Scots Song

Scots song is the traditional song repertory of Scotland in the Scots language and Scottish English: Child ballads, bothy ballads of the farm servants, Jacobite and Burns songs, bawdy and lyric pieces, preserved above all by the Traveller communities of the north-east. Its classic performance is unaccompanied solo singing — one voice carrying long narrative ballads with ornamented, rhythmically free delivery — as practised by source singers such as *Jeannie Robertson* and *Belle Stewart*. The folk revival carried the repertory to concert stages through scholar-singers including *Jean Redpath*, whose project to record the complete songs of *Robert Burns* fixed a modern canon.