Tobar an Dualchais/Kist o Riches is a great collaborative project which was set up to preserve, digitise, catalogue and make available online several thousand hours of Gaelic and Scots recordings. The project website includes a wealth of material such as folklore, songs, music, history, poetry, traditions, stories and other information collected from all over Scotland and beyond from the 1930s onwards.
Highlights from the collection include:
- Stories recorded by John Lorne Campbell on wax cylinders in 1937
- Folklore collected all over Scotland by Calum Maclean in the 1950s
- Scots songs recorded by Hamish Henderson from travelling people in the 1960s
- Conversations recorded on Radio nan Gàidheal
The site is an invaluable educational and hertitage resource to both the public and researchers. You can search the collection via a normal word search or use their “Lucky Dip” option which I did, or, if you have a region of interest select a county from their map. I managed to get a lovely Waulking song recorded in 1956 as well as an an interview with an Orcadian from 1953 who explained how it was seen as a disgrace for an islander to be seen going out with a Scotsman and they let it be known that they were a different race.
Visit here: http://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/en/