Ewan McVicar, one of Scotland’s best-known storytellers and song writers, has collected songs in over 40 Scottish schools to create the first publication of the ‘hidden’ songs of Scots childhood. The songs featured include honest vulgarity, violence, football and anti-school ditties.

Adults may lament that today’s Scots children do not sing in the playground, but the kids know better. Hundreds of hilarious, energetic, surreal, nonsensical and alarming rhymes and songs are still in use, some over 200 years old, others as new as today’s TV ads. Doh Ray Me, the first comprehensive account of Scots children’s lyric lore, investigates what has been lost and what has replaced it, looking at the arcane riches of the past as well as the absurd glories of today.

Over 800 Scots lyrics taken from publications and unpublished collections from the 1820s to 2006 include the stories of Coulter’s Candy and Aunty Mary’s Canary; the ancient pipe tune that became ‘London Bridge is Falling Down’ and the Scots ancestry of ‘The Mulberry Bush’, ‘The Hokey Cokey’ and ‘Old King Cole’. There are songs for skipping, hand-clapping, games, guises, wordplay and trickery.

'Invaluable', Margaret Bennett