Unholy Doings At The Holy Loch

O ye canny spend a dollar when ye’re deid,, o ye canny spend a dollar when ye’re deid;
Singin Ding … Dong … Dollar; everybody holler, ye canny spend a dollar when ye’re deid.
O the Yanks have juist drapt anchor in Dunoon, an they've had their civic welcome fae the toon,
As they cam up the measured mile, Bonny Mary o Argyll wis wearin spangled drawers ablow her goun.
O the Clyde is sure tae prosper noo they're here, for they're chargin wan and tenpence for a beer
An when they want a taxi, they shove it up their … jersey, an charge them thirty bob tae Sandbank Pier
An the publicans will aa be daein swell, for it’s juist the thing that’s sure tae ring the bell
O the dollars they will jingle, they’ll be no a lassie single, even though they’ll maybe blow us aa tae hell
Ding Dong Dollar, tune Comin Round the Mountain, words Glasgow Song Guild

The entry of American nuclear submarines into the Holy Loch near Glasgow resulted in mass protest demonstrations. The growing strength of Central Belt Scottish song creation and confidence in performance resulted in a body of songs that articulated the issues, and a group of singers who supported and heartened the marchers. The concept of the peaceful republican Glasgow Eskimo was born, and documented in another Rebels Ceilidh Song Book.
In 1961 what Morris Blythman called 'the first real singing campaign ever undertaken in Scotland' developed a workshopped ‘agit-prop’ song format for demonstrations so precise and succinct that in some songs every line and a half - since that may be all the observer hears as the march sweeps past - makes a key point in unambiguous and enjoyable language. The lyrics crackle with energy and wit.
The jaunty determined 'agit-prop' songs became needed when in Spring, 1961, the US Navy nuclear supply ship Proteus “sailed up the Clyde with her Polaris missiles and sparked off a wave of demonstrations and songs which were to make headlines all over the world in the months ahead. By train and bus, in rattle-trap lorries , by hitch of thumb, the motley anti-Polaris crew made for Dunoon and the Holy Loch area at every available opportunity. And also at every available opportunity the hard core sang their protests on station platforms, on quaysides, on the march; from improvised platforms, through hastily-assembled loud-speaker systems, from floating craft of all shapes and sizes; sitting down, standing up; to the police, at the police; but most of all at the extremely ruffled Americans." Morris Blythman
A March 1962 article in the Economist commented, “The CND remains a minority movement on Clydeside, but it certainly has all the best songs. The songs are not classics: they are not likely to survive as the best of the Jacobite ones, the last occasion on which there was such an outpouring of the music. But they do have the first essentials of virility and emotion, they are mostly satirical, and they have much in common with the industrial-coalfield work songs that evolved naturally from the Gaelic and Lowland culture. Within two months of [the American supply ship] the Proteus’s arrival the first anti-Polaris songbook was published in Glasgow (five editions in the past eight months). This was directly in the Scottish tradition of cheap chapbooks sold at country fairs.” The Economist
The Economist’s Glasgow Correspondent’s strong linking of the songs with ‘coal field work songs’ does not convince. The influences were ‘a haill clanjamfrie’. Morris Blythman said in the sleevenotes of the 1962 US Folkways LP Ding Dong Dollar.

He had some Scotch and scoosh, then he went back aboard
He turned his key – then whoosh and o Lawdy Lawd
He said “I’m so embarrassed, we’ll no be goin tae Paris
For I’ve launched the first Polaris thru bein a drunken sod”
The Misguided Missile and the Misguided Miss, tune and words John Mack
O, we’ll blaw the yahoo Yankees oot the Clyde, we’ll blaw the yahoo Yankees oot the Clyde
Get yuir twa-twa-zero an pick them aff the pier-o, we’ll blaw the yahoo Yankees oot the Clyde
For we dinnae gie a docken or a damn for the sons of Uncle Psychopathic Sam
Every day they get absurder wi their fancy ways o murder an we’re gaun tae mak them tak it on the lam
Twa-Twa-Zero, tune Canny Shove Yer Grannie, words Thurso Berwick
The U.S.A are giean subs away, giean subs away, giean subs away
The U.S.A are giean subs away but we dinnae want Polaris
Tell the Yanks tae drap them doon the stanks
The Cooncil o Dunoon, they want their hauf-a-croon
Tak the haill damn show up the River Alamo
We Dinnae Want Polaris, tune Three Craws, words Jim McLean

