School of Scottish Studies Sound Archive, University of EdinburghThe School of Scottish Studies was established in 1951 at the University of Edinburgh to collect, archive, research and publish material relating to the cultural life, folklore and traditional arts of Scotland. Over the past sixty years, fieldworkers at the School have made thousands of recordings of songs, instrumental music, tales, verse, customs, beliefs, place-names biographical information and local history. Material in the Sound Archive comes from all over Scotland and its diaspora, and as well as being a rich repository of oral tradition it is invaluable for its range of dialects and accents in Gaelic, Scots and English.
Songs and instrumental music have an important place in the Archive. Around half of the recordings contain Gaelic and Scots songs. These include love songs, waulking songs, laments, narrative ballads, sea songs, music-hall, Jacobite songs, local compositions, psalms, political songs, comic songs, lullabies, children’s rhymes, diddling and puirt-a-beul (mouth music). There is a particularly rich range of piping including recordings of individual pipers and their repertoires, canntaireachd and piobaireachd songs. Fiddle music includes different styles, particularly from the North-East and Shetland. Ceilidh and dance bands have also been recorded.. Donated material includes over 4000 published discs of music-hall, folk and traditional music from Scotland and the rest of Europe. There are also field recordings from Appalachia, India and Uganda, and the extensive John Levy Collection which consists, mainly, of religious music from Asia.