Belle Stewart

Cultural milieu

When the Stewarts of Blairgowrie went to the Sidmouth Festival in Devon they encountered New Age travellers for the first time. Belle Stewart noticed how dirty the New Agers were. They said they were travellers but Stewart replied "No, you're not. We are." The New Age Travellers said "But you're dressed too fine to be travellers." The photographs in Sheila Stewart's book show how much care the Stewarts took with personal appearance. At festivals the whole family wore tartan kilts and the pipers among them wore full regalia.

Stewart's repertoire of folk tales frequently refer to the supernatural, including changelings. A collection of her stories was published as The King o' the Black Art in 1987.

When Alec Stewart died, the Church of Scotland minister at Blairgowrie refused to allow a funeral service in his church, because Alec had been a Traveller. A Dundee minister offered them a service in his church.

Celebrity While John Stewart worked on a building site in Hatfield, a friend of Ewan MacColl visited. The following week Ewan MacColl visited the Stewart family. Hamish Henderson and the School of Scottish Studies recorded the family's music and folk tales.

In the 1960s Alec Stewart made his living in the summer months by playing bagpipes to tourists in Glen Coe, Oban and Loch Ness. Belle knew all the songs and decided which of the other members of the family could sing which songs. In 1965 the family recorded an album, The Stewarts of Blair. "The Overgate", a folksong with some similarities to "Seventeen Come Sunday" has particular associations with the Robertson / Higgins / Stewart families of Travellers. Belle recorded it in 1976.

In about 1970 the family spent a month performing in America. They made several appearances at the Edinburgh Folk Festival and in folk clubs around the UK. Ewan MacColl featured them in a Radio Ballad. Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger also compiled a collection of the folklore of Belle and other members of her family, called 'Till Doomsday in the Afternoon. A BBC programme about the family was shown in 1980.

Awards and recognition Stewart was awarded the British Empire Medal in 1981 for "an outstanding contribution to Scottish traditional music". In 1986 she was honorary president of the Blairgowrie Folk Festival, where she also performed. In the same year another television programme about her was broadcast. In 1996 a series of three programmes about the family were broadcast on BBC Radio 2. Another programme was made for Grampian Television in 1996.

Stewart judged competitions for the Traditional Music and Song Association. She gave lectures on the traditions of Scotland's Traveller people at American universities.

Stewart died aged 91 in 1997.

Discography The Stewarts of Blair (1965) Topic 12T138 The Travelling Stewarts (1968) Topic 12T179 Queen Among the Heather (1977) Topic 12TS307 The Stewarts of Blair (1986) Lismor Folk LFLP 7010

In 2009 "Queen Among the Heather" from Queen Among the Heather was included in Topic Records 70-year anniversary boxed set Three Score and Ten as track three on the fourth CD.

Anthologies: Back o' Benachie - Songs and Ballads from the Lowland East of Scotland (1967) Topic 12T180 Festival at Blairgowrie (recorded 1967) Topic 12T181 "The Voice of the People Volume 20 - There is a Man Upon the Farm (two songs - "The Overgate" and "The Berry Fields o' Blair")