David Buchan – författare

The ballad is an enduring and universal literary genre. In this book, first published in 1972, David Buchan is concerned to establish the nature of a ballad and of the people who produced it through a study of the regional tradition of the Northeast of Scotland, the most fertile ballad area in Britain. His account of this tradition has two parallel aims, one specifically literary – to investigate the ballad as oral literature – and one broadly ethnographic – to set the regional tradition in its social context. Dr Buchan applies the interesting and important work which has recently been done on oral tradition in Europe on the relationship of the ballad to society to his study of this particular part of Scotland. He examines a nonliterate society to discover what factors besides nonliteracy helped foster its ballad tradition. He analyses the processes of composition and transmission in the oral ballad, and considers the changes which removed nonliteracy, altered social patterns, and seriously affected the ballad tradition. By demonstrating how people who could neither read nor write were able to compose literature of a high order, David Buchan provides a convincing explanation of the ballad’s perennial appeal and an answer to the ‘ballad enigma’. His book is also a valuable study in social history of this culturally distinct region, the Northeast of Scotland.

The popular appeal of the ballad is perennial, and few literary genres give so much pleasure to so many kinds of people. This anthology, first published in 1973, is drawn from the richest ballad tradition in Britain, that of the Northeast of Scotland. It provides a fresh and original choice of songs that ranges from the old ballads like ‘Gil Brenton’ and ‘Willie’s Lady’ to the bothy ballads like ‘The Tarves Rant’. The collection illustrates the development of a tradition over the centuries from the oral stage down to the modern, and exemplifies the methods of composition and transmission, the kinds of ballad-story, and the types of ballad-text found in the various stages of a ballad tradition. It illustrates the variety of subject matter, and indicates lines of relationship with other genres of Folklore Studies. A substantial section, containing what are widely acknowledged as the best of all British ballads, the oral ballads of Anna Brown, demonstrates clearly that the ballads are not merely simple or crude poems; in their oral form, they are narrative songs of some complexity and sophistication. This anthology is complementary to Dr Buchan’s The Ballad and the Folk.

Scottish folk literature is characterised by a wide range of creative expression: story, song, play and proverb. This anthology, first published in 1984, provides an authoritative introduction to Scottish folk literature, and is unique in that it deals with all the genres intrinsic to Scottish tradition. Its selected texts offer an unusual and diverse enjoyment to the reader, including such forms as wonder tales or Märhcen, classical ballads, riddles, jocular tales, lyric and comic and occupational folksongs, rhymes, historical and supernatural legends, and guisers’ plays. The texts chosen cover the main regional traditions of Lowland Scotland, from Galloway to the Shetlands, and span a number of centuries, through both pre- and post-industrial periods, from a sailor’s worksong of the sixteenth century to modern urban legends just recently recorded. The book is arranged in four sections, on Folk Narrative, Folksong, Folksay, and Folk Drama, each with an introduction and a bibliographical essay setting the material in context and indicating some of its international links. Folk literature itself is brought into firm focus by discussion and generic example, and the anthology as a whole illuminates substantial areas of Scottish social and cultural life.

This book shows the social context of a ballad tradition and its effects on the literature, and the functions of the literature in the social context. It explores the basic questions about the ballad and the folk through an examination of the ballads and the folk of the regional tradition.

This Scottish ballad book provides a representative selection from the regional tradition with the best of ballad texts in the oral versions of Anna Brown and the widest range of ballad-stories. It is designed for both the general reader and the more academic student.

This volume provides an introduction to Scottish folk literature covering classical ballads, riddles, jocular tales, lyric and comic and occupational folksongs, rhymes, historical and supernatural legends. It is divided into four sections: folk Narrative, folksong, folksay, and folk drama.