The Calton was the biggest weaving centre in Scotland, so why shouldn't the song have been set there?

There used to be an exhibition about the Calton weaving in the People's Palace Museum in Glasgow. The main thing I remember about it was that the place used to be the main source, worldwide, for Arab scarves in the familiar sorta-houndstooth pattern. I think that lasted until about WW1.

I used to live near there, and there were still a few derelict textile factories around. I wish I'd managed to keep the abandoned files from one I found. It was mostly routine business correspondence, but there was one priceless note from the general manager to a subordinate describing an occasion when he had come in one Monday morning to find the entire factory coated floor to ceiling in blue fluff. The understated punchline was "this is not what I expect from a professionally run operation".