“Everything was thrown into the pot: the missionaries first to give it the bite, army ballads from World War II, football songs, Orange songs, Fenian Songs, Child ballads, street songs, children’s songs, bothy ballads, blues, skiffle, Australian bush ballads, calypso...” Blythman’s exuberant continuing list of ‘genial eclecticism’ includes elements not obviously present in the anti-Polaris songs, but his ingredients are a checklist of the major influences that shaped the 1960s Scottish Folk Revival – song types, song makers and singers, and subjects.
“… MacColl and Lomax, Ives and Leadbelly, songs about the Stone of Destiny, Dominic Behan, S.R.A. songs, I.R.A. songs, Guthrie and Houston, pantomime and vaudeville, Billy Graham, Scottish Land League songs, Gaelic songs and mouth music, Wobbly songs, spirituals, mountaineering and hiking ballads, Elliot and Seeger, mock-precenting, the Royal Family, Roddy McMillan, and Matt McGinn.”
Blythman explains that this stewpot resulted in “a new metropolitan folk-song corpus” with dozens of songmakers, a breaking of the Orange-Fenian monopoly on rebel songs, and a “structure of ceilidh, concert, soiree, melee, jazz club, folk club, and youth hostel” where the songs could be heard.
The songs were carried into the streets and on the mass demos by the makers and singers. “Acting as an independent unit, they supported demonstrations called by the DA Committee, the CND Committees, the Glasgow and District Trades Council and the English and Scottish Committees of 100. They became known as the Anti-Polaris Singers and were accepted with pride and affection by demonstrators and organisers as their own establishment singers. No-one told them what to sing, where to sing or how to sing it. They kept to the main theme of Anti-Polaris, uniting and binding the many disparate organisations into one body. And to this body they gave heart, voice and laughter.
They were BBC'd, STV'd, televised, NBC'd, broadcast, telecast, free-lanced and pirated, AFN'd, Radio Moscowed, translated, interpreted and given in evidence in court.” Morris Blythman
Blythman had reapplied one element of the ‘Sangs o The Stane’ era, when he had pioneered the idea of ‘demonstration singing’ in Glasgow Central Station. Some of the songs were short, punchy, with deliberately repetitive sloganising: The titles give the message: ‘We Dinna Want Polaris’, ‘I Shall Not Be Moved’, ‘Get Yer Twa Twa Zero’, ‘Ye’ll No Sit Here’, ‘We’re Off to the Camp in the Country’, ‘Ban Polaris – Hallelujah’, ‘K-K-Kennedy’, A Letter to Uncle Jack’. (The word ‘slogan’ is itself Gaelic, meaning a war cry!) This ‘agit-prop’ approach was developed further later in the ‘60s in SNP campaigning songs.
Other peace songs used choruses that rammed the message home, but the verses had more detail and bite. ‘Ding Dong Dollar’, ‘The Glasgow Eskimos’, ‘Boomerang’, ‘Paper Hankies’, ‘The High Road to Gourock’, ‘As I cam by Sandbank’, ‘Oor Een Are on the Target’, ‘The Rampant Lion’, ‘Cheap-Jack the Millionaire’, ‘Sit Brothers Sit’, ‘Gie the Man a Transfer’, ‘Lanin the Berserk Commander’.

It's up the Clyde comes Lanin, a super-duper Yank, but doon a damn sight quicker, when we cowpt him doon the stank,
Up tae the neck in sludge and sewage fairly stops yuir swank, we are the Glesca Eskimos.
Hullo! Hullo! we are the Eskimos, Hullo! hullo! the Glesca Eskimos.
We’ll gaff that nyaff ca’d Lanin, we’ll spear him whaur he blows,
We are the Glesca Eskimos.
We’ve been in many a rammy, lads, we’ve been in many a tear, we’ve sortit oot this kind afore, we’ll sort them onywhere
O, get yuir harpoon ready – he’s comin up for air. We are the Glesca Eskimos
Glesga Eskimos, Tune: Marching Through Georgia

