The Banff and Buchan Collection

Jane Turriff, Mintlaw, 1988

Interviewer: Margaret Bennett
This is a tape from the School of Scottish Studies Archive. This file is therefore INDEX ONLY.

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NEFA 1993.003.01   
P: Jane Turriff
T: Family music making and teaching herself to play

S: Both father and mother sang and her father was more of a piper. Taught himself the fiddle, piano and pipes. Their parents are all musical. Mother's sisters and brothers could play pipes and some the accordion and fiddle. She taught herself to play the organ and learned to sing with it. She would just fancy a tune and a song and try to master it and she did. It has been her life. Mother Irish, Jane McGuire. Very musical people. Married Robert Stewart, a soldier-piper. Gave picture of him to her sister Lizzie. Wanted to write a book about him and use the photo. She has got photos of her uncles in the Boer War. Would love to write book and would need a bit of help. She is a clever woman.

NEFA 1993.003.02   
P: Jane Turriff
T: The long ballads and where she learned them

S: The long ballads came from her mother and granny; she would listen. She never used to sing them, but they were all inside her. She would sit and think about the sad songs. She fell and hurt her leg when she was four and she spent more than three years in hospital. She wanted the house to herself so she could sing freely.

NEFA 1993.003.03   
P: Jane Turriff
T: Previous recordings
 
S: MB mentions the TV program about her. She has never seen it. There is a copy at the School of Scottish Studies. Her mother, Christina Stewart, was recorded at the same time she was by the School of Scottish Studies.

NEFA 1993.003.04    
P: Jane Turriff
T: Mother Christina Stewart
 
S: Her mother was very hard working. Singing was her life. There were no festivals in those days; she just sang all the time around the house. She was always scrubbing the floor and carrying water from the well. No water in houses. The other kids would be out playing, and she would be listening to her mum singing. She learned the Dowie Dens o Yarrow from her. She would hear her grandmother and grandfather too. She were as happy as a lark, they were happy. She wants the house to be empty so she can really sing out.

NEFA 1993.003.05    
P: Jane Turriff
T: The Dowie Dens o Yarrow
FL: He's gan tae his lady gaen
S:
 12 verses. Heard it all her life. Did not have to learn words. Just heard them.

NEFA 1993.003.06    
P: Jane Turriff
T: I'm Jist a Braw Young Sailor Lad
FL: I'm jist a braw young sailor lad
S:
 Six verses. Stanley Robertson's favourite song.

NEFA 1993.003.07    
P: Jane Turriff
T: Blue, Blue
FL: Blue, blue, I'm feelin so blue
S:
 Jimmie Rogers song, complete with yodelling.

NEFA 1993.003.08    
P: Jane Turriff
T: Home, Home on the Range
FL: Home, home on the range
S:
 Five verses with melodic variation.

NEFA 1993.003.09    
P: Jane Turriff
T: The old songs versus Jimmy Rogers and the like

S: Just used to hear it and liked that sort better than the old songs. Still does. She likes the stories of the old songs; they are true, you know. The old songs are very sad. She loves Jimmy Rogers, his voice and guitar.

NEFA 1993.003.10    
P: Jane Turriff
T: The old gramophone

S: She would play the disks on the Gramophone. One time she broke it and her father came home in the evening and said 'that woman' broke it, 'that big woman' and she was only a bairn. They would get stylii in a little packet. It was an RCA Victor gramophone with a big red horn.

NEFA 1993.003.11    
P: 
Jane Turriff
T: Bonnie Udny
FL: O Udny, bonnie Udny, ye shine where ye stan

 

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