This is the song that set me off on an album of Glasgow songs. It dawned on me while I was in residence at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, the Gaelic College on Skye, that Gaels sing first about home. Only in my case it shouldn’t be an island, but the city. Many of these city songs have been near-forgotten, but they are the most amazing documents of social history. This is a temperance song by Donald MacPherson from Morvern who lived briefly in Glasgow and was so impressed by the city that he promptly emigrated. He died in New Zealand at the ripe old age of 108.

This song is a universal and timeless experience of urban crisis. You could pretty much take any one of MacPherson’s complaints and apply them to current circumstances - his descriptions of substance and domestic abuse, deprivation versus privilege, over-population, poor public health and on and on, are searing and entirely contemporary. This was also the song that inspired me to translate this album in a way that tried to convey the marrow of the poetry as much as its word-for-word meaning. Setting this song in the world of today barely takes any liberties.