As I gaed doun Glenmoriston

This is a 'Song of the North' by Sir Harold Boulton (1859-1935), who also wrote the lyrics to 'The Skye Boat Song'. The dialect shouldn't present too many problems, I hope...


As I gaed doun Glenmoriston,
Where waters meet about Alteerie,
I saw my lassie milkin' kye
Wi' skilfu' hand and sang sae cheerie.
The wind that stirred her gowden hair
Blew saftly frae the hill at even,
And like a moorland flower she looked
That lichtly lifts its head to heaven.

Frae that sweet hour her name I'd breathe
Wi' nocht but clouds and hills to hear me,
And when the warld to rest was laid
I'd watch for dawn and wish her near me,
Till one by one the stars were gone,
The moorcock to his mate called clearly,
And daylicht glinted on the burn
Where red-deer cross at mornin' early.

The years are lang, the wark is sair,
And life is afttimes wae and wearie,
Yet Foyer's flood shall cease to fall
Ere my love fail unto my dearie.
I loved her then, I love her now,
And cauld wad be the warld without her,
The croodlin' bairnies at her knee
And licht o' mither's love about her.

Health and Joy Be With You

Here's another sweet Scotch song by John Stuart Blackie. In Songs of the North it has the heading 'Health and Joy be with you', with the Gaelic title 'Gu ma slan a chi mi', and consists of these three verses:

1. Health and joy be with you,
My bonnie nut-brown maid,
With tresses richly flowing,
With virgin grace arrayed;
Thy voice to me is music
When heavy I may be,
It heals my heart's deep sorrow
To speak a word with thee.

2. In sadness I am rocking
This night upon the sea.
For troubled is my slumber
When thy smile is far from me ;
On thee I'm ever thinking,
Thy face is ever near,
And if I may not find thee
Then death alone is dear.

3. Before we heaved our anchor
Their evil speech began.
That you no more should see me
The false and faithless man ;
Droop not thy head, my darling.
My heart is all thine own,
No power on earth can part us
But cruel death alone.


So simple, and yet so lovely!

I found another version in this e-book of The Selected Poems of John Stuart Blackie, which has some more verses and a different phrasing for some of the lines. To my taste (probably influenced by blind loyalty to Songs of the North), the shorter version is superior, but verses 3 and 4 are delightful:

1. May health and joy be with you,
My bonnie nut-brown maid,
With your dress so trim and tidy
And your hair of bonnie braid.
Thy voice to me is music
When heavy I may be,
And it heals my heart's deep sorrow
To speak a word with thee.

2. 'Tis in sadness that I'm rocking
This night upon the sea.
Right scanty is my slumber
When thy smile is far from me;
'Tis on thee that I am thinking,
'Tis thy face that I behold.
And if I may not find thee
May I lie beneath the mould.

3. Thine eyes are like the blaeberry
Full and fresh upon the brae;
Thy cheeks blush like the rowans
On a mellow autumn day.
If the gossips say I hate thee,
'Tis an ugly lie they tell,
Each day's a year to me since
I left my lovely Nell.

4. They said that I did leave thee
To feed on lovelier cheer,
That I turned my back upon thee
For thy kiss was no more dear;
O never heed their tattle,
My bonnie, bonnie lass.
Thy breath to me is sweeter
Than the dew upon the grass.

5. Before we heaved our anchor
Their evil speech began.
That you no more should see me
The false and faithless man;
Droop not thy head, my darling.
My heart is all thine own,
No power from thee can part me
But cruel death alone.

6. There are story-telling people
In the world, great and small,
Their heart it swells with poison,
And their mouth it droppeth gall;
Ev'n let them spin their lies now,
They'll see the thing that's true,
When the minister shall speak the word
That maketh one of two.

7. The knot of love that binds us
Is tied full sure and tight;
What matters if they wrong me.
When I know that I am right?
There's many a rich curmudgeon
Frets his heart with bitter spleen;
But I can live, and love, and laugh,
Although my purse be lean.

Oxford Poetry

Who knew? C. S. Lewis wrote a poem called 'Oxford'. Like most of his published poetry, it was written before his conversion to Christianity, and published in 1919. He took his degree at Oxford in 1920, after his undergraduate studies were interrupted by service in World War I.

Oxford

It is well that there are palaces of peace
And discipline and dreaming and desire,
Lest we forget our heritage and cease
The Spirit’s work—to hunger and aspire:

Lest we forget that we were born divine,
Now tangled in red battle’s animal net,
Murder the work and lust the anodyne,
Pains of the beast ‘gainst bestial solace set.

But this shall never be: to us remains
One city that has nothing of the beast,
That was not built for gross, material gains,
Sharp, wolfish power or empire’s glutted feast.

