Galoshins remembered

the long version

Galoshins was a seasonal folk drama learned orally and performed, mostly by boys, in people's houses. It took place on Old Year's Night or on Halloween in the south of Scotland at the very end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. The drama took the form of a fight, sometimes with 'swords', and then a 'doctor' perfomred a comic turn in bringing the injured party back to life. These oral reminiscences were collected for the School of Scottish Studies Sound Archive from people in Melrose, Morebattle, Hawick, Westruther, Biggar, Muirkirk, Kirkcowan, Newton Stewart, Armadale, Falkirk, Camelon, Dennyloanhead and Kippen.