Lay Your Disputes Aa Aside – Songs Of National Politics

Here’s a health to them that’s awa, here’s a health to them that’s awa!
And wha winna wish luck to our cause, may never guid luck be their fa’!
May Liberty meet wi success! May Prudence protect her frae evil.
May Tyrants and tyranny tine i’ the mist, and wander their way to the devil!
Here’s freedom tae them that wad read. Here’s freedom tae them that wad write.
There’s nane ever feared that the truth should be heard, but they whom the truth would indite.
Here’s friends on baith sides o the firth, and friends on baith sides o the Tweed;
And wha wad betray old Albion’s right, may he never eat of her bread.

Songs about aspects of national political issues and movements are often at the time deeply contentious, but after the uproar and heat of political fervour has died to embers the best of the songs live on, sometimes as educational tools, sometimes as nostalgic reminders, and often as historical examples to illustrate present concerns and support present political positions.
The above sixteen lines are drawn from the forty in Robert Burns’s 1792 lyric, ‘Here’s A Health To Them That’s Awa’. Other parts of the lyric say “It’s guid to support Caledonia’s cause and bide by the buff and the blue”, and offer “a health to Charlie, the chief o’ the clan”, to “Tammie the Norlan’ laddie, That lives at the lug o’ the Law”, to Maitland and Wycombe, and to “Chieftain M’Leod”. The song supports the Whig ‘Buff and Blue’ cause, rather than the White Rose of Tory Jacobitism. Charlie was Charles James Fox, the other names are prominent Scots Whigs of the time that we feel little desire to know more about.
However, into a jovial partisan and personally specific drinking song Burns weaves toasts that in other contexts of the time might have been considered highly seditious, and address general issues and principles. As does a recently favourite political song, Hogg’s ‘Both Sides The Tweed’.

What’s the spring, breathing jasmine and rose, what’s the summer with all its gay train
Or the splendour of autumn to those who’ve bartered their freedom for gain?
Let the love of our King’s sacred rights to the love of our people succeed
Let friendship and honour unite and flourish on both sides the Tweed
Both Sides The Tweed, Words James Hogg

Present day singer Dick Gaughan has created a fine new melody for this lyric, and slightly amended the words. Gaughan’s alteration of the text from “our King’s sacred rights” to “our land’s sacred rights” shifts the song from right-wing to left-wing. Burn’s lyric strongly pre-echoes Hogg’s, and the title of the specified tune, ‘Here’s a Health to Them That’s Awa’, suggests he may have drawn on an older song again.
Most political songs that are specific to time, place and person do not last long in the mouth of singers. The exceptions are marked by simplicity of lyric and vigour of tune and narrative, or by fine poetry and sweet melody, but they live on shorn of context. 1950s Scottish schoolchildren in their music classes sang Scots political songs of warfare and violence lustily, but had and were offered no notion of the political or social context these songs were made in. Ten of the thirty lyrics in the 1958 ‘Scottish Orpheus School Song Book, Book One’, have strong political content. Six of them are Jacobite songs, whose lyricists include Burns, Hogg, Nairne and Skirving, with two traditional songs. Sir Walter Scott contributes a song of Highland summons to war, and Bonny Dundee's flourishing exit from Edinburgh. The other two political songs tell of clan-related murders. The Orpheus songs were selected from a national song repertoire that would seem to have been codified and considered the acceptable settled corpus of Scottish Songs in later Victorian times, and continue to appear in hefty volumes graced by piano accompaniments.

