Rhyme and reason to town’s grey area

JOHN Hutchison rebukes John Huggan for referring to St Andrews as “The Auld Grey Toun” (Debate, 2 October).

I suspect the confusion dates back to the poem Almæ Matres by the Victorian poet and academic Andrew Lang, with its famous opening lines: “St Andrews by the Northern Sea/ A haunted town it is to me!/ A little city, worn and grey/ The grey North Ocean girds it round...”

And, from a later stanza: “And therefore art thou yet more dear/ O, little city, grey and sere.”

Harry D Watson, Edinburgh