 Welcome to the Art of the Kent. We are really, really thrilled that not only do we have this great exhibition that is filling all of the rooms of this place, 18 galleries, 17 artists throughout this entire complex. And we had quite a crowd yesterday of approximately 500 people here for the opening. So perhaps you were here to see the chaos, not the right time to see the show. So we're particularly thrilled to be collaborating with Delia Robinson. Our showcased artist down in the general store of the Kent, where she has all of her paintings, her whistles, and a cranky. And those are on display throughout the entire month as well. But tonight we also have the revered and former Kent's Corner Baladier Norman Kennedy. We are very thrilled to bring Norman back home to Kent's Corner where he belongs. And I'm going to turn it over at this point to your cranky mistress, Delia Robinson. My sister Nona told me about experience that she had had that I found so intriguing that I decided I would try to replicate it. And that required a little research. But I found out that the places I needed to go were everywhere in the whole wide world. Here is one and this is where I had my experience. And that was, I had friends that lived in Colorado when I was visiting them and they took me to this cold river. But right here is a hot spring and you can't go in high water, it's all, it's covered up. But if you go in the right lowness, you can go into that river and stand up to the water neck deep. And if you go to a certain place, the half of your body will be hot, rosy, toasty, hot. And the other half, really icy cold. And this divided sensation, I don't know who did this. It's online. It looks like some teenager with really dramatic thoughts. I really like that hand there. And also I like the dividing. This divided sensation of the river and that feeling and this sort of thing feels like it's the right metaphor for this ballad that we're celebrating tonight. The ballad is Benori, if you're Norman, and the two sisters, if you're me, or bow and balance, or oh the dreadful wind and the rain. And those are the most common names in our area, but it has many, many more names than that. It's the story of two sisters, one dark and one light, who fall in love with the same man. And the younger sister wins the man's heart. And that's so enrages the older one that she's uncertain to the river and drowns it. So, but later we'll get to that. But like many old ballads, it not only has many names, it has many, many versions. Five hundred versions have been collected according to one index of folk music. And those have been collected across Europe and America. And then the best versions, like Normans, you can sense these two worlds, the hot world, the cold world. It's as if one steps into that heated water that's flowing in the cold river. And the reason that happens is this perplexing ancient world view that runs side by side in the more acceptable ordinary story. And that is love gone wrong. But tucked in with the common place, they're these old sort of subterranean reverberations that for some reason haven't been suppressed as they are in most old songs. So then dualities can one really make a case that a simple story suggests this tussle between the remnants of our old ancestral belief systems. And those were people who our ancestors went into caves down into the earth to paint and commune with their deities in caves. And what took over eventually slowly over much time were these people who looked to the sky for their moral advice. And they supplanted the people who were the earthy ones. And they are the inspiration for our dominant moral belief system today. And so I'm not going to say more about that. You can think about it all you want, but it's a mystifying business. And do the valid characters personifying a warp between dark and light? Can they do that? The hot and cold and the traditional and the nontraditional. I think it's just a valid, but under the surface it has a lot to say. And it's said to be the longest continually continuously sung ballad in Europe and America in or in the Western world. And it says maybe more than I have ever before acknowledged. And I think that's why it's stuck around so long. There's something that goes on with this ballad that is a little tricky. Okay. So in 1851, this Scottish painter, John Fayette, was inspired to paint his take on this ballad. He called it the cruel sister, which is yet another name. And it was at a time when painting shiny fabric was really admired. And so that dress is ever so shiny. And the sisters kind of are reduced to arm candy for the main event. That's the man. Even though he's very, he's not. But here he's center stage. He's got legs like a tree trunk. And look at that hat. There's no carton there. I don't know what he thinks, but there he is. And so in this painting, a critic observed that the man is pointing to his dog. And a dog is a symbol for faithfulness. And that's how he's winning this girl is by that he's faithful. I have some doubts about that. But anyway, with his left hand, he holds a hand of the younger sister. And she's got her head, well, honestly, down. And all this has seriously ticked off the other sister. Right. And the critic also observes the lever, the lovers are in step with each other. And she's out of step. So clearly he thinks he's given us the whole story there. That's all he had to say. This love triangle and a little bit of you can't see it here because the slide isn't clean enough. But distant, distant water back there to say there's some water going on in this ballot. And this glowering sky. And for the critic, it seemed like simple jealousy over a man was the whole topic. Okay. And I'm pleased to observe that the painter didn't listen all that attentively to the song's words, because he used the wrong tube of paint here. The song repeatedly says that girl has yellow hair, yellow. Yeah. And that's part of the dark and light magic in this. And