Year: 2016
Director: Robbie Fraser
If you are Scots, you really should know Hamish Henderson. If you are a republican. A socialist. A nationalist (yes, he was). Into history. Poetry. You should know Hamish.
Apart from writing four songs that are part of the Scottish Folk Repertoire, one of which I hope will be our national anthem when the time comes – as it surely will – he took the Italian surrender in WW2 and has a better claim to starting the Edinburgh Fringe than anyone else. The man is a hero.
The film is great too. The archive stuff is superb (Hamish leading the pipes and troops into Rome) and the interviews are very moving. I was in floods at the end. This was the premier, his family were there, the place was packed with auld folkies and auld commies. My type of people.
The film will tour Scotland and other territories and will play on BBC Alba in the Autumn. But you should see it in a cinema.
Scottish Cringe, no more.
Might appeal to people who enjoyed:
Folk song, Scots culture, world history……..
I’d hate for there to be no replies. Or none before the NO brigade troop in, with their trad jazz band.
Thanks bro!
Well said. And at the risk of sounding like a right-on taxi driver I had not only Hamish Henderson but fellow red legends Harry McShane and Agnes McLean in the back seat of my car.
Though not all at the same time.
That would have been a good trio. I only met the man once – at a Traditional Music And Song ceilidh. I asked him what a ‘geen’ was as Google hadn’t been invented. (It’s a cherry).
He invited me to come to the School Of Scottish Studies and browse the collection of gathered materials. I’ve still to go but I will, Hamish, I will.
I don’t know Hamish as well as I probably should – though he has appeared in the background of two of my books at various points, re Edinburgh’s fringe and folk scene in the Bert Jansch biog and re: his 1950s song collecting in the uilleann piping book.
I’ve always thought this acmasterpiece, though. I imagine it’s one of the four songs to which you refer: ‘The 51st Highlanders’ Farewell To Sicily’, performed by Dick Gaughan:
Ah, I meant to post his later prog-rock length re-recording of the song:
Indeed that is one of his four. Gaughan owns that one but I do have my own version too. The others would be John MacLean March (also a good version by Mighty Dick), D-Day Dodgers and The Freedom Come All Ye. He also wrote Rivonia for Mandela in 1964 but that one isn’t much played.
The documentary will be a good place to pick up on any gaps. It is really very good. The Glasgow Film Theatre was running in tears last night.
I leafed through an absolutely colossal biography in a book shop a year ago – too colossal for me, I thought.
Similarly, I’ve been waiting for a paperback version of Dave Arthur’s huge Bert Lloyd biog.
Why don’t you post your own version of 51st, Jorro – if you have a recording of it?
I don’t have a recording of that but my take on D-Day will be coming soon.
A small anecdote about his collecting days. In the early 50’s a woman called Diane Hamilton knocked on the door of the Clancy family in Carrick-on- Suir. She was an American woman in her early 30’s, real name Guggenheim of that Ilk. She was song collecting and took a very young Liam Clancy out on the road round Ireland. (One of the other doors she knocked was the Makem family and that was the first Clancy/Makem connection.)
Later, they went collecting in Scotland with Hamish Henderson. Liam told the story of having to defend his virginal honour against both of them. Both tried to seduce the young Clancy but he kept his wholesomeness intact until he moved to the USA circa 1955.