The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #160733   Message #3814337
Posted By: Felipa
12-Oct-16 - 08:37 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Add: Sleep Weel My Bairnie (Murdoch Maclean)
Subject: RE: Murdoch Maclean: Sleep Weel My Bairnie
Sleep Weel My Bairnie is in "From Croft to Clachan" according to http://www.dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/dancers

I see Keberoxu found that out as well. "From Croft to Clachan" isnt the scarcest of Maclean's volumes of poetry; it is the one volume that is now available to purchase as print on demand.

--
contemporary review in The Athabaeum magazine
https://archive.org/stream/p1athenaeum1920lond/p1athenaeum1920lond_djvu.txt

Maclean (Murdoch). From Croft and Clachan. Deane &
Sons, 1919. 11 in. 80 pp. boards, 36 n. 821.9

Mr. Maclean is best in his most Scottish and conversational
pieces, such as " Requiescat in Pace." His serious verse is
often marred bv a stilted traditionalism of language. Lines
like

'Twas you who led my child astray
From virtue's path to ways of death ;
She died beside her infant's clay,
And curs'd you with her dying breath,

might have been written by a minor poet of the eighteenth
century.

Mac Tomais (Peadar). Songs of the Island Queen. Dublin,

Talbot Press (Fisher Unwin), 1919. 6 1 , -in. 39 pp. paper,

1 n. 821.9

Mr. Mac Tomais writes in a post-Swinburnian style tinged
with Celticisms. At moments, too, we are reminded of the
loud emphatic hurdy-gurdy of Rudyard Kipling. He sings
of Ireland oppressed, of

A people begotten of freemen,
Rocked in the cradle of song,
Fondled in the arms of beauty,
Fed on the milk of the stars,
And the food of immortal desire.

His poems will be admired, if they find admirers, not so much
for their literary beauty as for their political fervour.
-----
you didnt mention "The Wind in the Heather" published in 1931
'A new book of Scottish verse from the author of "Songs of a Roving Celt". His rhymes tell of the exiled Scot on the eve of his return to his native land and the thought of being once again in his beloved Highlands. Maclean revives memories of a well-remembered place where life seems always to be sweet, and shows up an old longing to be back there once again. He has Celtic fire and imagination, and possesses the gift of turning into verse these things which most of his countrymen feel.' (quoted on Amazon book page)

I wonder how many of the Maclean poems were set to music.

The Pibroch, Assynt Of The Shadows, The Sobbing Of The Spey, No More and The Call (Charles Villier Stanton composer - interesting article about him on Wikipedia)

A Duan of Barra (tune by Edmund Rubbra) has been recorded by Mark Chambers with The Caractacus String Quartet - Topic

Lament for Nurse Cavell (Malcolm Macfarlane set to music and provided Gaelic translation)

you would think Sleep Weel My Bairnie would be sung as well...
This novel quotes the poem as being sung: "Wild Rose of Promise"
By Ruth Carmichael Ellinger