Scots Songs: a Question for your Elderly Scottish Relatives!

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Front cover of Nelson's Scots Song Book Pupil's Edition Book 2

As I’ve mentioned, I’m researching some Scottish song books published by Thomas Nelson between 1948-1952. There were four books in total, and they were intended for school classroom use.

I would dearly love to trace a child, or children, who sang from these books. I think these books were aimed at children probably between eight to twelve years old, so the oldest children were born circa 1936-1946.

I don’t know how long the books would have remained in use, but my guess is that they’d probably have fallen to bits by the late 1950s. In that case, the youngest users would have been born round about 1950. And that would make them baby-boomers, but several years older than me.

So, if you have elderly Scottish relatives aged between 74 and 90, please do show them these images. Can they remember singing from these books at school?

And does Granny remember her teacher playing the piano for class singing lessons? There were bigger, more substantial teachers’ books to go with these little booklets. The teachers’ books had the piano accompaniments as well as the words and tune melodies. Only a few libraries still have them. I consider myself lucky to have tracked down my Pupil’s Edition Book 2!

Library copies of teachers’ books on an archival cushion

Musicology, and a Nerdy but Meaningful Spreadsheet

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Musical notes cut out of old sheet music

How to Assess whether a Song Book was Aligned with Contemporary Tastes

There were once four books of Scottish songs in a mini-series: just under 100 songs, all told. They weren’t much advertised, and few copies are now extant.  If they were intended mainly for school use, then I need to know to what extent their contents were standard Scottish song repertoire for their day. (Each generation has its favourites, noticeably different from the previous ones.)

Now then, I spent a very long time indexing song books as a librarian; that library catalogue is now a reference resource in its own right.  Last night, I listed the contents of those four books, and next, I shall look each song up in our RCS library catalogue.  I’ll end up with two figures for each song:-

  1. How many times the song is listed altogether: a high figure means popularity over a long period.
  2. How many times the song is listed between 1930-1970: this will be a shorter range of numbers. If it’s as high as, say, five hits, then it was popular amongst quite a few compilers over that 40 years.  If it’s not in any other books between 1930-1970, then it’s either old-fashioned, or a more obscure ‘rarity’ from less well-known or very old collections. 

And THEN, I can look up the rare ones in the National Library of Scotland’s Digital Gallery. 

This is the only accurate way of ascertaining whether the contents themselves might have been off-putting to the very audiences that they were meant to attract. I hope that’s not the case, because the compilers were well-placed, indeed ideally-placed to know exactly what went down well with school children. Nonetheless, I want hard evidence, and comparing the repertoire with two significant sets of data – the RCS more standard books, and NLS rare books – seems to me a pretty good way of doing it.

Blogging Helps Clarify the Question

I enjoy writing this blog, because it helps me clarify in my mind what the big issues are that I am addressing. Writing for a wide audience, which may or may not have exactly the same scholarly interest in the topic as I do, is a good way of reminding myself to write accessibly, and hopefully interestingly, about the things which occupy my thoughts as I pursue my research. Do I succeed? You tell me!

Now published in History Scotland, Spring 2025: The ‘Scottish Soprano’ and the ‘Voice of Scotland’

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
The Scottish Clans Association of London badge, on background of Mackinnon tartan

Sadly, this is the last issue of History Scotland, but I’m very pleased to have an article published there. I have really enjoyed writing this, and I think my idea of comparing two very different Scottish singers has actually come together rather well.  I wanted to write about Robert Wilson, but I didn’t want to go over the same ground that has already been covered.  I also wanted to write about Flora Woodman – but would anyone remember her? Then came the inspiration: what if I wrote about them both, two almost contemporary but very different celebrities, and then I could compare them.  This hadn’t been done before! And it worked  – the piece almost wrote itself.

Karen E McAulay, ‘The ‘Scottish Soprano’ and the ‘Voice of Scotland’: the Importance of Nationality to Flora Woodman and Robert Wilson’, History Scotland Vol.25 no.1 (Spring 2025), 74-81

If your public library has e-magazines, you’ll be able to read it online. Glasgow Life certainly has it!

