Horatio McCulloch, “Glencoe” (1864)
Tuesday
My mother, who runs the poetry column Bard to Verse in Sewanee Messenger, will be running the following Robert Burns poem this coming week. It’s meant for those teachers and students who haven’t yet adjusted to the new school year and imagine being somewhere else.
Think of it as a supplement to William Blake’s “Schoolboy,” which my mother and I shared in our respective columns last week. Our particular Highlands is the state of Maine, where we spent a week in July.
Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North,
The birth-place of Valor, the country of Worth;
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands forever I love.
Chorus:
My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
My heart’s in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer;
Chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart’s in the Highlands, wherever I go.
Farewell to the mountains, high-cover’d with snow,
Farewell to the straths and green valleys below;
Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods,
Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.
Chorus:
(Chorus🙂
One further thought on the symbolism of the Scottish Highlands. As with the Native Americans, the Scottish Highlands could become romantic only after the British put down the Jacobite rebellion, slaughtering many and enacting cultural genocide. The Highlands stood in dramatic contrast to industrialized England, with people focusing on the natural setting and overlooking the poverty. Burns and Sir Walter Scott played a role in this process.
We romanticize what we no longer have. Like summer vacation.