Aikey Brae

DESCRIPTION: Sunday, singer and his friends go to the horse market at Aikey Fair. He dresses for Sunday. He is surprised by all the cars on the road. He is disturbed by the goings on on the Sabbath where even a minister is drowned out by the activities.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1960 (Tobar an Dualchais, Andrew Robbie)
KEYWORDS: commerce religious horse technology
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
ADDITIONAL: Andrew Robbie, "Aikey Brae". School of Scottish Studies Archive SA1960.150.151,Tobar an Dualchais/Kist o Riches accessed 5 March 2017 from http://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/en/fullrecord/77155/5
Roud #2500
RECORDINGS:
Daisy Chapman, "Aikey Brae" (on SCDChapman01)
NOTES [169 words]: Hamish Henderson (edited by Alec Finlay), Alias MacAlias: Writings on Songs, Folk and Literature, 1992; second edition, Polygon, 2004, p. 163, described the Aikey Fair, "the famous 'Continental Sunday' Fair which is held in July on a brae not far from Old Deer, and in sight of Drostan's Abbey.... This used to be a celebrated horse market (held on a Wednesday), but with the gradual disappearance of the horse as a working beast on North-East farms, this side of the Fair faded out. However, the Sunday Fair is still a great occasion, and attracts singers, pipers, fiddlers, melodeon players and other wandering folk artists -- the majority of them 'travelling people' -- from all over the North-East, and even father afield. There are also revivalist preachers who occasionally have a tough time of it if the musicians feel like drowning their fire and brimstone by the direct method."
One of those musicians was the great Jimmy MacBeath, who sang his own version of this song under the title "Aikey Fair." - RBW
Last updated in version 7.1
File: RcAikBra

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