Here Come the Folk Clubs

It wis at a Rangers-Celtic match I’m sure ye’ll a’ hae mind
O’ the fighting and the cursing in the days o Aul’ Lang Syne
Noo Jamie was the boy ye ken wha stopped the hulla-baloo.
Intae the Pavilion he did slip afore the game wis due
Says Big McGrory: “I protest, that ba’ has an awfu sheen!
For one hauf it wis pented blue an the ither hauf wis green
“God’s truth” he said, “for boldness, that lad ye canna beat.”
For the mighty deed wis done by our hero, James McPhate
Baron James McPhate, tune Big Kilmarnock Bunnet, words Andrew Hunter
Ma wee laud’s a sojer, he works in Maryhill,
He gets his pey on a Friday night an buys a hauf-a-gill
Goes tae church on Sunday, hauf-an-oor too late.
He pu’s the buttons aff his shirt an pits them in the plate
Ma Wee Laud’s A Sodger, traditional
There was a lady in the north, I ne’er could find her marrow.
She was courted by nine gentlemen And a plooboy lad frae Yarrow
The Dowie Dens O Yarrow, traditional ballad
‘Twas poor Tom Brown from Glasgow, Jack Williams and poor Joe,
We were three daring poachers, the country well did know
At night we were trepanned by the keepers in the sand
And for fourteen years transported unto Van Dieman’s Land
The Poachers, traditional transportation ballad
My love he stands in yon chaumer door, combing doon his yellow hair.
His curly locks I like to see, I wonder if my love minds on me
Will ye gang love, an leave me noo? Will ye gang love, an leave me noo?
Will ye forsake your ain love true an gang wi a lass that ye never knew?
Will ye gang love? traditional

The above range of lyrics, all drawn from Norman Buchan’s ‘101 Scottish Songs’ - social comment, children’s fun, new national song, old ballad, broadside ditty, love song – show some of the song mix that became popular as folk clubs began to open and prosper around Scotland, and performers of professional standard began to develop. As did confidence and ability in songmaking, with political song lyrics taking a prominent place in the 1960s.
From 1959 through the 1960s the Scottish Folk Revival gathered strength. A new key source of songs appeared. Norman Buchan began a weekly ‘Bothy Ballads’ song column in the ‘Weekend Scotsman’ newspaper. In 1962 he gathered these and other songs into ‘101 Scottish Songs’, a small format book with a red cover that was dubbed ‘The Wee Red Songbook’. The range of songs is wide and well selected, most of them going quickly into the repertoire of young singers. Only a few of them had already appeared in the Bo’ness chapbooks.
In his Introduction Buchan says first, “The task of editing a small book of this kind is immense, for one is faced with the mass of Scottish song, perhaps the richest treasury of all Europe.” He explains that “firstly we had to reject ‘kailyardery’.” He seeks to change “the popular repertoire in a direction more suited to the needs of the present time”. He abandons piano accompaniments, instead indicating suitable guitar chords. Buchan thanks “all the members of the Rutherglen Academy Ballads Club who showed me that a love of the best in Scottish song can go hand in hand with a liking for guitar strumming, banjo-picking and American hoe-downs.”
Buchan had begun the Ballads Club in the Academy, the second folk club started in Scotland, in 1957, where he was a teacher. (The third club was the Edinburgh University Folk Society.) In concerts organised by him and Janey Buchan in Rutherglen, in Ballads And Blues nights in the Iona Community’s Clydeside premises on Glasgow’s Broomielaw, in concerts and ceilidhs the enthusiasm for song and singing was spread. Young singers were performing wherever they could corral an audience – social clubs, talent competitions, bingo halls, and especially clubs for the elderly.
In 1959 Janey and Norman Buchan asked a group of young singers to their home, and proposed the formation of a folk club open to the public. A committee was formed, but little progress made till Janey Buchan found a possible location, a large lunchtime eatery in the Trongate. The committee had by now dwindled to Drew Moyes and the author. On the first night enthusiasts came in herds, and the Glasgow Folk Club became the fourth folk club in Scotland and the first to operate as a weekly self-funding club. There were drawbacks. Singers had to stop in mid-verse when trams rattled past on the Trongate, until after a few weeks two young men brought in a mysterious setup of microphone, wires and boxes, and singers could conquer the trams. After a few weeks the club had its first guest, Jimmy MacBeath, who was paid a fee of £8, more than he’d ever before got from singing.
The singing backbone of the Glasgow Club was a ramshackle assembly of singers who shared a repertoire of political and other chorus songs through their participation in an ongoing 19 month long party that was held at Hamish Imlach’s house in Broomhill. Imlach, Josh and Sheila McRae, Jim McLean, Archie and Ray Fisher, Bobby Campbell, Jackie O’Connor and the author were known collectively as the ‘Broomhill Bums’. Another, more organised, ceilidh venue was the Blythman’s house on Balgrayhill where frequent ceilidhs had run since the mid-1950s. Jimmie Macgregor wrote in his appreciation of Blythman and the Balgrayhill ceilidhs in the ‘Scotsman’, “Some of the young people involved have gone on to become well-known and successful in the world of folk music – Matt McGinn, Archie Fisher, Robin Hall, Josh McRae, etc, but more significantly, many more gained a lifelong interest in their own traditions.”
Within two years of the opening of the Glasgow Folk Club the maker of this website went to work in Africa, and Drew Moyes moved the Folk Club to its own premises, to become the Glasgow Folk Centre in Montrose Street, where it ran several nights with visiting guest performers every week. There were instrument lessons during the day. Drew proceeded to open a network of other folk clubs in the Greater Glasgow area.

