I hae seen the Hairst o Rettie, aye, and twa-three on the throne
Ah’ve heard for sax or seven weeks the hairsters girn and groan
But a covie Willie Rae in a monthie and a day
Gart aa the jolly hairster lads gae singin doon the brae
The Hairst o Rettie

On Friday 31st August 1951 a ceilidh was held in Oddfellow’s Hall in Central Edinburgh, part of the first Edinburgh People’s Festival. Festival and ceilidh sprang from a political purpose. The songs sung and tunes played, the way the songs were sung, and the points made in the spoken introductions, exemplified many of the elements of the coming Folk Revival in Scotland. The ceilidh was organised by the second of the three Scottish architects of the Revival, Hamish Henderson.
Three of the five key figures whose work created and shaped the Revival, Scots Hamish Henderson and Norman Buchan and American Alan Lomax were at the centre of the ceilidh action; a fourth, Englishman of Scots parentage Ewan MacColl, arrived in time for the after-ceilidh dance. The fifth key person, Scot Morris Blythman, missed this People’s Festival ceilidh, but not the following ones.
The concert became legendary because it alerted astonished city folk to the living continuing richness of Scotland's traditional song heritage. The 1951 Edinburgh People's Festival Ceilidh was a key event that heralded, generated and vitalised the Scottish Folk Revival of the 1960s.
“As I went into the Oddfellows Hall the bloody place was packed, feet were going, and it was Jimmy MacBeath singing ‘The Gallant Forty-Twa’. Hamish had assembled these people. Jessie Murray sang ‘Skippin’ Barfit Through The Heather’; … Flora MacNeil was singing ‘The Silver Whistle [An Fhideag Airgid]’ - beautiful! I’d never heard anything like this. John Strachan was singing about forty verses of a ballad… An amazing night for people who’d never heard them before! It swept me off my feet completely.” Norman Buchan
“What made this inaugural People’s Festival ceilidh so important was the fact that this was the first time such a masterly group of authentic traditional musicians and ballad-singers from rural Scotland had sung together to a city audience; the result was a veritable cultural explosion, for a number of the ‘folk’ virtuosi of the future were present in the audience.” Hamish Henderson
“The beauty of the evening was probably due to the fact that the Gaelic and Lallans singers were operating in the true folk tradition, singing music that was unscored and also, if I may use the word, untitivated. Though the ceilidh was public it remained intimate owing to the smallness of the hall.” Neil MacCallum
American folklorist Alan Lomax of the Library of Congress was there to record the ceilidh. Lomax had come to Scotland in June 1951 expecting to “give Scotland a modest corner on the [World Library] album titled English Folk Songs.” The astonishing harvest that he garnered in Highland and Lowland Scotland in 1951 is still being distilled and bottled. He donated copies of the 25 hours of recordings to the University of Edinburgh, to become the cornerstone of the sound archives of the School of Scottish Studies. Hamish Henderson was his guide for much of the trip.
Lomax had already met and collected songs from singer, songwriter, actor and playwright Ewan MacColl. He and director Joan Littlewood were the ‘leading figures’ of Theatre Workshop. MacColl had in turn met Hamish Henderson through Theatre Workshop’s visits to Edinburgh. At the time MacColl was known for his theatrical work, and his long term musical partner Peggy Seeger had not yet come to Britain.
The official Edinburgh Festival began in 1947, and Theatre Workshop was there that year to help initiate the Fringe. The 1945 Labour government, radical in much of its social planning, created the Edinburgh International Festival by enlisting what Hamish Henderson called “the Edimbourgeoisie… the city’s arty elite and effete middle class, to organise the party and draw up the invitations. They remain firmly in charge to this day, self-elected critics and guardians of taste and morality.”
In 1951 the Edinburgh Labour Festival Committee was established to organise a People’s Festival. The aims were “to initiate action designed to bring the Edinburgh Festival closer to the people, to serve the cause of international understanding and goodwill.” Committee participants included the Trade Unions’ Council, the Miners’ Union, the Labour party and the Communist Party. Cultural groups, independent arts organisations and individual arts activists became involved. Theatre companies were invited to participate. Henderson credits the renowned innovative theatre director Joan Littlewood with some of the impetus for the People’s Festival, and in ‘Joan’s Book’ she gives a vivid and exciting account of various People’s Festival events, but sadly none of her dates or descriptions tally with other accounts, or newspaper reports of the time. She has perhaps conflated and over-dramatised various Edinburgh Festival-time events.
Theatre Workshop brought MacColl’s play ‘Uranium 235’, ‘A modern morality play for the atomic era’. Theatre Workshop was so popular it stayed on till 15th September, performing MacColl's ballad opera ‘Johnny Noble’ as well as ‘Uranium 235’, which was later described on TW posters as ‘the sensational success of the ‘51 Edinburgh Festival’.

