Fresh from receiving the Musician of The Year award at the MG ALBA Scots Trad Music Awards on Saturday, Scottish folksinger Iona Fyfe is releasing a new single entitled Poor Ditching Boy, a Scots translation of the Richard Thompson song. The single features BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year 2021, Michael Biggins (piano), Charlie Stewart (electric double bass), Jack McRobbie (guitar) and Graham Rorie (electric tenor, mandolin fiddle) of the folk band Gnoss, who also engineered, mixed and produced the single.
Below, you watch Iona performing the song live for BBC Alba and hear the single, released later this month on Friday 20th December. You can pre-save it here: https://listen.scot/ifpoor.
Iona Fyfe on Poor Ditching Boy:
In 1972, Richard Thompson of Fairport Convention released Poor Ditching Boy on his debut album, Henry The Human Fly. According to Wikipedia, Richard wrote the song after reading the iconic Lewis Grassic Gibbon novel, Sunset Song, a coming of age tale set in rural Aberdeenshire. For me, translating the song into the Doric dialect of the Scots language felt like the most natural way to treat the song. When I’m covering someone else’s songs, I usually feel extremely anxious about doing the song justice, remaining true to tradition and making sure I don’t simply butcher the words of other writers, but Poor Ditching Boy so easily translated into Scots that it felt like I could add my own stamp onto the interpretation, while respecting Richard’s original version.
The Scots Language is spoken by over 1.5 million people (2011 census); Spotify recognises Scots as a language; you can study Scots at the University of Aberdeen, you can study Scots Song at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Thanks to advocates such as Len Pennie and Alistair Heather, Scots is undergoing a huge renaissance, with 35 out of 129 MSPs in Scotland signing the Oor Vyce Scots Pledge, to support, promote and fund the language. I feel exceptionally lucky to be part of this movement and to help change perceptions of the Scots language. For me, the language has always been intrinsically linked with folk and trad genres, but over this year, I’ve spent time translating pop songs into Scots as well as writing original material in Scots also, such as my single The Cauld. In 2022, we should hopefully see the release of a studio version of a Taylor Swift song in Scots, but until then, I have Poor Ditching Boy.
“Was there iver a winter sae dark and sae cauld”
Despite not being a Christmassy song, Poor Ditching Boy is set in the deep dark depths of an Aberdeenshire winter, one I know all too well. I recorded this song in Spring with Graham Rorie (Gnoss) producing, recording, engineering and mixing as well as playing mandolin, fiddle and electric tenor guitar. on the song. BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year 2021, Michael Biggins adds piano, with Jack McRobbie on guitar, and Charlie Stewart on electric double bass.
Being the first singer and the youngest recipient to win Musician of the Year at the MG ALBA Scots Trad Music Awards has been overwhelmingly amazing, but has came with a wheen of imposter syndrome. But I keep reminding myself that I am a musician, I did the music degrees, I play piano, I just choose to sing instead. Nevertheless, I’m excited to see what 2022 has in store.
More here: https://ionafyfe.com/
Photo Credit: Elly Lucas