Scots Sangs An Tunes Fur Schools

Put a light in the window

Your brother's coming home

Set a meal on the table

Your brother's coming home

He'll be tired and weary

After all these years alone

He's coming home, your brother's coming home

Take the chain from the door,

Your sister's coming home

Open wide your arms

Your sister's coming home

Don't leave her standing there

After all the pain she's known

She's coming home, your sister's coming home

Chorus

Coming home to a place they've never been

Coming home to a land they've never seen

Coming home to a family they have never known

A' Jock Tamson's bairns

Are coming home

He's been angry and afraid

Your father's coming home

He's been hounded and betrayed

Your father's coming home

And with every act of kindness

A seed of hope is sown

He's coming home. Your father's coming home

Bring her in from the cold

Your mother's coming home

Sit her down by the fire

Your mother's coming home

Make her warm, make her welcome

Before the chance is gone

She's coming home, your mother's coming home

From Iraq and Zimbabwe,

Your family's coming home

And from Turkey and Somalia

Your family's coming home

Seeking rest and refuge

They have never known

They're coming home, your family's coming home

A moving Scots welcome for the exiled and homeless refugees who ask us for shelter and help. Maker of the song Steven Clark says on his website, “My song ‘Coming Home’ has been recorded professionally by Ian Bruce as ‘Comin Hame’, featuring on his album Demon's Dance. There's a review of Ian's CD that says (ahem) very nice things about my song (blush). It's also been arranged in a four-part version for Edinburgh choir Protest In Harmony, and is sung by the Eurydice choir.”

Here is a Glasgow writer and journalist’s account of the song in context.

"At a concert supported by the Scottish Refugee Council in Partick Burgh Halls in Glasgow, there was a trio of Kurds from Iraq playing onstage, making joyful music, so joyful in fact that a few, and then a few more, and after a minute every Kurd in the hall, about twenty men, women and kids, were up dancing, giving it laldy big time. They were joined by some of the Glasgow-born present, and they danced in a big circle in front of the stage. The guy in the seat next to me leaned over smiling and said ‘These ******* are going to fit right in, aren't they?’

“His mate said ‘Whit's the Kurdish for “Gaun yersel, big man”?’ and then just shouted it in Glaswegian anyway. For those unversed in Weegie-speak this is a form of very serious approbation and encouragement. One of the Glasgow-borns involved in the concert was Steven Clark, who allowed me to use his song ‘Home Again’, with its deathless lines about the difference between Edinburgh and Glasgow: "One has a castle, the other a heart" in the first Weegies vs Edinbuggers.

“He wrote a song to welcome our New Glaswegians and it was sung as a finale for the concert by everyone, including our New Glaswegians. I could hardly sing it for the lump in my throat. The tune is Steven's own."

From Merr Weegies vs Edinbuggers by Ian Black, Black & White Publishing 2005.