The Revival of Auld Sangs

Roch the wind in the clear day’s dawin blaws the cloods heelster gowdie ow’r the bay
But there’s mair nor a roch wind blawin through the great glen o the warld the day.
It’s a thocht that will gar oor rottans, a’ they rogues that gang gallus, fresh and gay -
Tak the road and seek ither loanins for their ill ploys, tae sport and play.
Nae mair will the bonnie callants mairch tae war when oor braggarts crousely craw,
Nor wee weans frae pit-heid and clachan mourn the ships sailin doon the Broomielaw.
Broken faimlies in lands we’ve herriet will curse Scotland the Brave nae mair, nae mair;
Black and white, ane til ither mairriet mak the vile barracks o their maisters bare.
So come all ye at hame wi Freedom, never heed whit the hoodies croak for doom
In your hoose a' the bairns o Adam can find breid, barley-bree and painted room.
When MacLean meets wi’s freens in Springburn aa' the roses and geans will turn tae bloom,
And a black boy frae yont Nyanga dings the fell gallows o the burghers doon.
The Freedom Come-All-Ye, tune The Bloody Fields Of Flanders, words Hamish Henderson

In 22nd April 1707 the Scottish Parliament was dissolved, and Chancellor Seafield said it was ‘an end of an auld sang’, but auld sangs continued to be sung and new sangs of Scotland and its politics kept being made. This page considers song types and categories, the use of tunes, the songmakers and singers, and the future.
Hamish Henderson’s song ‘The Freedom Come-All-Ye’ has been mentioned several times in this book. It has repeatedly been urged as a new National Anthem for Scotland, though Henderson himself did not favour this. His strongly Scots poetic lyric is initially difficult and inaccessible for many listeners, yet new hearers feel an urge to learn more about its meanings. The core message is of internationalism and peace, while acknowledging the past celebration of the soldier Jocks. The Maclean of the lyrics is the Socialist hero John Maclean.
The tune Henderson used is ‘The Bloody Fields of Flanders’, a WW1 pipe tune which Henderson said he first heard played on the WW2 Anzio beachhead by Pipie Tom Smith of the 6th Gordons (Banffshire Battalion). Henderson also used this tune for his song ‘The John MacLean March’, and Glasgow writer Cliff Hanley used a different setting of the tune for his ‘Scotland the Brave’, which has been advanced as another candidate for a Scottish National Anthem. In a letter to the author Henderson wrote that the ‘Flanders’ tune stems from the Perthshire folk song ‘Busk Busk Bonnie Lassie’ aka ‘Bonny Glenshee’.
The ‘Come-All-Ye’ was probably written at the urging of Morris Blythman, who was soliciting songs on the topics of peace and opposition to the American nuclear submarines coming to the Holy Loch. Henderson said the songs was written ‘for the Glasgow peace marchers, May 1960’, and it was first recorded on the 1962 ‘Ding Dong Dollar’ album on the American Folkways label. It has been recorded many times since.
The ‘Freedom Come-All-Ye’ holds many of the threads of Scots political folk song that I have tried to disentangle in this book – protest, Scots language and poetic expression, peace, socialism, past warfare and the Scottish soldier’s role in Empire, internationalism, and the reuse and reapplication of older tunes.

