Skip to main content
Read page text
page 316
according to Gove the Quisling Brexiter, his worst the best endorsement ever. Now enter Scotland by total immersion. Choose Occidental. Choose medieval-metaphysical. Revive the Celtic Revival. Our people ever were impractical? No, they were poor and downtrodden. Vulnerable to superstition. Don’t ever let that be forgotten by either poet or musician – though some were saints for certain and others visionaries. Bring the Irish back to the Hebrides? The only problem, they refuse to come, or find common cause in history or language. Ask them over at the Alamo of Sabhal Mòr. They’ll tell you but only if you speak their lingo. Meanwhile make music. Revel in dram and craic. How Purser walked to see MacLean all the way by loch and Cuillin – musician to poet – from Drinan to Braes, and back again, in a tale from ancient Japan a Hebridean hommage à la Zen. Pupil to master beyond the mountain. As told so well by Paddy Bushe with eloquence and rare finesse not on a choppy sea like this aboard a bateau out of water. 314 * * *
page 317
Never was there greater need to stir to take the air along the shore where nevermore meets evermore down through the birchwood glade where the burn plunges and time’s made to race and halt about itself and what’s not surefooted comes to grief and nothing’s surefooted enough. Here, below the remains of Dún Liath, by the ruin of the Laird’s grave, halt a moment and make time to hear his tenants’ chorus: ‘Tread down! Tread down on him! Tread down on him as he trod down on us!’ Still resounding through the wood as with heart and soul they tread the sods down in bitter hatred. Hearts dark with wit and anger. Hear them and remember their hard lives led far from leisure, or romance over the water. As on Sleat’s coast across the way where Irish myth tells its story of Cú Chulainn at Dún Scáith schooled in arms by Skathach, the shadowy warrior maid. ‘Pause in wonder,’ as Riach said. ‘Then try to find your way back.’ So I’ve tried and am trying still but with what meta- to the physical? 315

Page Text

View plaintext

according to Gove the Quisling Brexiter, his worst the best endorsement ever. Now enter Scotland by total immersion. Choose Occidental. Choose medieval-metaphysical. Revive the Celtic Revival. Our people ever were impractical? No, they were poor and downtrodden. Vulnerable to superstition. Don’t ever let that be forgotten by either poet or musician – though some were saints for certain and others visionaries. Bring the Irish back to the Hebrides? The only problem, they refuse to come, or find common cause in history or language. Ask them over at the Alamo of Sabhal Mòr. They’ll tell you but only if you speak their lingo. Meanwhile make music. Revel in dram and craic. How Purser walked to see MacLean all the way by loch and Cuillin – musician to poet – from Drinan to Braes, and back again, in a tale from ancient Japan a Hebridean hommage à la Zen. Pupil to master beyond the mountain. As told so well by Paddy Bushe with eloquence and rare finesse not on a choppy sea like this aboard a bateau out of water.

314

* * *

read next page

My Bookmarks

Buy this Book
Skip to main content