Bulldozia

By bulldozia

Lines of Paint and Light

I was asked today if I knew any Scottish music associated with the anti-slavery campaigns of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. I mumbled something about the abolitionist lyrics of Tannahill and Burns, especially the latter's Slave's Lament, which begins

It was in sweet Senegal that my foes did me enthral,
For the lands of Virginia,-ginia, O:

Which must have been lingering still in my mind when later I impulsively turned left up Virginia Street when returning to work after lunch.

That it is called Virginia Street is, of course, no coincidence.

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