SONG TYPES AND CATEGORIES

Themes of identity and the need for action run through the topic of Scots political song. Rich Scots language both rural poetic and urban demotic is often employed, important when the lyrics speak of identity and confrontation with a ruling elite and media who employ a standard slightly Scots inflected English. Although creation and use of the songs are more prominent in left wing and nationalist settings, there are also the songs of the right wingers and unionists. Sometimes songs of right and left, of union and separation contend directly through response, comment and confrontation.
How can we characterise song types? In chapter one I proposed a few basic types - action-based, illustrative, retrospective and supportive. In this book I have described in use some more detailed types.
‘Agit Prop’, agitation cum propaganda songs, are created to be sung on the march or demo, or played over the loudspeaker mounted on the political campaign van. The songs are immediate, current and simplistic, they utilise Scots vernacular and feature redundancy in their lyrics.
More developed immediate protest songs are sometimes made or adapted for the platform at the end of the march or to sing at the demo, and also for the support concert and recording. Some of these are the individual protest of the singer songwriter, others have strong accessible choruses. The themes are protest, anger and indignation, and vigorous comment. A few of these more developed songs made for immediate purposes, through qualities of poetry, singability, universalism, the persistence in performing them by the maker or by a well-known singer, etc, can transcend the immediate situation that called them forth and join the ongoing corpus of political song, for example ‘Such a Parcel of Rogues’, ‘Hawks and Eagles’ and ‘Who Pays the Piper?’
This corpus also includes lyric protest songs made not in response to specific events but as pro-active, more general protest and urging of responsive action. For example ‘Both Sides the Tweed’. A very few songs transcend the folk song genre to become anthemic ‘National Songs’, espoused by the whole nation, e.g. ‘Scots Wha Hae’, ‘Flower of Scotland’, ‘ A Man’s A Man’, ‘The Freedom Come-All-Ye’.
To the outright political songs we must add songs of comment, comment and narrative, or straight narrative accounts without comment, that are utilised for political purposes or in political settings.
There is social comment within some work songs e.g. bothy ballads or songs of strikes. Many of the old ‘big ballads’ contain sexual and class social comment, explicit or read into the narrative by the singer. These ballads also carry many narrative accounts of political violent strife and contention, e.g. the Border Ballads of cross-frontier encounters, the North East ballads of battles and smaller clashes.
Many songs use retroactive historical comment, illustrating principles to be promoted and fought for in the present day by telling of past injustices and iniquities. They make present political points by recounting tales of past issues and causes, e.g. the many Jacobite songs written long after the 1745 Rising. So much political song was and is retrospective, creating partisan accounts of past conflicts and issues to use as illumination and support for current attitudes and actions.
For example, Thomas Crawford writes about Alan Ramsay’s ballad opera ‘The Gentle Shepherd’, written in 1729, set in 1660, the time of the Restoration. Crawford quotes from a ballad, to the tune ‘Cauld Kail in Aberdeen’, that curses those in rebellion against authority, referring explicitly to the Restoration but surely aimed against 1720s Jacobites.

Cauld be the rebel cast, - Oppressors base and bloody; I hope we'll see them at the last strung a' up in a woody.

Political and comment song descriptive categories could include reportage, comment, parody and squib. They could be illustrative, critical, celebratory, complaining, topical, retrospective, oppositional, modern, substantial and more. Anger and outrage are prominent characteristics of Scots political songs, as is Scots vernacular whether city or poetic, and immediacy e.g the ‘Ding Dong Dollar’ and Republican songs of the 1960s, and many of Matt McGinn’s songs.
Even when the subject is deadly serious Scottish political song is often humorous, usually satiric in tone, and this is much more prominent in Scotland than the comparable songs of our Southern cousins. The lyric of the anthem of the English anti-nuclear movement in the 1960s was written by science fiction author John Brunner.

Don’t you hear the H Bomb’s thunder, echo like the crack of doom?
While they rend the skies asunder fallout makes the earth a tomb

The equivalent Scots anthem had several hands on it when it was ‘workshopped’ by the Glasgow Song Guild. It used humour and the vernacular to sharpen its point.

O the Yanks they drapped anchor in Dunoon, an they had a civic welcome frae the toon
As they cam up the measured mile, Bonny Mary o Argyle wis wearin spangled drawers below her goon
O ye canny spend a dollar when ye’re deid

