Freedom’s Sword - Songs of Warfare And Strife

Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled,
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led,
Welcome to your gory bed,
Or to Victorie.
Now's the day, and now's the hour;
See the front o' battle lour;
See approach prood EDWARD’S power,
Chains and slaverie!

Wha would be a traitor knave?
Wha can fill a coward's grave?
Wha sae base as be a slave?
Let him turn and flee!
Wha for Scotland's King and Law,
Freedom's sword would strongly draw,
FREE-MAN stand, or FREE-MAN fa',
Let him follow me!

By Oppression's woes and pains!
By your Sons in servile chains!
We will drain our dearest veins,
But they shall be free!
Lay the proud Usurper low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!
Liberty's in every blow!
Let us Do - or Die!
Scots Wha Hae, tune Hey Tutti Taiti, words Robert Burns

Songs of fights, large and small, have always been prominent in the repertoire of Scotland. Are warfare and strife the outcomes of failed politics, or are politicians in the long term as bloody and bloody-minded as are soldiers? Do Scots glory too much in their songs of battles just and unjust, betrayal, injustice and atrocity? In earlier days political debate was on the lines of ‘My sword’s longer than your sword, that shows I am right’. The songmakers decide who won the fight, and lament the cost in lives smashed. They also re-light old contests as candles to illuminate problems and lessons for the present day. In the last century Scots songmakers have begun to advance the startling notion that peace is of itself a good thing.
The 1314 Battle of Bannockburn was later celebrated repeatedly in song. Robert Burns' enduring anthem, ‘Scots Wha Hae’, is about the battle, but also about the political Scotland of his time. Robert Burns wrote this lyric as what “one might suppose to be [King Robert The Bruce’s] address to his heroic followers on that eventful morning” of 24 June 1314, when the Scots routed the army of King Edward II of England and regained their independence.

Hey tuttie taiti, how tuttie taiti, hey tutti taiti, wha’s fu noo?

He used the tune ‘Hey Tutti Taitie’, of which he wrote "There is a tradition, which I have met with in many places of Scotland, that it was Robert Bruce's March at the battle of Bannockburn”. The Town Council of Orleans in France accept this story, saying the tune, ‘Le Marche des Soldats de R. Bruce’, was played by the Scots soldiers fighting with Joan of Arc's army when she entered Orleans on 29th April 1429. Writer Hector MacMillan says of Burns' lyric that “the basic form was thought out and a first draft put together” when in 1793 Burns and fellow Dumfries radical John Syme were on holiday touring the Galloway coast, at exactly the time arch-radical Thomas Muir was expected to land on that coast from Ireland. “Muir was arrested 30 miles away, and ‘Scots Wha Hae’ completed in the same or following week.”
Several other Bannockburn songs were made by Scots poets. The latest well known song to refer to the loser of the Bannockburn fight, Edward II, is Roy Williamson's song, ‘Flower of Scotland’, another candidate for a Scottish national anthem. A lyric in the first Rebels Songbook tells of the 1411 Battle of Harlaw between the Lord of the Isles and the Earl of Mar. This ballad was made popular in the 1950s through the singing of traveller Jeannie Robertson of Aberdeen, and awards victory to the North East fighters. The title of the song is listed in the 1550 Complaynt of Scotland as 'the battel of the hayrlau', but scholars consider Robertson's text to be much later.
There have always been Scottish songs that protested about war, as there have ever been Scottish songs that celebrated soldiery and battle. Stirling Brig, Bannockburn, Otterburn, Harlaw, Flodden, Cromdale, Killiecrankie, Prestonpans, Falkirk, Culloden - the songs mix elements of admiration and glorification with lament, sober reporting, biased misreporting, and occasional humour.