As I was waakin doon yon hill, it was then a summer evening,
It was there I spied a bonnie lass skippin barfit through the heather
O but she was neatly dressed, she neither needed hat nor feather
She was the queen amang them aa, skippin barfit through the heather
Skippin Barfit Throu The Heather

There was a troop o’ Irish Dragoons cam a-marchin’ doon through Fyvie, O
An their captain’s fa’n in love wi’ a very bonnie lass an’ her name it was ca’d pretty Peggy, O
The Bonny Lass O Fyvie

Johnnie rose up in the May morning, called for water to wash his hands
Says “Gae lowse tae me ma twa grey dogs that lie bound in iron bands, that lie bound in iron bands.”
Johnnie O Braidislie

Fare ye weel ye dungeons dark and strang. Farewell, fareweel tae ye
MacPherson’s time will no be lang on yonder gallows tree
MacPherson’s Rant

In some accounts the People’s Festival ceilidh arose from a need to support financially Theatre Workshop’s visit. Poet and arch stirrer of the cultural pot Hugh MacDiarmid wrote to Henderson, 12/7/51, “Will you still be in Edinburgh when Theatre Workshop are there? I hope so. I’ll be through then too. Since the short season they have in Edinburgh will not leave them with any dough after defraying their expenses it has been requested that they also have a number of ceilidhs and if you are on the spot you might help to organise these… Alan Lomax will take part and I understand Flora MacNeil and Calum Johnston have also agreed.” Hamish Henderson says when this letter came he had already been put in charge of the Ceilidh.
Janey Buchan (later Labour MEP for Glasgow) and Norman Buchan, at that time a schoolteacher of English, later organiser of the 1953 People’s Festival, then Labour MP and Shadow Minister for the Arts, were both heavily involved in the creation of the Festival. Janey later said “You look back and wonder how did you summon up the physical energy to do what we did? We didn’t have a car among the lot of us, we did it all on tram and bus, and on our two feet.”
The week of events was a great success. Poetry readings, art exhibitions, plays and concerts. Although the People's Festival was planned as a counterweight to the International Festival's inattention to Scots culture, in 1951 there was in fact Scottish music in the official Festival. The Scotsman newspaper featured days of continuing debate about the chaos of the Pipers’ March down Princes Street that had initiated the official 1951 Festival. In the Freemason’s Hall there were two evenings of the Music of Scotland. Performers included two who had already been recorded by Lomax - Jimmy Shand playing accordion, and John Mearns singing Bothy Ballads ‘with endearing gusto’.
In the People’s Festival programme Hamish Henderson wrote “In Scotland … there is still an incomparable treasure of folk song and folk music… The main purpose of this Ceilidh will be to present Scottish folk song as it should be sung. The singers will all without exception be men and women who have learned these splendid songs by word of mouth in their own childhood, and who give them in the traditional manner. This fact alone will make the People’s Festival Ceilidh an absolutely unique thing in the cultural history of Edinburgh.” And so it proved to be. Friday night in the Oddfellows Hall arrived. Theatre Workshop’s stage lights troubled the singers. There was a calm enough beginning. John Burgess says that a few douce Edinburgh dames walked out early on. The poster "looked conservative" but their prim sensibilities were soon threatened by the honest gruff voice of Jimmy MacBeath.
The atmosphere became so supercharged that the listener to the CD recording of the Concert half expects sparks to shoot out of the speakers, the applause and cheering was so loud and prolonged that Lomax turned off his recorder between songs to conserve tape, thereby losing the start of some pieces. Three elements were combined – Gaelic song, piping, and North-East Scots song. Three older performers aged 57 to 76, three younger ones aged 16 to 21. “This was an amazing, indeed epoch-making folk-song concert which brought together some of the ‘greats’ of the traditional folk-scene: outstanding tradition-bearers from the Gaelic-speaking Hebrides, and ballad-singers from Aberdeenshire, heartland of the great Scots ballad tradition. The Barra singers Flora MacNeil and Calum Johnston presented Hebridean folk-song, stripped of its Kennedy Fraser mummy-wrappings." Henderson

