Robbie Shepherd and his Doric Column

Thanks to a fellow W.A.G. (Wee Annie’s Gang), who emailed me the information, I can listen to Robbie Shepherd’s Doric Column on an Internet podcast. I also listen to his 2 weekly shows, ‘Take the Floor,’ and ‘The Reel Blend,’ in which he presents the best in Scottish dance music.

‘Take the Floor’ airs on BBC Radio Scotland on Saturday evenings and opens with the  reel, ‘Kate Dalrymple.’ This reel opened the programme when I listened to it in Scotland, over 50 years ago. Obviously, Robbie wasn’t the presenter then!

So, between listening to Los Dos Andies, Mack‘n’Ross, and now Robbie, I get as much Scottish music as I want.

If you’ve never heard a Doric Column before, go to the Press and Journal website for a list of podcasts and download the latest Robbie Shepherd offering.

“I was in Scotland, once …”

Said the checker at the supermarket on New Year’s Eve.

In all the years I’ve been shopping at this store, this particular checker has never said a word to me and I wonder how he knows I’m a Scot? He told me he has Celtic genes and that both his parents have Scottish ancestry.

“ Oh Aye?” I said, “And where did their families come from in Scotland?”  Well, he used to know, but he’d forgotten. But! he does have the family crest! He’d bought it on his one and only trip to Scotland.

“Where in Scotland did you visit,” I had to ask.

“Dublin,” he responded and said he’d had a great time at the Guiness brewery.

Spot the obvious mistake and win a major prize!

Cheerio 2007, Hello 2008

2007 was a gey year for many of our friends. We already know they will face serious challenges in 2008. So while they are included in the “Happy New Year” wish, I have to add the wish that whatever medical procedures they face will have a successful outcome.

I made new friends in 2007 and enjoyed the company of old friends. Thanks to the Internet, I could spend time with them, without being ‘there.’ I had the most fun listening to “Los Andys” (Andy Mack of Bluewater Radio in Canada and Andy Ross of Scottish Internet Radio.) I’ll be listening to their Hogmanay Internet hookup with Moray Firth Radio.

Now, please all stand up and join in a Hogmanay toast… “Should Auld Acquaintance be forgot… Then let’s all fling ourselves at 2008!

Thanksgiving and Other Celebrations

I try very hard to not get caught up in the Holiday whirlwind.

I could mark each celebration individually: Thanksgiving, St. Andrew’s Day (November 30th), Christmas, Hogmanay (New Year in Scotland,) and Robert Burns’ Birthday (January 25th).  That’s just too exhausting, so this year, I’m doubling up the celebrations and combining Thanksgiving with St. Andrew’s Day. We’re going to dine on haggis and neeps and tatties (mashed rutabagas and potatoes). That’s typical Scottish fare served at a St Andrew’s Day dinner, and also on Burns’ Birthday. I’ll have to get another haggis in January.

We order the haggis from the Scottish Meat Pie Company in Dixon, a farming community, which is very close to Sacramento and drive up there to collect it.

The Thanksgiving haggis is a sturdy wee thing and survived last year’s kitchen renovation. I had to play bagpipe music (on a cd) at it, to entice it to come out from the depths of the freezer.

For dessert we have a rhubarb pie from Walker’s Pie Shop, an Albany institution.

This will all be paired with our favourite champagne, Marie Stuart.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone, Happy St Andrews Day! Slainthe Bha! Good Health!

Andy Ross and the Shetland Accordion and Fiddle Festival

I visited the Shetland Isles with my parents when I was six years old, but these days, thanks to Andy Ross, the host of Andy’s Internet Ceilidh, I’m there practically everyday.
Andy has a friend, or perhaps nemesis, who lives in the Shetlands. She and I have become pen pals and I’ve even joined her gang.
I can’t identify her, because I did not ask permission to do so, but Andy Ross’s listeners will know she is. Quite a few of Andy’s listeners are in the gang too!
Andy broadcasts once a month from the studios in Dingwall. His latest broadcast, on November 4, was about his experience at the Shetland Accordion and Fiddle Festival and the great hospitality he received from she-who-will-remain nameless!

