1. |
Strong Is The North Wind
03:05
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Warm blows the south wind
It feels good on your skin but it carries a message so cold
It whispers of terror, it whispers of error
It tells you to stay with the past and the present and fear the unknown
The kirk and the kaleyard
Dogma and romantic notions of nation pull at your heart
Highlands and lowlands, my clan and your clan
Lines drawn on paper and drawn in the sand to keep us apart
They gather against us
Those with their own vested interests to keep us in chains
So rise like a rogue wave
Be free of the old feudal ways and be brave, be brave
So come to the hustings
Come to the gatherings
Come to the polling stations in droves and make yourself known
Cold is the north wind
Strong is the north wind
Sowing the seeds of autonomy wherever their blown
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2. |
The Church And The Crown
04:16
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The church and the crown, the church and the crown
With sceptre and scripture they keep a man down
They tether my soul with godfear and gibbet
They tell me to keep my poor eyes on the ground
One day I was walking on Blackheath’s green pasture
I heard the words of the preacher John Ball
He told me that kings were no richer or better
In the eyes of the Lord than a peasant in thrall
To a poor man like me his words were like manna
They gave me the strength to lift up my eyes
And clearly I saw how the poor and weak suffer
While the nobles and bishops grow fat on their lies
And just for a moment, one glorious moment
The poor and the workers rise up like a wave
But the church and the crown with brute force and cunning
Harness us back to the yoke once again
Maybe one day there’ll be streets named for Tyler
Or a fine school for children that bears John Ball’s name
But money and greed have a power compelling
I fear the poor will be treated the same
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3. |
Red River Woman
03:44
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Red River woman you’re breaking my heart
I wish I could pick you up and hold you in my arms
But you've been way too long in the water
Somebody’s daughter used and thrown away
Red River woman I feel so ashamed
That somebody, probably a man like me, could treat you this way
But you ain’t the first brown skin girl to float down here
I fear you won’t be the last
CH: Upstream nobody heard your screams and cries
Downstream nobody really cares how you died
Just another native girl who strayed off the reservation
First Nation, last in line again
Red River woman you’re so far from home
Flotsam and jetsam of flesh and bone
Failed by the system, lost to the world
Dead girl, just another dead girl
Red River woman take back your name
Jane Doe no longer you are Tina Fontaine
I hope you find justice, I hope you find peace
We grieve, the river runs deep
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4. |
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I never saw you with whip in your hand
I never heard you give your commands
Did the 60 poor people you owned show willing? To do your bidding?
I only knew the family man
Hugh Junor, my father, the family man
I never saw you at the slave market
I never saw you as the devil incarnate
What did it feel like to bid for my mother? Did you love her?
I only knew you as my own dear father
CH: Eliza, Eliza Junor’s my name
My father a Scotsman, my mother a slave
Black bodies toil ‘neath the Caribbean sun
I love my father but I hate what he’s done
I was born in Guyana, across the great sea
Baptised in the church at Rosemarkie
In Edinburgh and London I tutored young minds. My life was fine.
Though I wonder if mother would be proud of me
I heard Frederick Douglass speak in the Borders
With such passion to free all his sisters and brothers
To abolish this cruel trade of ill gotten gains. Shackles and chains
I’m living free while my people suffer
So father I ask you when you look at me
Am I flesh of your flesh? Or your property?
Can bondage and love even be reconciled? Explain to your child
As I try to live with the empire in me
A black British woman with the empire in me
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5. |
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On the road to Ullapool from Gairloch on Scotland’s western shore
There lies a wee dark island where seeds of death were sown
In Gruinard’s lonely silence, war crimes were conceived
For clouds of doom like a plague of Egypt to float down on a German breeze
Men in masks from Porton Down test bombs of mass destruction
Then they burned the sheep that died to prove the weapon worked to Winston’s satisfaction
CH: Dark Harvest, Dark Harvest, Dark Harvest
You reap what you sow from a Dark Harvest
Now thank god the war was won without biological warfare being deployed
But spores of death lay sleeping in the ground in Gruinard’s poisoned soil
Scottish land lay quarantined and deemed too dangerous to set foot on
Too much expense to make it safe so for decades the land was forgotten (until the)
Eco-warfare, eco-terror call it what you will but without their intervention
Gruinard would be off limits still
They dug the soil and sent a sample back from whence it came and finally the government cleaned up the dirty secret mess they made
Now Gruinard’s safe for all to walk again, Anthrax Island, Isle of Death no longer is her name
And to this day no one revealed the names of those compelled
But Gruinard knows and Gruinard keeps her secrets to herself
And here’s to the Dark Harvest Commando, who they were only Gruinard knows
Sometimes direct action is the only way to go when dark forces rule and the powers that be ignore
And one generation’s terrorist or political prisoner is the next generation’s activist or politician
You reap what you sow
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6. |
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When I was a cowboy out on the Western Plain
I made myself a fortune, working hard on the bridle reins
Come a cow-cow yippee come cow-cow yippee, yippee yay
I saw a great white buffalo out on the western plain
