In the aftermath of September 11th, firefighters are in all our minds surely, and some powerful songs have come out of it about them.

There's been our Larry (InOBU) Otway's Remember their passing; and there's Who are your heroes? by Les Barker; and there's Tom Paxton's The Bravest (and if you click here you can hear Garrison Keillor singing it off his show (and all the more moving because he isn't singing it that well).

I was watching the news last night, and they had shots of that Red Cross building that got bombed in Kabul. And what struck me was the image of the firemen standing there in the rubble in their helmets, their firehoses in thgeir hands, tired faces and dust-covered uniforms. Looking so like their brother firemen in New York and every other city.

We don't think about firefighters enough, and we don't siong about them, as much as they deserve. and they wouldn't want us to anyway.

Anyway here's a song about some other firemen who died in a whisky warehouse fire in Glasgow forty years ago. It was written by a lad called Steve O'Donaghue soon after, and he sang it at Oxford University Heritage Folk Club, and we put it in our little broadsheet. I hadn't thought of it for yesars, still less sung it, and I rumaged it out in my attic just now. The tune is that of the Glasgow children's song Coulter's Candy. As Vin Garbutt would say, it's a good 'un.

There was a fire in Anderston
And like Hell it fiercely burned.
Smoke and flames rose to te sky,
In the ruins our comrades lie.

(chorus)Nineteen brave men, dead and gone,
Doing their duty sure and strong.
In the fire a wall did fall
Crumbling down upon them all.

These were the me n who lioved to save,
But nineteen men lie in the grave,
How can we the debt repay? Whit will the mithers to their bairnies say?

I sing this song to make it clear
Life is cheap though whiskey's dear,
But by Christ the price is high
When nineteen firemen have to die.