Song Recordings

‘Gladstone dancing with Lord Rosebery’ . Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY

Reform Song This song is a roll call of the principal reformers that dominated discussions on franchise extension in 1832. It appeared in broadside form in Paisley in 1832.
Bright Glow Charity Religion remained a live political issue in Scotland throughout the period covered by this project. This poem addresses voluntaryism and the relationship between the Presbyterian churches that: themes that informed politics in the latter decades of the century. It appeared in the Paisley Herald and Renfrewshire Advertiser in 1866 as part of a lengthy fictional piece about the romantic courtship of widow Free Kirk and Mr U. Peabody.
An Old Man’s Lament This poem regrets that now anyone might participate in politics. It was published in Paisley in The Hoo’let

Song (The Miller of the Cart): A song to the tune of ‘The Miller of the Dee’, published in the Paisley periodical the Hoo’let in 1868. It dramatises the rivalry between periodicals backing the different candidates in that year’s election; the Hoo’let was the Conservative outlet.
A Veteran Tory’s Lament: A ‘devil’s lament’ song about the 1868 election in South Ayrshire, by John Ramsay (1870).
Newington Butts were lively: A song to the tune of ‘Annie Laurie’, written by Dr Alice Ker and published in Holloway Jingles (1912), a collection written by suffragettes serving sentences in Holloway Jail.
Green Grow the Rashes O: A comic adaptation of Burns’s song which comments on the suffragettes’ window-smashing campaign, published in 1913.

Thomas Muir of Huntershill: A song by Adam McNaughtan himself about the trial of the Scottish radical Thomas Muir; it originally appeared on his 1996 album Last Stand at Mount Florida but this version was recorded especially for The People’s Voice.
Dark Bonnymuir: A broadside ballad commemorating the 1820 Radical War, originally from the 1830s but republished in a socialist newspaper in 1912.
A New Whig Garland: A broadside ballad about the 1832 Edinburgh election, to the tune of ‘A begging we will go’.
Reformers’ Election Song: A Glasgow election broadside from 1837.
The Glasgow Clothlappers: A song about an 1855 clothlappers’ strike.
A New Song on the Short Time Movement: A song from the 1870s in which farm workers in the West of Scotland call for shorter hours and better wages.
Women Shall be Free: A song by the Glasgow suffragette Helen Crawfurd.

Murt na Ceapaich (The Keppoch Murder) / Cumha Nì Mhic Raonuill na Ceapaich (The Lament of the Daughter of Mac Raonuill na Ceapaich): Two songs about the 1663 murder of the sons of MacDonald of Keppoch.
Tha mi sgìth ‘n fhògar seo (I am weary of this exile): An eighteenth-century song by John MacRae, an emigrant from Kintail to North Carolina. It melds his nostalgia for home with his experiences as a Loyalist in the American Revolution.
Oran do Bhonipart (Song to Bonaparte): A patriotic song by James Shaw, the ‘Lochnell Bard’, collected and published in 1813.
Fios chun a’ Bhàird (A Message for the Poet): A song by William Livingstone about the impact of the Highland Clearances in Islay.
Oran Beinn Lì (Song of Ben Lì): A song by Mary MacPherson celebrating the 1887 legal victory of the crofters of Braes in Skye, who won the right to graze their livestock on Ben Lì.