[Track Info] [The Lyrics] [Explanation]
A hand held over a candle in angst fuelled bravado
a carbon trail scores a moist stretched palm
Trapped in the indecision of another fine menu
and you sit there and ask me to tell you the story so far
This is the story so fa-ar
Shuffling your memories dealing your doodles in margins
you scrawl out your poems across a beermat or two
And when you declare the point of grave creation
They turn round and you to tell them the story so far
This is the story so fa-ar
And you listen with a tear in you eye
to their hopes and betrayals and your only reply
is Slàinte Mhath
Princes in exile raising the standard Drambuie
parading their anecdotes tired from old campaigns
Holding their own last orders commanding attention
we sit here and listen to all of the story so far
This is the story so fa-ar
Take it away, take it away, take it away
Take me away, take me away, take me away, take me away, take me away
From the dream on the barbed wire at Flanders and Bilston Glen
From a Clydeside that rusts from the tears of its broken men
From the realisation that we've been left behind
Is to stand like our fathers before us in the firing line
Waiting on the whistle to blow
We stand here waiting on the whistle to blow
They promised us miracles, and the whistle still blows
Broken promises but the whistle still blows
Waiting on the wistle to blow
We stand here waiting on the wistle to blow
(Oyster Bar, Edinburgh -- Country Bar, Dalkeith)
Copyright © 1997 Fraser Marshall, Matthew Anderson & Bert ter
Steege.
'Slàinte Mhath'
Debbie Voller: SLÀINTE
MHATH (Oyster Bar, Edinburgh/County Bar, Dalkeith) Fish: This is pronounced slanj-navah!
Everyone says it in Scotland, it means "cheers, good health!" This is a very
Scottish song, about broken dreams, and guys meeting in pubs and going (adopts very
drunken accent) "Och, if ma wife hadnee left me and ma book hadnee been ripped off,
I'd be famous now!" When I write, I like to sit with a drink, read a book, write on a
beer mat and doodle at the side. So I'm doing this in Edinburgh and this guy comes over
and goes, "scuse me! Whatya dooin? Are y' a writer? I'll tell you somethin' to write
abooot!" and proceeds to tell me his _whole_ life story. And how he'd been down on
his luck! And I wanted to say "You made a mess of your life, don't blame it on
fate" but instead I just said, "cheers, good health!!"
Jeroen Schipper's FAQ: Slàinte Mhath means literally "Good Health" - Slàinte translates vaguely as health, "mhath" is the feminine form of "math" (pron. "maa"). In Scots Gaelic, we aspirate to make an adjective feminine. Thus the name "Mairi" (Marie) is given extra feminine emphasis by aspiration - "Mhairi" (pron. "Varry").
It is a gaelic word, too, which is where Fish picked it up. Irish, gaelic (scottish), and welsh are all related languages.
Pronounce "Slàinte mhath" as Fish does - "Slanzh'va", and utter it when someone buys you a drink!
'Drambuie'
A rather pleasant Scotch liqueur type thing.
'Flanders and
Bilston Glen'
Flanders is the Dutch Speaking part of Belgium.
Bilston Glen is a depressed region of Scotland, known for its shipbuilding industruy. Or
nowadays, the lack of one.
Steve Ross: The Bilston Glen area in Lothian also had several large coal mines which were closed by the Thatcher government in the 1980's. Much employment in the area relied on these mines and several violent labour riots occured at the time of the announced closures.
'Clydeside'
The Clyde is the river that runs from Greenock on
the West coast of Scotland through to Glasgow. The conurbation of Clydeside, which in
cludes the cities of Glasgow and Clydebank, is the largest ship building and marine
engineering centre in Great Britain. To a local, Clydeside is virtually synonymous wityh
the docks and ship building. In the 1940s and 50s, the shipbuilders on the Clyde were
amongst the best in the world.
Since the 1960s, the industry has been in dramatic decline, with the attendant problems of high job losses and poverty developing. Successive governments failed to support the industry, despite saying publicly that they would. In the late 1980s, some of Clydeside was redeveloped and now experiences the same problems of gentrification that afflicted London's Docklands.
Sources:
Last Modified: 27 Jul 2000