Annie's Story

Annie Shirer was a prolific collector of Scots lyrics, contributing significantly to the Rymour Club and the Greig-Duncan Collection, enriching our cultural heritage with her remarkable work.

A Remarkable Cultural Contributor

Preserving Scottish Literary Heritage

Her dedication to collecting Doric songs helped document and celebrate the rich tapestry of Scottish culture through her invaluable contributions to the arts.

ABOUT ANNIE SHIRER FROM VARIOUS SOURCES

RYMOUR CLUB VOL 3 - Inception and history of the Rymour Club
P197 Among the corresponding members elected at the opening of the 1910-1 session were the Duchess of Sutherland, who sent, as her first contribution, a voluminous collection of games and rhymes gathered from the schoolchildren of Helmsdale; and of still more significance for the work of the Club, Miss Annie Shirer of Mintlaw, the dweller in a “but-and-ben” cottage in Buchan, whose extraordinarily rich and varied collection of folklore, gleaned by herself, came afterwards with almost monthly regularity. Nothing was greeted with greater interest or afforded better pickings than the “budgets” of the “Marchioness of Mintlaw”.
P201 “Waefu’ news” came early in the year of the death of the Club’s most copious contributor, Annie Shirer of Mintlaw, of whom it is truly stated in the Minutes that during the eight years she had been a corresponding member she had sent “the largest and most varied collection of folklore, songs, and stories ever collected in this or any other period by any young Scotswoman”.

Scottish Life and Society Vol 10, Oral Literature and Performance Culture
Ian A Olsen, p400 "Greig and Duncan made maximum use of such ‘star’ resources as Bell Robertson or Annie Shirer."

Buchan Land Of Plenty by Robert Smith
Chapter Seven is about The Causeways Of Kininmonth and Loch Cottage where Annie Iived.
The Muckle and Little Causeways were built and paved over old tracks ‘by’ the Comyn Earls of Buchan to carry travellers inland to Buchan across the boggy acres of swamp and moss between Crimond and Old Deer, from the Comyn port at Rattray. The line passed ‘the gloomy loch’ of Kininmonth, but when Smith walked the path in the 1990s he said this.
‘The farms on the road to Crimond had names that were reminders of the old Causeway – Corsend and Corse Farm – and further on others seemed to point the way to the Loch of Kininmonth. Lochills was on my left, Loch Croft and Loch Cottage on my right, but there was no sign of the Loch itself.’
Smith learned from Bill Allan of Corse Farm that rushes from the loch had been harvested ‘to make thatch for thackit hoosies, but at the end of the last war a ditch was dug by POWs and the loch was drained’.

ANNIE SHIRER (1887-1915)
One doughty but little remembered champion of Doric language and tradition was Miss Annie Shirer of Kininmonth, who collected several hundred traditional rhymes and songs of the Mintlaw area, sharing 260 of them with collector Gavin Greig who dubbed her ‘a Kininmonth lassie’ when publishing her contributions in the ‘Buchan Observer’. She shared 130 more rhymes and riddles with the Rymour Club of Edinburgh, who published them 120 years ago as ‘Rhymes From Mintlaw District’, saying they were selecting only some of her ‘large and remarkable collection’. Annie died aged 38 in 1915, and her great treasury of Doric language and culture was lost in ‘two family clearouts’.

Jim Shirer said ‘As a boy I spent my summer holidays at Eastloch Hills Kininmonth. I was allowed to rake through a box called Annie’s Kist. In this box were innumerable items from bygone days. Names I remember now meant nothing to me then, names like Peter Buchan, Gavin Greig, Jessie Saxby and John Stuart Mackie, places such as Shetland, Dysart, Edinburgh and even Whitehill New Deer, a mere twelve miles away were wondrous places to a young boy. This collection of poems and sayings is based on a small part of the collections of Annie Shirer, a cousin of my grandfather James Shirer (1856-1934) and are totally separate from the massive collection of material she gave to Gavin Greig.

‘Annie was born in Atherb, in the parish of New Deer, the illegitimate daughter of William Shirer (1826-1906) who was known as Auld Cyarnie, he farmed at Cairncummer Auchnagatt, and one of his servants Jessie Fiddes. It took me years to find her birth, as she was registered as Annie Innes Fiddes. As a baby she was taken to be brought up by my great grandparents Kenneth McLean Shirer (1822-1913) and Margaret Clarke (1835-18920) at Cairncummer.

‘Annie and her cousin Maggie Shirer, her senior by ten years, were dressmakers, and my aunt Mary often spoke of a lot of people visiting Loch Cottage at Kininmonth where the women got fitted. She also mentioned that Annie “raked the countryside” collecting various songs and poetry for Gavin Greig.
‘Annie was also a member of the Rymour Club in Edinburgh, a group of people interested in preserving the historical songs and literature of Scotland. This is obviously how Annie got in touch with some of the notable authorities in the field, who not only wrote to her but visited her at Kininmonth.

‘Of particular interest was her friendship with Millie, Duchess of Sutherland, another enthusiast, and daughter of the Earl of Roslyn, and in one volume of the “Transactions of the Rymour Club” we find Annie described as “The Marchioness of Mintlaw”.’ Jim Shirer

From The Greig-Duncan Collection, Vol 8