I Want To See A Fire Kindled On This Earth
Why have I talked like this, in this extreme sort of way? Well, perhaps in part because of some secret certainty that after all it is not so extreme as it is merely unusual to the ordinary ear—or because I no longer know how to speak from my heart in any other way. But really, at bottom, it is because wherever I go I am looking those who have ears for this kind of music. For I want to see a fire kindled on this earth, and I must try to find the dry hard fuel which the flame ever loveth.
I am looking for him who has grown into a new roughness, and untamedness, and wickedness. I am looking for him who at heart is a warrior, who never knows when he has had enough, who never knows when he is beaten and who therefore is never beaten. I love him who a dream hath possessed, and who thereafter knoweth not how to live on this earth at all, except to be hand and feet to it, and eyes and tongue to it! I love him who is filled with a divine impatience, who cannot wait to go to some heaven or for some revolution to come around the corner, but must take the whole living glory of life as he sees it and struggle to incarnate it here and now, even though it be in the face of a society set against him!
I love him who knows what it is to be drunken, but drunk with a drunkenness that leaves no bad taste in the morning! I love him who at heart is a gambler, but for whom it is not enough to stake nickels or dollars, even though it be dollars by the thousand or million, but who has found that which for him is so real that he stands ready not only to stake but even to lose everything that he has, and in the very losing to laugh!
I love him who is a child, him who is a fool, him who is reckless and spendthrift of himself! I love those men who ever come like Pied Pipers, ever luring men, bewitching men, enchanting men, by the music of their song, and by the irresistibleness of their dance, away from the walled village where life is so safe and stuffy and shut in, to strip themselves, to set before themselves the highest heights, knowing no height high enough to pitch their tents; knowing the highest height only as a point from which to take off on outspread wings, to soar in the golden rays of the sun.
I want to see a fire kindled on this earth, and this is the kind of fuel it will take. It may have to be a very small fire but it matters not so long as its flame be one of unspeakable beauty and great steadiness. But it is difficult to keep one stick burning alone, on the snow, in the face of an icy wind. Yet with just a handful of sticks one can sometimes start quite a fire. It has happened more than once. But where is the handful of sticks? Where are those few who are willing to burn, and to be burnt up, in order that there may be light in this night, and warmth in this coldness? Where is the fuel which the flame ever loveth, ever longeth to lick with its love, and to make one with itself? Where is the handful of sticks?
-William Gayley Simpson “Toward the Rising Sun”
“Flame of Wrath” by Donald Mor MacCrimmon (1570-1640). Composed in a spirit of vengeance and played by the composer during the burning of Kintail in retaliation for the village’s refusal to turn over his younger brother’s murderer.
Donald MacCleod’s drones whir like a swarm of hornets in this recording from old vinyl.
Chilling. Thank you for sharing Jimmy.
Makes me want to learn how to play tbh.
As far as the learning of pipes goes, the reading of the following passage from Neil Munro’s “The Lost Pibroch” is what sent me irretrievably down the path of my own bagpipe journey. While it’s not something I would wish upon anyone else, I am now incapable of separating myself from it, so be careful what you wish for, Blake.
“To the make of a piper go seven years of his own learning and seven generations before. If it is in, it will out, as the Gaelic old-word says; if not, let him take to the net or sword. At the end of his seven years one born to it will stand at the start of knowledge, and leaning a fond ear to the drone, he may have parley with old folks of old affairs. Playing the tune of the “Fairy Harp,” he can hear his forefolks, plaided in skins, towsy-headed and terrible, grunting at the oars and snoring in the caves; he has his whittle and club in the “Desperate Battle” (my own tune, my darling!), where the white-haired sea-rovers are on the shore, and a stain’s on the edge of the tide; or, trying his art on Laments, he can stand by the cairn of kings, ken the colour of Fingal’s hair, and see the moon-glint on the hook of the Druids!”