This just occured to me, but there's a citation of SEAN SOUTH in DT, and a few threads on it in the Discussion, but I don't think anyone ever mentions +this+.

Apparently Sean South was homosexual.

I had this drummed into me when I was working on a building-site with a particularly hard Glasgow Irish Catholic gang in the sixties, most of whose grand-daddies prolly got wasted alongside Sean South.

I dunno even how true this was ...

Robin.

Context:

THE DEAR GREEN PLACE

That building site ...

It was 1966, the summer between my first and second years as a student at Glasgow University, and I was working on the building site to make a bit of money. People there divided sharply between the over-forties, and kids my own age, and never the twain did meet. The kids were Catholic Glasgow Irish, which was pretty obvious from the start. What I only gradually came to realise was that they weren't just illiterate Glasgow Catholic bog-Irish (they'd all left school at sixteen), but that they were the core of a very hard Catholic gang (these were the years of Tongs and Cumbie -- they weren't Cumbie, but a smaller and tougher version thereof.) And there was me, privileged middle class Protestant university student who'd been to a grammar school (Hutchesons) and was working there for a bit to earn some pocket money while they were there for life.

What would you expect?

Closest I can come to describing their attitude towards me was protective -- "Hey, Robin, fuck off that wan, it's tae heavy fur ye, we're trained tae it."

[SNIP]

Only time I had anything remotely resembling trouble wasn't really my fault. I was (as one does, sometimes) humming "Sean South of Garryone" and they landed on me like a ton of bricks -- "Jeez, Robin, fur Christ sake stop that. Don't ye know he was a flaming poofter?"

(Well, +I+ thought he was a martyred hero of the Uprising. Most of their granddaddies had probably been wasted alongside him by the Black and Tans. Long memories in Glasgow.)

They forgave me for it -- as an Ignorant Protestant, how would I be expected to know something like that?

[SNIP]

One of the only two times in my life I ever felt completely at home.

{Actually, that particular [SNIP] cuts into what little sense this post is trying to make.}

[SNIP]

So that's the story of The Dear Green Place.

R2.