The Poems of Ossian

Macpherson’s poems of Ossian translations from the Gaelic traditions – had a profound influence on many painters, poets and writers. And his books were read internationally. The poet MacDiarmid lamented for Scotia’s lost music. 

Professor Alan Raich writes in his National articles - Immense, deep ... and surprisingly rich: The legacy of Ossian

By Alan Riach Professor of Scottish Literature at Glasgow University

“The poems of Ossian had a profound influence but the idea that Macpherson perpetrated a “hoax” persists. This is unjust and inadequate. In Fiona Stafford’s words, Macpherson’s Ossian is “pre-eminently a text of the margins – not in the sense that it is peripheral to serious literary study but because it inhabits the margins of contrasting, oppositional cultures.

“For Macpherson’s ‘translations’ involved acts of interpretation not only between Gaelic and English, but also between the oral culture of the depressed rural communities of the Scottish Highlands, and the prosperous urban centres of Lowland Britain, where the printed word was increasingly dominant.”

In this context, they are “less the work of an inexpert linguist, or an unscrupulous ‘Scotsman on the make’ than a sophisticated attempt to mediate between two apparently irreconcilable cultures.”

The legacy of Ossian, beyond Macpherson’s actual works, is immense, deep and surprisingly rich. Images of Ossian have perennially been a subject for the visual arts. 

“To remember the great music and to look

At Scotland and the world today is to hear

An Barr Buadh again where there are none to answer

And to feel like Oisin d’ éis na Féine or like Christ.”

And it is not only paintings and drawings. The literary influence is there, too, and was felt early. Wordsworth (1770-1850), in “Glen-Almain; or, the Narrow Glen” (1803), a result of his tour in Scotland, writes:

“In this still place, remote from men,

Sleeps Ossian, in the NARROW GLEN;

In this still place, where murmurs on

But one meek streamlet, only one:”

Ghosts and graves and windy hills and caves are an essential parts of the story - 

as in the short, haunting poem

 “Ossian’s Grave” by the Russian writer Mikhail Lermontov (1814-41), here given in my own translation:

“In the Highlands of Scotland I love, 

Storm clouds curve down on the dark fields and strands,

With icy grey mist closing in from above –

Here Ossian’s grave still stands.

In dreams my heart races to be there,

To deeply breathe in its native air –

And from this long-forgotten shrine

Take its second life as mine.

** The Gaelic phrases relate to this. In footnotes, MacDiarmid explains “An Barr Buadh” is “somewhat in a state between existence and non-existence.”

And “d’ éis na Féine” is:  “A withered babbling old man, ‘Oisin after the Fianna’ (ie when his love for Ireland made him return to it from Tir-na-nog) in that immortal phrase which has in it more than Virgilian tears.”

In other words, the evocation of Ossian “after the Fianna” –

after his father and family and companions of high youth, health and vigour, have all gone into the past, leaving him old, blind and alone – delivers a permanent image of tragic and irrecoverable loss, encompassing and predating other ancient religions and civilisations.

And there is no fraud or hoax involved in that. Its permanence is also Ossian’s legacy.

Alan Raich National - https://www.thenational.scot/news/.immense-deep-surprisingly-rich-legacy-ossian/

The Songs of Carolina Oliphant, Lady Nairne

*The Flower of Strathearn*

Carolina loved to sing and dance, and studied music from the great fiddler Niel Gow – she composed and improved on Scots folk ballads. She expressed the feelings of people of highlands about Charles Edward Stuart.

Carolina Oliphant’s BEST KNOWN SONGS -
Will ye no come back again

We a hundred pipers an ‘a, an ‘a, 

Charlie is my Darling

The hand O the Leal

Carolina Oliphant is second only to Robert Burns in importance in our Scots culture. Born in 1766, in an ancient Jacobite noble family. Their lands were confiscated after the 45, they stayed at the royal court france for 19 years and later returned to Cask house.

At 39 she married and moved to Edina, where she wrote 87 songs for the Scots Minstrel Collection by RA Smith – she signed herself BB. No one knew of her writing. She moved ot Kingston Ireland and then travelled with her son on the continent. She died in 1845 and after her sister published her songs – in the book Lay of Strathearn .

