Gypsies Sing Long Ballads Transcript
- [John] At a party in Blairgowrie, the Stewart family celebrates their son's return home from Australia with songs and dances. But these are not ordinary Scotch people. They are gypsies, who've been forced to live on the edge of society for more than 500 years.
- [Woman] Not bad Bao, not bad Bao.
♪ It's a pink and blue cravat for my love I'll prepare ♪
♪ In the cold nights of winter ♪
♪ For my laddie to wear ♪
♪ And when he returns I'll be his bride with joy ♪
♪ And I'll kiss the dear lips of my ain sailor boy ♪
♪ It's a bunch of white roses to my love I'll present ♪
♪ To live with my laddie I'll be content ♪
♪ And when he returns I'll be his bride with joy ♪
♪ And I'll kiss the dear lips of my ain sailor boy ♪
♪ Well I look to the high hills and my laddie's not there ♪
♪ I'll look all around me and my laddie's not here ♪
♪ I'll look to the salt sea and a tear blinds my ear ♪
♪ For the lad I love dearly lies a distance frae me ♪
- Well my children went to school an a hard, hard time Because the world wasn't traveling people at that time it was tinker, and it was tinky, tinky, tinkian. Well they wouldn't play with them on the playground. They wouldn't sit beside them if they could possibly help it in the classroom. When they grew up a bit too, they couldn't go to dancing or anything. Nobody would dance with them because they were tinkers.
- I don't have any due banks at all, none. I never had money in a bank in my life. All the money that I have, which is very little, I can keep it all in my pockets. One, two, three!
- There's just one thing I won't do
- [John] For centuries the gypsies have lived apart from society, romanticized, feared, and discriminated against as outsiders in Scotland. They have survived as maker of baskets, tinkers, and traders of horses. Camping in homemade tents and in caravans by the side of the road, they have always lived as travelers, but today, most of the gypsies live in houses
♪ Oh dear father, dear father ♪
♪ Watch what you have done ♪
♪ You've wed me to a bonny boy ♪
♪ A boy who is far too young ♪
♪ You have wed me to a bonny boy ♪
♪ A boy who is far too young ♪
♪ He's my bonny boy, he's young ♪
♪ But he's growing ♪
♪ Oh dear father, dear father ♪
♪ I'll tell you what I'll do ♪
♪ I'll send him off to college ♪
♪ For another year or two ♪
♪ And it's only because he's bonny ♪
♪ I'll tie a bunch of blues ♪
♪ Just to let the ladies know ♪
♪ That he's married ♪
♪ At the age of 16 he was a wedded man ♪
♪ At the age of 19 he was a father of a son ♪
♪ At the age of 21 his grave was growing green ♪
♪ And that put an end to his growing ♪
- See once upon a time the pluming only had to set amount of rations. When you feed you feed for six months. Well, for that six months, although you were a dead corpse, you never got no money to help you. You had to have a certain amount of your own key, you got milk from the farm, you got your certain amount of oatmeal and the meat of the farm had always to put on a boiling kettle for your 12 o'clock. While in the winter nights, there's nothing else to do at the tent you played a bit of gamble maybe played bag pipes or some songs, to keep themselves going for the rest of the day because there were no televisions no wirelesses, no nothing to keep them going. They just made them up themselves. The educatedest man, was the man that could make the Muse ballad, and once they got to sing them it was regular to sing at night.
♪ The Duke of Gordon had three pretty daughters ♪
♪ It was Elizabeth and Margaret and Jean ♪
♪ And they would not stay at home ♪
♪ In bonny Castle Gordon ♪
♪ Till they would see bonny Aberdeen ♪
♪ But they hadn't long in Aberdeen ♪
♪ But one 12 month and some days ♪
♪ Until Jean fell in love with Captain Ogilvie ♪
♪ All in from him she would not stay ♪
♪ She'll ride out on the hills on the Foudlen ♪
♪ Where hunting I have been ♪
♪ She race out and find a way ♪
♪ To bonny Castle Gordon ♪
♪ Without either stockings or shoe ♪
♪ When she came to the duke of Gordon's gate now ♪
♪ All down upon the plain ♪
♪ She'll look Porter is out ♪
♪ With a loud blown shout ♪
♪ Saying it's here comes bonny Lady Jean ♪
♪ Duke of Gordon comes runnin down the stairs ♪
♪ With his hat balled into his hand ♪
♪ Saying you're welcome you're welcome ♪
♪ Miss. Jeany Gordon ♪
But a stranger doesn't enter my land That's it really.
