Dougie MacLean – Homeland

Written by well known Scottish folk musician Dougie MacLean, Homeland is a song ridiculing the foreigners who have emigrated into his Scotland.  The arrogant colonists sell their expensive city houses and move out into the Scottish countryside where they love all the quaint superficials of the culture while fundamentally misunderstanding the core values and looking down on the people who created what they enjoy.   As a Southerner American, I have a deep understanding of and empathy with this song.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard or seen Yankees and liberal Westerners in the South go on and on about how they love the slower pace of life, Southern hospitality, sweet tea, and so on while with the next breath they mock the Christian and hierarchical values which produced them and insult the “dumb, racist, backward hicks and rednecks” whom it belongs to.  Yes, we can tell that that’s a fake Southerner accent, it makes you sound stupid, and it’s insulting.  We don’t need you to “fix” us or “improve” us. If bluegrass music, the Confederate flag, and conservative values are so bad, then why don’t you go back to where you came from?

The lyrics and a cover of the song are posted below, and you can see that he pulls no punches.  The foreigners complain about the weather and the local music, they don’t understand the history of the place and people, and they attempt to emulate some of the customs but get them all wrong.  MacLean scornfully mocks the arrogance of the “great improvers” whose efforts are purely destructive and points out the shallowness of their “deep concern” for suffering halfway around the world while ignoring it in their own community.  The last verse ends with the great nationalist line that, although these foreigners may have purchased the land, it will never truly belong to them.

You’re a stranger to these hills and you’ve come up
here to end your days
And you love our running rivers and you love our
quaint little Highland ways

You sold your house in the city – you put it on the
market and you did so good
Now you’ve bought a little piece of something
that you don’t understand and you’ve
misunderstood

Chorus:

But I’ll tell you about the land that you play on
What you’ve gained is our ultimate loss
I’ll tell you about the soil you decay on
I’ll hold it up to you like the Fiery Cross

You love the view from your window and you’d go out
more but it always rains
You don’t think much of the music or the tears in the
old man’s sad refrains

You’ve bought yourself miles of tartan and you wear it
round your middle and you wear it on your head
You stand there a proud believer in a vision of the truth
that’s long gone dead

Chorus

Once these glens were full of people and the songs
and stories of their fathers of old
And there was peace and plenty and a horn of
whiskey when the weather grew cold

Then along came the great improvers and they
cleaned it up like only imperials could
They lined them up for transportation to the land of the
brave and the free and the good

Chorus

Look to the south I tell you that the black man has it
cruel and hard
But you don’t have to look any further that the rumble
of stones in our own backyard

And Oh sad the day and all that’s left are a fading few
Yes Sir you may have paid good money for it but no it’ll
never belong to you

Chorus

 

 

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