Written amid the ‘tremendous energy’ of Scotland’s independence campaign, this supple nature poem might be a livelier than usual image of nationhood
The HindsWalking in a waking dream
I watched nineteen deer
pour from ridge to glen-floor,
then each in turn leap,
leap the new-raised
peat-dark burn. This
was the distaff side;
hinds at their ease, alive
to lands held on long lease
in their animal minds,
and filing through a breach
in a never-mended dyke,
the herd flowed up over
heather-slopes to scree
where they stopped, and turned to stare,
the foremost with a queenly air
as though to say: Aren’t wethe bonniest companie?Come to me,you’ll be happy, but never go home.
The title of Kathleen Jamie’s lively new collection, The Bonniest Companie, published this week by Picador Poetry, is tucked away in The Hinds, third line from the end. As the poet’s note tells us, the words are an allusion to the Scottish Border Ballad, Tam Lin.
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I watched nineteen deer
pour from ridge to glen-floor,
then each in turn leap,
leap the new-raised
peat-dark burn. This
was the distaff side;
hinds at their ease, alive
to lands held on long lease
in their animal minds,
and filing through a breach
in a never-mended dyke,
the herd flowed up over
heather-slopes to scree
where they stopped, and turned to stare,
the foremost with a queenly air
as though to say: Aren’t wethe bonniest companie?Come to me,you’ll be happy, but never go home.
The title of Kathleen Jamie’s lively new collection, The Bonniest Companie, published this week by Picador Poetry, is tucked away in The Hinds, third line from the end. As the poet’s note tells us, the words are an allusion to the Scottish Border Ballad, Tam Lin.
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