Tongland (gang area)

One version (which may be apocryphal) is told thus: "In the 1960s, in an East-End cinema near Fielden Street,[2] some of a local Calton gang led by one McCabe were watching a film, The Terror of the Tongs.

[4]Calton in the 19th century was ruled by the brutal "San Toys" gang,[5] and that name was written with wildly varied spellings:, such as 'San Toi' in the 1930s.

[6] "Ya bass" is generally taken as Glasgow slang for "you bastard", though it has been proposed it could be the Gaelic war cry aigh bas meaning "battle and die".

The Tongs and other gangs' power over the area and their decline in the 1970s is described in Janey Godley's 2005 autobiography, Handstands in the Dark.

[11] The Scottish Tongs are referenced in Adam Ant's song "Crackpot History (and the right to lie)".