Jun 26

Red Legs

Campbell, Bridgegate Music
A little known tragic but true story – Scotland’s lost tribe of sugar slaves in Barbados, banished as indentured labour, and still there today in the northeast of the island where you will also find the Scotland District and a Saint Andrews Parish.

There are dozens of traditional songs about Scots convicts and others being banished to Van Deamon Land, Australia, but none about the ‘Redlegs’ as they were known in Barbados, so here is the first!

 

 

G 
Dark was the  
C 
day from their  
G 
homes they were  
C 
torn,   a  
G 
lost tribe of  
C 
Scots, 
 
 
D7 
abandoned, 
 
 
G 
alone.
 
The  
C 
poor and the hungry with  
G 
their lives they paid,    in
C 
dentured as slaves,  
G 
sold and betrayed.
G 
Shipped to the  
C 
Indies and  
G 
there they  
C 
remain,    
 
 
G 
ghosts from the  
D7 
past,  and  
C 
Scotland’s,  
 
 
G 
shame


 
To  
C 
hell or Barbados to  
G 
work sugarcane,   the  
C 
Redlegs they toiled for  
G 
other men’s gain
 
 
G 
Woman and  
C 
children and  
G 
fathers and  
C 
sons, In the  
G 
name of hum
D7 
anity 
 
 
C 
what have we  
G 
done

 

By stark, craggy cliffs on the windward shore, in rain sodden hills  despised and ignored,
Proud and poor for years they clung, living in hope they could return,
Through death and disease in a desperate  plight, welcomed neither by black or by white.

 

To hell or Barbados to work sugarcane, the Redlegs they toiled for other men’s gain
Woman and children and fathers and sons, In the name of humanity what have we done

 

 
The  
Em 
passage of  
D7 
time bleaches  
C 
out men’s  
Bm6 
stains, the  
Am11 
poor leave no  
Bm6 
record of  
C 
hunger and  
D7 
pain,
Em 
Damned by  
D7 
slavery, 
 
 
C 
haunted, 
 
depr
Bm6 
ived,    
 
 
Am 
innocent 
 
 
Bm6 
victims 
 
 
C 
trying to  
D7 
survive

 

Island of wealth and plenty for some, An island paradise under the sun
Where Scotland’s Sugar Slaves still live today, 14 miles from the beach where we play
A people apart beleaguered and shunned, They vanish like snow in the tropical sun

 

To hell or Barbados to work sugarcane, the Redlegs they toiled for other men’s gain
Woman and children and fathers and sons, In the name of humanity what have we done

Woman and children and fathers and sons, In the name of humanity what have we done

 

 

 

  Jun 26, 2014