YOU could always find Hamish Henderson in Sandy Bell's, the Edinburgh howff that has long been the focal point for folkies.
Tall as the Eiffel Tower, he cut an imposing figure with his bulbous nose, wiry moustache and ever-present hound. Ignorant interlopers might mistake him for a barfly but regulars knew better. Given a roving brief by the university's School of Scottish Studies, Hamish used Sandy Bell's to hold seminars, for students and anyone else within earshot, discoursing on everything from Gramsci and Italian fascism to the travelling community and the obscenity of nuclear weapons. When he died in 2002 at the age of 92 it was as if a Scots pine had been felled.
I was among a throng of 1,500 who attended his funeral at St Mary's Cathedral. At its end, the congregation was invited to sing Hamish's rousing anthem, The Freedom Come a' Ye, which we needed little encouragement to do. Not only is it a wonderful, uplifting song, it is also a great poem. His biographer, Tim Neat, reckons that its opening lines are as good as any in the canon: "Roch the wind in the clear day's dawin/Blaws the cloods heelster-goodie ow'r the bay,/But there's mair nor a roch wind blawin/Through the glen o' the warld the day." I'd go along with that. Bob Dylan, it has been said, was inspired by it to write The Times They Are A-Changin', which he may well have been, though its language is prosaic by comparison.
The Freedom Come a' Ye is one of several candidates for a Scottish national anthem, the possibility of which was raised last weekend by a government spokeswoman who averred that there is value in having one, especially at sporting occasions. At present, the de facto anthem is Flower of Scotland which, whatever one thinks of it, has a certain resonance accrued through familiarity. It was written by Roy Williamson of the Corries and it could barely be more anglophobic, given its specific reference to the Battle of Bannockburn when Edward II and his tattered troops were sent "hameward" to reconsider their options.
It is not a song to which I feel drawn, but at Murrayfield or Hampden, when the opposition is our nearest neighbour, it could be argued that it fits the bill. On more stately occasions, however, it seems diplomatically inappropriate, harking back to an era of enmity when our chief concern was besting the English which, while once fun, seems now rather silly and irrelevant. Moreover, I find when singing Flower of Scotland I am neither moved nor stirred. Rendered at a funereal pace it is a dirge. But jazzing it up doesn't work either, because it loses whatever dignity it possesses. All and all, it feels like it has had its day and is best consigned, which is perhaps where it really belongs.
What of the other options? Two were penned by Burns. Scots Wha' Hae will not do, for it reminds me of the All Blacks' hakka cry. Like Flower of Scotland, it takes as its inspiration battles of yore and is redolent of gore. Moreover, it has a surfeit of exclamation marks, which rather suggests that the bard felt it needed an injection of oomph. A Man's A Man is undoubtedly better and, when performed by the likes of Sheena Wellington, it can raise the hairs on the back of your neck. But it is a man's song, written in an age when women were not part of the equation. Then there is the Proclaimers' Scotland's Story, which is a hymn to immigration. Its sentiments are heartfelt and inclusive but how would it sound when sung en masse? I'm no Gareth Malone but my instinct tells me you would need to be Welsh to pull it off.
Which brings us back to Hamish Henderson and The Freedom Come a' Ye, which, by my reckoning, is the one to go for. It first appeared in 1961 in a leaflet containing anti-Polaris songs. Like its composer, it is nationalist by formation, internationalist in outlook, and socialist by inclination. It springs from the memory of a boy brought up in Blairgowrie but it is the opposite of parochial. One of its targets, for example, is apartheid and its ambition is for a world free from prejudice and exploitation. In short, it's an anthem for everyone.
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