Not for the march, but for associated events, were longer narrative songs. ‘The Misguided Missile and the Misguided Miss’, ‘The Polis o Argyll’, ‘Hi Jimmy Tyrie’, ‘The Young C.N.D.’, ‘What a Friend We Have in Gaitskell’, ‘’Queen’s Park 1962’.“We hit the Americans [and the British politicians] with every weapon at our disposal. We were on the side of anything that made them feel mad. The element of personal attack on the Kennedys was very popular in Scotland, but the US Folkways record label would not use ‘Cheap-Jack the Millionaire’ or ‘The Rampant Lion’ “because they made such consistent attacks on the Kennedys. And the Kennedys were untouchable.” Morris Blythman
The theme of Eskimos arose when the West of Scotland Canoe Club and like-minded souls had turned up to escort the bad ship Proteus safely through the narrow entrance to the Holy Loch. “With a barrage of fire hoses, the United States Navy yesterday repulsed the sea-borne invasion of anti-Polaris demonstrators who tried to board the submarine depot ship Proteus in the Holy Loch.” The Scotsman 22/5/1961
“The flotilla included kayaks, dinghies, launches, and a motorized house boat which bore a Red Cross symbol and the slogan Life Not Death. The vessels were [confiscated] by the authorities, until three days later the canoeist in the last of the little fleet was tipped into the water by naval frogmen, but Sean Edwards had got within 20 yards of his target. At a press conference the ship’s captain, Lanin, was asked by press persons what he thought of these insults to his vessel. He scoffed, ‘They don’t worry us. They’re just a bunch of Eskimos’.” [Source uncertain]
Blythman had developed a communal songmaking approach. The key creators were Blythman himself and Jim McLean. The Glasgow songsmiths grasped the wonderful metaphor delivered into their hands. First, a cherished surreal verse of a children’s ‘street song’ that used the tune ‘Let’s All Go Down The Strand’ celebrated the Eskimos.

Ma maw’s a millionaire, blue eyes and curly hair,
Sittin among the Eskimos, playin the game of dominoes,
Ma maw’s a millionaire.

Second, they were of the opinion that there were Eskimos in Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Russia, and that none of them had ever even participated in a war, let alone started one, so that to assert oneself as a Glesca Eskimo was to be peaceful, exotic and absurdly surreal all at once. Cue for a new lyric, ‘The Glesca Eskimos’. The core demo singing group became known as ‘The Eskimos’. In later years many who had been at one or other Holy Loch demo, had sung the songs or felt an association with the concept, claimed that they too were ‘Eskimos’, but Jim Maclean considers firmly that only the core singing group deserve that name. The 1961 'Glasgow Eskimos' lyric shows in trenchant and aggressive form the Eskimos' contempt for Captain Lanin and his supporters. The word ‘spear’ in the chorus employs a neat double sense, a fishing tool for the Eskimo but with a Scots sense of ‘speir’ meaning ‘ask’ when sung, and reminds us that many of the activists were in no simplistic way pacifists. Several were ex-soldiers, opposed to war but quite interested in discussing violent response.
A spear for Lanin, a 220 rifle to “pick them aff the pier-o” in ‘Twa Twa Zero’, and in 1967 “A second front at Holy Loch” and “Victory for the Vietcong” in ‘L.B.J.’ The 1980s SCND Buskers updated the ‘Glesca Eskimos’ chorus line from the outdated Captain Lanin reference to become ‘We’re no husky Ruskies, like Maggie might suppose’.

Doon at Ardnadam, sitting at the pier, When ah heard a polis shout: “Ye’ll no sit here!
Ay, but ah wull sit here! Naw, but ye’ll no sit here! Ay, but ah wull! Naw but ye’ll no! Ay, but ah wull sit here.
‘Twas Chief inspector Runcie, enhancing his career, prancin up an doon the road like Yogi Bear.
He caa’d for help tae Glesca, they nearly chowed his ear, “We’ve got the ‘Gers an Celtic demonstrators here.”
He telephoned the sodgers, but didnae mak it clear, The sodgers sent doon Andy Stewart tae volunteer.
He radioed the White Hoose, but aa that he could hear wis…two…one…zero – an the set went queer
For Jack had drappt an H-bomb an gied his-sel a shroud, An he met wi Billy Graham on a wee white cloud.
Ye’ll No Sit Here, tune Ye’ll No S*** Here, words Thurso Berwick

