Eildon Tree (Summer 2011)
Review by Hazel Buchan Cameron
Borne on the Carrying Stream:
The Legacy of Hamish Henderson
Edited by Eberhard Bort
Grace Note Publications
ISBN – 978-1-907676-01-7
When I was asked to review Borne on the Carrying Stream, I thought I knew little of Hamish Henderson other than hearing of the recent biography by Timothy Neat. However, it wasn’t long before I discovered that Henderson had touched my life in many ways and we may even have met or certainly crossed paths.
The beautiful title of the book is perfect for a collection of essays which recollect the various authors’ connection with a man who was a linguist, poet, musician and translator. Despite these many skills, his focus and commitment was to the oral tradition. Joy Hendry remembers how she spent many hours trying to persuade Henderson to put his poems in print, ‘…offering Chapman… at his disposal. ‘No,’ he said, time and again. For Hamish, in the 1970s and early 1980s, his commitment to the oral tradition was so firm that he would not allow his poetry to be published.’
Hendry goes on to publish a fascinating transcript of a radio programme aired on Radio 3; The Sympathetic Imagination, Scottish Poets of the Second World War, where she interviewed Henderson along with Norman MacCaig, Sorley MacLean and Tom Scott. Henderson tells how he made no secret of his egalitarian feelings which did not sit well with officers in the English regiments. Sorley MacLean refers to Henderson’s poems sharing the ‘recognition that the enemy over there that they were trying to kill, and who were trying to kill them – are just like themselves’. Henderson later elaborates on this by referring to his ‘Fourth Elegy’ (El Adem), which ends:
And this Egypt teaches us
that mankind, put to the torment, can bear
on their breast the stone tomb of immolation
for millennia. The wind. We can build our cairn.
Mario Relich gives us a more detailed insight into Henderson’s Elegies for the Dead of Cyrenaica, generally considered amongst the most significant poetry sequences to come out of World War Two and winner of the Somerset Maugham Prize. Henderson worked as an intelligence officer, going through Libya, Tunisia and Sicily and his words inspired by his time in the desert seem all too relevant today:
against the contemptuous triumphs of the big battalions
mak siccar against the monkish adepts
of total war against the oppressed oppressors…
I will seek out Henderson’s elegies to read with Mario’s essay to hand.
Tessa Ransford splits her piece into four sections which she says forms a core and impetus to the works Henderson produced; ‘pilgrimage, love-energy, integration and companionship’.
Ransford connects Henderson with many poets, writers, academics and others, weaving her four ideas to show how Henderson was influenced by others and influenced many in return. Borders did not confine these influences. Ransford shows how an unattributed quotation heading the Tenth Elegy may have come from Rilke and discusses possible connections with Hölderlin and others.
Corey Gibson writes a piece on Henderson’s encounter, admiration and translation of Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Letters. Gibson tells us that Henderson ‘projected his own cultural-political perspectives onto his translations’ and ‘made no effort to resist the process, to conceal it, or even to defend it.’ As a fan of the painter Ken Currie, I was delighted to see that Henderson referenced a painting by Currie, The Self-Taught Man, which depicts a Clydeside worker reading Gramsci under a bare light bulb, at the beginning of his translations…a great example of my interpretation of ‘the carrying stream.’ Gibson shows the influence Gramsci’s views on folklore had on Henderson and I was particularly interested to read Henderson’s ideas of ‘contamination’ of popular song to transform it to folk-song. ‘Because the people have taken it, possessed themselves of it, gloried in it, recreated it, loved it. That is the only test worth a docken.’ Wonderful.
The possible encounters with Henderson, which I referred to earlier, may have taken place in Blairgowrie. On leaving college in the late 70s, I moved to Blairgowrie as a farm secretary to live and work amongst the berry farmers which Sheila Stewart in her essay speaks of. Stewart writes warmly of her friendship with Henderson and his work with her family, the ‘Stewarts of Blair’, in recording the ballads of the travellers. Stewart quotes several songs including ‘The Twa Brothers’, ‘Where the Moorcocks Crow’ and ‘A man you don’t meet every day’, which she sang at Henderson’s funeral. The respect and love the travellers felt for Hamish is summed up: ‘If it were not for him, travellers would not have been recognised as having anything to offer society.’
During my own years in Blairgowrie, I worked for a farmer, Sandy Webster, who also played the accordion and I’m certain he would have known Henderson and played some of his songs. My own son later joined Sandy at Ceilidhs as a piper, which takes me on to another essay with a connection; Margaret Bennett writes a piece crammed with information on Henderson’s work and encounters with the folk music tradition, including his friendship with the American folklorist, Alan Lomax, and Henderson’s work in the University of Edinburgh’s School of Scottish Studies. Margaret says, ‘Some of America’s best-loved and best-known folk singers, such as Pete Seeger and Tom Paxton, benefited from discussions with Hamish…’ And Bennett describes how her son, Martyn, took the final cut of his ‘re-make’ of songs sung by Sheila Stewart and Lizzie Higgins, to Henderson, who then wrote;
19 Dec. 2001
Dear Martyn,
I am delighted to hear about your new music. Brave new music!! Davie Stewart would be proud to know his voice will be heard the world over. I give you my blessing to use my recordings.
Love, Hamish.
Martyn Bennett has been an inspiration to both my piper sons, so it was lovely to realise that the hidden connections with Hamish Henderson do not stop at me. Henderson seems to be like poetry itself, as I often say when asked ‘how many people actually read poetry these days?’ I respond that it is in everyone’s life, even if they are not aware of it, poetry, like Hamish Henderson finds its own path to us. It seems ‘the carrying stream’ is flowing strong.
Hazel Buchan Cameron
