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Songs Notes.Pdf A’ ADAM’S BAIRNS 1. HAWKS AND EAGLES Tich Frier 2. YELLOW ON THE BROOM Rod Paterson 3. ERIN-GO-BRAGH Ross Kennedy 4. THE SLAVE’S LAMENT Emily Smith 5. WE’RE A’ JOCK TAMSON’S BAIRNS Ian Bruce 6. SCOTLAND’S STORY Nick Keir 7. THE DESTITUTION ROAD Dave Taylor 8. INDIAN DEATH SONG Gillian Mcdonald 9. DOOMSDAY IN THE AFTERNOON Steve Byrne 10. WHY DAE THEY SAY I’M ONLY A JEW? Wendy Weatherby 11. RIVONIA Steve Byrne 12. THE SUN RISES BRICHT IN FRANCE John Morran 13. BOTH SIDES THE TWEED Emily Smith 14. I AM THE COMMON MAN Ross Kennedy This CD has been produced as part of a partnership project developed 15. LARKHALL Dave Taylor by the National Library of Scotland, Scotdec and Dr Fred Freeman. 16. A MAN’S A MAN Wendy Weatherby It has been funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and the National 17. FREEDOM COME ALL YE Jim Reid Library of Scotland. The CD is supported by a teachers’ resource pack, and a programme of workshops and training events for pupils and 18. COMIN HAME Ian Bruce teachers. For further information about the project, please contact the Education & Outreach Officer at the National Library of Scotland Produced by Dr Fred Freeman. Engineered by Richard Werner (www.nls.uk) or the Coordinator, Scotdec (www.scotdec.org.uk). Mixed by Fred Freeman and Richard Werner Recorded at B & B Studios, Edinburgh For 3 Education Officers who have made quite a difference: John Wilson (E. Ayrshire), Maggie Singleton (Glasgow) and Design: www.contextdesign.org Scotdec Catriona Henderson (Inverclyde) 1 © FRONT COVER IMAGE: SCOTSMAN PUBLICATIONS brethren. In 1964 Hamish Henderson himself would compose and record Rivonia, with INTRODUCTION by Dr Fred Freeman its compelling refrain ‘Free Mandela, Free Mandela’, for the freedom fighters of South Africa. The song was taken up by the anti-aparteid movement – in fact, by the soldiers in the field – and inspired Nelson Mandela within his prison cell on Robben Island. Mandela would thank Henderson years later, when South Africa was a free country. Like the names of the streets, our place names; the names of our national heroes; the names we call one another; the very words we use to describe our surroundings: T WAS thAT GREAT patriot Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun who once reflected that ‘if all reveal so much about ourselves. Take that famous Scottish maxim, ‘We’re a’ Jock a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make Tamson’s bairns’: we are all children of one family – mankind. For all time it stands as the laws of a nation’. Certainly Scotland’s songsters, more than her legislators, have a social measure of our behaviour towards one another in Scotland. What is culturally Ireminded us of our moral imperatives. With men of conscience like Robert Burns and significant is that it is a moral value which we as a nation espouse, whether we live up Hamish Henderson in the vanguard of Scottish song writing, the strength of the tradition to the measure or fall far short of it; and our song-writers, like the voice of a national cannot be denied – nor should it be. conscience, have always been quick to remind us of that fact. 1807 marks the end of the slave trade, but it was 1838 before slavery itself was wholly It is no mere accident that Burns should have penned A Man’s A Man For A’ That; that outlawed from the British Empire. Moreover, as late as 1993, ex-pat Scots, and people Hamish Henderson should compose a modern equivalent with his Freedom Come All of Scottish extraction, were denying basic human rights to black people in South Africa Ye; or that an Irish immigrant to Scotland should write We’re A’ Jock Tamson’s Bairns. under the iniquitous system of aparteid. In a poignant song, Hawks and Eagles, Ian All remind us in characteristically Scottish turns of phrase of our moral imperatives: Walker describes the struggle of the oppressed blacks of South Africa as a pitched battle respectively, that we must all unite so that ‘man to man the warld o’er (we) shall brithers between birds of prey and birds of peace, and, in a vision that has now been fulfilled, be for a’ that’; that in oor ‘hoose a’ the bairns o’ Adam / Can find breid, barley –bree and asserts that ‘hawks and eagles will fly like doves... one day’. painted room’; ‘that there’ll ne’er be peace till the warld again has learnt tae sing wi’ micht and main that we’re a’ Jock Tamson’s bairns’. WHAT NAMES TELL US ‘Hawks’ and ‘doves’. We have been both in our long history, and all the names round us SCOTLAND THE ‘HEALTHY HYBRID’ tell us as much about ourselves. Those West Indian street names in Glasgow – Jamaica The names of our ancient heroes – Wallace who was thought to be of Welsh extraction Street, Tobago