Search

A Pair o Nicky Tams

Date 26 December 1959
Track ID 55300
Part 1

Track Information

Original Track ID

SA1960.142.B3

Original Tape ID

SA1960.142

Summary

A comic bothy song in which a ploughman celebrates his nickie-tams [leather thongs tied around the knees]. He wears these during his first position, as baillie loon [helper to the cattleman], then as third horseman. They even work well as improvised breast-straps [part of a horseman's harness]. They are not only very useful at work, but also admired by the woman he is courting, though he is unco sweir [very reluctant] to take them off in church when she asks him to. He considers other possible professions, but will never forget the happy days when he wore his nickie-tams.

Item Notes

7 verses of 4 lines. A song by the famous bothy balladeer G. S. Morris (1876-1958).

'Nickie-tams' were leather thongs (or sometimes pieces of cord) tied below the farm worker's knee in order to keep the trouser legs from trailing in the mud (and allegedly to prevent rats and mice from crawling up the legs). The name derives from 'nickie' as an allusion to 'knickerbockers' (which were fashionable at the time) and 'taum' meaning 'a cord'.

See:
'Scotland Sings' (E. MacColl, 1953) p. 96
'101 Scottish Songs' (N. Buchan, 1962) pp. 48-49
'Kerr's Buchan Bothy Ballads' vol. 2 (G.S.Morris, J.S. Kerr, 1957) pp. 2-3
'Travellers' Songs from England and Scotland' (E. MacColl & P. Seeger, 1977) pp. 316-318
'The Scottish National Dictionary' (available online [[http://www.dsl.ac.uk/dsl/]], accessed 7 August 2009)

Language

Scots

Genre

Song

Collection

SoSS

Classification

R1875

Source Type

Reel to reel

Audio Quality

Fair