so he's done that. Okay. So we all know that blondes have more fun. And it's in balance. That's one annoying long health convention. I don't know how long, but it certainly has dominated our lives. That must have been from an ad. Anyway, there's a long health convention that blondes are inherently good. Oh, here's having more fun. But blondes are inherently good in these ballots. And one scholar complained, it would be refreshing to find a ballot in which the bad character was the blonde one. And that really is of interest, because many, many ballots, the villain is the dark haired one. In the old days, and I hope not now, fair skin was considered prettier and they're as pretty as they could be. But the peaches in cream world was always good. And the rotten reputation is left for the darker person. And this pernicious concept is more understandable when you consider that these are northern ballots and the northern environment where this ballot flourished and still sung probably influenced that kind of thinking. So excuse me now because I'm going to do a lightning dash across the most confusing history I've ever encountered. And that's of the Nordic lands. So I'm going to reduce it down to practically silliness. When the fair haired Nordics came to raid and to settle at the end of the eighth century in Scotland, they already feared dark people as foreign or other. The potential enemy were these dark people. And the Nordics swarmed shore and then they stayed. And they pushed back on the various small fierce dark Indigenous tattooed people who were already there. And some of them like the pigs were all blue with woes, some sort of thing. And so those here were these people being pushed aside by big blonde people. And they were great stone carvers. Here's a carving of portraits of themselves. It's hard to see, but they're sort of dressed in these little fetching frocks. And they were great stone carvers. And is there another one next? I don't know if you can see this. It's people sort of with their butts, their butts and other guys' nose. And I think this was a paper dish joke because if you look at it from a point of view, well there's no way you can look at that and not think, what were they thinking? They were making fun of somebody. Anyway, these, they were great stone carvers. And when metal came in, they became great metal workers. The Indigenous people objected to big blonde, next one, yeah, this big, here's the Norse guy. He's shaking hands with the Indigenous rulers going, oh my gosh. But the Norse, they didn't like these people settling on their land. But in no time they were all intermingled with invaders. And somewhat in that process, the ballad of the two sisters, the Norse, were shared with the Scots. And so were some very interesting belief systems they got shared. And like the Viking idea that the soul resides in the bones. And that is really important in this ballad. To think that the soul resides in the bones. And we'll get to that later. But it's very important. And they also shared a fair amount of Nordic DNA with the Indigenous people. Because if you have Scots, make your part, Scots blood, and you get the DNA test now that are quite cheap, you'll be told that you have a ton of Scandinavian blood. Even though as far as you knew, there was never a Scandinavian in your entire family line. And with that comes the end of the ballad. So here we are, Norman. Living proof. Okay, in Northern ballads originating in Scandinavia, like this, the dark coloring was scorned and often very crudely and rudely scorned. Dark was a code for lower social caste. Tamskin suggested you had the status of a field hand, and that wasn't considered a great thing. In the two sisters, or Benori, the darker sister berates the good girl, the blonde girl, for destroying her chances at natural money. She says, your rosy cheeks and your golden hair leave me a maiden forever more. Maiden being unmarried. And as for the hair, some painters got it right. We're going to have a quick gloss over. This is Catherine Cameron. She was a very well-respected Glasgow painter who was a member of the Glasgow Society of Ladies Artists. And this is one of her, and here Sonya neglected it all together. Yeah, come back. This is modern internet book. And I don't know what they were thinking, but they gave them lots of hair, and it's black, black, black. So they apparently weren't interested in that kind of discrepancy either. Okay, so while looking at Benori art, one sees that this ballad has inspired some of the most unusually sentimental paintings ever made. They're better paintings. The better paintings are all about Ophelia, not about our girl. But the idea is the same. And here's a modern one. So they're all language. They have, I guess that's dead, but they are all drooping around in water. And for me, this topic is both dismaying and frightening. But how artists have it is interesting. Here's one by the woman Lorena Kenneth, the Canadian folk singer who sings this ballad in a very dramatic way. And she painted this painting. And this is, you have an energetic drowned her here. She's really doing her best to get out next. There she is up close. She really, she really, that's a different girl than the, than the limp ones we're looking at. But anyhow, she's trying to save herself. And then here's one that's found everywhere online is given no attribution at all. But she seems to be taking a nap in the weeds. And I kind of like that, that napping, that napping dead girl. We have one a bit more submerged there. That is kind of even in real life. That's an enormous picture, enormous. And the poor model was Elizabeth's, what's her name, Sadelle. And she was a pre-Raphaelite muse. And she had to lie in ice water in the winter. And she got very sick, pneumonia or very bad cold. And her father was really angry that they made her pose like that. But that was done for a few of you. But I thought that was a good picture of her getting further under the