It fell about the Lammas tide when the muir-men win their hay,
The doughty Douglas bound him to ride into England, to drive a prey.
The Battle of Otterbourne, traditional

Ay, I cam near an near eneuch, an I their numbers saw;
There wis forty-thousand Hielanmen a-marchin ti Harlaw.
Now as we rode on an further on, an in aboot Harlaw,
It’s there we met the Hielanmen, sic strikes ye never saw.
The Battle of Harlaw, traditional

I’ve heard the lilting at our yowe-milking, lasses a-lilting before the dawn of day;
But now they are moaning on ilka green loaning. the Flowers of the Forest are a’ wede away.
The Flowers of The Forest, about the Battle of Flodden, tune traditional, words Miss Jean Elliot of Minto

Are Scots songs that tell of past battles and armed clashes historical or political? They are seldom fully 'historically accurate' in the historian's sense. But accounts of history illuminate the present knowledge, values and belief of the writer as much as they shine a lantern on the past. Most Scottish songs about battles and strife were made long after the events, and the makers' current beliefs and allegiances shine through the texts. Most of the songs ever made, political or other, only lived on the page or were sung once or twice. Most of those that were performed three or more times also died soon after they were created, and much of the rump lasted only while the maker breathed. Why were the songs written? Some or most through antiquarian interest, 'stirring of the blood in the veins', the poet's urge to explore a gripping topic. Many songs so created were then used to support the singer's patriotic sense of emotional identity.
A very few of those songs are kept alive by singers who have learned them aurally, others are on occasion lifted from print and put into sung circulation. The motivation to sing them comes sometimes through antiquarian interest, sometimes there is a specific local relevance of the event or the maker, sometimes because of the high drama of the tale and how it is told, sometimes because the performer and listeners appreciate some higher poetic value in the text.

To seik het water beneath cauld ice, Surely it is a greit follie
I have asked grace at a graceless face, But there is nane for my men and me!
Johnnie Armstrong’s Goodnight, traditional

But another spur to the preservation of a song as a live thing is its continuing or reawakened relevance to current political events or preoccupations. Songs of strife support a sense of national identity, and raise issues of social rights and justice. Historical songs are very susceptible to adoption by political causes and groupings. Many of them can be sung with a sense of ownership by Whig and Tory, Left and Right, who can find elements of their own core values exemplified in the songs. The songs considered here have resulted from international and national violent confrontations that have involved Scots bloodshed, with more attention paid to those songs that were still sung or were resuscitated in the second half of the Twentieth Century, especially where such songs were performed in a political or social comment context, rather than as light or heavy entertainment.

High o’er the waving broom, in chivalry and grace shone England’s radiant spear and plume, by Stirling’s rocky base
And stretching far beneath the view, the bloody Saxon banners flew
When, like a torrent rushing, oh God, from left and right the flame of Scottish Swords like lightning came, those English legions crushing
Stirling Brig, writer not known