In the 1965 ‘Rebel Ceilidh Song Book’ the lyric is credited to T S Law, but Jim McLean created many of the lines. Other songmaker and singer members of the Glasgow Song Guild, based in Blythman's Balgrayhill Road home, included Bobby Campbell, Nigel Denver, Ray Fisher, Susan Haworth, Hamish Imlach, T S Law, John Mack, Gordon MacCulloch, Alastair MacDonald, Jackie O'Connor, Jimmy Ross, Ian Wade, and the key performer of the songs, Josh McRae, who “took a committed stand and gained great respect from all concerned”. Morris Blythman
It was Blythman himself, described in 1994 by Gordon MacCulloch as 'The Magic Marxist and Eskimo Guru', who built and ran the 'collective mincer' that created these songs. “One of the most unusual features of this whole movement was the way in which many of the songs were born. Workshop techniques were employed, and as a result, many of the songs had a communal authorship. In at least one song as many as twenty people contributed to the final production.” Morris Blythman

They say that the atom-ships doon at Dunoon belang tae a big millionaire.
An I hope tae hell they'll be oot o there soon, afore we're aa up in the air.
The fella that sent them's an awfy nice chap, he sent them owre here as a gift,
He heard the hotels in Dunoon were depressed an he wantit tae gie them a lift.
Boomerang! Boomerang! Juist send them back whaur they belang,
Along wi auld Adenauer, Kennedy's pal, Signor Fanfani and Chairlie de Gaulle,
For we dinnae like gifts that go bang, juist try wan an see if ah'm wrang,
The banners are wavin; Wha's next for the shavin? So open the boom; boomerang!
Boomerang, tune Bless Em All, words Matt McGinn and Glasgow Song Guild

The songs were printed in the anti-Polaris chapbook style songbooks which were titled ‘Ding Dong Dollar’ and sold for sixpence. Eight ‘editions’ were published, though the ‘6th (New York) edition’ was the LP of seventeen Holy Loch and independence songs issued on the American Folkways Records. The first was a duplicated production of seven songs in May 1961. By June 1962 seven printed editions had followed. For each edition the contents were slightly varied and at least one new song made. Edition Eight, published June 1962, hinted at the varied contents and contexts by listing the previous editions as: First (Duplicated), Second (Pirated), Third (Berserk), Fourth (Moscow), Fifth (Eskimo), Sixth (New York), Seventh (Comfort), Eighth (Boomerang).
“We found a publisher for them in Clydeside who brought out a new edition for almost every demonstration. There were maybe a couple of songs changed in each one. We must have sold thousands of them between us, me probably more than Morris, tens of thousands because they were only sixpence, and when people would say they’d bought it already, I would say ‘Not this one!’ and it would have a different picture on it.” Marion Blythman
The core group of singers supported and encouraged the marchers not just at the Holy Loch, but at the annual Easter marches from Aldermaston to London. Veteran marchers have in conversation said that they sought out the Scots contingent because they always had the best songs. In the USA, TV reportage of British marches caused jealousy in the breasts of songmakers developing their own approach to utilising song for political protest through the publications ‘Sing Out!’ and ‘Broadside’.
“The people around ‘Sing Out!’ were envious of the British topical song movement. Alex Comfort, Ewan MacColl, and Matt McGinn were singing new and fresh songs that were both part of a tradition (Scot [sic] folk music) and of a mass movement (The Committee for Non-Violent Disarmament - CNVD). The films of the Aldermaston Marches drew long sighs as the folk singers and jazz bands made their way with tens of thousands along that country road to protest nuclear arming.” Josh Dunson
British folk magazine ‘Sing’ reported in May 1962 that “There’s not much doubt about it, the stars of this year’s Aldermaston march were the Glesca Eskimos.” The report names Nigel Denver, Jackie O’Connor, Mrs Josh McRae and Morris Blythman, who at one point “sat side-saddle on a motor cycle swapping songs with Alex Comfort for over an hour… The group sang enthusiastically for several hours a day, fashioning new songs as they performed, not least a ‘wee commercial’ for the Holy Loch demonstration at Whitsun.”
Morris wanted to get as many names of lyric writers shown as he could, so he would choose one key hand and ascribe the whole product to them. He told the author in conversation of how he wanted famed Glasgow songwriter Matt McGinn to be part of the process, but Matt was initially dubious. Morris had already worked out the basic idea and several lines for a song to the tune of the WW2 soldiers' favourite 'Bless ‘Em All', with a central idea of sending the Yanks flying home like an Australian boomerang. He sang what he had to Matt, but suppressed the key word.
“Dud duh duh, duh duh duh, we'll send them back where they belang. I can't think what word to use there. Can you?” Matt hesitantly suggested 'Boomerang'. Morris was enthusiastically grateful and Matt was hooked and reeled in. He created so many of the lines that the whole lyric printed under his name, although Jim McLean made many of the lines for 'Boomerang' and other songs credited by Morris to other hands, including the ‘Ding Dong Dollar’ line about Mary of Argyll. McLean recalls, “When I wrote the line about spangled drawers, Jackie O'Connor nearly fell off the couch laughing.”

