This song has pissed me off ever since it started being sung at rugby matches in the late 70s. It was part of a fashion for bogus heritage and tartan "culture" which I really resented being constantly told I should take more pride in.

90% of Scottish people live in the industrial lowlands between Glasgow and Edinburgh and had never been near a wee bit hill and glen, never mind had one of their own. Suddenly men had to wear a kilt for weddings, because it was our heritage. Bollocks. I never saw my father in a kilt before 1976 and I never saw his father or any of his elder brothers in one in their lives. The party frock that people wear these days is a victorian colonial invention.

The song itself is a good song, like so many about generations of Scots lads who died following one Royal shyster or another, but has been usurped into a feelgood, glory of fighting, anthem. It is a song I am frequently harangued into singing or singing along to and have always followed by Burns' Ye Jacobites by Name, a genuine old song and one which recognizes the folly of following these noble leaders as they squabble amongst themselves to decides who owns the plebs.

You have to know your past to look to your future, but it has to be more than a shortbread box cartoon view of where we come from. Brian Mc Neil says it pretty well in "No gods and precious few heroes. Check it out.

ps while I'm in rant mode Douggie McLean,Caledonia do me a favour. I'm 48 years old and have never heard anyone even refer to Caledonia much less say it means everything to them. x