The first song in the 1950s Bo'ness Rebels songbook, ‘Patriot Songs For Camp and Ceilidh’, is the oldest in setting, the tongue-mangling account of William Wallace's victory at Stirling Brig in 1297 that entranced Hugh MacDonald in the 1940s. “When I was 16 I went on the walk for Bannockburn. On the way back, when I passed the Wallace Tavern I heard a voice ringing out from the pub, singing ‘Stirling Brig’. I didn't drink, but I stopped to listen. The singer was a member of the William Wallace Lodge, they were colliers, they carried the William Wallace banner.”
It was the only warfare song from the Ceilidh Songbooks not to enter the Folk Revival repertoire.
Various other songs of North East battles and clan-based strife became prominent in the Revival – ‘The Haughs o Cromdale’, ‘The Baron of Brackley’, ‘The Burning of Auchindoun’, ‘Bonny George Campbell’ - while nearly all the ballads of Borders feuds and fights and cattle lifting so lovingly collected and annotated by Sir Walter Scott in his ‘Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border’, faded from singing memory.
Scott included many other ballads kent far and wide in Scotland, and his pioneering work subsequently led many to lump all old ballads together as 'Border Ballads'. Scott’s songs that do tell of strife across the Border or inter-clan clashes in the Debatable Lands comment on natural justice and the misuse of political power, injustice, revenge, complaint and daring deeds. Few of them are now sung in the Borders or elsewhere in Scotland, though ‘Johnnie Armstrong's Goodnight’ has stayed in memory because of its account of King James V's dastardly 1530 betrayal of a promise of safe conduct.
The greatest outpouring of retrospective lyrics about battles and their contexts arose from the series of Jacobite Risings, which some called Rebellions, from Killiecrankie in 1689 to Culloden in 1746. William Donaldson says, "Most of them purport to be contemporary with the events they describe, and some were explicitly presented as such by their writers, and the same is true of the overwhelming majority of what the songbooks of Scotland contain under the heading 'Jacobite Songs'. Is there anything, then, to prevent the conclusion that they are fakes, brilliant fakes perhaps, but fakes notwithstanding?" Donaldson concludes that there is of course more to the story than this, and that “the struggle for the rights and liberties of the [Scottish] nation… merged with 'the Matter of Prince Charlie', to produce a new national consciousness and transform the Scottish identity."
There were of course songs made at the time of the Risings, particularly in Gaelic, as given in Anne Lorne Gillies' ‘Gaelic Songs of Scotland’ and J L Campbell's ‘Gaelic Songs of the Forty-Five’. ‘Hey Johnnie Cope’ was written at the time of Prestonpans, the tune of ‘Old Killiecrankie' eventually attracted several sets of lyrics, and Donaldson gives various early broadside Jacobite lyrics.
The major creators of retrospective Jacobite songs were Robert Burns, James Hogg and Lady Nairne. Sir Walter Scott contributed only ‘Bonny Dundee’. Some commentators suggest Burns began as a Jacobite supporter, and progressed to become a radical. Others point out he kept writing or rewriting Jacobite lyrics while penning modern revolutionary lyrics. Jim McLean comments that “Burns was a democrat and a romantic Jacobite at the same time. That is very Scottish, we hold contradictions.”
Burns’ Jacobite songs include ‘Awa Whigs Awa’, ‘The White Cockade’, ‘It Was Aa For Our Rightful King’, ‘Charlie He's My Darling’ – and ‘Ye Jacobites By Name’, though some authorities assert it is an earlier song, possibly reworked by him.

Cam ye o’er frae France? Cam ye doun by Lunnon? Saw ye Geordie's whelps and his bonny woman?
Were ye at the place ca’d the Kittle Housie? Saw ye Geordie’s grace riding on a goosie?
Cam Ye Ower Frae France, words James Hogg

Twenty years after Burns died, James Hogg published his ‘Jacobite Relics of Scotland’ collection, songs both pro and anti Jacobite. Donaldson considers Hogg the creator of at the very least ‘Donald Macgillavry’, ‘Cam Ye O'er Frae France’, ‘Will Ye Go Tae Sheriffmuir’, ‘The Piper O Dundee’ and ‘Come O'er The Stream Charlie’.

Versions of Charlie Is My Darling
As Charlie he cam up the gate his face shone like the day
I grat to see the lad come back that had been lang away
Out-owre yon moory mountain and down yon craigy glen
Of naething else our lasses sing but Charlie and his men
By James Hogg
As he came marching up the street the pipes play’d loud and clear
And aa the folk came running out to meet the Chevalier
They’ve left their bonny Hieland hills, their wives and bairnies dear
To draw the sword for Scotland’s lord, the young Chevalier
By Lady Nairne

