Download or read book Traveller Storytelling in Scotland written by Robert Fell and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2024-08-19 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book unravels the complexities of traditional storytelling and uses creative analytical techniques to uncover the meanings of the stories we tell. The reader is first acquainted with conceptualisations of how stories make meaning in our lives, then guided through a selection of stories from the rich traditions of Scotland’s Traveller and Nawken/Nacken communities. Beginning with a nuanced historical overview of the communities, Traveller Storytelling in Scotland: Folklore, Ideology and Cultural Identity then draws on archives, texts and interviews to introduce readers to the unique and vibrant folklore of Scotland’s Travellers and Nawken/Nacken. It connects ethnology and literary criticism to contextualise folklore and reveal how its ideological priorities underpin cultural identity. Utilising diverse analytical techniques, this book is a timely examination of a folkloric idiom that has, until now, been sorely in need of further scrutiny. It showcases the sophistication and enduring relevance of folkloric expressions to contemporary Scottish culture.
Download or read book Scottish Traveller Tales written by Donald Braid and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2002-07-25 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The only book that closely examines this fascinating storytelling culture of Scotland
Download or read book Way of the Wanderers written by Jess Smith and published by Birlinn. This book was released on 2012-11-05 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Jess reveals a way of life that leaves the reader full of admiration' - Mary Horner Scottish Gypsies, known as Travellers or Tinkers, have wandered Scotland's roads and byways for centuries. Their turbulent history is captured in this passionate new book by Jess Smith, the bestselling author of Jessie's Journey and a Traveller herself. Her quest for the truth takes her on a personal journey of discovery through the tales, songs and culture of the 'pilgrims of the mist', who preferred freedom to security, and a campfire under the stars to a hearth within stone walls. The history Jess has uncovered reveals centuries of prejudice and shocking violence by settled society against Travellers, including the enforced break-up of families and separate schooling. But drawing on her own and her family's experiences as they wandered the glens and braes of Scotland, she also captures the magic and rich traditions of a life lived outside conventional boundaries.
Download or read book Fireside Tales of the Traveller Children written by Duncan Williamson and published by Birlinn Ltd. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Orkney Folk Tales written by Tom Muir and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2014-03-03 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Orkney Islands are a place of mystery and magic, where the past and the present meet, ancient standing stones walk and burial mounds are the home of the trows. Orkney Folk Tales walks the reader across invisible islands that are home to fin folk and mermaids, and seals that are often far more than they appear to be. Here Orkney witches raise storms and predict the outcome of battles, ghosts seek revenge and the Devil sits in the rafters of St Magnus Cathedral, taking notes! Using ancient tales told by the firesides of the Picts and Vikings, storyteller Tom Muir takes the reader on a magical journey where he reveals how the islands were created from the teeth of a monster, how a giant built lochs and hills in his greed for fertile land, and how the waves are controlled by the hand of a goddess.
Download or read book The Intelligent Traveller s Guide to Historic Scotland written by Philip Axtell Crowl and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 664 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of Scotland presented as part narrative, part gazetteer, part biography.
Download or read book The Accidental Time Traveller written by Janis Mackay and published by Floris Books. This book was released on 2013-02-21 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Scottish Children's Book Award 2013 Younger Readers (8-11 years) category. I'm not mad, ok? I know this sounds off the wall, but I was just walking to the corner shop and this girl almost got hit by a car. She grabbed hold of me and told me her name's Agatha Black and she's here from the past. At first I thought she was nuts but maybe it's true. She doesn't get traffic, she's freaked out by photos and she's terrified of TV. And she knows about the past -- body snatchers, making fires, and pet monkeys. Her dad does a bit of time travel. But obviously, he's not very good at it. I mean, he got her lost. Now it's me that has to get her back ? to 1812!
Download or read book Scotland Beyond the Bagpipes written by Helen Ochyra and published by Book Guild Publishing. This book was released on 2020-03-28 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like so many people who live south of the border in England, Helen thought that she knew all about Scotland. It was a part of Britain after all, a place that was surely more the same than it was different. But then she actually went there – and everything changed...
Download or read book Gypsy and Traveller Girls written by Geetha Marcus and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-01-25 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the untold stories of Gypsy and Traveller girls living in Scotland. Drawing on accounts of the girls’ lives and offering space for their voices to be heard, the author addresses contemporary and traditional stereotypes and racialised misconceptions of Gypsies and Travellers. Marcus explores how the stubborn persistence of these negative views appears to contribute to policies and practices of neglect, inertia or intervention that often aim to ‘civilise’ and further assimilate these communities into the mainstream settled population. It is against this backdrop that the book exposes the girls’ racialised and gendered experiences, which impact on their struggles as young people to realise their potential and future prospects. Their narratives reveal the strengths of a distinct community, and the complexity of their silence and agency within the patriarchal structures that pervade the private spaces of home and the public spaces of education. This study also invites the reader to reflect on how the experiences of Gypsy and Traveller girls compares with young women from other social backgrounds, and questions if there is more that binds us than divides us as women in the modern world. Gypsy and Traveller Girls will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including sociology, education, gender studies and social policy.
Download or read book The Unlikely Time Traveller written by Janis Mackay and published by Floris Books. This book was released on 2016-05-19 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robbie has disappeared. And, since he'd been asking Saul a lot of questions about time travel, Saul has a good idea where he might have gone... At school they've been doing a project on the future: will it be full of robots and shiny technology? Or will the environment have been destroyed? The last thing Saul wants to do is go there and find out for sure -- but there's no way Robbie will manage on his own in the twenty-second century. The third book in Janis Makay’s much-loved Time Traveller series, set in Peebles in the Scottish borders, takes the reader to an unpredictable and exciting future filled with thought-provoking discoveries. What does the future hold in store, and can Saul get Robbie safely back to their own time?
