Book Review: Gun Sireadh, Gun Irraidh: The Tolmie Collection

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Never let it be said that I’ve ‘only’ published a monograph this year!

Now, in the Folk Music Journal Vol.12 no.5, pp.127-9, my review of a new edition of the Tolmie Collection, a significant Gaelic song anthology.

Kenna Campbell and Ainsley Hamill (eds). Stornoway: Acair Books, 2023. Illustrations. Bibliography. Index of titles in English and Gaelic. ISBN: 978-1-78907-109-2 (hbk). 978-1-78907-142-9 (spiral-bound). ww.acairbooks.com

I begin my review:-


Frances Tolmie (1840–1926) grew up and spent her final years on the Isle of Skye. She lived briefly in Edinburgh as a governess, later as a lady’s companion in the Lake District, and for a while in Oban on the Scottish mainland. Her collection preserved a rapidly dying repertoire of Skye women’s communal songs …

(Not yet readable online unless you’re a member of EFDSS, or your library has a subscription to the journal. It will appear in JSTOR in a couple of years from now.)

The Grumpy Friar (okay, Air-Fryer)

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Today’s the last-but-one day of annual leave that I’ll ever take as a librarian. (The day before my 66th birthday will be the absolutely final librarian’s annual leave day.) After that, I’ll be semi-retired, not a librarian, and any annual leave will be as a researcher.

As you know, I’ve been thinking about healthy eating and more home cooking – although, since I’m not passionate about cookery, the less time I spend on it, the better. Tidying the lounge, I found the book I’d bought during the worst of the energy crisis. I had recently bought my first air-fryer – an appliance that a colleague assured me was the best invention ever. Less time means less energy, too.

Hannah Patterson, The UK Brand New Air Fryer Cookbook. 2023 edition. First published by the author in 2022. ISBN 9798360567448

Whilst enjoying my mini-holiday loafing around at home (getting things done, in a leisurely, unstructured way), I used the slow-cooker to cook some chicken. And then pork chops, which were very tasty but looked over-done. Surely, I reasoned, there must be more to it than this!

There is, however, a problem. As Patterson explains, there are different kinds of air-fryers. I knew mine was a small one – I thought it would do for three people – but along with being small, it’s also unsophisticated.  I didn’t know, until I opened her book at the beginning, that what I have is a Cylindrical Basket Air Fryer. As Patterson says,

‘Aside from the noise and the size, another downside is the functionality, as it only has one function.’

Mine isn’t noisy, but I was beginning to see what the problem was. Reading on, I discovered – as I had suspected from the recipes – that ‘basket’ means different things in different air-fryers. Mine is not open like a chip-frying basket. It’s basically a non-stick deep tin. And although there’s a ‘crisper’ – or whatever you call the round removable component that keeps the food off the bottom of the tin/basket – if you put the food on the crisper, it stays dry, but if you remove the crisper, everything is in the bottom and I’d worry about it burning the bottom of the tin.

And it got worse. Many of the recipes needed a baking tray or metal bowl that would actually go in the air-fryer. There isn’t room for either, in my wee machine. (Why did Russell Hobbs make a machine with so many limitations? Can I really only cook chicken or chips?!) Some recipes could be halved in quantity, but I still doubted that the food would fit with room for the air to circulate.

Sometimes, I fear people think I’m terribly negative. I prefer ‘cautious’ or ‘realistic’. Anyway, since I am at home reviewing a cookery book, I thought I’d just go with the flow and be myself. I went through EVERY recipe, and marked the index with whether it was technically feasible in my wee air-fryer. I honestly only marked a very few more that would need too many new ingredients, ingredients I would struggle to source, or that wouldn’t suit the tastes of my slightly conservative family. I haven’t done a statistical calculation, but it’s pretty clear that I’ve ruled out easily half the book – and possibly more than that.

Grumpy Friar (Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay)

It’s a pity – the book is good value, and the food looks tasty. Perhaps much of it is not in our usual repertoire, but that’s not a bad thing. With some meals, I suspected that the preparation would be longer than I usually spend, partly due to unfamiliarity, or the faff of stuffing or rolling stuff into flattened chicken breasts or steaks.

Anyone got a book of recipes for a small, cylindrical air-fryer with minimal functionality? Until then, I’m off to make a quiche. In the oven.

Banana Yoshimoto: The Premonition: heard on Audible

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Eccentric old house

I’m still new-fangled with this Audible book app. It told me I had a monthly credit to spend, so I had a look at the recommendations. Yoshimoto’s The Premonition sounded intriguing, from the blurb – and the cover art was attractive; proof that book design matters!

Had I walked into a bookshop and seen it, would I have bought it? I don’t know. I’d have been surrounded by appealing new titles, and I can’t say whether I’d have chosen this above all others. It’s quite short, compared to the other books I’ve listened to, and – frustratingly – it is not broken up into chapters. I find it easier to put a book down if I’ve come to a structural break.

It’s a strange, dreamlike book, set in or around Tokyo. It’s richly descriptive of its physical surroundings, but I got a bit tired of reading about Yayoi’s brother’s straight back, the set of his shoulders and the way he walked!

Yayoi, the heroine is paradoxically both clairvoyant after a fashion (the word ‘clairvoyant’ isn’t used, but what is a clairvoyant if not someone who has premonitions?) and amnesiac, having lost all childhood memories after a traumatic incident. She knows that there’s something she doesn’t know. She has two loving parents; a wonderful brother a couple of years younger than her, whom she adores; and a completely eccentric young aunt who lives alone in a ramshackle house, from which she somehow emerges sane and tidy enough to work as a school music teacher every day … except when it rains.

We never find out quite why the house has been allowed to become so dirty and run-down (was there no-one to help her learn how to run a home?); why the aunt never seems to cook proper meals; or why she seems so dreamy and other-wordly. It takes a while to work out why the heroine feels so drawn to her.

There are loose ends. What was the significance of the heroine intuiting that someone had killed a baby in the leaky bath of the temporary accomodation that her own family rented during a house renovation? This seems to be completely unrelated to anything else in the story. And why did the aunt not like going out in the rain? Most particularly, once the heroine had worked out her real relationships to her brother and aunt, you’re left wondering why she hadn’t been told before.

Japanese mountain volcano peak
Image by kimura2 from Pixabay

At the end of the novel, Yayoi has pieced together the story, with the help of her aunt/sister. But what will become of the changed relationship with her brother? And how will the aunt/sister resume a romantic relationship with another young man, who had until recently been a classroom pupil? From a British vantage-point, all I could think about was child protection policies, ethical breaches and the involvement of social services, the teaching council and potentially the police. My knowledge of Japanese culture is so minimal that I don’t know if such a situation would be viewed differently there.

Discovering the truth may not make things any easier

So, if I had to summarise the book in one line, it would be this:- ‘Discovering the truth may not make things any easier.’

I’m not sure what I’ll read next, but perhaps I’ll opt for something a little more conventional!

Haunted by Alexander Campbell!

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

I wrote extensively about Scottish song-collector Alexander Campbell and his early 19th century Albyn’s Anthology collections, in my PhD. And my subsequent monograph. I’ve talked about him (a lot), and during the pandemic, I contributed a chapter to Steve Roud and David Atkinson’s essay collection, Thirsty Work and other Legacies of Folk Song (London: The Ballad Partners, 2022). So it’s gratifying to read a nice review of the essay collection in the April-May 2023 issue (no.324) of London Folk.

Campbell feels like a distinct ‘blast from the past’, after I’ve spent the past three or four years mainly thinking about more recent song collections. But I’m very pleased that other people seem to share my interest in this fascinating man!