As a youngster at primary school in the late fifties and early sixties, I learned to sing Robert Louis Stevenson's poem The Vagabond adapted to music with other poems in the 'Songs of Travel' cycle' (composed by Ralph Vaughan Williams). The lure of the open road and the thought of the freedom to wander touched a part of me that formal education could never reach.
The song can be seen as a gloriously romantic view of the life of a vagabond, a much simpler way of life that celebrates life itself. It has long spoken to me of the endless summer days I spent with my older brothers exploring the Old Kilpatrick Hills on the west coast of Scotland, ginnlin (catching fish by hand by tickling their bellies and holding their gills) for brown trout and cooking it straight out of the water over a wood fire on top of a hot stone. Replete after a meal, we would lie by the banks of the West Burn and doze in the summer sun, serenaded by the songs of the peewits and other birds. School was a long way off.
Over the years, looking out of classroom, university and office windows I often yearned for that freedom to roam. Now that I have reached retirement, I am in a position to tramp 'the upward and downward slope' again. Walking the coast of Great Britain will be my homage to both the Vagabond and the boy soprano within me who still thinks dreamily of a
"Bed in the bush with stars to see,
Bread I dip in the river".
The short poem 'The Bonny Broukit Bairn' by Hugh MacDiarmid (Christopher Murray Grieve), highlights for me the overwhelming beauty of the this earth of ours, as well as our under-appreciation of its delightful charms:
Mars is braw in crammasy,
Venus in a green silk goun,
The auld mune shak’s her gowden feathers,
Their starry talk’s a wheen o’ blethers,
Nane for thee a thochtie sparin’,
Earth, thou bonnie broukit bairn!
– But greet, an’ in your tears ye’ll droun
The hail clanjamfrie!
We marvel, quite rightfully, about the wonders of the night sky but sometimes overlook the fast disappearing beauty of our coastal and wild mountain places. The next time it rains take a new look at this green and verdant place that we live in and see that changes in weather and season are only the 'old lady' changing her clothes, the more to attract you to her delightful charms.
Joanna Elizabeth has provided most of the photographs used to illustrate the journeys. As well, on numerous journeys her wise counsel has diverted me from moments of juvenile impetuosity that were at times risky and at others down right dangerous. As a travelling companion one could ask for no better.
Remember! If I am walking anywhere close to where you live, come and walk a little way with me and share the anarchy of the open road.
The song can be seen as a gloriously romantic view of the life of a vagabond, a much simpler way of life that celebrates life itself. It has long spoken to me of the endless summer days I spent with my older brothers exploring the Old Kilpatrick Hills on the west coast of Scotland, ginnlin (catching fish by hand by tickling their bellies and holding their gills) for brown trout and cooking it straight out of the water over a wood fire on top of a hot stone. Replete after a meal, we would lie by the banks of the West Burn and doze in the summer sun, serenaded by the songs of the peewits and other birds. School was a long way off.
Over the years, looking out of classroom, university and office windows I often yearned for that freedom to roam. Now that I have reached retirement, I am in a position to tramp 'the upward and downward slope' again. Walking the coast of Great Britain will be my homage to both the Vagabond and the boy soprano within me who still thinks dreamily of a
"Bed in the bush with stars to see,
Bread I dip in the river".
The short poem 'The Bonny Broukit Bairn' by Hugh MacDiarmid (Christopher Murray Grieve), highlights for me the overwhelming beauty of the this earth of ours, as well as our under-appreciation of its delightful charms:
Mars is braw in crammasy,
Venus in a green silk goun,
The auld mune shak’s her gowden feathers,
Their starry talk’s a wheen o’ blethers,
Nane for thee a thochtie sparin’,
Earth, thou bonnie broukit bairn!
– But greet, an’ in your tears ye’ll droun
The hail clanjamfrie!
We marvel, quite rightfully, about the wonders of the night sky but sometimes overlook the fast disappearing beauty of our coastal and wild mountain places. The next time it rains take a new look at this green and verdant place that we live in and see that changes in weather and season are only the 'old lady' changing her clothes, the more to attract you to her delightful charms.
Joanna Elizabeth has provided most of the photographs used to illustrate the journeys. As well, on numerous journeys her wise counsel has diverted me from moments of juvenile impetuosity that were at times risky and at others down right dangerous. As a travelling companion one could ask for no better.
Remember! If I am walking anywhere close to where you live, come and walk a little way with me and share the anarchy of the open road.