Biography

Martha Johnstone was a lesser-known tradition bearer from the Traveller community who nonetheless proved to be an interesting singer and storyteller for the fieldworkers who visited her in the 1950s-70s.

Martha was born in her parents' camp in the woods north of Wester Ballintuim in Kirkmichael parish, Perthshire, with both Sandy Johnston and his wife Catherine Whyte working as local farm servants at the time. Catherine was local to the area, although her father's people were from Nairn and Aberdeenshire originally, while Sandy was an Argyll man hailing from the Inveraray area.

Growing up in the traditional Travelling lifestyle, Martha was surrounded by the songs and music of her own family and other members of the Travelling community:

'Ye see, we were aye together some way and we'd aye hear the auld yins singing. And then we picked em up better because there was nane o this music now, there were none o these musics like tae we hae … anything that we did pickit was off the older people because we had nae wirelesses, no gramaphones, nothing like that … And we just had tae amuse wirsels wi wir own songs. Ye see … That was the way it was. [Track 21697] You see, because the old songs the people sung them, they were easy picked up, the young people easy picked them up, if you were willin to learn, ken? And I likit the old songs although I was young, little.' [Track 34376]

In particular, Martha's great-grandfather, David Whyte, was a formative influence:

'He would sing tae hissel, ye ken, […] evenings an that. We used tae aye be sittin aside him, ye ken, when I was little, like! […] He was an awfae man for singing, singing, singing. And ye ken, when I was little I just sat beside him, ye ken, listening tae him and I pickit them up. Of course I lost a lot. Aw, I had lots and lots and I used to sing them when I was little.' [Track 21699]

On this track, Martha elaborates that she sometimes learned songs from her great-grandfather while he sat painting pictures, singing to himself. David would sometimes paint images inspired by the songs he sang, such as 'Young Densmore' from the song 'Bonnie Woodha' [R3778].

By the age of 18, Martha - or 'Peasie' as she was universally known (a byname connoting her small stature) - was working as a hawker, while her partner Sandy Reid laboured on local farms; the couple would go on to have several children together, and were married in 1932. They would spend much of the 1930s and 40s travelling the country, particularly in Fife, where they would befriend fellow Traveller and tradition bearer, Duncan Williamson. Unfortunately, Sandy was a jealous man, and did not approve of Martha spending time in the company of others; as a result, she had comparatively few opportunities to sing her songs or tell her stories for anyone outside her immediate family, and she was a shy singer in later years.

Sandy passed away in 1954, by which time the couple had moved permanently to a house named Torwood in Birnam. It was here that local folklorist Maurice Fleming sought Martha out as part of his reconnaissance of the area for singers and storytellers. Hamish Henderson followed up this lead and visited Martha a number of times in the mid-1950s.

While Martha was a reluctant singer in some ways, she proved to have a keen ear for old ballads. As many as a third of her song repertoire were classic ballads of the type found in the Child collection. In particular, songs like 'The Task' - a version of the murder ballad 'The Elfin Knight' [Child 2, R12], and another murder ballad 'The Banks of Airdrie' [Child 14, R27], were of interest to contemporary ballad scholars, and were quickly published in print.

Given her family's work on farms, it's perhaps unsurprising that Martha also had a number of bothy ballads in her repertoire, including the rarely recorded songs 'Cockerstone Farm' and 'Falkirk Fair'. Even some of the fragments she could recall having heard from other singers are worthy of note due to how rarely they've been attested in recent oral tradition; 'The Battle of Otterburn' is a case in point, while the cante-fable variously known as 'The Girl Who Got Up a Tree' or 'The Robber Bridegroom' has never otherwise been collected in Scotland.

Martha remarried in 1957, this time to a Traveller named Duncan Johnstone, who was himself a good singer and who enjoyed hearing Martha sing and tell stories. Ten years later, the independent fieldworker and ballad singer Peter Shepheard sought the couple out:

'I had been pointed in the direction of Torwood by Sheila Stewart of the Blairgowrie Stewart family who told me of Peasie's repertoire of old ballads; […] we determined to visit at the first opportunity. After driving up to Dunkeld from St Andrews we enquired for Torwood - a large house, no longer there. We asked for Martha Reid and were directed to an upper flat reached by an outside stair in the old Scottish style, other flats in the house occupied by other members of her extended Traveller family. We were welcomed in [and] related who we were and that we had been told about her old ballads. Peasie introduced us to Duncan Johnstone, and with Peasie and Duncan sat either side of an old range fire we were soon recording ballad after ancient ballad. We visited Peasie and Duncan again several more times that year and were always welcomed in as 'the man from the University'. […] I still treasure and sing several of their ballads.'

Sadly, Duncan died the following year, making Peter's recordings of him the only ones known to exist.

In the mid-1970s, doctoral student Linda Williamson embarked on a study of Traveller narrative songs, and was encouraged to visit Martha by her husband Duncan Williamson, as well as Martha's son Sandy:

'I had met her son Sandy Reid ('Shells') in Pitlochry and made recordings of 'old-fashioned songs' as they were known among Scots Traveller families […] I hired a car to find Martha, who was pleased to have a visitor and knew well the mindset of folklorists after meeting Hamish Henderson. […] She was the perfect informant for a complete novice straight from the city. When she sang her old songs for me in her own very individual and unique way, with a very fluid form, loosely-knit strophes and in a completely confident and frankly factual style of narrative singing – I was astounded and deeply interested.'

In her doctoral thesis, Linda would go on to describe Martha's unusual variation in the length and melodic patterning of verses ('strophic variability'), her adherence to the orality of the songs she'd learned mostly from within her own family, and the stability that songs found when Martha preferred their narratives over others:

'Martha Johnstone's performances of ballads and old songs were 'traditional' to her - evident from her expressed attitude towards the old songs and her attitude towards her own family history. The topic she discussed most was her family history, and from her expressions of love and high regard for her forbears, we can be sure her way of performing old songs was 'handed down;' for she was faithful to her sources, the singers from whom she'd heard and learned her songs.'

Martha passed away in 1980, not long after Linda completed her fieldwork. While she may be less well-known than other Traveller tradition bearers, we hope that her recordings on our site will renew interest in her songs and stories.


References and Further Reading

Williamson, Linda Jane 'Narrative Singing Among the Scots Travellers: A Study of Strophic Variation in Ballad Performance' (University of Edinburgh, 1985), https://era.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/8223 [accessed 23 August 2023].