Translations from Gaelic
As I awoke early in the morning Great was my joy and merriment on hearing that the Prince is coming
to the land of Clanranald. You are the best of all rulers, may you come back in good health.
If the crown was placed on you your friends would be joyful
From Oran Eile Don Phrionsa (Another Song to the Prince)

Alas, young Charles Stewart, your cause has left me desolate.
You took from me everything I had in a war on your behalf
It is not sheep or cattle that I mourn but my spouse.
Since the day I was left alone, with nothing in the world but my shift
From Mo Rùn Geal Òg (My Fair Young Love)

Jimmy MacBeath sang ‘Come A’ ye Tramps and Hawkers’ for the first time on any stage (as opposed to the reeling road, or the booths of Porter Fair). John Burgess, master piper, played us marches, jigs, strathspeys and reels with all the expertise of Auld Nick at Kirk Alloway. John Strachan, the Fyvie farmer, and Jessie Murray, the Buckie fishwife, sang versions of classic ballads such as ‘Johnnie o’ Braidislie’ (Child 114) and ‘Lord Thomas and Fair Ellen’ (Child 73) which convinced even the most sceptical that a noble oral tradition was still with us.” Hamish Henderson

In Scotland I was born and bred, in Scotland I was dwellin.
I fell in love with a pretty fair maid, and her name was Barbara Allen
Barbara Allen
I’ll gyang tae the ale hoose an look for my Jimmy, the day is far spent an the night’s comin on
Ye’re sittin there drinkin and leave me lamentin, so rise up, my Jimmy, an come awa hame
Nae mind o the bairnies, they’re aa at hame greetin, nae meal in the barrel tae ful their wee wames
The Ale Hoose