♪ A stranger doesn't enter my land ♪
- I believe the first story I can remember I was about a five-year-old. And it was an aunt who used to tell stories to all the wins. She would gather them all about old aunt that was her pastime, telling stories to the win. And I think the first story that I remember was Johnny famous mystery. That's a three part story. And it lasts about 2 1/2 hours to three hours. I think that was the first I remember because it was a great story.
- [John] What kind of happened in the story?
- Well it starts with with a boy and his mother and what this boy does and the things he's got to come through. He's a fish in the seas, he's a lion in the forest. And he's a hawk in the woods. Now through the time, all these things comes in handy because he's to do difficult things, and each of these things come in very very handy for him. And when the story's finished, he gets his freedom for the money, keeps them in these three puzzles. Well the castle that he goes to at the end there's a giant wall out round about it. But he's a human being you see, and he walks round about and he says "I can't get over that wall," he says. And he turns himself into a hawk and he flew over the wall. And the end side of this wall, there was these great big giant dogs. The dogs made at him and they bite him and he turned himself into a lion and he frightened these dogs away, you see? Now he frightened the dogs away this big giant castle castle was on and he was looking for this lassie in the castle. So he turns back into the hawk again and he flew right round about the castle right round about, being in all these wee windows where he thought the lassie would be. And finally way in the topmost tower of the castle here she was present in the topmost part of the castle. And he was sittin' in the window looking in at her and she was sittin' under and she was looking out and she seeing this wee hawk sittin' in the window. And she opened the window and she let the wee hawk in for to pet it. And of course when he come in, he turns himself back into the man again. And he explained to her how he was there and he come to save her and they were gonna get wed.
- I was born in a very small tent which most of travelling people lived in at that time. They didn't live in houses at all then. My father just roamed about and my mother. And I was born in a small tent at a place called Kipeth, on the bank of the River Tay, on the way to Dunkeld. And I was the first girl born. Which of course my father was very, very happy about that morning. But my mother was very ill. They didn't have any medical attention at all then, none of the traveling people, the in confinements sort, anything else.
♪ Oh two pretty boys were a-goin to the school ♪
♪ And one evening comin' home ♪
♪ Said William to John can you throw a stone ♪
♪ Or can you play at a ball a ball ♪
♪ Or can you play yet a ball ♪
♪ Said William to John I cannot throw a stone ♪
♪ Nor little can I play yet a ball ♪
♪ But if you come down to yon merry green woods ♪
♪ I'll try you a wrestling fall fall ♪
♪ I'll try you a wrestling fall ♪
♪ So when they came to yon merry green woods ♪
♪ Beneath the spreading moon ♪
♪ The little penknife slipped out of William's pocket ♪
♪ Which give John his deadly wound wound ♪
♪ Which give John his deadly wound ♪
♪ Oh you'll take off your white Holland shirt ♪
♪ And you'll tear it from gore to gore ♪
♪ And you shall bind my deadly wounds ♪
♪ And they shall blood no more no more ♪
♪ And they shall blood no more ♪
♪ Oh he took off his white Holland shirt ♪
♪ And he tore it from gore to gore ♪
♪ And he did bind his deadly wounds ♪
♪ But they bled 10 times more and more ♪
♪ Oh they bled 10 times more ♪
♪ Oh what will I tell to your father dear ♪
♪ This night when I go home♪
♪ You can tell him I'm away to a London school ♪
♪ And the good scholar I'll come home home ♪
♪ And the good scholar I'll come home ♪
♪ At Mill O'Tifty lived a man ♪
♪ In the neighborhood of Fyvie ♪
♪ For he had a lovely daughter fair ♪
♪ And they called her bonny Annie ♪
♪ Now her hair was fair and her eyes were blue ♪
♪ And her cheeks as red as roses ♪
- Several people could sing the same song but, we had a something that we called a conia and a conia in a ballad is a feeling. You could sit listening to several people maybe singing the same ballad and it didn't do a thing to you and suddenly someone with a conia would get up and sing the same ballad and, God, you were just living it. I mean, it was something entirely different altogether.
