Willie MacPhee (1910-2001)Author(s): Sheila DouglasSource: Folk Music Journal, Vol. 8, No. 3 (2003), pp. 410-413Published by: English Folk Dance + Song SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4522711 .

Accessed: 12/06/2014 12:43

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

English Folk Dance + Song Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to FolkMusic Journal.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.144 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 12:43:31 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

410 FOLK MUSIC JOURNAL 410 FOLK MUSIC JOURNAL

music, dance and song so that, for a start, the other ranks are no longer seen as 'specimens', but human beings.

When Jim Lloyd invited me to choose records for a programme on BBC Radio Two a definite item was Phoebe Smith singing 'Barbara Allen'. It is a wonderful performance and ranks in my memory along with Clarence Ashley sitting back and singing it, at the Fox, or Packie Byrne at the Loughborough Festival. 'Barbara Allen' is a song so many people know, yet, we are brought into it, as Phoebe said, because she, the singer, is living the story. Children can listen night after night to their favourite bedtime story (and you dare not shorten it if you are going out!). Likewise, opera lovers know La Boheme backwards, but love the story and the famous arias. So it is with 'Barbara Allen'.

People may think Phoebe is singing 'slow', but there is a flow throughout the song which keeps you listening to the story - the function of the traditional singer. Bessie Smith has the same style on her famous recording of 'St Louis Blues', with Louis Armstrong on trumpet. Both Phoebe and Bessie represent the 'other' in our society: women, travellers, coloured. Hearing someone call Phoebe 'a gyppo' or Margaret Barry 'a tink', for example, is sad and more so when the offender has recorded Irish or British travellers and gained status, made money, or both, out of the enterprise.

The art of Phoebe Smith, native genius in anonymous music, can be heard on Topic and Veteran CDs, but these are the existences, the essence was the person herself, her family and friends. Paul Carter was the recording engineer when Frank Purslow produced Phoebe's Topic LP, Once I Had a True Love. Both he and Brian Shuel remembered the visit vividly - the

music, dance and song so that, for a start, the other ranks are no longer seen as 'specimens', but human beings.

When Jim Lloyd invited me to choose records for a programme on BBC Radio Two a definite item was Phoebe Smith singing 'Barbara Allen'. It is a wonderful performance and ranks in my memory along with Clarence Ashley sitting back and singing it, at the Fox, or Packie Byrne at the Loughborough Festival. 'Barbara Allen' is a song so many people know, yet, we are brought into it, as Phoebe said, because she, the singer, is living the story. Children can listen night after night to their favourite bedtime story (and you dare not shorten it if you are going out!). Likewise, opera lovers know La Boheme backwards, but love the story and the famous arias. So it is with 'Barbara Allen'.

People may think Phoebe is singing 'slow', but there is a flow throughout the song which keeps you listening to the story - the function of the traditional singer. Bessie Smith has the same style on her famous recording of 'St Louis Blues', with Louis Armstrong on trumpet. Both Phoebe and Bessie represent the 'other' in our society: women, travellers, coloured. Hearing someone call Phoebe 'a gyppo' or Margaret Barry 'a tink', for example, is sad and more so when the offender has recorded Irish or British travellers and gained status, made money, or both, out of the enterprise.

The art of Phoebe Smith, native genius in anonymous music, can be heard on Topic and Veteran CDs, but these are the existences, the essence was the person herself, her family and friends. Paul Carter was the recording engineer when Frank Purslow produced Phoebe's Topic LP, Once I Had a True Love. Both he and Brian Shuel remembered the visit vividly - the

immaculate house, the wonderful china collection, but, above all, there was that warm and generous hospitality,

Phoebe's favourite song, out of the many she sang, was 'A Blacksmith Courted Me'. Ralph Vaughan Williams used the tune for his setting of Milton's 'He who would valiant be'. The song and the orchestration of the tune are worlds apart. Isaac Button was a traditional, functional potter and Bernard Leach was a studio potter. They used the same materials but each had their own techni- ques: one was not 'better' than the other, they were different. So it is with Mr Williams and Phoebe Smith.

