Murray, Salt Spring Island, 2017
Murray Shoolbraid
1931 – 2020
Writer, folklorist, musician, teacher, Independent Scholar, husband, father, colleague, and friend
Loved by all with whom he came in contact.
George Murray Haining Shoolbraid was born on November the 10th 1931 at Kinglassie, in the Kingdom of Fife. He was educated there, in Berkshire, in County Dublin, and in Larne. He went to high school in Cupar, Fife followed by St Andrews University in 1950.
During Great Britain’s last period of conscription (1939-1960), Murray served in the Royal Navy. He learned Russian and was assigned to wireless telegraphy duties and covert operations. After his National Service he went to work as a librarian in the West of Scotland until 1960, when he emigrated to Canada to join his brother and sister in Vancouver. Here he continued his education at the University of British Columbia where he received his Bachelor of Arts (1963 Russian Major), followed by a Master of Arts in 1965 in Slavonic Studies.
During this time Murray also applied his considerable musical talents to the Vancouver folk music scene. He took over the organisation of the Folk Song Circle from Phil and Hilda Thomas and Al and Jeanie Cox and began playing with a fellow folkie, and fine artist, Kirsty Kincaid.
As Jon Bartlett remembers:
He and Kristin sang and played together, she on banjo and he on guitar, played “Vladivostok-style” in open tuning on his lap. I well remember their duets such as “the Gairdner Chiel” and “The Crookit Bawbie”…
In the mid-sixties a group was formed called “The Ad Hoc Singers”. Its members (Murray and Kristin, Fred Muelchen, David Browne, Jean Strachan, Marg Shand and me) opened the Folk for some time, and also performed at hospitals and old peoples’ homes. The Shoolbraid’s house on 14th Avenue was often the scene of some extraordinary parties. I was invited to move in in 1970, when I began attending UBC. I well remember watching late-night horror films on their little (probably 12”) TV, and using their extensive library to complete the weekly acrostics in the old “Saturday Review”…
In 1972 on my return from Australia I discovered that at the previous AGM the Folk had decided to start a monthly magazine, edited by Murray. Nothing had as yet been done, so after some chivying by me, Come All Ye finally emerged. I was named as Editorial Assistant, but “general dog’s body” would be more accurate. The magazine was typed on stencils, run through a Gestetner, folded and pressed.
A further, interesting, addition to his musical biography is added here from the introduction to Murray’s book of Scottish dance tunes, Leslie Braes, written by the Editor, Francis Mitchell:
Murray was born…to a third generation dancer and teacher, William Beath Murray Shoolbraid, to whom this book of Scottish dance music is dedicated…
After immigrating to Canada in 1960 and joining the local Scottish community, Murray began addressing haggises and giving “Immortal Memories” at Burns Suppers, singing Scots songs, and composing nearing 400 tunes in thirty years. He played piano and wrote arrangements for a succession of S.C.D. [Scottish Country Dance] bands including “Schiehallion”, the “Teuchters”, his own Vancouver Ceilidh Band, and more lately with the Victoria-based band “Barley Bree”.
In fact it was a confusion of this latter band with a similar named Irish group which performed out of Halifax in the 70’s-80’s that led to our chance meeting on Robbie Burns day in January, 1992, and which subsequently gave rise to the production of this book. Nancy Roach, enroute to the South Pacific via Victoria accompanied by the undersigned, played at the local Burns Supper and dance as a guest of Barley Bree. Two days later the idea for the book was germinated. Begun in late 1992, Leslie Braes has been two years in the making.
In 1966 he and Kirsty (now Kristin) were married and, in the same year, he was accepted into the faculty of Simon Fraser University where he taught Linguistics, and Russian Language and Literature. During the 1970’s Murray and Kristin’s sons were born, Roderick in 1971 and Malcolm in 1973 and both of them continue to make music. Murray remained at Simon Fraser until 1977, when a dispute over his Ph.D. thesis caused him to leave.
For three years he operated a children’s bookstore in Vancouver “The Cat and the Fiddle” and in 1980 the Shoolbraids moved to Salt Spring Island in order to pursue their interests in writing, and to compose and, on Kristin’s part, to develop her art. Between 1980 and 1985 Murray was also visiting Professor of Canadian Folklore in the Canadian Studies Programme at Simon Fraser University.
Murray was a prolific writer whose works covered an enormous variety of subjects: in 1977 Indiana University Press published his The Oral Epic of Siberia and Central Asia, [reprinted in England by the Curzon Press, 1997] and in 1994 he published his Leslie Braes, a collection of original Scottish-style tunes. Several articles were published in Slavic studies journals, together with many others devoted to folksong, in Come All Ye, the periodical of the Vancouver Folk Song Society between 1972 and 1977 and in Canada Folk Bulletin from 1978-80. These were complemented by further notes in the Bulletin of the Canadian Folk Music Society during the 1980’s; the notes of the September 1989 issue also included a couple of his tunes. Murray was an accomplished pianist and played with several Scottish Country Dance bands, including “Schiehallion” based in Vancouver until the 1990’s. He composed a few hundred country dance tunes, several of which were recorded, including those that were written especially for Scottish Country Dances devised by his sister Mary Brandon, now of Los Angeles.
Murray was made an Honorary Life Member of the Vancouver Folk Song Society, he was on the board of the successor to the Canadian Folk Music Society: the Canadian Society for Musical Traditions, and he was a member of the Society for Folk Narrative Studies. He was a founding member of the British Columbia Folklore Society (BCFS), and the editor of its journal, B.C. Folklore, from 1995 until 2010. During this period, he published a great many articles and reviews in both B.C. Folklore and Pacific Folklore Studies, (PFS: an occasional journal of the BCFS). The scope of these papers continued to illustrate Murray’s Slavic scholarship as well as his very real concerns on censorship and the prudery of society. In this last respect he corresponded extensively with other scholars, notably Gershon Legman (1917-1999), best known for his books The Rationale of the Dirty Joke (1968) and The Horn Book: Studies in Erotic Folklore and Bibliography (1964), and Ed Cray (1933-2019), famous for his The Erotic Muse: A Completely Uncensored Collection of the Songs Everyone Knows and No One Has Written Down Before (1969). Their close association is particularly illustrated by the foreword that Ed wrote for Murray’s The High-Kilted Muse. Peter Buchan and his Secret Songs of Silence (University Press of Mississippi, 2010). Among his papers published in Pacific Folklore Studies are Even the Naughty Bits; On the Preservation of the Integrity of Folklore and Folkloristics (PFS No.2, 2015), ALTAI-BUCHAI, An Altai Epic (PFS No.3, 2015) and Er Soghotokh, A Yakut Epic from the far north of Siberia (PFS No.4 2016). Murray wrote in-depth studies of the rhyme Mary Had a Steamboat (BCF 15:46) and The Glenwhorple Highlanders (BCF 20:42), and a collection of his papers was published in the Special Issue of B.C. Folklore (No.25.5, 2013) particularly as a vehicle for his: Folklore: Songs, Society and Censorship, that used Scottish bawdy songs as a focus.
About himself Murray wrote,
Works in progress: Translations (with notes) of the Turkic folk epic Kogutei (from the Russian ed. of 1935)]; Bairnsangs, a compilation, mostly from printed sources, of Scottish children’s rhymes; Census, an index of Scottish songs, music and verse; Musa Proterva, an anthology of Scottish bawdy songs; Vade-mecum, an attempt at a companion to Scottish literature and music; and an edition of Peter Buchan’s manuscript Secret Songs of Silence [published 2010 as The High-Kilted Muse; U of Miss/Elphinstone Inst.]. A more popular-style projected book is on the Burns Supper; and another academic one on Russian folklore (with an anthology of specimens).
(little blurb for selling things on eBay)
I have been reading and collecting books for sixty years, concentrating, because of my Scottish birth, on Scots literature and music (being something of a composer). But I also am into languages and folklore, and have compiled some reference works [unpublished to date] on these topics: what I call Census of Scottish Songs (a bibliographical index to words and music), a Vade-Mecum to Scots Literature and Music (in dictionary form), and a scholarly collection of Bairnsangs, Scottish children’s rhymes. I am really a researcher by nature and, armed with my extensive library in several languages, have provided quick answers as well as detailed ones to many a question. I have written about 400 tunes, mostly in the form used for Scottish country dancing, many of them commissioned.
Things I should dilate upon in my memoirs: music in the family [dance, etc.]; pre-war days; memories of St Andrews; then naval experience. Civvy street and my first job with Lanark County Library. Living in the west of Scotland – Glasgow, theatres and cinemas. The Mitchell Library; antiquarian bookshops. Ballads & Blues Club. Norman Buchan. Collecting folksongs. Tape recording. My first girlfriend; pals in Bellshill: Leslie Wink, aka Bucket, and family (songs from Grumpaw). Break with g-f Elisabeth; death of Bucket; decision to emigrate to join sis & bro in Vancouver.
And the rest is…
Bibliography. Only singular publications and major papers are given here, although some of the latter are nevertheless quite short. Almost every issue of BCF includes Murray’s notes and reviews, and most also include his brief essays on one topic or another.
(1975) The Oral Epic of Siberia and Central Asia. London: The Curzon Press Ltd., and Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Indiana University Publications; Uralic and Altaic Series Vol.111.
(1994) Leslie Braes. Scottish Dance Music. Halifax: Fiddlehead Publications.
(1996) “Censorship & Folklore”. BCF 4. Cobble Hill: BCFS
(1997) “Forgery, Misappropriation, Aesthetics, and suchlike”. Also, “Julia’s Reel” (tune). BCF 6. Cobble Hill: BCFS
(1997) “Definition of Folktale (and Marchen, Myth, Jest)”. BCF 7. Cobble Hill: BCFS.
(1998) “Selection of Russian Proverbs” and “Bibliography of Slavic Folklore” and “Survey of Russian Folklore”. BCF 8. Cobble Hill: BCFS.
(1999) “Er Soghotokh. [A Yakut epic, from the far north of Siberia]”. BCF 12. Cobble Hill: BCFS.
(2000) “Index to Sokolov, Russian Folklore”. BCF 13. Cobble Hill: BCFS.
(2002) “Scottish Songs in B.C.” BCF 17. Central Saanich: BCFS.
(2003) “Colcannon Revisited”. BCF 18. Central Saanich: BCFS.
(2005) “The Glenwhorple Highlanders”. BCF 20. Central Saanich: BCFS.
(2008) “Russian Erotic Folklore”. BCF 21. Central Saanich: BCFS.
(2010) The High-Kilted Muse. Peter Buchan and his Secret Songs of Silence. Edited by Murray Shoolbraid with a Foreword by Ed Cray. University Press of Mississippi and Elphinstone Institute, University of Aberdeen.
(2011) “The Closet On The Stair: A Toonheid Idyll”. BCF 23. Central Saanich: BCFS.
(2013) Dances with a Difference. The Los Angeles collection devised by Mary S. Brandon, with Music by Murray Shoolbraid, Muriel Johnstone and Others. TAC Books [B1547].
(2014) “Cinderella skipping rhyme” [from Murray’s fieldwork.] BCF 27. Central Saanich: BCFS.
(2015) Even the Naughty Bits; On the Preservation of the Integrity of Folklore and Folkloristics Central Saanich: British Columbia Folklore Society. Pacific Folklore Studies No.2.
(2015) ALTAI-BUCHAI, An Altai Epic. Told by N. U. Ulagashev Translated by Alexander Smerdov Edited by A. L. Koptelov Translated from the Russian and with Additional Notes. Central Saanich: British Columbia Folklore Society. Pacific Folklore Studies No.3.
(2016) Er Soghotokh, A Yakut Epic from the far north of Siberia. Translated by Katherina Otto. Translated from the Russian and Edited with Additional Notes. Central Saanich: British Columbia Folklore Society. Pacific Folklore Studies No.4.
(2016) The Emigrant Scot. Dances devised by and for Mary Brandon, with music by Murray Shoolbraid. TAC Books [B2097].
An honest man here lies at rest,
The friend of man, the friend of truth,
The friend of age, and guide of youth:
Few hearts like his, with virtue warm’d,
Few heads with knowledge so inform’d;
If there’s another world, he lives in bliss;
If there is none, he made the best of this.
Mike Ballantyne
Central Saanich
April 2020