s jumpy and nervous, I'll admit, and it was all I could do to
hold to the pitch and not break the time. I thought all of Von
Hindenburg's army must be attacking us, and, from the row and din,
I judged he must have brought up some of the German navy to help,
instead of letting it lie in the Kiel canal where the British
fleet could not get at it. I never heard such a terrific racket
in all my days.

I took the opportunity to look around at my audience. They didn't
seem to be a bit excited. They all had their eyes fixed on me, and
they weren't listening to the guns--only to me and my singing. And
so, as they probably knew what was afoot, and took it so quietly, I
managed to keep on singing as if I, too, were used to such a row, and
thought no more of it than of the ordinary traffic noise of a London
or a Glasgow street. But if I really managed to look that way my
appearances were most deceptive, because I was nearer to being scared
than I had been at any time yet!

But presently I began to get interested in the noise of the guns.
They developed a certain regular rhythm. I had to allow for it, and
make it fit the time of what I was singing. And as I realized that
probably this was just a part of the regular day's work, a bit of
ordinary strafing, and not a feature of a grand attack, I took note
of the rhythm. It went something like this, as near as I can gie it
to you in print:

"Roamin' in the--PUH--LAH--gloamin'--BAM!

"On the--WHUFF!--BOOM!--bonny--BR-R-R!--banks o'--BIFF--Clyde--ZOW!"

And so it went all through the rest of the concert. I had to adjust
each song I sang to that odd rhythm of the guns, and I don't know but
what it was just as well that Johnson wasn't there! He'd have had
trouble staying with me with his wee bit piano, I'm thinkin'!

And, do you ken, I got to see, after a bit, that it was the gunners,
all the time, havin' a bit of fun with me! For when I sang a verse
the guns behaved themselves, but every time I came to the chorus they
started up the same inferno of noise again. I think they wanted to
see, at first, if they could no shake me enough to make me stop
singing, and they liked me the better when they found I would no
stop. The soldiers soon began to laugh, but the joke was not all on
me, and I could see that they understood that, and were pleased.
Indeed, it was all as amusing to me as to them.

I doubt if "Roamin' in the Gloamin'" or any other song was ever sung
in such circumstances.