This is part FOUR of the digital release An t’Each Uisge [The Water-Horse]. Only available on Bandcamp, it's called 'SPIRIT'' and focusses on the supernatural power of the River Spey. Part 1 was 'CHILD', Part 2 'LAND', Parts 3 'LOVE' and 5 will be 'STRENGTH', respectively.

In a nutshell 'Part 4 - SPIRIT' of is half an hour long, and consists of:

2 pieces of music
3 folk stories
2 field recordings

After the 2020/2021 pandemic lockdowns, I compiled during this time a new 5-part collection of bonus material for my first solo album The River called An t’Each Uisge [The Water-Horse]. This is the name given to the kelpie, the wicked (but awesome) river spirit of Scottish folklore.

Edinburgh singer, guitarist and Storyteller David Francis is hugely knowledgeable and experienced in the Scottish folk tradition. He and I have collaborated on various projects over the years, including the ‘Ceol Mor’ youth folk big band at Aberdeen International Youth Festival 2012-2016, and the ‘Dufftown Stories’ for the People’s Parish project in 2022. ‘Strathspey Stories’ was series of self-filmed local heritage stories on YouTube for the Scottish International Storytelling Festival Online in 2020. David researched and wrote the stories - they are brilliant. We went out on location to farms, cottages and firesides in my local area to record the stories and tunes associated with each place. We are very proud of the 8 short films - they have a very homemade feel (we didn’t have pro videography gear, just our iPhones)! You can find them on my YouTube channel. Have a pot of tea and a packet of biscuits at the ready.

The opening tune on Part 4 - Sprit’ is called ‘Acharnac’s Reell’ (aye they used to spell the dance ‘reel’ with two ‘L’s back in the 18th century). It was recorded on a whistle as I sat on the banks of a peaceful wee stream called the Auchernack Burn that trickles down from the famous local farmhouse of the same name. It’s from our celebrated local tune collection by Angus Cumming in 1780 called ‘A collection of Strathspey or Highland Reels at Grantown in Strathspey. That family of Cummings were a dynasty of fiddlers and pipers in the service of the Chief of Clan Grant at Castle Grant, in Grantown-on-Spey. The alternative name for the tune is ‘Ba’l nan Grantich’ - which translates from Gaelic to ‘Town of the Grants’. Okay, I promise won’t say ‘Grant’ one more time. Oops I just did.

Granted, the river Spey has its very own rare variety of kelpie known as 'An t-Each Ban' (the White Horse), according to James Alan Rennie's book 'Romantic Strathspey'. This notorious water horse sprit would appear on the riverbank, its "saddle, bridle and stirrups of gleaming silver were encrusted with precious stones, white reigns and saddle-cloth of crimson velvet edged with gold." The passer-by would excitedly climb onto its back. Suddenly with a hideous scream, the horse would bolt into the river. As the rider held on for dear life, by some evil magic the skin of their hands would grow over the reigns and the spirit would drag them to their doom in the murky depths.

The rainy field recording comes from a quote from Kenneth Steven’s stunning poem ‘The Linn’ (see Part 1 - CHILD) about river swimming with pals on a summer’s evening in his youth:

‘By nightfall we trailed back home, barefoot,
Smelling the blue smoke of barbecues,
Hearing in the trees muffled smudges of talk
As rain pattered dark around us
And Lightning flickered the sky’

This thunderstorm was recorded outside my back door and that’s the raindrops pitter pattering on the gazebo. The Gazebo was blown away by high winds a few months later! We are on our 4th garden gazebo now - I can get windy int he Cairngorms! Thunderstorms are are relatively rare occurrence in Strathspey - once a year, if that! The ‘Muckle Spate’ (Scots for ‘the big river flood’) was a terrifying pair of thunder storm that collided over the Cairngorms in 1829 in Speyside and Deeside, causing utter havoc and washing away mighty stone bridges, crops, livestock and peoples lives.

The Witch of Nuide (pronounced ‘nude’, tee hee) was the very first story that I recorded for the ‘Badenoch The Storylands’ project for Badenoch Heritage. I expanded and elaborated on a tale from a really old out-of-print book Badenoch Stories complied from a series of stories collected and published in the Badenoch newspaper by a Malcolm MacPherson over a hundred or so years ago. My own Badenoch The Storylands’ series grew to 20 stories all in all - some 50 minutes long! While researching these during lockdown I would sit down at my desk each day to ‘roam the landscape’ of Badenoch on a daily basis in my mind, exploring online heritage maps from the National Library of Scotland (handily overlayed with satellite images) and leaf through lots of old local heritage books. As lockdown eased it was fascinating to visit these places for the first time - they were always wildly different to what I had imagined - always much, much bigger and more complex than I had originally perceived from the maps.