Hamilton,  Scotland 1950.

Only now, after all this time, do I realise with affection what a constant background Dad’s singing was. In my teens music was a big part of my life, and I tried to shut out his efforts. He only ever sang a few bars, and often altered words and even notes. The snatches of song were half-conscious asides when he was engaged in some task.

He was a scientist and stoic, rational and undemonstrative. Never hugged me, not even when I returned from a year’s absence abroad. I forget his words on that occasion, but they weren’t an emotional welcome. Mum used to say: “He loves you but doesn’t know how to show it.” He made my sister a doll’s house and me a wooden train, and maybe that was his way. I sometimes think of him as a cold, bleak Icelandic landscape, and his songs as those hot springs that bubble up from unknown depths.

The one that moves me most in retrospect, The Nut-Brown Maiden, was translated from the Gaelic in the 19th century by the poet John Stuart Blackie. It’s said to be one of the most popular Highland songs and is refreshingly free of sentiment. Its mouth-music elements are like those of my favourite Gaelic song, Chan e caoidh Mhic Shiridh. Dad would even sing a whole verse:

Ho ro my nut-brown maiden

Hi ri my nut-brown maiden

Ho ro ro maiden

For she’s the maid for me.

He sang it often, and hearing it made me happy.

For a while he gave me a lift to school. Mum’s idea. I was the classic monosyllabic teenager, and she hoped it would break the ice. During those awkward journeys I fantasised: he had a double life as conductor of a famous orchestra, and his limited musical repertoire was a disguise.

He once said plaintively: “You think I’ve anything in common with my father?” But we did have something in common: our love of the outdoors. I should have listened more when he described his walks on the Campsie Fells and Ben Ledi, and his part-time work as an assistant gamekeeper.

We spent summer holidays in Hamilton with my grandfather, aunts, uncles, and cousins, and to me Scotland was dull grimy streets, brown stone tenements, and the blackened coal-boats of Greenock. It was only later I discovered the Highlands. The haunting melody of The Nut-Brown Maiden, which evokes the magic of lochs and mountains, and which he sang in perfect tune, is the one by which I most like to remember him.

 

Stereo Story #708

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Alex Barr’s recent non-fiction is in Griffith Review, The Blue Nib, and Sarasvati and more is forthcoming from Change Seven magazine. His recent short fiction is widely published in the UK and US. His short fiction collection My Life With Eva is published by Parthian.