From Bothy Ballards to Taylor Swift

You can hear Scots song today in many forms, from pop and hip-hop to bothy ballads and children’s songs, continuing a tradition that dates back to the Middle Ages.

Contemproary singers performing in Scots include Ellie Beaton, Steve Byrne, Natalie Chalmers, Iona Fyfe,
Scott Gardiner, Siobhan Miller and Emily Smith. Singers combine new compositions with traditional songs, sometimes adapting contemporary songs into Scots, such as Iona Fyfe’s version of Taylor Swift’s Love Story.

Traditional song in Scots is supported by the Traditional Music and Song Association of Scotland (TMSA), founded in 1966, whose branches run festivals, sessions, workshops and competitions, including bothy ballad competitions. Festivals and events featuring Scots song include the Keith TMSA Festival, the Bothy Ballad Champion of Champions in Elgin, the Traditional Singing Weekend at Cullerlie and Celtic Connections in Glasgow.

Archive recordings of Scots song are available through; The Tobar an Dualchais / Kist o Riches, which includes recordings from the School of Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh, founded in 1951, and from BBC Scotland. The Scotsoun Digital Archive which holds over 150 albums from the Scotsoun label, spanning more than 80 years, including traditional and modern ballads, poetry and spoken word in Scots and Gaelic. The Scots Language Centre’s Scotland’s also hosts several song collections including sheet music, lyrics and performances.

History of Scots song

The ballads of the Borders and the North East of Scotland were passed on orally for centuries before being written down. The first known anthologies of Scots folk songs date back to the 16th century, John Forbes’s Songs and Fancies (1662) is redited as the first publicaiton to include songs in Scots. In the 18th century Allan Ramsay published collections of Scots songs, and Robert Burns collected, adapted and wrote several hundred songs, many of which are still sung today.

The 19th and early 20th centuries saw the popularisation of bothy ballads, songs of farm work and life many of which were preserved in the 1950s through the collector Hamish Henderson. Travelling families, including the Stewarts of Blair and Jeannie Robertson, kept a large repertoire of these ballads and songs that reached a wider audience during the folk revival in the 1950's.