Brenda G Macrow

I didn’t go to the hills this weekend but I did drink too much which means I’m fumbling about at home on a Sunday evening looking for something tangible. The Crows outside are starting-up with their bedtime routines, cackling and posturing on their way down the field towards the woods. I’ve dug out my Brenda Macrow books, their torn jackets and brittle pages always sooth me. The smell of dust, or trapped damp, or whatever it is these old books smell of is taking me back to Barter Books in Alnwick where we bought them, I can hear the little train rattling around overhead and the pointless ticking of a clock.

Brenda wrote beautiful prose and melodic poems that scratch away furiously at the clichés and weary language we use when describing the hills. She was digging for that jewel in us for which she readily confessed, there are no words. Yet she tried, and I think what she achieved was to express just how compelled she did feel to dig, and it’s that journey which she takes us on. She wasn’t satisfied to have something in her that couldn’t be explained, almost at odds with this love for the mountains, so great and raw that it overwhelmed and confused her. She was out of control, and I haven’t read anything else about the hills that conveys this reckless love so purely.

“On days like this…” is a short piece of prose that I have found to be the most honest of her attempts at rationalising her feelings and it is as much about what it is to be alive as it is about the mountains.

The whole piece is here: http://www.electricscotland.com/travel/hills/chapter37.htm    

This passage seems to be shouting, begging, pulling at the ankles of the reader. I could imagine it shouted by a street preacher at indolent passers-by, it’s her rallying cry to us all, do you not hear??

“Do you not hear the faery violins of the grasses as they bend and bow to the breeze? They are playing for you. The trees are touching their harps for you -- the heather-bells are murmuring a song which reaches out to all the lost and lonely places of your soul. You are happy for the sun-kissed summer flowers -- and sad for the broken reed at the edge of the mourning stream. Whatever else you have known or failed to know about life, you feel that this day will live forever in your heart.”

She goes on to say that “while the senses cry “This is madness" the spirit cries “This is real!” which is a brilliant description of that conflict within us, when standing in the mountains, contemplating a view with your conscious thought, thinking how this or that look amazing, incredible, yet inside your spirit, which never grapples around for meaning or ideas, is finally connected and crying out way beyond your disintegrating thoughts, out beyond the senses, beyond reasoning, a spirit in you is crying out this is real! Do you not hear?

Later on, perhaps describing herself:

“Down in the glen, the shaggy red cattle stand at peace under the tall trees and the woman at the bothy door forgets her weary task and looks away up into the mountains, with that in her eyes for which there are no words.”

Yes, there are no words Brenda, but there’s a cry and we hear it loud and clear. And you can hear it too, in the following poem which reads like a song, it forces you to sing it, it swings and heaves off the page. It’s possibly the most cheerful thing I’ve ever read. 

I WILL arise and go, and go to the mountain: Oh, I will arise out of my darkness, my sorrow, and go to the mountain. To the old ways and the wise ways: To the lost ways and the long ways. Where life is but a shadow that plays on the calm face of the mountain. 

I will cast off my shackles and flee to the mountain: Oh, I will cast off my shackles of care, of envy, and flee to the mountain: To the cool days and the still days: To the brave days and the blue days: Where Peace in blessing forever lays her hands on the brow of the mountain. 

And I shall find my soul again in the mountain. Oh, I shall find the soul that I lost in the City, there in the mountain. With the wild things and the shy things. The swift things and the sure things. And the night, a mysterious folding of wings on the broad breast of the mountain.

The shy things, what better term for wildlife? conjuring up swathes of fantasy and magic in us with the simplest of language. And what a beautiful way to spend a Sunday evening, bathing in passion for life. Here’s to Brenda and a life well lived.