Robin, I'd love to know how your workmates divined you were humming 'Sean South' rather than 'Roddy McCorley', which is its usual tune.

The Dear Green Place, which you post above, was written by Alan Reid of the Battlefield Band, and the lyrics can do with a little correcting in the first part. It probably has been posted elsewhere on Mudcat, but I'll put the corrections alongside this:

Line 1: It was by the clear Molendinar burn
Line 6: His name they say was Kentigern

Line 9: Now the salmon ran through the river stream
Line 13: There was cloth to dye and hose to buy

Line 18: And folk were thrown from the farmland

The Molendinar, IIRR, is the burn running through the oldest part of Glasgow, by the cathedral, and now mainly underground. Kentigern is St. Mungo, the legendary founder of the city. 'No mean city' in the last verse refers to another book, of this title, published by Alexander McArthur in 1935, which fixed Glasgow's image as a city of organised crime and hard men for a long time.

The song may be somewhat sentimental, but I don't think it's as bad as you make it! :-)

Apologies for not having anything to add on Sean South.