My Ain Countrie

Photos above and below ~ Edinburgh, 2018

My Ain Countrie

The sun rises bright in France,
and fair sets he,
But he has lost the look he had,
in my ain countrie
Though gladness comes to many,
a sorrow comes to me
As I look o’er the ocean wide
tae my ain countrie

It’s no my ain ruin
that saddens aye my ee
But the love I left in Gallowa
wi bonnie bairnies three
My hamely hearth burns bonnie
an smiles my sweet Marie
I left my heart behind me,
in my ain countrie

The bird wins back tae summertime,
and the blossom tae the tree
But I’ll win back, no never,
tae my ain countrie
I’m leal tae high heaven,
that will prove leal tae me
An I will meet ye aa aricht soon,
frae my ain countrie

Allan Cunningham (1784 – 1842)

I remember asking my Grandfather Paul Lindsey, many years ago, if he knew an old folksong entitled "My Ain Countrie." It had to be further back than 1983, because that's when he died. I had come across the song title in a novel I was reading -- in junior high? senior high, college? At any rate, way back before search engines and youtube, so I asked my erudite grandpa instead. He was an expert at reciting old poems and songs, and I thought he knew everything, but this time he drew a blank: "I just don't know that one Honey Girl."

How I would have loved to learn the lyrics and hear the melody, but it didn't happen. Not until today! For whatever reason, after all these years, that title -- "My Ain Countrie" -- came floating through my mind again this afternoon, and within moments, thanks to 21st Century technology, the above rendition and the following information was available to me:

"My Ain Countrie
"A sad late Jacobite song of exile.

"The song was written by Allan Cunningham, an author and poet in the manner of Robert Burns, who was born at Keir, near Dalswinton, Dumfriesshire. Cunningham’s father had been a neighbour of Robert Burns at Ellisland, and Allan became a friend of James Hogg.

"Cunningham was asked by Robert Cromek to help gather old songs for Cromek’s book called 'Robert Hartley Cromek's Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song.' Cunningham successfully presented several of his own imitations of ballads and Jacobite songs as old originals. One of these was ‘My Ain Countrie.’

"The tune is said to be ‘A Gaelic air.’"

Now, if asked what novel I was reading when I first came across the reference to "My Ain Countrie," I would have said it was the funeral of Charlie (one of the Eight Cousins) in Rose in Bloom, However, my internet search tells me that this song appears nowhere in the works of Louisa May Alcott or even Sir Walter Scott.

All I have learned so far is that some version of this song was sung as a hymn at the funeral of Lizzie Borden! I don't think this is what I was reading about back in the 8th grade, or whenever it was. I think I would remember that.

In one of those mixed blessings, the music and lyrics have at last been revealed to me, even though I have lost the original reference. Perhaps it may yet be restored to my memory. Through the portal . . .

Open All the Windows!

Spring in Gościeradz (1933)
Leon Jan Wyczółkowski (1852 – 1936)
Leading Polish painter and educator

Today

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.

by Billy Collins (b. 1941)
from his collection
Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems

Spring in Goscieradz
by Leon Jan Wyczolkowski

with its ethereal energy
coming from book, curtain, tree, light

also appears on my recent post:

Book on Windowsill

@Kitti's List

Spring: She is Risen

Spring / April Personified

The Rose Princess (1917)

By John Rea Neill
(November 12, 1877 – September 19, 1943)

Illustration of Ozga the Rose Princess
from "Tik-Tok of Oz"

A Poem for the Death & Resurrection

The Thrush

When Winter's ahead,
What can you read in November
That you read in April
When Winter's dead?

I hear the thrush, and I see
Him alone at the end of the lane
Near the bare poplar's tip,
Singing continuously.

Is it more that you know
Than that, even as in April,
So in November,
Winter is gone that must go?

Or is all your lore
Not to call November November,
And April April,
And Winter Winter—no more?

But I know the months all,
And their sweet names, April,
May and June and October,
As you call and call

I must remember
What died into April
And consider what will be born
Of a fair November;

And April I love for what
It was born of, and November
For what it will die in,
What they are and what they are not,

While you love what is kind,
What you can sing in
And love and forget in
All that's ahead and behind.

By [Philip] Edward Thomas
(3 March 1878 – 9 April 1917)
Yet another poet lost to the First World War

Found in 10 Beautiful Spring Poems
and The Guardian

To Complete the Cycle . . .
Autumn / November Personified

14th of Nisan

Vintage Postcard
On Facebook

I can never let this day -- the 14th of Nisan -- go by
without rereading my favorite sections
from my favorite novel:

The Master and Margarita
by Mikhail Bulgakov

"On the fourteenth day of the spring month of Nisan . . . a tom cat, huge as a hog, black as pitch or a crow, and with huge mustache, for all the world like a rakish cavalryman's . . . walked over to the boarding step of an 'A' streetcar waiting at the stop, brazenly elbowed aside a woman who squealed as she saw him, grasped the hand rails and even attempted to give the conductor a coin . . .. . . Neither the conductor, nor the passengers were as astounded by the situation itself -- a cat climbing into a streetcar--which would not have been half so bad, as by his wish to pay his fare!

"The tom, it turned out, was not only a solvent, but also a disciplined beast. At the conductor's first cry, he ceased his advance, got down from the step, and sat down at the stop, rubbing his whiskers with the coin. But as soon as the conductor pulled the cord and the cars started, the tom proceeded to do what anyone else would who had been expelled from a streetcar but must nevertheless get to his destination. Allowing all three cars to go by, the tom jumped up onto the rear of the last one, sank his claws into a rubber tube projecting from the wall, and rode away, thus saving himself the fare."

More on my blogs:
QK ~ KL ~ FN