Belle Stewart
Birth nameIsobella McGregor
Born(1906-07-18)18 July 1906[1]
Caputh, Blairgowrie[1]
Died4 September 1997(1997-09-04) (aged 91)[2]
Blairgowrie[2]
GenresScottish folk music
Occupation(s)Singer
Instrument(s)Vocals

Belle Stewart, born Isobella McGregor, (18 July 1906 – 4 September 1997) was a Scottish Traveller traditional singer. Her biography, Queen Amang the Heather: the Life of Belle Stewart, was written by her daughter, Sheila Stewart, and published in 2006.[3]

Early years

Isobella McGregor was born on the banks of the River Tay at Caputh, near Blairgowrie, into a family of Highland Scottish Travellers, who lived in bow-tents (similar to dome tents).[1][4] Sheila Stewart corrects the frequently cited birthdate of 17 July 1906 to the 18th. As a result of their life-style, the family received much insult and abuse.[4] Belle's father died when she was only 9 months old. Afraid that social workers might take her children from her, her mother stopped travelling and settled in Perthshire. The McGregor family tried to teach Belle how to read palms (fortune telling), but she didn't take to this. The family frequently went to Northern Ireland to do pearl-fishing. In the evenings they gathered at ceilidhs to exchange folk songs. Stewart learnt songs from her brothers, who had themselves learnt them from her father.[4]

Marriage

Belle's version of "If I Was a Blackbird" inspired Alec Stewart, a violin player, to propose to her. They married in secret on 17 August 1925 at Ballymoney in Northern Ireland.[4]

Alec's father Jock Stewart (1869–1954) had been a champion violinist, supposedly the subject of the popular Scots and Irish drinking-song "Jock Stewart, A Man You Don't Meet Every Day". Jock's father, "Big Jimmy" Stewart, also a champion violinist, allegedly died when beaten to death by a group of Irishmen he met on his way home from busking in the Pitlochry area, because he refused to play a tune they requested. Alec's mother, Nancy Campbell, reputedly had both a grandfather (Andy Campbell) and a grandmother sentenced to death by hanging in the 18th century for the crime of travelling.[5]

The couple had five children who died as babies, and Sheila, Cathie, Andy and John who survived, and an adopted daughter, Rena.[2][6] The family made their living by selling scrap metal and by pearl fishing.

Alec Stewart was conscripted into the army. His Captain also came from Blairgowrie. The Captain was wounded in action and Alec carried him to the Red Cross camp. When the Captain learned who had saved his life, he said that he would have preferred to die rather than to owe his life to a "Tink". Alec and Belle wrote letters in the Traveller cant known as Beurla-reagaird. The British Army postal censors could not understand it, and ordered them to stop.

Cultural milieu

When the Stewarts of Blairgowrie went to the Sidmouth Festival in Devon they encountered New Age travellers for the first time. Belle Stewart noticed how dirty the New Agers were. They said they were travellers but Stewart replied "No, you're not. We are." The New Age Travellers said "But you're dressed too fine to be travellers." The photographs in Sheila Stewart's book show how much care the Stewarts took with personal appearance. At festivals the whole family wore tartan kilts and the pipers among them wore full regalia.

Stewart's repertoire of folk tales frequently refer to the supernatural, including changelings. A collection of her stories was published as The King o' the Black Art in 1987.

When Alec Stewart died, the Church of Scotland minister at Blairgowrie refused to allow a funeral service in his church, because Alec had been a Traveller. A Dundee minister offered them a service in his church.

Celebrity

While John Stewart worked on a building site in Hatfield, a friend of Ewan MacColl visited. The following week Ewan MacColl visited the Stewart family. Hamish Henderson and the School of Scottish Studies recorded the family's music and folk tales.[7][4] Soon the younger members of the family made recordings of ballads in London. A few months later the whole family received invitations to perform at MacColl's "Singers' Club" in London. In March 1954 Hamish Henderson invited the Traveller family to do a concert in Edinburgh alongside "Auld Galoot" (Davie Stewart), Jeannie Robertson and Jimmy MacBeath. Later in 1954 Douglas Kennedy and Peter Kennedy visited them and made recordings. This began their career performing in folk clubs.

Stewart's most famous composition is "The Berry Fields o' Blair".[8]

In the 1960s Alec Stewart made his living in the summer months by playing bagpipes to tourists in Glen Coe, Oban and Loch Ness.[9] Belle knew all the songs and decided which of the other members of the family could sing which songs. In 1965 the family recorded an album, The Stewarts of Blair. "The Overgate", a folksong with some similarities to "Seventeen Come Sunday" has particular associations with the Robertson / Higgins / Stewart families of Travellers. Belle recorded it in 1976.

