I'll buy that, Jeri - except for one thing: on his album called Scottish Voice, Ed Miller says "Be a welder on a pipeline or a fitter at Nigg Bay" - can you check the Fisher lyrics, just to be sure? He agrees with Fisher's "mudman." I find that sometimes the album notes aren't right, even when it's the songwriter's own album.

Ed Miller explains the words as follows:

Forties, the Brae: North Sea Oilfields

Neptune, Seaquest: North Sea oil platforms

Shetland yawl - old style fishing boat

NIGG BAY - oil-related industrial site in Eastern Ross

Kishorn - deep water rig-building site in Western Ross

Flotta - oil terminal in the Shetlands

Peterhead - fishing port north of Aberdeen

Here is what Miller says about the song:

for a period in the 1970's, Archie Fisher was employed by the BBC, churning out a topical song almost on a weekly basis. One subject he was asked to sing about was the developing oil industry in the North Sea. Never having worked on an oil rig, Archie called up an industrial press correspondent and asked him to start talking about oil.
The resulting song, which was considered too controversial for use by the BBC, stresses the good and bad effects this major new industry has had on the longstanding fishing and farming trades of northeast Scotland.
Oil brought a much-needed infusion of investment and employment, but was also seen as being a potentially dangerous threat to traditional coastal life. Happily, the resilient fold of northern Scotland have both survived and thrived with their regional cultures largely intact; although the Shetland oil disaster of early 1993 will no doubt have a major impact on their thinking.

-Joe Offer-