Download or read book Up Yon Wide and Lonely Glen written by Elizabeth Stewart and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2012-07-02 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elizabeth Stewart is a highly acclaimed singer, pianist, and accordionist whose reputation has spread widely not only as an outstanding musician but as the principal inheritor and advocate of her family and their music. First discovered by folklorists in the 1950s, the Stewarts of Fetterangus, including Elizabeth's mother Jean, her uncle Ned, and her aunt Lucy, have had immense musical influence. Lucy in particular became a celebrated ballad singer and in 1961 Smithsonian Folkways released a collection of her classic ballad recordings that brought the family's music and name to an international audience. Up Yon Wide and Lonely Glen is a significant memoir of Scottish Traveller life, containing stories, music, and songs from this prominent Traveller family. The book is the result of a close partnership between Elizabeth Stewart and Scottish folk singer and writer Alison McMorland. It details the ancestral history of Elizabeth Stewart's family, the story of her mother, the story of her aunt, and her own life story, framing and contextualizing the music and song examples and showing how totally integrated these art forms are with daily life. It is a remarkable portrait of a Traveller family from the perspective of its matrilineal line. The narrative, spanning five generations and written in Scots, captures the rhythms and idioms of Elizabeth Stewart's speaking voice and is extraordinary from a musical, cultural, sociological, and historical point of view. The book features 145 songs, eight original piano compositions, folktale versions, rhymes and riddles, and eighty fascinating illustrations, from the family of Elizabeth, her mother Jean (1912–1962) and her aunt Lucy (1901–1982). In addition, there are notes on the songs and a series of appendices. Up Yon Wide and Lonely Glen will appeal to those interested in traditional music, folklore, and folk song—and in particular, Scottish tradition.
Download or read book Jessie s Journey written by Jess Smith and published by Birlinn. This book was released on 2012-04-05 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the ages of 5 to 15, Jess Smith lived with her parents, sisters and a mongrel dog in an old, blue Bedford bus. They travelled the length and breadth of Scotland, and much of England too, stopping here and there until they were moved on by the local authorities or driven by their own instinctive need to travel. By campfires, under the unchanging stars they brewed up tea, telling stories and singing songs late into the night. "Jessie's Journey" describes what it was like to be one of the last of the traditional travelling folk. It is not an idyllic tale, but despite the threat of bigoted abuse and scattered schooling, humour and laughter run throughout a childhood teeming with unforgettable characters and incidents.
Download or read book Pilgrims of the Mist written by Sheila Stewart and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sheila Stewart, singer, storyteller and author, is one of the last in the line of Scotland's travelling people. Here, she gathers from family and friends this collection of travellers' tales. These are the stories that she and her parents used to listen to by the camp fire as the shadows of night clustered around.
Download or read book Lewis in History and Legend written by Bill Lawson and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Isle of Lewis, the largest and the most northerly of the islands of the Outer Hebrides, has had an eventful story. This book charts the history of the people, with stories drawn from documented sources, oral tradition, Gaelic song, and from the author's own experiences of many years travelling around the island.
Download or read book Webspinner written by John D. Niles and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2022-09-20 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Tales for Twilight written by Alistair W.J. Kerr and published by Birlinn Ltd. This book was released on 2021-10-14 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tales for Twilight offers a spine-tingling selection of unnerving tales by writers from James Hogg in the early eighteenth century to James Robertson, very much alive in the twenty-first. Scottish authors have proved to be exceptionally good at writing ghost stories. Perhaps it's because of the tradition of oral storytelling that has stretched over centuries, including poems and ballads with supernatural themes. The golden age was during the Victorian and Edwardian period, but the ghost story has continued to evolve and remains popular to this day. Includes stories from Sir Walter Scott, George Mackay Brown, Muriel Spark, Margaret Oliphant, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Guy Boothby, Algernon Blackwood, Eileen Bigland, Ronald Duncan, James Robertson and Ian Rankin.
Download or read book Lost Edinburgh written by Hamish Coghill and published by Birlinn Publishers. This book was released on 2008 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happened to Edinburgh's once notorious but picturesque Tolbooth Prison? Where was the Black Turnpike, once a dominant building in the town? Why has one of the New Town designer's major layouts been all but obliterated? What else has been lost in Edinburgh? From Edinburgh's mean beginnings - 'wretched accommodation, no comfortable houses, no soft beds', visiting French knights complained in 1341 - it went on to attract some of the world's greatest architects to design and build and shape a unique city. But over the centuries many of those fine buildings have gone. Some were destroyed by invasion and civil strife, some simply collapsed with old age and neglect, and others were swept away in the 'improvements' of the nineteenth century. Yet more fell to the developers' swathe of destruction in the twentieth century.Much of the medieval architecture vanished in the Old Town, Georgian Squares were attacked, Princes Street ruined, old tenements razed in huge slum clearance drives, and once familiar and much loved buildings vanished. The changing pattern of industry, social habits, health service, housing and road systems all took their toll; not even the city wall was immune. The buildings which stood in the way of what was deemed progress are the heritage of Lost Edinburgh. In this informative and stimulating book. Hamish Coghill sets out to trace many of the lost buildings and find out why they were doomed. Lavishly illustrated, "Lost Edinburgh" is a fascinating insight into an ever-changing cityscape.
