Note: Ewan MacColl talks about Hogmany festivities in his parents' home. Guests - relatives and friends and fellow iron foundry workers would arrive a few days before Hogmany proper. Celebrations in pubs would start even earlier. "Harry Lauder tearjerker music hall ballads used to touch me to the quick." A description of food served at Hogmany. Song: "There Were Three Lads and They Were Bad." Alan Lomax: Nobody objected to the bawdiness of these songs. Ewan MacColl: The first poem I ever learned was a poem by Burns. My father could recite all of Burns's poems and correspondence. Scots songs deal with the Merry Muses. Poetry was quoted by working men and also Shakespeare. All four verses of "Auld Lang Syne" were sung. Song fragment: "The Rowan Tree." Family friends included members of the Masons and the Secular Society. They had heard of the famous American agnostic Robert Ingersoll. They would recite poetry separately and chorally. At a certain point the mood would change and MacColl's father and mother would sing a 25-stanza ballad in harmony, "The Beggar Lad," a disguise ballad. "Life is a Journey," a philosophical song expressed the mood toward the end. At 10 a.m. the next day they would reassemble. His mother and aunt would clean up the house and the men would go out to the pub. Then an abundance of meats, hot and cold, would be served. "It really was a most excellent, beautiful festival" once or twice broken up by the police when relatives had fights.