water. And that's good. All right, so others want that total underwater look. This is from a children's book, I guess. And you can't even tell what that is. There's a small nub of a person there. But the rest is underwater. And I went for that look in the cranky, too. You don't have to paint a body that way, you just push him away. Where did that come from? The internet with no attribution. Yeah, it looks very familiar to me. But I can't think. Yeah, I think it was a children's book. What does it say down below here? That just tells, oh, this I can't read, but this just tells the text. First she sank and then she swam. And anyhow, so that one more, it shows a total float look. You don't, aren't in the water all year, just going along like a steamboat down there. I kind of like that she has a little feeling of flowers and all that. But this is for a book about that murder ballad by Katie Horan. And I think it's also an internet kind of creation. And the last image about this is this teeny little one. This is a quilt also by a nameless maker. But it's seriously inspiring to me. I love the little kind of person there. Not what this bear is doing. But she looks mighty pleased if you can see her. She's like, oh boy, I'll take care of her. So the great ballad collector and scholar, Francis James Child, collected 21 versions and he traced the tragic story of the two sisters from its Scandinavian roots up to the first printing of it in a broadside in 1656. And here's the one that Rick asked me about who in another show, who drew this. And I said, Roland Thomason, but it's not true. It's Thomas Rawlinson. I was so embarrassed I almost fell through the floor. He was from the mid 1700s to the mid 1800s and I love that picture. But it shows a ballad. It's called The Ballad Singer. And it shows a ballad singer making money on the street singing ballads. But over her arm, she has newsprint kind of very cheaply printed up ballads that she'll sell to anyone who wants to buy one. And these broadsides brought many early ballads forward to be printed and murdered in catastrophe were of course the preferred topics. But often in the process, they were given to kind of hack poets and they fancied up the language just incredibly and made it kind of embarrassingly ornate. And they also often relieved ballads of any supernatural or pagan concepts. And there's another ballad singer. I love this one. I think she's holding a baby, I can't quite tell. But these cheaply printed versions were really cheap. And the oral tradition for learning ballads was slowly being replaced by the printed word. And that's an interesting time. And that started in about the 1400s and went on for quite a while. In fact, we can still buy sheet music, so it's still going. Okay, I'll spare you a very long list of northern countries. But from Professor Child, here he is, he stepped in. He stated the same story, this story of this ballad originated in Norway, and it spread everywhere with versions that reflected all from Iceland, all the way to Slovenia, and all the countries in between have versions of this ballad. As a teenager, I learned this song is Ballin Balance. It's a refrain from a contra dance step, and I couldn't see how that had anything to do with this grim ballad, and I must not. But the variant, that variant is said to be distinctly American. And Cecil Sharp, here he is, collecting with his pal Maude. He went all over Appalachia under really desperate conditions, no roads, they hiked all over collecting ballads. And he found 14 versions of this in southern Appalachia. And they had numerous endings. A lot of them just focused on the Miller. Did the Miller who pulls her out of the water and rob her jewels. And then tossed her back into dye. That is, all these, a lot of the versions going down side lines that take it away from the story. My version displeased me against all logic. The drowning girl was pushed by her sister into the northern sea, it says. And then she floats along the seaside to a river, and then she floats up the river. How is this happening? And then down a mill race, and then the Miller shows up. And I, many versions preserved this impossibility, and I found it so offensive. And only yesterday I thought, well maybe it was a title estuary. And she should have been pushed up by the title estuary. That's coming late in my career here for me to have that bright spot. When I was young, I just thought this was all wrong. Okay, here's a very sentimental art again. In the oldest forms, his ballad was filled with intrigue and magic. It was always a warning of the dangers of envy. And in other ballads of watery murder, like the banks of Ohio or the Knoxville girl, the aggressor always teems they want to stand around and watch as the victim drowns. And I think that's a nasty touch. But it reveals how low ballads illuminate the sort of shabbiness of evil on her at Cape of Valley. But it's shabby, these kind of acts that ballads sort of point out as being the bad guy. Some versions specifically stress the dangers of jealousy. And some have a more general take on human wickedness. And some emphasize the supernatural elements. And in Norman's ballad, I think those are still strongly held. Though jealousy consumes the older sister, I'd say that she's treated badly by the match. The man has come to court her. And in those days, that's an arranged marriage already arranged that he wouldn't have showed up. He's giving her lovely gifts. And that includes a ring. And then is now a ring symbolizes deep love and honorable intentions. Especially if you gave a ring and a glove, which in many versions of this ballad they do, a ring and a glove are tokens of a binding engagement that was a promise to marry her. And so why does he think he can make sheep's eyes at the younger sister? He's broken a serious bow and my mother would say, a cat. He's a cat. But he is, and for some reason, will pity always in these songs. Okay, so this creepy picture is chosen by