After the ‘official’ ceilidh had finished, the whole company moved to St Columba’s Church hall in Johnstone Terrace, where they were joined by Ewan MacColl and Isla Cameron, their Theatre Workshop show having finished. Hugh MacDiarmid was there, and part of ‘A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle’ was spoken during the evening. Hamish Henderson wrote that “All over Auld Reekie the ceilidh was continuing. In a sense, it is continuing still.”
Norman Buchan’s highly influential efforts to support and educate young urban singers were inspired by that night. “Looking back, I know that though the evening was devastatingly new to me, it really shouldn’t have been. Although I grew up in the Orkney islands, my folk came from the North East coast. The Revival didn’t really start that night at the Festival Ceilidh. Things were going on, it’s just that we didn’t know about it. There were still ballad singers going around, there were still professional entertainers like G S Morris and John Mearns singing bothy ballads. They were even beginning to appear on records. But no-one said to us, “Look, these things matter. They matter for you in the cities. You should listen to this and learn.”
Communist Party organiser Martin Milligan’s comments show the politically committed motivation that drove aspects of the People's Festival. "The leading role the Communist Party can play in the defence and development of British culture was made evident at the conference by the quality of the contributions by its spokesmen there." Seventeen organisations had backed the first Festival. The 1952 Festival had the backing of fifty organisations, and was a triumph, running for three weeks.However, the involvement of the Communist Party in those days of the gathering ice storm that became the Cold War caused unease to the Labour party members involved in the Festival. The Festival was proscribed by the STUC as a 'Communist Front'. This was a shattering blow to the many people involved in its success and the 1954 festival was the last.
A particular richness of the 1951 Lomax recording is the preservation of Hamish Henderson’s legendary manner of presenting song and music – warm and inclusive, enthusiastic yet wry, knowledgeable but not always fully accurate, delighted at what he had found to share with others. Hamish’s extempore performances were, as far as I am concerned, one of the most memorable aspects of those early People’s Festivals (forerunners of the Fringe). By day one encountered him on the streets and squares of Edinburgh, generally accompanied by one or two of his discoveries, Jimmy MacBeath, Frank Steele, or Jeannie Robertson, or he would be bent over a hypnotised acquaintance lilting his latest ‘find’. At night he could be found presiding over the ceilidh which generally began at 11pm and finished at two or three in the morning. There must be hundreds of Edinburgh folk who heard their first traditional song at those splendid affairs.” Ewan MacColl
The 1951 performers were chosen by Henderson for their excellence. 17 year old piper John D Burgess had in 1950, in his first appearance aged 16, won Gold Medals for his playing in piobaireachd competitions in Oban and Inverness. Gaelic singer and piper Calum Johnston was born on the Outer Hebridean isle of Barra. He worked as a draughtsman in Edinburgh, retired to Barra. Johnston died suddenly in 1973 while piping the coffin of novelist Sir Compton Mackenzie to its grave in violent weather. Jimmy MacBeath was born in the Buchan fishing village of Portsoy. For most of his life Jimmy footslogged the roads of Scotland and beyond, earning pennies from street singing and shillings from casual labour, living in 'model' public lodging houses. In the 1960s Jimmy began to be recorded commercially and to sing in folk clubs and festivals.
Gaelic singer Flora MacNeil was also born on Barra. When she moved to work in Edinburgh in 1947, “She was already a most accomplished traditional singer, with a repertoire more varied and more extensive than anyone else of her age.” Dr John Macinnes
Jessie Murray aged 70 came with her Portknockie niece Blanche Wood aged 18. Jessie Murray was a fishwife living in the North-East port of Buckie, and would have trudged from door to door, a little lady dressed all in black, a basket of fish or shellfish on her back. “I always remember Jessie Murray, and she came forward and gave a little curtsey to the audience. And she sang ‘Skippin Barfit Through The Heather’, and of course these were songs you had never heard, and clearly the whole audience had never heard either.” Janey Buchan
John Strachan was born and died on the Aberdeenshire farm of Crichie near Fyvie. A wealthy farmer, Hamish Henderson wrote that Strachan “took a kindly paternalistic interest in the welfare of his fee’d men”, and was a highly knowledgeable champion of the songs of farm life and old ballads. Janey Buchan pointed out an irony. “When John Strachan, who was himself a wealthy farmer, sang two lines and said, ‘The fermer I am wi the noo, He’s wealthy but he’s mean’, that summed up every employer people like me ever had in their life. But he could sing that and maybe not see the irony of himself singing it.”
Though there were no songs of politics in the 1951 ceilidh, many of the songs and tunes had a general political context – of warfare and strife, of sexual and social conflict, and of unfair work conditions. Among the warfare and strife songs was a sequence of Gaelic Jacobite songs. First came two celebrating the coming of Bonny Prince Charlie - ‘Oran Eile Don Phrionnsa’ (Another Song for the Prince and ‘An Fhìdeag Airgid’ (The Silver Whistle) - then one lamenting what his coming had wrought, ‘My Fair Young Love’ (Mo Rùn Geal Òg). Piper John Burgess played ‘Blue Bonnets Over The Border’, a tune fashioned in the 1740s, for which Sir Walter Scott wrote a lyric based on an old Cavalier song. ‘Blue Bonnets’ is a metaphor for the Scots marching men, who are going ‘over the border’ into England seeking a fight.

