Canny Tales Fae Aberdeen

Scottish Country Dance Instruction

CANNY TALES FAE ABERDEEN (J8x32) 3C (4C set) Harry Rhodes Snowdon Book 4

1- 8 1s cross RH, cast 1 place and turn RH
9-16 1s dance reels of 3 across (Lady with 2s and Man with 3s) ending 2nd place opposite sides
17-24 1s set and ¾ turn LH while 2s+3s cross RH and set, 1s set and ¾ turn LH while 2s+3s change places on sides RH and set
25-32 1s dance diagonal R&L

(MINICRIB. Dance crib compiled by Charles Upton, Deeside Caledonian Society, and his successors)

Dance Information

Canny Tales Fae Aberdeen, by Allan Junior, was a joke book of the kind popular in the late 1920s.

It was published in 1929 as was John Joy Bell's "Hoots", Junior's "Aberdeen Again" and Sir Harry Lauder's "My Best Scotch Stories". Canny Tales was part of a series sporting tartan covers and published by Valentine And Sons of Dundee.

Here is one of the shorter jokes of Canny Tales to give you a flavour. It is called "What For":

Another Aberdonian contemplating a departure from this mundane sphere, visited a Chemist's and asked for 3d. worth of arsenic.
"What for?" queried the assistant.
"Tuppence!" replied the Aberdonian.

The author/compiler of the book advises us that the collection of jokes are mostly from the records of a secret club. His preface describes the club's origins:

Unknown to the word at large, and to very few, even in the Granite City itself, a club exists in Aberdeen whose main function is the manufacture of stories against themselves and their fellow citizens. It was founded by an Aberdonian (of/from Aberdeen) who discovered that some of his English friends believed anything and everything he told them against the Scot in general and his townsmen in particular. The appreciative laughter nerved him to further efforts and so he gathered round him a company of kindred spirits.

According to Christine Davies in "The Mirth Of Nations" such joke tellers are "making fun of the very essence of Scottishness and yet they are in no sense denying their own Scottish identities; on the contrary they are proclaiming it".

"Canny" is Scots for "careful".

Aberdeen - Information Video

Canny Tales Fae Aberdeen

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