Lady Caroline Nairne disapproved of much of Burns's work, and "deeply lamented that one endowed with so much genius should have composed verses which tended to inflame the passions.” She softened and “purified the national minstrelsy” of older Jacobite songs, and created new ones under her pen name of Mrs Bogan of Bogan. For example she rewrote ‘Charlie Is My Darling’, and wrote ‘The Hundred Pipers’, and ‘Will Ye No Come Back Again?’
The best known Jacobite song was written in the 1880s by an Englishman, Sir Harold Boulton. He used the tune of a Gaelic rowing song, an iorram, for ‘The Skye Boat Song’. When the lyric was given in the Bo'ness ‘Patriot Songs’ booklet, they changed the last line from "Charlie will come again" to "Scotland will rise again".
There are many other more modern creators or revisers of Jacobite songs. ‘King Fareweel’ occurs on a late 19th Century broadside as ‘Charlie Stuart and his Tartan Plaidie’, and also in the ‘Greig Duncan Folk Song Collection’. In the 1960s, singer and songwriter Andy Hunter developed and rewrote ‘King Fareweel’ from a short sung version. Songwriter Jim McLean’s retrospective ‘Massacre of Glencoe’, "Cruel is the snow that sweeps Glencoe" is widely popular, as are Brian MacNeill’s Flora MacDonald song called ‘Strong Women Rule Us All’, and Ronnie Browne’s ‘Roses of Prince Charlie’.
Some Jacobite songs were protest songs of the time, but many more were either later right wing romantic Tory songs, or disguised assertions about Scotland’s place in the United Kingdom. Geordie McIntyre comments, “Most Jacobite songs were written later, when it was safer to write them. I've never heard anyone singing a Whig song, though there are plenty of them. We love a loser. I said to [Glasgow singer with the Whistlebinkies group] Mick Broderick 'You're a bizarre guy, like a lot of the rest of us you're a left wing Jacobite Marxist Socialist Conservative Presbyterian.’
“How many people who sing Jacobite songs know the slightest thing about the Stuart monarchy? People who are republicans sing Jacobite songs. I think they are singing about an ideal of somebody who was popular, singing about something good that might have happened, though Bonny Prince Charlie was not universally popular in Scotland. And of course people can be attracted to the tune and the language, and images are brilliant in some of the songs. We sing them now for different reasons, sometimes from a basis of ignorance.” Geordie McIntyre
After the '45, tartan and kilts were banned, except in the British army. The song topics move, opposition to the British Government turns into praise for the foreign exploits and valour of our gallant Jocks.
Another song made popular through the singing of Jeannie Robertson is ‘Twa Recruitin Sergeants’, a Scots language version of the widely sung Napoleonic Wars song ‘Over the hill and across the main, to Flanders, Portugal and Spain'. The advent of the Crimean War brings on a small flock of humorous 'Here Come The Russians' broadsides. ‘The Russian In Glasgow’ begins, “The Russian is coming, oh dear oh dear”. ‘The Finishing Stroke’ will be given him by the Yeomanry, and the Volunteer forces are also praised in ‘The Camlachie Militia’. ‘The British Lion And The Russian Bear’ is to the tune of ‘The King Of The Cannibal Isles’. Another new broadside is also named ‘The Russians Are Coming’. Broadside songs that praised the daring Scottish soldiery included ‘The Scotch Brigade’, ‘We’ll Hae Nane But Highland Bonnets Here’, and ‘Lads That Were Reared Among The Heather’. Other broadside lyrics made fun of army life, like ‘The Gallant Forty Twa’ which was sung with high vigour by Jimmy MacBeath in the People’s Festival Ceilidh, and broadside ballad ‘Sodger Jock’.

Says oor sairgent jist the day, "Jock! Ye'll sune be gaun awa
Oot tae Indy for tae fecht the Blackymoors"
But I'll tak my rifle heft, and I'll paste them richt and left
An I'll dimple in their goblets wi the cloors
Sodger Jock, A Comic Song, dated Saturday, May 22, 1886

The last line could be translated as "I'll bash in their cooking pans with blows", where ‘pans’ means heads. Weaver David Shaw of Forfar, who wrote ‘The Wark O The Weavers’, made another such 'comic' song, ‘The Forfar Sodger’. In the 1960s folk clubs several less chucklesome verses were omitted, like the following.

