.JPG) |
| Ae Spring, by my husband, Alan Lees |
Back in June 1996, BBC R4 broadcast my play on the writing of Tam O' Shanter : the narrative, comic poem by our greatest national poet, Robert Burns. That was back when I was writing plenty of radio drama, and at that time, was lucky enough to work with an international award winning producer/director, the late Hamish Wilson. The play was commissioned to mark the 200th anniversary of the death of the poet, on 21st July 1796.
A few days ago, a friend flagged up to me on Facebook that R4 Extra were broadcasting repeats of the production. It's still available online, and will be for the next 25 days, which I'm pleased about since we were in the middle of a prolonged Storm Eowyn powercut at the time!
I wanted to evoke the older Burns, who seems to have been inspired to write the poem circa 1790, for the second volume of Francis Grose's Antiquities of Scotland. This was when he, his wife Jean and his family were living at Ellisland Farm, not far from Dumfries. The poet was farming and working as an exciseman, all while writing and remaining, by all accounts, a loving father.I also wanted to look back to the inspiration behind the poem, when a very young Rab spent time in Kirkoswald, not far from his mother's home town of Maybole, learning 'mensuration' or mathematics, but also walking across to the nearby Carrick coast with his friend Willie Niven. It was there that he met Douglas Graham of Shanter Farm, about half a mile from the village of Maidens. Duncan was the model for Tam. He had a formidable wife, and a drinking crony called John Davidson - 'Souter Johnnie', the Kirkoswald shoemaker, whose house you can still visit today.
Essentially, this is a tale of a very drunken Tam setting off home to Shanter Farm after a successful market day in Ayr, riding his 'grey mare Meg'. Increasingly beset by stormy weather and the fear of ghosts and goblins, he is heading for the River Doon, that marks the border between Kyle and Carrick when ...
Kirk-Alloway seem’d in a bleeze;
Thro’ ilka bore the beams were glancing;
And loud resounded mirth and dancing.—
Drunkenly determined to investigate, Tam advances on the ruins, only to see a dance of witches, 'rigwoodie hags' with the devil himself, Auld Nick, playing the pipes to accompany them. Unfortunately for Tam (or his horse) one of the witches, Nannie, is young and pretty, dancing madly in a very short shift, a 'cutty-sark', leaving little to Tam's imagination. He is so excited that he takes leave of his senses altogether and cries out 'weel done Cutty-sark!' whereupon - as the poet tells us - 'in an instant all was dark.'
The 'hellish legion' sallies forth to chase him. 'In hell they'll roast thee like a herrin'. But witches and warlocks dare not cross running water and 'Maggie' is a noble steed. They 'win the key-stane of the brig' just as the athletic Nannie catches hold of Meg's tail.
And left poor Maggie scarce a stump.'
It is a wonderful poem: witty and wise and perfectly structured, with a use of language second to none. I have always loved Burns's poetry and have written a good deal about him and his wife over the years - but I still think this poem is my favourite.
In writing the play, I was keen to weave in some of the folkloric inspiration behind the poem, stories that the poet would have heard at his mother's knee and that his wife too would have been well aware of during her Mauchline childhood.
I also wanted to evoke the poem's composition - not in the single inspiration that later commentators invented - but as a creative process. The poet clearly enjoyed himself, and it shows in the perfection and wit of the completed poem.
The cast included, among various talented Scottish actors, Ayrshire lad Liam Brennan as Rab, Gerda Stevenson with a perfect voice to evoke Jean Armour's 'wood notes wild' - and an appearance by Billy Boyd who went on to play Pippin in The Lord of the Rings. You can hear Liam reading the whole poem, beautifully, at the very end of the play.
Like all Hamish's productions, it was a happy project. He was skilful, talented, caring and kindly.
As a postscript to this, you may want to read a little more about Hamish himself. After his death, I wrote a piece about him for this blog, later republished on the Sutton Elms Blog. Sadly the BBC decided that this award winning producer was surplus to requirements and made him redundant. Among much else, he had been a juror and jury chairman in the Prix Italia, Prix Futura Berlin and the Prix Europa - but he wore his distinction lightly. Perhaps too lightly for the BBC that jettisoned him as casually as they have jettisoned so many others over the years - myself included, some years later. My last radio production was in 2007. We were, as somebody pointed out to me much later, 'tainted by experience.'
It turned out to be a good thing for me. After an initial period of mourning for the radio career I once had, I moved on to many other enjoyable and successful creative projects - and a writing career is always a switchback. Not quite so for Hamish, sadly. I've often thought that if these things had happened just a few years later, he would have been able to go it alone, much as so many writers like myself do nowadays. He was one of the best and I still miss him.
Meanwhile, if you can visit Ellisland, probably the most atmospheric of all the places associated with the poet, don't forget to walk along the River Nith, where the poet walked and remembered his youth and imagined the first drafts of the tale of Tam o' Shanter. You might like to listen to the play as well! You can find it here for the next three weeks or so: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0027csp
 |
| River Nith near Ellisland |
