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04 Sep 09 - 11:33 AM (#2716163) Subject: Stanley Robertson From: GUEST, topsie I have just been listening to BBC Radio 4's 'Last Words' programme, which included an obituary of Stanley Robertson - singer, storyteller, traveller. When it comes on 'Listen Again' it will be worth a listen. |
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04 Sep 09 - 11:35 AM (#2716165) Subject: RE: Stanley Robertson From: Vic Smith Lovely tributes from Sheila Stewart and from Sam Lee and wonderful to hear Stanley's singing and speaking voice again. |
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04 Sep 09 - 12:26 PM (#2716204) Subject: RE: Stanley Robertson From: Marje It's on Listen Again already, and it comes about 18 minutes into the programme (after Simon Dee). Well worth a listen, especially for the snippets of song, and the things Stanley has to say about ballad singing. Marje |
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05 Sep 09 - 05:08 AM (#2716623) Subject: RE: Stanley Robertson From: GUEST, topsie Here's a link |
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06 Sep 09 - 03:45 PM (#2717566) Subject: RE: Stanley Robertson From: GUEST, topsie The repeat of the program is on air now - Stanley Robertson's bit any minute now. |
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06 Sep 09 - 03:50 PM (#2717570) Subject: RE: Stanley Robertson From: SylviaN Listening to it now. |
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06 Sep 09 - 04:19 PM (#2717584) Subject: RE: Stanley Robertson From: Folkiedave There was also an excellent tribute paid to Stanley at Whitby Folk Week. |
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07 Sep 09 - 11:06 AM (#2718063) Subject: RE: Stanley Robertson From: Diva The tribute to Stanley at Whitby was one of the highlights of a cracking week. Heard the BBC prog last night and it was very fitting. |
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11 Sep 09 - 12:31 PM (#2721640) Subject: RE: Stanley Robertson From: dick greenhaus STANLEY ROBERTSON Sep 3rd 2009 Stanley Robertson, the last of Scotland's Traveller storytellers, died on August 2nd, aged 69 THE fish-hooses of old Aberdeen were dark, reeking places, and the work was scabby. But it was all Stanley Robertson could get. At 15 he started, 48 hours a week chopping up fish in some poky hole, getting shocks from the finning machine, steeping his skinned, sore hands in brine or pickle-juice. The smell was so scunnering it made him want to puke up, and the lassies on the next bench thought it a great joke to throw fish eyes in his face. When he finally caught the bus home to his dinner, still with his wellies on, croaked after hauling wooden boxes of haddock or hanging kipper kilns in the roof, other passengers would say "What a horrible smell of fish!" and change their seats. But they were characters who worked there. An old woman in a shawl, who would bandage anyone's stinging fingers; a lad who did Elvis impressions; the foul-mouthed fish-wives, who treated each other like cat's dirt whenever one was out of earshot. And, not least, Stanley himself. Mr Robertson spent 47 years filleting fish for a living. With his bland face and steady ways, he might have tried to sell you insurance. Out of his apron he wore a suit and a flat cap, always neat. He could slice a lemon sole to perfection. But inside his head, in thousands of tales and ballads handed down for five centuries, lived kings, witches, demons and mermaids. There were knights riding to battle, lovelorn maidens combing their long hair, ghosts shouting "Boo!" from their coffins, giants thrashing with huge clubs through the woods and nimble, virtuous Jack, preparing to outwit them all. Under Mr Robertson's modest cover was the best storyteller in Scotland. He was a Traveller, one of that mysterious band who were neither true Romanies, nor settled citizens, but roamed the roads of north-eastern Scotland in tents and carts. That meant he was despised as a "tinkie" at school and sometimes cut dead in the fish-hoose, though the girls also pestered him to tell their fortunes (he made them up) and to "read rubbish tae them aboot their tea cups". Since 1945 or so his family, weary of a life of gathering flax or hawking rabbit skins, had settled, with their 13 children, in an Aberdeen tenement. But a time would still come every year when Mr Robertson knew in his bones that it was time to go away: They would go up the Old Road at Lumphanan, a green drove road peopled with spirits and with a venerable oak tree, Auld Craobhie, who had to be greeted each time they passed. ("We ca' them the guid folk," Mr Robertson said, "for they can dee ye an awful lot of damage.") There they would camp, light a "glimmer", or a fire, sing songs and tell stories, with each teller throwing on a piece of peat as they began. Here five-year-old Stanley first heard the grim and grisly song of the little dove, the "wee doo": The language was a mixture of Scots, Doric, Gaelic and Cant, or Traveller dialect; he called it "one ancient tongue", and passed it on as a kindness, not for money. The ballads came from his cousin Lizzie, his grandparents and an aunt, Jeannie Robertson, a singer whose least phrase could "pit shivers doun yer spine". As he could. THE DANCING TREES From his Aunt Maggie he learned to pass "through the eye of the skull" into a zone where fairies and warlocks were real, and even scaldies, or non-Travellers, could believe. Mother Nature taught him much of the rest. Favourite among his Jack tales (told at Harvard and the Smithsonian, as well as all over the Grampians) was one where, at the 50-year solstice, all the trees of the Old Road danced. As they pulled up their roots, piles of jewels and treasure were uncovered. Canny Jack picked up a few sparkling pieces; but the Laird of the Black Airt stuffed his pockets, and was crushed by the trees as they returned. His performances, always in his cap, arms pumping with enthusiasm or voice sinking to a solemn whisper, were for adults or children; the morals of his stories were ageless, and age-indifferent. But his special feel for disappearing worlds and words led him also to collect playground songs, for rope-skipping, ball-throwing, clapping or simply choosing: It was hard to believe, though it was true, that the fish-hoose in which he earned his crust was equally endangered. Late in his life, to his huge surprise, he was made a master of Aberdeen University for keeping old traditions alive. Alongside his tales of the road, of ghoulies and elves and the Laird o' Drum, riding out to see "a weel-faur'd maid/A'shearin' her father's barley", the scholars also recorded his memories of kippers hoisted on tinter-sticks, fish baskets swirled in water, one herring every second dropped into the splitting machine--all that his busy, careful hands were doing, while his head was in Fairyland. |
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11 Sep 09 - 04:54 PM (#2721855) Subject: RE: Stanley Robertson From: Folkiedave Dick would you be kind enough to tell us who wrote that? |
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11 Sep 09 - 05:20 PM (#2721876) Subject: RE: Stanley Robertson From: dick greenhaus It was an article in, of all places, The Economist. Here's a link: Robertson Obit |
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11 Sep 09 - 05:28 PM (#2721881) Subject: RE: Stanley Robertson From: Folkiedave Ta!! |