 In the world of folk music and song, Hamish Henderson was generally referred to as ‘the father of the Scottish Folksong Revival movement’. Acknowledged also as Scotland’s greatest twentieth century folklorist, he was, at the same time, an outstanding soldier, poet, philosopher, scholar, (he had a string of D. Phil’s and D. Litt’s), linguist, teacher, broadcaster, political activist and prize-winning writer. His death Edinburgh on March 8, 2002 marks the passing of a most remarkable man, an inspiration and hero the world over.
Hamish Henderson was born on Remembrance Day, Nov. 11, 1919, in Blairgowrie, Perthshire to parents who were rooted in traditions spanning countless centuries, embracing several languages, and ranging the entire social spectrum — courtiers tae cottars, an’ men o’ the road forbye. Since his father did not long survive the First World War, Hamish, an only child, was brought up by his mother (a trained nurse) and grandmother, being steeped in Gaelic and Scots folklore and educated beyond the fireside of his forebears. Like Burns in the eighteenth century, he attributed his love of poetry, song and tradition to his childhood years and conceded that the ‘school of hard knocks’ also drilled more than a few lessons into his young life.
When his mother was evicted from their home in Blairgowrie, she took Hamish to Ireland and later to the south of England, where her efforts to provide home and schooling opened doors to a world of experiences far from the familiar Perthshire hills. Sadly his beloved mother died when Hamish was only twelve, thus adding to these the solitude and wanderings of a boarding school orphan. Holidays took him to the south-west of England, over to Dublin where, aged sixteen, he met W.B.Yeats, and across the Channel to explore the Continent and practise the languages in which he later became totally fluent.
After four years at Dulwich College, he went to Cambridge in 1938, studying languages and literature — French, German and Italian. He never lost his love of Gaelic and Scots or of the bagpipes, Highland dancing, or the ancient Scots ballad of his childhood. They were all much in evidence at Cambridge where, sometimes clad in kilt, he sang, danced, played, debated, discussed, and enlightened
Volunteering for war in 1939, Hamish was posted to south of England with the Pioneer Corps (building defences), where he began collecting songs later incorporated into his Ballads of World War II, in Five Languages (published 1947). Soon afterwards, he was commissioned as an Intelligence Officer and sent to North Africa and later (as Captain Hamish Henderson) to Italy. During those years he continued to collect songs from ‘ordinary squaddies’ — Scots, English, Irish, Welsh, German, Italian, it made no difference to the man whose passion for liberty, brotherhood, equality, justice, peace and freedom was to find expression in his own poetry, ‘scribbled’ in the same notebook as the multi-lingual song collection.
After the war, he completed his book of poems, Elegies for the Dead in Cyrenaica, (1948), winning the Somerset Maugham prize for literature and a foreign travel bursary which enabled him to return to Italy. There he began his brave translation of the work of Sardinian, Antonio Gramsci, the remarkable Marxist philosopher. Nervous Italian authorities sent him back to Scotland, however, and did not allow him to return till the 1970s. (His book, Prison Letters of Antonio Gramsci, was first published in 1974)
In 1946, as guest of folklorists John Lorne Campbell and his wife Margaret Fay Shaw on the Isle of Canna, Hamish found himself in the company of two employees of the Irish Folklore Commission on a recording fieldtrip in Gaelic Scotland, Seumas Ennis and Calum MacLean. The meeting of minds refuelled an enthusiasm for song collecting that was to last for life.
Hamish Henderson’s reputation as a song-maker, collector and political activist led him into the company of other ‘greats’ such as Brendan and Dominic Behan, whom he met on a visit to Dublin in 1948. During a second period of study at Downing College, Cambridge, his circle included E. P. Thompson, Matthew Hodgart and Patrick Shulham Shaw. A spell at Teacher Training College in Edinburgh was followed by a stint in Northern Ireland as District Secretary of the Workers’ Educational Association. Then, in 1951, at the suggestion of Ewan MacColl, Hamish agreed to be guide and assistant to American folksong collector Alan Lomax for the Scottish part of his Columbia Records series of World Albums of Folk and Primitive Song. This was the turning point of Hamish’s life, for, so successful was this tour in securing high quality recordings of singers including Jeannie Robertson, Flora MacNeil, Jessie Murray, Jimmie MacBeath, Davie Stewart, and John Strachan that the University of Edinburgh’s newly formed School of Scottish Studies eventually agreed to give him a three year contract.
From then on, his professional life was spent at the University of Edinburgh, where the name of Hamish Henderson became synonymous with the School of Scottish Studies. There is no doubt that the international reputation it enjoyed for over fifty years is due largely to this one man’s mammoth contribution, not only to the archive but through his lectures, papers, correspondence, radio and television programmes, personal contacts, charisma and energy.
One person would need several lifetimes to publish the songs and stories alone. The fruitful harvest of songs in the mid-50s, included his work with the Stewarts of Blairgowrie, camping among the berry-pickers and sharing many a fireside. With conviction he wrote about his collecting experiences in a colourful anecdotal style that is as evocative now as when it first appeared:
Recording in the berryfields, in fact, was – and is – like holding a tin can under the Niagara Falls… In a single session you can hear everything from ancient Ossianic hero-tales to the caustic pop song parodies thought up by Clydeside teenagers the same afternoon.
In 1956, during those trips, Hamish met and fell in love with a bright, beautiful young German woman, Kätzel Schmidt. He visited her in Germany on a holiday in 1957, returned the following year to become engaged, and, in 1959, Hamish and Kätzel were married. They made their home in Edinburgh and their daughters Tina and Janet, of whom Hamish was immensely proud, were born in 1963 and 1966.
