morning

The humble Jeelie Piece Song has gained literary respectability — ranked among works by some of the country’s greatest writers including Robert Burns and Robert Louis Stevenson — as one of Scotland’s best-loved poems.

The song is ranked 17th in Scotland’s top 20 poems, as chosen by listeners of BBC Radio Scotland. Burns, Stevenson, Hugh MacDiarmid, Sir Walter Scott, Muriel Spark and Edwin Morgan all feature prominently. But Adam MacNaughton’s Jeelie Piece Song attracted strong support.

The poem chronicles the death of a Glasgow tradition where mothers would wrap sandwiches in paper and throw them from tenement windows to their children playing below.

Its chorus states: “Oh, ye cannae fling pieces oot a twenty-storey flat, seven hundred hungry weans’ll testify to that. If it’s butter, cheese or jeelie, if the breid is plan or pan, the odds against it reachin’ earth are ninety-nine tae wan.”

Kit wrote: