Tag: Ballads

Teaching Supernatural Ballads!

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I’ve had a grand afternoon teaching Scots Song for SC&T Youth in an Aberdeen City School. The team are off doing their fourth week of “Taster Sessions” in another school, so I was asked to visit and teach some Scots songs to a group of P7s who are having a bit of an activities week while others are off on their residential trip. P7s you say? So I chose a couple of supernatural ballads that are great for engaging an older age group.

You know it’s been a good session on murder/supernatural ballads when you move on to “Twa Corbies” with a class and you ask them “What would you do if there was a deid knight behind a dyke?”

And the answer is “Make a fiddle out of his corpse?”

They learned well.

(The image is Twa Corbies by Jessie M King, 1902)

Portsoy Haal 2024 with Sheena Blackhall

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Weel fit a grand trip we hid tae Portsoy fur the Haal this wikend!

Sheena and I had a great weekend at the Portsoy Haal this weekend – heading off on Friday afternoon (with Wee Imp and the caravan in tow!)

After the concert our first session was the late night storytelling at the Town Hall – a grand 2 hours with folk sharing their tales from 11pm to 1am. Wee Imp enjoyed the late night walk back to the camp site!

Our storytelling workshop on Saturday morning went down a treat too – we had 16 enthusiastic attendees who heard stories and learned about how some famous authors got into a bit of trouble by putting their neighbours in their novels! Abdy then had a go at creating life stories from photographs and came scarily close to the truth in some cases!

Wee Imp and I went off with oor pal Tattie to hear some of the ballads sung at the Greig Duncan Collection competition – after which I was brave enough to have a swim in the North Sea (but there’s nae photies o that!)

A few sangs, many midgie bites and a fire on the beach on Saturday evening made sure I had a good nights sleep ready for our last storytelling session at the Town Hall bar at Sunday lunchtime. Then it was already time to go home – wi a few songs and ballads sung all the way home in the car. (Wee Imp had her headphones on by this point, preferring Eurovision over ballads!)

Thanks to Portsoy Haal for having us both along, fit a gran time wi hid! And thanks to everyone who came along to share their stories, songs, poems. And thanks to Sheena for having me laughing so much!