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Subject: RE: Calton v. Carlton Weaver? From: Jack Campin Date: 03 Jul 08 - 05:48 AM The Calton was the biggest weaving centre in Scotland, so why shouldn't the song have been set there? There used to be an exhibition about the Calton weaving in the People's Palace Museum in Glasgow. The main thing I remember about it was that the place used to be the main source, worldwide, for Arab scarves in the familiar sorta-houndstooth pattern. I think that lasted until about WW1. I used to live near there, and there were still a few derelict textile factories around. I wish I'd managed to keep the abandoned files from one I found. It was mostly routine business correspondence, but there was one priceless note from the general manager to a subordinate describing an occasion when he had come in one Monday morning to find the entire factory coated floor to ceiling in blue fluff. The understated punchline was "this is not what I expect from a professionally run operation". |
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Subject: RE: Calton v. Carlton Weaver? From: Malcolm Douglas Date: 03 Jul 08 - 01:58 AM It seems to have been standard for the 'Calton' version of the song; Ord's text (printed 1930) is quite close, though longer and rather lighter on the dialect. |
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Subject: RE: Calton v. Carlton Weaver? From: Big Tim Date: 02 Jul 08 - 04:00 PM Malcolm, I have just re-read your post of 01 Jul 08 -12.05 PM and actually thought about it a bit more. I now suspect you are right: the song probably has a much wider provenance. They weaved all over the place! I wonder why MacColl located it in Glasgow -'as I came in by Glesga city' - a city he didn't know much about. The Hughie Martin connection? |
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Subject: RE: Calton v. Carlton Weaver? From: Jim McLean Date: 02 Jul 08 - 03:34 PM Nerd, would that be 40% proof? |
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Subject: RE: Calton v. Carlton Weaver? From: Bernard Date: 02 Jul 08 - 12:18 PM What I love about the song is the way it can be performed either as a fast 'chord basher', or quietly and wistfully... Interesting about the 'r' not being pronounced, as Scots have a habit of pronouncing every letter... though not necessarily in the right order!! Wurruld (world) and gerrel (girl) spring to mind! |
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Subject: RE: Calton v. Carlton Weaver? From: Big Tim Date: 02 Jul 08 - 06:27 AM I don't care how whiskey/whisky is spelt. I do think tho that the least Mary Brooksbank deserved was that her name be spelt as she spelt it and that she be clearly credited with writing 'Oh Dear Me'. The possible etymology of Calton, in Edinburgh, is very interesting. |
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Subject: RE: Calton v. Carlton Weaver? From: Jack Campin Date: 02 Jul 08 - 05:17 AM The usual etymology given for the "Calton" in Edinburgh was that it was Carl-toun, the settlement of landless labourers. For centuries it was a ghastly slum outside the city boundary (and used as the site for a leper colony, a gibbet and the town jail). Glasgow's Calton is similarly located relative to the Old Town of Glasgow. But nobody seems to have pronounced the "r" in either for centuries. |
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Subject: RE: Calton v. Carlton Weaver? From: GUEST,Nerd Date: 01 Jul 08 - 11:35 PM In America, we spell it "Whiskey." Could it be his proofreader was Peggy? |
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Subject: RE: Calton v. Carlton Weaver? From: Jim McLean Date: 01 Jul 08 - 04:36 PM "The spelling of Scotch as whisky is a modern convention as there are many advertisements from the 1900s for both 'Scotch whiskey' and 'Irish whisky' and the Royal Commission on Whiskey 1908-09 includes the 'e' throughout its definitions" (MacLean's Miscellany of Whisky, 2004: 16). MacColl wasn't prone to acknowledge National or spelling predudices. |
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Subject: RE: Calton v. Carlton Weaver? From: Big Tim Date: 01 Jul 08 - 01:47 PM I think we can forgive MacColl a few spelling mistakes, like whiskey, etc. However, in that book, getting Mary Brooksbank's name wrong was rather more serious. Also, he didn't actually credit her with authorship of 'Oh! Dear me (Jute Mill Song'), saying only 'taken taken down from a manuscript submitted by Mary Brookbank [sic]'. This is at best ambiguous. Mary actually gave MacColl the song and she could certainly spell her own name. In the 60s many regarded his words as holy writ. |
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Subject: RE: Calton v. Carlton Weaver? From: Big Tim Date: 01 Jul 08 - 01:24 PM I'm actually a member of Shettleston Harriers! |
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Subject: RE: Calton v. Carlton Weaver? From: Malcolm Douglas Date: 01 Jul 08 - 12:42 PM Ewan doesn't seem to have had a very good proofreader back in 1960. In this particular song he also spelled 'whisky' as 'whiskey' throughout. |
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Subject: RE: Calton v. Carlton Weaver? From: Big Tim Date: 01 Jul 08 - 12:20 PM Shettleston (correct spelling) is very close to the Calton. |
