Rob Duncan (longrob) wrote in spinningcompass, @ 2014-08-22 22:37:00 |
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Entry tags: | !open, ~rob duncan |
Who? Rob & OPEN
Where? Kinraddie
When? Friday?
What? Working the land, singing.
Open? Yes
Rating? Low
"Her bosom was the driven snaw,
Twa drifted heaps sae fair to see;
Her limbs the polish'd marble stane,
The lass that made the bed to me.
I kiss'd her o'er and o'er again,
And aye she wist na what to say:
I laid her 'tween me and the wa';
The lassie thocht na lang till day."
Rob always sang as he worked, although his music was usually a little more upbeat. Now, he was growing weary. The days were long, they ran into the night as he picked up the work of the men who had gone to war. With so many of the horses gone, he'd seen women pulling carts and ploughs with their own body weight- farming gear that was meant to be used with two-three horses being dragged along by slim bit women...
"The bonnie lass made the bed to me,
The braw lass made the bed to me,
I'll ne'er forget till the day I die,
The lass that made the bed to me."
He dug into the ground that gave nothing back, trying like a fool to unearth the root of a dead tree that would make ploughing impossible. It was clear there was more behind this action- all the pain put into this strain and struggle.
The people of the village who smashed his windows and shouted slurs at him, when he was working harder than anyone.
The way he knew Ewan treated Chris, when he realised, far too late, that he loved that bonnie lass-
"Upon the morrow when we raise,
I thank'd her for her courtesie;
But aye she blush'd and aye she sigh'd,
And said, "Alas, ye've ruin'd me."
The news that kept coming. James Leslie from Upperhill shot down dead. For what? For the King? For England? What was the King to them, what was England?
This was their land. And the English didn't care, they didn't care if they shaved the land of all its timber, they didn't care if it was nothing but heath and wind and heather-
"I claps'd her waist, and kiss'd her syne,
While the tear stood twinkling in her e'e;
I said, my lassie, dinna cry.
For ye aye shall make the bed to me."
They didn't care if there was nothing. No land to farm, and no men left to farm it either. He chucked his spade aside with a clang, and flopped to the ground, leaning back against the half dug-up roots, his muscles giving in to the exhaustion of it all at last.
Oh, and now it was raining on him. Of course it fucking was. And yet, he just sat there. Broken.