Flora Woodman – photo and compliments, 25th October 1924

A Thought-Provoking History Scotland Webinar

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Leisure and Pleasure – Everyday life in Second World War Scotland

I don’t often sign up to webinars, but something so closely aligned to my own current research was irresistible.

The History Scotland webinar series is promoted by the History Department at the University of Dundee. The guest speaker today was Dr Michelle Moffat of Manchester Metropolitan University.

And what did I learn? Leisure pursuits didn’t stop in wartime, especially going to the cinema.  This is worth knowing.  (However,  I must be careful not to assume things were exactly the same everywhere.  It makes me wonder about central London, for example, where people might have felt more threatened. )

There was also interesting detail about rationing and food shortages, and discussion about how much people in Scotland felt the war was ‘their’ war. (I suspect anyone who had relatives fighting overseas would  very much have felt indirectly part of it.)

And a reminder about the Mass Observation Archive.  I had forgotten about this, but it’s a crucial resource – I’m going to check it out with some questions that I hope it might help with!

Moving with the Times: from Silent Movies to (oh, Gosh!) British Pathe Shorts

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
A tangle of movie film roll

You can tell I’ve spent too long in the late nineteenth century – in the research sense, that is.  Dizzy with excitement at the thought of seeing a silent movie – yes, it might actually come to pass, albeit not for a few months – I was almost deliriously pleased to discover that one of my research interests made British Pathe ‘shorts’ during the Second World War.  My aim is to contrast two singing careers, started only a decade apart – and here’s the first contrast. One began their career during the First World War and the silent movie era. The other made British Pathe shorts during the Second.

We think we’re so advanced, with our internet and our AI, electric cars and digital sound … but anyone born in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century might have been amazed by their own advances in technology.  A fin-de-siecle child treated to a magic lantern show, might have sung along to hymn or Scottish song texts projected on a magic lantern screen, the singing led by whichever grown-up had been co-opted in to help. When silent film came along, any music would be provided by a cinema pianist or a small ‘orchestra’ – possibly no more than a piano trio. What you heard would partly depend on who was playing and the bundle of music they’d brought with them.

But when the children became adults, they would would find themselves listening to the wireless or going out to ‘talking’ movies.  Watching, in adulthood, a short film performance by a contemporary star vocalist would have been unimaginable a decade earlier.

However, I must still cool my heels as I wait to see if (and when) the silent movie that I need to see, can be converted into a modern format.  Meanwhile, I’m trapped in the nineteenth century with the printed novel that gave rise to the movie.  As I read, I wonder how they managed to condense the story into a couple of hours, and then convey the whole plot by wordless gestures. 

I can’t wait to see.

Accessing Silent Films

Lucerna: a Magic Lantern Database

‘LUCERNA is an online resource on the magic lantern, an early slide projector invented in the 17th century.

‘For more than 350 years the magic lantern has represented and fed into every aspect of human life and every part of the world. It is still used today, both in its original form and through direct descendants like the modern data projector.

‘LUCERNA includes details of slide sets, slide images, readings and other texts related to slide sets, lantern hardware, people and organisations involved in lantern history, and much more.’

(Introduction to the Lucerna database)

Cover Image from Pixabay

Hearing Her at Last (She Died in 1936)

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Why do collectors collect things? Especially old things.  The link with the past? The feeling that in some remote way, there’s a virtual thread linking you and an earlier era, or a particular individual?

As I’ve mentioned, I’m writing a long article about some late Victorian/Edwardian Scottish women musicians.  It’s virtually finished.  But there’s one more thing to do.

I have a single 78 rpm shellac recording of one of these women, whose reputation was not inconsiderable in her day.  She played in London.  She and her ‘orchestra ‘ made a handful of recordings.  But I have no means of playing this precious artefact.  I’ve tried to beg or borrow an old gramophone (or newer technology) to no avail, so eventually I bought a record player on Amazon.

All this because I wanted to know what instruments were in her band, a century ago! My article is incomplete without this detail. 

Petronella
There’s an anecdote about a whisky-filled teacup rattling on a piano edge whilst she played …!

Main image:- Beltona gramophone,  post 1923, from Wikipedia.

