Scots a-go a-rollickin’!…
My Dad earlier sent me an old Scottish drinking song which is rather bawdy, and had to do with whiskey and the fact that a proper Scotsman wears no underwear beneath his kilt!:
My response was this excerpt from Ken Russell’s film “Lair of the White Worm”:
YouTube: Pogues: The D’ampton Worm
BTW: I like the language here: ‘weir’ for pond and ‘coos’ for cows!
You can REALLY hear where our own Appalachian tunes came from! Which then mutated into Bluegrass and eventually ‘Country’… and even had a hand in the creation of Rock ‘n’ Roll!
These roots go WAAAAAAAAAAAY back!
Fun stuff!
Really cute!!! I’m all into Scottish these days since my ancestry’s been determined to be Scots/Welsh and NOT Irish!
Comment on February 1, 2011 @ 6:51 pm
Ah! A fine lovely lass after my own heart!
Not to say anything slight about the Irish. The Scots-Irish connection is so strong that it’s hard to separate the two sometimes…
Certainly, after Culloden and the brutal ‘highland clearances’, the lowland and island Scots (my clan MacDuffie* came from the isle of Colonsay) pretty much bought into the British model, becoming very fine engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs.
The Irish on the other hand were driven from their island by the terrible poverty of the ‘potato famine’. So most who came to the U.S. were poor, unskilled and uneducated. “No Irish Need Apply” was a very common phrase. But the Irish are TOUGH and determined, and have long since become a mainstay of American society and culture.
Read Robert Burns and dig the way he plays with the language! Very colourful and very skillful, but very sweet as well!
* MacDuffie (from MacDHUBHSITH) eerily means ‘son of the black faerie’
Comment on February 1, 2011 @ 7:11 pm
The displaced Scots who came to America largely settled in Canada. ‘Nova Scotia’ pretty much says it! And Max MacKinnon’s family apparently went to Ontario…
In Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, the Scots accent is to this day quite noticable!
Comment on February 2, 2011 @ 11:25 am
Likewise, the French side of my family, the du Jeaux’s were displaced through religious intolerance and relocated to upstate NY, centered on a town called New Paltz, where the family name eventually became modified to Deyo. I’ve been told that there are so many Deyos in New Paultz that you can see the characteristic ‘Deyo nose’ in almost everyone you meet walking down the street. Scary thought. Eventually one Deyo lass found her way to Toronto by way of Windsor, Ontario, where she encountered a distant son of Clan MacKinnon, and after the two of them resettled in Canton, Ohio, eventually gave birth to a child named Joel, who would one day join with some planetary ungulates and rename himself Max.
No wonder I’m so confused.
Comment on February 2, 2011 @ 11:40 am
I found a site for the community of New Paltz and only one unnamed citizen is pictured. I think I may have spotted the infamous Deyo nose.
Comment on February 2, 2011 @ 11:47 am
The MacDuffie’s apparently came directly to the United States. The Scots in general integrated with few problems into the American fabric. My own (recently passed) great uncle David MacDuffie moved to Florida and struck it rich by starting an air conditioning business! Pretty savvy! ‘Uncle Slim’ (as I knew him) was a very smart and yet a very compassionate man. I admire him a lot!
Comment on February 2, 2011 @ 11:49 am
The other evening, PBS ran an episode of ‘Pioneers of Television’… (an excellent series BTW). This episode focused on ‘Westerns’…
One thing that came through was the appeal of Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone! Both Scots as sure and pure as the day is long! Just sayin’
Comment on February 2, 2011 @ 12:11 pm