tired and wet. They made us welcome, however, and soon we were sitting huddled along with another eighteen people in the long tunnel-like bow-tent which was their home. We heard the story of ‘The Black Bull of Norroway’, and tales of headless spectres and a dream of long-tails (rats) harnessed to a coffin which they were drawing through a quarry of tears.

The hissing of the oxyacetylene lamp made recording almost impossible, so it was turned off and we sat there in the darkness and listened to 16-year-old Willie Cameron play his piano-accordion – an almost magical feat in that confined and crowded space. He has contributed ‘The Tattie-Liftin” (No. 105) to this collection. (Collected 1962)

CHARLOTTE HIGGINS

Charlotte Higgins (née Riley) was born in Perkmass, Lumphanon, Aberdeenshire, in 1893. Her father, Thomas Lucas, hailed from Bristol, as did her mother, Mary Paul, who died shortly after Charlotte was born. The father, in order to pursue his trade as a deep-sea fisherman, arranged for his infant daughter to be brought up by a family of Travellers called Riley, whose name Charlotte finally adopted. ‘My foster-parents were good to me and they brought me up decent. They learned me a lot I never would have learned. She was an auld woman and she believed in the young girls being early to bed and away to your calling in the morning.’

Of her formal schooling, she said, ‘I believe I only got as far as Standard One. But I was a great one for books. I remember we used to go over the alphabet both forwards and backwards to keep ourselves entertained.’

At the age of twelve, Charlotte was initiated into the ancient trade of street-hawking. ‘We used to leave New Deer in the morning and maybe travel to Ethlick (that’s about six miles). Or we’d hawk Strichen and come back at night. Or maybe we’d ca’ at the fairms, and on the cotters. The cotters o’ that day, 1912 or 19 and 14, they didna have much. They’d only a pound a week and their meal, milk and tatties. Even though they had five and six bairns. A pound a week! And yet they’d take you in sometimes and they would say, “Come awa’ noo, sing a bit song and I’ll gie ye your tea”.’

In addition to becoming a proficient hawker, Mrs Higgins also learned ‘to read hands and to tell fortunes by the white of an egg’. She became fluent in the use of the cant and had a profound knowledge of the customs of Travellers. In 1911, she married a Traveller called MacGuire and bore him two children. ‘He was a piper and was killed in France during the First World War.’ She contracted a second marriage to Jock Higgins, who has also given a number of songs to this collection.

‘My husband and I did farm work. We shawed the turnips, thinned the neeps, lifted the potatoes. During the Second World War, we workit in the flax. And we’d go to Blairgowrie to the berries. You could make good money at the berries if you were a good picker. But you had to be at it since childhood.’

The Higgins family finally settled in Blairgowrie, where Charlotte died in 1971. She has contributed the following songs to this collection:

9	Lord Lovel
10	The Lass of Roch Royal
15	The Bonnie House o’ Airlie
27	The Sailor’s Return
30	Still I Love Him
33	Busk, Busk, Bonnie Lassie
55	Died for Love
62	Green Grows the Laurel
64	The Bonnie Irish Boy
66	Green Bushes
82	Alan MacLean
92	The Boston Burglar
93	Van Dieman’s Land
94	Jamie Raeburn
113	The Wild Rover
131	Hi, Bara Manishee

(Collected 1963)

JOCK HIGGINS

Jock Higgins was born in Portree, Skye, in 1897. His mother, Kirsty Stewart, was daughter to John Stewart of Kinlochrannoch. Jock Higgins married Charlotte Riley, who bore him two sons. He has contributed the following songs to this collection:

17	The Braes o’ Yarrow
79	Locks and Bolts
88	MacPherson’s Farewell

(Collected 1963)

CAROLINE HUGHES

Caroline Hughes (née Bateman) was born in 1900 in a horse-drawn caravan in Bere Regis, Dorset. ‘My mother’s name was Lavinia Batemen and my father was Arthur Hughes. I was one of seventeen children. My parents worked all their lifetime to bring we up clean and respectable. My father was a rat-and-varmint destroyer. We could bide anywhere, and was respected with anybody. My father had a good name and a good character. My mother worked hard, us...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Music Note
• General Arrangement
• The Singers
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index of Titles
• Index of First Lines