WITH the image of a jam sandwich being dropped from the 19th floor of a 20-storey tower block, it evokes one of the most iconic memories of urban Scottish childhood.

The humble Jeelie Piece Song has gained literary respectability — ranked among works by some of the country’s greatest writers including Robert Burns and Robert Louis Stevenson — as one of Scotland’s best-loved poems.

The song is ranked 17th in Scotland’s top 20 poems, as chosen by listeners of BBC Radio Scotland. Burns, Stevenson, Hugh MacDiarmid, Sir Walter Scott, Muriel Spark and Edwin Morgan all feature prominently. But Adam MacNaughton’s Jeelie Piece Song attracted strong support.

The poem chronicles the death of a Glasgow tradition where mothers would wrap sandwiches in paper and throw them from tenement windows to their children playing below.

Its chorus states: “Oh, ye cannae fling pieces oot a twenty-storey flat, seven hundred hungry weans’ll testify to that. If it’s butter, cheese or jeelie, if the breid is plan or pan, the odds against it reachin’ earth are ninety-nine tae wan.”

A lesser-known later verse tells how an RAF plane was struck by an errant sandwich: “He scraped it aff his goggles, shoutin’ through the intercom, ‘The Clydeside Reds’ve giat me wi’ a breid an’ jeelie bomb’.”

Lizzie MacGregor of the Scottish Poetry Library said: “It is certainly not just a childhood chant. If you look at the whole of the poem it contains some fairly radical social commentary.”

The poll was topped by Burns’s tale of witches, Tam O’Shanter, with his anthem to equality and fraternity, A Man’s a Man for A’ That, third. The Wild Geese by Violet Jacob came second, with the Gaelic epic Hallaig by Sorley MacLean fourth.

Professor Alan Riach, the head of Glasgow University’s Scottish Literature department, said the listeners’ selection was a delightful and surprising “collage of the comforting and demanding”.

One Hundred Favourite Scottish Poems (Luath Press) will be launched at Waterstone’s in St Andrews on November 30.

Top 10 poems

1 Robert Burns: Tam O’Shanter

2 Violet Jacob: The Wild Geese

3 Robert Burns: A Man’s a Man for A’That

4 Sorley Maclean: Hallaig

5 Edwin Morgan: Canedolia

6 Alastair Reid: Scotland

7 Hugh MacDiarmid: The Watergaw

8 Marion Angus: Mary’s Song

9 Robert Louis Stevenson: To SR Crockett

10 Liz Lochhead: View of Scotland

Times Recommends

• In Margot Fonteyn's footsteps
• Forget beautiful people, let's have wonky Brits
• Fundamentalist brew: faith and power