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User Name Thread Name Subject Posted
Tattie Bogle Net pulling songs (28) RE: Net pulling songs 06 Jun 20


There's Matt Armour's song, "Shores of the Forth", the title track of the album by John Watt and Davey Stewart. The chorus goes like this:

In the auld trawl boats and the lang seine nets,
I’ve yaised up all o my youth;
Noo the herrin grund’s nae mair are fund,
Alang the shores o the Forth.


Then there are the nearly forgotten "Dreg Songs" of the oyster fishers on the Firth of Forth: see the following cut and paste and video clip:
"For many years the oyster fishermen of the Firth of Forth sang improvised worksongs as they rowed small boats towing dredges to gather their catch. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the fishery declined and the songs fell into disuse. In the mid-twentieth century, Francis Collinson and Hamish Henderson sought traces of the songs with limited success. However, an American folklorist, James Madison Carpenter, had documented the songs in the 1930s. His work, largely unknown until recently, sheds new light on these songs, their unusual structure, and their use at sea. This new understanding has enabled participants in the Scottish Coastal Rowing programme to bring the songs back to life on their home waters.

Keywords: dreg song, work song, oyster, dredge, call-and-response, maritime, tradition, Firth of Forth, Scotland, folklore".

Dreg Songs


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