BOB DAVENPORT

London

immaculate house, the wonderful china collection, but, above all, there was that warm and generous hospitality,

Phoebe's favourite song, out of the many she sang, was 'A Blacksmith Courted Me'. Ralph Vaughan Williams used the tune for his setting of Milton's 'He who would valiant be'. The song and the orchestration of the tune are worlds apart. Isaac Button was a traditional, functional potter and Bernard Leach was a studio potter. They used the same materials but each had their own techni- ques: one was not 'better' than the other, they were different. So it is with Mr Williams and Phoebe Smith.

BOB DAVENPORT

London

Wiltie MacPhee (1910-2001)

Willie MacPhee was born in 1910 in Dunbartonshire, where his mother and father were doing casual farm work. Both his parents were born in the county and belonged to one of the biggest of the travelling clans. His father was Andrew MacPhee, whose sister - known as Perthshire Nancy - was married to John Stewart, the great piper and father of a large family, One of Stewart's sons, Alec, and Alec's wife Belle, became known as the Stewarts of Blair. Alec Stewart was Willie's lifelong friend and fellow piper by loch and glen. Willie travelled with his family all over Scotland and Ireland and learned all the traveller's skills, like tinsmithing, basket-making, piping and, in Willie's case, blacksmithing, earning him the nickname of 'the Blacksmith'. As with most of the Highland clans, nick- names were used among the travelling people to distinguish individuals in a family who might all have the same name.

Wiltie MacPhee (1910-2001)

Willie MacPhee was born in 1910 in Dunbartonshire, where his mother and father were doing casual farm work. Both his parents were born in the county and belonged to one of the biggest of the travelling clans. His father was Andrew MacPhee, whose sister - known as Perthshire Nancy - was married to John Stewart, the great piper and father of a large family, One of Stewart's sons, Alec, and Alec's wife Belle, became known as the Stewarts of Blair. Alec Stewart was Willie's lifelong friend and fellow piper by loch and glen. Willie travelled with his family all over Scotland and Ireland and learned all the traveller's skills, like tinsmithing, basket-making, piping and, in Willie's case, blacksmithing, earning him the nickname of 'the Blacksmith'. As with most of the Highland clans, nick- names were used among the travelling people to distinguish individuals in a family who might all have the same name.

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.144 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 12:43:31 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

OBITUARY 411

His father died when he was just a boy, so he had to take on family responsibilities at an early age. Like many of the men with his name, he grew up with a strong physique and impressive good looks, which made him something of an heroic figure. He served in the army in the Second World War, which led to the song sung at his funeral in which the chorus paid tribute to him for the way 'You marched o'er every battlefield and never changed your stride'. This song was written by another traveller singer and storyteller, Jimmy Williamson. It very much describes the way Willie went through his long life, without letting any of the misfortunes that befell him destroy his courageous and stoical outlook. He was once 'the best man in five counties', which gave him an authority that lasted him to the end of his days. In the 1950s he was involved in a long-remembered fracas in Blairgowrie at the berrytime, when another traveller picked a fight with him in a pub, and the resulting free-for-all was continued on the Stewarts' berryfield at the Cleeves where they were all encamped. It is still known as the Battle of the Cleeves.

I met him and his second wife Bella in the 1 960s, in the Stewarts' house in Rattray. After that we shared many a good night of song and story and the odd dram and many years of loyal friendship. Like everyone else, I loved Willie as a big man in every sense of the word, a person of great integrity and generosity of spirit, interested in everything that was going on in the world, very wise and perceptive, articulate and humorous. He was a fine storyteller, singer and piper, at all the ceilidhs in the Perth area and all over Scotland, and I was honoured that he became part of my PhD project for Stirling University. I was fascinated by his ability to keep the structure and sequence of a

complicated story in his head and re-tell it to suit particular audiences without alter- ing its constant features or leaving out any of its essentials. His repertoire seemed endless and he carried the authority of a true tradition bearer very lightly. I was grateful to him for piping and singing regularly at ceilidhs I ran in Perth for the Traditional Music and Song Association.

