Complementary therapy...
Here we are the complementary therapy fair. The Steiner school was there to get more parents/families for the school. Here's Marcella doing some dry felting, which was stunning and Oisin did an eco bag - it's a picture of Ghin and the back of it says "EVERYONE HEARTS GREEN PARTY" which he did in his own writing. His writing has come along really well. Now they're learning this song that goes...
Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing,
Onward! the sailors cry;
Carry the lad that's born to be King
Over the sea to Skye.
Loud the winds howl, loud the waves roar,
Thunderclouds rend the air;
Baffled, our foes stand by the shore,
Follow they will not dare.
Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing,
Onward! the sailors cry;
Carry the lad that's born to be King
Over the sea to Skye.
Though the waves leap, soft shall ye sleep,
Ocean's a royal bed.
Rocked in the deep, Flora will keep
Watch by your weary head.
Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing,
Onward! the sailors cry;
Carry the lad that's born to be King
Over the sea to Skye.
Many's the lad fought on that day,
Well the claymore could wield,
When the night came, silently lay
Dead in Culloden's field.
Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing,
Onward! the sailors cry;
Carry the lad that's born to be King
Over the sea to Skye.
Burned are their homes, exile and death
Scatter the loyal men;
Yet e'er the sword cool in the sheath
Charlie will come again.
Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing,
Onward! the sailors cry;
Carry the lad that's born to be King
Over the sea to Skye.
Hmmm....i've just realised that this could well be a royalist song - as Charlie refers to Bonnie Prince Charlie obviously...the lad that's born to be kind and all...i have now googled him as i was thinking of a completely different Charlie and it turns out that he was a Scottish contender for the throne...and this is how a description of his life ends...
"In conclusion, Bonnie Prince Charlie was a sad and tragic figure. Haunted throughout his life by the passion for Stuart kingship he ultimately ended his life as a pathetic drunk. He is remembered however as a Scottish hero, a reminder of bygone times when the Clans roamed the Highlands and his life is portrayed in many stories and folk songs which are recounted and sung across Scotland. A monument erected by Alexander Macdonald at Glenfinnan commemorates the Prince and the myth and romanticism that surround him to this day."
Isn't that sad? I imagine him as a young boy, on a boat, in grey seas with gannets and gulls flying overhead. His face burnt red cold by the Hebredian winds and his heart filled with the hope, not just of himself and his cause, but also that magincal possiblility of anything being possible when you're so young. He sees the island of Skye in a distance and as it come into view to fill the horizon, he says not a word, but makes himself a promise - that he will be King one day. Behind him the sailors row, they too are filled with the vigour, excitement and promise of the cause. They burn with a belief, with a longing, and they fill the island with that longing too. And then forward forty years he become a broken dreamer, an alcoholic, a woman beater, deserted, despised, spolit, deluded. Where did it all go wrong?
Anyways... it's times like these that i fear so much for my own sons, but you can only do so much and after that they choose. Love with all our hearts and hope that this template sustains them. This memory of affection, like a pilot light, ignites and warms their dankest, coldest, most wintry of days.
Our love, an oilskin cloth against the elements of life...