We are not wholly brute. To us remains
A clean, sweet city lulled by ancient streams,
A place of visions and of loosening chains,
A refuge of the elect, a tower of dreams.

She was not builded out of common stone
But out of all men’s yearning and all prayer
That she might live, eternally our own,
The Spirit’s stronghold—barred against despair.

Kipling's 'The Land'

This is another Kipling poem which came to my attention through the A Folk Song A Day project, where the Peter Bellamy arrangement was brilliantly sung (in its entirety!) a few weeks ago by Jon Boden. Like 'Puck's Song', this poem illustrates Kipling's interest in the continuity of the English landscape through two thousand years of history, with the nice addition here of the continuity of English people, too. I know someone just like Hobden!

The only thing I don't understand about this poem is why Kipling chose 'Ogier the Dane' to be his archetypal Saxon settler - Ogier the Dane was a romance hero belonging to the Charlemagne legend, and not Saxon (or even Danish) at all; he didn't have any connections to Sussex, where this poem is set. You might have expected someone like Hengist and Horsa, the legendary founders of Kent - Ogier is out by about three centuries. It's a strange choice! But the use of William of Warenne, the first post-Conquest lord of Sussex, makes up for it. I wonder if William, when he wasn't being outsmarted by Hereward the Wake, really did ride round rainy Sussex fields with his baliff...


The Land

When Julius Fabricius, Sub-Prefect of the Weald,
In the days of Diocletian owned our Lower River-field,
He called to him Hobdenius--a Briton of the Clay,
Saying: 'What about that River-piece for layin' in to hay?'

And the aged Hobden answered: 'I remember as a lad
My father told your father that she wanted dreenin' bad.
An' the more that you neeglect her the less you'll get her clean.
Have it jest as you've a mind to, but, if I was you, I'd dreen.'

So they drained it long and crossways in the lavish Roman style.
Still we find among the river-drift their flakes of ancient tile,
And in drouthy middle August, when the bones of meadows show,
We can trace the lines they followed sixteen hundred years ago.

Then Julius Fabricius died as even Prefects do,
And after certain centuries, Imperial Rome died too.
Then did robbers enter Britain from across the Northern main
And our Lower River-field was won by Ogier the Dane.

Well could Ogier work his war-boat--well could Ogier wield his brand--
Much he knew of foaming waters--not so much of farming land.
So he called to him a Hobden of the old unaltered blood.
Saying: 'What about that River-bit, she doesn't look no good?'

And that aged Hobden answered: ''Tain't for me to interfere,
But I've known that bit o' meadow now for five and fifty year.
Have it jest as you've a mind to, but I've proved it time on time,
If you want to change her nature you have got to give her lime!'

Ogier sent his wains to Lewes, twenty hours' solemn walk,
And drew back great abundance of the cool, grey, healing chalk.
And old Hobden spread it broadcast, never heeding what was in't;
Which is why in cleaning ditches, now and then we find a flint.

Ogier died. His sons grew English. Anglo-Saxon was their name,
Till out of blossomed Normandy another pirate came;
For Duke William conquered England and divided with his men,
And our Lower River-field he gave to William of Warenne.

But the Brook (you know her habit) rose one rainy Autumn night
And tore down sodden flitches of the bank to left and right.
So, said William to his Bailiff as they rode their dripping rounds:
'Hob, what about that River-bit--the Brook's got up no bounds?'

And that aged Hobden answered: ''Tain't my business to advise,
But ye might ha' known 'twould happen from the way the valley lies.
When ye can't hold back the water you must try and save the sile.
Hev it jest as you've a mind to, but, if I was you, I'd spile!'

They spiled along the water-course with trunks of willow-trees
And planks of elms behind 'em and immortal oaken knees.
And when the spates of Autumn whirl the gravel-beds away
You can see their faithful fragments iron-hard in iron clay.

* * * * *

Georgii Quinti Anno Sexto, I, who own the River-field,
Am fortified with title-deeds, attested, signed and sealed,
Guaranteeing me, my assigns, my executors and heirs
All sorts of powers and profits which--are neither mine nor theirs.

I have rights of chase and warren, as my dignity requires.
I can fish--but Hobden tickles. I can shoot--but Hobden wires.
I repair, but he reopens, certain gaps which, men allege,
Have been used by every Hobden since a Hobden swapped a hedge.

Shall I dog his morning progress o'er the track-betraying dew?
Demand his dinner-basket into which my pheasant flew?
Confiscate his evening faggot into which the conies ran,
And summons him to judgment? I would sooner summons Pan.