But the Glesca Moderator disnae mind; in fact he thinks the Yanks are awfy kind,
For if it’s heaven that ye’re goin it’s a quicker way than rowin and there’s sure tae be naebody left behind.
O ye canny spend a dollar when ye’re deid, Sae tell Kennedy he’s got tae keep the heid,
Singin Ding … Dong … Dollar; everybody holler, ye canny spend a dollar when ye’re deid.
Ding Dong Dollar, tune Ye Canny Shove Yer Grannie, words Glasgow Song Guild

“Morris had a gift for getting people involved in things. He was good at work-shopping. If you look at Matt’s song, ‘Boomerang’, there are words that are just Morris – ‘Adenauer…Signor Fanfani and Chairlie de Gaulle.’ ‘Ding Dong Dollar’ was credited by Morris to John Mack Smith. He was in the Labour Party and worked for the Licensed Trade Association, for the owners of the pubs, and he was a really smart guy, very astute and he wrote quite good songs. John Mack Smith started ‘Ding Dong Dollar’ and it was good but Morris work-shopped it to make it more singable. Morris changed it to “Ye canna spend a dollar when you’re deid.” Marion Blythman
In 1968 Blythman wrote, “To take just one example of this communal origin: Glasgwegian John Smith ("Jak") heard George MacLeod of the Iona Community (now Lord MacLeod of Fuinary) making a comment something like – ‘And, of course, you cannot spend a dollar when you are dead." John then came up with ‘Ye canna spend a silver dollar when ye're deid, In fact, it might as well be made o' lead.’ The eventual version as sung became simpler, repetitive, so that the unassailable logic would stick with people. After all, to those making capital from the American presence, dollars would be poor consolation should the worst ever happen.” Morris Blythman
This workshopped lyric was then credited in print to John Mack. It used humour, the vernacular, and sharp local references to sharpen its point. A small hesitation before the word ‘jersey’ allowed Scots listeners to recognize that it was a substitution for ‘jaxie’
As well as the ‘Glesca Eskimos’ song, Morris created another that noted the absence of royalty in polar regions, ‘The Eskimo Republic’, which he described as “a sort of ‘Big Rock Candy Mountain’ visualisation of a Republic for Scotland”

O the Eskimo is a man o peace, he’s never jyned the arms race,
An ye’ll find nae trace o a Polaris base In the Eskimo Republic
When they mak a law, sure they all agree for they aa sit on the com-mit-tee
An they’ve got nae Lords and nae M.P.s in the Eskimo Republic
Now the Eskimo he is no like you, every Eskimo has his ain i-ga-loo
An his mither-in-law has got an i-ga-loo too in the Eskimo Republic
When an Eski wean he goes tae school, he sits up nice on an Eski stool
An he sings an he lauchs an learns the rules o the Eskimo Republic
he Eskimo Republic, tune The Boys Of Garvagh, words Thurso Berwick

