CULTURE Birth of an anthem
Books: Andrew Hook
‘That Guy Fae the Corries’, by Robert Browne (Sandstone Press)
On the last page of his book Robert Browne writes that he has ‘had a long, interesting and rewarding life’. The autobiography he has just published confirms that this is indeed the case. ‘Successful’ might well have been added to the list of adjectives, but it is characteristic of the author’s modesty that he chooses not to include it. Nonetheless the narrative of the Browne life is in reality one of almost uninterrupted success. As a result, his book is sometimes in danger of becoming somewhat flat and unexciting.
We learn that at certain times Ronnie Browne made mistakes or bad decisions; that occasionally he behaved badly, hurting people he cared for; that schemes and plans he set up sometimes went badly wrong; and that, as for all of us, the passage of time inevitably meant he had at different times to cope with the illness and death of friends and family. But despite all this, the life of that guy from the Corries described in these pages – as the author fully recognises – is a life of quite remarkable achievement and personal fulfilment.
When in the late 1950s at the Edinburgh College of Art Robert Browne met the man destined to be the other half of the legendary Corries – Roy Williamson – he was acutely aware of the differences between them: they played for opposing rugby teams and competed for different Edinburgh athletic clubs, but more importantly, ‘socially, as well, we were at opposite ends of the scale. I was working class and he was from a moneyed, professional background, his mother a pianist and his father a prominent attorney’. His father a long-distance lorry driver, Ronnie grew up in Edinburgh in what was clearly in most respects a fairly typical working-class family – though Browne’s mother did develop a strong commitment to spiritualism, finally becoming a séance-holding medium herself, and persuading her husband and son to share her beliefs.
At both Preston Street Primary School and Boroughmuir High School Ronnie proved to be an able student, frequently competing to be the ‘dux’ of his class. However, from an early age he showed an unusual aptitude for drawing and painting. So much so that when two reporters from the Edinburgh Evening News happened to see him – at the age of 11 – outside drawing Edinburgh’s Black Watch Memorial, they arranged for him to be photographed and featured in the newspaper. About the same time, however, taken by his mother to see a spiritual healer over a minor sore, mother and son were told by the spiritualist ‘this boy isn’t going to make his name from drawing, you know, but from music’.
Despite this message from the spirit world, post-Boroughmuir Ronnie decided that art college was where his future lay. Completing the four-year course in 1959, followed by teacher training at Moray House, for the next two years he did actually become a high school art teacher. In fact, despite the major change in the direction of his life that was about to happen, Ronnie never gave up drawing and painting, and indeed at different periods in his life, he enjoyed great success as a portrait painter in particular. It is not too much to say that, had he never sung a note, he would still have made his name as an artist in the world of Scottish culture.
But it was indeed from music that he was destined to make his name. That guy from the Corries from childhood on had always been something of a singer. Yet there is nothing in the book to suggest that Ronnie ever had any sense – not to say expectation – that singing rather than painting would come to define his life. In making this happen, the meeting and growing friendship at college with Roy Williamson was crucial. ‘Then,’ as he puts it, ‘in the early months of 1962, fate took a hand’.
Sitting with their wives (Ronnie had married his childhood sweetheart Pat in 1959 after a courtship and engagement which had lasted for several years), one night Roy picked up his guitar and the two men sang a few songs together. ‘My goodness’, said Roy’s wife, ‘they could easily be another Hall and MacGregor’. (Robin Hall and Jimmy MacGregor were already famous as Scottish folk-song singers.) Soon afterwards a folk-singing group, including Paddie Bell, which Roy had joined, found itself missing a male singer. Ronnie agreed to take part and immediately became a regular member. The result was the creation of ‘The Corrie Folk Trio and Paddie Bell’.
Success was immediate. The new folk group was soon receiving invitations to appear at venues all around Scotland. Ireland and England followed suit before long, and perhaps more importantly, appearances began to occur on BBC television programmes such as the ‘Hootenanny Show’ and the ‘White Heather Club’. Roy and Ronnie had already become professional performers, but by late 1963 Ronnie had a bigger decision to make. Should he resign his teaching post and become a full-time performer? The answer of course was yes.