Alfred Lord Tennyson in his poems for the of his take on this ballad. And in that he has the older sister woos, and she merges the man who has seduced and ruined her younger sister. She takes it in in a revenge way. And I, I think that that's more my take on this too. And it's a kind of cool poem. 1833. Okay, but we got got to get back to this girl who was pushing to the water. She floats down and the Miller pulls her out of the water, sometimes dead, sometimes alive. In Scandinavia, they have 120 my versions of this song or more. And in every single one of them, practically, the girl is fished out alive and is allowed to live. And in the British Isles, and in America, she's always dead. We, she's just not allowed to get away with anything. So the wandering musician who in the ballad comes and takes her bones. And there he is, he's found her, found her dead. And that's also from one of the, yeah, I don't know who did it, but it's an initial. Anyway, he takes, she makes it, he makes an instrument that allows the girl to speak beyond death, using her bones. So that parks back to the Viking idea of the bones being where the soul resides. And this category of folk tale is called the singing bone after a grim fairy tale. That's very grim about men that are involved in this sort of war against each other. And the one's bones then sings and accuses his brother of having killed him. So a remarkable feature of these long surviving ancient ballads is a pervasive and uneasy sense of mystery. And strange moments remain in the song despite hundreds of years of revision and pious influences. And there's often some hint of some forgotten ritual or some supernatural perception that's just ruffling that surface of the ballad a little bit. I told somebody it was like a Vermont lawn that looks all smooth and green, but rocks keep kind of coming to the surface. And those rocks are the pagan belief system that are in these ballads in little odd ways. One of my uneasiest moments in this ballad arrives with the wandering musician. Here he is. And he has a shamanistic skill for making the dead bones speak. And that's a concept that's far older than any harp or fiddle. It's described by the controversial social anthropologist and ballet collector, Barry Phillips. And he called it a resuscitation ritual. Let the bones are harvested and they're revived by some sort of magical axe. And then they're made to speak to give warnings or to dispense knowledge or in this case to accuse wrongdoers. And rituals like that are really, really ancient. Here is a painting from Tibet of two shin bone horns. They're leg bones. Yeah, leg bone flutes. And if you use bones or hair or body parts, they're soul summoning rituals, they're called. And they still survive today in many shamanistic cultures. Here's another shin bone. That's a Tibetan shin bone horn. And thigh bone horns are used in a lot of very specific Tibetan rituals. And I don't know if they're used to awake at some deceased sage who's the Dalai Lama's oracle enters into a trance and then he speaks and gives them advice. And they're madly honking these horns while he's going into a trance. That puts him into the trance. But they don't admit that they're using these horns. But it would make sense that that's what you do to make magic and to bring the voice of somebody else forward. And I don't know when the Tibetans aren't saying as far as I can tell. Okay, to a small degree, a remnant of this spirit something persists in our own culture. This is a reliquary foot. It holds allegedly the foot bones of a child killed by a little boy killed by King Herod. And it's inside this fancy foot, which was made in 1450. And inside this older reliquary that dates from way way back. Worshiping before reliquaries that contain some saintly body part is done with the hope that you're going to be guided by the wisdom of that particular saint. Modern church, the modern church, the church, disavows the idea that relics possess mystic powers. But that's a very recent assertion. For millions these remain objects that inspire a kind of deep mysticism. And they're believed to be imbued with enormous power to help and to guide. They're awesome, very fancy. I like this one, it's the arm of Saint Blaise, but we decide this is just his hand. I liked it because in Norman's ballad, the girl has so many rings on that you can't see her fingers. And I didn't draw it that way. I just gave her a couple of rings, they put that must be wrong. But here's this medieval thing. And that's what they did. And how did they move their hands? I guess it's a way of saying someone's going to wait on me. You know, I don't have to, like Gisha, fingernails, right? Somebody's going to do the work because you can't do a thing. And you know, fingernails at the ballad. So in the ballad, here's a horrible picture. But this is a ghost. I shouldn't say horrible, maybe you like it a lot. This is a ghost. And here's the Harper. And he's making, with whatever he's doing, he's getting ready to do a shamanistic act. But in the heart, at the water side, he takes these little bones and he fashions a musical instrument out of them saying it's her breastbone and her finger bones are used to make this. Since the average human sternum is about six inches long, it's got to be a very diminutive little instrument. Unless he's used the sternum for inlay on the wooden heart like I've done in the gravy. But many instruments have been made using human bone in this way. And I don't know what the musical result is. This one's in the mech. And that's human bones in a heartache or fiddle from 1786 in Norway. And they don't, I don't think they, I don't know if they let you hear that be played. It might make people do strange things and speak of the dead. But it's kind of gorgeous. And maybe it was honoring somebody that had died that they liked. But originally the uncanny instrument immortalized in this song was a harp. This is a pick dish carving of a harp player. And hearts and liars have been shown in early or iron age stone carvings in northern British Isles dating from 2300 BC. That's really too long ago to even contemplate. But eventually in many versions of the ballad a fiddle replaces the harp as the instrument that allows the girl to speak from beyond death. And fiddles were invented in Italy around the mid 1500s. And they took a while to get to England by 1700. This guy is not the guy. It was Martin Martin, who I don't know what he looks like. His but this is a famous fiddler from Scotland. He wrote that Martin Martin wrote a description of the western Isles of Scotland. It's the oldest known account of the Hebrides. His name was James Scott Skinner. You knew him. You're a marvel. That's great. Well, you don't know this. Oh, the next guy I bet. Yeah, he's fiddling. But anyway, the author of the story of the tour of the Hebrides said that he knew 18 fiddle players on the Isle of Lewis alone. And that's Trump's mother's homeland. So but that was in 1700. He wrote that. So they were already playing fiddles. And so I thought, Oh, that's going to help date this ballot when it changed over to fiddles, you know, that had to be after that presumed date of around 1700. And I was really pleased. But if you think like that, you might be mistaken. There were numerous medieval stringed instruments played with the bow. They were said to be introduced by returning crusaders who brought them back and fiddle with the general name for all of them. And this is one has three little tuning pegs up there. And so it's a it's a fiddle of sorts. But it's not our fiddle. And so I all of these fiddles in those countries predated the violin. So the ballot might be referring to any number of bowed instruments. And there's no help at all in making a date in addition to music and instruments. There are so many human aspects that are expressed in this ballot with the steady force of the river's backdrop. And I was so impressed by this sense of that river that I painted the entire scroll with a river running through it. And I grew to regret it as the scroll got longer and longer. And I thought, Why did I make this river blue as I'm running out of blue paint? Rivers aren't really blue except for really nice days. I could have made it all brown and it would have been so much easier. But I painted and painted and painted this river. And that stream I'll let this carry me a moment. So I'll tell you now being carried by this stream who I am and why I'm here to show you a cranky while Norman sings it. And I spent my whole life trying to figure out how one can best tell a story. So for me, a cranky skull is just another pleasant float down my personal river. And crankies were a term invented by Peter Schumann of bread and puppet. And they're small pre-industrial theaters in which a story is told by a scroll rolling past a viewing window. And they could be tiny like this. That's a little handheld cranky of the war. And you turn these little teensy knobs up at the top and you get to see the war. How exciting is that? And that they can be huge. That's a that's huge. And if you go to the movie theater to see this and they would roll up this you'd go on a wailing voyage. And when it was over, you'd leave the theater. And then it would go the other way because nobody wanted to rewind it. My favorite was going down the Nile and down the Mississippi where you go down the Nile and the next crowd comes in they go up the Mississippi. And the related visual devices have been used all over the world for centuries. And China I think has the earliest surviving documents of evidence of that sort. Anyway, no matter what path I follow narratives come out of it. As I paint, and that's how I paint, I make a big mess. I have to admit an untrained painter. And I'm not but I'm thinking I start with the abstract painting and then I see a little something there that looks like a little face and oh dear it becomes a story. So that's what happens. Narratives just pop out everywhere. And I also make play whistles. And here's one that always makes me laugh that that's St. Francis preaching to the banjos. And that's a craft I learned from my mother. And I often sing these old songs in the ballads I love as a child while I'm working. And I visualize them as the verses unwind. But since no little whistle can carry the whole story, I became interested in painting these long scrolls. And I've grown fascinated with each ballad's really rich and complex history. And everything off kilter paintings and books and old songs and everything has been a risk for the mill and my long life. And as I age the landscape of my creative world changes. And all these streams of my interests have come to flow together in a way that really has surprised and pleased me. And so these lifelong streams of interest flowing all into each other. And here I am. Did this ballad affect me? Yes. Because here I am. I'm following the advice of the Harper in the ballad. I've gone to visit the bones of Francis James Child, the ballad collector. And that he's down there in the centric pie in Stockton, Massachusetts. In the round so that when the final trump is called, the sedgeants will all sit up in the all knock at the look at anyone but each other. And so they're planted in a circle like that. Sit up. See the people you care about. Anyway, we had a nice chat. I brought them some whistles to discuss. And that is a very old Celtic harp. And now Norman has a few words to say as well. And then we're going to have the cranky. That was amazing. Just thinking, you know, what you are talking about is a lot of us. My folks history, of course. I mean, I was raised most, picked the stones and things like that. And next month, the creek don't rise, I'll be almost picked the stones again. The stuff that you brought just don't use it. You know, there's a glove and rain, of course. Well, the glove and then the rain is the top and up. Yes. To show the proof on the name. Oh, now you're