By Christine Grahame

SNP MSP for Midlothian South, Tweeddale and Lauderdale

I am pleased to report that the Crowdfunder for a headstone memorial to mark the grave of Robert Colthart, the Gala weaver who penned Ally Bally Bee, has reached over the £1,500 mark; but you can still donate using this link: www. crowdfunder.co.uk/p/ally-ballys-frae-guid-auld-galae.

Why bother, you may ask? Well, from an ordinary man raising an ordinary family of some eight children – three of whom died at a very young age (not uncommon in late 19th century Scotland) – has come a lullaby known worldwide.

His statue in the Square at Gala is only part of commemorating him and when I discovered he lay in an unmarked family grave in Eastlands cemetery in Gala, I simply thought that was wrong.

When he first came from Dumfries to work as a weaver, Gala – and indeed the Borders – was booming with its wool mills and dye factories.

The railway had been built and Gala’s population exploded.

It is not recorded why he made the sweeties which were actually boilings but he told the sheriff at Selkirk why he dressed so flamboyantly with ribbons from his tray of sweets, that he was his own shop window. What a salesman.

Would he have given Richard Branson a run for his money today? Who knows.

Life was short then and he died at 47 from what was thought to be a brain tumour.

Let’s do him proud, and his family, and get that headstone erected.

But I leave you with this corrupted version of his advertising jingle punted by Selkirk shop-keepers sick to the back teeth of him stealing their trade. It went like this:

‘Colter is a lazy man, He tries to cheat folks when he can,

But Selkirk has a very guid plan,

No tae buy his candy’.