Elizabeth Barrett Browning (EBB)

 “After the first Anglo-Sikh war in India, one of these days our great Indian empire, will stand up on its own legs and make use of our own rope to scourge us. … what right has England to an Indian empire?

No more than the Duke of Sutherland to his broad estate, wait  a little, we shall see it all arranged, according to a better justice, on the small scale and the large”  

 

Her family made its money on the sugar planation of Jamaica

 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning     (1806 –  1861) 

was an English poet of the Victorian era popular in Britain and the United States during her lifetime. Born in Count Durham, the eldest of 11 children, Elizabeth Barrett wrote poetry from the age of eleven.  At 15 she became ill, suffering intense head and spinal pain for the rest of her life. 

In the 1840s Elizabeth was introduced to literary society through her cousin, John Kenyon. Her first adult collection of poems was published in 1838 and she wrote prolifically between 1841 and 1844, producing poetry, translation and prose. She campaigned for the abolition of slavery and her work helped influence reform in the child labour legislation. Her prolific output made her a rival to Tennyson as a candidate for poet laureate on the death of Wordsworth. 

She was married to Robert Browning. Elizabeth's work had a major influence on prominent writers of the day, including the American poets Edgar Allan Poe and Emily Dickinson. She is remembered for such poems as “How Do I Love Thee” (Sonnet 43, 1845) and "Aurora Leigh" (1858). 

Scots Makar Jackie Kay

 

Excellent chat with Jackie Kay with Janice Forsyth about her 5 years as the Scots Makar on BBC Scotland’s afternoon show -  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/jackiekay

POEMS

Poem for new babies - Lullaby welcome wee one

Poem for the Queensbury crossing - The long view

Poem for the Homeless, 

Scottish Parliament 2020 – Farewell for Hogmanay

plus the baton from poem to song.

  

Jackie chose singers – Celeste Lean on Me, Nina Simone, Peggy Seeger, 

 

BOOK - Elif Shakaf, How to Stay Sane in a world of Divisions 

 

“Its been a joyous , interesting ride to have been to every major city and to have been to so much of the highlands an disbands, rural part of Scotland. And incredible journey..

 

Nicola Sturgeon, “Jackie Kay made an enduring and positive impact –and has widened the  appeal of poetry.”

 

Fare Well - Hogmanay Celebrations

Fare Well - Part 129 December - 

Filmed in the stunning Scottish Highlands, tonight we host the premiere of the first instalment of our 2020 online celebrations. 

Fare Well, a visually captivating and emotive experience, will see 150 individual drones take to the skies to deliver the UK's largest swarm drone show.

Set to the words of award-winning poet and Scots Makar, Jackie Kay. Fare Well Part One takes inspiration from what we've been able to do and not do during 2020. Jackie writes about the way that the air carries airs, music, the virus, chants and hymns.  Despite the trauma of the months gone by, we can and must still hope.  Hope for the future, hope for a new year and hope for each other.  Part One of Fare Well looks at the year gone by – the funerals and weddings cancelled, the griefs and despairs which have been collective, with a feeling that the world has become a village.

"This air has heather and malt on its breath

as it sighs, puffed oot after a year of death,

under the blue mask of its flag. The Saltire’s

been a warning cross. Dinny come too near. "

 Drone show pioneers, Celestial have used sophisticated AI software to choreograph their movements, the drones reached an altitude of 150m and top speeds of up to 25mph to form images created by Scottish illustrator, Gary Wilson.  Reflecting both the words from Jackie’s poem and the surrounding nature of the Highlands, the drones depict a series of images including a stunning Stag galloping across the scenery and the Saltire Cross.  Lending their voices to part one are renowned actors David Tennant, Siobhan Redmond and Lorne MacFadyen; with 25-year-old native Gaelic speaker Winnie from the Isle of Skye completing the line-up, all to a musical score from Skye-based Celtic fusion band, Niteworks.

"Let us remember and never forget

That we won’t let our hopes fizzle out"

 

 

https://www.edinburghshogmanay.com/whats-on/fare-well-part-1

BURNS Photos

May liberty meet wi success

May prudence protest her frae evil

May tyrants and tyranny tine i the mist

And wander their way to the deil! 

For the past years I have been following in Robert Burns footsteps and reading of the national Scots bard. As I live north of Glasgow I’ve been able to make several journeys down to Burns country in Ayrshire to find the real Burns behind the many myths. Here are some of my favourite Burns photos.

Burns wanted to be a Bard for all of Scotland, not only Ayrshire – and so in 1787 he embarked on travels by horseback across the Borders, the west highlands and further north. He collected songs and poems, to help keep Scots heritage alive. Its not widely recognised but he gained great inspiration from many English poets, such as Alexander Pope and other writers and his letters are written in English. But it was when he read Robert Fergusson’s poetry in Scots, he realised the power of his native tongue. So he combined the force of Scots and the imagery of English. He also knew Latin and French and had been tutored by his father and a young teacher John Murdoch. He was also a great reader. 

 

Burns pens

Ellisland farm beside the river Nith

Burns desk Ellisland looking over the orchard 

Burns was a unique mix of his mother's ballads and his fathers education. He worded hard, wrote and read constantly. Robert Burns 1759 - 1796

1786 

Burns first book of poems published

1787

 Oct. Again in Edinburgh and wrote songs for the Scots Musical Museum. Dec met Nancy.