As I was walking one summer’s evening, a-walking doon by the Broomielaw
It was there I met with a fair young maiden, she’d cherry cheeks and a skin like snaw
The Bleacher Lassie O Kelvinhaugh
I love the lassies, Ah’m gaun tae wed them aa, when the broom blooms brawly on the bonnie Broomielaw
But in the meantime we’ll hae tae sail awa till the broom blooms brawly on the bonnie Broomielaw
I have a bonnie lassie, Brigton’s her address, and Jimmy Maxton’s written tae wish us baith success
He’s gaun tae get his hair cut just tae gie’s a new mattress, and I love my lassie, oh she’s fine
The Broom Blooms Brawly, Music Hall song
As I went out by Cardowan bings I heard a young man say, "Once I was a miner but they’ve ta’en my job away.
I used tae work the coalface of that mine ower the field, we always made our quota, we always got good yield.
But a man came from America, I curse him to this day. McGregor rationalised me and he’s ta’en my job away.
Ta’en My Job Away, tune and words John McCreadie

Ronnie Clark was drawn in. “I first heard a traditional song on the early evening UK country wide TV programme, ‘Tonight’. Rory and Alex McEwan, or Robin and Jimmie. There was little else available to choose from then, only Guy Mitchell. I then went round Glasgow record shops, seeking, learning more, finding people like Blind Lemon Jefferson.
“Two years later, in about 1962, I was chatting with a girl at work, she told me she went to a folk club, I went along to Drew Moyes’ Folk Centre in Montrose Street. That was it. I had found a set of rails to put myself on and learn a lot more. Hamish Imlach and Nigel Denver were the first singers I heard. My first interest was antiquarian, as for many, but this was something native to me as well, and I could identify with the history, and I could speak to the people delivering it.
“In 1963 or 4 we started the Grand Hotel Folk Song and Ballad Club at Glasgow’s Charing Cross. The idea was pushed by Geordie McIntyre, Carl MacDougall was brought in, he in turn brought in Ian Philip from Aberdeen. We had a policy, our view of what a traditional singer was. We brought the best guests, A L Lloyd, Ewan MacColl, Jeannie Robertson.
“We had political song nights, structured the night around that idea – Irish, French, Spanish, it didn’t matter. Lloyd and MacColl would make a point about singing political songs when they came. The local younger guys, like Peter Ross, Jimmy Ross, would give you a few of their songs. And older political songs – Harlaw, World War One, Jacobite songs. What songs are sung depends who is there. In a club, people pay hard cash, and have a set of expectations. You have to not change songs, but maybe introduce others to humour the house.”

The second song below was written in response to the first.
Oh where is the Glasgow where I used tae stey? The white wally closes done up wi pipe cley,
Where ye knew every neighbour frae first floor tae third
And to keep your door locked was considered absurd. Do you know the folk steyin next door to you?
The Glasgow That I Used To Know, tune traditional, words Adam MacNaughtan

Oh where is the Glasgow I used to know?The tenement buildings that let in the snow
Through the cracks in the plaster the cold wind did blowAnd the water we washed in was fifty below
We read by the gaslight, we had nae TV, hot porridge for breakfast, cold porridge for tea
Some weans had rickets and some had TB, aye, that’s what the Glasgow of old means tae me
Farewell To Glasgow, tune and words Jim McLean

“Matt McGinn would come and sing at the club, not as a paid guest, but always welcome to sing a few songs. I had great respect for him as a cobbler of songs. Nothing that will last forever, but songs on a general political theme that people could sing and were happy to sing with. Ironically I think Matt did not like folk song, but as a vehicle for him to cobble his own stuff. He never sang any folk songs himself, and he’d sometimes be very dismissive of the singing of people like Joe Heaney and MacColl. Matt McGinn and Danny Kyle have become legends. How does that happen? It is in part tied to an individual’s ability to promote themself. Which is their right, but don’t expect me to swallow it.
“Arthur Argo came to the club with Peter Hall. Arthur had a genuine interest in the music, not just in promoting himself. He was very important to the Revival at the time, he was a collector for a start, he was of the family of Gavin Greig, through his job in Aberdeen radio he got some good work out on radio. He created some good records, he was happy to tour and to sing songs without looking for anything in exchange. He was a nice human being. Arthur created ‘Chapbook’, Carl and Ian provided the West of Scotland aspect of the magazine.
“Geordie McIntyre was also important. He discovered singers - Duncan Williamson and Arthur Lochhead, who gave us a brand new version of ‘Lamkin’. The club waxed and waned. It was hard to keep up the enthusiasm, and by the 70s I had a family to bring up, a career to build, I faded from the scene.” Ronnie Clark
Later in the 1960s an informal venue became the centre of the Glasgow folk scene. Ye Olde Scotia Inn at the foot of Stockwell Street was next door to the closed Scotia Music Hall where Harry Lauder had had his first paid gig. Singing in the public bar of pubs was now legally allowed, and the left half of the long curving bar was a centre for 100 voice chorus singing. The right half of the bar was reserved for the local chapter of the motorcycle Hells Angels, who entered by a separate door from the folkies, and tolerated the noise to their left. At the far left of the bar was the Wee Back Room, where twenty early comers jammed themselves in and sang together. The Scotia had its own newspaper, co-edited by poet Freddie Anderson who would enter the pub and distribute cyclostyled copies of his latest political lyric.
Linked to the Glasgow scene were other clubs. Danny Kyle started one in Paisley. Members of the Cumbernauld Little Theatre started a club and ran concerts and classes.