USE OF TUNES

The tunes used for ‘The H Bomb’s Thunder’ and ‘Ding Dong Dollar’ lead us into the topic of tune families. The primacy of lyric over melody on political song, up until the recent rise of the singer-songwriter, results in much reuse of older tunes. The term ‘parody’ is sometimes applied to such use, but unless the new lyric makes substantial use of, or plays directly off, the older lyric then there is no parody, only tune re-employment.
The origin of the tunes used for both the above anti-nuclear tunes is American. Is this using the foe’s resources against them, or just pragmatic employment of simple bouncing tunes?
‘The H Bomb’s Thunder’ was brought by Brunner to a group of singers who “were planning the music for the first Aldermaston peace march [in 1958], and asked if we could turn it into a song for the march. After trying all sorts of tunes it was [Karl Dallas] who suggested we use ‘Miner’s Lifeguard.’” (Dallas 1972). This American trade union song, “Keep your hand upon your wages and your eye upon the scale”, was in turn drawn out of a white US spiritual, “Life's like a mountain railway, sometimes up and sometimes down”, and writer Karl Dallas says the tune in origin “is derived from the Welsh hymn ‘Calon Ian’".
The 'Ding Dong Dollar' tune was the Scots children’s anthem ‘Ye Canny Shove Yer Grannie Aff A Bus’, “Ye canny shove yer grannie cause she's yer mammie's mammie”. This derived from the American ‘She’ll Be Coming Round The Mountain When She Comes’, which also had a US religious ancestor 'When The Chariot Comes'.
Other US song tunes were turned and employed against the nuclear invaders. ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ became “Chase the Yankees oot the Clyde an send them hame tae mammy”. ‘We Shall Not Be Moved’ was the first to be workshopped, becoming “Like a tree that’s standing by the Holy Loch, I shall not be moved”, and eventually moving to the football terraces to become “Like a team that’s standing in the FA Cup”. ‘John Brown’s Body’ transmogrified into “Ban Polaris - Hallelujah, And send the Yankees hame”. The tune ‘Marching Through Georgia’ is an incitement to civil strife on two continents. Whistling it in the USA below the Mason-Dixon Line will get you punched, but so will any use of it on the streets of central Glasgow on a Saturday afternoon as the ‘bears’ are heading for their football derbies. The SCND Buskers learned this in the 1980s when they had to abandon singing their updated version of ‘The Glesca Eskimos’. The tune had been adopted many years earlier by a proud gang of Proddie ruffians, rumoured to tuck open-blade razors behind their lapels ready for use, and provocatively proud of their Bridgeton home in Glasgow’s East End and their allegiance to King Billy – William of Orange.

Hullo, hullo, we are the Billy Boys,. Hullo, hullo, we are the Billy Boys.
Up to the knees in Fenian blood, surrender or ye die, we are the Brigton Billy Boys.

So the SCND Buskers would be challenged by Celtic supporters for using such an offensive tune, and by Rangers supporters for using such a proud tune without authority. Peace lovers cannot win sometimes. The reuse of tunes is not new. Robert Burns wrote no new tunes, though on occasion he would slow down or speed up or change the mood of a tune. Of the first generation of Revival songmakers, neither Blythman, Henderson nor Buchan made new tunes for their songs. Jim McLean and Matt McGinn used many old tunes, but also began to make new ones for their songs. Burns played fiddle, McLean plays piano.

All these lyrics were written to the tune of ‘The Wark o The Weavers’
Our sodgers and our sailors, ’od! we mak’ them a’ bauld, for gin they hadna claes, faith, they couldna fecht for cauld
The high and low, the rich and puir – a’body, young and auld, tair or less need the wark o’ the weavers
David Shaw, Early 19th C
Sae here's tae George Buchanan, wis first tae gie 't a name, an here's tae William Wallace, and John Maclean
An here's tae Bonnie Scotland - we'll see her free again wi Perfervidum Ingenium Scotorum
Morris Blythman1960s
The Welly Boot Song, written by Tom Buchan / Billy Connolly 1970s
We don’t want British rule, we don’t want it to stay, we don’t want a spirit that fears the break of day
It’s not a time for cowardice it’s time to break away with the spirit of the Scottish Resistance
ANON, 1980s

