RIP Billy Jolly and Dave Gray

 February was a very sad month for Orcadians as they lost two very well kent folk. Billy Jolly was a folk festival stalwart and Dave Gray was the voice of Radio Orkney. Both will be greatly missed by many. Our photographic archive yielded some photos of Billy as 1979 New Years Day Men's Ba' winner and playing music with wife Ingirid. We also found a lovely photo of Dave Gray as a lad in the mobile library van. The Sound Archive holds recordings of both men, so Orkney will always be able to hear them.

Billy Jolly, winner of 1979 New Year's Ba'

Billy Jolly, second from right

Dave Gray, far right

 

Fiddling with Maps

Its that time of year again when you can hear the distant sounds of skirling, fiddling, strumming, drumming and humming in the air - yes that's right its the annual Egg Scrambling Contest....

Only joking, of course its the brilliant (not biased at all) Orkney Folk Festival. And if you are in the town of Stromness or at some of the village ceilidhs these sounds won't be distant, but all around you creating a wonderful energy amongst all the locals and visitors alike.

If you're walking along the streets of Stromness or are unable to visit and wondering what it looked like in the past, here are a couple of maps to show you its development over the years. The first one is the Ordnance Survey map from 1903 and the second one is an Admiralty map from 1849. Double-click on the images to see them more clearly.


1903



References D8/W/36 [C2] Copy (in two parts) of Admiralty plan of Stromness and Kaerston [Cairston] Roads. Surveyed by F.W.L. Thomas, Lieut. Commanding. Dated 1849. (This older map is not so clear to begin with and did not copy well.)

Part of Ordnance Survey Sheet number CVI, 1903, 6"/1mile.




Year Of Orkney Dialect Winners.

The Folk Festival is over and all the fiddles have been packed away, how sad. We can still enjoy the winners of the Year Of Orkney Dialect poetry competition,however, which were debuted at one of the Festival Farewell concerts. The poems were very well received and are of excellent quality.

The winners include a few of our customers and it is wonderful to see this new side to them. Personal favourites are Marlene Mainland's haiku about cattle (High Coo), Fran Flett Hollinrake's Assipattle and the Mester StoorWorm and Jane Harris' Me Laand.

Orkney Folk Festival 2010

Today is the first day of Orkney's annual folk festival which showcases acts from down the road as well as across the sea. See here for all the acts who have been booked to appear. As you will see, the vast majority of events are sold out, but there are sometimes returned tickets at the door and the pubs of Stromness are sure to be filled with fiddles and accordions all week.

There is an archive connection to the festival in the form of the Song Shop Trio who you may remember performing on Radio Orkney during the Library and Archive Discovery Week. Sarah Jane of the trio is an archive employee and has been involved in the hugely successful Big Orkney Song project. This project is an attempt to collect, perform and make known the folk songs of Orkney. For some time now, a group of dedicated volunteers have been regularly visiting the archive in search of folk songs amongst the old newspapers, reel to reels and other documents.

We have also put together a small collection of material from the archive to celebrate, not only the folk festival, but the St Magnus festival which takes place later on in the Summer. Documents include original folk music collected by our very own photographic technician, photographs of various musical events, sheet music, programmes, bell music from the St Magnus Cathedral and a manuscript book of religious music that dates from around 1790.