Changes

It has been a major commercial centre since the late [[medieval]] period, with a trade in [[salt]], [[coal]], and [[wool]], and, in recent centuries, [[whale oil]] and [[linoleum]]. Salt boiling and the boiling of [[whale]] blubber on the beach to extract oil must have given the town an interesting olfactory environment, so it is perhaps unfair that the linoleum industry gets the sole blame for Kirkcaldy's reputation as a malodorous town, as recorded in the poem 'The Boy on the Train' by Mary Campbell Smith, which concludes:

It has been a major commercial centre since the late [[medieval]] period, with a trade in [[salt]], [[coal]], and [[wool]], and, in recent centuries, [[whale oil]] and [[linoleum]]. Salt boiling and the boiling of [[whale]] blubber on the beach to extract oil must have given the town an interesting olfactory environment, so it is perhaps unfair that the linoleum industry gets the sole blame for Kirkcaldy's reputation as a malodorous town, as recorded in the poem 'The Boy on the Train' by Mary Campbell Smith, which concludes:

''For I ken mysel' by the queer-like smell''  

''For A ken masel by the queer-like smell''  

''That the next stop's Kirkcaddy!''

''That the neist stop's Kirkcaudy!''

http://www.spl.org.uk/popular/boy-in-tra.html

http://www.spl.org.uk/popular/boy-in-tra.html