It said I’m hiding from Bill Cody, he’s trying to take my name
Come a cow-cow yippee, come cow-cow yippee, yippee yay
I met the ghost of Custer out on the western plain
He said don’t believe the hype son legends can be made
Come a cow-cow yippee, come cow-cow yippee, yippee yay
I met Scotty Philip out on the western plain
I met Jesse Chisholm out on the western plain
I saw those Scottish drovers won’t see their likes again
Come a cow-cow yippee, come cow-cow yippee, yippee yay
Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse were out on the western plain
They said sit and have a smoke son, then we’ll be on our way
Come a cow-cow yippee, come cow-cow yippee yippee yay
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7. |
Brave David Tyrie
04:32
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Hung, drawn and quartered, was there anything so cruel
To make a fine example to bolster tyrant rule
A punishment so monstrous, devised by monarchy
The last to die this way a Scotsman
Brave David Tyrie
In seventeen hundred and eighty two in Portsmouth, Southsea
A navy clerk he was accused name of David Tyrie
Put on trial for treason, a crime against the crown
For conspiring with a Frenchman and guilty he was found
By all accounts his gruesome end was bravely met that day
100,000 citizens cheered and clapped the deadly play
With head held high, eyes ablaze and silent dignity
The King’s justice upon him fell with inhumanity
Hoisted high by the neck til he near passed out for good
His head cut off, his heart cut out, his private parts removed
His body chopped and quartered then buried in the sand
But the good people of Portsmouth were not content with that
They dug him up, ripped at his corpse to take a trophy home
The women pushed and pulled to dip silk handkerchiefs in blood
His severed head was stole away for voyeurs keen to pay
Portsmouth showed its ugly side on that dreadful day
For the people of the Kingdom, this was the final straw
They vowed to end this spectacle of death for evermore
So the brutal act of punishment passed into history
And we no longer bow and scrape or have to bend the knee
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8. |
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The nightjar used to sing so sweetly
Pure heaven in his song
The spinning world would slow and listen
On summer nights still and warm
The other birds would hear the nightjar
And tried to sing as fine
But the nightjar laughed and the nightjar boasted
You’ll never have a voice like mine
The nightjar sung his own high praises
He’d sing too long and loud
The other birds they all fell silent
For the nightjar drowned them out
All the other birds were full of sorrow
To hear the nightjar’s scorn
For a songbird’s soul is full of music
It’s the chorus of the dawn
One day the old world gods were walking
Through the woods and fields
Hedgerows hushed and meadows mute
Just one bird did they hear
They asked the nightjar what was wrong
Where have all the other songbirds gone
The nightjar puffed his chest and said my song is the best
The songs of all the other birds are not fit to be heard
The old gods said we all agree, your song is heavenly
But every voice and melody has its worth
Pride and vanity shall be your curse
So we’re giving you the voice that you deserve
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9. |
Buffalo Thunder
04:16
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There’s a man called Scotty Philip in the Cowboy Hall of Fame
Born in Dallas Morayshire in 1858
He headed west to dig for gold but the Black Hills left him poor and cold
All he found was an empty hole so he tried another way
When America was born on Independence Day
50 million buffalo roamed the western plains
When 1900 came around a scant 500 walked the ground
Wiped out to put the red man down, a policy insane
CH: Cowboys and Indians, they understand
The sound of buffalo thunder on American land
Cowboys and Indians know deep down inside
When the last buffalo passes, the heart of America dies
Scotty wed a pretty girl and she was half Cheyenne
They started raising cattle on native treaty land
Pretty soon they had a ranch, and Scotty thought he saw a chance
To save the bison bring them back and make a final stand
Crazy Horse and Red Cloud considered him a friend
For America’s first peoples he tried to do his best
A visionary with a dream to see the bison herds run free
A nation’s soul could be redeemed, a symbol of the west
Bodhran: Dave Martin
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10. |
She Told Me Not To Go
04:19
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I left my woman on dry land, my best harpoon was in my hand
As I set out for a year at sea to hunt the whale in waters deep
She told me not to go
Leave the beasts to swim in peace, don’t go to sea no more
The tide was high at the Port of Leith, our hunting ground the great south sea
The north wind filled our eager sails, we seek our fortune and the whale
She told me not to go
You can be a man with your feet on land, just leave the whale alone
CH: She told me not to go, not to go, not to go, not to go
But my ears and my eyes and my heart and my mind all said no
When we arrived at the killing grounds, the whales were blowing all around
Blue water quickly turned to red when all the whales we caught were dead
She told me not to go
This bloody toil for the sake of oil, will damn your very soul
I left my woman on dry land, my offshore bag was in my hand
Flying out to the cold North Sea, to drill for oil and gasoline
She told me not to go
Will you not learn, we will crash and burn, we don’t have long to go
Well here we are in a few more years, the seas are dead and the air’s not clear
The water isn’t safe to drink, our greed has pushed us past the brink
She told me not to go
Now it’s too late, to close the gate, she said I told you so
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11. |
Heather And Honey
04:40
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It’s hard when the soil is not willing to give up its yield
I would dream of a garden with statues and flowers instead of this field
But who’s got the time or the money for flowers and wild honey bees?
