Sometimes, o' coorse, a song will be richt frae the first time I sing it on the stage; whiles it'll be a week or a month or mair before it suits me.

There's nae end to the work if ye'd keep friends wi' those who come oot to hear ye, and it's just that some singers ha' never learned, so that they wonder why it is ithers are successfu' while they canna get an engagement to save them.
They blame the managers, and say a man can't get a start unless he have friends at coort.

But it's no so, and I can prove it by the way I won my way.
I had done most of my work in Scotland when Mac and I and the wife began first really to dream aloud aboot my gae'in to London.

Oh, aye, I'd been on tours that had crossed the border; I'd been to Sunderland, and Newcastle on Tyne, but everywhere I'd been there was plenty Soots folk, and they knew the Scots talk and were used to the flutter o' ma kilts.

Not that they were no sae in England, further south, too--'deed, and the trouble was they were used too well to Scotch comedians there.
There'd been a time when it was enow for a man to put on a kilt and a bit o' plaid and sing his song in anything he thocht was Scottish.
There'd been a fair wave o' such false Scottish comics in the English halls, until everyone was sick and tired o' 'em.