Graham Reid | | 1 min read
When I was a little boy growing up in Edinburgh I was doubtless surrounded by Scottish songs (I certainly heard the pipes) but it wasn't until I came to New Zealand that I can clearly remember particular songs (like The Cherry Rhyme which was played on the childrens' session on 1ZB on Sunday mornings).
I also had comics like The Broons and Oor Wullie, and a couple of years ago when back in Auld Reekie I found -- in the bookshop at Edinburgh Castle -- a compendium of Broons and Oor Wullie strips and stories.
They were beautifully drawn (for 40 years by Manchester-born Dudley D Watkins) if all rather unsophisticated humour.
The Boons and Oor Wullie (pictured) for those who don't know were a family and Wullie a Dennis The Menace-like prankster who was always getting in to mischief.
The dialogue was all in braw Scottish: eg "Now you yins get tae yed bed, else ye'll mak yer gran'paw worse wi' yer noise" says Maw Broon to the kids when Grandpa is poorly.
I've read and re-read many of these full page cartoons and so on (and spotted an anti-Semitic joke on the humour page from the late Thirties) but only recently discovered there was a CD attached to the inside front cover.
It contans such classics as Gay Gordons, Amazing Grace (a song my father hated, thought it a real religious dirge), Loch Lomond, Scots Wha-Hae and so on.
And this one which I seemed to have somewhere lodged in a long forgotten memory bank because I recognised it immediately.
I post it here for absolutely no reason other than it appeals to me.
For more one-off, oddities or songs with an interesting backstory see From the Vaults.
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