The Scottish Song Tradition

The old style ballad (before 1700)
The leading and oldest kind of song in Scots is the historical ballad. The ballad was composed for two kinds of audience: the ordinary people or the courtly gathering. Among the first type, old myths and heroic figures were highly popular: tales such as the Wallace or Fionn MacCumhail. Among the nobles classical Greek and Roman stories might be more common and the language more Latinate and high register. In this respect the master-composer could show off his skill. Most ballads wer passed between people by word of mouth and often the ballads took the form of a duologue rather than a narrative. The nobles and kings often paid for ballads to be written down and sometimes drew on the more common spoken versions. Well-known ballads from this older period include Otterburn 1388 and the Border ballads of the 16th century. Another common type of ballad deals with family and community: these speak of local personages and daily events. The local landowners and others thought a great deal of ballads about theirselves since it was a way to obtain fame in life and to be remembered after death. One other type of ballad was that which had a political or religious agenda. For example, the ballad of the Bonnie earl of Moray is quite typical of this genre. The backdrop to this saw King James VI commission the earl of Huntly to brng the earl of Moray to trial in 1592. Moray was a Protestant and churchman. Subsequently Catholic Huntly burned down Moray’s house at Donibristle and murdered him outside. There was such a popular outcry that the king was put in a bad light. So the ballad was really good propaganda for the Scottish Church.

Lowland Song in the 18th century
The 18t century witnessed the rise of songs in which the whole community, of various classes, had a hand. There were various types: folksong, broadsides, chapbooks and the ‘national song’. The broadsides and chapbooks were sold at fairs, at farms by pedlars and around towns by singers. The middle class people, in conjunction with antiquarians, uncovered old tunes and added new words to them. These were intended for for a particular audience of ‘polite’ people and the language was often Anglicised. Burns, for example, would Anglicise quite a few of his songs. These people produced actual songs books rather than the simpler broadsides and chapbooks, and it is often down to them that many songs have survived into modern times. A few of these type of songs and ballads were now also used for performances in schools. In addition to these, there were the labour and leisure songs which the common people continued to sing and compose. Such songs had the practical use of passing on ideas and customs to the younger generation, to share experiences such as love, tragedy, and fun, or for putting new ideas around neighbours.

Farm settlements and the bothy ballads
Before the 18th century farms were held in run-rig. In the centre of the estate was the toun (settlement), held either by one individual or a few joint tenants: they all had sub-tenants and servants. In the 18th century the old bog and moorland was drained off and cleared for new crops and new apparatus also came into use. Hedges and stone walls also became more common. Long leases granted to a single lease holder now became the usual pattern of tenancy. The result of this was that old families and shared land faded away and were replaced with courtyard and farm steadings. Such steadings spread out from Berwick and Lothian, up the east coast and became quite conspicuous in the north east too. The status of the lease holder now improved: he had expensive goods and a house, and his workers now ate separately from him. These workers tended now to be men and women from various different places, always on the move around the country, without roots in their place of work. In May and November the men and women were engaged at markets and lived in the bothies, separate from the rest of the community, and could be fined for going out at night. The day began at 5am and they ate brose (oatmeal and water) while the grieve, baillie (overseers) and others could act as little tyrants over them. For these people life was a constant struggle to make ends meet. Consequently they were dour and not impressed by anyone with airs or pretences, and their humour was very dry. Bothy ballads originated in the farm settlements from the late 1700s onwards and the height of this type of settlemet and way of life occurred during the period c.1840-c.1930. Their ballad making was often the result of grievances, a way of passing work time, or merely to describe their daily life. They were not as polished or refined as the older styles of ballads but they do provide a wealth of detail about life, and about the language. And one other thing, it could be years before a ballad was written down because many could not read or write well, and the version that ended up being printed was often Anglicised after having been through the hands of collectors.But bothy ballads remain to this day once of the unique ways in which people have expressed themselves through the Scots language.