Jim Brown lyrics
I felt so sad just standing there in a place I’d once loved well, now used without permission asked to store the very teeth of Hell
But all these folk who strive for peace, my heart went out to all of them, the struggle’s on, it mustn’t cease
I tell you now, as I told myself, that day upon the road
As I Walked On The RoadCome tae your dad, don’t stand in the cauld, a chill wind is blawin through Cumbernauld
Well, you’re feelin young but yur dad’s feelin auld, we’ll make a great team together
Bein on the dole is no much fun, times seem awfu bad
But no for you to worry, son, why, you’re just only a lad
Come To Your Dad
My old man in his day, to my brothers and me he used to say, "Never let them grind you down,
Build yer union strong and sound and the boss won’t get his way."
My Old Man

One key member was Jim Brown, a shipyard worker who had moved to Cumbernauld. In ‘Song And Democratic Culture In Britain’ Ian Watson says Brown developed a distinctive melodic guitar accompaniment style, and made songs that “exploit fully the medium of song through both text and melody, a commitment to democratic culture in songwriting, performance and practical organisation, a stubborn realism and an ambition to capture and activate a working-class public”. Watson devotes a whole chapter to Brown’s work, hoping to help “gain recognition for a songwriter who, by virtue of his social and artistic circumstances, remains unknown to a national public”.
The Folk Song Revival, the Lallans poetry movement and other outpourings of creative writing before and since in Scotland and other countries, produced other makers the equal of Jim Brown whose work deserved much better recognition and valuation than it got. Fortune does not always favour the talented over those assiduous in self-promotion. See what Pete Heywood has to say later about John Watt’s positive influence on the Scottish folk scene.
In its early days, the Glasgow Folk Club exchanged fraternal visits with the Edinburgh University Folk Society. One trip by the Glasgow club was on the flatback of an unladen coal lorry, and in Edinburgh they were entertained by a group that included Dolina MacLennan and Jean Redpath. A previous temporary venue in Edinburgh had been The Howff, organised during the Festival by visiting English singer Roy Guest. Other Festival time venues featuring folk song followed.
Dolina MacLennan became heavily involved in the ongoing Edinburgh folk scene. “I came to Edinburgh in 1957. The 18th of April 1958 was the date the University Folk Society opened, and I met Hamish Henderson that night. My friend Christine was going to a party, after the first night of Folk Soc. It was incredible. I didn’t understand it. It was the beginning – of the end! Without it I would have been very boring.” Dolina eventually took over as Folk Soc president. “I recently found a notebook from those days, with the entry, ‘New girl, Jean Redpath, sounds promising’.
“I was the only Gaelic folkie around when I came down to Edinburgh. There had been Kitty and Marietta MacLeod and Flora MacNeil. I sang everywhere, every political party thought I was one of theirs. In 1959 I started singing in the Waverley Bar on St Mary St, upstairs in the lounge. There was no singing allowed in pub bars in those days, no music allowed in Sandy Bell’s till later. We got other people started. I gave the Corries their first gig, at the Waverley, and showed them how to use the mike.

Ye ladies wha smell o wild rose, think ye for your perfume to whaur a man goes,
Think ye o the wives and the bairnies wha yearn for a man ne’er returned from huntin the sperm.
My Donald, Owen Hand
But no content wi howkin deid – a ploy that aye gets harder – They cast their een on livin folk an start committin murder.
But Reekie toon can sleep at last, the twa sall hunt nae mair –It’s the gallows tree for William Burke and a pauper’s grave for Hare.
Burke and Hare, Broadside Ballad
Dalry, Kilbirnie, Johnstone, Kilmarnock and Ayr, Glasgow, Coatbridge, Airdrie and the whole of Lanarkshire,
Falkirk, Fife and Gallowa and the Lothian men aw say that colliers should, like other men, but work eight hours a day.
Colliers’ Eight Hour Day

