Two Gentlemen Of The Road

Back in the early 1950s, folklorist Alan Lomax spent several days recording songs, stories and interviews with these two old travelling singers from the Northeast of Scotland (both of whom died in 1972). Remastered from the original field tapes, this treasure-trove of a double CD set gives a unique insight into a vanished way of life, providing such fascinating information as how to build a ‘bender’ or traditional Scottish Traveller’s tent, the secret initiation ritual for horse handlers, and much more. There are plenty of songs and tunes (played by Stewart on the accordion), too, but it’s the spoken-word tracks that rivet the listener – and if your grasp of old-style Scots dialect is as weak as mine, you can refer to the full transcriptions in the PDF document embedded on one of the discs.