Category Song
The Queen o Sorrow composed by Colin Crombie
Winner, Original Song in Scots competition at the 48th (2017) Newcastleton Folk Festival. A short song about impending environmental catastrophe, the imagery builds from apparent unrelated vanity and a farewell to natural beauties, turning gradually to disastrous man-made calamity and catastrophe, with no hope of turning the tide, or of redemption, to facing a bleak, […]
We Love Oor Ain The Best composed by Colin Crombie
Banned! My claim to infamy – I was red-carded for this song at the original song competition at the Glenfarg Folk Feast in 2015 – and banned from entering again for a year. It’s just a bit of fun (and a rare comic song from me, if you’ve looked at or listened to my other […]
The Ballad of Arthur and Dorothy composed by Colin Crombie
Ah, the tragedy of romance. One of my songs inspired by and crafted from real events. Intended, where possible, to be sung as a female-male duet. Arthur Golding died on 14 October, 1939 after returning for the fourth time to try to save shipmates from the Royal Oak, sunk at Scapa Floe by the German […]
Marchin’ [The Protest Song] composed by Colin Crombie
Marchin’ is a protest song. Written in the spirit of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Peter Yarrow or the somewhat milder (to my mind) Tom Paxton. A truly quintessential protest song – worthy of taking its place in the canon of the greats, and as powerful in its way as any of them – in mine […]
Song of Sophia [to Alexander Selkirk] composed by Colin Crombie
Sophia is Sophia Bruce. I grew up up in a time in Scotland when there was precious little Scots history – or much Scots culture at all – taught or introduced in the formal educational system. Probably much the same today. And it’s only through your own interests and reading that you learn about our […]
Medana’s Well composed by Colin Crombie
Medana’s Well tells the story of the legend behind the ancient healing or holy well near Glasserton in Dumfries and Galloway, known as St Medana’s Well. Medana – or Medan, or also known by several other versions of her name – had been an Irish noblewoman who spurned all the advances of the Irish gentry […]
Cargoes composed by Colin Crombie
Cargoes was born as a longer song trying to tell two stories. Sometimes this works, but it was too cumbersome and this is the version pared back to tell the one story. The title of a workshop by author James Robertson – The Art of Omission – sums up an essence of any creative endeavour […]
The Restless Wave composed by Colin Crombie
The Restless Wave is in the style of a traditional sea shanty. The inspiration came from two sources. When I lived in Texas, I had been at Stan Rogers’ last performance at the Kerrville Folk Festival – this song is in homage to his singing and writing – in particular The Lock-keeper and Rolling Down […]
Bonny Birds (for the lives lost in the Ross-shire Massacre of 2014) composed by Colin Crombie
This was written in response to the Ross-shire Massacre of 2014 – when within days 22 birds of prey were found dead in a small area near Conon Bridge. Like most of my songs, it almost wrote itself – as if the spirit of the raptors sought a voice. And like many songs, it was […]
The Captain at the Crossroads composed by Colin Crombie
The inspiration for this came as I walked through Leven, where I live. I’d come out of Letham Glen, which has fine grove of mature cherry trees (come in the late spring for their glory), and as I passed a crossroads (well, our version, a roundabout… but that doesn’t fit the developing theme) I noticed […]