a very interesting. Ultraviolet. So they would put on the glove and then have the rain on top. Of course, of course. Now, them ballads on the ball were not sung by, they would be sung to wealthy people. They didn't sing it. Nor did they have this common. But like in most countries, the working class by far the biggest class still yet in Britain. They make them think they are, but they are in mighty working class with the biggest and very, very different, different politics from the middle class who were trying to be of our class. And I was told, just sing that damn Dahl stuff for. Sing something modern, you know, that I like the stories. And I heard, I learned from some of them from street singers, the last of the street singers, you know, and I took them, and I was listening. I was about 13. I was at school near in Aberdeen. There was a friend in the market, there was a fellow in there, he was like, hey, there. And the thinker folk kicked a lot of this stuff going. And I went to school with thinkers. I mean, I'm talking, this is not my national way of talking. If I talk the dialect, the dialect of my grandma, I mean, even my father couldn't understand who was speaking, because she was, she was for the country and I was born on her bed. There was a first class, so she took me over. My mother, I could speak to her and my father would say, I wish the hell you two would speak, so I could understand. We're talking way, way, way, maybe 200, 300 years old. Which is natural to me. The ballads, they didn't need to be translated to me at all. That was, so I just took to them. My grandma used to say, Luddy, you're a sponge for our knowledge. Are you quite true? And they thought I was just weird. Could you say some, could you speak, speak like, I mean, I got strapped to the school for saying one word in Scots. And the teacher says, what are you doing? Kennedy said still, she said, get on me, what, come here. I said, we're talking for the strap. She said, the word is tickle. In 1870, you had come up from London in the education place that the Scottish dialects and the Gaelic language should be suppressed. And the Irish and the Welsh suppressed. It was vicious, you know. Same, I've got a Navajo name. Navajo fellow would say that to me. He says, white people did that to other white people. He did it to me. First day school there, taken away from his folks, his hair cut and deloused. And he needed to go to the toilet. He needed to pee. And he had to ask a girl in Navajo. And the teacher says, what did he say? He was to pee. Oh, I'll show him. He grabbed him to come to the toilet and put his head to the toilet and flushed it. He did that four times. He says, I saw that to myself. That happened to him. I said, yep, word for it, put down upon him by the words. But still, you know, there's nobody at home who in Scotland could sing that well like I did. And I've got it in Gaelic too. And I use them things when I'm doing walkings, when I'm shinking cloth. Next month there's two pieces of cloth waiting for me up in Minnesota. In my poor part, you know, last Wednesday was my 86th birthday. And I can never wore nook. But I lived in the house across the road for about eight, nine years. And that who's helped me sing in college for those walking back and forth. Because folks sound. They were doing repented work, hard work that they keep them made up or else they sing together. You know, molly molly molly molly molly, there's 15 versions that collected Navadine from different villages. So one time I was up, I was collecting taxes for years, civil servant, I was looking for this fella. He's a wait to see a young lad who's over on water money. So I said nobody's wife's working in there. The heaven boats are coming in. I walked into this place and there were 80 or 90 people, grandmothers, mothers, and granddaughters, all with muscles. All women and folk were coming with muscles because they worked physical hard work. So I never used to annoy my mother because she would knock me down, you know, literally. Anyway, so she only did it once or twice now. I learned to watch what I was singing. But anyway, so I went in there and there was all this singing, singing, singing, 14 hours in our feet, you know, and there's the boats that are coming in, the heaven boats, heaven's all gone now. But anyway, they were singing, we all live in the earth. They stopped out and an old woman started singing Bobby Allen. There was 50 here, that many women who just naturally knew these. They were just songs, just songs, you know. But I really liked the old ones with stories, especially to do with places and people, clans and not that I knew. The ballets, some of the castles, people still live in them. So this, Benore, the old Benore. They sung it in Monroe's, which is father's songs. The thinkers, the thinkers that gave this, because they were regarded as low class, and they were out camping now. But the woman I got it from, she knew Robertson, she eventually got silver medal from the Queen's and on, because what she did for our culture. Well, we were born due to the war and we were put in with the granite canvas and here she was across, pardon me, across the road and her mother. And mother was a great singer, Mariah, but by that time she'd taken a stroke. Last time I sang she knew, I was brought here to this country, to Robertson, Scotland, for that, for the singer, Mike Seeger, he heard me at home. And then I was 65, 66, I decided, I'd leave a lot of stuff there. I saw opportunity here. I'd never get in that middle country. And folk appreciated it more. But anyway, last time I sang she knew she'd taken a stroke. And she was trying to put it, she was knocking over the cup, and she said to me, Norman, sing me Inamain songs. Sing me one of my own songs. I'm an artist and I'd like to sing a song that I'd learn from that woman. And she could never sing it again, you know. But I've got it in my head, you see, down to you now in Scotland. And then I put the Gaelic