Most of the next generation of songmakers had guitar skills – Ian Davison, Archie Fisher, Dick Gaughan, Robin Laing, Jim Brown. Nancy Nicolson plays melodeon, Ian Walker, Brian MacNeill and Billy Connolly play a number of instruments excellently. All of this grouping use a mixture of old and new tunes for their songs, but the later singer-songwriters tend to use new tunes only, e.g. Rab Noakes, Peter Nardini. Perhaps an increase in instrumental skills leads to greater creation of new tunes?
Morris Blythman often used tunes considered part of the rousing marching repertoire of Ulster Orange flute and accordion bands, and also seized on tunes from Scots and other traditions. On a 1950s family holiday in Brittany he heard the ancient Breton tune ‘Al Alarc’h’, and realised it could be applied to the old ballad of ‘The Twa Corbies’, the crows who profit from the slaying of a knight, his body abandoned by the ones he loved.
When, through the Reivers group, Norman Buchan brought the song ‘The Wark o the Weavers’ into the repertoire, Blythman and others grasped the tune firmly. Blythman’s song ‘Perfervidum Ingenium Scotorum’, begins, "We're aa met thegither here, but no tae sit an crack”, drawing on the first line of 19th Century weaver David Shaw’s lyric. Blythman’s chorus makes no lyric link with Shaw’s.

Wi Perfervidum Ingenium you hear the ring o bells, ye watch the wheel o fortune, an see whit it foretells
We'll win our Independence, ay, by takin it oorsels, wi Perfervidum Ingenium Scotorum

Blythman asserts “We’ll win our independence by takin it oorsels”, and goes on to praise named Scots – George Buchanan, William Wallace and John Maclean. Hector MacMillan quotes two of Blythman’s verses for ‘Perfervidum Ingenium Scotorum’, saying that the last two verses “wittily top-and-tail the whole of our story, from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century.” The title Latin phrase works off the phrase ‘Scotorum praefervida ingenia, the ardent temper of the Scots’, which was used by 16th Century Robert Buchanan, who was a reformer, historian, scholar, poet and tutor of James VI.
A use of Shaw's song for broader humour came in Tom Buchan's 1970s theatrical event 'The Great Northern Welly Boot Show', which told of a wellington boot factory threatened with closure and resultant worker unemployment. Sung by, and probably written by, Billy Connolly, the 'Welly Boot Song' made use of Shaw's tune and his key chorus line.
Shaw had written “If it wasny for the weavers, whit wad we do? We wouldna get claith made o oor woo.” The new song said, “If it wasny for yer wellies, where would ye be?” In 1983 the ‘Red Review’ reworked this for ‘If it wisnae for the Tories, where would we be? We would have our hospitals and infirmaries’. Matt McGinn made use of the ‘Weavers’ song for his ‘If it Wasny for the Union’, and Blythman’s own lyric was mangled for ‘The Spirit of Scottish Resistance’ in the ‘Songs For National Liberation’ booklet.
Some tunes change in character as they are reused. I have mentioned the ancient march tune ‘Tutti Taiti’, used for the drinking song ‘Landlady what’s the lawin?’, then for Burns’ ‘Scots Wha Hae’, usually sung at a dead slow march pace. ‘Nicky Tams’ is a jovial music hall type bothy ballad, used by Birmingham-based Aberdonian Ian Campbell for his poignant ‘Old Man’s Song’. The sad German WWII love song ‘Lili Marlene’ was used by Henderson and other soldiers for the angry ‘D Day Dodgers’, and by ‘an English peacenik’ for “Underneath the table, hiding from the bomb, there I met a stranger, he said his name was Ron.” A British soldier’s peacetime song, ‘Bless Em All’ became widely sung in WWII, then versions emerged used by Scots schoolchildren as a play song, by female factory and office workers when publicly parading a colleague about to be married, and by the Glasgow Song Workshop for ‘Boomerang’.
One Scots tune has carried a surprising range of lyrics, political and otherwise. In the 16th Century a nine part pipe tune called ‘Gabhaidh Sinn An Rath Mor’ [‘We Will Take The High Road’] which ‘belonged’ to the MacIntyres of Cruachan was ‘appropriated’ by the Stewarts of Appin, who played it when returning from the battle of Pinkie in 1547. After the battle of Inverlochy in 1644 a two part version of the tune acquired a Gaelic lyric. Then in 1715 the Stewarts played it at the battle of Sheriffmuir, after which the tune was known as the ‘Sherramuir March’. After the ‘45 Rising a Jacobite Gaelic lyric was made, drawing on the older words. In 1819-21 James Hogg published (and probably wrote) the Jacobite song ‘Will Ye Go To Sheriffmuir’ which uses the tune.