1788. Left Edinburgh and married Jean in April and moved to build a farmhouse Ellisland north of Dumfries. Jean joined December at the farm. Trained to be an exciseman collecting taxes. 

1790 Feb. Third Volume of Scots Musical Museum with 40 songs published.

At Hallowe’en composed Tam O’Shanter. 

 

1791 Moved to Dumfries in October 

July his brother William died at 13. 

1792

Fourth volume of poems published with 47 of my poems. Nancy left for Jamaica in January 1792. Elizabeth Riddell born November.

April given the Dumfries first foot and walk, which paid more.

Reform was happening. John Taylor was arrested and accused by Robert Dundas as a ringleader – ‘of a mob, raged in a riotous and tumultuous manner.’  And brought before Creech. A witness was Robert Graham of Fintry and Alexander Nasmyth was on the jury. Burns asked him to design scenery for the new theatre. 

Sent Creech poems autumn 1792 and signed myself Ca ira, a wild flourish! 

 

1793

Creech published Second Edinburgh Edition, 2 volume edition of Burns Poems. 

The French king was executed. Burns suffered extreme mood swings and conflicts – hypochondria he called it. 'I often despaired, suffered low moods. The more I was in the position of authority the more I rebelled!'

May moved to a red brick 2 storey town house, Mill fennel, 

1794

James Glencairn born August. 

1795

Joined the Dumfries volunteers. Sept Elizabeth died. Burns fell ill. 

1796

December fifth volume of  Scots Music Museum published with 3 Burns songs – 

Dancing was independence. Burns died july 1796

Mauchline

Dumfries house

First Book Poems Chiefly in the Scotch Dialect

Hugh MacDiarmid’s Renaissance

MacDiarmid reimagined a Scottish rebirth and renewal of a truer heart and stories, that had been forgotten ever since the unwanted ‘union’ . 

He looked at the Edinburgh historic skylines, the seashores of Shetland, the north eastern town of Montrose and his border hometown of Langholme and felt  strong disgust at all that had been lost.in his 1942 Scottish art and letters essays: the Present position and Post war prospects, included 17 chapters on Scotland’s reconstruction. He welcomed a new generation of Scottish writers – Sorley MacLean, WS Graham, Sydney Goodsir Smith and others.

Professor Alan Raich writes, "The Scottish renaissance was conceived in the first world war and then leapt into lusty life in the second world war. In the 1920s, national self-determination became a cultural priority." 

"Partly as a result of reimaging of Scotland by MacDiarmid, and other writers, artists, composers, critics and historians. The 20rh century saw the irreversible development and re-establishment of cultural and political self-consciousness, and ideals of self-determination. In Scotland. The beat goes on." 

"At the heart of that beat is a regenerated sense of national identity and international connection, both with a sense of historical depth. The artist is not refined out of existence, but bears the weight of conscious connection with his or her society, family, language and national history. And this is to do with a feeling of home or belonging." 

Rough and Rowdy, Bob Dylan

'Considered, elegiac and richly allusive, this austere gem may be Dylan’s best album in 40 years' Bryan Applyard , Sunday Times july 2020

This is his first album since Tempest 2012. I read a wonderful review – “So Bob, you’re 80 next year; what have you to say for yourself?“ the overall effect is austere, serious and pared down. It is a mesmeric and magnificent piece of work. 

"The songs vary from romantic to surreal. His rhyming is as ingenious, playful and varied as ever.” Lyrically Dylan is operating at a peak not seen since his albums Blood on the Tracks and Blonde on Blonde. 

SONGS:   Key West (Philosopher Pilot)/ Black Rider/  Crossing the Rubicon/  I sing of love/  I sing of betrayal,/ I Contain multitudes/  False Prophet/ My Own Version of You. And the Lovely romantic ballad – I have made up my mind to give myself to you. Dylan writes, “Can you tell me what it means to be or not to be.’

Another link – the assassination of John F Kennedy at the center of Murder most foul, and in a sense of the center of entire album, suggesting, as it does, a dark cloud, which may be death or may be Trump, from which there is no escape.

On the Lyrics on Murder most Foul - “Visiting morgues and monasteries/ looking for the necessary body part” with Freud and Marx looking on. Plus others -   Edgar Allan Poe, William Blake, the bluesman jimmy reed, Elvis, Presley, Allen Ginsberg, jack Kerouac, Dizzy Miss Lizzy, Tom Dooley. This is an assertion that culture comes first, history is a footnote; a long one, but a footnote nonetheless. Culture, like the individual, contains everything, right or wrong, good or bad. Everything is double-edged. 

"Whitman was similarly obsesses with the assignations of his friend Abraham Lincoln. His two most famous poems – ‘Oh Captain! My Captain! – “When Lilacs last in the Dooryard Bloomd” – are about the terrible moment.. 

"The album celebrated the noble conviction – Whitman’s conviction – that you can’t sing about anything without singing about everything. With this album Dylan announces himself as Whitman’s child.  As a way of saying we contain, like Whitman all contradictory possibilities. 

“I’m not what I was; things aren’t what they were.” Back to when he told journalists, you cant put me in a box.”  The backing is sparse but precise,  and beautifully exact in its evocation of genres – ballad, blues and so on.. also a kind of list of American musical forms.” Whitman’s attempted to contain the entire country.  

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