1613 articles found

December 7th – Singing like a bird

Perusing popular lyrics of bygone decades suggests that, unlike the carols with which we are more familiar today, many traditional carols eschewed wintery scenes and snow for verdant abundance and tropical colour. The…

December 5th – It’s snow joke

Here’s a wee verse from a book of children’s rhymes by Hamish Hendry, from 1897, with illustrations by Alice. B. Woodward. “We made a man all by ourselves; we made him jolly fat; We stuck a pipe into his face and on…

December 3rd – Nautical or nice…

Today’s choice is taken from the charmingly titled “The poets’ Christmas: a collection of carols, poems, and plays for Christmastide. With a plea for a village drama”, by W. T. Stead (1890). Seemingly on a mission to…

December 2nd – Carolling at St Andrews

The St Andrews student newspaper “College Echoes” from December 1925 provides what is simply described as a “traditional carol”: “Carol, carol, merrily, Christ is born for us today Christ is come on earth to stay.…

Advent Calendar 2025

When dark mornings bring the first glimmer of frost, bare branches shudder in the cold wind, and dusk settles in after lunch, it can mean but one thing – time for this year’s University Collections advent calendar! So…

‘Unhappy St Andrew’s Day’?

St Andrew’s day (30th November), historically a feast day for Andrew the apostle, officially became a bank holiday in Scotland in 2007. Previous blogs have celebrated Scotland’s patron saint by looking at some of the…

Libraries Winter Hours 2025

The Christmas vacation and inter-semester break are almost here. To try to help you plan-ahead, our revised opening hours can be found below. These include some additional opening hours during the revision period, as…