Maybe Read this First? Hanley’s ‘Dancing in the Streets’

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Picture from Dancing in the Streets book cover

Unless you’re Scottish, you may not have come across Clifford (Cliff) Hanley. He was a Glasgow journalist, writer and sometimes lyricist, born in 1922 and dying in 1999. Dancing in the Streets was first published by Hutchinson in 1958. My own eBay copy is a 1983 reprint by Edinburgh’s now defunct Mainstream Publishing. Amusingly, it came secondhand all the way from a library in Ilford, Essex!

Picture of 1983 Mainstream Publishing edition of Dancing in the Streets book

On the second day of my indisposition with Covid, I picked it up, decided that even Glasgow autobiography and social history was beyond me, and turned to Audible. Don’t judge me! But yesterday and today, feeling closer to my normal self, I picked it up again, and read the whole thing cover to cover. This is a man who knew Glasgow inside out, as a local journalist. (You’d like to read his obituary, maybe? Here it is in The Guardian, 14 August 1999.)

Subject heading: Glasgow (Scotland) Social life and customs

Hanley wrote well, and entertainingly. There’s lots of local colour – not to mention wee reminders that times have changed since then. (Go to a party on the night your wife’s in hospital having your firstborn? I think not! I imagine husbands weren’t allowed in the delivery room in those days, but this is still barely a mitigating factor!)

I bought Dancing in the Streets in the hope of tracking down some elusive information – which I didn’t find, as it happened. (It was, admittedly, a long shot!) However, I did recognise names that I’d already encountered, and I was to discover different gems that filled me with some excitement, because odd little passages foreshadow things that I, as an incomer to Glasgow, had later discovered through diligent research, and these convinced me that what I have written in my forthcoming monograph is certainly born out by someone who was actually there in inter-war and postwar Glasgow. I’m quite glad I hadn’t read it until now. It’s useful background, but it’s not on the subject of Scottish music publishing or amateur music-making, so I don’t feel I was negligent in not considering it earlier. However, in bearing out truths that I had to learn the hard way, there were several ‘Yes! See?  That’s what I found!‘ moments, amongst the laughs that I couldn’t stifle between coughing!

For example –

In my forthcoming book, I’ve written about Emigration and Homesickness

Hanley took a holiday job on a cattle-ship from the Clyde to Montreal, as a very young teenager. On page 95 of his book, he meets some Glaswegian expat women there:-

‘How is Argyle Street, son?’ one of them asked kindly. ‘Fine – still the same, big crowds on a Saturday night an’ buskers playin’ the flute.’ ‘Oh, my God!’ She started weeping, but took a hold of herself. ‘It’s that nice tae hear a good Scotch voice. Could you no’ take me hame on your boat, son?’ ‘I wish I could’, I said in desperate pity. ‘Ah know, ah know, son, ah wish you could tae. Don’t you ever leave your hame, son, it’s the best place in the world. Ah wish tae God ah had never left dear auld Glesga.’

You can see how sentimental old (or more recently manufactured) Scottish songs would go down well with such fond emigrants!

In my new book, I mention Newer Approaches to Folk Song in the 1950s

I have certainly not suggested that the folk revival started, like flicking on a light switch, in a certain year, but I have highlighted new trends, and the influence of Edinburgh University’s new School of Scottish Studies. It’s fair to say that Hanley was not in this new movement. On the contrary, he seems to be poking gentle fun at it, on pages 208-10 of his book. At the abovementioned party, he describes an actor who ‘wanted everyone to sing folk songs, or Hebridean mouth music’, and a girl who was a potter, who wanted to ‘dance some kind of reel in her bare feet’. Later, she was ‘doing something stooping down and stamping, which apparently was meant to represent walking [sic] the tweed’.

WAULKING not Walking

Clifford and the potter were both, I’m afraid, wrong. The word is ‘waulking the tweed’ and Hebridean women used to thump urine-soaked cloth on a table, to soften it. Yes, I know – it sounds gross, put that way! (Feel the same about your genuine old Scottish tweed now?) Anyway, here Clifford has encountered one individual who is more aware of the new trends, and another who has a vague delusion that she understands it! Neither are seen as kindred spirits. Hanley wrote for a living, including the aforementioned song-lyrics, and had occasionally dabbled in performing on stage and radio. Probably a little younger, these partygoers were not part of his usual scene at all.

