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In November 1948 a 25th anniversary commemoration for John MacLean was held in Glasgow. One of the organisers of this event, James Scott (Hamish) Henderson had written a song especially for the proceedings - "The John MacLean March". Hamish Henderson would go on to write other songs one of which "Freedom Come All Ye" (set to the pipe une of Bloody Fields of Flanders) has been championed by many as a new national anthem for Scotland. The song has found itself sung in Scotland, England, the USA, France, China and Italy.
His other songs set to pipe tunes include "Ye Banks of Sicily", "Free Mandela" and "Men of Knoydart", the latter of which is concerned with land rights. Henderson was also an accomplished performer becoming well known within the folk music world. Dick Gaughan in an appreciation of the man writes "Hamish's life and legacy are a mass of contradictions. He was our most important collector of folksongs yet the bulk of his work was for a University department and so lies in an archive, unseen and unheard by most of the public. He was a poet of international stature yet his work was seldom published. He was the writer of some of our greatest modern Scots songs yet when it was decided to record a collection of those songs, there were not enough to fill an entire album and some of his poetry had to be included........He was a Gaelic speaker who loved, spoke and wrote fluently in Lowland Scots. He encouraged and inspired a generation to rediscover our native traditions and to experiment with them to give them relevance in the modern Scotland yet, while he applauded and seemed to enjoy our work, he never really understood us or our experiments within those traditions. And I suppose we never really understood him. Perhaps, as is the way with grandparents, he better understood and related to the generation which came after us".
Read Dr Margaret Bennett's article on Hamish Henderson. |
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