Anent Hamish Henderson | Essays • Poems • Interviews

Eberhard Bort  | University of Edinburgh | ISBN: 978-1-907676-65-9

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Anent Hamish Henderson:

Introduction| Eberhard Bort

I’ll always be waiting
Where streams are afore me.

I

These two lines are taken from an early ‘Love Poem’ by Hamish Henderson. They could be seen as programmatic, expressing a curiosity, sense of adventure and life force that would again be reflected in his last poem, ‘Under the Earth I Go’,

While my love lives, I’ll dance with the Mayers
Teasing the Old Oss till there’s new life in him
Chasing sweet lusty Spring with pipes, goatskin and bones.

If Timothy Neat’s two-volume biography of the man has shown us anything, then how crammed with incident his life was. And charting, as in the previous three volumes – Borne on the Carrying Stream (2010), ‘Tis Sixty Years Since (2011) and At Hame wi’ Freedom (2012) – the life and work of Scotland’s foremost folklorist of the twentieth century, the songwriter, poet and political activist Hamish Henderson (1919-2002), this collection has been put together to fondly remember and critically assess the continuing influence he exercises.