The statement that MacColl was born in Auchterarder appears in the booklets accompanying most, if not all, of the Folkways records from the 1960s. Likewise, the Riverside records call him "Scots-born". What might have been the point of this falsehood?

The news that he deserted during W.W. II may be a start on explaining another oddity: The whole war is missing, without a word of explanation, from his autobiography _Journeyman_. That is a rather large event to slip into a crack between two chapters. What in hell went on?