Hi, everyone. I'm interested in this piece as well. It seems I've got a slightly different version on my 30-year-old tape (Dad's Inheritance) when I compare it to Jim's efforts. Anyway, I hope it helps, although I am not sure about some things yet, either. I just love the way he changes his accent along with the travels of the rumour.

Now when it comes to spreading, there are many things to name:
There's butter, and there's fire, and then, of course, there's fame.
But the thing that spreads the quickest, it's the fastest, you'll agree,
Is the spoken word of rumour. Just listen and you'll see.

Now the rumour I would speak of here was started by a man
In Inverness who whispered it from in behind his hand.
"Did you hear what I heard, Willy? Man, that's awful. Yes, that's right.
You'd never have believed it. Man, it gave me such a fright!"

Now poor Willy was quite upset when he heard that this had been,
So he straightway phone his brother George who lives in Aberdeen.
"Oh dearie me", says Georgie. "Man, that's half a fatal shock.
I'll have to tell your cousin Ralph and next to me the broch."

But instead he told his sister Jean, a bus conductor's lass.
She told Styn Hive in Laurencekirk in Delche town she passed.
"Well that's fatal. I don't know why, I just will keep it to myself."
And they did keep it just like her and could not wait to tell...

Until she reached old Forfar Town where once were nothing loth.
She telled it to a fisherman who telled it to her broth.
"By to wow", was their reaction and perhaps just "dearie me".
And they could not wait to tell the tale for to get into Dundee.

"Well I never am no sailor, wart no never in my whole life,
But I crossed the water and of course the story spread to Fife."
It was told in every meeting place and spread for there and there.
Though there was some cautiousness at first, they soon said, "Tell us more".

So more and more and more and more the rumour flew around,
Till they spelt it out in capitals in Edinburghy town.
They shouted that in Leith, but oh, the tone grew more discreet
As it passed up these walking along the length of Prince's Street.

There somebody took it on a train to Glasgow and that's how
A few of there you'll probably have heard the rumour now.
Not that that's where it all finished, for it carried on and passed
By a steamer going westward to Old Ireland and Belfast.

"Is that the truth", the Irish said. They thought it was a shame.
No, they didn't like the rumour so they sent it home again.
On a distant roar came the north wind over Irshel and Kintyre
Where it spread the sea quite freely like the heather was on fire.

Oban, Mull, Tobermory, Mallaig and Kyle, and that is why,
Once again, by way of water the rumour came to Skye.
But they couldn't tell it further; and the reason is because,
By the time it reached the islands, they'd forgotten what it was!