Farm Life in Northeast Scotland, 1840 - 1914 Quotes

“An influential study tells us that bothy ballads got their name because they were sung in bothies, where most northeast male farm servants were housed. But I knew that most of these servants had been lodged not in the bothy but in the chaumer. Further, it soon became clear that if one plotted on a map the spatial distribution of bothies on the one hand and of bothy ballads on the other, then the two distributions would show almost no overlap. Put crudely, in Aberdeenshire, Banffshire, and north Kincardine one had ballads but no bothies, while in Moray, Nairn and south Kincardine one had bothies but no ballads. It was clear that the argument that bothy ballads were written to be sung in bothies was a remarkably inadequate explanation of these songs' genesis.”
― Ian R. Carter, Farm Life in Northeast Scotland, 1840 - 1914: The Poor Man's Country

“To outsiders, and particularly to the condescending Olympians who swarm in Edinburgh's New Town, this cultural self-sufficiency usually appeared to be the merest parochialism - the result of the northeast's isolation from civilisation. Civilisation for such people meant - and means - the New Town, of course. This attitude blights attempts to understand northeast social life; but it could never have squared with the facts. In the nineteenth century, which still casts a long shadow over Scottish social life, the northeast was one of the most literate regions in a highly literate country. Newspapers were read widely and with care. Political questions were conned with particular care, and the conclusions drawn were usually rather radical.”
― Ian R. Carter, Farm Life in Northeast Scotland, 1840 - 1914: The Poor Man's Country

“Farm Life seems to have settled down in Scottish academic circles to tombstone status: a relic to which authors give a respectful nod before plodding off in other directions. When last I looked, this still was the only book-length study of nineteenth century agricultural change in a lowland region. That still puzzles me.”
― Ian R. Carter, Farm Life in Northeast Scotland, 1840 - 1914: The Poor Man's Country