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