Barrowsgate

Category: Other verse

  • Twice Wintin’

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    Les, the new landlord of the Cleekim Inn doesn’t offer credit. One day, a customer asks for a gill of whisky and throws some coins on the bar. Before Les can count it, the customer downs the whisky and tries to leave. Les stops him and says “you’re short” but the customer says “it’s not…

  • Back tae the Lan’

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    The government cries “Back to the land” to encourage local farming but, sadly, people seem to prefer to import cheaper and inferior foreign food.

  • Raising school fees

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    A satirical verse about the recent government policy gesture of providing more heating in country schools. Published in the Mearns Leader newspaper. Apart from the title and first line, this is the same verse as the handwritten verse Raising the Skweel Age.

  • From a Scots “Galeeprus”

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    Barrowsgate takes William Will to task over his criticism of Barrowsgate’s Doric spelling. Gillieperous = stupid fool

  • Mair vernacular

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    In March 1932 there had been several letters published in the Aberdeen Press & Journal newspaper about ensuring that Scots language and literature was taught in Scottish Schools. This had been prompted by the publication on 15 and 16 March 1932 of two articles by William Will based on a talk he had given on…

  • Spring

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    A poem about Spring. Published in the Buchan Observer and East Aberdeenshire Advertiser.

  • Doric

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    A paean to the Doric – with Jean Baxter reference – which dates it to the early 1930s. Other people name-checked are William Will (from the Burns Society of London) and J M Bulloch (who wrote the Foreword to the Blethers O’ Barrowsgate). Unpublished.

  • Snowden an’ me

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    In the summer of 1931, the government had been gripped by a political and financial crisis as the value of the pound and its place on the Gold Standard came under threat. This satirical verse is about Prime Minister Ramsay McDonald asking people to trust him and Viscount Snowden, the Chancellor of the Exchequer to…

  • Hairst O’ War

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    This is one of Barrowsgate’s rare serious verses and amongst his first published works. It was originally published in May 1931 in the Mearns Leader as “Hairst o’ War”, then republished in the same newspaper in November 1931 as “1914 – Remembrance – 1918”. The image above was taken from the July 1934 edition of…