version too. I use these things for walkings, for shrinking clothes, you know, and thinking next month that I put two or three pieces and you won't blanket them up in the shoulder for me to shrink. But then more people know with it here, then across there, and more people have heard these ballads across here because a lot of works out all those. You ready to hum? You'll have to do it much slower around your stoking. No, you can do it your usual singing. Oh, thank you. It'll be one room like this. It'll be close. I think you can slow down a little. Come and act to be the wood for the bonnie meltdowns of Benoitie. He's courted the eldest with glove and ring. Benoitie, oh Benoitie. But he's loved at the youngest and be nothing for the bonnie meltdowns of Benoitie. He's courted the eldest with glove and ring. Benoitie, oh Benoitie. But he's loved at the youngest and be nothing for the bonnie meltdowns of Benoitie. It was upon a morning clear. Benoitie, oh Benoitie. Trick or eyes and tear, sister, dear, with the bonnie meltdowns of Benoitie. Sister, sister, come down with the horn, Benoitie, oh Benoitie. And we'll walk down with the water strung, with the bonnie meltdowns of Benoitie. The youngest she stood upon a steam, Benoitie, oh Benoitie. The elder she'd come and she'd shove her hair and the bonnie meltdowns of Benoitie. Sometimes she swam, sometimes she swam. Benoitie, oh Benoitie. That she floated down to the meltdown with the bonnie meltdowns of Benoitie. Meltdown, meltdown, come down with the bonnie meltdowns of Benoitie. There's either a memory or a meltdown. And the bonnie meltdowns of Benoitie. The memory has turned and drew these down. Benoitie, oh Benoitie. And there is fun, a drunic woman. But the bonnie meltdowns of Benoitie. You couldn't see her little weak feet. Benoitie, oh Benoitie. Her golden fringes, they were so deep. But the bonnie meltdowns of Benoitie. You couldn't see her little seismal. Benoitie, oh Benoitie. Her golden kertle, they're too well sabred. But the bonnie meltdowns of Benoitie. You couldn't see her finger so small. Benoitie, oh Benoitie. Where diamond rings, they were covered up. But the bonnie meltdowns of Benoitie. And I'm on a yalla here. Benoitie, oh Benoitie. A rope or heralds was twine and fair. But the bonnie meltdowns of Benoitie. Buy and come, a heart but fine. Benoitie, oh Benoitie. Fying today, but the bonnie meltdowns of Benoitie. He's made our food and her breast bean. Benoitie, oh Benoitie. For soon, we'd melt a hair of the steam. But the bonnie meltdowns of Benoitie. His skin and teeth are feathers half. Benoitie, oh Benoitie. Where was the kurt assembled? I'll build the bonnie meltdowns of Benoitie. He's laying the heart down on a steam. Benoitie, oh Benoitie. And sighing that begon to play hats, laying the bonnie meltdowns of Benoitie. Your nurse sets my father the king. Benoitie, oh Benoitie. And your nurse sets my mother the queen. Build the bonnie meltdowns of Benoitie. Your nurse stands my brother Hugh. Benoitie, oh Benoitie. And me and my William sweet and true. Build the bonnie meltdowns of Benoitie. But the last tune that the heart played then. Benoitie, oh Benoitie. Was wisdom a sister false hell? And build the bonnie meltdowns of Benoitie. Anyone wants to see anything? Look at this, you're welcome to enroll it a little bit. And did you want to sing another song or not? But I would just say something about the theme of all these songs is jealousy. There's one along the other songs and they're saying beautiful. Older woman, you know, young and after a young man and he said tell her to get lost. But anyway, there's nine inspiration I do. But the first line says Three things come without bidding. Fear, jealousy and love. And then she says, and it's not my fault that I failed victim to one of them. And as I was a walking one more than me, I spied a young couple, a common my way. And the one was a fair bid and a beauty I declared. And the other he was a soldier and a bold grenadier. You can pick up the chorus as a ghost. And they kiss so sweet and comforting as they clung to each other. They went arm and arm along the road like sister and brother. They went arm and arm along the road till they came to a stream. And they both sat down together, loved to hear the nightingale sing. Kind kisses and compliments as they both did walk together. Till they didn't come down by the side of some river. Where they did sit down voiced by the side of some stream. Heart, heart cries the fair bid how the nightingale sing. And they kissed so sweet and comforting as they clung to each other. They went arm and arm along the road like sister and brother. They went arm and arm along the road till they came to a stream. And they both sat down together, loved to hear the nightingale sing. While out of his knapsack he drew a fine fiddle. And he played her such a tune, the voice that the ballies did ring. He played her such a tune, the voice that the ballies did ring. Heart, heart cries the fair bid how the nightingale sing. And they kissed so sweet and comforting as they clung to each other. They went arm and arm along the road like sister and brother. They went arm and arm along the road till they came to a stream. And they both sat down together, loved to hear the nightingale sing. Well now cries the soldier, it is time to give or. Oh no cry the fair bid, we will have one tune more. For I do like the tune you play and the touch of your string. Heart, heart cries the fair bid how the nightingale sing. And they kissed so sweet and comforting as they clung to each other. They went arm and arm along the road like sister and brother. They went arm and arm along the road till they came to a stream. And they both sat down together, loved to hear the nightingale sing. It is now for the alehouse, we're bound for to steer. Where we will drink wine, my boys, instead of small beer. And if ever do return again, it'll be early in the spring. And we'll watch the pretty flowers blow and hear the