This article was originally published in Arabic in Horiet Cultural Magazine (2nd edition) on 3rd of September 2025, and has been translated by the author for publication in English on his official website.
Link to the original article in Arabic رابط المقال الأصلي باللغة العربية
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Scottish Echoes on (The Barren Rocks of Aden)
By: Saber Bamatraf
On a quiet, grey Edinburgh evening in late 2021, during rehearsals for a musical performance organised by the University of Edinburgh's Law School, I came across a melody whose echo stirred something unconscious within me. The concert was intended to be a sombre musical reflection on war, conflict, and memory. I was joined by two Scottish musicians: cellist Katherine Campbell and multi-instrumentalist Phil Westwell. I suggested that we end the performance with a light and cheerful Scottish tune to lift the audience’s spirits — and they immediately proposed a well-known traditional melody titled “The Barren Rocks of Aden.”
The name caught my attention for a moment, but I didn’t dwell on it. I assumed it was perhaps a mispronunciation of "Edin" — short for Edinburgh — or maybe just some ancient Gaelic name from the Scottish tradition, difficult for me to catch clearly, especially since I was still getting used to the Scottish accent at the time. I agreed without question, and we began rehearsing. We performed the piece at the end of the concert. The audience responded joyfully, clapping enthusiastically — some even dancing in their seats. After the performance, the Dean of the Law School, Professor Christine Bell, who had been a violinist or pianist in her youth, came over to compliment me. She told me that particular tune reminded her of her childhood, and that they used to sing it with cheerful, playful lyrics.
At the time, I smiled politely, not yet knowing that this melody was tied — quite literally — to the city where I was born, thousands of miles away: Aden.
A few months later, as I began exploring Scottish music more deeply — driven by the curiosity of a composer eager to understand his new environment — I came across the name again: The Barren Rocks of Aden. But this time, it wasn’t in a music hall — it was in the dusty pages of British military history, regimental marches, and colonial campaigns. This upbeat 2/4 march, so lively in tone, was one of the defining sounds of British military presence in my hometown. Suddenly, the title made complete — and very interesting — sense.
A Tune with Two Homelands
Aden was a British colony for over 120 years. Its strategic geographical position made it a crucial outpost on the map of the British Empire. Yet its dry, rocky terrain also made it a harsh station for soldiers deployed from the lush glens of the Scottish Highlands. The contrast was jarring.
The tune itself, with its sprightly tempo and light-hearted feel, seems almost ironic when paired with a title like The Barren Rocks of Aden. Interestingly, in Ireland, it’s played in a slightly different rhythm — in the style of a Bohemian polka on the fiddle. There's nothing barren about the music itself. But perhaps that contradiction is intentional. Military tunes are rarely written to mourn — they are meant to guide marching feet, uplift spirits, and bring rhythm and structure to life in exile.
The tune is believed to have been composed by James Mauchline, a Scottish piper from the 78th Seaforth Highlanders, sometime around the mid-19th century. According to some sources, Mauchline did not originally title the piece. But while a detachment of the same regiment was stationed in Aden, another piper — Pipe Major Alexander Mackellar — rearranged the melody and gave it the name The Barren Rocks of Aden, supposedly in celebration of the regiment’s departure from the scorching, dry port.
Over time, the tune became closely associated with Scottish military identity and eventually became the regimental march of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers. While the melody itself did not originate in Aden, nor was it inspired directly by it, the name became embedded in the city’s memory — and in the memories of the soldiers who served there.
Music in the Shadow of Empire
Military music was never just decorative. It served psychological, functional, and ceremonial roles. During the Aden Emergency in the 1960s — a period marked by fierce resistance to British rule — Scottish piping once again filled the streets of Aden.
In the now-famous Battle of Crater on 3 July 1967, Lieutenant Colonel Colin Mitchell — famously known as "Mad Mitch" — re-entered the Crater district of Aden, which had fallen under the control of resistance forces. He was accompanied by piper Major Kenneth Robson, who played Monymusk — a traditional tune used by Scottish regiments to signal an advance. Despite coming under fire and soldiers having to crawl on the ground, Robson continued playing, lifting morale in the face of danger, as pipers have long done in Scottish military tradition.
The next morning, on 4 July, the residents of Crater awoke to the sound of bugles — the "Long Reveille" — followed by the traditional wake-up tune "Johnnie Cope, Are Ye Waukin Yet?", and finally, the unmistakable echoes of "Scotland the Brave" and The Barren Rocks of Aden.
Thus, The Barren Rocks of Aden became a kind of auditory relic of empire, echoing through the streets of a city struggling to cast off its colonial chains, even as the last notes of a foreign army's pipes filled the air.
Back to Where the Story Began
It was a strange and moving experience to find myself, years later, standing on a stage in Edinburgh, playing a Scottish tune titled The Barren Rocks of Aden — not realising that it was a direct reference to my birthplace. That moment of accidental convergence captured the profound way music can connect places and times, people and histories, even when we believe the chapter is closed.
The tune, born within a militaristic imperial context, likely shaped from folk melodies in the far north of Scotland, eventually took its title from a city in the far south of Arabia. Today, with that title, it lives on in the collective musical memory of Scotland. It's played at weddings, national ceremonies, and public events — and yet most Scots have no idea that Aden is not a name from their own folk heritage, but rather a city that once lay within the bounds of their former empire.
The lyrics written in 1963 by Scottish singer Andy Stewart — although more recent than the tune itself — reflect the same emotional tension: military pride, homesickness, and distant wars. Here are the verses:
Piper laddie here's a song
to make the soldiers march along
Play it now and play it strong
It's the barren rocks of Aden
Drummer laddie beat your drum
To let them know that we are come
Friends will cheer and foes will run
From the barren rocks of Aden
Up the hill and down the glen
the stirring tune will sound again
They will march the Highland men
To the barren rocks of Aden
Bonnie lassie dinna cry
oh bonnie lassie dinna sigh
but wish them luck as they go by
To the barren rocks of Aden
Long the role of honour's name
From Waterloo to Alamein
oh wish them all safe home again
To the barren rocks of Aden
Up the hill and down the glen
The stirring tune will sound again
They will march the gallant men
To the barren rocks of Aden
Oh did you see them marching there
And did you stop and did you stare
And did you hear the famous sair?
The barren rocks of Aden
Let it sound the world wide
As they go marching side by side
To fill their country's heart with pride
The barren rocks of Aden
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For me, as a composer born in Aden and now living in Scotland, this story carries deep and layered meaning. It’s not merely a tale of coloniser and colonised. It is also a testament to how music leaves its mark across distant lands, how melodies migrate, and how history often hides in plain sight — embedded in familiar tunes and forgotten titles.
Scottish pipe tunes — including The Barren Rocks of Aden — have been adopted into military traditions far beyond the UK, in places like Jordan, Oman, Egypt, Malaysia, and elsewhere, influenced by former British presence. The tune remains one of the first melodies learned by pipers today, symbolising how music outlasts the politics of its birth, crossing borders and evolving through dialogue rather than dominance.