You may taalk aboot your First Royal Scottish Fusiliers
Your Aiberdeen Mileesha, an your dandy volunteers,
Yer Seaforths in their stickit kilts, yer Gordons big and braw.
Gae bring tae me the tartan o the gallant Forty Twa.
The Gallant Forty Twa

John Strachan essayed ‘The Bonny Lass O Fyvie’, a martial Aberdeenshire song of death for love, hardly known in 1951, but since massively popular in Scotland in ‘sing-along-a-tartan’ style. Bob Dylan recorded an American version, ‘Pretty Peggy-O’. MacBeath’s ‘The Gallant Forty Twa’ is a lighthearted theatrical song, which lists Scots regiments but gives the palm to the 42nd Highland Regiment, the Black Watch. In all, four songs about heroic villains were sung. All four songs became very popular in the 1960s folk song Revival.
Sexual politics were addressed as usual by men seeking with varying degrees of success to undress women. Jessie Murray sang a Scotland-located version of the widely-known ballad ‘Barbara Allen’, in which Barbara’s rather feeble lover dies for love when she rejects him. Some versions justify Barbara’s apparent heartlessness in the matter by explaining her swain had spoken slightingly of her in the alehouse. Murray also gave another ballad of love’s confusions that is sung throughout the English-speaking world, ‘Lord Thomas and Fair Ellen’ which has two murders and a suicide with an apparent element of racial prejudice. Blanche Wood sang ‘I’m a Young Bonnie Lassie’ of faithful love, and ‘Portnockie Road’ of betrayed love.

I know you’re a Pat by the cut of your hair, but you all turn Scotchmen as soon’s you come here,
You have left your own country for breaking the law, we are seizing all stragglers from Erin go Bragh.
Erin Go Bragh

Near the end of the concert Jessie Murray sang a ballad that enchanted Norman Buchan. “The place was electric, and I was surprised because on the stage was a tiny old lady, less than five feet, dressed in black, fisherwife dressed, and she was chanting out a song called ‘Jamie Raeburn’. Now, I’d never heard that song before, but I did know what it was. I knew it was a street ballad from a century and a half or maybe two centuries ago. It was a street ballad that people had sold about a transportation, but I had absolutely no idea that people still sang a song like that. In fact, during the rest of that evening every preconception I had was swept out of existence, and indeed if any man had a Damascus, that was me.”
John Strachan sang a fine account of noble deer poacher Johnnie O Braidislie’s fight with the King’s gamekeepers, and another of how Duncan Campbell of Argyll is addressed by an Edinburgh policeman as ‘Erin Go Bragh’ (meaning Ireland Forever). Campbell fights the policeman, and escapes North. Jimmy MacBeath sang of Scotland’s Robin Hood, James MacPherson.
Jessie Murray also sang the social comment song ‘The Ale Hoose’, a small morality lesson on the evils of the Demon Drink, reminding us of the strength and manipulative vehemence of the Temperance Movement in the 19th Century. The transcript of this song in the School of Scottish Studies archives is annotated, “This hodden-grey tear-jerker is a find – can’t trace it in any of the earlier collections.”
The evening began with two Aberdeenshire Bothy Ballad songs of farm life, the work and personalities. The final two songs were the only ones with an explicitly political dimension sung in the evening. The last song was Robert Burns’ ‘Scots Wha Hae’ considered by many to be Scotland’s own National Anthem. Just before it, Henderson and a Mrs Budge sang his composition ‘The John Maclean March’, written for and sung at the John Maclean Memorial Meeting in St Andrew’s Hall in Glasgow, 1948, and later called by Morris Blythman “the first swallow of the Revival”. John MacLean was the great hero of Scottish socialism, ‘martyred’ for his opposition to World War One, a fiery orator, writer and organiser.

Forward tae Glasgie Green we'll march in good order:
Will grips his banner weel (that boy isna blate).
Ay there, man, that's Johnnie noo - that's him there, the bonnie fechter,
Lenin's his fiere, lad, an’ Liebknecht’s his mate.
Tak’ tent when he's speakin', for they'll mind what he said here
In Glasgie our city - and the haill world beside.
Och hey, lad, the scarlet's bonnie: here's tae ye Hielan' Shony
Great John Maclean has come hame tae the Clyde!
Great John Maclean has come hame tae the Clyde!
The John Maclean March, tune The Bloody Fields of Flanders,
words Hamish Henderson

The 1951 People’s Festival Ceilidh

The Victory Model Reaper