  

The White Rose of Cask: the Life and Songs of Carolina Oliphant by Freeland Barbour. Barbour is a key figure in Scots Trad music – musician, radio and record producer and composer. 
https://www.amazon.com/White-Rose-Gask-Carolina-Oliphant/

Carolina wrote more on a romantic past –

Wheras Burns was more forward looking, with optimism for a better future. 

 PS

Our Bard Robert Burns. Did Burns die of exhaustion? (as Hamish Macpherson and others claim). 

Certainly reading his biography I wonder at his exertions – particularly with supporting his young family at Ellisland and Dumfries, by travelling long distance on horseback for the Excise work, the farm work, and his passion of collecting reworking and composing Scots song.

Centenary Hamish Henderson at Edinburgh book festival 2019

Hamish Henderson

Like Burns before him, he looked to the traditions of the Gaelic and Scots ballads, and he gave expression to a nations heart. 

Spring quickens. 
In the Shee Water I'm fishing. 
High on Whaup's mountain time heaps stone on stone. 
The speech and silence of Christ's world is Gaelic, 
And youth on age, the tree climbs from the bone. 

A piper played in Henderson’s well kent and loved song Freedom Come All Ye,and we all sang along, The event was part of Edinburgh International book festival 2019,

Tonight was a tribute concert for Scotland’s great poet and song collector Hamish Henderson. 

On the centenary of his birth, poets have come together to celebrate his rebellious spirit and influence with a unique poem anthology. – THE DARG

Poet, translator, Highland folklorist, Henderson was part of the Scottish folk revival and a co-founder of the Edinburgh university’s Scottish studies. He was a campaigner for the Scottish parliament and guiding light behind the Edinburgh fringe festival.

I first saw photos of Hamish at the Old Fruitmarket venue Glasgow. I heard of his song, Freedom Come all Ye. That he had been a frequent visitor at Sandy Bells bar, Forrest road; a collector of Scots song and a co-founder of Scottish studies at Edinburgh university. I was also a frequent visitor at Sandy Bells back in the 80s, before I moved abroad.  

He became a folklorist and collector of Scots Bothy ballads and Gaelic song, to keep Scots voices alive. He spent years tracking down storytellers and folk singers with the American folklorist Alan Lomax. Together they recorded hours of traditional ballads, Gaelic work songs, children’s songs and contemporary folk songs from all over Scotland. His ambition was to record a people’s history before it has disappeared. To preserve the tales told around the campfires, tinker storytellers and songs of the singer Jeanie Robertson. .

Tribute concert for cemetery for Hamish Henderson

Our Oral Histories. Author, critic and broadcaster Stuart Cosgrove, (writing in the Sunday National 15.09.19 ) wondered, who will record the significant oral history of our vital Scots independence movement today?Who is there to collat our energetic indy movement – of all those who gave up so much of their time and energy to work tirelessly. All those how “gave up their jobs, rode Yes bikes, stuffed envelopes, designed flyers and pounded the streets.” 

He writes of the importance of such histories - “Oral histories require many volunteers, researchers and recorders willing to travel extensively… “Oral history is a collection of historical information using interviews with ordinary people who have unique perspectives on important events, first hand evidence of the past which captures people’s experiences and opinions often in ways that contrast with or contradict official history.”  It is “history from the bottom up, told by onlookers, joiners, unemployed – not through the eyes of the powerful. “

**Scotland present desire for our self-determination and independence has deep, creative and authentic roots because of visionaries such as Hamish Henderson. 

**Hamish Scott Henderson (1919 – 2002)grew up in a cottage in the Spittal of Glenshee. And like Burns his mother was s singer of Gaelic songs. He was also a soldier in the Second world war: He studied Modern Languages at Cambridge. In the years leading up to the war, as a visiting student in Germany, he ran messages for a Quaker organization aiding the Germans resistance and helping to rescue Jews. Later he moved to Edinburgh and frequented the folk bar Sandy bells.

