An Extraordinary Life

GILES SUTHERLAND considers the life of work of Hamish Henderson in the light of a new biography by Timothy Neat

HAMISH HENDERSON was born on 11 November 1919 in his grandmother’s house, a small sandstone villa on the outskirts of Blairgowrie, in Highland Perthshire. Because his mother was unmarried and because of the still prevalent Victorian mores of ‘respectable’ Scottish society, James Scott Henderson (to be known ever after as Hamish) and his mother Janet Henderson were moved to a rented cottage in the Spittal of Glenshee where Hamish spent most of the first five years of his life.

So began one of the most extraordinary lives of 20th century Scotland, for in his 83 years Hamish was to achieve more and do more than most; however it is not only his achievements which are important (monumental and life changing as they were), but also the manner and method by which they were achieved.

In our secular and cynical age where ideas of goodness, saintliness, charm and the blessed provoke scorn and even derision, any biographer who encounters such qualities in his subject is placed in a quandary: omit mention of these and thereby fail to give a rounded picture of such a person or, by inclusion, run the risk of critical, scholarly and popular opprobrium.

Such is the burden of the biographer, and Tim Neat, champion of the unvoiced, filmmaker, beekeeper and mycologist, has had to tread a very careful line. He has, however, approached his subject with great humanity and empathy; he has attempted and succeeded in conveying a rounded picture of a complex, highly gifted and extraordinary individual by what he describes as ‘telling a story’ and in doing so has had to negotiate all the pit-falls of personal enmities, political feuds and ideological and aesthetic rifts which, inevitably, beset Hamish Henderson’s varied, idiosyncratic and brilliant career.

Although Hamish’s commitment to the Highlands was intense and complete it was never insular or inward-looking

In G.K. Chesterton’s book on the saint (a lover of animals, some-time soldier and champion of the dispossessed) the English author states that if Saint Francis were to be born in our time he would probably be found in somewhere like Clapham. By happenstance, Clapham is where Hamish spent four years of his life, orphaned after the death of his mother, in the Clapham Boys’ Home run by a charitable Anglican foundation, the Society of the Good Shepherd.

Neat is, however, keen to make the point that “Hamish was never ‘holier-than-thou’”. He adds, “He lived very much impelled by the moment…if Hamish felt like punching someone, he did…it was a very Shakespearian kind of thing – ‘readiness is all’…this idea of enjoying the moment, the lived moment -‘stuffing a rock down the craw of devouring time’. He addressed the moment and addressed the person there.”

Another quasi-religious moment is recounted by Neat in his biography:

Early on 8 May 1945, Hamish drove south from Florence for a meeting in Perugia. Hitler was known to be dead, Allied and Soviet forces were meeting up all over Europe, but the actual date and time of the ‘cessation of hostilities’ was still unknown. It was a beautiful summer’s morning, the Chianti hills were aglow with green and gold. Hamish was exultant: he had come through – the war was won – soon he would be home, all was well. Then, within sight of the city walls of Siena, the Jeep broke down…Seeing a pair of white oxen ploughing in a field below the road, Hamish walked down to ask the farmer if he might borrow them to tow the Jeep into Siena. A requisition order was made and, with Hamish and his driver seated in majesty, the two oxen, led by il contadino, towed the bullet scared Jeep, emblazoned with the words Bandiera Rossa, towards the great medieval city. It was eleven o’clock and, as they approached the north gate, the bells of the churches began to ring out, one after another, all over the city: peace had been declared. Hamish stood up in the Jeep and took off his Balmoral, tears pouring down his face – after six years of the most terrible war in history, all Europe was at peace again. The Senesi were spilling out on to the streets and when they saw the oxen towing the Jeep they cheered in their hundreds. Hamish, gripping the shattered windscreen with his left hand raised his right fist in the Partisan salute and sang the ‘Bandiera Rossa’ time and time again…Shoulder high, he was carried from the Jeep into a café where peace was saluted with vino, kisses and song…Children came with water for the oxen, and the oxen’s collars were plaited with flowers. It was another of Hamish’s great days…”

In conversation Neat states that “the parallels with Christ’s entry into Jerusalem are unmistakable” but again, such explicit observations are omitted from the written biographical text.

Tne tale (omitted from the biography) is instructive: a few days before Christmas, during his war service, in 1943, Hamish found a pregnant woman huddling in the snow behind a wall. He took her to a byre and gave her shelter and called the army medics to attend to her. Such Christ-like parallels abounded in Hamish’s life, and during our discussion Neat draws an implicit parallel between Henderson and the life of Saint Francis of Assisi.

