User:Ruairidh Greig

Although of Scottish descent, I have lived most of my life in Lincolnshire and have taken an active interest in local traditions since the 1960s. This has included collecting songs from retired farmworkers and recording customs and traditions, mainly from the north of the county. Whilst completing my teacher training in Sheffield I became a member of the Survey of Language and Folkore at Sheffield University, which later became Natcect. During the 1970s I lived in Sheffield and undertook a postgraduate degree, completing a study of seasonal house-visiting customs in South Yorkshire, for which I received a M. Phil in 1988. The fieldwork for the degree extended over a number of years, collecting a number of previously unrecorded Hero-Combat, Old Tup and Old Horse plays as well as a variety of other local calendar customs. Since moving back to Lincolnshire, my main interests have been plough plays and the folksong collecting activities of Percy Grainger. As a performer, I have sung and played ina number of local bands and helped to organise clubs in Sheffield, Rotherham and Gainsborough. My publications include articles in "Lore and Language", and Folk Music Journal (1977) as well as a paper on Lincolnshire singer Joseph Taylor in "Folksong Tradition, Revival and Re-Creation" eds Ian Russell and David Atkinson, Aberdeen 2004.