Nell Hannah: Aye Singin an Spinnin Yarns

Nell Hannah was born in rural Aberdeenshire in 1920 and grew in Turriff, where her family scraped a meagre living as domestic and farm servants. After the outbreak of World War Two, Nell and her sister Margaret moved with their mother to Perthshire, where all three got jobs at the Stanley Mill. At the time, it was running full tilt to produce webbing for military requirements and despite long hours and austere conditions; Nell recalls her years as a mill lassie as being memorably happy. In conversation with folklorist Margaret Bennett and long-time friend and fellow-singer, Doris Rougvie, Nell shares a life-time of reminiscences and songs. In recalling the hey-day of an industry that shut down in the 1980s, she constructs an oral history of life in war-time Perthshire. Then, following life’s paths with its twists and turns, Nell tells how, at the age of sixty-nine, she discovered her gift of singing and entertaining. Having made her first recording, a cassette, at the age of seventy, and her fifth, a CD, at the age of 90, Nell can hold an audience in the palm of her hand.