Live video from the show at York’s Fortyfive Vinyl Café with White Sail in October. McPherson’s Rant is a old hanging ballad, said to be based on a true story. James McPherson was a notorious Scottish bandit who managed to escape justice on many occasions. However, one day in the year 1700 he was seen carrying a sword in the market place in Elgin, a capital offence. Like many career criminals (even today) he had friends in high places, but this time, even his friend Lord Elgin was obliged to condemn him to death since there were so many witnesses.

The song is a famous one in Scotland since it expresses not just his courage in facing death, but by inference, his defiance of authority. While on the scaffold, waiting for the clock to strike midday, McPherson sang a song, danced a jig and played his fiddle to the huge crowd, before smashing the fiddle so that no-one else could play it. However, as the song suggests, he may have been playing for time and hoping that there would be a last minute reprieve. The townspeople suspected that too, so when a rider was seen coming over the bridge, one of them climbed up the clock tower and moved the hand of the clock forward a quarter of an hour to twelve. And Jamie McPherson became a song.

This song is from my first solo album Tales of Love War and Death by Hanging.

Thanks to Tom for the video and Martin for sound.