Henry's Songbook

 [1978:] [Die Stewarts of Blair] haben es schon weit gebracht in ihrer noch nicht so langen Musikerkarriere. Nicht nur bis ins Weiße Haus, sondern sogar bis [vor] Königin Elisabeth II.; und da dieses so ist, nehmen die Stewarts die Beleidigungen einiger Bürger des schottischen Blairgowrie, ihrem Wohnort, mit einem lachenden Gesicht entgegen. Im letzten Jahr noch spuckte ein Jurymitglied aus Blairgowrie beim Festival in Kinross Sheila ins Gesicht, nachdem diese den Gesangswettbewerb gewonnen hatte. Und dies aus dem Grund, weil das Jurymitglied der Meinung war: Traveller gehören nicht zu den Gewinnern (sinngemäßes Zitat). (Uwe Golz, Folk Michel 6, S. 3)

 [1986:] Travellers will aye exist to the end o' time, and you'll never get them to change their ways, and you'll never get rid o' Tinkers. They'll be there till doomsday in the afternoon. (Belle Stewart, quoted in MacColl/Seeger, Doomsday xii)

 [1989:] The travelling people are probably the most misunderstood section of the community. This song relates true events in the travellers' history. The title comes from Belle Stewart who, when asked the question "When would the travellers cease to wander?", replied "Doomsday - in the afternoon!" (Notes Arthur Johnstone, 'North By North')

 [1990:] John's local Milngavie paper reported meetings to protest [against] council plans for a local campsite for travelling people. John linked this to stories told by traveller Belle Stewart of Blairgowrie about prejudice she had encountered. [...]

When you think about travellers, remember that there are several different groups travelling the roads of Scotland. There are the Romany descendants of nomadic North Indian metal-working tribes who travelled across Europe to reach Scotland four or five hundred years ago. They claimed to have come from Egypt, so were called Egyptians or Gypsies for short. There were broken clans from the 1745 Rebellion, and families forced from their homes in the glens of Sutherland and elsewhere in the North and West during the 19th century Clearances, and freed serfs from much earlier times. Then there are the travelling Show people, who claim a very different descent. All of these groups occasionally make their home on vacant sites in Glasgow. One part of Shettleston is labelled on the map Little Egypt. In their long visit the travellers have experienced much hostility from the settled peoples, who must themselves at some earlier date have been travellers in order to arrive here. And as the travellers picked over the leavings of the earlier arrivals to find and salvage metal, they also found and preserved songs and stories, so that much of Scotland's heritage of song has been recovered by folklorists from traveller singers like Jeannie Robertson and the Stewarts of Blair. (McVicar, One Singer One Song 136)