I’ve written about Teenagers and Gramophones and American Influences

And on page 242, Hanley writes about the decline of variety theatre, about teenagers’ musical tastes, and a new preference to listening to music at home on gramophones rather than go out to a variety show.

Don’t be Shy to read ‘Non-Academic’ Books!

So, unexpectedly, reading this book came as welcome vindication for some of the points I’ve made – a feeling which is always nice, of course. It’s hardly surprising that a book like this actually functions as useful background reading for a study in popular musical culture. But it also came as a welcome reminder that sometimes there’s benefit in stepping back and reading more widely. A book doesn’t have to be a scholarly tome – no index or bibliography here – to contain worthwhile background information. Information, in fact, that I wouldn’t even have recognised as valuable before I embarked on my research, but which came as validation of the most welcome kind.

My own book’s been copy-edited, the proofs have been corrected, and it’s well on its way to being published. I believe orders can be placed at the end of October. But for now, you might just find me heading to the local library to see if I can pick up anything else by Clifford Hanley. You can get Dancing in the Streets very cheaply secondhand, if you’d like to read it for yourself.

Women in the Wings, Women on the Stage: Historical Success Stories in Scottish Music History

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Edwardian lady in hat

I was bemoaning my many failings yesterday, when I was told (firmly) that I should be more positive and regard myself as a success-story. Unfortunately, I grew up being made so aware of my deficiencies that I’m kind of pre-programmed to look on the dark side.  I’ve never quite matched up to expectations!

There’s no Pleasing Some People

Mind you, the criticisms have changed over the years:-

  • You’re clumsy, untidy and hopeless at sport’;
  • ‘Don’t be disappointed if you fail your 11-plus exam’;
  • ‘You need a secretarial qualification – in case your research doesn’t get you a job’;
  • ‘that “Dr” on your address-labels looks like showing-off’,
  • ‘So-and-so says all those qualifications are ridiculous’,
  • Are you writing another boring book?’

Which just goes to show that some people are never happy, and maybe I should disregard the comments altogether. For what it’s worth, my books are fascinating! And I rather like my ostentatious “Dr”. Liking my ‘letters’ is probably a failing too.

Being a Successful Woman in the Early 20th Century

Tools of the trade?

However, when I consider how much harder it must have been to be a successful woman a hundred years ago, I’m mightily impressed by the women I’ve encountered during my researches into Scottish music publishing. I’m contemplating writing an article about them, but they are often ridiculously modest and very hard to track down, which presents a would-be writer with quite a few problems!

So, who have I got? No, I’m not going to name them just yet. Suffice to say, I have two ladies whose death certificates mention music publishing. And a piano teacher who wrote and self-published a handful of really rather good songs, along with raising three children. And the entertainer’s mother who arranged some Scottish hits. (So far, I’ve only traced documentation of her up to her marriage and the birth of her first child – so frustrating!)

Best of all – and I’ve only recently started researching this in more depth, so she gets the most passing of mentions in my forthcoming book – an incredible lady whose father-in-law started up the business, but who very definitely eventually ran the business herself, with her husband helping her (not the other way round). At the same time, she was a much sought-after conductor with her own orchestra. Wow! Impressive. She didn’t have children. In those days, I can’t imagine how she’d have done what she did, if there was a whole brood of Edwardian children with all their white frilly laundry to do, and no convenience foods! One maidservant? Or two?

I’ve encountered another woman, a singer, whose life looks equally fascinating in different ways. Not a publisher, this time, though. She needs a different article written about her.

Only this weekend, I was reading a blogpost which said that there weren’t really that many women booksellers in the Victorian era, which I think makes it all the more remarkable that these late Victorian and early-twentieth century Scotswomen were quietly forging careers in the music business. So, I shall carry on quietly digging away to find out what I can about them all, and at some point, one, or hopefully two interesting articles will emerge. Watch this space!

Success, for me, is research findings, in print!

Not the best Song: ‘Glasgow’s Tuppenny Tram’, by a Variety Artiste

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
We think this is the City Council?