“We were singing the songs, but I didn’t quite understand what they meant. The folk scene was very left wing and very political in the beginning. Every night I had to sing the ‘Coronation Coronach’ and the ‘Wee Magic Stane’. That went totally out in the late 60s, early seventies. It got competitive. Before that, if you got a gig you brought other singers in, shared the performance and the fee.” Dolina MacLennan
Folk clubs in pubs began to spread. Nancy Nicolson came from Caithness to study, and was brought in by a friend. “My friend Dot said ‘Nancy, we are all gaun to the folk club’. ‘What’s a folk club?’ ‘Just come and you’ll see.’ It was the Crown Folk Club in Lothian Street, run by Archie Fisher, Owen Hand and Wattie Wright. I found it was what my own folk had been doin at home. I just sang the choruses. And to find people like Owen Hand who wrote his own songs, I thought, ‘That’s something!’”
Hand’s best known song was ‘My Donald’, about the whaling industry. Is it political? Nancy Nicolson thinks so. “It was not protest, but of course it was political, they had to go oot because they’d no ither job, the situation was far more dangerous than people should have been bein put into. But because the companies needed oil for the perfume for the ladies in the Strand, of course these boys had to die. Oh yeah?” Nancy Nicolson
John Greig came from Inverness to study in Edinburgh, and he found folk clubs. “The whole place was really awash with music. There was the Crown, the folk club of the University, which had different names and moved through lots of lifetimes. There was the Triangle, there was one in George Square. I met a friend of mine who had been 2 years in front of me in Inverness and had sung in a group, and we were going for a pint – and it all really came from that. He said ‘We’ll go to Sandy Bell’s’ and we met in Forrest Road and he says ‘This is Sandy Bell’s’ and I thought, ‘No it’s not, it’s the Forresthill Bar.’ The chances of getting in were not high, but once you did get in, there was very little you didn’t come across. Whether it was the people playing at the time or ‘Wow, Archie Fisher drinks in here!’ You suddenly realise you’re in a different world entirely.
“From there it really went through the University Folk Club. There was a guy called Abby Sale, an American. He was a Jewish guy who’d lived on the West Coast, lived in New York, had been all over and knew everybody, Jean Ritchie, all those people. He really got a hold of the Club and hammered it into shape, so it was a very good club. He also introduced the idea of getting a guest and making it pay, and he had very good taste in guests, so it did pay. It wasn’t the kind of club where they’d bring on a guy who could sing three songs, people would actually go and pay to see these guests.” John Greig
“We had money in hand, we decided we should pay singers. Dick Gaughan, Dolly MacLennan, Rod Paterson who used to sing Hamish Henderson songs wonderfully. We paid them £5, at that time they were semi-pro working artistes. Why not support them? We did a few more concerts than previously. We hired a location, and started a Fringe Festival Club. A wonderful endeavour. We were very sad when after three years it was time to leave. I now own a Folk Soc 50th anniversary T shirt.” Abby Sale
John Greig recalls, “I used to go with my tape-recorder and I think probably the first time I saw most people was in that club - they all came and played. I remember Jimmy Ross coming across with a big crowd of Glasgwegians, who were all singing. Glasgow was overtly political at that particular point, very much so. There was a lot to do with the SNP as well. In Edinburgh, I was getting up and singing, but it was all the stuff I’d learned in Inverness – I was the guy who introduced them to bothy ballads. But then you’d come across people like Hamish (Henderson) who was busy out there singing ‘We Are The D Day Dodgers’ and ‘Banks Of Sicily’, all that sort of stuff. “ John Greig
John Barrow, later an agent for Dick Gaughan and many others, had come to Edinburgh from Tyneside. “I bought a guitar in Edinburgh, I was in digs in the 60s with two students with lots of songs. At the Agricultural Society on a Wednesday night there would be a big circle of guys just singing. I was learning songs, and began to acquire political points of view, and Scottish songs, learning the history of something I'd never heard of before. I was busy studying to get a degree, bypassing student protests. Then I felt I should vote, and I voted on the left because I was conditioned by what was around me.
“During the 60s I ran the University Charities appeals concerts. Matt McGinn, politics seemed to seep out of him, he was the one guy at the time I'd call a political songwriter and singer. Dick Gaughan was not really a political singer then, not till Allende and Chile. There was a club at the Royal Terrace in 1967/8. Pub singers didn't go there, they were singing the jolly songs that would get across to an audience.
“Then the Vietnam War and ‘We Shall Overcome’ songs came in, but even then where I was, not much. Thank God I didn't get to Sandy Bells at that time or I might never have graduated. I looked for it two or three times, but I wasn't looking for the Forresthill Bar. I would have bumped into Hamish Henderson earlier.” John Barrow

Twa recruitin sergeants cam frae the Black Watch, tae merkits and fairs some recruits for tae catch
But aa that enlisted wis forty and twa. Enlist ma bonnie laddie, and come awa
For it’s over the mountains and over the main, through Giberaltar tae France and Spain
Pit a feather tae yer bunnet and a kilt abune yer knee. Enlist, bonnie laddie, an come awa wi me
Twa Recruitin Sergeants, old ballad
This is nae a sang o love, na, nor yet a sang o money. Faith, it’s naethin verra peetifu, it’s naethin verra funny
But there’s Hielan Scotch, Lowlan Scotch, butterscotch an honey. If there’s nane o them for aa there’s a mixture o the three
McGinty’s Meal An Ale, G S Thomson, bothy ballad
Tae get ma rooster hame I got onto a bus. I sat doon in a corner seat awa fae aa the fuss
The folk come crowdin on, I squeezed up tae the top. “Excuse me, madam,” I shouted,”ye’ve sat doon on ma
Cock-a-doodle-doo, it’s nothing to do wi you. It’s a jolly fine bird and it’s aa I’ve got
It’s ma cock-a-doodle-doo”
Cock-a-doodle-doo, music hall song
We shall overcome, we shall overcome. We shall overcome some day
Deep in my heart I do believe, we shall overcome some day
American freedom song
Achanachie Gordon he is but a man. Although he be pretty, whaur lies his free land?
Saltoun’s houms they lie bonnie, his tours they stand hie. Ye maun mairry Lord Saltoun, forget Achanachie
Achanachie Gordon, as sung by Joe Rae
I aince hid a lass, I likit her weel. I hate aa the people that spak o her ill
But whit have I gotten for aa ma great love?She’s awa tae be wed tae anither
I Aince Hid A Lass, as sung by Elizabeth Stewart

