Week 5 with SC&T Youth!

February 23, 2024Leave a comment

Well today was our last week in Aberdeen’s primary schools as tutors for SC&T Youth! Cornhill Primary School – thankyou for your amazing enthusiasm and wonderful singing!

Once again, pupils from three classes had 4 hours – only 4 hours! of tuition in penny whistle, clarsach, guitar and … Scots Song!

Despite my ever-worsening laryngitis, the pupils of P4, P4/5 and P5 learned to sing The Silver Darlings, The Fisherman’s Lassie and The Barnyards of Delgaty as well as learning all bout the history of the songs and how they describe life in the North East of Scotland. I’ve posted in greater detail about all of these songs in the past few weeks, but I’ve not yet posted about the songs the pupils have been learning for their grand finale!

It is of course Billy Connolly’s The Wellyboot Song – which probably doesn’t need much of an introduction! One of the teachers managed to find this recording of Billy singing it in 1976 -which I can share here cos there’s no swearing! 😀

Noo I’m aff tae nae spik for a wik! 😀

The Silver Darlings (continued!)

February 7, 2024Leave a comment

Anither grand day today at Ashley Road Primary School! The P3, 4 and 5 pupils (2 classes of each!) are fair gettin on wi their class songs – The Fisherman’s Lassie, The Barnyards O Delgaty and The Silver Darlings which I spoke about yesterday. (They’re also learning a fourth song which everyone is to join in with, but more on that in another post!)

There are a few videos online, but I like this one the best – the recording is the original by Alastair McDonald and the film that has been put to the song shows old footage of the fishing fleets and the fish gutting lassies swiftly preparing the fish to be salted and packed into barrels. The pupils fair enjoyed watching it!

Ashley Road School and the Silver Darlings

February 6, 2024Leave a comment

It’s another busy week ! This time starting off with the pupils of Ashley Road School who we Scat Youth tutors are visiting to teach penny whistle, guitar, clarsach and Scots song!

I’m teaching the P3s The Barnyards O Delgaty and the P5s the Fisherman’s Lassie (both of which I’ve spoken about in previous posts)… but the P4s are learning The Silver Darlings – a song about the herring boom in Scotland which peaked in 1907. “The Silver Darlings” is a fond nickname for the herring.

The song was written by Jim McLean, Bob Halfin and Andy Hulskrammer and later on this week I’ll share a video of a recording of it with Alastair McDonald. (Find a discussion of the song origins here on mudcat: https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=40414 )

The pupils are taught the meaning of the song they’re learning – as well as any unfamiliar Scots words. Many pupils in each school have families who came from farther afield, but no matter where they’re from, they’re all doing a grand job of learning and pronouncing the Scots and Doric!

The image I’ve chosen to illustrate this post is an etching by James McBey (1883-1959) from 1908. The title is “Herring Fleet, Aberdeen” – the etching has made its way across the pond where it is stored at The Boston Public Library Arts Department. James McBey was local to the area and may be familiar to those that visit Aberdeen Art Gallery where there’s a fantastic exhibition of his work. My daughter and I love the interactive display of how etchings were made! (Thoroughly recommended!)

SC&T Youth Tutoring – Scots Song at St Peter’s School

January 20, 2024January 20, 2024Leave a comment

Well that was a fun week for the SC&T Youth tutors at St Peter’s Primary School in Aberdeen!

P4, 5 and 6 pupils learned clasarch, guitar, whistle, and Scots song every morning, with a concert on Friday where they were able to show off the tunes and songs they’d learned to the rest of the school and their teachers. P4 and 5 instruments would accompany the P6 singers, for example.

Here’s a photo of P6 enjoying a video of Joe Aitken singing the Barnyards of Delgaty – they were all singing along within a couple of choruses! I was especially impressed with their pronunciation of all the Doric words which were new to almost all the pupils.

One of the P6 girls drew this amazing portrait of me! – I love it when pupils do that! There are some amazing details in there – I’m particularly loving the duck earrings!

I’m really looking forward to next week when we’ll be sharing songs and tunes with the pupils of Riverbank Primary School.

Teaching Scots Song with SC&T Youth

January 16, 2024January 20, 2024Leave a comment

This week, and for a further four weeks, I get to do something a little different!

Rather than storytelling, I’m going to be working as a tutor with SC&T Youth (the tuition for bairns and young adults through Scottish Culture and Traditions). I’ll be teaching a different song to Primaries 3, 4 and 5 (this week it’s Ps 4, 5 and 6) and one song they’ll all sing together. Meanwhile the other wonderful tutors will be teaching them accompaniment on clasarch, guitar and whistle as well as some trad tunes.

This week we’ve been at St Peter’s Primary – and the snow hasn’t dampened the pupils enthusiasm for learning! Here’s a photo taken on Don St yesterday. A beautiful part of town affa bonny in the snaa.

The Primary 4 pupils are learning one of our old favourites –

The P4s are learning our old favourite, The Fisherman’s Lassie. Noo I wis rummaging aboot tae find a video tae show you of someone singing it – totally forgetting that I recorded a wee video of it at Fraserburgh Lighthouse Museum back in… 2016! Which seems an eternity ago