A Tale of the Howe celebrates the history of Kincardineshire, or the Mearns as it has always been known, in music and song. It is punctuated with readings from novels by Lewis Grassic Gibbon and other local writers. 

A Tale of the Howe attempts to present, in music, an account of an all but vanished way of life in rural Scotland which is still held dear in the hearts of many.

How Did The Tale Come About?

Around three years ago, I thought that it would be a really worthwhile project to gather together a collection of songs and music relating to the Mearns district of North East Scotland. The idea came from an observation that the area, whilst rich in writers and artists, was not well recorded in music and song. By contrast, Aberdeenshire was rich in its bothy ballads and dance music.

So, I thought I would mount a search for traditional materials and did, indeed, find one or two bothy ballads plus some locally named tunes by James Scott Skinner and a few others. Not enough, I thought, to fulfil my ambition of pulling together a complete end to end tale of events in the County.

Then, by chance, when visiting my friend and local bothy ballad singer, Geordie Murison in Stonehaven, he handed to me a beautiful poem written my Jim Douglas from Fife entitled "Ewan." I recognised immediately that the character in the poem was Ewan from Lewis Grassic Gibbon's "Sunset Song" and thought that here was a great opportunity to produce an album, combining narrative from the novel with a collection of sympathetic songs and music. The only problem was that, apart from Jim's "Ewan" and one other song which I later collected from Jim, there was nothing else available. So there was only one option available to me and that was to write the material myself.

It's a long story from there to where we are now, involving lengthy discussions with writers from the Mearns and musical graduates from various Scottish universities - but here it is, at last "A Tale of the Howe" produced just in time for the Howe 2005 festival.

What is The Tale?

 "A Tale of the Howe" is a collection of 8 songs, with supporting narrative.

Four of the lyrics have been written by myself, two by Jim Douglas from Fife, one by Ewan McVicar, a songwriter in his own right and one is traditional. 

Sarah Wilson, an honours graduate in musical composition from Strathclyde University, has composed five pieces of music to support the narrative. I have named these "Dawn of Life, Endurance, Remorse, Sorrow and Sunset" to link to the spoken word.

How Were the Songs Composed?

For me, each of the songs which I wrote started out as a poem in its own right. It was only after they had been written that I thought about composing some tunes to attach to them. Is that how it always happens I wonder? Well I remember, some time ago, listening to a well known Scottish songwriter saying that she had written a poem and the following month it became a song - well, that's what happened to me.

I hope you will enjoy listening to the CD as much as I enjoyed collecting and writing the material. 

With best wishes,