Street, the Kingston Bridge, are reminders that, for a long period, many and Bruce who was indeed of Norman extraction – remind us that Scotland has never of us were hawks, involved in the black slave trade which sustained the lucrative cotton, been a homogeneous nation but a mix of tribes and peoples; what Hamish Henderson sugar and tobacco industries that made much of Glasgow’s wealth in the 18th and 19th described as a ‘healthy hybrid’. The song, Scotland’s Story, says it so well when it refers centuries. On the other hand, Nelson Mandela Place reminds us of the doves amongst to ‘the Gael and the Pict, the Angle and Dane’ and to the many others in Scotland whose us who voluntarily entered the anti-aparteid struggle on behalf of their oppressed black 2 story is ‘all worth just the same’. 3 All these tribes are still with us today if we bother to look. Driving up and down the Apropos of the Norse connection, virtually every school in Scotland teaches about the country one cannot help but notice all the place names that begin with ‘pit’: Pitlochry, Viking raiders who settled in Scotland in the 900s; but little is taught of our obvious Pitscottie, Pitsligo, Pitlowie and so many more. They tell us that the Picts were settled in linguistic connections with them. To a great degree, Scots is a Scandinavianised Anglian these areas in our early history as do the haunting standing stones left behind by them. tongue. The Vikings brought us words as mundane as ‘kirk’ and ‘dyke’, ‘birk’ and ‘breeks’. And one could go on, delineating the contributions to Scotland of the Flemings and the The Brythonic tribes, or ancient Welsh, have left us with names beginning with Dun or Dutch, the Northern French and the others. Dum, like Dumbarton, one of their ancient capitals, or Dunedin, Edinburgh’s original name, as well as the Scottish place names we notice beginning with Pen or Eccle, like For a long time the various tribes fought against one another and, then, forged alliances Pencaitland or Ecclefechan. Glasgow itself is an ancient Welsh name, and Strathclyde which are celebrated in our history; the most famous being that of the Picts and the was one of the ancient Welsh kingdoms. One of our oldest pieces of so-called Scottish Scotti who defeated the Romans. After a time, Scotland made peace with itself, and, literature, The Gododin, was actually written in ancient Welsh. in its declaration of independence, the Declaration of Arbroath (6 April, 1320), formally expressed the egalitarian ideals of its folk maxim, ‘We’re a’ Jock Tamson’s bairns’, when Scotland itself derives its name from an Irish tribe, the Scotti, who, it is thought, began it recognized that in the eyes of God there is ‘No difference between Jew or Greek, travelling across to Scotland from the north of Ireland as early as 290 AD. In time, the Irish Scot or Englishman’. James Hogg underlines this very point and extends it to its natural would bring us St Columba and Christianity; one of our national languages – Gaelic; and conclusion, mutual respect between Scotland and England, in his refrain – ‘Let friendship powerful traditions of poetry, song and instrumental music that are still with us in the and honour unite, / And flourish on both sides the Tweed’ Both( Sides the Tweed). present day. Geographical names, like ‘loch’, ‘ben’, ‘kyle’, and ‘strath’, attest to the Irish connection. THE SECTARIAN DIVIDE Nonetheless, much of our history is not about mutual respect but about bigotry and If the Scotti brought us one of our national languages, the Angles of Bernecia in the north discrimination - especially sectarian division - that has plagued Scotland since the of England brought us the other – Scots, when, in 638, they captured Dunedin, changed Reformation: initially, John Knox and Presbyterianism on one side of the divide; Mary its name to Edinburgh, and established their language in much of Lowland Scotland. By Queen of Scots and Catholicism on the other; then, two centuries of strife between an accident of history, the Anglian tongue would flourish in Scotland, as a courtly, civic Covenanter and Royalist, Whig and Jacobite. It is well to reflect that for centuries politics and literary tongue, as it declined in northern England under the domination of London and religion were wholly intertwined. With the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688, king and Cambridge. Anglian words like ‘brig’ and ‘rig’, ‘dug’ and ‘hoose’, and so many more, and country became Protestant. Presbyterianism became for many an integral part of are common currency in much of Scotland. Moreover, there are still very strong cultural Scottish national identity as the ‘Kirk’ was, officially, the national church of the land.
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