The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Family descendant sings praises of new Angus ballad
CD features song about Arbroath man
A family descendant of the Arbroath man whose exploits in the American Wild West have been captured in song believes the music-loving soldier, politician and lawman would have been proud of the ballad in his name.
The little-known story of Thomas Moonlight, who left the Angus town as a teenager on a passage to the States which would see him become a colonel in the US Civil War, the Governor of Wyoming and US Ambassador to Bolivia, is the opening song on a new CD released by Arbroath band Slipway to raise money for good causes.
Moonlight was also the man who pardoned Sundance Kid Harry Longbaugh, freeing the horse-thief to lead a life of infamy robbing railroads and banks.
Dundee descendant Graham Duncan has revealed being caught up in a bus hijacking during a journey Stateside to trace his famous forebear’s footsteps as part of the research for a book he plans to write about the Angus character.
Mr Duncan, 59, said he was delighted to learn about the Ballad of Thomas Moonlight’s place as the opening track on a disc which also features songs about Arbroath’s famous smokies, the town’s historic abbey and the Red Lichties’ 36-0 record-breaking football win.
The former St Andrews University business management tutor is the greatgreat-grandson of Moonlight’s brother, part of an Arbroath family of 10 from the early 1800s.
Mr Duncan said: “My brother was looking at the family history and the connection emerged. I decided to start looking a little further back and have been trying to write a book about him, but there is just so much to the story.”
Mr Duncan said on a 2004 trip to the US to track the Moonlight story the bus he was travelling on was hijacked.
“Moonlight himself was captured during the Civil War but escaped to safety, just as all of the people on that bus did, but it could have been another story of the Wild West,” he said.