Sons of Scotia raise your voice, with shouts of exultation, the Bill is past, we have at last free trade throughout the nation
Russell and Brougham, Althorp and Hume laboured both late and early, the Champion Grey has won the day, now he has beaten them fairly
Reform Song, for Scottish Reform Act 1832, no tune named

A typical earlier music book, the 1870s ‘The Songs of Scotland’, has 151 songs, of which 21 are political. Fourteen of these are Jacobite, five are accounts of other historical violence, one is ‘Tullochgorum’ which advocates dancing rather than political dispute, and the other song is ‘Scots Wha Hae’. ‘The Songs of Scotland’, and the mound of other such collections, differ from each other largely in the detail of the 'new symphonies and accompaniments' in each volume, the piano arrangements to be used for their performance. The singers at the Bo’ness and Edinburgh ceilidhs had learned their song tunes aurally, and sang them from memory and unaccompanied. Versions of the lyrics of many of the ceilidh songs can however be traced in older broadsheets and in song collections. In some songbooks the music is given, but more often a tune is named to which the song is to be sung. And some songs appeared first in newspapers. Some of Burns’ most intensely political songs were dangerous to his personal liberty, so were printed anonymously in the news-sheets of the time, and scholars still debate his authorship of a few.
Some songbooks are collections with the maker named when known, others are the work of individual writers who typically paid for the printing of their volumes and told the reader their name or pseudonym in large letters. Broadsides hardly ever named the lyric maker. In ‘Sons of Scotia, Raise Your Voice’ Peter Freshwater tells how broadsides printed on one side of a single sheet of paper were hawked through the streets by ballad-singers.

Hey, great Duke, are you waking yet? Have you heard your dead drum beating yet?
Tho going to Heaven, we aa wad wait to see you hanged some morning
The Pats are kicking up a row, The Scotsman says, “What’s aa this now?”
John Bull cries “I’ll not bear’t I vow, I’ll hang him up some morning”
Make ready, Wellington, in haste, to lose your head or be displaced
As all your mercy we did taste when we sought reform yon morning
The Tyrant’s Fall, tune Johnnie Cope, words Mrs Kennedy, 1832

These sang or droned out the lyrics to the named tune or a selected known one. “The printed broadside was the principle vehicle of publishing current information in the streets until newspapers became affordable by all but the very poorest." After that point, song lyrics topical and old were still most cheaply bought on broadsheets. The songs of current events were not created by poets but by catchpenny rhymesters who 'knew what the people wanted'. If there was space on the page, reprints and unattributed lifts from other broadside makers were added. We find much topical comment, left and right wing, in songs in broadside collections, and in the cheap little chapbooks which usually gave prose accounts and stories, but sometimes included songs. The ephemeral nature of much political song means that the broadside is a natural location for it. Freshwater discusses in particular broadside ballads of the early 19th Century, but the medium is far older. For example, a contemporary broadside cheers on the 1705 Darien Scheme that ruined Scotland.

Come rouse up your heads, come rouse up anon, think of the wisdom of old Solomon
And heartily join with our own Paterson to fetch home Indian treasures

The 1707 Act of Union roused songmakers. One song lamented "O Caledon! O Caledon! How wretched is thy Fate.” Author Hector McMillan says that the best known song about the Union, ‘Sic a Parcel of Rogues’, was “written by Robert Burns from an older work dating from the 1707 Union of Parliaments, it seems likely this reworking was at very least informed by current efforts being made to turn Scotland, politically and linguistically, into North Britain.”
A 1713 broadside, ‘Samson’s Foxes’, lambasts both Catholics and Covenanters.

From the Roman whore or Geneva slut, the one dawbed with paint, the other with smut
From the Beast's horned head, or his cloven foot, libera etc
From Rome's old darkness or Geneva's new blaze which lead men from heaven quite different ways
From excluding from thence by decrees or by keys, libera etc

The Jacobite Risings raised a torrent of songs at the time, and the stream still runs. ‘God Save The King’ was an earlier 18th Century royalist song. It won renewed life in the theatres of a London panicked by the 1745 Rising, when the notorious "rebellious Scots to crush" verse appeared.
The 1788 Edinburgh song collection ‘Calliope or the Vocal Enchantress’, that the editor says includes "every popular and fashionable song, whether English, Scots or Irish" has only one Jacobite song, ‘Lewis Gordon’. Jacobite songs were then quite out of fashion, to be brought back into the singing repertoire by the collecting work and new songs of Burns and Hogg. Among various Calliope songs on the joys of international warfare are the Scots songs ‘Deil Tak The War’ and two lyrics for ‘The Garb of Old Gaul’, one made in 1748 by General Sir Henry Erskine as a recruiting song against the French, and another later lyric that adds in the Spanish as enemies. Several of the Scots songs urge political peace, promoting boozing instead.

