“Given Days”

Written for amateur and professional musicians and amalgamating the traditional music of Scotland with contemporary classical music, the work celebrates the history of the island, as well as the traditions and talents of the islanders (from boat-building, violin-making, knitting and weaving, to silver craft, glass-staining and information technology). The music sets texts by both islanders and visitors, who have written about the “essence of Fair Isle” - history and historical events, daily life, people, folklore, animals, birds, buildings, musical heritage and the future.

The Introduction sets paragraphs taken from the booklet `Safeguarding Our Heritage’ by N. Riddiford, interspersed with quotations from famous figures including the Duchess of Bedford and Robert Louis Stevenson.

Packin up wir proil, we’d mak fur hom,
blyde o kent lichts. We’d row

peerie wyes, owsin as we göd.
Abön wis, tirricks flitin

an a mird o maas laavin an divin,
plötin fur muggies.

We’d tak da boat in on a flowin tide,
dicht an shoard her, dan rin hom prood
i da darkenin wi a fraacht o fish.

We’d aet wir supper

tae tales o uncan Odysseys
in idder voes.

“Fridarey Hairst” by Jonathan Lennie
(Summer)

Let fishing hands guide us in to the gathering.

Here in the muckle mouth of the morning, mapped with weathered veins battered and broken, the hunched figure straightens, the face opens, but the wind snatches the words from the mouth of the sailor.

Wind drops, there is a sigh on the sea. And five fathoms down the spilt harvest of galleons. Ah, that September morning when angels walked from the water.

But we have our treasure: glistening hairst hauled from the Deep (feel the lines quicken and shudder!).
Prey on the rising hull, bow to the parting wave, back to the shore. Turning the wooden blades. Strong arms heave the island closer.

(Autumn)

Raise a prayer for the sea fruit, a glittering steeple. Then we turn inland, backs hung with silver. Along the cliff-top and its vertical voices.  Steal down to pluck the ledge harvest.

Treading the hairst rigs of kale and tatties. The coarse wind relentless picks at the bright stitches; a harvest of needles weave the rough fibres. Craft upon craft, life upon life.

Time falls back; the machines are rolling, past a crofter bent beneath a sickle moon. Hymns from the kirk float across the lamb-racing earth alive with bleating. Overhead, serenaded by selkies, the departing geese are wailing, the eiders are booming, the puffins growling, a redshank laments the summertide ebbing. Why, even gateposts are tuned to the windsong. Dear Lord, the very land is singing.

Instruments of His chorus, tune us fit for this harmony. And when there are no more words to be spoken, there will still be that music.

(Winter)

[A communion of voices and the croftlight blazes. The hearth’s mouth feeds from the lip of the casting, unhinged from the earth millennia waiting. Now that leaning foot reels in a partner fuelled by the grain harvest and well-crafted music, while mighty blades turn the air into pictures, BBC flickers wherein the world enters.

Outside in the darkling thunder, peerie lungs shrill in the feathered heart of the howling. “Gale force eight and rising.”

We await the Good Shepherd (as she returns to the fold) and telephone calls from the lambs that are scattered.]

As night beds down, I hear Thy voice constant in the hush of the ocean. Southlight on the northern swell trawls the long wave empty, turning the beam out and away.

But what after the dark and when I am young again? Who then will gather the Fridarey hairst?

Verse from “Da Year Gengs By”
by Tom Laurenson

Wi stirnin taes an hackitt hands
An frosty winds fae arctic lands
An’moorin snaa.

We’re blyde tae see da paet fire taands
An draw wis in tae lowein brands
Till he’s awa’.

Verses from “Winter Comes In”
by Jack Renwick

Yowes kruggin closs i da lee o a daek-end,
Creepin frae a chill at bites ta da bon.
Solan an scarf aa wirkin inshore,

A sign at da best o da wadder is dön.

Hail sheetin doon wi a nort wind ahint it,
Blottin oot laand an sea frae da scene.
An iron coortin closin ower aa thing:
Winter has come ta da islands ageen.