Ballad Scholar Invited by Ritsumeikan University
Dr Thomas McKean, Director of the Elphinstone Institute and President of the Kommission für Volksdichtung, has returned from a two-week visit to Japan where he gave lectures on Scottish ballads and North-East Traveller singers at the invitation of Professor Keiko Wells of Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto. The talks, at Ritsumeikan and to the Ballad Society of Japan in Yokohama, each drew an audience of around forty scholars and enthusiasts. McKean talked about the transmission of song, the role of literacy, and patterns of family transmission, before finishing with a close look at the contemporary emotional relevance of the ballad, using Jane Turriff’s peerless ‘Barbara Allan’ and Jeannie Robertson’s ‘Gypsy Laddies’. The trip grew out of last year’s visit to the Elphinstone Institute by Professor Wells and a group of ballad scholars and students from Ritsumeikan. The Institute hopes to develop further exchanges with Ritsumeikan University over the coming years.