Pete Coe

‘It’s nice to be back in Crail… at my age it’s nice to be anywhere’ quipped Pete as he took the stage at

the Community Hall. He’s going be 80 next March and chronologically he fits neatly into the

‘veteran’ category. An oft bandied term but let’s tie its meaning down a bit. My dictionary says…

‘having or showing exceptional knowledge, experience, or skill in a field of endeavour’

Aye, that’s Pete alright, a master of his craft, with a lifetime of songs to sing and tales to tell.

He straps on his melodeon and we’re off with ‘Penny for the Ploughboys’ a Colin Cater song

describing the visits by the ploughboys and the Morris dancers at the turn of the year, as the fields

are prepared for the new crops. Something of a lament for the old ways, now mostly overtaken by

machine farming. Being a former city dweller, the season cycle, the harvest, the crop, the ploughing

meant little. Living in Crail now, embraced by the fields and fields of Scotland’s larder, the words of

the song have resonance and meaning; I pay attention.

‘I’ll get this off me chest’ … heralds Vic Gammon’s hilarious monarchy skewering ‘Kings and Queens

of England’…

‘Singing, Rule Britannia, Britannia waives the rules

Kings, Queens, Jacks and Knaves and Tyrants

Cheats and Fools’

A multi-instrumentalist is our Pete, a ‘John Barleycorn’ variant is bouzouki accompanied, ‘The Lily of

the West’ has banjo. Of course, Pete doesn’t miss the chance to take the mickey out of the banjo as

an instrument. It’s funny how anyone who picks up a banjo suddenly become apologetic!

There’s a great tale about the song ‘The Footman’, written by one Emerson Woodcock and collected

by Edith Fowke, released on an album ‘Far Canadian Fields’. The song has clear English references

‘There lived a man in Devonshire…’ but none of the folk singers in England knew it, it just turned up

in Canada. How fascinating. Listening to Pete weave the tale really illuminates the nature of folk’s

living tradition, how songs move around from mouth to ear, their DNA mutating, variants springing

up in the strangest places, the idea of this wiggly almost-life-form tickles the mind.

And to intimate that Pete name-dropped would do him a disservice, names of the folk greats do

come and go in his tales, he knew them, they knew him… he’s a veteran. We’re lucky to share the

room with him.

It’s Pete’s last tour in Scotland, as he says, he’s 80 next March and, although eventide Horlicks, pipe

and slippers surely won’t be yet beckoning, he’s giving himself a well-earned break from the road.

All I can say is, we were lucky to catch him, I left the hall enriched!

Words by Callum MacLeod, photos by Mary O’Sullivan.