‘O! awa wi sic sangs as aft hae been sung’: radical songwriting and the rethinking of Chartism

Abstract

ABSTRACT Chartist songs, and the movement’s culture more generally, have received growing scholarly attention in recent decades. This article uses a case study of the many Chartist songs written to the tune of Robert Burns’s ‘Scots wha hae’ to explore the ways in which Chartist songwriters participated in the reworking of radical culture and ideas taking place in the 1830s and 1840s. These Chartist versions of ‘Scots wha hae’ – new words to an old tune – engaged in a conscious and creative dialogue between the Chartist present and the radical past. As such, they are an ideal source for exploring continuity and change in nineteenth-century radicalism, a topic of sustained historical controversy since the 1980s. Rather than indicating continuity, these re-writes of ‘Scots wha hae’ reveal how the Chartists saw themselves as a new phase of radicalism, facing novel political and economic challenges, appealing to broader constituencies of nationality, class and gender, and foregrounding working-class, rather than gentlemanly, leadership. Moreover, the act of showcasing this plebeian musical creativity on a scale unmatched by previous radical movements illustrates Chartism’s commitment to songwriting as both a key form of democratic activism and an innovative challenge to the cultural hierarchies of Victorian society.