THE song about the wee chookie birdie on the window sole (Letters, November 20, 21 & 22) was sung to me by my grandmother but my father's favourite was the late, great Bud Neill's lament to winter:
“Winter's came and snaw has fell
Wee Josie's nose is rid as well
Wee Josie's nose is a' skintit
Winter's diabolic, intit?”
Timely, I think.
Brian Chrystal,
55 Craiglockhart Road, Edinburgh.
IRENE Woodward’s letter (November 22) on grandparents' songs sparked the memory of:
“Ring the bells in London, guess wha’s deid.
Wee Katie Currant Bun, wi’ a sair heid!
A’ the folk that kent her, when she was alive,
Come tae her funeral at half-past five."
Incidentally, the late Norman Buchan’s collection of 101 Scottish Songs, published by Collins in 1962, has a short section of Children’s Songs in the same style, including the popular Ma Maw’s A Millionaire.
Ian Millar,
Canterbury House,
Gattonside, Melrose.
I WOULD like to contribute as an "auld yin" to your wee poems. My grandpa used to tell me:
“When the moon is fair and roon’
The fishes swim frae Ayr tae Troon
But when the moon is roon and fair
The fishes swim frae Troon tae Ayr.”
Kenneth Johnston,
Cambusdhu, Loch Eck, Dunoon.
COME fly with me as I welcome the veritable flock of dickie birds and speugies (sparrows to our English cousins), which have descended on the Letters Pages in this winter chill, and look forward to more droppings from ornithological cognoscenti.
Harra! Anatha sparra up my barra.
R Russell Smith,
96 Milton Road, Kilbirnie.
MY grandfather, Paddy Coffey, was called the Glasgow Harbour Bard. He wrote for the Gossip and Grumbles column of the Evening Times for 20 years until his death in 1937.
He was born in County Kerry in 1856, and when he came to Glasgow, worked as a stevedore . But in his own words he “was not a great success at the business.”
He was the acknowledged poet of Glasgow’s dockland. I am proud to have a copy of his collected poems, Pickings from the Poetical Works of Paddy Coffey.
Here’s a sample from one his poems, Hard Times:
“If I only heard the clanging
Of the hammers on the Clyde
In the boatyards, as I used to,
God, I think I’d die with pride,
Then the missus and the bairnies,
Would be clothed as once before,
As the wolves that have me crazy,
I could banish from my door.”
Carol Hughes,
Wellmeadow Road, Glasgow.
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