The Bards o' Allan Water
On the Banks
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Below is Dunblane artist Tom Mckenzie's The Old Dam, the image which he has kindly donated for this project.
This image also features in the poem Dunblane! Dunblane! All Hail to Thee by H. C. G. C. in showcase video number 8 below. To view more of Tom's excellent work click on the image of his painting below to go to his studio. Tom has an exhibition of his paintings going in the Dunblane Library on the evening of Friday 27th November beginning at 7pm. 
The Old Dam by: Tom McKenzie
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Below is the 10 songs showcased for this chapter and phase:
This traditional song:
The Banks of Allan Water, by Matthew Gregory Lewis, is not only the first entry in the book but the theme and inspiration of the project's title.
Just click and sing along.
Enjoy!
Paraig
This traditional song:
The Banks of Allan Water, by Matthew Gregory Lewis, is not only the first entry in the book but the theme and inspiration of the project's title.
Just click and sing along.
Enjoy!
Paraig
Home-made You Tube videos with the lyrics to sing along to will be continually added to each sub-page of 'The Bards o' Allan Water' as the project progresses.
Below is a feature that I wrote about this song for Dunblane's periodical 'The Wire' in the June 2014 issue:
Below is a feature that I wrote about this song for Dunblane's periodical 'The Wire' in the June 2014 issue:
| paraigjune.pdf |
Here is Jessie the Flower o' Dunblane by Robert Tannahill - the most popular in Britian in the 19th century. Just click and sing along:
Below is the choral ballad of 'Heather Jock', written by Dr. James Stirling of Dunblane in the early 1800s. Heather Jock (John Ferguson), weaver, dog breader, fiddler extraordinaire, clock maker and notorious thief of Kilbride and terror o' Dunblane, was eventually sentenced to transportation to Botany Bay.
Next is: Clear Aff the Laighill by Dunblane Bard Thomas Penny who flourished in the early 1900s. Click and sing along.
Next is seventeenth/eighteenth century poet, Allan Ramsay's ' The Bob of Dunblane'
A spoken poem: The Beech Walk composed by an unknown minister of the 1850s, described the beautiful winding Allan Water below Dunblane Cathedral as it flowed through a grand avenue of Beech trees that were once there
Next, we have ane o' oor very ain Bards o' Allan Water, Sarah,giving us her unique rendering of Robert Burns's, By Allan Stream. The song was showcased also at the Midsummer Bards showcase on Friday evening 19th June, at the Braeport Centre, Dunblane.
" The midsummer bard evening lit us all up! The whole evening took up and down paths that we didn’t know about, let us stop in wonder at all we met on the way, and we’d now like to see those very places. Wonderful! And what a great project, I’d love to hear the lassies again too , Moran taing dhuibh uile, "
Dr. Margaret Bennett, Scottish ethnologist and traditional singer, June 2015.
" The midsummer bard evening lit us all up! The whole evening took up and down paths that we didn’t know about, let us stop in wonder at all we met on the way, and we’d now like to see those very places. Wonderful! And what a great project, I’d love to hear the lassies again too , Moran taing dhuibh uile, "
Dr. Margaret Bennett, Scottish ethnologist and traditional singer, June 2015.
Dunblane! Dunblane! All Hail to Thee is the name of the next piece below. The author signs themself as: H.C.G.C. It was composed in the eighteenth centuryand it extolls the healing properties that the wells & springs of Dunblane and the Allan water itself were once famed for. It is here recited by Paraig accompanied with Alison playing on the recorder yet another melody name after the Allan Water, and Lindsay Porteous play his struttie.
Next is Dr. Ainslie's poem Dunblane Wells introduced and finishing with Mi nam Shuidhe aig tobar an fhuarain - I am sitting at the the well of the spring :
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No 10 for this chapter and phase is Strathallan, one of the very few poems composed in English by the Bard of Dunblane, Thomas Penny (1869 - 1938), and here I have encased it within the first and last verse of 'My Bonnie Red Haired Lassie', a love-song I composed during Burnsong week, 2007 for my wife.