Marion Blythman explains Morris’s aim. “The Eskimo Republic was a kind of ideation of what the best kind of society was going to be. It was to epitomise what was good in society and what we were aiming for, so that’s why it started with ‘There is nae class, there is nae boss, Nae king nor queen’. At that time it had ‘Willie Ross’ and that changed to ‘damn the loss’ and then ‘You get boozed up for a six month doss In the Eskimo Republic.’ It was Morris’s idea of a framework for a good society and that’s what was important about it.“Morris said he didn’t know why the Labour Party wouldn’t use [his concepts] because otherwise it was like fighting with one hand tied behind your back.
Morris wanted the Communist Party to expel him, and he did everything he could to get them to do so but they wouldn’t. I’d been kind of half Communist, I was always too independent minded. As soon as somebody said to me ‘Everybody says’ – I’d say ‘Oh really?’ I joined when I was a student but then I came out of it quite early, ’47 or ’48, at the time of Czechoslovakia, and then there was Hungary. Somewhere in the interim, Morris finally left, stopped paying his dues, but that wasn’t what he wanted, he wanted to be expelled. He thought they had become bureaucratic and anti-Scottish, they weren’t interested in that side of it.
“There was a definite ideological split at that time [re what kind of language to use in new political song]. Morris thought the purpose of the songs was not literary, the purpose was polemic. Morris wouldn’t have stopped writing, absolutely not. He would have been writing anti-Iraq-war songs. Everything that came up that was important to Scotland, he would have written songs about it. Morris put his money where his mouth was. If he set out to do something, he would do it.” Marion Blythman
Jim McLean was Blythman’s key lieutenant in the Glasgow Song Guild. He went on to write many more songs of Scotland and to create themed records. In about 1959 he created Radio Free Scotland, a hotly pursued pirate radio station which broadcast in the Greater Glasgow on the BBC television frequency from various locations, including the homes of Hamish Imlach and the McGillverays.
“In 1957 I served 6 months in Barlinnie for registering as a Conscientious Objector to my National Service. I went abroad for a couple of years when I was released and came back from working in Germany in 1959 as a translator. I was a TV engineer, and got a job in Glasgow. I built a radio, put it in back of my work van. We broadcast Republican Scottish material which the SNP knew of, I was not a member, too many fascist elements at that time. They sent us a message, to wait till the Queen's has been played, don't upset people. About this time I wrote and co-wrote a number of songs for the ‘Ding, Dong, Dollar LP’. It started when I met Morris. In 1960 I went to the Glasgow Folk Club, Geordie McIntyre took me there, I was just back from Germany. I heard these songs, fantastic. I went away home and wrote ‘Maggie's Weddin’ and ‘NAB For Royalty’.

Sing a song o tax an woe, empty pooches in a row, the Chancellor’s collectin dough, aa for Maggie’s Waddin
Tune Mhairi’s Wedding, words Jim McLean
There lives a family in oor land, the famous Royal crew, man, they willna work they willna want they’re living on the Broo, man
It’s NAB for Royalty, free milk for wee Prince Andy, tae pey the cook an claith the Duke the Welfare State’s gey handy!
NAB For Royalty, tune The Deil’s Awa, words Jim McLean

I’m a musician, not a singer. Dominic Behan said I sing like a duck. Other people sing them, I tell them what the melody is. I wanted others to sing them. Some are solo songs most are group chorus songs, to get people singing on the marches, on the ferry [to Dunoon], like ‘The USA are Giein Subs Away’. Morris wanted no 'cult of personality'. Everybody knew Morris and Hamish Henderson, the rest were 'unknown'. The Eskimos were Morris, me, Jackie O’Connor, Josh McRae and Nigel Denver. Not Hamish Imlach, I was surprised to see his head in the photograph of the ‘Ding Dong Dollar’ album, that was taken on the Dunoon ferry. I don't really remember him there.
“Our message was 'Here we are, and we don't like you'. The US sailors didn't know what the songs were about, they enjoyed them. We were not talking to them, but being a morale booster for the marchers, and entertaining ourselves. That's why we’d use one line two or three times. Give the passersby a chant, a line out, trying to bring people in.” The songs used humour, as well as positive energy.

Oh dear, Yuri Gagarin, he flew tae the moon when it looked like a farthing
He said tae the boys at the moment of parting, "Ah’m juist gaun awa for the Fair"
Yuri Gagarin, tune Johnny’s So Long at the Fair, words Roddy McMillan
Far frae ma hame ah’ve wandered an ah never will return
Frae ma ain hame in the Gorbals juist alang frae Jenny’s Burn
For they’re pullin doon the buildin an ah doot ah canny bide
For they’re gonnae mak the Gorbals like New York or Kelvinside
An it’s oh, but ah’m longin for ma ain close, it wis nane of yer wally, juist a plain close
An ah’m nearly roon the bend, for ma ain wee single-end, fareweel tae dear old Gorbals an ma ain close
Ma Ain Close, tune Ma Ain Folk, words Duncan Macrae

