Brian McNeill
My Uncle Jim, he served his time
on the shores o' the Forth, as a joiner,
and three pounds ten a week was all he earned,
but the wages were better working Michigan pine
so he sailed on an ocean liner
to build a better life with the trade he'd learned.
And the shore he reached in twenty-three,
the home o' the brave, the land o' the free,
was dry, as the Devil's tongue on Judgement Day,
but to find a dram in a foreign land,
it's the natural gift of a Falkirk man,
and Lady Liberty looked the other way,
or so I've always heard my uncle say.
Chorus: For he's the best o' the barley, cream o' the crop.
Easy on the water, I'll tell you when to stop.
Would you please charge your glasses with the real pure drop,
and drink to the best o' the barley.
My Uncle Jim was a child of his time,
and the tricks of the time they were dirty,
and the dirtiest of all was the one they played
on a working man's dollar and a poor man's dime
between twenty-nine and thirty,
for they killed all the steady jobs in the building trade.
And the only way that Jim could see
was to play the game with Lady Liberty,
though no one ever told him all the rules,
and when fainter hearts were homeward bound
Jim sold Michigan ice by the pound,
with a leather sling and an iron hook for tools,
just to show the Yankees how to keep their cool.
Chorus
My Uncle Jim, he could keep good time
when the band played an eightsome reel,
and he loved to waltz away the summer nights,
and the spring in his step kept him in his prime,
through the turns of fortune's wheel
as it spun him through the darkness and the light.
And to dance the jig called history,
Jim took the hand o' the century
and he never let her steal a backward glance.
From the D-Day beaches to the cold lake shore,
he whirled her round and round the floor
to show her how a Scotsman takes his chance,
and he never missed a measure o' the dance.
Last chorus:
For he's the best o' the barley, cream o' the crop.
Easy on the water, I'll tell you when to stop.
Would you please charge your glasses with the real pure drop
and drink to the best of the barley.
Here's a health to the best of barley,
to Scotland and the best of the barley.'