What are bothy ballads?

What are bothy ballads?

Bothy ballads are songs sung by farm labourers in the northeast region of Scotland . Bothies are farm outbuildings, where unmarried labourers used to sleep, often in harsh conditions. In the evening, to entertain themselves, these bothy bands sang.

What is a Bothy Band?

Bothies are farm outbuildings, where unmarried labourers used to sleep, often in harsh conditions. In the evening, to entertain themselves, these bothy bands sang. Several Child Ballads that had died out elsewhere in the UK survived until the 1920s, sung by these workers. It was a male-only environment and some songs are obscene.

What does the Bothy look like?

“The bothy is an old dirty-looking thatched house, joined on to the end of a cow byre and scarcely one yard from the door there is a large dung-hill an empty dark, filthy, sooty place. “At the end of the house is the fire-place, about which there is generally a large heap of ashes – at times more than two barrowfuls.

What is a bothy nichts?

In the mid-1960s Grampian Television produced two series of programs re-enacting the kind of songs that were sung in bothies. It was called Bothy Nichts. A tragic song might be followed by a joke or a story, then a humorous song.