**Biographer Timothy Neat  wrote in the Guardian March 2002, “Like Burns, Henderson was, first and last, a poet, and poetry was for them both language rising into song, responsible to moment, people, place and joy.” 

“The tryst of Hamish Henderson, who has died aged 82, was with Scotland. It was a meeting of high consequence - across the 20th century, in darkness and in sun, Scotland informed all that Henderson was as a man and a poet. “

“Not for Henderson Auden's conceit that poetry never made anything happen; he believed that "poetry becomes people" and changes nations, that poetry elevates and gives expression to the deepest and best being of mankind, that poetry is a measure that extends far beyond the written word, that poetry is pleasure and a call to arms.” Timothy Neat

As he states in his prologue to the Elegies: 

Let my words knit what now we lack 

The demon and the heritage 

And fancy strapped to logic's rock. 

A chastened wantonness, a bit 

That sets on song a discipline, 

A sensuous austerity. 

Freedom Come All Ye

Roch the wind in the clear day’s dawin
Blaws the cloods heelster-gowdie ow’r the bay,
But there’s mair nor a roch wind blawin
Through the great glen o’ the warld the day.
It’s a thocht that will gar oor rottans
– A’ they rogues that gang gallus, fresh and gay –
Tak the road, and seek ither loanins
For their ill ploys, tae sport and play

Nae mair will the bonnie callants
Mairch tae war when oor braggarts crousely craw,
Nor wee weans frae pit-heid and clachan
Mourn the ships sailin’ doon the Broomielaw.
Broken faimlies in lands we’ve herriet,
Will curse Scotland the Brave nae mair, nae mair;
Black and white, ane til ither mairriet,
Mak the vile barracks o’ their maisters bare.

So come all ye at hame wi’ Freedom,
Never heed whit the hoodies croak for doom.
In your hoose a’ the bairns o’ Adam
Can find breid, barley-bree and painted room.
When MacLean meets wi’s freens in Springburn
A’ the roses and geans will turn tae bloom,
And a black boy frae yont Nyanga
Dings the fell gallows o’ the burghers doon.

Robert Burns Ellisland

This summer I was so pleased to visit the last farm our great poet Robert Burns lived in. Ellisland is just north of Dumfries and incredibly is pretty intact as when Burns lived here and contains books and other material he had there.  

 **In 1788, Rob and Jean settled at Ellisland farm, a few miles north of the town of Dumfries. It was romantic and he was so pleased to have the river Nith running beside the new farm. A new farm house had to be built: the land was neglected with old ‘run-rigs’ strips, little drainage, no hedges to keep animals off the crops and no farm house. They had a servant and farm workers at Ellisland farm, so he was then able to write many songs and poems while he lived here - Auld Lang Syne (1988), Banks O Doon (1791) and his masterpiece the narrative poem Tam O'Shanter(1791). 

Robert Burns had enjoyed a second winter in Edina in 1788, when stayed in St Andrews square. 

He left Edina that March, little knowing I would never return there. He wanted to return to find his muse to the land and to raise his young family. 

Burns married his Jean in March 1788 and they lived for a time in a small room in Mauchline. 

He was offered the choice of three farms and decided on Ellisland. The farm houses and Byre had taken some time to build and Jean stayed with his mother to learn about cheese making for those months.

Burns found time to write near the woods of Craigie burn near Moffa and at the Hermitage.  He visited the Birks O Aberfeldy on his highland tour. He wrote and sang in the open air to study nature and human nature both. He studied the life of nature around him, from the wild flower, the river banks, the woodlands, the bird song, the small animals underneath, and the fields of corn.

His most famous song, Auld Lang Syne was written after he heard an old man singing this songs and Burns added new verses. Burns collected all these old songs on his Scotia travels, which inspired him to write his own songs too

He wrote Tam O Shanter – his most famous narrative poem on a free day as he walked along the shady path by the banks of the river Nith. He lived at Ellisland for four years. 

He also began training to be an Exciseman, which meant long rides away from home. 

Burns was only thirty and he had been the toast of Edina - he was the new father, the struggling farmer and the ambitious bard. 