In the years of the Corrie Folk Trio, Ronnie Browne’s role was exclusively that of singer. Roy Williamson and Bill Smith played the various instruments the group employed. However on New Year’s Day, 1966, everything changed. Relations between Smith and the others had become increasingly fraught, and on that day the breach became final. As Ronnie puts it: ‘On January 1st, 1966, The Corrie Folk Trio was no more’. Ronnie and Roy were now The Corries – and Ronnie had to begin learning how to help with the instrumental accompaniment to their songs. Nervously at first, but in time with growing confidence, this he succeeded in doing.
For the next 24 years, the story that this autobiography tells is quite simply that of how the Corries went from local and national to worldwide folk-singing success. Ronnie writes: ‘I have painted the picture of my earlier professional life as one of unbridled progress and unqualified success’. He goes on to suggest that in the period that followed, he had to face serious problems as a result of business and property ventures that did always go according to plan, but such problems had nothing to do with his life as a performer. Inevitably there were critics of the status of the Corries as folk singers. ‘Some people on the folk scene, club organisers and columnists, didn’t entirely hold with our performances, thinking we should present a more serious blend of what they considered to be authentic…’
But Ronnie is reluctant to take such criticism seriously – the Corries provided the kind of programme their audiences wanted to hear, and some element of light-hearted entertainment in their shows was necessary. In any event, Ronnie, even if he is unwilling to try to analyse the reasons for their immense success, is confident of the integrity of the Corries’ music. When Roy Williamson died in 1990, Ronnie said in a TV tribute: ‘I think that what we managed to do was capture the eternal essence of Scottish music and Scottishness. That is certainly what I felt, and I know Roy did too’.’ Obviously’, he goes on, ‘we had to follow certain patterns, but the motivation was mainly feeling: feeling for the songs, the country, and the music’. That is as much in the way of analysis that the surviving Corrie singer is prepared to offer.
After Roy Williamson’s death, Ronnie Browne went on to continuing success as a solo performer, as a portrait painter, and even as an after-dinner speaker, and the closing chapters of his book take us on his travels to participate in St Andrew’s Day celebrations, Burns nights, and major sporting events, in countries around the world. Much of this had to do with the impact of the most famous of the Corries’ songs: ‘Flower of Scotland’. Let me end with a comment or two on this phenomenon.
First of all Ronnie is characteristically scrupulous in insisting that he played no part in the creation of ‘Flower of Scotland’. Both words and music were exclusively the work of his partner, Roy Williamson. The only credit that Ronnie takes is that, after Roy’s death, he became what he calls the song’s ‘Guardian’. 2 February 1968 was the date of the Corries’ first public performance of the song, and Ronnie tells us it became ‘an instant hit with our audiences’. However it was 1974 before it ‘caught on’ with the wider public – in Ronnie’s view because of the publicity that resulted from its being adopted as their team song by the British Lions rugby players touring South Africa that year. A few months later the Corries cashed in on their success by releasing the song as a record single – which sold 8,000 copies in a week.
Despite all this, I still feel it’s true to say that it was only at the beginning of the 1990s – when Roy Williamson was dying – that ‘Flower of Scotland’ finally attained the status of Scotland’s unofficial national anthem which it still holds today. Crucial here, as Ronnie Browne proudly explains, were the decisions by first the Scottish Rugby Union, and a few years later, by the Scottish Football Association, to make ‘Flower of Scotland’ Scotland’s pre-kick-off national anthem – an accolade confirmed when Ronnie’s own final personal rendition of the song took place at the opening of the Commonwealth Games in Scotland in 2014. So perhaps the history of ‘Flower of Scotland’ may be seen as supporting the theory that Scottish cultural nationalism preceded or anticipated the rise of Scottish political nationalism.
Finally, Ronnie Browne acknowledges there were those who were unhappy about the song’s adoption as Scotland’s anthem – because of its anti-English dimension. (I admit I’m one of them.) Ronnie’s answer is that ‘Flower of Scotland’ is no more anti-English than ‘God Save the Queen’ is anti-Scottish. To prove this he quotes a verse, written in 1747, just after the end of the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion, which is certainly anti-Scottish. But this will not do. The verse in question disappeared almost as soon as it was written, and never appeared in the version that was adopted as the British national anthem much later in the 18th century.
‘Flower of Scotland’, on the other hand, in all of its verses, oddly, and in my view, inappropriately, chooses to define Scotland’s identity by referring to an ancient battle with its neighbour. However, Ronnie Browne’s understandable enthusiasm for the current status of the Corries’ song will, I know full well, be shared by the vast majority of the readers of his entertaining book.
By Andrew Hook | June 2015