Closing some youtube tabs because my browser is unhappy! I've been dabbling with some folk music on the violin and just generally hearing more folk stuff due to spending more time in Scotland.


The Blarney Pilgrim - I like this version because it builds in parts really clearly and systematically, adding complexity and richness in an interesting way



The book I'm learning from suggests going straight from these two:




Learnt how to play John Ryan's Polka when I was still having lessons and I can still play bits of it from memory. I like the speed of this version but I think the whistle/pipe is flat and it's increasingly noticeable.



The folk band emeraldsword and I go and see usually play these as part of their set and people sing along:



In 2014 they added "Green Fields of France" to commemorate the start of WWI:

Eric Bogle:


The Fureys:



I first heard about St Kilda as a child at a folk night in Scotland. I think I heard someone play this but it was a long time ago and I'm not sure now



More recently, I read about Robin Robertson's visit to St. Kilda, which resulted in "render[ing] the strange place in song"

The last song – I knew – would be about the evacuation of 1930, when the islanders left their ancestral home, never to return: a candle burning in each window, the doors flung wide, and on each table of every house, the Bible, laid open on the first page of Exodus.

This is that song - gorgeous, troubling and haunting, evoking hard, spare lives. I find "gave them up to water's trust" particularly striking, and the final lament of loss of a shared identity, shared history and shared characteristics as the inhabitants are dispersed.