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NAPOMO, Day 2: Empty Vessel
Apr. 2nd, 2009 11:18 amEmpty Vessel
I met ayont the cairnie
a lass wi tousie hair
singin til a bairnie
that wes nae langir there.
Wunds wi warlds ti swing
dinna sing sae sweet,
the licht that bends owre awthing
is less taen up wi’t.
Hugh McDiarmid, proving that he's actually more comprehensible in Scots (Or it would do, if anyone could actually face reading "On a Raised Beach", or the "Hymns to Lenin". McDiarmid is probably the only poet in the world to have been kicked out of both the Communist and the Scottish National Parties....)
NB: if you're struggling, try reading it aloud. A cairnie is, in this case, a field boundary marker, tousie means 'tousled', and a 'bairnie' is a baby or a child (a good old Germanic word, cognate with 'bear' as in 'to bear a child, to give birth' - the bairn is what is born)
I met ayont the cairnie
a lass wi tousie hair
singin til a bairnie
that wes nae langir there.
Wunds wi warlds ti swing
dinna sing sae sweet,
the licht that bends owre awthing
is less taen up wi’t.
Hugh McDiarmid, proving that he's actually more comprehensible in Scots (Or it would do, if anyone could actually face reading "On a Raised Beach", or the "Hymns to Lenin". McDiarmid is probably the only poet in the world to have been kicked out of both the Communist and the Scottish National Parties....)
NB: if you're struggling, try reading it aloud. A cairnie is, in this case, a field boundary marker, tousie means 'tousled', and a 'bairnie' is a baby or a child (a good old Germanic word, cognate with 'bear' as in 'to bear a child, to give birth' - the bairn is what is born)
