| |
|
This seely Earth's our Salem
To Hell with Kingdom Come
If Sergeant Death struts near us
We'll slash his painted drum
From Auld Reekie's Roses, by Hamish Henderson
Hamish Henderson, poet, songwriter, atheist, socialist, humanist, soldier, intellectual, and living contradiction, arguably the most important Scots poet since Burns, catalyst for the Folk revival in Scotland, discoverer of Jeannie Robertson, the man who accepted the surrender of Italy on the 19th of April, 1945, the author of the "Freedom Come-All-Ye", the anti-Nazi whose love of German culture was deep and true, one of the bairns of Adam, Seamus Mor.
Originally from Perthshire, Hamish Henderson studied at Cambridge in the years leading up to WWII, spending spare time running messages for the Quakers in Nazi Germany. He took part in the desert war in Africa, which produced the startling Elegies For the Dead in Cyrenacia, encompassing every aspect of a soldiers experience of the sands of North Africa, and even in the midst of the struggle against Nazism reaching out to find the common ground between German foot-soldiers and the Jocks of the 51st Highland Division.
Hamish's complexities make his work hard study: for example, Dick Gaughan's (a singer who knew Hamish and his work for many years) commentary on the song-poem "The 51st Highland Division's Farewell to Sicily", while insightful, misses one essential point about the nature of a regimental pipe band, the historical difference between the pipers and drummers, which lends a new perspective on the work.
Hamish threw himself into the work of the folk revival after the war, discovering and bringing to public attention the astonishing Jeannie Robertson, whose singing and artistry utterly destroys any criticism of folk music as a "lesser art". He collected widely in the Borders and the North-East of Scotland, creating links between the travellers, the bothy singers of Aberdeenshire, the Border shepherds, and the young men and women who in Edinburgh were discovering a whole new lens through which to view their country and their people.