As the Lady of Lawers (Perthshire) spoke of in the seventeenth century,

“a day would come when the feather of the goose would drive away the memory from man”

(the feather of the Goose being the quill ie; the pen), has to a great extent, come to pass in, that we are now far more dependant on the written word than on the spoken word and the need for man’s memory has seriously declined. To add a further dimension to this, according to a recent survey published in the papers,

“Growing numbers of people in their 20s and 30s are suffering from severe memory loss because of increasing reliance on computer technology......sufferers complain they are unable to recall names, written words and appointments, and in some cases have had to give up their jobs.......A study of people aged 20-30 years has shown more than one in 10 suffer from severe memory problems”

It has been suggested by scientists that we, as humans, use only 1/200th of our brain power, the rest is memory!

Having never set eyes on a television until I was 10 years old, I consider myself fortunate. I can look back to that time with fond memories. Although it has been argued that TV represents part of the oral tradition, with the coming of the TV however, the home-made entertainment ceased virtually overnight, people stopped talking and so ended an era. Everyone on my father’s side of the family were gifted with the power of good and accurate memory recall. I put this down to the fact that my grandfather (Paraig Mor who died during the second world war) was never taught to read nor write, at least English, therefore he had to rely on his memory more than we now in our generation might. He was only two generations away from myself (he was born in 1889) therefore it would appear that this prophetic saying of the Lady (for she had many more) concerned events that were to come to pass well within living memory of my own generation. Some of the best traditional storytellers/singers I have ever known were what our modern ‘civilization’ would dismiss as being illiterate. The latest was the late Willie MacPhee of the travelling folk, who died at the end of last year. Willie lived until he was 92 years old and I remember telling a long complex wonder tale in his presence at a school in Perth in 1992 when we were both at a festival there. Willie heard the story once from me.

One and a half years later, when the School of Scottish Studies were running a ceilidh to help raise money for Willie and Bella (his wife) as their caravan had been destroyed as a result of the floods in Perth of 1993, Big Willie repeated that same story (after one hearing!) from memory! Calum I. MacLean (brother of the late bard Sorley) maintained that had he spent his full and proper allotted life span (as he died of cancer at the age of 45 – 1960), he, whilst collecting the stories and songs etc from the people of South Uist, could not have got to the end of their repertoires. There was one old man in Benbecula from whom he had recorded on and off for four years and could not get to the end of his repertoire. This old man knew from memory one story which took three days to tell! and this old man claimed that he knew only 1/3rd of what his father knew!

My father’s uncle (Paraig’s Mor’s brother) kept the traditions going. He was the last in my own family who knew what to do at a funeral, wedding or birth and when he went to his grave in 1979, many of those customs went with him. However he did make a lasting impression on me, he had a deep old fashioned strength, deep routed sense of loyalty, a very powerful presence and a link with something special that the modern material world increasingly would have little or no room for. To quote Dougie MacLean’s Seanair’s Song “On the frayed edge of time, on the border line” See his album ‘Craigie Dubh’

With the end of the ‘do your own thing’ sixties’ and early seventies material cultural, breaking up the family unit and values, the younger generation began to realise that there was something seriously amiss, some of whom became new age travellers finding some way to drop out of society. Now the present generation, going full circle, wish now to rediscover their roots with its ethic/ethnic values, hoping that all is not lost forever.

Now, the good news. Having pioneered this front at the invitation of Duncan Williamson, the great storyteller/singer of the Travelling Folk, on the very weekend of the tragic death of his friend Betsy Whyte in August 1988, I was asked to travel with him to schools around Scotland where I learned more about the presentation of stories. I learned so much also from great other indigenous artisans such as Sheila Stewart, Stanley Robertson, Big Willie MacPhee etc. From there I worked with groups such as the Scottish Storytelling Forum from its foundation , helping to found its Gaelic sub-committee putting this ancient and most valuable art-form back on the map, helping it to regain social and educational recognition as an form of literature equal with books.

With all our modern technology, (all be it, some of it useful as networking/communication tools), the power of the spoken, living, breathing, human voice cannot be superseded as a living form of cultural expression. No group of people have ever impressed this upon me more than the Travelling People have. Their technique of telling/singing has not been corrupted by ‘formal training’ but simply a legacy passed down from generation to generation. They have learned by ear and not the eye. They have within their ranks some of the finest tradition bearers that I have ever had the good fortune to know. I hope that I can do them justice.

The workshops I do are especially successful in reversing the trend of the “feather of the goose driving away the memory from man". Soon this site will incorporate some samples of parts of stories/songs told/sung from memory plus samples of some of my own songs illustrating the continuing living tradition

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