In the Central Belt folk song was being revived, but in Aberdeenshire the picture was of continuing life and vitality in the songs. Danny Couper explains. “Aiberdeen is different tae the rest o Scotland. Robbie Shepherd said there was no such thing as Revival singers. He was correct as far as Aiberdeen is concerned. Aiberdeen is made up of fishing and farming. Fishing has a living tradition of singing and choirs. There was a lively scene about the farming Bothy Ballads in Aiberdeen, there was ‘Bothy Nichts’ on TV, radio had ‘Down at the Mains’, a live thing was going on in Aberdeenshire. And where the travellers settled doon in agricultural communities, they were accepted there, the farmers were dependent on them for labour. In Fetterangus there are four or five traveller families, including the Stewarts.
“Another lively thread was there was a lot o instrumental dance bands playing. Jean Stewart of Fettercairn had her own dance band, with Elizabeth playing piano - Lucy Stewart the great ballad singer bade wi Jean in Fetterangus. Curly MacKay had a band, he was a traveller, he played in all the halls in Aiberdeen. I played in a band. When I was 19 I was playing wi a traditional jazz band and playin a bit of skiffle, the band was Bill Bruce an the Gaybirds. Before that I’d played wi another band, nae a jazz band. Bill Bruce was a seed merchant, we played in halls, with me singin ‘MacPherson’s Rant’ and Irish rebel sangs, learned frae mother and frae uncles, nae Revival songs frae books. Intertwined wi that wis the skiffle and the jazz. Ye’d Jimmy MacBeath, Davie Stewart, these people who in the 40s and 30s sang in the feein markets.
“What little influence I had, there was a pub in Aiberdeen, ‘P Peep’s Bar’ in Commerce Street. It’s proper name was the Commerce Bar, the sign over the door said ‘Commerce in, or ony wye ye like’. I’d a friend, at university, he also played with Bill Bruce, we started a singin evening in the pub. When we started it Arthur Argo cam doon. The place was packed. Arthur said ‘Why don’t we form a folk club?’ At the same time I was a member of the Young Communist League, a few of them were interested. One of them was a member of the Arnold Wesker Society, and wanted the club to be part of that [group of allied cultural local organisations throughout Britain]. Arthur was not keen. There was not real Communist Party influence, but CP people were part of the folk scene naturally. It was politically driven in Glasgow, but it didn’t need to be driven up here.
“When Hamish Henderson and Alan Lomax came here and they found Jeannie Robertson they styed wi the Lennoxes, the singer Annie Lennox, that’s her family. The Lennoxes understood the political significance of folk song, what it was about, that ye canna separate songs frae politics. They understood this. The Aberdeen Folk Club was supported by people in the CP, by fellow travellers, by left wingers. Peter Hall came here, and he and Marion got involved. Peter was involved in CND.
“So Aiberdeen was and is different, there’s a continuity and a mixture of influences. Ewan MacColl’s approach uses a dead tradition you can control. In Aiberdeen the tradition is live all the time. The travellers didn’t think of the old songs as folk songs, they sang them but they also sang country and Jimmy Rodgers songs.“I sing songs, I’m an Aiberdeen supporter, travel wi the team, they’re nae party supporters, nae CP, but I’ve had Arthur Johnstone up, and they love his songs. You wouldnae get that wi upper class or the middle fringe of Tories, English people, but ye get it in Scotland, Young Tories joining in.” Danny Couper
In Fife the best known clubs were St Andrews, The Elbow Room in Kirkcaldy, and the Dunfermline club. Dolina MacLennan says that she and Robin were the first guests, at the opening of the Dunfermline club. “At a party near Dunfermline we had met John Watt, he said ‘This is new’. He and Robin got together, John started writing songs, and started the club.” Watt went on to be a major songmaker in the Revival.
Fife punched above its weight in the Revival. Was it a generational thing, or the impetus of activity? In Aberdeen they were so occupied with the cornucopia of living tradition on their doorstep that they had little need to spread the word or to develop a strong songmaking movement. Fife had more clubs, and singers and songmakers who became active outside their home area.
Fife songwriter Rab Noakes says, “I was first aware of folk song through its commercial aspect – Robin and Jimmie, the White Heather Club. I went to St Andrews Folk Club, the people there were really interested in a wide range of things. “Young Davey Stewart, Rod Sinclair singing Scottish songs, Ewan MacColl songs from the Radio Ballads. Pete Shepheard was more interested in the older material, Jimmy Hutchison was singing songs learned from Jeannie Robertson. Other people coming in - Davie Craig, Artie Trezise – were welcomed.

Lyrics from Fife songmakers
Espana ye bled from Bilboa to Seville, while the ghosts of your dead, oh they walk the beaches still
So while you’re busy getting laid and you’re raising merry hell, think on what the price was paid for yer dirt cheap San Miguel
Owt For Nowt, John Watt
She’s just a Kelty clippie, she’ll no tak nae advice, it’s “Ach, drap deid, awa boil yer heid or ah’ll punch yer ticket twice”
Her faither’s just a waster, her mither’s on the game. She’s just a Kelty clippie but ah love her just the same
The Kelty Clippie, tune Maggie Cockabendy, words John Watt
I heard some men out talking on a street corner, and some of them were saying their lives were getting bad
I heard one of them saying, ”Friend, I can’t make any money”, and the friend replied, “Well, I think we’re being had”
Don’t Keep Passing Me By, Rab Noakes
I see you take your orders from above, the iron fist held in a velvet glove
And you always hurt the one you love. Would you break your sweetest vow
How can I believe you now
How Can I Believe You Now, Rab Noakes

“I got more deeply into Scottish tradition from hearing older singers, I was getting contact with the tradition. Now in the club I had a vehicle where I could write my songs in a different way. The Great Fife Road Show was about tradition and identity and new songs.
Young Davey Stewart heard about an English travelling show, we decided to do that. Our first outing was to Belfast in 1969. They wanted old Davie Stewart, and we built a show around him. Then we did a tour of East Anglia. 1970 was our first Scottish tour. It was all to do with song. John Watt’s songs were important in the show, all Fife related, very layered and deep.” Rab Noakes
John Greig tells about Inverness. “Inverness was really the source of a lot of it for me. There was a guy called Duncan MacLennan ran the folk club in Inverness until quite recently. Duncan had been to Aberdeen University, he’d known Jeannie Robertson well, he knew lots of people, and so I grew up with a proper folk club, with people who had the required attitudes of the time. One or two people were a bit older than me. Hamish Grant had sung with the Dubliners in the Aberdeen Concert Hall as their second act and he had a tremendous voice for bothy ballads and for big ballads. I didn’t think there was anything particularly strange about doing these things because from the age of 14 or 15 that’s all I was really interested in. Once I’d heard it, that’s what I wanted to do. That included the blues, I’d heard that, and Dylan coming along. It wasn’t just the Scottish music, it was everything, it was astonishing. I remember Dylan’s first LP coming out about 1963. I was in school, I’d wander round the town as you do, looking at the record stores and wander back to school again. Nothing else to do, no money, but I remember these things happening. So I had plenty of songs when I left Inverness, it wasn’t as if I had to come down [to Edinburgh] to learn songs.” John Greig
The Perth area benefited from the presence of teacher, singer, author, organiser, songmaker, collector, storyteller, promoter of the use of the Scots language and all-round powerhouse Sheila Douglas.