In the garb of old Gaul, with the fire of old Rome, from the heath-covered mountains of Scotia we come
Where the Romans endeavoured our country to gain but our ancestors fought, and they fought not in vain
Quebec and Cape Breton, the pride of old France, in their troups fondly boasted till we did advance
But when our claymores they saw us produce their courage did fail, and they sued for a truce
In The Garb Of Old Gaul, music General John Reid, words Lt General Sir Henry Erskine (The ‘garb’ is a reference to the kilt)

‘Tullochgorum’, ‘Every Man Take his Glass’, ‘When Once the Gods’ and ‘John of Badenyon’. The latter rejects the ideas of John Wilkes and Parson Horne. Another song in the collection ‘The Vicar of Bray’, approves of repeated trimming of one’s coat of allegiance. It is English but was still sung in Scottish 1950s schools. We can trace how Robert Burns develops his political lyrics - retrospective Jacobitism, Heron election ballad squibs supporting his favoured local candidates for office, Masonic minstrelsy, revolutionary songs re both internal and international politics, and the 1795 internationalism of ‘A Man’s A Man’, ’ inspired by the French Revolution and Tom Paine’s ‘Rights of Man’. Is he obliged to then trim his coat, and retreat from the threat of transportation along with Thomas Muir, by writing ‘Does haughty Gaul invasion threat?’

Does haughty Gaul invasion threat? Then let the loons beware, Sir! There’s wooden walls upon our seas and volunteers on shore, Sir!
The Nith shall run to Corsincon and Criffel sink in Solway, ere we permit a foreign foe on British ground to rally!
Who will not sing God Save the King shall hang as high’s the steeple; but while we sing God Save the King, we’ll ne’er forget the People!
Does Haughty Gaul Invasion Threat? tune Push About the Jorum, words Robert Burns

Burns’ radical songs are counterbalanced by the anti-democratic songs of Glasgow’s William Campbell. A manuscript collection of these in Glasgow’s Mitchell Library shows how horrified the powerful and well-to-do were at the prospect of the rule of the common people. Campbell also uses the ‘Garb of Old Gaul’ tune, for

We’ll boldly fight like heroes bright, for honour and applause, and defy the frantic democrats to alter our laws
Shall we barter those gifts from our sires handed down for the whims of the madman, the freaks of the clown
And ignobly yield up to the frenzy of P-ne what our ancestors spent their best blood to obtain

Another, sneering at the courage of the Parisians, he labels as ‘Translation of a Song Sung in the National Convention In Praise of the Sans Culottes’, and he adds new verses to ‘The King’s Anthem’.

Know frantic democrats, Scotia your frenzy hates, scorns your vile noise.
Tell your apostle Paine All his great blustering’s vain. freedom’s mild gentle rein (sic) Britain enjoys

Campbell also gives us two songs in praise of locally recruited Volunteers. One says “Discord shrinks to nothing when she views the Glasgow Volunteers”. The other, to the tune of ‘The British Grenadiers’, is even more complimentary.

No rotten hearted democrats among our band appears, such wretches shun the presence of the Paisley Volunteers
As for foreign foes, whene’er their tribe eludes our Tars, and on our coast appears
They’ll find their first opposers in the Paisley Volunteers

Campbell was not alone, many Anti-Jacobin songs and novels were published, spearheaded by Edmund Burke’s 1791 attack on the French Revolution. "Along with its natural protectors and guardians, learning will be cast into the mire, and trodden down under the hooves of a swinish multitude." Balladeers responded. One song, to the tune ‘Maggie Lauder’, was entitled ‘Swinish Gruntings’.