Will ye go to Sheriffmuir, bauld John o Innisture?
There to see the noble Mar and his Highland Laddies.
Aa the true men o the north, Angus, Huntly and Seaforth,
Scouring on to cross the Forth, wi their white cockadies.

The tune sank socially over the centuries to become a favourite for children’s songs, including ‘Katie Bairdie’, ‘Hard Up Kick The Can’, and ‘London Bridge Is Falling Down’. And it was used for at least one recent political squib.

Maggie Thatcher’s all at sea, Tries tae fool the counterie,
Spoutin rubbish on TV. [Stamp] Maggie Thatcher!
Though she’s up tae every dodge, She couldny run a good minoge.
Ought tae fly the Jolly Roger. [Stamp] Maggie Thatcher!

SONGMAKERS AND SINGERS

Who makes the songs? The poets of Scotland make them. For an example from the 14th Century, consider in John Barbour’s ‘The Bruce’ the wonderful 24 lines that begin with 'A! Fredome is a noble thing.' Then consider Hamish Henderson’s ‘The Freedom Come-All-Ye’, written for the 1960 Holy Loch marchers. Between the two, and since, many and many a Scottish poet has made trenchant and committed comment on their life and times. Robert Burns' work encompasses the recovering of ballad versions, new songs of the Jacobites, election balladeering, protest at the actions and values of others, social comment and radical universalism.
What has come down to us is weighted towards published poets. As well as known poets whose work can be considered in annotated collections, there are the unknown balladeers. Some such songs are preserved by continuing to be sung because of their worth and relevance. Written or printed records of others are available to us in collections, or inserted into first hand accounts in books or in court proceedings or newspaper accounts of marches and demos.
Collections of printed broadsides of the 19th Century are a wonderful source of political and protest lyric. There are also much earlier broadsides that on occasion tell us of then current political issues and actions. And only a fraction of what was printed has been preserved to be available to us in current collections. The most enduring of what was written goes into the oral sung tradition, then back into book collections. But if it is too topical, it does not endure. If too workaday or flimsy in language or construction, it dies. If written with poetic force and quality, it has a better chance of continued life.
In the early days of the Folk Revival key political songmakers included Morris Blythman, Jim Maclean, Hamish Henderson and Matt MacGinn. Only MacGinn was known as a paid public performer. Their work appeared in the Rebel Ceilidh Song Books and Norman Buchan's songbooks.
Nowadays there is a kind of poet called a singer-songwriter who is a professional or semi-professional performer. Roy Williamson, Dick Gaughan, Nancy Nicolson, Ian Davison, Peter Nardini, Brian MacNeill, John McCreadie, Eileen Penman, Ian Walker, Jim Brown, Karine Polwart, and many more have contributed to the fund of Scottish political song. Some of their work may be heard in concert or on recordings, through the efforts of folk club and festival organisers, Greentrax and other record labels. Increasingly these days, individual artistes or groups issue and sell their own recordings.
I have named Blythman, Henderson and Buchan as the three architects of the Revival. In this analogy the songmakers and the professional and semi-professional singers are the builders who dug the drains and raised and plastered the walls, designed the furniture and plumbed in the electrics. The inhabitants of the building are of course all the above, and they share occupancy with all those who sing or join in or just listen to the songs. In Scotland, political song is part of the key structure of the folk song building, not just living in one room or floor, but from top to bottom, and in the hearts and minds of the inhabitants.

WHAT IS NOT IN THIS WEBSITE?