In the wee sma oors of mornin there was sudden blazin death, three hundred desperate miners ran and fought for a breath
Fire at Michael Colliery. Black smoke underground, sSix men dead in a pit of hell, and three who were not found
Michael Colliery
As I cam in by Peterheid, I saw it changing sairly o. For the tankers grey stand in the bay and the oil is flowin rarely o
The men o the north are aa gane gyte, aa gane gyte thegither o , As the derricks rise tae the northern skies the past is gane forever o
The Men O The North

There was perhaps less folk song activity in Dundee, though the songs of poetess Mary Brooksbank became staple fare in the Revival.

Oh dear me, the warld’s ill divided, them that work the hardest are aye wi least provided
But I maun bide contented,dark days or fine
There’s no much pleasure living affen ten and nine
Oh Dear Me, Mary Brooksbank

The key ‘acoustic’ songmaker to emerge from Dundee was Michael Marra, whose wonderful songmaking has some affinities with folk song, but ranges far wider. Re political protest, Dundonian Stuart McHardy says, “I was excited about CND, thousands of people demonstrated in Glasgow, a few dozen of us in Dundee. Similarly, in the 90s there was a massive Glasgow march against the Iraq war.”
London-based Ewan MacColl’s work was very influential in Scotland, through recordings and broadcasts, through his touring along with Peggy Seeger, through his flow of fine new-made songs, and through his work developing the skills and knowledge of younger singers in the Critics Group. Scots who at various times ‘studied’ with MacColl include Enoch Kent, Bobby Campbell, Bob Blair and Gordon MacCulloch. Others like Ray Fisher and Gordeanna McCulloch were involved in recording projects with MacColl.
Through the 1960s many folk clubs opened and folk song concerts became more frequent. Particularly popular Glasgow based singers included Josh McRae, Hamish Imlach, Alastair MacDonald who sang with the BBC TV orchestra at times, but always held Republican and ‘Stane’ songs in his repertoire, and Archie Fisher. Soon Matt McGinn came back from studying in the south. Other young Scots were developing their performance and songwriting skills, among them Glasgwegians John Martyn, Billy Connolly, and Fifer Barbara Dickson. Fewer singers emerged from Edinburgh at that time, but Owen Hand, Bert Jansch, and soon Dick Gaughan and the McCalmans became professional singers. Three of these very popular professional Revival singers, McRae, Imlach and McGinn, were particularly known for politically committed songs.
Glasgwegian Ronnie Clark says of the Grand Hotel Club, “The Holy Loch or Republican songs were very popular. There were factions within the audience and the singers – SNP, Communist, Scottish separatist – they showed it in how they structured their repertoire, how they introduced their songs. People sang the Clancy Brothers chorus songs, and people were always very happy to join in and raise their voices to make a noise with the Holy Loch songs. MacColl was very dismissive of the Holy Loch songs because they did not have the qualities that the English had managed to create in their peace songs. I thought this a stupid thing to say, he had a different perspective and he was a different being anyway.
“He considered we should write thought pieces as political songs. I think there is a purpose in the English perspective, but the Scottish songs were made to work on the street, to say ‘Don’t do that’.” We need a broader context to put political song into.” Ronnie Clark
Josh McRae’s intense involvement in and identification with the ‘Eskimos’ was reflected in his performance of peace and republican songs along with old ballads and American material. He and Hamish Imlach shared many stages, singing for whoever invited and paid them.

Cheap-Jack’s a millionaire, (a very nice feller). He wants tae send us up-the-stair (or doon tae the cellar)
But up the stairs we arnae gaun for Wall Street and the Pentagon., or Cheap-Jack the Millionaire
Cheap-Jack The Millionaire, tune Ma Maw’s A Millionaire, words Glasgow Song Guild
I didn’t raise my son to be a soldier, and go off fighting heathens round the Horn
If God required to show that men were bolder, they’d wear uniforms and swords when they were born
Why should we have wars about religion, when Jesus came to teach us not to kill?
Do Zulus and Hindoos not have the right to choose? I didn’t raise my son to be a soldier
New verse by Ewan McVicar for ‘I Didn’t Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier’, 1914 American popular song

