November 2025 saw the return of the Library Collecting Competition. This was the third year we’ve run the competition, and once again we received some great entries. We’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone who…
In this blog, Learning & Engagement Manager Ross Christie embarks in an adventure around the unexpected sounds of scotland, from pipes to pop and folk to funk. From These Parts: Scotland, Art and Identity explores the…
Merry Christmas one and all! For Christmas Day, we have chosen this medieval carol which finds the baby Jesus born in Bethlehem, and a golden star shining brightly overhead: “þe sterr’ hym schon boþe nyзt & day to lede…
Tonight, being Christmas Eve, many will indeed be welcoming in Christmas and hopefully much joy, as captured in the jolly carol recorded by W.T. Stead as “A Christmas Song”: Now thrice welcome Christmas! Which brings…
The tale unfolding in verse today, centred upon Adam disobedience in plucking an apple from the tree, is preserved in just one manuscript. Happily, that manuscript is our old friend ms Sloane, and Wright has duly…
Though early modern students at St Andrews were expected to live beneath one college roof, and eat at a common table, the presbyterian tradition, and students and masters pleading poverty, precluded any great Christmas…
Today’s advent door opens onto winters of yesteryear spent in University Hall, the University of St Andrews’ first residence for women students. The records of the “Dinna Forget” club, an informal social group of…
“It is most remarkable”, declares an aghast J.R. Planché in his ‘Cyclopædia of costume’ (1876 – 1879, rf GT510.P5), “that these most graceful and effective ornaments appeared to have been utterly ignored by all races…
Reving up at the starting line of the whacky-carol races is this bawdy drinking song, titled simply “Old Norman Carol”. Included in the collection by W.T. Stead, the editor does not give us any further context for…
Taken from a late-fifteenth century book of hours, this beautiful illustration shows the annunciation, the scene recounted in the gospel of Luke when Mary is visited by an angel and told she would give birth to God…