Chairlie / The Cotton Spinners

Chairlie / The Cotton Spinners / The Forty-Second
Spoken and sung by Hamish Henderson.

Wha wouldnae fecht for Chairlie?
Wha wouldnae draw the sword?
Wha wouldnae up and rally
At the royal prince's word?

Spoken: That's the earlier song, the Jacobite song. But of course when the people began to organize, in the — in the first part of the nineteenth century, they took — uh, the older tunes and they began to compose new words to them. And in 1848, the movement of the People's Charter was very strong in Scotland, and it was chiefly strong around Glasgow, and in Paisley, and — uh, a lot of the industrial areas around there, and also among the miners in Lanarkshire. And the version that's most familiar to the working class in Scotland is "Saw'd Ye the Cotton Spinners," which describes the march of the cotton spinners into Glasgow to take part in the rising — a rising incidentally which kept the city in the hands of the people for three days (sings):

Saw'd ye the cotton spinners,
Saw'd ye them gaun awa?
Saw'd ye the cotton spinners,
Marchin doon the Broomielaw.*

Some o them had shoes and stockins,
Some o them had nane ava.
Some of them had shoes and stockins,
Marchin doon the Broomielaw.
(Song repeats.)

Spoken: A little later in the nineteenth century, at the time of the Boer War — uh, new words were put on this same tune, when the Forty-Second Regiment, which is the Black Watch, the Royal Highland Regiment, was being sent out to South Africa to take part in the war, and out of that period come these words (sings):

Wha saw the Forty-Second,
Wha saw them gaun awa?
Wha saw the Forty-Second
Sailin doon the Broomielaw.
Some o them had tartan trousers,
Some o them had nane ava.
Some of them had tartan trousers,
Sailin doon the Broomielaw.

Much of this account of relationships between songs is drawn directly from Robert Ford's 1903 book Children's Rhymes, Games Songs and Stories, p. 32. However, Ford says the "42^nd "verses are much older and were sung "at an earlier period" than the Crimean War. Many variants of this song have since been collected. Other accounts of the 1848 "Rising" say the city was held for one night only, and it is more likely that the "Cotton Spinners" song originated from the 1837 Glasgow cotton spinners strike, after which five union officials were sentenced to transportation and sent to the prison hulk ships at Woolwich.

*Quayside in central Glasgow for seagoing boats.

Various Artists
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