Bothy ballad
May 31st 2025
A bothy ballad or bothy song is, “a traditional farmworkers’ song”. Bothy refers here to “an independent building on a farm or part of the farm steading, used to house unmarried male farm servants”.
In April 1898, the Buchan Observer and East Aberdeenshire Advertiser used the term in its description of a barn dance: “At intervals refreshments would be handed round and an agreeable interlude would take place by the singing of some bothy ballad or simple love song”.
A few months later in December 1898, the Glasgow Herald noted: “Another traditional song is ‘Young Jamie Foyers’ a ‘typical bothy-ballad’ which was copied 30 years ago from the singing of a Perthshire woman”. Clearly the term was already used and understood by then.
In the twentieth century, Christine Marion Fraser mentioned one of these songs in King’s Acre (1987): “The drams were passed around, half an hour later a flushed and garrulous Grandmother was lying back on her pillows humming a bothy ballad while Mattie sang in the scullery at the top of her voice”. Similar merry-making is recalled by Father Anthony Ross in The Root of the Matter (1989): “… in whose bar rugby songs and bothy ballads mingled”.
More recently in May 2024, Iona Fyfe reflected on the continued support for these traditional songs at the Strichen Festival in the Press and Journal: “A young lad takkin pairt in the bothy ballad competition is giy reassurin thit there is still interest in oor sang and leid”.
Dictionaries of the Scots Language would like to thank Bob Dewar for illustrating our Scots Word of the Week feature.