Many of the early Jacobite songs were in Gaelic. I have said hardly anything about political song in Gaelic in this book – when you are ignorant, silence is doubly golden. Also, much more could be said and illustrated about sexual or gender politics as handled in Scots song from the old ballads right up to current Scots hip-hop lyrics, rock, alternative country music, and other song genres, and the other kinds of political lyrics they have created.
Just two examples. First, Babs MacGregor tells about the use of a classical choral format for a ‘Peace Oratorio’, which was first performed without permission in the Scottish Law Courts. Second, in the archives of the Political Song Archive is ‘Scheme Songs’, a programme for a concert by the socially and politically explicit rock band Scheme, who sprang from and were based in Glasgow’s huge Easterhouse public housing scheme. The author heard the band perform when they were tramping the country with an Unemployment March, playing every night their mix of rock and Caribbean musical influences.

Lyrics from ‘Scheme Songs’
They caged me in a cell, left me here lonely, I was the pawn in the Police street game, I was guilty, but I know I was framed
All in the one boat together, shade of skin no difference, we’re all the same, living on day to day
Sixteen today, my feet are sore, trying to earn some pay, they close their doors and say
Can’t exploit you, try another day

One reasonable response to this book is that it is too parochial in its focus on Scots political song during the lead up to and time of the Scottish Folk Revival. But any folk revival is through its nature strongly parochial – Ireland, Wales, USA, England, Scotland – each had their own version of the Folk Revival, with different key dates and personalities.
Michael Brocken’s 2003 book is titled ‘The British Folk Revival 1944-2002’, but it is about the English Folk Revival. Indeed, at one point he refers to “the equally vigorous folk revival in Scotland”. The Scottish performers who are mentioned by him are those who found performance success in London as well as in Scotland, or were involved in one of Ewan MacColl’s recording projects, or are the four Scots in Brocken’s list of six “folk artists leaving the revival for the sake of commercial success” - Isla St Clair, Billy Connolly, Gerry Rafferty and Barbara Dickson.
The most visible presence of folk music the public and enthusiasts see are the professional and semi-professional folk and formerly folk artists as they tour, perform in concert and record. They are the media part of the story. They are more visible, but in no wise more important, than the lovers (amateurs) of traditional song old or new in its political and non-political forms who sing it and listen to it in its older social contexts.

WHERE DOES IT COME FROM? WHERE DOES IT GO?