♪ I said no ♪
♪ I'm just Tifty's bonny Annie ♪
♪ Near my love I go to Edinburgh town ♪
♪ And for a while I must leave you ♪
♪ Oh but I'll be dead before you come back, ♪
♪ In the green kirk yard of Fyvie ♪
♪ Now her father struck her wondrous sore ♪
♪ And also did her mother ♪
♪ And her sisters also took their score ♪
♪ But woe be to her brother ♪
♪ Her brother struck her wondrous sore ♪
♪ With cruel strokes and many ♪
♪ And he broke her back under the temple stair ♪
♪ By the temple stair no Fyvie ♪
♪ Oh mother dear, please make my bed ♪
♪ And lean my face to Fyvie ♪
♪ For I will lie and I will die ♪
♪ For my dear Andrew Lammie ♪
♪ Now when Andrew home from Edinburgh came ♪
♪ With muckle grief and sorrow ♪
♪ Oh my love she died for me last night ♪
♪ So I'll die for her tomorrow ♪
- It would be a terrible thing if the travelers was moving houses because they lose their culture, they lose their identity. Maybe not to begin with because there's still older travelers, but I think it's terrible for the younger ones. They'll lose everything. They'll even lose their language, their way of life, their freedom, and I think that is the biggest tragedy of all when the traveler's put in houses. This place here is gonna be the travel site for the traveling people that's when the homages know, that's their site. All these houses in the background is where nearly all the travelers have lived at one time or other and this is why they object to this site so much because it's in a very bad area. It's a ghetto. Dump a traveler right in the middle of centers of theft I think it's just terrible. I think it'll never work.
- The travelers of housing are accommodating these people has become quite acute in the last year or so. To allow them to continue in wild campsites is quite unacceptable. We have now, hopefully, identified two sites within our area, one of which we hope to bring on stream very quickly.
- We are against the place for the caravan site is going. They want to build a caravan site there right beside a slum area and we didn't want beside a slum area. Because putting caravans right next to a slum area is just gonna make it twice as bad what it really is.
- We feel that if we get these people, and we will get them, into an organized site, a site which they're happy to go to and will have the maximum facilities that can be provided, short of giving them a house and they don't want a house. Once that has been achieved, I think that will, and I'm fairly certain, that will remove the majority of the friction that presently exists, because they will be on their own, in their own encampment, they can then live amongst themselves and they will not be affecting anybody else.
♪ Oh dear father, dear father ♪
♪ I'll tell you what you've done ♪
♪ You've wed me to a bonny boy ♪
♪ A boy who's far too young ♪
♪ You have wed me to a bonny boy ♪
♪ A boy who's far too young ♪
♪ He's my bonny boy, he's my bonny boy eh ♪
- [Man] John?
- [John] Watchya doing?
- Here making shots for the caravan.
- [John] You got the only old caravan here, huh?
- [Man] It's the only one.
- [John] What are you gonna do with this when you get it finished?
- I'll put the horses on and tobble with it.
- [John] Would you like to have a permanent site?
- Yes we would.
- [John] So you can live there always or come and go from it?
- Well we'd like to make it so we could live there but go. We wanted to go. We didn't want to lose real life altogether. We still want to keep a traveling life.
- I'm a real traveler. My mother and father, and my grandfather, and my great-grandfather before me was travelers. And we just wanna keep the tradition going.
- Well damn this. It's like the Indians. They get pushed back and back, further back and further back on the reservations and that. We not only just begin to fade back now they want to take over that all that's our land. You have to do something drastic. We're trying to do something drastic here. We're not trying to take over we're not trying to force them, but we're trying to give ourselves an eye of the public so it's at least other people in the world would know what we're up against.
♪ Oh father, dear father ♪
♪ I'll tell you what I'll do ♪
♪ I'll send him off to college ♪
♪ For another year or two ♪
♪ And only because he's bonny ♪
♪ I'll tie a bunch of blues ♪
♪ Just to let the ladies know ♪
♪ That he's married ♪
