Jock's Jocks: Voices of Scottish Soldiers from the First World War
Author: Jock Duncan
Edited by Gary West
Paperback. Published 2019 by NMSE - Publishing Limited. Co-published with EERC.
Between the 1930s and 1980s, folk singer Jock Duncan interviewed around 60 veterans of the First World War, mainly in his native North East of Scotland. He then spent many years transcribing his interviews in the rich variations of Scots in which they were spoken. The result is a unique and illuminating collection of first-hand witness testimony to the horror, and humour, of the Great War.
Transcribing the recordings word for word on an old manual typewriter over 2000 Sunday mornings, Jock's labour of love has gifted us a truly unique glimpse of the lives of those who left the farms of Aberdeenshire, Angus and Perthshire for the fields of Flanders and France and the shores of Gallipoli." It goes on to say: "The stories of 59 men from 14 regiments, including the Gordon Highlanders and the Black Watch, are told in rich and earthy Scots dialects, and are shared here for the first time.