nightingale sing. And they kissed so sweet and comforting as they clung to each other. They went arm and arm along the road like sister and brother. They went arm and arm along the road till they came to a stream. And they both sat down together, loved to hear the nightingale sing. Oh you're fast learners, look at me. Any questions about this old fashioned stuff? Yeah, anybody has any questions? No, it's Shakespeare with him the one time. I'm talking about the Norse, of course the Norse for 400 years ruled all the other heavies. In my area, Danish, so it was Danish DNA in my blood, 16%. And then further north it was the North Asians and then Shetland and Orkney. And then all the heavies. And I would 1400 and 11, it was a mannish, of course all the arranged mannishes. They were all lucky, a lot came up to us. But anyway, it was a princess up in Northwick, Loughlin, Newcastle. And getting married on to a high born Scottish hebridean man. But anyway, and they were very powerful, the hebridean chiefs. Because the McDonald's, the two McDonald's, they were the Lord of the Isles. The biggest one, Snooty too. But the Norwegians had been fighting with Swedes, I mean even yet in Minnesota. Swedish milk, that worthwhile drinking, you know. I hear that one time, I get choked and you've been at that for hundreds of years. But anyway, the Norwegians couldn't come up with a dowry. So they put the Orkneys, the Shetlands, and all the heavies in Pong. And up to 1400 and so the Scottish King said, we're people. But there were so many North Spoon down there. And they got all the folk fine, you know, but they entered brave. So Trump's mother, she's, I think she's a McLeod lassie. She's from, oh she's cute, she knows English until she went to school, of course. She'd spawn and guard it and walk, nobody would have asked her. And gone barefooted to the mosques with the Creelner about to get to them. She'd come from poor, poor people. But I hear that her sister came across like all the old people did. They sent one, they would work like hell, bring another one, you know. So when she was brought across to New York, she got a job, there's been a skiffy in Trump's grandfather's house. And of course they were pure German, they were from Austria. So Trump's father was raised in a German speaking home. And one of the lads took up her head, you see. So Trump's father spoke German. And his mother took pure Louis Galer, you know, very, very presbyterian. I mean, no dancing, no drinking, they got singing these eternal long sounds. And then, so I don't think he knows any of that stuff with his own people. But he's got Norse blend in too. So them Norse folk, they showed what around. And the Isle of Louis is the first where they locked the swing sets on Sunday, so the children couldn't swing on the Sabbath. And then they built a bridge across the, I've been across it two years ago, to the Isle of Skye. And then the first Sunday, the supporters said, great, we'll go for a drive up to Skye. And here were ministers lying. They lay on the road, distorting. And then the next Sunday, some people went across, because they were on golf courses. They went to play golf on the Sabbath, lie on the Sabbath, up, up, up. They got around, you know. They knew that generation, but they got around fine. So that's for his marketing. Did you say how this collaboration came to be? And as I gave a cranky, just a cranky soda, it wasn't. It's not on the counter. The wife of Dr. Bell, I don't remember what it was, at a Thanksgiving dinner. And he was there. And he said... I don't know, I've seen Alex. I don't know, I've seen Alex. He had some ideas for ballots that would be good. And then when they asked me if I would do a cranky show, I said, yes, but I want more than the same. Because... What was the one year you wanted me to sing, but I had only four or five verses? It was the only ballot with a happy ending. I thought that could be a good thing. Dita, would you sing one verse of one ballot? Me? One other ballot? Yeah. Four of us. Go ahead, I want boo. Sing an American one so you can. Yeah. That's one verse. That's for a sod ending too, isn't it? Mm-hmm. That's for a sod ending too. Of course. She goes off with a man, she hardly knows. And then they come to a bad end. Because I love to let the guys get them knocked up. And then they don't... They cut that out of it. That's what happens in old songs. Because people say, well, he's just a psychopathic killer. But no, he had his reasons. But she was pregnant. But that's been told to me. You know, all me lies? You know, all me lies? Don't watch them. Just sing all me lies. That's two sides of the same. Well, yeah, because it's the same thing. The same thing, yeah. There are a lot of murder vows. But the queen of murder vows is pretty falling. Yeah, she is the queen. Hey, I have one other question, Judy. Is it... Could you tell me if the bone instruments from Tibet predate or post-date the Mongol invasion? I don't know. I could tell you something about that, though. Archaeology is a deep interest to me, and still is. Because I was... When we were young, when I was maybe 11, the war was still going on. Everybody had to go at the harvest for the potatoes, you know, because we could eat terrible food. And we were digging tatties in the standard stone circles. And then the carved stones, the Pictish stones, were Pictish carved on one side and across on the other. That's when it started to come in. But, you know, Neolithic people? Ancient, ancient, ancient people. They have found remains, the ancient remains, and vulture bones were walls. So the Neolithic people, yeah. They found that quite recently, yeah. So the flutes are ancient, ancient, ancient. Before, old people came all over, you know. Well, there's an unsupportable question. I think they have refreshments for us over there. There are, yeah. Thank you. Keel, I know you feel as privileged as I do to have two legends in our museum tonight. Let's give them one more round.