What! Shall a base deceitful crew supported by our labours,
Gainsay our wills - wage wicked war, with our good Apeish neighbours?
Forbid it, Heaven! Forbid it, Earth! Ye Grunters brave, forbid it!
Nor yet your haughty rulers tell, with your consent they did it; Come rouse, &c.
From bloody fields our brethren’s ghosts, starting in dread succession,
Their wounds displaying, shriek aloud, “We’ve paid for our transgression.
O! sheath the instruments of death, forbear the strife inglorious,
Sweet Liberty inspires the Apes, their arms will shine victorious.

Paine counter-attacked Burke with ‘The Rights of Man’, and battle was joined. In 1793 the Scots radical hero Thomas Muir of Huntershill was sentenced to 14 years' transportation for sedition. Burns would have been in real danger of accompanying him if he had had no powerful friends at court. As is usual in wartime, it became ever more dangerous to seek to publish radical ditties. There are rumours, mentioned in ‘The People’s Past’, of radical songs of the 1790s United Scotsmen, but the trail is cold.
Right wing lyrics of the time are easier to locate. James Hogg’s 1811 collection ‘The Forest Minstrel’ has 22 National Songs by various hands that praise King, Country and William Pitt (O Willy was a wanton wag, The Blythest lad that e’er I saw). There are also a few Jacobite ditties, and a truly dreadful lay by Thomas Montgomery in praise of the Scots at Bannockburn, set to ‘Hey Tutti Taitie’.

Wide o’er Bannock’s heathy wold, Scotland’s deathful banners roll’d, and spread their wings of sprinkled gold to the purpling east

The editors of the 1820 ‘Union Imperial Song-Book, containing a selection of the most popular Scotish (sic) English and Irish Songs’, printed in Edinburgh for G. Clark, Aberdeen, say “The editors having no political purposes to serve, do not wish to let any bias of this nature appear”. They excuse their inclusion of “some of the best of the old Jacobite songs, at this distance of time, the interest which they once excited has now but little connection with party feelings.” These songs are now safely Tory, and are accompanied by a clutch of Unionist pieces, two of them songs by Walter Scott. One of these praises Pitt, his royal Master, and Wellington. The other celebrates the Allies’ victory over Napoleon.

For a’ that, and a’ that, Guns, guillotines, and a’ that, The fleur-de-lis, that lost her right, is queen again for a’ that
His last two verses threaten the cowardly Americans, “Ye yankie loun, beware your crown, The kame’s in hand to claw that”.

In the same year of 1820, the skirmish at Bonnymuir between a small band of armed weavers and local Kilsyth Yeomanry that was dubbed The Radical War resulted in the political martyrdom for the crime of armed insurrection of Hardie, Baird and Wilson, who were then repeatedly celebrated in broadsheet ballads.

As evening dashed on the western ocean, Caledonia stood perch'd on the waves of the Clyde
Her arms wide extended she raised with devotion -"My poor bleeding country" she vehemently cried
"Arise up my country and hail reformation, arise and demand now the rights of our nation
Behold your oppressors shall meet the desolation that marked the brave victims on dark Bonnymuir"
Dark Bonnymuir

Alexander Rodger, the radical Glasgow weaver poet of the 1820s, was scathingly anti-royalist. In 1822 George IV visited Edinburgh. Sir Walter Scott for the occasion recalled a royalist song perhaps as old as the 17th Century Commonweath, ‘Carle, An The King Come’, when “thou shalt dance and I shall sing”. Sir Walter wrote a long congratulatory poem called ‘Carle, Now The King’s Come’, based on the older song, and then was furious when Sandy Rodger weighed in with

Sawney, now the king’s come, Sawney, now the king’s come. Kneel and kiss his gracious --Sawney, now the king’s come
Tell him he is great and good aAnd come o Scottish royal blood. To yer hunkers, lick his fud, Sawney, now the king’s come

Rodger was the “most prolific bard for radicalism in the first decades of the 19th century, he was himself imprisoned in Glasgow Tolbooth during the 1820 Rising, during which incarceration he and his comrades bawled themselves hoarse with ‘Scots Wha Hae’, though possibly not, as was said, just to annoy the screws.” Robert Ford Ford says he also sang “at the top of his lungs his own political compositions. These, highly spiced as they were by the awful radicalism of the time, gave his jailors ‘fits’”.
He was not the only radical weaver poet. Present day Glasgow poet Tom Leonard combed through slim leather-bound volumes of locally published poetry in Paisley Library to assemble the book ‘Radical Renfrew’. Many of the earlier pieces are intended to be sung, and marked with the tunes to be used. Leonard’s topics include Unemployment, Trade Unions and Co-operation, Anti-Ruling Class, Parliamentary Representation, Republicanism and Feminism, though none of these sections are as large as the ones on Alcohol, Religion, and Nature and the Country.
‘The Deluge of Carnage ‘, to the tune ‘Jamie, the Glory and Pride of the Dee’, was sung in an 1822 soiree to celebrate the release from jail of Orator Hunt.
For kings have resolved that in Europe for ever the tocsin of freedom shall sound again never
But power shall be law, and the flaming sword sever ‘twixt man and the path to fair liberty’s tree
‘The Hour of Retribution’s Nigh’ is more grimly hopeful.
And Liberty two blasts has blown that still in Europe’s ears do ring
And at the third, each tottering throne shall hold a man, or Chosen King
Scots songs of the 1840s Chartists or the Suffragettes are far to seek. They surely sang, but what? General National songs of struggle and protest of course, but where did the Scots radical streak of song go? Was this a fallow period, or just less recorded?
Songs from outwith Scotland were sung. The Suffragettes had ‘The March of the Women’, trade unionists had “Hold the fort for we are coming, Union men be strong”. Frenchman Eugene Pottier’s ‘The Internationale’ and Irishman Jim Connell’s ‘The Red Flag’ were anthems that were sung with religious fervour at political and protest meetings and marches. The latter, written to support an 1889 London Dock Strike, was set by the writer to a jaunty Scots Jacobite tune, ‘The White Cockade’. Years later the lyric was transferred to the lugubrious traditional German tune ‘Tannenbaum’.

The workers flag is deepest red, it shrouded oft our martyred dead
And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold, their life’s blood dyed its every fold
Then raise the standard banner high, within its shade we’ll live and die
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer, we’ll keep the Red Flag flying here

In John Broom’s 1973 biography of John Maclean the ‘Red Flag’ is the only song named. It was sung periodically to ‘punctuate’ a 1915 speech by then Minister of Munitions David Lloyd George in Glasgow’s St Andrew’s Halls as he struggled to be heard and “defend the dilution of labour policy… the introduction of female unskilled labour into the factories in order to free the men for military service”. When in1916 Maclean was sentenced for speeches considered seditious, his wife and friends stood up in court and “sang the ‘Red Flag’ lustily.”
A lonely Scots contribution to anthems of struggle was made by James Connolly, shot for his Citizen’s Army’s part in the 1916 Easter Dublin Rising, who was an Edinburgh Scot of Irish parentage. He had been a union organiser in the USA, and a songwriter. He wrote this defiant ‘Rebel Song’ lyric.

