Traditional folk ballads are rarely accused of abundant good cheer. For over twelve years, the Scots-Irish quartet The Furrow Collective has mined the deeper, darker, and sometimes more macabre seams of the repertoire with passion. Yet, stepping onto the Traverse Theatre stage for Edinburgh Tradfest, they proved that musical misery can be carried off without leaving an audience ready to jump off North Bridge.
The quartet—Lucy Farrell (viola, saw, voice), Rachel Newton (harp, voice), Emily Portman (banjo, concertina, voice), and Alasdair Roberts (guitars, voice)—excel at setting a distinct, unhurried mood. Their virtuosity lies entirely in the architecture of their arrangements, maximizing a diverse acoustic toolkit to serve meaningful narrative with tuneful authenticity.
Act I: Lunar Lore and Metropolitan Misadventures
Drawing from their latest album, We Know by the Moon, they opened with a richly orchestrated ‘May Song’ series. The melancholic traditional English tune ‘The Moon Shines Bright’ established a solemn pacing before sliding into ‘The Moon Shined on my Bed Last Night’ (as preserved by Jeannie Robinson), given an Appalachian edge thanks to Robert’s deft fingerpicking.
Yet, stepping onto the Traverse Theatre stage for Edinburgh Tradfest, they proved that musical misery can be carried off without leaving an audience ready to jump off North Bridge.
The first act benefited from Newton’s lead on the traditional ‘Many’s the Night’s Rest’, found in the Lucy Broadwood collection. It was delivered with a country sway that offered a welcome moment of melodic sweetness. Visual storytelling arrived via the group’s lovingly hand-crafted ‘Crankie’ (moving panorama) for the Gaelic waulking song ‘Kishmul’s Galley’, followed by a community singalong of the gentle ‘I’d Rather Be Tending My Sheep’ (sourced from Ruth Tongue’s The Chime Child). To close the first act on a spirited note, Roberts led the 19th-century broadside ‘Apprenticed in London’ with a roguish energy, providing a jaunty metropolitan contrast to the preceding rural gloom.
Act II: Swelling Harmonies and the “Porkiest” Song
Returning for the second half, the Collective continued to demonstrate their arrangement gift by using the 17th-century country dance tune ‘Emperor of the Moon’ to introduce a pithy rendition of Robert Burns’ ‘O, Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast’. This led into the traditional poisoning ballad ‘The Wild Wild Berry’, a haunting tale of death delivered “by the light of the hunter’s moon” and rich with swelling harmony. Here, Farrell’s mastery of the musical saw—an endangered instrument in the live wild—granted the song a crackingly weird, bluesy edge.
Having spent some time with the Collective by now, it was clear that Roberts might not be the most classically robust singer of the quartet, but he still provided the vital, anchoring bass notes for the trio of female voices. His talent lies in an unadorned knack for storytelling—a dry clarity that serves the lore better than any vocal acrobatics could. His driving delivery on the traditional ‘Outlaw of the Hill’ was matched by the grimly fascinating ‘King Henry’, a traditional ballad concerning a monarch forced to feed his hounds and horse to an insatiable fiend—prompting this reviewer to wonder as to why the King didn’t simply “stop feeding this witch.” (The answer is, of course, that feeding your furry friends to a crone gets you a hot new bride – what a life lesson haha).
I digress.
A Meditative Close
Overall, If there is a minor critique, it is that a little more variation—the inclusion of something actively merry rather than simply “not maudlin”—would help balance the pacing of such a long show.
This led into the traditional poisoning ballad ‘The Wild Wild Berry’, a haunting tale of death delivered “by the light of the hunter’s moon” and rich with swelling harmony. Here, Farrell’s mastery of the musical saw—an endangered instrument in the live wild—granted the song a crackingly weird, bluesy edge.
However, it seems the Furrows heard my silent prayers, as they swept into a closing trilogy beginning with the pristine, a cappella romance of Lal Waterson’s ‘Every Day is Three’. It was my spine-tingling favourite number of the night, allowing their shared instinct for the unfolding tale to shine before they launched into the rhythmic drive of ‘Wild Hog in the Woods’ (a traditional Appalachian variant of the medieval Sir Lionel). The arrangement of this “porkiest” of songs traded an ethereal crawl for a nice bit of foot-stomping momentum.
They closed with an encore of Peggy Seeger’s ‘Oh, Watch the Stars’—a simple, celestial lullaby of American spiritual origins—which proved a close second for the night’s best moment. It was a lovely finale that finally escorted the Traverse audience out into the night on a wave of mellifluously meditative calm.
Featured Image: The Furrow Collective – Edinburgh Tradfest 2026 – Image by Will Quinn
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