One of the most poignant ceremonies to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War will be in Edinburgh on Sunday for the annual Heart of Midlothian FC remembrance service.
The sacrifice of the Hearts players is well known thanks to Jack Alexander's excellent book McCrae's Battalion, and I was delighted that the Battalion, the 16th Royal Scots, has just been inducted into the Scottish Football Hall of Fame. I recently re-read Jack's book, and it brought home to me what a magnificent piece of research it was, particularly as he did most of it before the internet revolutionised modern history with the wealth of digitised records. His book remains the outstanding classic of First World War sporting literature.
I recently came across a tribute of another kind to the Hearts players. In 1923 the resident poet of the Edinburgh Evening News, J. Aitken Brown, brought out a little volume entitled Football in Verse, and it is no surprise that he devoted several poems to the club and its sacrifice.
In this emotive piece written during the War he put into context the club's agonising failure to take the Scottish League championship in 1914-15, when the remaining players were simply too exhausted from military training to win matches after leading the race for so long.
The sacrifice of the Hearts players is well known thanks to Jack Alexander's excellent book McCrae's Battalion, and I was delighted that the Battalion, the 16th Royal Scots, has just been inducted into the Scottish Football Hall of Fame. I recently re-read Jack's book, and it brought home to me what a magnificent piece of research it was, particularly as he did most of it before the internet revolutionised modern history with the wealth of digitised records. His book remains the outstanding classic of First World War sporting literature.
I recently came across a tribute of another kind to the Hearts players. In 1923 the resident poet of the Edinburgh Evening News, J. Aitken Brown, brought out a little volume entitled Football in Verse, and it is no surprise that he devoted several poems to the club and its sacrifice.
In this emotive piece written during the War he put into context the club's agonising failure to take the Scottish League championship in 1914-15, when the remaining players were simply too exhausted from military training to win matches after leading the race for so long.
The distinctive clock tower was recently restored to near its original position after Edinburgh's notorious tramworks were completed. A big crowd is expected this weekend at Haymarket (details on the Hearts website) but when it was unveiled in April 1922 by the Secretary of State for Scotland an extraordinary 50,000 people were in attendance. This is how Aitken Brown viewed the memorial:
Football in Verse is a flimsy book and few copies have survived, but I will try and digitise my copy at some stage. Meanwhile, it is available in the National Library of Scotland.
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