Hoots, Mate!

My kids have been learning some Scots poems at school for Burns Night over the past week—Burns’s “To a Mouse” for my older son, and “Twa-Leggit Mice” by the late Edinburgh poet J. K. Annand for my younger daughter. Cue a week of her asking for a snack by exclaiming, “Jings! I get fair hungert.”

I amused them both by reading out the Annand poem in my broadest Aussie accent. (It’s more honest than trying it in faux-Ewan McGregor.) Which reminds me that Burns Night on 25 January aligns with the morning of Australia Day on 26 January back in Oz, thanks to the time difference. Jings, I could go a snag.

To mark both occasions, here’s a recording of “Twa-Leggit Mice” in my finest Ocker. And in celebration of the great chieftain o’ the pudding-race, here’s a verse from the classic Australian children’s book The Magic Pudding by Norman Lindsay, which turns 100 this year. I’ve enjoyed reading that to my kids too over recent years, and would record the whole thing if I had a proper studio instead of the in-built mic on an iMac.

Twa-Leggit Mice [mp3]

Bill Barnacle's Breakfast Ballad [mp3]

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Added by Rory on 26 January 2018.