Hamish Imlach said, “The political lines weren’t so tightly drawn then. I remember Archie, Josh and I singing for the Young Communists and the Young Conservatives on the same night. Or the Communist Party gigs that Aly Bain’s older brother used to organise in Glasgow.”
Jim McLean does not remember Hamish going on Eskimo demos at the Holy Loch. Hamish said that he sang at a lot of the demos, and in the book ‘Cod Liver Oil and the Orange Juice’ tells various tales, including one about the singers being bussed a mile ahead of the march at Sandbank Pier, finding themselves surrounded by “three or four hundred Yank sailors who were thinking ‘Not much of a mass demonstration, this! We were singing away, and selling them copies of Morris’s ‘Ding Dong Dollar’ songbooks at sixpence a time. They were buying six or ten copies each, as cheap souvenirs of Scotland. Eventually the mini bus came back and took us to the right place.”
Hamish said he sang on the ‘Ding Dong Dollar’ album, which was issued in the USA. “And in Russia, “where they translated all the songs and used them on the front page of ‘Izvestia’. No British company would issue the record, and when the American Folkways company eventually agreed to do it they insisted that the specifically anti-John F Kennedy songs be removed. Unfortunately they were the songs I sang. After the recordings had been made Kennedy had been assassinated and become a saint, so my songs were out.” Imlach says he was apolitical till he met Josh McRae and Morris Blythman. “I was if anything Conservative as my parents had been.” His singing and recording of political songs led eventually to him being blacklisted. “In 1989 the ‘World in Action’ TV programme reported I was on a political blacklist I had never heard of – The Economic League. They had me down as a communist sympathiser when I’m one of the very few professional folk singers who has never been a communist.”

I have heard men complain o the job that they’re daein, while they’re howkin the coal or they’re diggin the drain
But whatever they are, there is none can compar wi the man that stauns shovelling manura man-ya
Noo I’m feelin gey sour, for my job’s been ta’en ower, and everything noo is mechanical power:
And the roses that grow have nae odour oh no! – Nae manura, manura, manura man-yaManyura Man-ya, tune The Kerry Recruit
I’m looking for a job with a sky high pay, a four-day week and a two-hour day
Maybe it’s because I’m inclined that way but I never could stand being idle
I’m Lookin For A Job

In his autobiography Imlach says that Glasgow songwriter Matt McGinn “didn’t spend enough time polishing his songs. He’d lose interest in a song in a week, and instead of polishing a brilliant idea that was nearly there, he’d go on to a new brilliant idea. He’d have a sudden burst and write six songs in a day, and one or two would have the kernel of a great idea, if only he’d spent a bit more time rubbing the rough edges off. Later I realised this was part of his strength, and made his work unique as a songwriter.” Hamish Imlach
McGinn was the first political songmaker of the Revival who also became when opportunity offered a professional performer. An eloquent and openly politically dogmatic singer-songwriter, he continued throughout his career to create a welter of songs on a wide variety of lyric topics, his political values firmly expressed in the mix.
“Matt was a clever operator, I never saw him perform live, but my wife did, in Blantyre Miners’ Welfare. Several times he was the Sunday lunchtime spot and he would do funny songs, two or three fairly risqué jokes, and then he would slip in a political song – and the audience was with him all the way – pretty clever.” John Powles
McGinn had an engagingly rough voice and rather pugnacious but winning singing style. Most beginning folk song makers begin by manipulating parody elements – sometimes working off key parts of the original lyric, sometimes appropriating and reworking a song in a way that refers back tangentially to the original or older known song. This is different from the folk tradition’s way of making use of a tune held in common but without referring in the new lyric to any older one.
The more tangential approach is shown in McGinn’s song ‘Manura Man-ya’, which was made widely known by Pete Seeger. McGinn took a traditional comic Irish song of a Kerry Irish lad enlisting in the army, with a chorus beginning “With my toora nanya, my toora nanya”. McGinn made it into an hilarious tale of a street collector of horse dung, the chorus beginning ‘Wi manyura man-ya, manyura man-ya”. He includes enough references in his lyric to the hardships of the job, and being put out of work by ‘mechanical power’, to make it possible to squeeze the song into my widest definition of political song.

Our faithers fought this fight before, and thought that they had won, you should have seen the boss turn green and how that man could run
But when our faithers turned their backs, the boss came again to dodge his tax. But the next time we’ll no be so lax, and we’ll have a May Day then
We’ll Have A May Day
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ra-loo, there’s twenty four hours in the day it’s true, and we’d ha worked the twenty two, if it wisnae for the Union
Men and women listen tae me, it’s time tae rise up aff yer knee, so raise the flag of Unity and forward with the Union
If It Wisnae For The Union, tune Join The British Army

A much simpler example is the way he took the Israeli dance song ‘Havana Gila’, and made it into “Have a banana, have a banana, have a banana, eight pence a bunch”. In performance he could coax out thunderous audience participation in such slight material. A McGinn political parody that works off an original song is in a cyclostyled collection of his first lyrics that was dedicated ‘To my grannie’. This includes, to the tune of ‘Tipperary’, an attack on unwaged wealthy people who wintered in the south of France.

It’s a long way to the Riviera, it’s a long way to go (without your bankbook), it’s a long way to the Riviera and to dear old Monaco
Goodbye to dear old England, her praises we shall sing, and to prove that we are patriotic, we’ll be back next spring.