SE

_ '}

Willie and Bella MacPhee. Photograph by Aase Goldsmith

Photograph copyright The School of Scottish Studies

His stories appear in the collection that was subsequently published by Aberdeen University Press as The King o the Black Art. He was recorded by the School of Scottish Studies and became a founder member of the Scottish Storytelling Forum, based at the Netherbow Arts Centre in Edinburgh. He also visited festivals and Highland Games, particularly the Cowal Gathering.

He and Bella also enjoyed visiting the Highlands and islands, and for years he and his cousin Alec Stewart would pipe in Glencoe for the summer visitors. He always returned to the Perth area where he was constantly fined or moved on for 'illegal camping' till eventually he found a semi-permanent place to winter. This was near Redgorton, where a local farmer let him pull his trailer into a disused quarry near the farm, after he alerted him about

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.144 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 12:43:31 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

412 FOLK MUSIC JOURNAL

thieves making off with his diesel supply. Jimmy MacGregor, a former police ser- geant, remembers Willie as a decent and law-abiding member of the traveller com- munity. When Doubledykes Caravan Site was set up for travellers at Inveralmond on the outskirts of Perth, he secured a stance there. In 1993, along with others on the site, he lost his trailer to the floods and the same year had his car stolen and burnt out in Edinburgh. He took all this philosophi- cally and was still, in his eighties, a remarkably strong man, despite heart trouble, backache and cataract in his eyes that put an end to his driving.

He was latterly often in Perth Royal Infirmary, where the medical staff loved him dearly, and it was from there that he was allowed home in the autumn of 2001, to die among his family and familiar surroundings by the River Almond. He was buried on 19 October in Gartocharn in West Dunbartonshire in a country graveyard within sight of Loch Lomond. Everyone present at the memorable gath- ering felt that we had seen the end of an era, with the passing of the last of the tinsmiths and the world was a poorer place for losing him. But as we made our way homewards we knew that he would live on in our hearts forever.

LAMENT FOR THE LAST OF THE TINSMITHS

Tune: Johnny My Man

Dumbarton is mournin and Perthshire lamentin

The story is ended forever and ay The dark glen nae mair will resound tae his

pipin

The last o the tinsmiths lies cauld in the clay.

CHORUS: - 0 let us aye mind o the tales that he telt us

The tunes that he played ne'er forgotten shall be

Aa the ninety one years that the great hert was beatin

O the man caaed the Blacksmith, Big Willie MacPhee.

There was mony a ceilidh when his company cheered us

An mony a journey he made on the road, Wi an ee for the beauty that rase aa aroon

him In the haunts o the wild deer, the hare an

the tod.

He yince was the best man in all o five counties

As strang as an ox, wi nae fear in his hairt, Wi the travellers' skills in the banes o his

body, An a mind fu o wisdom, a tongue fu o airt.

He gaed wi his pipes tae the Heilans an Islands,

Tae play for his livin by lochside an ben, An he ne'er tuik a hoose but aye bade in a

trailer Whaur he fun aa the freedom nae scaldie

can ken.

Nae mair he'll be seen at the gaitherin in Cowal

An the folk owre in Islay will luik for him lang.

Roon the warm bleezin ingle his face will be missin,

Whaur he used tae stap by for a crack and a sang.

Let's aa jyne oor voices in praise o Big Willie

For nae man was mair kindly nor kingly than he.

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.144 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 12:43:31 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

OBITUARY 413 OBITUARY 413

He's left us guid memories tae comfort oor sorrow

The last o the tinsmiths, Big Willie MacPhee.

SHEILA DOUGLAS University of Aberdeen

He's left us guid memories tae comfort oor sorrow

The last o the tinsmiths, Big Willie MacPhee.