In about 1970 the family spent a month performing in America. They made several appearances at the Edinburgh Folk Festival and in folk clubs around the UK. Ewan MacColl featured them in a Radio Ballad. Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger also compiled a collection of the folklore of Belle and other members of her family, called 'Till Doomsday in the Afternoon.[10][11] A BBC programme about the family was shown in 1980.[9] After the death of Alec they continued to tour, and appeared at a folk festival in Bologna in 1980 and at Lake Como in 1980, with Ian taking the place of chief piper.

Stewart's great-nephew Andy M. Stewart became the frontman of the Scottish folk band Silly Wizard, who recorded their interpretation of Belle Stewart's version of "If I were a Blackbird" in 1981.[12]

Stewart was awarded the British Empire Medal in 1981 for "an outstanding contribution to Scottish traditional music".[13][14][15] In 1986 she was honorary president of the Blairgowrie Folk Festival, where she also performed.[16][17][18] In the same year another television programme about her was broadcast.[19][20] In 1996 a series of three programmes about the family were broadcast on BBC Radio 2.[21] Another programme was made for Grampian Television in 1996.[7]

Stewart judged competitions for the Traditional Music and Song Association.[4] She gave lectures on the traditions of Scotland's traveller people at American universities.[8]

Stewart died aged 91 in 1997.[2]

Discography

  • The Stewarts of Blair (1965) Topic 12T138
  • The Travelling Stewarts (1968) Topic 12T179
  • Queen Among the Heather (1977) Topic 12TS307
  • The Stewarts of Blair (1986) Lismor Folk LFLP 7010

In 2009 "Queen Among the Heather" from Queen Among the Heather was included in Topic Records 70-year anniversary boxed set Three Score and Ten as track three on the fourth CD.

Anthologies:

  • Back o' Benachie - Songs and Ballads from the Lowland East of Scotland (1967) Topic 12T180
  • Festival at Blairgowrie (recorded 1967) Topic 12T181
  • "The Voice of the People Volume 20 - There is a Man Upon the Farm (two songs - "The Overgate" and "The Berry Fields o' Blair")

