Singing Scotland's Future and Past

John Robertson

Inspired by Patrick Watt’s Manpower, Myth and Memory: Analysing Scotland’s Military Contribution to the Great War in the Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, on 24th May 2019: https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/2025/11/10/on-remembrance-sunday-peer-reviewed-research-proves-that-scotlands-ww1-army-war-dead-was-a-greater-sacrifice-63-higher-than-the-rest-of-the-uk/

To hear it click on: https://suno.com/s/6964A2S8wGvdm1u9

Lyrics:

The heavy price we paid for a place they said was forever England

At Mons in nineteen fourteen we were all there

The Camerons, Argyles, Guards and Black Watch

Outnumbered three to one we retreated in good order

But lost many, far too many, on the way back

From Mons to the Somme we paid a bloody price

For places poets told would be forever England

For places we paid a far greater price than them

From Mons to the Somme ninety thousand dead

We were always there to stiffen the line and facethem

Told to walk toward their machine guns with our pipes

We knew then like our forebears we paid a greater price

But were told it was just another proud Scottish myth

From Mons to the Somme we paid a bloody price

For places poets told would be forever England

For places we paid a far greater price than them

From Mons to the Somme ninety thousand dead

It was a hundred years before the truth could be told

When a man could count and compare all the dead

To find we died in greater numbers on the front line

92 000 dead to win another of England’s wars

From Mons to the Somme we paid a bloody price

For places poets told would be forever England

For places we paid a far greater price than them

From Mons to the Somme ninety thousand dead