At least a couple of decades ago – long before I was interested in the social history of amateur music-making in Scotland – I came across a curious piece of sheet music. Knowing that my other half is more than a little interested in Glasgow trams, I made a photocopy and kept it safe. Every so often, we would joke that I’d get someone to sing it when it came to ‘final curtains’ time. (It would make a nice change from ‘Abide with me’ and the 23rd Psalm, after all!)

My Insatiable Curiosity

I hadn’t looked at ‘Glasgow’s Tuppenny Tram’ in years, but whilst I was proofreading my forthcoming book, I decided I really should look to see who had published that song. James S. Kerr? Mozart Allan? Galbraith’s in Renfield Street? Certainly not Bayley & Ferguson or Paterson’s. So I looked. The song was self-published in 1926 by the author and composer, an entertainer called R. F. Morrison. The song was actually arranged by Carleton H. Smyth, who was secretary and treasurer of the Glasgow Masonic Burns Club. (You’ll see that Morrison was also the author of ‘Just a wee Deoch-an-Doris’ and ‘Suvla Bay’. Which is interesting, since Harry Lauder’s songsheet of ‘A Wee Deoch-an-Doris’ seems not to mention Morrison at all – but I couldn’t access Morrison’s version without going to the British Library, so I shall have to remain mystified.)

There’s no’ much wrang wi’ Glasgow, auld Glesca on the Clyde;
St Mungo’s name is known to fame, ower a’ the world wide.
There’s bonnie places roon aboot, that thousands never see,
You need no ship to make the trip, so be advised by me.
CHORUS.
Take a trip on a tuppenny tram, and happy you will be,
From daylight till dark, there’s many a park, awaitin’ for you & me,
Don’t use your hoard for a Daimler or Ford, Like the workers of Uncle Sam,
Since Maister Dalrymple made motorin’ simple, wi’ Glasgow’s Tuppenny Tram.

Glasgow’s Tuppenny Tram / R F Morrison, 1926

‘Since Maister Dalrymple made motorin’ simple, wi’ Glasgow’s Tuppenny Tram’

Whilst we remembered the closing lines of the song (after all, we knew that Mr Dalrymple was a significant name in the history of Glasgow’s tram system, until he disappeared off to Sao Paulo in Brazil as a transport consultant), it’s fair to say we hadn’t looked properly at the whole song.

I’ll spare you the second verse! It lists a number of places you could visit by tram. (As the chorus says – see above – no need to waste money on a car!) Meanwhile, the back page is a large advertisement reminding you that there are 32 parks to visit in Glasgow (and still get home in time for tea), and reminds the reader to take care crossing the road …

It’s rubbish! It does incorporate some bits of Scottish song-tunes, but Carleton H. Smyth’s setting was very humdrum. Only one actual mistake in a chord, to be fair. My book is missing NOTHING AT ALL by not referencing this song.

Oh well, it’s a nice reminder of what Glaswegians would do on a sunny Sunday afternoon, or during Fair Fortnight if they had a bit more time. (Apart, of course, from going to variety concerts to hear the likes of R. F. Morrison! I wonder what the other acts were like?)

Meanwhile, I have now been positively begged not to have the song performed when it comes to the final curtain! What’s it worth … ?!

Back page of song - advertising and a safety reminder
Back page of song – advertising and safety first

The Glasgow Ladies Publishing Sheet Music

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Yesterday, I set out to track down some music.  It’s light music, not great music  – almost ephemeral, you could say – but together,  it tells a story.

I also wanted to find out more about the life of one of these fin-de-siecle Glasgow woman music publishers.

It’s not that easy. The music is scattered round our legal deposit libraries; the cataloguing isn’t completely consistent; and fin-de-siecle ladies, whether single,  married, childless or proud mothers, didn’t  leave much record of their daily lives.  They’re hidden in the shadows of family members, and, whilst I imagine they knew one another, let me stress that this is NOT a tale of a female publishing cooperative!

I had a nice chat with a local history librarian, making an acquaintance who is now equally keen to find out more; then I headed home – as yet, none the wiser – to devise a complex spreadsheet of music titles.  I’m visualising a pinboard with strings criss-crossing between ladies, libraries and  work-lists.

So complex, indeed, that I still haven’t planned how best to get to SEE the music.

A weekend task?

Sadly, a Pixabay find, not one of ‘my’ ladies!