Come workers, sing a rebel song, a song of love and hate. Of love unto the lowly and of hatred to the great
The great who trod our fathers down, who steal our children’s bread. Whose hand of greed is stretched to rob the living and the dead
Then sing our rebel song as we proudly sweep along to end the age-long tyranny that makes for human tears
Our march is nearer done with each setting of the sun and the tyrant’s might is passing with the passing of the years

In the aftermath of World War One came Socialist Sunday School songs, dreich stuff indeed, and at times appalling. Contemplate a child whose father was killed on the Somme being invited by Tom Anderson, a comrade of John Maclean, to sing this.

My father was a soldier, a great big fat soldier, my father was a soldier in the King’s Army
My father was a Tory, a stupid ugly Tory
My father was a Christian, a meek and mild good Christian
My father loved his Captain, his class-made lovely Captain
My father went to Heaven to play a harp in Heaven
My father went to Heaven from the King’s Army

An occasional squib is placed under a Scots politician. Jimmie Maxton, a darling of the left in the 1920s, gets attacked by a songmaker further left than himself, to the tune of ‘The King’s Horses’.

Jimmie Maxton and the I.L.P, they want a ‘living wage’ for you and me, Jimmie Maxton and the I.L.P
But when your wages meet attacks, and when your boss the Government backs, where’s Jimmie Maxton and all his men?
“We don’t want a fight today, and we point out a better way, you arbitrate, and halve your pay, we’ll make a speech protesting in the House next day
It’s our sad duty, now and then, to call out the cops to down working men, Jimmie Maxton and all his men”

The work of left wing lyric writers began to emerge in print, more often as poetry than as song, and often their writing focused on trades and employment. I mention elsewhere in this book songs by Comrade Tom Anderson, miner and playwright Joe Corrie, factory worker and poet Mary Brooksbank, trade unionist Josh Shaw, and poet Helen Fullarton. There were many others whose work appeared in flyaway leaflets. In 1941 ‘Popular Variants of Auld Scots Sangs, edited by M. P. Ramsay’ were published by Scotland United and sold for 3d. The tune of ‘Bonny Dundee’ is used for the following.
To the Lords and Commons in Westminster Ha’, that thought they ruled Scotland sae snugly and a’
The folk o’ the North they had something to say and it’s “Scots maun guide Scotland in Scotland’s ain way”
To the tune of ‘A Hundred Pipers’ Ramsay says we’ll “gie the English a blaw, Ayont the Border awa”. Some Scots’ conscientious resistance to WWII conscription is celebrated in A Glesca lad my love was born, the English law he held in scorn, for he kept his faith wi’ Scotland true aAnd wadna fecht for the red, white and blue.
After his poetry and songs created in and of World War Two, Hamish Henderson wrote a song later referred to by Morris Blythman as “the first swallow of the [Folk] Revival”. Henderson’s 1948 ‘John Maclean March’ was written quickly for the 25th anniversary of the death of that hero of the left, and set to a WW1 pipe tune.

The haill citie’s quiet noo, it kens that he’s restin’,
At hame wi’ his Glasgie freens, their fame and their pride!
The red will be worn, my lads, an’ Scotland will march again
Noo great John Maclean has come hame tae the Clyde

“Political songs tell us a bit about the history. Maclean, the Dominie, he held the Clyde for a long time as a socialist and a nationalist. He also believed in freedom. Some of these political songs are beautiful, some of them are love songs as well.” Harry Constable.
In the same year of 1948 Henderson penned, to an Irish Rebel tune, another song on the issue of land ownership and use which also became staple fare of the Revival. Seven war-returning crofters from Knoydart repossessed untended land.