It is impossible to do justice to a life so various, diverse, long and multi-faceted, even in a two volume biography. In a short review the task is even less possible. However, it is clear that a number of important issues regarding Hamish’s life require re-iteration and explanation. From an early age Hamish had a very clear intimation of his own destiny and his path in life for, despite the diversity and apparent randomness of his life’s course, there is a well-established pattern to his activities.

Primarily, it seems clear from Neat’s researches that Hamish’s all-encompassing vision was the re-energising of Scotland’s political and cultural landscape through song and poetry. However, unlike his literary contemporaries and near-contemporaries such as Robert Garioch, George Campbell Hay, Sorley Maclean, Hugh MacDiarmid and Norman MacCaig (some of whom had seen active service in the same North African theatre of war as Hamish) – Hamish’s vision was a re-energising of culture from the bottom up.

In 1932 in his ‘Second Hymn to Lenin’ MacDiarmid had written, “Are my poems spoken in the factories and fields,/In the streets o’ the toon?/Gin they’re no’, then I’m failin’ to dae/ What I ocht to ha’ dune.” Arguably, MacDiarmid’s literary efforts, despite having all the hallmarks of genius, never were taken up by ‘the people’. Recognising this, Hamish set himself the task of writing and singing material which was taken up at a popular level.

His songs, written while on active service, such as ‘Ballad of the D-Day Dodgers’ and ‘Pioneer Ballad of Section Three’ were taken up by the ordinary soldier, Jocks, Highlanders and others alike. They achieved almost immediate currency among the ranks primarily because Hamish understood what made song popular – a good tune, lyrics written in the language of the people and, often, a bawdy, earthy element. It goes almost without saying, too, that his ‘Freedom Come-All-Ye’ has achieved a status unparallel in modern Scotland with perhaps the exception of the backward looking, anti-English dirge ‘Flower of Scotland’, which it will, one hopes, eventually eclipse.

Another important by-product of Neat’s work will also, surely, be the introduction to a new audience of Hamish’s ‘Elegies for the Dead at Cyrenaica’ which deservedly won the first Somerset Maugham Award for Poetry in 1949. The Elegies, by any standard, is a masterwork, and ranks amongst some of the best poetry of the 20th century.
As Neat notes in the preface to this first volume of Hamish’s biography “…the phrase ‘Poetry becomes People’ captures the essence of his belief’s and life’s work”. Such commitment to poetry and song and the concomitant ability to create it can be traced back in no small measure to Hamish’s Highland connection. For in the ‘20s the Spittal of Glenshee was “a traditional Highland community with a few scattered crofts, a farmhouse, a kirk, a large manse, a Victorian hotel – and the Henderson cottage hunkered down by the Glenshee Water…”

The owner of the cottage Mr Ramsay was also a regular visitor and Hamish himself records:

One of my earliest memories is of him ‘gien me a hurl’ along the road and over the humpbacked bridge, in his wheelbarrow. He knew everybody and it was he, more than my mother, who got me interested in the old Perthshire dialect of Gaelic – still very much alive on the lips of the old folk. Ancient place-names rolled off his tongue like rhymes: Creag Dhearg, Creag Bhreac, Glen Lochsie, Dalmunzie, Carn Tarmachain, Tom an t Suidhe… . In public, Gaelic was used as a secret language that kids were not supposed to understand – but natural curiosity urged me to crack the code and I learned enough to give myself an interest and sympathy which has stayed with me for life. I was brought up in a fully bi-lingual community full of songs and stories – it was an experience that gave me an organic insight into the nature of language and popular culture and was to shape my whole life…I remember my mother telling me, ‘not all the songs we sing are in books’….

Although Hamish’s commitment to the Highlands was intense and complete it was never insular or inward-looking; his vision effortlessly connected Highland and Lowland Scotland to Europe and the world beyond. He was a visionary of untold importance to Scotland and Europe and he is sorely missed. Fortunately his spirit and vision lives on and in the capable hands of Tim Neat his life and work will hopefully reach the audience it so richly deserves.

Hamish Henderson, A Biography, Volume 1 The Making of the Poet (1919-1953) by Timothy Neat, Polygon (£25.00 ISBN 978 1 904598 47 2)

© Giles Sutherland, 2007

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