His dead are in the churchyard--thirty generations laid.
Their names went down in Domesday Book when Domesday Book was made.
And the passion and the piety and prowess of his line
Have seeded, rooted, fruited in some land the Law calls mine.

Not for any beast that burrows, not for any bird that flies,
Would I lose his large sound council, miss his keen amending eyes.
He is bailiff, woodman, wheelwright, field-surveyor, engineer,
And if flagrantly a poacher--'tain't for me to interfere.

'Hob, what about that River-bit?' I turn to him again
With Fabricius and Ogier and William of Warenne.
'Hev it jest as you've a mind to, but'--and so he takes command.
For whoever pays the taxes old Mus' Hobden owns the land.

Brown-haired maiden

In the collection of 'random things I like' which is pretty much what this blog is composed of, there has so far been one large omission. I've sometimes posted about folk songs and ballads, which I love, and which I would probably be studying right now if there were any way to prove their medieval roots (mostly there isn't). However, I also have a very soft spot in my heart for what you might call Victorian 'faux-folk' (fauk?) songs - especially the so-called 'Scotch songs' which had a big surge in popularity in the 19th century, as part of the general enthusiasm for Scotland which was nurtured by Queen Victoria's fondness for the country and the popularity of Burns, Sir Walter Scott, etc.

The most famous of these 'Scotch songs' are compositions like The Skye Boat Song or Annie Laurie, which, although they may have been based on traditional songs, were essentially new compositions written in the idiom of Scottish folk song. I own a couple of wonderful books full of this stuff, with titles like The Lyric Gems of Scotland (available to read online here) and Songs of the North. Many are sentimental and some are silly; but the best have a particular quality of dignified tenderness which is utterly lacking from popular culture today. One of the many ways in which the Victorians were better than us.

Here's one I especially like. Songs of the North only tells me that it was translated from the Gaelic (from a song(?) called 'Gruagach Dhonn') by 'Professor Blackie', i.e. John Stuart Blackie (1809-1895), poet and classical scholar. I'm pretty sure the tune in the book is a simplified version of this one (oddly), but I can't explain how or why... This is the sum total of my knowledge of this song.


Brown-haired maiden

Brown-haired maiden, fresh and fair,
Blithe and bright with lightsome air,
Tuesday when I trysted thee
All the week was worth to me.

Brown-haired maid with witching smile,
Full of love and free from guile,
Softly 'neath the hawthorn tree
Came thy whispered troth to me.

Young were we when first fond love
Found us in the hazel grove;
Sweet thy kisses were to me
And thy voice was melody.

God be with thee, brown-haired maid,
In the sunshine or the shade;
Every Tuesday saved for thee
Brings a year of bliss to me.

Repost: For St Bartholomew's Day

St Guthlac, the Mercian soldier-turned-hermit who founded the abbey of Crowland in Lincolnshire, arrived at his marshy, devil-haunted hermitage on St Bartholomew's Day, 24th August, 699 AD. Thereafter he chose St Bartholomew as his patron, and said that the apostle defended him from the demons who were constantly besieging his Fenland hideaway. Bartholomew even gave him a whip to beat off the demons; a fact apparently long remembered at Fishtoft in Lincolnshire.

(it seems that Bartholomew is thought to be the same person as Nathaniel from this great story, by the way)

And here's a repeat of something I posted a few months ago in relation to Crowland and St Bartholomew:

From the Chronicle of Crowland Abbey, Lincolnshire, this is a notable cost-cutting initiative by Abbot John Wisbech, who died in 1476:

"He it was who first wisely abolished that ancient or rather that corrupt custom of giving knives to every visitor on St Bartholomew’s day. By this both abbot and convent rejoice in being free for ever from heavy and needless expenses."

St Bartholomew, who was one of Crowland's dedicatory saints, suffered martyrdom by being flayed alive, and so one of his attributes is a knife. I guess people were given them as souvenirs? Sounds like it would get pretty expensive - and a bit of a health and safety issue too.

Searching my heart for all that touches you,/ I find there only love and love's goodwill

E drizzeremo gli occhi al Primo Amore. - Dante
Ma trovo peso non da le mie braccia. - Petrarca

If I could trust mine own self with your fate,
Shall I not rather trust it in God's hand?
Without Whose Will one lily doth not stand,
Nor sparrow fall at his appointed date;
Who numbereth the innumerable sand,
Who weighs the wind and water with a weight,
To Whom the world is neither small nor great,
Whose knowledge foreknew every plan we plann'd.
Searching my heart for all that touches you,
I find there only love and love's goodwill
Helpless to help and impotent to do,
Of understanding dull, of sight most dim;
And therefore I commend you back to Him
Whose love your love's capacity can fill.