| Hamish Henderson: A Biography, Vol. 2: Poetry Becomes People (1952-2002) - Timothy Neat |
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When Timothy Neat was planning to write a life of folklorist Hamish Henderson he quickly realised it was going to take two volumes. The first, published in 2007, covered Henderson’s boyhood, youth and distinguished wartime service.
The second volume, Poetry Becomes People, begins in the early 1950s when Henderson was offered a post with the School of Scottish Studies at Edinburgh University. It was an inspired appointment: “God’s own job,” he called it. As a research fellow he was given a roving commission to track down traditional singers and storytellers.
Henderson said of those early years that they were the golden age of Scots folk collecting, a bold claim but surely justified when you look at how much was accomplished.
He had three outstanding colleagues in Calum Maclean, John MacInnes and Francis Collinson, and he himself over 10 years collected tens of thousands of songs, tales, rhymes, riddles, interviews and musical recordings from several hundred people.
The North-East and Perthshire were two of his happiest hunting grounds and many of the tradition-bearers became his friends. Some of his warmest relationships were with members of the travelling people.
Traveller camps were still a feature of the Scottish countryside and he famously said, after a few days’ work in one of them that trying to record everything was “like holding a tin can under the Niagara Falls”.
He had pitched a tent alongside the others in that Perthshire camp and he did the same in Sutherland where, by great good chance, he had come on a group of Gaelic-speaking Stewarts with a phenomenal repertoire. Within an hour of meeting them, says Neat, Henderson and a companion were recording ancient tales that would thrill folklorists worldwide.
As well as collecting and lecturing Henderson found time somehow to fight for numerous causes. He took a leading part in CND in Scotland and supported groups campaigning against Polaris, the Benbecula rocket range, Torness and, abroad, the apartheid regime in South Africa.
Throughout the two volumes Timothy Neat conveys the warmth of the man, his geniality. He loved company and good talk. A number of people told Neat how, with a handshake or embrace, Hamish Henderson was their friend for life.
His last years were clouded by ill health and he died in a nursing home in 2002.
This timely biography is a superb record of one of the most colourful and influential Scots of last century. |
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