Emily Lyle | |
---|---|
Born | |
Nationality | Scottish |
Occupation(s) | academic, author |
Known for | research into Scottish ballads |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | University of St Andrews University of Glasgow |
Thesis | A Study of Thomas the Rhymer and Tam Lin in Literature and Tradition (1967) |
Academic work | |
Institutions | Ripon College Neville's Cross College University of Edinburgh |
Emily Lyle (born 19 December 1932 in Glasgow) is a Scottish ballad scholar and senior research fellow in the School of Celtic and Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh.
Emily Lyle grew up in Kilbarchan,Renfrewshire,Scotland. She studied English language and literature at the University of St Andrews (MA 1954),followed by an education course at the University of Glasgow (Diploma in Education,1955).
For six years she taught English in secondary schools in Britain and New Zealand before she was appointed as a lecturer in English at Ripon College of Education in Yorkshire (1961–65). While employed as a senior lecturer in English at Neville’s Cross College in Durham (1965–68),she wrote her doctoral dissertation "A Study of Thomas the Rhymer and Tam Lin in Literature and Tradition" (1967) at the Institute of Folk-Life Studies at the University of Leeds. Moving away from the teaching of English literature,she soon established herself in the field of Scottish studies.
In 1976-77,she went to Australia as a visiting fellow at the Australian National University. There she collected oral material from those with Scottish connections,some of which is included in the CD “Chokit on a Tattie”(focusing on children’s songs and rhymes),and in a forthcoming issue of the journal Tocher. In 1977,Lyle donated copies of her tape recordings to the National Library of Australia. [1] The work she did as a Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute of Harvard University in 1974-75 gave her increased visibility as a ballad scholar and led to many more visits to Harvard,including an appointment at the Center for the Study of World Religions in 1995.
She was appointed as a research fellow at the School of Scottish Studies of the University of Edinburgh from 1970 to 1995 and as a lecturer from 1995 to 1998. In 1978 she was visiting professor of folklore at the University of California at Los Angeles;from 1979-1982 she was a visiting lecturer in folklife studies at the University of Stirling from 1979 to 1982. Since 1998 she has been an honorary fellow in the School of Celtic and Scottish Studies at Edinburgh. [2]
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Sir Thomas de Ercildoun, better remembered as Thomas the Rhymer, also known as Thomas Learmont or True Thomas, was a Scottish laird and reputed prophet from Earlston in the Borders. Thomas' gift of prophecy is linked to his poetic ability.
Scottish folk music is a genre of folk music that uses forms that are identified as part of the Scottish musical tradition. There is evidence that there was a flourishing culture of popular music in Scotland during the late Middle Ages, but the only song with a melody to survive from this period is the "Pleugh Song". After the Reformation, the secular popular tradition of music continued, despite attempts by the Kirk, particularly in the Lowlands, to suppress dancing and events like penny weddings. The first clear reference to the use of the Highland bagpipes mentions their use at the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh in 1547. The Highlands in the early seventeenth century saw the development of piping families including the MacCrimmons, MacArthurs, MacGregors and the Mackays of Gairloch. There is also evidence of adoption of the fiddle in the Highlands. Well-known musicians included the fiddler Pattie Birnie and the piper Habbie Simpson. This tradition continued into the nineteenth century, with major figures such as the fiddlers Niel and his son Nathaniel Gow. There is evidence of ballads from this period. Some may date back to the late Medieval era and deal with events and people that can be traced back as far as the thirteenth century. They remained an oral tradition until they were collected as folk songs in the eighteenth century.
Jeannie Robertson was a Scottish folk singer.
Jean Redpath MBE was a Scottish folk singer.
"Arthur McBride" is a folk song probably of Irish origin, also found in England, Scotland, Australia, and North America. Describing a violent altercation with a recruiting sergeant, it can be narrowly categorized as an "anti-recruiting" song, a specific form of anti-war song, and more broadly as a protest song. A. L. Lloyd described it as "that most good-natured, mettlesome, and un-pacifistic of anti-militarist songs".