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Subject: RE: Calton v. Carlton Weaver? From: Big Tim Date: 01 Jul 08 - 12:18 PM Of course the song is more about alcoholism than weaving! 7000 weavers went on strike on 30 June 1787 and stayed out until the men were killed on 3 Sept same year. I found another two names of the dead: Alexander Miller and James Ainsley. They were protesting against wage cuts. Calton had been chosen as a weaving village in the first place because it was outside Glasgow and therefore beyong the influence of the weaver's craft guild (early trade union). The village's original name when founded in 1705 was Blackfaulds but it was renamed Calton in 1723. Nobody is quite sure of the name's derivation, best guess is from 'cauld', or weir, giving a good supply of water for early industry. Of course there is also a Calton Hill in Edinburgh but the Glasgow one is the more probably as it was a weaving community. There's a decent outline history of the Calton in a book called 'Villages of Glasgow' (volume I) by Aileen Smart, 1988, from which much of the info posted here by me has been taken. |
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Subject: RE: Calton v. Carlton Weaver? From: Malcolm Douglas Date: 01 Jul 08 - 12:05 PM If there's a confusion between Calton, Carlton and so on, it's down to revival singers rather than the tradition. Many of them will have learned the song from other people's records and just guessed at the spelling. Most if not all of these will derive (through various intermediaries) from the set published and recorded by Ewan MacColl, one of only two that mentions Calton; and the only one of those with a tune. 'Nancy Whisky' seems to have started out as a broadside song; there are two editions at Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads, one of which is set in London, while the other (printed in York) names no particular place. See Nancy Whisky. There are other localisations; some of the Scottish versions in Greig-Duncan mention Dublin (probably deriving from another broadside localisation: see http://www.nls.uk/broadsides/broadside.cfm/id/16420/ ), and Sam Henry got one in which the weaver belonged to 'Long Cookstown'. Willie Scott mentioned Stewarton. It has also turned up in the south of England. Almost certainly nothing at all to do with Calton to begin with, then; but taken up there at some point and adapted to localise it. The historical background of Calton itself is interesting, but in the circumstances only peripheral to the history of the song. MacColl got it from Hughie Martin of Shettlestone in Glasgow, who, it seems, reckoned that MacColl's father had written the tune, "because he didna' tak' to the ither yin". (Singing Island, 1960, no. 36: 36, 41 and 110). See several previous discussions here, some of which include further detail and the usual comments on how 'Calton' should be spelled. |
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Subject: RE: Calton v. Carlton Weaver? From: GUEST,Sheila Date: 01 Jul 08 - 11:52 AM |
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Subject: RE: Calton v. Carlton Weaver? From: GUEST,DonMeixner Date: 01 Jul 08 - 10:47 AM Hi Sheila, By all means honor the history. I am equally concerned about Erie Canal history and getting it right. Is it possible the Carlton, Calton, Colton confusion is because of the dialect of the singers who have assailed the song in the past? I was unaware of the historic content in the song. And I will add that info to my performances of the song in the future. Don |
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Subject: RE: Calton v. Carlton Weaver? From: GUEST,Sheila Date: 01 Jul 08 - 10:34 AM Big Tim, I would totally agree! Don, with all due respect, it's not the song itself, but the history of the music I would care to honor. Sheila |
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Subject: RE: Calton v. Carlton Weaver? From: Big Tim Date: 01 Jul 08 - 10:09 AM Calton began as a weaving village in the early 18th C. It became a burgh in 1817 and wasn't absorbed into Glasgow until 1846. The Weaver's Strike of 1787 was one of the first major industrial disputes in Scottish history. Soldiers were called in to control a demo and six weavers were killed. The only name to survive is that of John Page. There is a commemorative plaque. Folk singer Matt McGinn ('McGinn of the Calton') was born there in Ross Street in 1928. John Ord, the great collector of bothy ballads, wrote a history of the Calton (as it's always called). Not many Calton folk was like to hear the song misnamed Carlton Weaver, I can assure you! |
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Subject: RE: Calton v. Carlton Weaver? From: GUEST,DonMeixner Date: 01 Jul 08 - 09:57 AM Hi Sheila, Does it matter all that much? I have it in both names plus a third as well. I sing and recorded "Colton Weaver" because that was how I first heard it sung. I think this is one of those great switchable songs. Like The Spainish Lady becomes The Ettrick Lady when the Corries do it. Lakes of Pochatrain becomes The Creole Girl. Its a great song no matter the community don't you think? Don |
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Subject: RE: Calton v. Carlton Weaver? From: Dave Hanson Date: 01 Jul 08 - 08:26 AM Calton, it's a district of Glasgow. eric |
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Subject: Calton v. Carlton Weaver? From: GUEST,Sheila Date: 01 Jul 08 - 08:15 AM I see both these spellings everywhere. Which is correct? Thanks. Sheila |
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