His choice of tunes is eclectic at this time. As he developed he drew more on traditional song tunes, though nearly always making new tunes out of old ones. This first batch uses a music hall tune, a religious tune, Sir Arthur Sullivan’s ‘Tit Willow’, ‘Poor Old Joe’, ‘Harry Was A Bolshie’, and some tunes of his own devising. His other lyric topics there are criticism of the powerful, of racial prejudice, of unemployment, of taxation and financial hardship, of Joseph Stalin, of trade union leader Arthur Deakin, of ‘My Foreman’. None of the broad comedy, children’s songs and romantic ditties he would later intermingle with such politically explicit songs as ‘Three Nights and a Sunday’, ‘If It Wasny for the Union’, and ‘We’ll have a Mayday’.
His 1964 collection, ‘Scottish Songs of Today’ has 26 songs. A few are about relationships, nature, or alcohol, the majority mingle elements of the problems of employment, humour and political comment. The 1987 posthumous collection of his writings and 61 of his songs, ‘McGinn of the Calton’, has the same mixture of elements, though the proportions differ. The 1987 book has in proportion more reflective or romantic songs. ‘Mambo was a Dusky Man’ and ‘My Faither was Born a Hebrew’, both songs about prejudice, are the only two included in all three collections.
McGinn’s songs did not fade from sight with his early death in 1977. Memorial shows featuring a mixture of his output continued to be produced and toured in 2009. Other political songs of his that remain popular include ‘The Ballad of John Maclean’, ‘Can o Tea’, ‘Coorie Doon’, his first song ‘The Foreman O’Rourke’, ‘I’m Looking for a Job’, `The Little Carpenter’, ‘Lots of Little Soldiers’, and ‘With Fire and with Sword’.
‘Scottish Songs of Today’ is dedicated to ‘the greatest guy I know, Pete Seeger’. His widow Janette’s Introduction to ‘McGinn of the Calton’, and McGinn’s own ‘Excerpts from Autobiography’ in the book, share many anecdotes about his performance skills, social influences and amusing incidents told from his partisan viewpoint, but little about creation of his political songs. Janette tells us, “First of all he would have an idea, then words and music would come together. Never, ever, was anything ever noted on paper. He relied on memory and sang everything aloud line after line, again and again.”Matt inaccurately credits Josh McRae with being the leader of the anti-Polaris movement and of the ‘Eskimos’, and says he himself was ”very much on the fringe” of the emerging songmaking at the start of the ‘60s. He quite quickly found himself taken up by American Pete Seeger and whisked over to perform as a headliner in a concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall. Further down the bill was a polite and rather nervous young singer songwriter, Bob Dylan. McGinn wrote, “I started at the top. From then on it had to be down all the way.”
In fact from then on he, with McRae, Imlach and Fisher, was in the first rank of best known and best loved performers of the ‘60s folk scene. Vol 4 no 4 of ‘Chapbook’ magazine in 1967 devotes most of the issue to McGinn, with seven songs and a ‘very tall tale’ by him, and two articles about ‘Matt McGinn: Minstrel’.
In their 1968 second last issue, vol 5 no 1, the editors of ‘Chapbook’ wrote, “Three and a half years ago, in defiance of all the prophets of doom, a rather slim magazine was launched in Scotland to cater for the interests of Scottish folk song enthusiasts. That was Chapbook, that was. In the intervening years, our magazine has grown in both size and in stature – to such an extent that copies are sent to over 30 countries of the world and sales have more than doubled.”
The publication ‘Chapbook’ was a co-operative venture. Ronnie Clark says that Aberdonian organiser and activist Arthur Argo created the magazine, with Aberdonian relocated to Glasgow Ian Philip, and Glasgwegian writer Carl MacDougall providing the West of Scotland aspect. It carried month to month news about folk clubs, singers and personalities, record reviews, old and new songs, photographs, and extended articles on song topics and song makers – I quote elsewhere in this book from several of these articles.

Verses from Chapbook Vol 2 No 3, “prize-winning entries in a contest run by the Aberdeen Club”, 1965
Mony miles between hame o mine, beloved scene, and that bombed and bloody beach o Dunkirk
Oh ma hert was sair – wid I see hame ivirmair, bit I micht – Bit I micht – Bit I micht
Dunkirk (A Scot Remembers), Mrs Zetta Macdonald
Sing a song of buttercups, Sing a song of rain. Johnnie’s gone to fight in the war and he’ll never come home again
No he’ll never come home again
Withered yellow buttercups cryin’ drops of rain. The men will go and fight in the wars, And the women will cry in vain again
The women will cry in vain
Sing A Song Of Buttercups, Mrs Lindy Cheyne

It was at first published by Aberdeen Folk Song Club, and vol 2 no 3 carried the first three prizewinning entries in the Club’s contemporary song competition. Two of the three take the topic of war. Zetta Macdonald’s ‘Dunkirk, a Scot Remembers’, was based on the first hand account of one of her brothers. In Lindy Cheyne’s ‘Sing a Song of Buttercups’ his love laments Johnnie who went to fight in the war, and ‘lies in a lonesome grave’. When Arthur Argo eventually moved to work for the BBC in Edinburgh the magazine went with him.
‘Chapbook’ continued to feature songs with an implicit or explicit political element. Vol 4 no 2 was an issue largely devoted to new songs, nearly all from weel-kent songmakers. The songs included a trenchant attack on Charles De Gaulle’s refusal to join the Common Market, eloquent accounts of the hardships of working to build the Shira Hydro-Electric Dam and of the tragic coaltip accident at Aberfan.
An anti-militarist song of Scots soldiery, one expressing contempt for the self-seeking rise into parliament of a trade union official, a comment on Glasgow gang religious bigotry, and “a page of political lampoons, tending very much towards the street song style, gathered from various sources”.
From 1964 to 1968 Chapbook was the guidebook and diary of the Scottish Folk Revival. It folded at a time when the number of folk clubs was high, but the community energy was waning, commercialism was gaining strength, the distance between active audience and performer growing and the nature of their relationship changing.

Lay down the borrowed guitar, lay down the fiddle and bow.
You’d like one more drink at the bar, but the manager says you must go
All the tunes in the world are dancing around in your head
The clock on the gantry says ‘Playtime is done’, you’ll just have to sing them instead
Everyone here feels the same, yes, you deserve one more tune
But you know the rules of the game, it’s time to go howl at the moon
All The Tunes In The World, tune The South Wind, words Ewan McVicar