We know the names of only a few of the political song makers prior to Burns. Our National Bard is the wonder and the curse of Scots verse, some Scots seem to think that because we have him we need no other. Many traditional songs that he collected, and sometimes edited or added to, are in print wholly ascribed to him. The worst of his verse was sanctified and imitated by the kailyard school of Whistlebinkie poets, his political convictions were glossed over by right wing biographers and commentators. His songs are at times bellowed by tartaned entertainers or demurely simpered by drawing-room belles who seem not to pay any heed to the sense of his lyrics.
Yet the strength and weight of what he achieved resists and survives this mangling. Burns is periodically mined by poets, songmakers and singers. “Lots of Burns songs are performed in concert. Younger singers coming in have almost inverted snobbery, songs that were ‘too popular’ are not sung any more, e.g. ‘The Bonny Lass o Fyvie’. Songwriters have an advantage. Poets are in the same position – ‘Who can I tell this to?’ Poets have only their own voice, songwriters have the voice of singers too. Folk clubs were of their time. Now there is much more to choose from, a wider spectrum with greater quality, so it is harder for folk music to become popular now.” Ronnie Clark
Burns collected and edited the work of older songsmiths, after him came Hogg and Nairne and many another. In 1951 Scots poets contributed to the ‘Sangs O The Stane’ collection, Morris Blythman developed a fine line in anti-royalist songs, then got together a cabal of songwriters of whom the chief luminary was Jim McLean. For the 1960s Anti Polaris demos at the Holy Loch the Glasgow Song Guild produced an abundance of songs. Then their attention turned to campaign songs to support the emerging success of the Scottish National Party. In Edinburgh Hamish Henderson was collecting, writing and encouraging others to sing and to write. Norman Buchan’s books provided the traditional song fuel so the Revival wagons could roll and the waggoners could sing their hearts out.
Around the country the folk song clubs, then the festivals sprang up, singers gained confidence and expertise and some became professionals, with many more as semi-professionals. As singers gained confidence in their ability to create as well as sing, the tide of protest song became a flood. Women’s rights, the Poll Tax, The Gulf War, the closure of the Glasgow Govanhill Swimming Pool, the struggle for equity in South Africa – when a political issue catches fire, either national or local, of short or long duration, Scottish songmakers are usually to the fore.
Songwriter and organiser Rab Noakes assesses the state of Scots traditional music in 2009. “Currently instrumentally based traditional music is popular, song is in trouble. There is at present a lack of respect for Scottish tradition. There’s a perception that it’s highly respected, but it has been allowed to be very diluted, till regionality has mostly gone. It all sounds Irish, that happened through the seductive qualities of 1970s Irish music. I empathise with the reasons for that, it is a more seductive and easier sound. Ireland has also suffered from that, there is very little regional fiddling there any more.” Rab Noakes
Songs are still being made in abundance, but are little heard because of the lack of a mass forum; the occasional radio or TV programmes that feature or discuss Scots political song tend to look to the past, not the present. Journalists and old folkies complain that no-one is writing political songs any more. Writer Stuart McHardy has a positive outlook.
“We used to have chapbooks and ballad sheets, full of political commentary, self supporting media. By the early 60s, technology meant somebody had access to a roneo machine, so could produce leaflets and give them away - individual action rather than rooted in community. Chapbooks were a natural part of the community. Now we are more self sufficient, there’s a change there.
“What are the kids using now? The Internet, Facebook and U Tube. At the T In The Park festival, the band Rage Against the Machine’s lyrics were absolutely what we have fought for. The band told BBC they could not film them, they said ‘We are for the people here’. Some songs are not for the media, but for the people who made them, process is the important thing, the CD is the memento. Does it matter not getting into media? The media are now fragmenting. You can now use viral advertising, make your own list of web contacts, ask people to circulate information, lyrics, recordings. Find your own audience. You can also use the same approach for political purposes. Say a version of ‘A Man's a Man’ that points at current problems in China? There is a necessary level of professionalism and presentation. The potential for political song is great. Young folk are doing it already.” Stuart McHardy
Morris Blythman, Hamish Henderson and Norman Buchan were the key progenitors of the Revival, and all were creators and disseminators of Scottish political song. Among the next generation of songmakers and singers of Scots political song who emerged were Jim McLean, Matt McGinn, Josh McRae, Hamish Imlach, Ian Davison, Nancy Nicolson, Geordie McIntyre, Gordeanna McCulloch, Dick Gaughan, Ian Walker, Brian MacNeill, Alistair Hulitt and Karine Polwart.
The Scottish Folk Revival of this book’s time has largely dissipated its energy, the mass chorus singing aspect of it is a withering bloom. Music education courses are training instrumentalists in traditional style whose technical ability is marvellous, but few of them sing, and those that do tend to treat the voice as another musical instrument rather than as a deliverer of narrative and comment. But the Folk Revival is always cyclical – ceilidh and campfire singing leads to folk clubs, then concerts, then festivals, then packs of fiddlers in pubs, then ceilidh dancing, then recordings, feral community choirs, community songmaking by the New Makars Trust, and the rise of storytelling. What will be next?
The impulse to make political songs will be there. The voices of the people, in the songs they choose to make and sing about what matters to them, remind us that, whatever contempt is at times expressed for the ideas and actions of politicians, the ideas and actions of politics are at the core of our lives and our living, and must be sung about.
Is Scotland any closer to creating the Eskimo Republic, and should we be?

Then let us pray that come it may, as come it will for aa that, that sense and worth o’er aa the earth shall bear the gree, an aa that
For aa that, an aa that, it’s comin yet for aa that that man to man, the world o’er, shall brothers be for aa that