Tributes to storytelling folk hero who kept 500 years of history alive

TRIBUTES have been paid to a "champion" of Scotland's travelling people, who kept alive oral traditions dating back more than 500 years.

Leading storyteller and ballad singer Stanley Robertson, who died of a heart attack in Aberdeen at the age of 69, left school at 14 and became a fish filleter.

He went on to be awarded one of the most prestigious honorary degrees that can be bestowed by one of Scotland's oldest universities.

Hailed as a "cultural ambassador of distinction for his people, for Aberdeen, and for Scotland in the world", he was a human repository for thousands of folk tales and ballads.

In November last year he was awarded the honorary degree of Master of the University by Aberdeen University in recognition of his achievements as a writer, storyteller and singer, and for fostering the traditions of the travelling people.

Tributes to Mr Robertson were led by Dr Ian Russell, the director of the university's Elphinstone Institute, which is dedicated to the preservation of the culture of the north-east of Scotland.

Dr Russell said: "Stanley was hugely important to Scotland's storytelling tradition and the culture of the travelling people.

"His oral memory was absolutely extraordinary. He could remember stories that would last well over an hour without forgetting a single detail.

"I never got to the bottom of his memory, and I never managed to ever record all the songs he knew or the stories he could tell. There were always more stories and more songs. Through his ballads and his stories, he was a link with Scotland over centuries to the 1500s."

Dr Russell stressed that, although Mr Robertson's own family had stopped travelling on the roads of Scotland following the Second World War, he remained steeped in the tradition of the travellers' way of life.

He said: "The travellers in Scotland are still very much looked down on, and they are much discriminated against and they have a constant fight every day to exist. But through Stanley they had a wonderful champion – somebody who could show what an amazing contribution travellers have made to Scotland's culture and traditions."

Mr Robertson worked at the Elphinstone Institute for three years as a research fellow and was the key-worker for the Oral and Cultural Traditions of Scottish Travellers' project at the institute, which ran until 2005.

Tim Neat, the author and expert on Scotland's folk-song traditions who has strong links to Scotland's travelling community, also paid tribute to Mr Robertson.

He said: "In some ways, Stanley was not a typical traveller in that he looked rather like an insurance salesman.

"But behind that rather straight faade he was a very profound man with deep insight and very true traditional knowledge of Scotland's travelling culture. And he quietly delivered a great deal."

Born in Aberdeenshire into a travelling family in 1940, Mr Robertson spent the early years of his life on the road. His father, Bill, a noted piper, made a living collecting flax from farms on Royal Deeside.

Music and storytelling were an integral part of his life. His aunt, Jeannie Robertson, from whom he inherited a huge repertoire of North-east ballads, was the legendary Scottish folk singer who was a pivotal figure in the British folk revival.

Mr Robertson, who is survived by his wife, Johnann, and children Robert, Anthony, Clifford, Dale, Gabrielle and Nicole, will be buried on Friday at Lumphanan cemetery, following a funeral service in Aberdeen.