The comparable English Peace songs emphasised doom, gloom and terror. “Alex Comfort in his little book of his own songs said the Glasgow songs and the ‘Ding Dong Dollar’ movement were a breath of fresh air. Why use humour? One of my first songs, ‘Maggie's Weddin’, was the only way to treat the subject, we tend to laugh at people, for example some of the bothy ballads, their pawky humour, the human spirit won't lie down.” Jim Maclean
Henderson's great anthem 'The Freedom-Come-All-Ye' was also on the ‘Ding Dong Dollar’ album. His dedication of the song says it was created 'for the Glasgow Peace Marchers, May 1960', but it is usually sung as a slow march, and its progress in entering the singing repertoire was initially slow. It eventually became a favourite song of the Revival and is repeatedly urged as a new Scottish National Anthem, although Henderson himself opposed this idea.
Blythman added the first crop of agit-prop peace songs to the 1965 second ‘Rebels Ceilidh Song Book’, with another wonderful cover by Jimmy Dewar that includes references to at least twelve of the songs in the booklet. By the time the song book appeared the songs it contained were widely known, had appeared on record, and were sung with gusto in folk clubs and concerts throughout the land. In the 1965 Preface Blythman acknowledges that, through the developing Folk Revival, popular involvement with Scots song had changed since the pioneering efforts in Bo’ness.
“With our first issue we were well ahead of the market. Today, after several editions of the Rebel and Patriot Song Books – and in the face of the tremendous job done by Hamish Henderson and the School of Scottish Studies, and the growth of Folksong Groups everywhere – the Bo’ness Rebels Literary Society find themselves well ahint. The present publication is an attempt to get up to date, and as such, mainly records songs that have been already sung at hundreds of Ceilidhs and at Folk Clubs and Festivals throughout Scotland. Many of the present songs have already been published elsewhere, many recorded. Most are by well-known authors. Mainly they are rebel songs.
“While only one or two of the most popular items are retained from the 1951 [sic] publication this collection repeats our endeavour to group together the different types of rebel song being sung in Scotland today. Naturally many are anti-authority. Scotland suffers in some measure, no matter what power group rules from London and this feeling is reflected in the songs. Let it not be said that these songs are anti-English, or anti-American, or anti-German. As Dominic Behan says: ‘The love of one’s country is a terrible thing’. These songs are pro-Scottish. None of them has the death wish.
“Where MPs fail, and that is often, these songs provide a VOICE for Voiceless Scotland. They bind Scottish Labour inevitably to the Scottish Nation. Yet curiously, as in ‘Ma Ain Close’, they show a communal conservatism worthy of the best of our traditions opposing a modern sterile bureaucracy. If anyone feels aggrieved he may reflect wisely with one of our Scottish Kings that perhaps his only ultimate claim to fame or immortality may lie in the fact that ‘they pit me in a Ballad’.” Morris Blythman
Rebel songs and ballads, literary debates, ceilidhs with speeches as well as dancing and music and song, political action, celebration of Scotland’s culture, and the joy of fellowship.

Hey hey ho, the Yankees bluff and blow, here’s the dough dough dough, if Castro shoots the crow
But Fidel says “No, we’ll have another go by the Bay of Pigs in the morning”
Fidel Says No, tune Banks o the Boyne, words T S Law
Have ye heard o Lady Chatterly? Sick and starved o love wis she. Hey hey, pair wee Lady Chat
Good Sir Clifford wis her man, he got shot in the war an he couldnae stand
But Lady Chat wis fou o pluck, she went doon tae the gairden tae try her luck
Lady Chat, tune Honey Have a Whiff on Me, words Jim McLean
O, Billy Wolfe’ll win, hullo! hullo! O, Billy Wolfe’ll win, hullo! hullo!
O, Billy Wolfe’ll win. Yes, he’ll walk right in, an it’s ta-ta Tammy, oot ye go.
Now the wey that Tammy’s built, Hullo! Hullo!
Now the wey that Tammy’s built, och, he shouldnae weir the kilt. An it’s ta-ta Tammy, oot ye go.
Election Ballad, tune I Married a Wife, words Thurso Berwick

