Many of the poems we are asked for are old favourites that are out of copyright. You can read a selection of them by clicking on the links to the right.

If you have a favourite poem which is not here, and which you would very much like to read again, try Rampant Scotland.

However, many of the poems we are asked for are still within copyright. Below we give book details of a sample. If you have trouble getting hold of any of them, please get in touch. You can borrow the books mentioned from us or several of them can be purchased from us.

If you still can't find the poem you are looking for, go to our Lost for Words section and enter as much of the text as you can remember, and we will search for it, or post it up for you.

The Poetry Library also has an FAP page for comparable enquiries.

The Auld Troot
is by Sandy Thomas Ross, from the book Bairnsangs: Nursery Rhymes in Scots (originally published in 1955). The trout is joined by The Diuck, the Corbie, “auld tumshie-heid” The Scarecrow, and the hated Miss Maverick.

Ballad of Janitor Mackay
“I was playin keepie uppie / in the street ootside the schule …”
This poem by Margaret Green is to be found in several popular anthologies of Scottish poetry, including A Hantle o Verse: poems in Scots for children (National Museums of Scotland, 2003).

The Bird that was Trapped has Flown is by James Robertson; first featured on a National Poetry Day postcard in 2003, and included in Lament: Scottish poems for funerals and consolation (Polygon/Scottish Poetry Library, 2005).

“Oot behind a lorry / Peyin nae heed / Ablow a doubledecker / A poor wean deid”
The tragic story is Black Friday; it is by the late Jimmy Copeland, and can be seen in Jimmy Copeland's Shoogly Table Book of Verse (Bramma, 1983).

“Whit’ll ye dae when the wee Malkies come / if they dreep doon affy the wash-hoose dyke …missis, whit’ll ye dae?”
That’s The Coming o the Wee Malkies by Stephen Mulrine. It was voted one of Scotland’s favourite poems in a BBC poll in January 2006, and is included in 100 Scottish poems: the nation’s favourites (Luath, 2006).
(And the Reply to the Wee Malkies is by Ian Bowman, and was published in the magazine Akros, No.33, April 1977)

“Come in ahint, ye wan’erin tyke!”
The wayward sheep-dog is Dandie, immortalised by W.D. Cocker (1882-1970). You can see it in his book Poems Scots and English, originally published in 1932. In there you will also find The Bogle “There’s a bogle by the bour-tree at the lang loan heid …”, Contentment (which is sometimes also known as ‘Wee Bobbie’s Breeks’), and the Wee Freenly Dug.

A Dug a Dug
“Aw daddy. Get us a dug. Wull ye?” Every child’s plea, this poem by the Glasgow poet Bill Keys is in The Kist / A’Chiste anthology (Learning and Teaching Scotland, 2001).

“Weel, Geordie Wabster, / Fut excuse the day?”
The tardy schoolboy and all his excuses are in the poem of the same name
by the North-East poet John C. Milne, from his book Poems (Aberdeen University Press, 1976).

Glen, A Sheep Dog
This poem by Hilton Brown (first line “I ken there isna a p’int in yer heid”) is still in print in the anthology Canty and Couthie: familiar and forgotten traditional Scots poems (Scottish Cultural Press, 2001).

The Heron
"A humphy-backit heron, nearly as big as me, stands at the waterside ..."
J.K. Annand’s popular verses for young children are collected in A Wale o Rhymes (Macdonald, 1989), which is no longer in print, or the currently available Bairn Rhymes (Mercat Press, 2003). There is also The Crocodile, Twa-Leggit Mice (the human kind!), and poems about childhood activities both good and bad: Doukin, Snawman, Mince and Tatties, and Street Talk (“There was a rammie in the street / A stishie and stramash …)

I Wouldn't Thank You for a Valentine by Liz Lochhead is to be found in her book True Confessions and New Cliches (Polygon, new edition 2003), as is the What-I’m-Not Song.

In the Snack Bar
This poem by Edwin Morgan can be found in his Collected Poems (Carcanet, 1990), as can King Billy, and the one about the three young people with the chihuahua, Trio.

The Jeely Piece Song
Chorus: “Oh ye cannae fling pieces oot a twenty storey flat
Seven hundred hungry weans’ll testify to that …”
This is by Adam McNaughtan, and can be found in anthologies like The Kist / A’Chiste anthology (Learning and Teaching Scotland, 2001).

Kate O Shanter’s Tale
Matthew Fitt gives Kate a voice in this poem, from the book of the same title, (Luath, 2003).

Kidspoem/Bairnsang
“it wis January / and a gey dreich day / the first day Ah went to the school” This poem in Scots and English by Liz Lochhead appears in the most recent collection of her poems: The Colour of Black & White: poems 1984-2003 (Polygon, 2003), and in The Smoky Smirr o Rain: a Scots Anthology (Itchy Coo, 2003).

Lament for a Lost Dinner Ticket is by Margaret Hamilton, and can be found in The Kist / A’ Chiste anthology (Learning and Teaching Scotland, 2001).

'‘liaison co-ordinator’
first line: “efturryd geenuz iz speel”
By Tom Leonard, from the sequence ‘Ghostie Men’ , which can be found in his book Intimate Voices: Selected Work 1965-1983 (reprinted by etruscan in 2003), which also has ‘This is thi six a’ clock news’ (no. 3 of ‘Unrelated Incidents').

Poem for My Sister (“My little sister likes to try my shoes”)
by Liz Lochhead was originally published in The Grimm Sisters (1981), and has now been reprinted in Dreaming Frankenstein and Collected Poems, 1967-1984 (Polygon, 2003), which also has Revelation (about the black bull); The Choosing (“We were first equal Mary and I), and Box Room.

Schule in June
“There’s no a clood in the sky, / The hill’s clear as can be …” this wistful poem of the kept-in schoolboy was written by Robert Bain. It can be found in Oor Mither Tongue, A Scots Kist, and probably many other older anthologies you might see in public libraries.

“This is my country,
The land that begat me,
These windy spaces
Are surely my own …”
This is from the poem ‘Scotland’ by Sir Alexander Gray (1882-1968). It appears on several websites, and has been used in Scottish Rugby Union advertisements, but the author is still within copyright. It can be found in many anthologies of Scottish popular poetry.

The Train to Glasgow
Written by Wilma Horsbrugh. The book of the same title was published by Clarion in 2004, and the poem can also be found in The Orchard Book of Funny Poems (1993), and other anthologies.

Twenty Blessings
This poem by Thomas A. Clark has been included in the Scottish Poetry Library’s book Handsel: Scottish poems for welcoming and naming babies (SPL/Polygon, 2005).

The Wee Cock Sparra
A popular Hogmanay recital by Duncan Macrae, from the original by Hugh Frater. In Scottish Comic Verse (Robert Hale,1981), and Hoots!: an anthology of Scottish Comic Writing (Polygon,1997).

The Whistle
“He cut a sappy sucker from the muckle rodden tree …”
by Charles Murray (1864-1941) It is to be found in his book Hamewith, (Aberdeen University Press, 1979), as can his other favourite, It Wasna His Wyte. The laddie with the whistle was also voted one of the top twenty favourite Scottish poems in a BBC poll in 2006.