"The Maid and the Palmer" is an English language medieval murder ballad with supernatural/religious overtones. Because of its dark lyrics, the song was often avoided by folk singers. Considered by scholars to be a "debased" version of a work more completely known in European sources as the Ballad of the Magdalene, the ballad was believed lost in the oral tradition in the British Isles from the time of Sir Walter Scott, who noted a fragment of it having heard it sung in the early years of the nineteenth century, until it was discovered in the repertoire of a living Irish singer, John Reilly, from whom it was collected in the 1960s, although subsequently other versions have surfaced from Ireland from the 1950s to the 1970s; an additional full text, collected and notated in around 1818, was also recently published in Emily Lyle's 1994 Scottish Ballads under the title "The Maid of Coldingham", having remained in manuscript form in the intervening time. Based on a tape of Reilly's performance provided by the collector Tom Munnelly, the singer Christy Moore popularised the song under its alternate title "The Well Below the Valley" with the Irish folk band Planxty and later solo performances/recordings, this song providing the title of that group's second album released in 1973; the song has subsequently been recorded by a number of more recent "folk revival" acts.
Lori Watson is a fiddle player and folk singer who performs traditional and contemporary folk music. She is the first doctor of Artistic Research in Scottish Music.
The Harris Repertoire consists of two manuscripts, both written by the sisters Amelia and Jane Harris. Containing 29 and 59 ballads and songs respectively, these manuscripts are part of the cornerstone of nineteenth-century ballad collecting. The second manuscript written was used by Francis James Child (1825–1896) in his seminal work, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, commonly known as the Child Ballads.
Margaret Bennett is a Scottish writer, folklorist, ethnologist, broadcaster, and singer. Her main interests lies in the field of traditional Scottish folk culture and cultural identity of the Scots in Scotland and abroad. The late Hamish Henderson, internationally distinguished poet and folklorist, said about her: Margaret embodies the spirit of Scotland.
Wilhelm Fritz Hermann Nicolaisen was a folklorist, linguist, medievalist, scholar of onomastics and literature, educator, and author with specialties in Scottish and American studies.
Marjory Kennedy-Fraser was a Scottish singer, composer and music teacher and supporter of women's suffrage and pacifism. According to Ray Perman, Kennedy-Fraser "made a career of collecting Gaelic songs in the Hebrides and singing her own Anglicized versions of them."
The School of Scottish Studies was founded in 1951 at the University of Edinburgh. It holds an archive of approximately 33,000 field recordings of traditional music, song and other lore, housed in George Square, Edinburgh. The collection was begun by Calum Maclean - brother of the poet, Sorley MacLean - and the poet, writer and folklorist, Hamish Henderson, both of whom collaborated with American folklorist Alan Lomax, who is credited as being a catalyst and inspiration for the work of the school.
Christoph Bode is a literary scholar. His fields are British and American literature, comparative literature, literary theory, narratology, and travel writing. He is full professor and chair of Modern English literature in the Department of English and American Studies at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. Since 2009, Bode has been a reviewer and occasional columnist for Times Higher Education.
The Greig-Duncan Folk Song Collection from northeast Scotland, was the work of the schoolmaster and musician, Gavin Greig (1856–1914), and the minister James Bruce Duncan (1848-1917). The project began in 1902 and was completed between then and the First World War. Its largest contributor was Bell Robertson. A selection of the songs was published in 1925 under the title Last Leaves of Traditional Ballads and Ballad Airs collected in Aberdeenshire by the Late Gavin Greig.
John Stuart (1743–1821) was a Scottish minister, Gaelic scholar, and reviser of the New Testament in Gaelic of his father James Stuart of Killin.
Eunice Guthrie Murray MBE was a Scottish suffrage campaigner, author and historian. She was a leading figure in the Women's Freedom League in Scotland. Murray was the only Scottish woman in the first UK general election open to women in 1918.
Prof Harold William ("Tommy") Thompson FRSE FSA DLitt (1891–1964) was an American folklorist and historian. He was also a competent musician, specialising in playing the organ.
Ruth Perry is an American literary scholar who works on the literary and cultural history of eighteenth-century England and Scotland. She is known especially for her work on women’s writing. She is the Ann Fetter Friedlaender Professor of the Humanities Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and past president of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.
Rosie Anderson was a figure in 18th- and 19th-century Scotland. She was the daughter of landowner Thomas Anderson, who, along with his son-in-law, Thomas Hay Marshall, was responsible for the construction of much of the Georgian architecture of Perth. Rose Terrace in Perth is now named for her.
Bell Robertson was a Scottish reciter of folk songs who contributed almost four hundred memorised ballads to the Greig-Duncan collection.