The bluid cam bockin thro my hose, and when I couldna gang,sir
I toom'd my gun among my foes, and syne sat doon an sang, sir
At 'Scots wha hae wi Wallace bled', an 'Up wi Maggie Dick' sir
But sune wi cauld my woundit leg, it grew stiff's a stick, sir

These verses come from Robert Ford's 1904 ‘Vagabond Songs and Ballads of Scotland’. Other soldierly songs included there are the old lyric of ‘Jamie Foyers’, ‘The Plains of Waterloo’, ‘Corunna's Lovely Shore’, ‘The Bonny Lass of Fyvie’, ‘Bannocks of Bearmeal’, ‘The Kilties in the Crimea’, ‘The Heights of Alma’, and a Jacobite lyric for ‘The Bonny Banks of Loch Lomond’.
When World War One began, an alliance of socialists and pacifists objected. Some went to prison.

Oh Calton Gaol! Oh Calton Gaol!
Sae sombre, grim and grey,
Within thy wa’s were gallant hearts
Held captive mony a day.
For they refused to bend the knee
To tyrants’ cruel sway;
The stand remembered aye shall be
They made for Liberty.
Calton Jail, tune Rowan Tree, words Robert Stewart, from ‘Prison Rhymes’.

Two retrospective songs that query the value of the sacrifice of the WW1 Flanders warriors were made by Scots emigrant to Australia Eric Bogle, ‘The Green Fields of France’ (also known as ‘Willie McBride’) and ‘The Band Played Waltzing Matilda’. Both songs were recorded by the Irish group The Fureys and Davy Arthur, and were very successful in the Irish Hit Parade, so subsequently Bogle has been claimed as an Irish songwriter. These songs illustrate two of the problems of considering why songs are labelled 'political'. First, the songs are critical of the way the First World War was prosecuted, no-one in the last 80 years has argued in favour of how that war was waged, so where is the political dissention? Second, a sense of ownership over the songs is felt by left wingers who are pacifists, but they are sung with equal fervour and a sense of ownership not only by people in the Scottish National Party and the Scottish Labour Party, but also by Scottish Tories. Bogle has of course made other songs about more recent matters that are politically explicit, and he views his WW1 songs as generally anti-war. The inter-party popularity of these songs reminds us that no politician makes statements in favour of waging war, it is always someone else who starts or forces the fight, and they are reluctantly obliged to respond.
Most songs of the time of World War One were pro that War. An American songwriter, Alfred Bryan, covered his bets by using the same tune and lyric approach in both directions – his 1914 song ‘I Didn’t Raise My Son To Be A Soldier’, was in 1917 rewritten by him as ‘I’m Glad My Son Grew Up To Be A Soldier’. In the 1970s Scots singer Hamish Imlach had only one verse of the antiwar version and wanted to use the song, so got more verses written so he could perform it. Neither Eric Bogle nor Hamish Imlach wanted to change attitudes or promote new action re WW1, but both wanted to use the example of that War to promote the principle of peaceful resolution of differences. Post war fury at betrayed promises led to such bitter jibes as:

After the war was over, after the Slaves had bled,
After the dead were buried, after the prayers were said,
Many a Slave was saying, "Good God, what was it for?"
Many a mother was weeping after the war.
After The War, tune After The Ball, words Comrade Tom (Anderson)

Aprės la guerre fini, heroes they said we’d be, skimming the milk in the land of the Free, aprės la guerre fini
Aprės la guerre fini, first fruits of victory. We got our medals and wooden legs free, aprės la guerre fini
Aprės la guerre fini, no homes for such as we, without a deposit and bank guarantee, aprės la guerre fini
Aprės la guerre fini, no jobs for one in three, “Take it or leave it” the bosses decree, aprės la guerre fini
Aprės la guerre fini, we’re on the U.A.B., helping build guns with the tax on the tea, aprės la guerre fini
Aprės La Guerre Fini, Tune Under The Bridges Of Paris, From People’s Parodies

There have always been soldiers’ squibs, parodies and rewritten verses. The Theatre Workshop show ‘Oh What A Lovely War’ was made up of such. Ronnie Clark of Glasgow recalls his father singing the following, one of many verses for ‘Bless Em All’.