’Twas down by the farm of Scottas Lord Brocket walked one day, aAnd he saw a sight that worried him far more than he could say
For the Seven Men of Knoydart were doing what they’d planned, they had staked their claims and were digging their drains on Brocket’s Private Land
‘You bloody Reds,’ Lord Brocket yelled, ‘Wot’s this you’re doing ‘ere? It doesn’t pay, as you’ll find today, to insult an English peer
You’re only Scottish halfwits but I’ll make you understand, you Highland swine, these hills are mine, this is all Lord Brocket’s land’

During the Folk Revival songs lambasting national and international politicians were easily found. Morris Blythman wrote ‘John MacCorbie’, lambasting Nationalist “wee black sleekit nyaff” John McCormick, for allegedly first sending Ian Hamilton to “snitch the Stane”, then when “McCorbie and his privateers were threatened wi the nick” handing the Stane over to Sunday Express reporters Hector MacNeill and John Gordon, and being paid “twa thoosan doon for the Stane o Scone, an mind, that’s just the start”.
One of the verses of ‘Boomerang’ tells of when Labour politician Hugh Gaitskill had used the word ‘peanuts’ about CND, and had then come to address a 1960 Labour rally in Glasgow’s Queen’s Park, when he was ‘shelled’ with peanuts by protestors. Matt McGinn then set about Harold Wilson.

I’m the boy to please them and I’m the boy to tease them, my silver tongue will please them and I‘ll tell you what I’ll do
I’ll tie their arms, I’ll tie their legs, I’ll tie their spirits too then I’ll kick them in the teeth like the Tories never could do

Jim McLean picked up the molar theme when he made a song to support the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders work-in, attacking PM Edward Heath as ‘Head Teeth’. In the 1980s the SCND Buskers made many lyrics featuring Maggie Thatcher and Ronnie Reagan, and then lyrics were updated to replace Thatcher with Major and Reagan with Bush. Most lately Ukes Against Nukes have used the tune of the old ‘Nigger Minstrel’ song ‘Jump Jim Crow’ for ‘Oh! Bama, Oh! Bama’, complete with careful arrangement instructions on what the kazoo should play. These show that the apparently rather chaotic approach to performance is carefully worked out.

Oh! Bama, Oh! Bama, you no mean dude, got the pockets o the trousers emptied oot
Yur cat-walk strut and yur dimpled tie and four and twenty blackberries baked in the sky.
With manufacture in terminal decline, how do ya, how do ya look so fine?
If I knew yur secret I would mak it mine, put some in ma dinner to ease the pain.
Kazoo plays American Patrol
To end the song Ukes Against Nukes specify the following.
“TUNE: Zip-a-de-doo-dah, Zip-a-dee-day, Bobb B Soxx & the Blue Jeans
Zip-a-de-doo-dah, Zip-a-dee-day. Life, old chum, is a cabaret. plenty O’ bamas; shortage of grain.
Plenty of doo-dah all down the drains.
Kazoo plays American Patrol then Wedding March (Mendlessohn)”

Songs sympathising with politicians were thinner on the ground. One MSP, Cathie Peattie, told her fellow member of Linlithgow community song group Sangschule, Linda McVicar, how Cathie’s daughter was complaining that she was seeing much less of her mother now. Cathie felt there should be a song beginning “Ma maw’s an MSP”. Linda wrote a song as a present to Cathie, who responded by singing it in Parliamentary shows and on a 2007 BBC Radio Scotland programme, and told how she sang the song and taught it to children when visiting schools to talk about her parliamentary work.

Ma maw’s an MSP, she’s too late to get the tea. Frozen dinners on a tray, they don’t get my vote any day
Ma maw’s an MSP.
Ma maw’s an MSP, hame’s not what it used tae be. Robbers take one look and run, they think the job’s already done
Ma maw’s an MSP
Ma maw’s an MSP, she doesnae care for me. She’s oot makin Scottish laws, ah huvny got a change a drawers
Ma maw’s an MSP
Ma maw’s an MSP, she’s keen on democracy. It’s “You dae this and you dae that, ah huvnae time tae feed the cat”
Ma maw’s an MSP
Ma maw’s an MSP, aye too late to get the tea. Mince and tatties, soup an stew, I think I can remember you
Ma maw’s an MSP
a Maw’s An MSP, tune Ma Maw’s A Millionaire aka Let’s All Go Down The Strand, words Linda McVicar