Perhaps he had been doing too much - a young father, Exciseman, farmer and collecting songs and writing poetry.  

It became all too much. He sold off the stock to leave the farm life for town life in Dumfries.  

And in 1981 he and his young family left Ellisland for a town house in Dumfries town

Michael Marra: Arrest This Moment talk Edinburgh book festival 2018

Liz Lochhead – “he turned everything upside down.”

We became better people for knowing him. 

This was a delightful talk at Edinburgh International book festival 2018, on one of Scotland’s greatest singer songwriters Michael Marra, who sadly died in 2012. Author James Robertson was joined by Calum Colvin, Sheena Wellington and Gordon Maclean.

They spoke of the influence Marra’s music has had on the city of Dundee, and that partly because of Marra’s powerful songs there is more self confidence in the city of Dundee. Sheena said that Dundee marked on your character and community. She knew Michael growing up in Dundee. Michael used the city's culture, language and people and he helped to give Dundonians a sense of pride and raised their confidence.

He was a proud but humble man – not parochial or cosmopolitan, with a wide heart of the whole world. He was extremely intelligent and creative and the system couldn’t cope with him. 

His experience in London was not good and he was rejected by the industry. They wanted to change him, which would remove him from exactly what made him an artist. His lyrics are so clever and beautifully written. 

  

Why will his songs last? They are totally original and unique. They are not about his own feelings – instead they speak for everyone, are often a story about a character and are quite theatrical. Marra is a touch of genius and a seminal voice in Scotland. 

When Marra performed he lifted the audience and they would be in the palm of his hand. 

In 2007 Marra was given a honorary degree at the University of Dundee and it was a day of great pride and emotion for him. 

A Canadian in the audience asked why we didn’t a of Marra in the media. 

“If you don’t know how strong your voice is, you’ll not vote yes.’ he said.

Perhaps its because Scotland doesn’t have control of its own media and until recently had no press (the National started in 2015).

To close for a treat,Sheila sang Marra’s classic Hermless.

BOOK – Arrest his Moment by James Robertson 

BOOK – Arrest This Moment by James Robertson 

George Buchanan Father of Democracy

A short distance from my home there is a monument in the small town of KiIlearn to one of the most important writers on democracy, reformer George Buchanan. 

He was one of the most significant literary and political figures of the 16^th century -  poet, playwright, historian, humanist scholar, and teacher to the great French essayist Michel de Montagne, Mary Queen of Scots and later to her son James VI of Scotland and I of England (United Kingdom.)

Buchanan was a native Gaelic speaker from lower loch Lomond. He was deeply impressed that the Gael had held on to their language and culture for more than two thousand years. He was a Catholic, who was committed himself to the Reformation, and he joined the Reformed Protestant church in 1560s and published

In his article, The birth of the Democratic Intellect, professor Alan Raich, (National July 2017) discussed the importance of Buchanan’s writings. Buchanan wrote De Jure Regni apud Scotos, published in 1579 - one of the most important books in all British (or European) literature on democracy for all. It is originally the most essential text in our understanding of the constitution and the state. (how many of us have heard of it?)

“His book follows the Declaration of Arbroath (1320) in saying that all political power resides in the people, and it must reside in the people: and that it is lawful and necessary to resist kings (or queens, or we might say all rulers) if (or when) they become tyrants.

Buchannan was basing his argument at least partly on his understanding of the clan system. There were many attempts to suppress his work, in the century following – particularly by the king he tutored and he foresaw where stupid Stewart vanity would lead. He was a major player  in the European cultural context.”

 

monument to George buchanan at Killearn

**

George Buchanan 1508 - 1582 was a Scottish historian and humanist

Buchanan was "the most profound intellectual sixteenth century Scotland produced." His ideology of resistance to royal usurpation gained widespread acceptance during the Scottish Reformation. Keith Brown says the ease with which King James VII was deposed in 1689 shows the power of Buchananite ideas.