The Bo’ness Rebels Literary Society helped put the voiceless people of Scotland into songs, then the old and new songs gave those people back their voices to sing and to write their own songs. There are 39 songs, of which only six are also in the first Song Book. There are nine ‘Ding Dong Dollar’ Holy Loch songs. The rest are all political and social comment songs. They include four anti–royal songs by Jim McLean, three by Blythman, and two by Dominic Behan, an Irishman hen domiciled in Scotland, who also contributes ‘The Patriot Game’. There is a comment on book censorship, praise for cosmonaut ‘Yuri Gagarin’, and songs about enforced rehousing from Adam McNaughtan and Duncan Macrae. No Gaelic songs are included this time.
There is also the first of what would be a flood of SNP campaigning songs, Blythman’s pro SNP and anti-Tam Dalyell ‘ Billy Wolfe’ll Win’. A few ruder verses were excluded, for example, “Tammy is a ….., Oh, you’ve got the word quite right”. Wolfe later said, “We adopted all the anti-Polaris songs. We were very much outnumbered in those days by the Labour Party on those peace marches, they and the Communists were the speakers, and dominated in meetings. Keith Bovey, chairman of SCND, and I were the only nationalists. The logic was that the only way you can get rid of the Holy Loch is by being independent. But they could not see that.”
Criticising voices were raised. In Autumn 1962 ‘Folk Notes’ magazine, Vol.1 No. 1, carried an advertisement for Edition 8 of the Ding Dong Dollar song book, songs and an article, ‘We Can Write - & Must’, by Matt McGinn, and an article by Josh McRae on his trip to Moscow, the welcome the Eskimos’ songs got, and the experience of hearing his recording of actor Roddy McMillan’s ‘Yuri Gagarin’ played on loudspeakers strung on the city’s lampposts as he walked along the streets.
But the issue also had an article, ‘Political Pops?’, by an Ian Campbell (there have been several Ian Campbells active in the Folk Revival) that began, “The increasing inclusion of political songs in singers’ repertoires is a dangerous sign for the future of folk clubs. The adoption by singers of such songs is an indication of the influence the audience is having on the choice of songs. It cannot be disputed that the jingoistic political song proves to be more appealing to sections of club audiences than many, in fact the majority, of the better and grander examples of folk song.” He continued, “It must be understood that I am deploring particularly the ultra-simple parodies fitted to tunes which are obvious vehicles for the makers of parody.” Campbell makes various other points on the problems a folk club faced. A club could become “The wearer of a political tag, and its music suffers”. Campbell calls for singers to in effect re-educate their audience.
Campbell was not alone in condemnation. In the next issue of ‘Folk Notes’ Gordon MacCulloch in a general survey of the Folk Revival’s ‘The Past and the Future” responded to the “critics of the folk song movement” who “claim that it has purely political motives”. McCulloch refutes this, but comments, “It is true that the folk revival is in general anti-establishment. A very short experience of folksong clubs serves to show that the revival draws its very life’s blood from its rebel leanings”.
“While the American song movement began to grow in strength, in Scotland "public demonstration reached its peak and lost its impetus after a time, but the songs did not die out. We could have gone on and on publishing new editions of Ding Dong Dollar had we not made the decision to call a halt. We got many, many requests from bookshops and from individuals up to two years after we ceased publication. We stopped at the time the missiles went to Cuba and were turned back by the Americans. The numbers at demonstrations had fallen off and we had written the songs to back up these demonstrations. […] Every campaign encounters its peaks of feverish activity - and its troughs of apparent inactivity - as breath is drawn for the next stage in development." Morris Blythman
For Blythman and some of his collaborators the next stage was to be support for the SNP Independence campaign, although he was never an SNP member, seeing their political victory as a necessary step towards his unwavering goal of a Scottish Workers Republic.

It fell aboot the time o valentines, when the G.P.O.’s gey busy-o, wi pillar boxes full o billets doux that a high explosive wan wis sent tae Lizzie-oWha’s the chiel that sent it? Naebody can say. polis, press nir postie-o, but there’s none that can deny that his principles wis high an that Lizzie’s smile is weiran kinda frosty-o
Gelignite or dynamite, T.N.T. or the pouther-o, maks a valentine incisive til a queen that’s ill-advised an it maks the face o Scotland aa the smoother-o
Billet Doux, tune Corn Rigs, words Thurso Berwick

ON THE FERRY TO DUNOON
BACK Morris Blythman, Jackie Keir, Jim McLean
FRONT Josh Macrae, Hamish Imlach, Nigel Denver