It’s the harrow we have on this hard highland ground and heather to clear
I once met a girl at a fair, at a stall raising funds for the kirk
Her father owns all the estate and the land that my family once worked
She offered me something to try in the hope that maybe I’d buy
An oatcake with butter and honey so sweet that I bitterly sighed
Ch: She looks at heather and sees purple flowers and bees
Grouse on the wing and the guns when the summer is high
I look at heather and see burning and smoke on the breeze
I see a rich land while scraping a living and that doesn’t seem right to me
I can hear talk of rewilding, another tax break dressed in green
When most of the highlands and islands are privately owned so it seems
I can see thousands of acres for pheasant and grouse and the deer
All there for the killing, too few make good livings round here
I fear the highlands becoming parks for a new monied clan
As people head south to the big towns and cities for jobs and a better chance
And who could blame them for leaving but clearances come at a cost
And they’ll open a jar of wild heather honey and taste of a life they have lost
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12. |
The Last Bowman
08:08
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The archer checked his bow that morning, six feet of finest yew
100 lbs of stored up power to cast an arrow long and true
He learned his art as a young green lad with the men out on the village common
His skill and strength and eye grew keen but it takes years to grow a bowman
He next inspected every arrow, he ran them through his hands
The fletchings tight, the bodkin sharp, the shaft was straight and balanced
Each arrow crafted for the bow, one no use without the other
Muscle, sinew, skin and bone and wood all worked together
Is there really art in war amongst the bloody broken slain?
The bowman lets his arrow soar to arc and fall like deadly rain
Only with bow and shaft in perfect tune and body, mind and spirit one
Can the archer beat back lance and steel but not so with the gun
The bow is cut from living wood and seasoned by the years
The gun is cast like any tool from the cool minds of engineers
A bowman like the tree is grown but any child can pull a trigger
Oh the archer’s days are counting down as the guns get ever bigger
When the last bowman shoots his final arrow, when fletcher and bowyer cease to trade
Some will mourn tradition passing, some will say that progress has been made
The alchemy of gunpowder transformed into the atom bomb
And the practice butts no longer stand where the common land is gone
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13. |
Drowsy Maggie
03:34
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Wake up Maggie there’s bad men coming, it’s time for us to go
They’ll have more than killing me on their mind if you’re alone
Wake up Maggie the baby’s wailing and I can’t hush his cries
I swear the bairn he knows what’s coming and he’s just as feared as I
CH: I took their money and spent it
No mercy will be showed
They told me and they meant it
They would take my body and soul
Wake up Maggie I see you dreaming of what I’ll never know
But if we’re not gone by morning Maggie then we will dream no more
Wake up Maggie your head’s still reeling, what fun we had last night
But all the drink and drugs we’re using may well cost us our lives
County lines I crossed for them with substances controlled
But drugs and money I stole from them, now I can’t pay what I owe
Wake up Maggie please wake up Maggie, it’s time for us to go
Wake up Maggie please wake up Maggie, your body’s so pale and cold
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14. |
Semi Scotsman
03:07
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I was born where British Empire hand once gave command
Blessed with whisky in my mother’s land
The blood of nations mix to make this man
I was raised where Arctic storms break on the Moray shore
I’ve worked the North Sea rigs that keep us warm
This is where my own kids were born
I know this land from coast to coast, from Wick to Gretna Green
I love her fault lines and her golden seams
It’s where I walk in all my hopes and dreams
And I have hopes that Scotland’s future lies in her own hands
On her own rocky feet she’ll proudly stand
And I’ll be there to see that day first hand
CH: You don’t have to be born north of the Tweed
To know exactly where your true heart lives
The soil beneath my feet cares not for race or creed
Half my blood and all my heart I give
I’m connected to this land. This semi-Scotsman
And I have hopes, like tartan wove of many coloured threads
We’ll weave a nation strong, just and fair
After all we’re a’ Jock Tamson’s bairns
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Malcolm MacWatt London, UK
“MacWatt will doubtless be considered among the best of the new breed of folksingers and songwriters, who speak of the past
as a way to perhaps understand it and move forward” Stephen Rapid, Lonesome Highway
“He shines as a singer and he shines as an interpreter of the eternal folk songbook,” Tom Brosseau, The Great American Folk Show, North Dakota
... more
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