Interesting about ALS - thanks for the info. Burns' version is a considerable improvement, it seems to me. But now we have the question of how old Ramsay was when he wrote ALS - which is not so much a rhetorical question as my question about Burns.

What you would want to know about Courtney's vital stats, I would think, is whether he was of the generation of which the young men could have "dared the Auxies, and fought the Black and Tan". Assuming that the song consists of someone's genuine memories of his youth, rather than someone's imaginings of an old man's memories ....