English is not natural to me; and I use it ‘consciously’ even in conversation.
WILLIAM SOUTAR: Diaries of a Dying Man (1954)
Soutar was a Scottish poet who served in the navy during the First World War, after which he matriculated at Edinburgh University, studying first medicine, then transferring to an Honours degree in English. While still an undergraduate he published his first book of poems, Gleanings by an Undergraduate, and then fell ill with a form of spondylitis. Becoming increasingly crippled, he underwent an operation in May 1930, but it was unsuccessful. Soutar referred to it as his ‘abortive resurrection’, and the last time that he was able to leave his bed was on 3 November 1930. For the last thirteen years of his life he was confined to the family house in Wilson Street, Perth. His father, a master-joiner, redesigned his bedroom, lengthening it and enlarging the window so that Soutar could see the garden and the natural world he loved. He was a prolific writer: diaries, journals, prose (much is still unpublished) and, of course, poems. He wrote in both English and Scots, but was more at home in the latter. Almost all his poems are short and they include lyrics, epigrams, bairnrhymes – his own term for his children’s verse, which rivals that of de la Mare and Stevenson – whigmaleeries (which he described as ‘whim fantastical notions’) and riddles, designed to fire a child’s imagination and give fresh currency to Scots words. He worked with MacDiarmid, who wrote an introduction to his Collected Poems (1948), to create a distinctively modern Scottish tradition in poetry. Between 1925 and 1935 he filled eleven notebooks with ‘Vocable Verses’, which he called ‘exercises in linguistic ingenuity’ – cerebral doodlings in which he would take four difficult or unusual words and put them into verse. They were never published. He wrote three books of Scots verse: Seeds in the Wind: Poems in Scots for Children (1933), Poems in Scots (1935) and Riddles in Scots (1937). His autobiography, Diaries af a Dying Man, was published in 1954.
Who are These Children? is Britten’s last song cycle. It was composed in 1969, and the theme – typical of Britten – is the contrast between a world of violence, pain and death, and the innocent world of childhood. The poem ‘Who are these children?’ draws together the adult and the child’s worlds, as the children witness a fox hunt, a sport that Britten abhorred. The thought that not even an air raid can deter the ‘foxing folk’ is peculiarly repulsive, as the elegantly dressed men and the lipsticked and rouged women go about their cruel task with a sort of military precision. The trigger for both the poem and the music was a wartime photograph printed in a newspaper, depicting huntsmen riding down a bombed-out street, watched by an uncomprehending boy standing by his bicycle – see the note to the poem ‘Who are these children?’, below.
There’s pairt o’ it young
And pairt o’ it auld:
There’s pairt o’ it het
And pairt o’ it cauld:
There’s pairt o’ it bare
And pairt o’ it claid:
There’s pairt o’ it quick
And pairt o’ it dead.
(A: the Earth)
O! it’s owre the braes abüne our toun
Whan the simmer days come in;
Whaur the blue-bells grow and the burnies row
And gowdan is the whin1.
The gowk2 sings frae the birken-schaw3,
And the laverock4 far aboon:
The bees bummer by, the peesies5 cry,
And the lauchin linn lowps6 doun.
The tree stood flowering in a dream:
Beside the tree a dark shape bowed:
As lightning glittered the axe-gleam
Across the wound in the broken wood.
The tree cried out with human cries:
From its deepening hurt the blood ran:
The branches flowered with children’s eyes
And the dark murderer was a man.
There came a fear which sighed aloud;
And with its fear the dream-world woke:
Yet in the day the tree still stood
Bleeding beneath the axe-man’s stroke.
A skelp frae his brither
And a skelp frae his faither
For the Lord kens what.
Within the violence of the storm
The wise men are made dumb:
Young bones are hallowed by the worm:
The babe dies in the womb.
Above the lover’s mouth is pressed
The silence of a stone:
Fate rides upon an iron beast
And tramples cities down.
And shall the multitudinous grave
Our enmity inter;
These dungeons of misrule enslave
Our bitterness and fear?
All are the conquered; and in vain
The laurel binds the brow:
The phantoms of the dead remain
And from our faces show.
It was your faither and mither,
Yet it wasna weddit:
It was your sister or brither
Though nane were beside it.
Wit and wisdom it lent ye,
Yet it wasna lairéd1:
And though it dee’d or it kent ye2
It was never buried.
(A: The child you were)
The larky lad frae the pantry
Skipp’t through the muckle ha’2,
He had sma’ fear o’ the gentry,
And his respec’ was sma.
He cockit his face richt merry;
And as he jiggit on
His mou’ was round as a cherry
Like he whistl’d a braw tune.
And monie a noble body
Glower’d doun frae his frame o’ gowd
On the plisky3 pantry-laddie
Wha was sae merry and royd.4
With easy hands upon the rein,
And hounds at their horses’ feet,
The ladies and the gentlemen
Ride through the village street.
Brightness of blood upon the coats
And on the women’s lips:
Brightness of silver at the throats
And on the hunting whips.
Is there a dale more calm, more green
Under this morning hour;
A scene more alien than this scene
Within a world at war?
Who are these children gathered here
Out of the fire and smoke
That with remembering faces stare
Upon the foxing folk?
Steepies1 for the bairnie
Sae moolie2 in the mou’:
Parritch for a strappan lad
To mak his beard grow.
Stovies for a muckle man3
To keep him stout and hale:
A noggin for the auld carl4
To gar5 him sleep weel.
Bless the meat, and bless the drink,
And the hand that steers the pat:
And be guid to beggar-bodies
Whan they come to your yett6.
Upon the street they lie
Beside the broken stone:
The blood of children stares from the broken stone.
Death came out of the sky
In the bright afternoon:
Darkness slanted over the bright afternoon.
Again the sky is clear
But upon earth a stain:
The earth is darkened with a darkening stain:
A wound which everywhere
Corrupts the hearts of men:
The blood of children corrupts the hearts of men.
Silence is in the air:
The stars move to their places:
Silent and serene the stars move to their places:
But from earth the children stare
With blind and fearful faces:
And our charity is in the children’s faces.
(MacMillan)
The auld aik’s doun:1
The auld aik’s doun:
Twa hunner year it stüde, or mair,
But noo it’s doun, doun.
The auld aik’s doun:
The auld aik’s doun:
We were sae shair it wud aye be there,
But noo it’s doun, doun.
O! shairly ye hae seen my love
Doun whaur the waters wind:
He walks like ane wha fears nae man
And yet his e’en are kind.
O! shairly ye hae seen my love
At the turning of the tide;
Foe then he gethers in the nets
Doun be the waterside.
O! lassie I hae seen your love
At the turning of the tide;
And he was wi’ the fisher-folk
Doun be the waterside.
The fisher-folk were at their trade
No far frae Walnut Grove;
They gether’d in their dreepin nets
And fund your ain true love.
O luely, luely1 cam she in
And luely she lay doun:
I kent her be her caller2 lips
And her breists sae sma’ and roun’.
A’ thru the nicht we spak nae word
Nor sinder’d bane frae bane3:
A’ thru the nicht I heard her hert
Gang soundin’ wi’ my ain.
It was about the waukrife4 hour
Whan cocks begin to craw
That she smool’d5 saftly thru the mirk
Afore the day wud daw.
Sae luely, luely, cam she in
Sae luely was she gaen
And wi’ her a’ my simmer days
Like they had never been.