See also

Scottish Travellers

References

  1. 1 2 3 Shepherd, Robbie (22 July 1996). "column ONE". Aberdeen Press and Journal. Retrieved 21 May 2021. Belle Stewart wis bom on the auchteenth o July in nineteen hunnder an sax in a wee "bow" tent bi the side o the waaters o the Tay at Carputh jist a feow mile fae Blairgowrie. Times were fell hard for the faimily bit that vena momin, her faither Donald McGregor wis daein a bit o pearl fishin oh the Tay an bi a bit o guid fortune pull't oot topper.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "STEWART". Aberdeen Press and Journal. 5 September 1997. Retrieved 21 May 2021. STEWART Peacefully. at Blairgowne Cottage Hospital Thursday. September 4. 1997 Isabella (Belle) Stewart BEM beloved wife of the late Alec Stewart, Yeaman Street, Rattray mother of Cathie and Sheila and the late John, Andy and Rena, a much loved granny and aunt to all the Family. Funeral Service at Alyth Cemetery, on Wednesday. September 10. at 2 pm to which all friends are respectfully invited. Friends please meet the Cortege at Cemetery gates at 1.55 pm
  3. ↑ Stewart, Sheila (2006). Queen amang the heather: the life of Belle Stewart. Edinburgh: Birlinn. ISBN 978-1-84158-528-4.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Douglas, SM (9 September 1997). "Belle Stewart". The Herald. Retrieved 21 May 2021.
  5. ↑ Stewart, Sheila (September 2008). Pilgrims of the Mist. Edinburgh, Scotland: Birlinn. ISBN 978-1-84158-752-3.
  6. ↑ Hunt, Ken (12 December 2014). "Sheila Stewart: The singer who succeeded her mother Belle as doyenne of the Scots Travellers' tradition of folk songs and storytelling". The Independent. Retrieved 21 May 2021.
  7. 1 2 "Blair, berry-picking and folk singing". Dundee Courier. 11 October 1996. Retrieved 21 May 2021. The family had picked berries for generations and composed their songs in the fields. After being checked out by local journalist Maurice Fleming, on behalf of Scotland's foremost song collector, Hamish Henderson, of the School of Scottish Studies, as a possible source of traditional songs and stories, they enjoyed world-wide fame following the release of the album, Berryfields O' Blair.
  8. 1 2 "Fiona" (11 July 1989). "For the Stewarts, singing is a built-in family tradition". Dundee Courier. Retrieved 21 May 2021. Mrs Belle Stewart, now in her 80s, has known the songs, riddles, superstitions and stories all her life, through listening to her elders, and she has continued the tradition by making songs about events in the lives of her friends and family. It was one of these, "The Berryfields of Blair," that brought the Stewarts and their treasurehouse of tradition to the attention of the School of Scottish Studies back in the 1950s. Since then, individually and as a family group, they have given performances and lectures to people ranging from the Pope to students of Princeton. At home in Blairgowrie I met Mrs Stewart, her daughter Sheila and greatgrandson Roy ...
  9. 1 2 "Pick of the Night". Newcastle Evening Chronicle. 24 September 1980. Retrieved 21 May 2021. The oral culture of the Scots travelling people is given an airing in Stories and Songs of a Scots Family Group. The film centres on Alec and Belle Stewart and their two daughters who, like generations of travelling people before them, lived in and around the Perthshire berrying centre of Blairgowrie. Alec, descended from one of Scotland's greatest piping families, died before the programme was completed. He was known to thousands of tourists as the piper who busked on the edge of Loch Ness in the summer months.
  10. ↑ MacColl, Ewan; Seeger, Peggy (1986). Till doomsday in the afternoon : the folklore of a family of Scots Travellers, the Stewarts of Blairgowrie. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 0-7190-1813-7.
  11. ↑ Watt, Bob (18 February 1989). "Reviews". Aberdeen Press and Journal. Retrieved 21 May 2021. "Till Doomsday In the Afternoon", by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger. Manchester University Press: £10.95 THIS is the real story of the travelling folk, warts and all. The friendship between the writers and the Stewart family of Blairgowrie has lasted more than 20 years and, consequently, they are well aware of all the tragedies, as well as the triumphs, involved in the roving life. It was Belle Stewart herself who originally maintained that there will be travelling folk " ... till doomsday in the afternoon ..." But this is not just an account of a family and their nomadic ways. The MacColls were in at the very beginning of the folk revival, and they give the reader the best of the songs and the stories which have comforted the Stewarts in their efforts to do their own thing, whatever our own ordered society might dictate..
  12. ↑ "If I Was a Blackbird / I Am a Young Maiden (Roud 387; Henry H79)". mainlynorfolk.info. Retrieved 4 March 2022.
  13. ↑ Stewart, Sheila (2006). Queen of the heather : the life of Belle Stewart. Edinburgh: Birlinn. pp. 1, 101. ISBN 1841585289.
  14. ↑ Suttar, Barbara; Black, Duncan; Lundy, Iain (31 December 1985). "North and N.E. folk are honoured". Aberdeen Press and Journal. Retrieved 21 May 2021. One of the leading Scottish folk-music revivalists, Mrs Belle Stewart, Blairgowrie, has been awarded the BEM. From a musical family, Mrs Stewart, who is now in her 70s, has been on the folk scene for about 50 years and still appears at the various festivals throughout the country. Nowadays she sings with her two daughters and has recently completed a new album "The Stewarts of Blair".
  15. ↑ "Summer programme at Blair Atholl". Perthshire Advertiser. 9 May 1986. Retrieved 21 May 2021. Belle Stewart of Blairgowrie, recently awarded the B.E.M. for her outstanding contribution to Scottish traditional music
  16. ↑ "Fiona" (4 February 1986). "Blair folk festival comes alive again". Dundee Courier. Retrieved 21 May 2021.
  17. ↑ "Top names at festival". Dundee Courier. 14 February 1986. Retrieved 21 May 2021.
  18. ↑ "Belle Stewart will open Blairgowrle Folk Festival". Perthshire Advertiser. 25 April 1986. Retrieved 21 May 2021.
  19. ↑ "TV and Radio Guide". Dundee Courier. 25 August 1986. Retrieved 21 May 2021. 6.30—Be11e Stewart. The Stewarts of Blairgowrie are legendary among connoisseurs of folk music. This programme is centred on the head of the family, Belle Stewart. B.E.M., who, at the age of 80, is still regarded as one of Scotland's finest folk singers.
  20. ↑ "Listings". Sunday Tribune. 20 December 1987. Retrieved 21 May 2021. 7.35-8.05 Belle Stewart (RTE 1). Programme about a British traveller woman who became one of the foremost figures in the world of traditional music. This documentary looks at the travelling ways of her family.
  21. ↑ "Top Telly Guide". Aberdeen Evening Express. 8 May 1996. Retrieved 21 May 2021. lan MacGregor, a bagpipe maker and a former footballer, talks about the changing nature of the travellers trade In Doomsday In the Afternoon (Radio 2. 9.03 pm), a senes of three programmes looking at the folk tradition of the Stewarts of Blair, a family of Scots travellers who are among the highest ranking folk families in Europe. lan, grandson of Belle Stewart, spends part of each year fishing for pearls. With stocks of freshwater mussels dwindling, this way of life could disappear.
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