His father, a Highlander and a younger son of an old family, owned the farm of Moss, in the parish of Killearn but he died young, leaving his widow, five sons, and three daughters in poverty. George's mother, Agnes Heriot, was of the family of the Heriots of Trabroun, of which George Heriot, founder of Heriots hospital was also a member. Buchanan, a native speaker of Gaelic. In 1520 he went to the university of Paris and studied logic under John Mair.

In 1528 Buchanan graduated M.A. at Scots college, University of Paris. The next year he was appointed regent or professor, in the, College of Sainte-Barbe and taught there for over three years. Sainte-Barbe was one of the most prestigious and advanced colleges at that time. George added to that prestige by creating new reforms in teaching Latin. In 1529 he was elected "Procurator of the German Nation" in the University of Paris, and was re-elected four times in four successive months. He resigned his regentship in 1531, and in 1532 became tutor to Gilbert Kennedy, 3^rd Earl of Cassilis with whom he returned to Scotland early in 1537. Though a layman, he was made Moderator of the General assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1567. He had sat in the assemblies from 1563.

The importance of the work is proved by the persistent efforts of the legislature to suppress it during the century following its publication. It was condemned by and act of parliament in 1584

In the lead-up to the anniversary Professor Roger Mason of the University of St Andrews has published A Dialogue on the Law of Kingship among the Scots, a critical edition and translation of George Buchanan's 'De Iure Regni apud Scotos Dialogus.

Robert BURNS speaks to America!

‘HAPPY BURNS DAY!’
Lincoln carried a book of Robert Burns poems and during the civil war he read Burns aloud. He was a great fan of ‘Scots Wa Hae’ and had one of his sons named William Wallace. There are more statues, fifteen in all, to the great poet Robert Burns in America than to any other writer or musician! In the 19th century he was as big as Elvis. Many of America's greatest poets and writers were greatly influence by Burns - Woodie Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Steinbeck (Of Miss and Men), JD Salinger (Catcher in the Rye). 

Burns was too afraid to publish his poem, A Mans a Man for A That, in his name at this time – the punishment then for speaking up against the union was hanging or deportation to Australia. It was only two years after his death this was acknowledged as his song.

Enjoying Burns is NOT parochial – Burns wrote of everyman and not about local issues. He was the first great romantic poet and influenced others. More than ever his words on equality, protecting nature, our being at one with nature and against greed, oppression and ignorance matter.

The Brig O Doon near Alloway Ayrshire

A few months back I wrote a blog on the statues in Scotland. I was reading Burns Wikipedia page when I realised the statue I passed at the bottom of Leith walk near the River Forth each day on my way to school, was actually the ignored poet (then anyway) Robert Burns. I studied both English (note not Scots) and history to higher level and each subject focused on English history and culture. Any Scottish culture was not only a side show, but ignored. Yet every day I passed the cobble streets of Edinburgh’s royal mile and wondered about all the stories and history here that I was not being told. Why was I being taught about far away kings in far away places and not my own history? There is no statue to Scotland's greatest poet in the centre of Edinburgh, oddly. 

This was of course a deliberate suppression last century of Scottish history ad culture by Anglicised Scots – just as Anglicised Irish tried to do the same in Ireland. 

‘Lay the proud Usurpers low! Tyrants fall in every foe! Liberty ’s in every blow! Let us Do—or Die!!!’

For all this I don’t believe Scotland will ever be only a region and north Britain as some might wish. If we follow this path – we ignore our history at our peril I fear. We will end up as a forgotten and ignored retirement and tourist place on the fringes of Europe. Not a great future for our young people!? 

For all this, the time is not right for Indyref2 - people are tired of these ridiculous referendum displays. I know we have to choose, but its best to wait for the foolish Brexit to fail, as fail it surely must. In fact I have grave doubts about these Referendums at all and how democratic they really are - without a free press or media. In our age of Fake News, Post Truth and online Echo Chambers are we loosing the art of Great Debate and real argument?

Burns grew up on the Ayrshire coast, where he looked out to sea and saw all the ships in the large busy ports of Irvine and Ayr. He used to dream of travelling to distant shores. He never did, but his words and poems did.

http://www.robertburnsspeakstoamerica.com