Halloween Part 2

When I was a child in Scotland it seemed that Halloween and Bonfire Night were two celebrations in one. Bonfire Night, on November 5, celebrated the discovery of, and the foiling of, the plot by Guy Fawkes, and others, to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605.
A classmate did once invite me to a Halloween party and we played the traditional games: dooking (bobbing) for apples, eating treacly scones tied on strings and pinning the tail on the donkey, blindfolded.
But that was not the usual way we celebrated the season.
Preparations for Bonfire Night started in late October. There was indeed a bonfire to be built. This was long before these events were regulated and the local children scoured the neighbourhood for bonfire material; old tyres, tables, bits of wood, old rugs and rolls of unused wallpaper were collected for the funeral pyre of Guy Fawkes.
We made a Guy out of scarecrow material; old clothes stuffed with straw. He came with us as we foraged for the bonfire and we pulled him along in a hurlie (a wee cart.) “Penny for the Guy!” we shouted.
The pennies bought fireworks. On Bonfire Night, with little adult supervision we lit Roman candles, Catherine wheels, bangers, rockets and waved sparklers about with no care of personal injury or property damage.
The safest place for a bonfire is on the beach, but when I was wee, the bonfire was built on top of the brae, the communal drying green and so very close to our houses.
The Guy sat on the top and once the bonfire was burning, neighbours gathered and kept it blazing, tossing more rubbish on to it.
We cheered when the flames got to the Guy and devoured him.
Then we children started our ‘guising’ and knocked on neighbours’ doors. We were expected and welcomed.
We didn’t shout ‘Trick or Treat.’ We simply knocked and were invited to come in and perform for the treat.
We earned our treat. Those who could dance or sing did so and the reward was a few coins, a toffee apple or a piece of homemade tablet (fudge.)
We didn’t have fancy costumes and I wore my mother’s wrap-around-apron as my outfit. I had a false-face, which was a sixpenny piece of cardboard, secured behind my head with an elastic band.
It usually rained and the false-face was mushy on my cheeks.
Most children had a talent for dancing or singing, but I didn’t dance or sing or entertain.
My talent was to recite and bore.
My favourite poem has always been, “The Lay of the Last Minstrel,” By Sir Walter Scott.
I‘d launch into:

The way was long, the wind was cold,
The Minstrel was infirm and old;
His wither’d cheek, and tresses gray,
Seem’d to have known a better day;
The harp, his sole remaining joy,
Was carried by an orphan boy

I’d start weeping when I got to “carried by an orphan boy…” The poor wee laddie carrying the heavy harp in the cold wind. I got my sixpence and went weeping to recite at the next house.

But on October 31 I will turn on the porch light and I will have a basket of candy.
I don’t want the wee ones to trip over their costumes climbing up my steps.
I’m not really so grumpy.

Scots Language Society

I have always enjoyed writing in my native dialect, The Doric. I heard it before I learned to speak English and I could call it my ‘comfort language.’
An article I wrote a few years ago explains this in more detail; “Speak Bonnie Noo.”
I’ve written a number of articles and stories in The Doric which have been published in the Banffshire Advertiser (The Buckie Paper, AKA, ‘The Squeak,’ and in the newsletter of the Buckie and District Fishing Heritage Museum.
A few years ago I joined the Scots Language Society. I think the Society has very few members outside of Scotland.
I’m chuffed tae bits that last year the Society published a story I wrote.
I’d been telling the story for 40 years and wrote it as a piece for Susan Ito’s writing class at UC extension. But it just didn’t work in English.
The story was about a visit from Canadian relatives and despite our sincere efforts to make them feel welcome and comfortable, it was a laughable disaster!
I heard the Doric voices in contrast to the Canadian voices and realised that was what the story was about. There were two extremely different cultures and expectations.
“Scottish Hospitality” was published in The Doric, in the winter edition, 2006, of ‘Lallans,’ the journal of the Scots Language Society.

Here’s a short excerpt of me reading this story.