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Edinburgh remembers its fallen footballers

5/11/2014

7 Comments

 
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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.
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   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:
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   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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7 Comments
Colin Robertson
26/4/2021 06:40:03 pm

Hi Andy do you have a digital copy of this book. Football in Verse

Is there a poem about Bobby Walker Hearts.

Reply
Andy Mitchell
26/4/2021 07:10:47 pm

I don't have a digital version and I realise my copy is too fragile to put on a scanner. There is one poem devoted to Bobby Walker, which was originally published in the Evening Dispatch on 14 April 1923.

Reply
John Cramb
2/5/2021 08:18:57 pm

Yeah I can send you a picture of the poem or attach here if I could be told how to

Reply
John Cramb
30/4/2021 03:43:56 pm

When was this book released, published?

Reply
Andy Mitchell
30/4/2021 06:29:19 pm

1923, as stated above

Reply
John Cramb
1/5/2021 09:45:52 pm

Hi There

I have this book and it’s in very good condition with spine intact , no issues , very good book

Reply
Alan Brown
8/10/2021 03:00:47 pm

Very interesting. I'm James Aitken Brown's great great grandson, and I've got all his manuscripts in a folder. From the sketchy first draughts to the finished published book.

Reply



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    All blog posts, unless stated, are written by Andy Mitchell, who is researching Scottish sport on a regular basis.