Scotland Days24-25: Book Towns & Folk Festivals

Road into Wigtown

Only in the UK have I encountered places that define themselves as ‘book towns’: Hay-on-Wye in Wales has to be the best book town ever, but Wigtown near the Scottish borders with England, is a quaint, if distant, second and Saturday, I traveled to Wigtown to check out their spring book festival.  I don’t know how it started for Hay-on-Wye, but Wigtown apparently made a self-conscious decision to become a book town (simply meaning a village with more than one used book store, as best I can tell) in an effort to promote tourism.  Well, it got me there.  And I did buy some books.  So good on Wigtown.

Samba Fusion on the green at Wigtown

The Samba Fusion rhythm playing and dancing on the green was a bonus, especially since the folks doing most of the playing and dancing were old enough to be my parents – their percussive downbeat an ironical contrast to the complaining of the Englishman at the adjacent table in the café where I enjoyed some potato-leek soup and the best ham sandwich I’ve had in a long time.  They would beat, he would complain and then they would beat again, only louder, as if they could hear or sense his displeasure.  It became quite comical, this contest of sound.  But of course, the drums won.  Don’t they always?

The main surprise for me were the comparative numbers of Englishmen and women to Scots: just about everyone I heard had a distinctive English accent.  Then I remembered how very close to the border with England I was.  Going north for a day seems to be a good past time when the weather accommodates the journey.

Ailsa Craig and could that be Ireland behind?

As they had a beautiful drive north, so I had just a beautiful long drive meandering south along the western coast, with fantastic views along the way of the Irish Sea.  It was a clear enough day that I really do believe I spied Ireland across the way behind Ailsa Craig.  It’s only 30 miles or so, so maybe I did.  Or maybe it was low-laying clouds.  Doesn’t matter – whether I saw it or not, I know it’s there.

But the Ireland connection was brought home more firmly the next day.  After church (I was late, the door was locked in typical Scots fashion - more on that another time), I meandered in Girvan to one of the local venues for their annual Folk Festival.

Recitation winner reciting The Twa Dogs

I headed to the story-telling location and was treated to stories and recitations enough to delight for a long time to come.  The recitation that won was a gentleman doing The Twa Dogs by Robert Burns.  He was fabulous, with two hats with dangling ears he’d switch off as he took the part of the high-born dog and then the lowly dog of a poor house, each to espouse the advantages of their respective ways of life.

And I met an Irish Scot, a Protestant Republican.  I leave the politics and legacy of that one to those more politically and culturally astute than I.  But he was a raconteur of the first order in his own right and made for a very enjoyable time as our erstwhile host.

Outside, musicians gathered round the tables of the hotel’s sidewalk café and played and sang – guitars and mandolins and a recorder that broke your heart with each note.  And to my surprise, much of the folk music played was Irish and told the stories of migration to the United States, particularly New York.

This wasn’t one of the venues; it was simply where some musicians sat down and started talking with each other and randomly playing, taking the center by turns, with we non-musicians graciously allowed to sit and stand at the periphery tapping our toes and wiping our eyes.

Whatever the day, when you encounter people making music as you walk by, that, friends, is a blessed day.  And so it was.