HAMISH MacPherson’s Sunday National article on statues and street names mentioned Cumberland Street in Edinburgh. Dublin, the former English garrison, surprisingly, still has a street named after the Butcher. Many Dublin buildings were also due to their part of the slave trade, thanks to its Anglo overlords, who kept the native population on thraldom by their common rulers, which he covered in his first part of the tottie famine in Scotland, discussing the planned genocide executed on both nations.

There is also a Cumberland Street in Glasgow’s Gorbals. According to a wrought iron wheat sheaf outside the Glasgow People’s Palace, “Gorbels”, meaning wheat sheaf, was known for producing muskets, plaidies, targets and Highland broadswords. The Gentle Lochiel persuaded Cherlie’s army not to sack Glasgow and to this day the Tollbooth bells are supposed to ring for a visit of the chief of the Cameron clan.

Earlier, Rob Roy was reputed to have escaped from the booth when MacGregor haunchmen plied jugs of uisge beatha to the Heilan guards. Haunchmen were so named after their duty to cerry the chief aff tae bed after a nicht on the water of life and provide a tail, or bodyguard, for their chief. Rob Roy was caught after being drunk in the Saltmercat where he had been buying nails, efter selling his coos oan the Gallowgate. No clues as to how the Saltmarket got its name. The Gallowgait, according to one tradition, was where the condemned prisoners swaggered on their last walk to the “gallows herd” on the Green. There used to be a pub in the Merchant City, until the Glasgow Clearances of the 70s and the 80s, called the “Hangman’s Rest”, where the hangman stopped for stoup on the way to perform his duties on the Green. The right of free assembly was granted to the Green by a grateful Stewart King. That right was taken away by Labour Public Order Acts in the 30s and again, more recently.

Gorbals was named after English “Noble” Lords in a cringing attempt to seek patronage, hence Cumberland, Bedford, Norfolk St, etc. The Duke of Norfolk owns lands in Westminster, where one street is valued more the streets of Gorbals, Kelvindale and Ben Nevis put together. The large flats of Gorbals were subdivided to accommodate the influx of cheap labour for the Industrial Revolution from the tribal areas of Celtica. You can still catch a bus to Ireland from the Gorbals today. The Cumbie street gang was better loo’ed than the fat Butcher.

You would be lucky to catch a bus in Kelvindale, thanks to Labour cuts. Cail bhan, White water, or Kelvindale, was bought from Wiseman Dairies whose coos used to graze there. The “progressive” cooncil bocht the land to provide cheaper housing, to help beat the depression of the 20s. The streets were all named after English toons, giving them the nickname of “Little England”. It is most embarrassing for a Scottish Republican Socialist like masel’, frae Maryhill, who never made it to a big hoose in Mulgay, or Beersden.

Mary Hill’s faither owned three declining mines in Gairbraid Avenue and merrit Graham of Dougalston, Milngavie, who used his heritable jurisdiction money to buy into the Bowling to Grangemooth Canal. Bearsden is named efter the barley and not Maryhill or Possil Bears. Milngavie is a Strathclyde Brett name. Though, some believe it was called efter a miller cried, Gavin.

Come the Revolution, all those conquest names will be revised and the petit-bourgeois hamlet, or Clachaig, of Kelvindale shall be subject to the tartan spray paint mob. In the meantime, I have changed mah ain hoose street name frae Southampton Drive to Independence Road.

Donald Anderson

Glasgow

HOW could any reasonable Scot watch the UK Government’s cringingly embarrassing propaganda TV advert promoting the UK’s “new start” after Brexit without being even more convinced staying in the UK is no longer an option? In any case, isn’t this Tory propaganda piece truly an appalling abuse of public money? Anyone convinced by it?

Jim Taylor

Edinburgh