Ah ye’ll go, ah ye’ll go, ah ye’ll go, whether ye like it or no
Wee baggy troosers wi seams up the side, hauns in yer pockets wi nuthin inside

World War Two produced many such soldiers’ songs. Hamish Henderson collected some together in a volume, Ballads of World War II, published by the ‘Lili Marlene Club’. They included songs of his own making like ‘The 51st Highland Division’s Farewell To Sicily’, better known as ‘Banks O Sicily’ – “Nae Jock will mourn the kyles o ye”. Another that he developed from “a Ballad which was circulating among the ‘8th Army scroungers’” in Italy was ‘D-Day Dodgers’, of which he claimed authorship of five of the eight verses. Both these songs have been much sung in the Folk Revival. A song made by Henderson which was dropped from the sung repertoire expressed wartime admiration for the Red Army’s resistance to Hitler, and its leader.

Hitler’s a non-smoker and Churchill smokes cigars
And they’re both as keen as mustard on imperialistic wars
But your Uncle Joe’s a worker and a very decent chap
Because he smokes a pipe and wears a taxi driver’s cap

Ian Davison has made a WW2 song, to the tune of ‘John Anderson’ in march time, about the 1941 ‘Clydebank Blitz‘. It begins

The moon was on the river, and a chill was on the town
The children in their siren suits were told to cuddle down
And in from off the North Sea, across the eastern shores
With shining lochs to lead them on, the waves of bombers roared
Clydebank, London, Coventry and Dresden
Hamburg, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki

It ends with
Night-shift workers found the place their families had been
They saw the shattered tenements, and spaces in between
They saw the miners digging, and they knew what it was for
It’s babies on the front line now, and that’s a modern war

Peacetime soldiering also produced small songs. In revolution-torn Aden in 1965 an ex-Indian army man sang the author a piece that combines Hindi words, a combination of condescending attitude and recognition of rights outraged re the Indian servants that even non-commissioned men had, and an older final joke line of ‘Baboo English’.

Sixteen annas one rupee, seventeen annas one buckshee
Sixteen years you love my daughter, now you’re bound for the Blighty, Sahib
Hope the boat that carries you over sinks to the bottom of the briny, Sahib
Sergeant Major very fine fellow, Queen Victoria very fine king

Current Scots songwriters in no way thought of as politically active have made current or retrospective songs. John Martyn's ‘Don't You Go My Son’ and Billy Connolly’s ‘Sergeant Where’s Mine?’ are both quiet laments. Martyn’s song speaks for all mothers. ‘Sergeant Where’s Mine?’ is a neat and affecting comment on puzzled beleaguered squaddies in Northern Ireland, set to the same pipe tune, ‘Farewell To The Creeks’, which Hamish Henderson utilised for ‘Farewell To Sicily’ and Bob Dylan reworked for ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’. Other makers have created songs about Dunkirk, Aden, Northern Ireland, Libya and Iraq. The Lanarkshire Songwriters Group and New Makars Trust in 2006 created a whole CD of new songs about the Victoria Cross medal winners of Lanarkshire.
Are the Scots more war-obsessed through song than the English? No. Karl Dallas's ‘Cruel Wars’ volume of soldiers’ songs has 12 traditional songs that are Scots, 25 that are English, 14 Irish, and 32 that are National rather than from one part of Great Britain, plus 15 songs of newer mint.

As I cam in by Fiddich Side on a May mornin, I spied Willie Mackintosh an oor afore the dawnin
Turn again, turn again, turn again, I bid ye, if ye burn Auchendoun, Huntley he will heid ye
Heid me or hang me, that shall never grieve me, I'll burn Auchendoun tho the life leave me
As I cam in by Fiddich Side on a May mornin, Auchendoun was in a bleeze an oor afore the dawnin
Crawin, crawin, for aa your crouse crawin, ye brunt your crop an tint yer wings an oor afore the dawnin
The Burnin o Auchendoun, traditional