SHEILA DOUGLAS University of Aberdeen

Cyril Papworth (1916-2001)

Cyril Arthur Wallis Papworth, probably best known in the folk world for his research into and revival of the Comberton Broom Dance and the Cambridgeshire Molly and 'Feast' Dances, died peacefully at New Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cam- bridge, on 13 October 2001. He was eighty-five. In the days just prior to his death, while he was in hospital, he was visited by family members and a stream of friends, mostly younger people, whom he had met through dancing but with whom

I _I

Cyril Papworth dancing the Broom Dance in Comberton on Plough Monday, 1981

Photograph reproduced by courtesy of the Cambridge Morris Men's Archives

Cyril Papworth (1916-2001)

Cyril Arthur Wallis Papworth, probably best known in the folk world for his research into and revival of the Comberton Broom Dance and the Cambridgeshire Molly and 'Feast' Dances, died peacefully at New Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cam- bridge, on 13 October 2001. He was eighty-five. In the days just prior to his death, while he was in hospital, he was visited by family members and a stream of friends, mostly younger people, whom he had met through dancing but with whom

I _I

Cyril Papworth dancing the Broom Dance in Comberton on Plough Monday, 1981

Photograph reproduced by courtesy of the Cambridge Morris Men's Archives

lasting friendships beyond this mutual interest had developed, as in my own case.

Cyril was born on 27 June 1916 in Cambridge, the only child of Arthur and Winifred Papworth. The family soon moved to the nearby village of Hardwick where Cyril attended the' local 'private' school and then the village school at Comberton. In 1930 he went to the Cambridge School of Arts and Crafts where he learnt woodwork and thereafter earned his living from carpentry at various local building firms, except for several years during the war when he worked in Letchworth and at an aerodrome near Shrewsbury. Cyril married Amelia ('Millie') Ann Smith at Barton Church in 1941 and she later joined him in Shrews- bury. The couple returned to Cambridge in 1946 to live at 25 Ferry Path, which was to be their home for the rest of their respective lives.

As Cyril later told me in an interview about his life, his interest in dance reached back to his childhood: 'My mother and father were both dancers and my mother was teaching ballroom dancing. She would have the young men of the village up into our house in Long Road, in the front room, to them teach waltzes and veletas and Boston two-steps and things. And of course I was there watching them and later on I went with them to the Village Institute when they went there to dance. And would join in, best I could.'1 Later, around 1930, the local headmistress, Miss Willers, together with Cyril's mother, started a country dance group in Comber- ton and this became Cyril's first encounter with Playford dances. Cyril was thus already an experienced dancer when he came to join the Cambridge Morris Men in 1936.

It was around this time that Cyril first encountered the local tradition of 'feast

lasting friendships beyond this mutual interest had developed, as in my own case.

Cyril was born on 27 June 1916 in Cambridge, the only child of Arthur and Winifred Papworth. The family soon moved to the nearby village of Hardwick where Cyril attended the' local 'private' school and then the village school at Comberton. In 1930 he went to the Cambridge School of Arts and Crafts where he learnt woodwork and thereafter earned his living from carpentry at various local building firms, except for several years during the war when he worked in Letchworth and at an aerodrome near Shrewsbury. Cyril married Amelia ('Millie') Ann Smith at Barton Church in 1941 and she later joined him in Shrews- bury. The couple returned to Cambridge in 1946 to live at 25 Ferry Path, which was to be their home for the rest of their respective lives.

As Cyril later told me in an interview about his life, his interest in dance reached back to his childhood: 'My mother and father were both dancers and my mother was teaching ballroom dancing. She would have the young men of the village up into our house in Long Road, in the front room, to them teach waltzes and veletas and Boston two-steps and things. And of course I was there watching them and later on I went with them to the Village Institute when they went there to dance. And would join in, best I could.'1 Later, around 1930, the local headmistress, Miss Willers, together with Cyril's mother, started a country dance group in Comber- ton and this became Cyril's first encounter with Playford dances. Cyril was thus already an experienced dancer when he came to join the Cambridge Morris Men in 1936.

It was around this time that Cyril first encountered the local tradition of 'feast

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.144 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 12:43:31 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions