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Acornkister is aDoric song, generally a comic song, written during the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries, in the tradition of thebothy ballads.[1] The name refers to thecornkist (corn chest) used to measure oats sufficient to feed a plough horse on the farms of NortheastScotland at that time. The reason for the association was that it was assumed that the singers—or one of the listeners—sat on top of thecornkist while singing and kicked their heels against it in time to the music. Nowadays most cornkisters are known via recordings made by entertainers of the 1920s and 1930s such asWillie Kemp,G. S. Morris or by later imitators such asAndy Stewart.
While there is some overlap with the bothy ballads, in that they both often have the topic of farm life in the Northeast of Scotland, and that singers of one will generally also sing the other, there is a difference in that the cornkister was more likely to be written for themusic hall or for recording purposes, with theBeltona record label in particular recording many pieces.
The most famous cornkisters are:
but many others exist.
The bothy ballad was their song, set to the scraich of a wild fiddle or the clumsily-buttoned notes of a melodeon and the rhythmic thump of heavy, tacketed boots.
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