Poems of the Scottish Hills - An Anthology by Hamish Brown

We came across this volume (published 1982) in a second hand bookshop after two weeks of atrocious weather in the west finally drove us east for the third and last week of our holiday. That was back in 1993 and it's been a great source of pleasure ever since. There is something in this anthology for everyone and Brown tells us that we should "Come to it as we do to the hill, with rambling opportunism". Here is one of my favourites, written in Scots. It always make me long to be on the hill; when I reach the second last verse, it's the western hills I want, wet or not.

WINE O LIVING

 Hae ye smelt the tang o heather

  And the rich pitch pine,

    Or the bracken bristled yellow wi the sun?

O the moon abune the lochan

  Hae ye seen the siller shine

    Looming eerie through the drift upon the dun?

He ye traiked it up Glen Ogle

  By your lane, sane sel?

    Hae crossed the Moor o Rannoch in the mist?

Were ye boggit to the buttocks?

    Did ye hear the eagles yell?

      Were ye frichted by the adders when they hissed?

Hae ye whupped the whurling eddies

  By the brow’d, loud linn?

    Hae ye tracked the tired buck upon the brae?

When ye crouched it in the heather

   Were ye chittered by the win?

      Hae ye waukened in the mist at skreigh o day?

An the Islands, hae ye seen em

   In the wet, wet west?

     Wi the kelp a-clinging crisp abune the tide?

Hae ye heard the girning gullies?

  Seen the singing seals at rest?

    Hae ye raced the ocean stallions when they ride?

Gin ye kenna what’s ma meaning,

   Gin ye think my havers daft,

     Ach, I’d liefer blaw ma breath upon the breeze!

Ye’ve no quaffed the quaich o Living

  In a steep, deep draught-

    Never lipped the wine o Living to the lees!

Matt Marshall

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