THE FIRST RECORDINGS

The first recording sessions in Buchan by KG were of George Inglis Fraser.
Geordie Fraser was born in 1889 in Gowanhill, Rathen, near Fraserburgh. He was schooled till aged 13, then worked as a gardener, a forestry worker, and then as a crofter, as a farmer at Achnagatt, with the Forestry Commission again, and finally in the Toolworks in Fraserburgh. He retired in 1954.
Geordie Fraser’s repertoire had a range of song types and topics that mirrors most of what KG gathered over the next year. He sang 20 songs, including the following, in the first recording session, 30th November 1959.
For example
Child ballads
The Dowie Dens O Yarrow. A ploughman fights nine nobleman for the hand of his love, but is killed by her brother.
Narrative songs
The Bonnet O Blue. A rich Yorkshire woman is rejected by a Scots soldier.
The Toon O Kelso. The attempted poisoning of a husband goes wrong.
Jamie Raeburn, transported for theft of bread.
Songs of courting and sentiment
The Road And The Miles To Dundee. A girl is advised and accompanied on her journey.
Broadside songs
John Watson Laurie. An innocent man convicted of murdering an English tourist. I’m A Man You Don’t Meet Every day. An Irish broadside 19th C version of a song that became a favourite Traveller song, ‘My Name Is Jock Stewart’.
Bothy songs of farm life and work
MacFarlane O The Sprotts. A shy suitor sends a friend, who courts the girl with lies of how fine his farm is.
American
The Dying Ranger, learned from a from gramophone disc. A Texan lies dying on the battlefield.

On 3rd December Geordie was recorded singing 23 more songs and ballads, plus comic songs and Robert Burns’ lyrics.
Mary Hamilton. Nine verses of an unusual text which one of Queen Mary Queen of Scots’ Four Marys anticipates her tragic death.
Ye Canna Pit It On Tae Sandy. A comic song of an apparently foolish fellow.
emima Brown. In a comic ‘broadside’ lyric of the 1860s that names English cities, the naïve singer gives £100 to his devious lover and her ‘brother’, who proves to be her husband.