Roamin’ in the gloamin’ (1928)

ROAMIN' IN THE GLOAMIN' 135 wonder to me the other artistes didn't enter a protest against my singing the song at all ! Had I only sung this song and done nothing else in the pantomime I think I would have been worth my salary to Howard and Wyndham. But I had a very "fat" part in the show — thanks to the man who wrote the book and to the extra work I was able to throw into my character of Roderick McSwankey. Roderick was supposed to be a young Glasgow boy who had apprenticed himself — for a premium of five shillings — to the Wicked Magician, who on his part, had agreed to teach Roderick all the tricks and alchemies of the Black Art. My constant anxiety, after parting with my five shillings, to keep in the closest personal touch with the Magician, never letting him out of my sight for a moment, proved to be much to the liking of the Glasgow people. Even in these early days, it seemed, I had earned a reputation for — shall we say? — financial shrewdness, and my repeated wailings about my "five shillin's" never failed to send the house into roars of merriment. I had some very good scenes, too, with a stage polar bear and there was a rich bit of comedy fooling between Dan Crawley and myself, both of us dressed up as women and talking scandal over a cup of tea and a cookie. Every now and then I poured a "wee drappie" from a half-mutchkin bottle into Dan's tea and the way he and I acted the garrulous women gradually getting "fou" was one of the hits of the show. I sang several songs in this pantomime. One I recall was a female character song called "Once I had a Bonnie Wee Lad" and another was a song I had tried out in London and elsewhere entitled "Rob Roy Mcintosh." They both went well but my great success was "I Love a Lassie." I think I sang this song for about three years without a stop. I couldn't get off the stage anywhere without singing it. Do I ever get tired of it, I am sometimes asked. Of course I do. I got so tired of singing "Lassie," as we call it in the