I suspect that Hamish is still being talked about in Breton fishing villages. The reality is that he is still being talked about in Scotland, which is the important thing. He was a fixture in Edinburgh when I was a student of Scottish history and literature in the early 1970s. He had a reputation not just for extraordinary scholarship, but for his strong and constant advocacy, to which John McAllion referred, for those who could not speak for themselves or who could not be heard in the clamour of the capitalist 20 th century. Neat, Timothy (2009). Hamish Henderson: a biography. Vol. 2, Poetry becomes people (1952-2002). Edinburgh: Polygon. ISBN 0-85790-487-6. OCLC 904291234.

The 51st Highland Division's Farewell to Sicily by Hamish Henderson". Scottish Poetry Library (in Inglis) . Retrieved 23 Januar 2022.

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Freedom Come All Ye" performed by Karine Polwart in The Italian Chapel, Orkney August 2013. from Andy Crabb on Vimeo. Hamish Henderson made a double contribution—of an institution that I hope will be nurtured and treasured by the University of Edinburgh and by the Scottish nation, and of a live folk tradition that will continue into the future. If the Parliament does anything to honour his name, it should be to support that folk tradition and the institution that he has left us with.

James) Hamish Scott Henderson (11 November 1919 – 9 March 2002) was a Scottish poet, songwriter, communist, intellectual and soldier. Hamish Henderson’s credo was derived from Heinrich Heine’s ‘Poetry becomes People’ — the perfect fusion between folk and art poetry. Gibson is right: with his song ‘The Freedom Come-all-Ye’, written for the Clydeside peace marchers in 1960, he produced the ‘most compelling example of a poetry that “becomes people”.’ So much so, that, despite Henderson’s own rejection of that idea, lots of people would want to see it used as the Scottish national anthem. Hamish Henderson was Scotland's leading folklorist, as well as a major poet, soldier, socialist, songwriter, CND peace campaigner and anti-apartheid activist. He was born in Blairgowrie on 11 November 1919. His mother was Janet Jobson Henderson (d. 1933), a cook and housekeeper who had served as a nurse on the western front, and his father was James Scott (1874–1934), an army officer. He was raised by his Gaelic-speaking mother and his Episcopalian, Jacobite maternal grandmother, spending his early childhood in Blairgowrie and Glenshee. He also spent time in Dundee, Somerset, and Devon. Orphaned at the age of thirteen, Henderson obtained scholarships first to Dulwich College and then to Downing College, Cambridge, where he read modern languages. During 1947 and 1948 he took various teaching engagements, including one at a German high school teachers' summer school in Bad Godesberg, and another working with German prisoners of war in Comrie, Perthshire. Between 1948 and 1949 he was also a district secretary for the Workers' Educational Association. At the same time he was producing a great deal of literary and political criticism, poetry, and songs. In his work, Henderson swung between English and Scots, like Burns before him, writing only rarely in Gaelic. Henderson was instrumental in bringing about the Edinburgh People's Festival Ceilidh in 1951, which placed traditionally performed Scottish folk music on the public stage for the first time as "A Night of Scottish Song". However, the People's Festival, of which it was part, was planned as a left-wing competitor to the Edinburgh Festival and was deeply controversial. At the event, Henderson performed The John Maclean March, to the tune of Scotland the Brave, which honoured the life and work John Maclean, a communist and Scottish nationalist hero.Duncan Glen, ‘Hamish Henderson: poetry becomes people’ in Selected Scottish and Other Essays (Kirkcaldy: Akros Publications, 1999) Henderson was was a soldier, poet, scholar, folklorist and folk revivalist, songwriter, translator and activist. He was an internationalist, with strong connections with Europe and beyond. Characterised by his aims of ‘resolve, transformation and insurrection’, his activism was a fusion of cultural politics and social justice – campaigning with CND and with the Peace movement, against apartheid in South Africa and championing the causes of cutlural equity, equality and gay rights. Alec Finlay, editor (1992) Alias MacAlias: Writings on songs, folk and literature, Polygon, Edinburgh ISBN 978-0-74866-042-1 a b c "About Hamish Henderson". The University of Edinburgh (in Inglis) . Retrieved 23 Januar 2022. Henderson's influence travelled far wider than Scotland. He fed songs, disquisition, and polemic into the international folk scene too. He took up political argument through his poems and songs, on issues to do with land ownership and access, anti-Polaris missile, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and the anti-apartheid struggle.