Many of us who were students in the 60s recall catching Henderson’s infectious enthusiasm even before we met him, for his name had become as familiar to us as that of Robert Burns, Wilfred Owen or Woody Guthrie. His very presence could be felt at folk clubs and festivals everywhere, where his songs such as ‘The D-Day Dodgers’, ‘The John MacLean March’, ‘The Banks of Sicily’ and ‘The Freedom Come All Ye’ had become standard repertoire. When we met the man himself, we discovered that he also sang many of the songs he collected, for they were stored in his encyclopaedic mind, far from the dusty archive shelves, to be called upon at the drop of a hat.
Certain academics were undeniably suspicious of “research” in a tinker’s tent, a crofter’s byre, a field or the open road. On the far side of the Atlantic, however, others had the wisdom to cross the ocean just to be in this man’s presence. The late Richard Dorson, one of America’s folklore gurus, wrote to Hamish after his visit in 1965:
For an itinerant folklorist, The School of Scottish Studies is surely a paradise. All kinds of resources abound: valuable files, indexes, books, journals, tapes… When one becomes intoxicated with folklore, he can sober up at Sandy Bell’s around the corner.
Throughout his life Hamish Henderson wrote many articles, essays, letters, poems and songs dispersed in journals, books and magazines the world over. Among the best known were two important essays on folksong: “It was in you that it A’ Began” and “The Ballad, The Folk and The Oral Tradition”. It was not until after his retirement, however, that he took time to publish much of his collected works: Alias MacAlias: Writings on Songs, Folk and Literature appeared in 1992 (Polygon, Edinburgh) — no student of folksong should be without if only for essays such as ‘The Voice of the People’, ‘The Ballads’ and ‘A Plea for the Sung Ballad’ — and The Armstrong Nose: Selected Letters of Hamish Henderson, (edited by Alec Finlay, Polygon, Edinburgh, 1998). In 2000, Raymond Ross published the very fine anthology, Hamish Henderson: Collected Poems and Songs, (Curly Snake Publishing, Edinburgh).
The world of film and television also benefited from the many-faceted Henderson. In the late 1970s, BBC made a documentary, ‘The Dead, The Innocent’, about his wartime experiences, now a Remembrance Day classic. He co-scripted Timothy Neat’s documentary film ‘The Summer Walkers’ about the Scottish Travelling people, inspired him to make ‘Hallaig’ (on the life of Sorley MacLean), and also ‘The Tree of Liberty’. As an actor Hamish had a leading role in Tim Neat’s award-winning film, ‘Play Me Something’ based on John Berger’s book, and in the documentary ‘Journey to a Kingdom’ which is a moving account of Hamish’s own life. Aside from the many recordings of others, the bard’s own voice is on Pipes, Goatskins & Bones: the Songs and Poems of Hamish Henderson, (Grampian Television, Aberdeen, 1992). August 2003 saw the launch of the CD "A the Bairns o Adam", a fitting tribute to the man who was always there to encourage others. (Collaboration by Ian Green and Fred Freeman, the CD is on Greentrax CDTRAX 244).
Hamish Henderson was gifted in his dealing with people—old, young, rich, poor, the towering intellectual or the simple soul who never read a paper far less a poem. He could have espoused the silks and satins of the world but he felt at home with the humble homespun. Most folk knew the congenial Hamish, but, as his colleague and close friend, I still picture the light burning late at 27 George Square. After everyone had gone home, he would often return to his study where he’d answer every letter by hand. Cluttered mantelpiece, family photos, a bowl on the floor for Sandy, desk piled with papers, ten lifetimes of letters, yet he made time to drop a note, inform, encourage, delight or uplift. His ordinariness was extraordinary; his humility a lesson to us all.
At the age of 82, declining health forced Hamish to submit to care in a nursing home. When the end came, March 8, 2002, Kätzel, Tina and Janet, “my three beautiful girls” as he so lovingly and appropriately called them, were by his side. Hundreds of messages poured in, their directness and honesty reflecting the character of the man whose life touched so many from all walks of life. On the day of his funeral, over a thousand people thronged into St. Mary’s Cathedral to pay their last respects. Scotland’s First Minister attended and was quietly directed to a seat in the second row — the front row being reserved for the folk who had the honour of carrying his remains, two sons-in-law, two friends, and four from traveller families whose company Hamish had shared over the years. In a moving tribute to him, his close friend Tim Neat summed up the “method in Henderson’s magic”, and the service concluded with an unforgettable rendition of the “Freedom Come All Ye” that reached beyond the rafters. Afterwards, friends from far and wide packed into the Edinburgh Folk Club to celebrate this great song-maker and song-collector. The line-up was second to none, the singing was straight from the heart, the choruses raised the roof, the drams flowed, and Hamish would have loved it!
So, come all ye at hame wi freedom
Never heed whit the hoodie croaks for doom
In yer hoose a’ the bairns o Adam
Will hae breid, barley bree an painted rooms!
This article was written by Dr. Margaret Bennett (pictured) and appeared in the 2003 Carrying Stream Festival programme. The festival which is organised by Edinburgh Folk Club, came into being to honour the life and work of Hamish Henderson and is held annually in November in Edinburgh.
Hamish Henderson Collects Vol 1. CD and Hamish Henderson Collects Vol 2 CD |
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