Oh ma bairn, mo leanaibh (Oh my goodness, my child)

Twelfth in a series of Protest Music for the Current Crisis

Karine Polwart

I've been remiss in keeping up this series of protest songs largely because of my work protesting this administration on the streets of Middletown, and also working to produce a concert of protest music on October 11.

The day after Donald Trump was sworn in for his first term, gifted Scots singer and songwriter Karine Polwart was scheduled to open the 2017 Celtic Connection concert at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. She wrote I Burn But I am Not Consumed as an intentional and pointed commentary of the events the day before.

Weeks before, she shared her fledgling attempts at the song in a Facebook post which showed that this masterful poke in the eye was largely written in an afternoon.

I've been a fan of Polwart's music since an early, more pop oriented album Faultlines, but I recognized something there that I like to think Polwart recognized herself, a debt to folk and traditional music that began to emerge more strongly as the album releases progressed. Both her originals, and he interpretations of traditional songs, showed she was a marvelous songstress, with a deft hand for natural observation and poetic lyrics.

So when I saw a video posted the week after the inauguration, with Karine singing her song, on stage with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, I thought I was hearing the most amazing protest song ever written.

I BURN BUT I AM NOT CONSUMED

The most amazing thing about this song is an empathy Polwart demonstrates for a "lonely boy," gone terribly wrong, and a pity that he will likely never realize his own miserable smallness in the face of timeless nature.

I include the lyrics here, along with Polwart's spoken prologue, which is included on her recorded version, as it was in her performance at Celtic Connection.

I've been wondering, since the beginning of the second term, and every time the song rolls round on my playlist, just what Karine Polwart is thinking now.

On May 11th, 1930, a young woman called Mary Anne MacLeod, from Tong on The Isle of Lewis, stepped aboard the RMS Transylvania from Glasgow to New York City, in search of a better life. There, she met Frederick, whose father had emigrated to America from Germany as a 16 year old boy.

And together, Mary Anne and Frederick raised five children. 

Mary Anne’s middle son would return to Scotland years later, the home of his MacLeod ancestors, whose clan motto is: “I burn, but I am not consumed.”  And here - in the name of progress and profit - and executive golf - he would pit himself against time and tide, and in his wake, the shifting dunes at Balmedie in Aberdeenshire would never be the same.

The marbled, metamorphic rock of Lewis is two-thirds the age of Earth - amongst the oldest on our planet. It knows about power, and it’s seen a lot. And so I wondered: what might it have to say about the Inauguration - tomorrow in Washington DC - of the 45th President of the United States of America - Mary Anne Macleod's middle son, Donald? And this is what the rock told me.

Oh son of Lewis, lonely boy, 

hewn from granite, salt and sky 

upon a foreign shore: 

the ocean is a mirror gleam 

in which you see yourself, 

and nothing more. 

Three billion years of gravity, 

of strata forged in fire and earth, 

the stone crib of your mother’s birth, 

in which your forebears lie. 

I am alive. I am a tomb. 

I burn, but I am not consumed. 

I burn, but I am not consumed. 

Fish may swim at your command 

across The Atlantic to the land 

of dreams and self belief and boundless chance. 

An exile tale. An immigrant dance. 

You’re captain of a frigate now, 

So set your compass, raise the mast, 

Blow up the sails, 

Erase the past, and future, if you must. 

Together we can stand 

and watch the peat-land turn to dust. 

This is your apprenticeship: 

The Gulf Stream doesn’t know your name, 

nor does the splendid, blazing sun 

that alters how the currents run. 

The North wind never heard you roar: 

You’re fired! You’re fired! 

My back might burn, the blaze run wild, 

but I am not consumed, my child. 

The Minch whips up a spindrift storm. 

The machair shifts. The machair moans. 

From Uig Bay to Luskentyre, 

the gale blows fast, the tide flows higher. 

The shore erodes and disappears. 

And, meantime, you are stoking fears 

and stacking hope into a pyre. 

You strike a match. 

Oh ma bairn, mo leanaibh         

Oh ma bairn, mo leanaibh 

Your mother was a wee girl once, 

who played upon my rocky shore. 

And you, you are broken boy, 

and you want more and more and more. 

You build a tower. You build a wall, 

You live in fear that they might fall. 

You who see nothing but your own face 

in the sheen of The Hudson River. 

Oh ma bairn, mo leanaibh 

Oh ma bairn, mo leanaibh 

A balancing is yet to come, 

although by then you may be gone 

and leave a desert to your sons and daughters. 

Still, these waters, they will rise, 

the North Sea haar will cover your eyes, 

despite your appetite for lies. 

and your disregard for truth. 

Three billion years of gravity, 

of strata forged in fire and earth, 

the stone crib of your mother’s birth, 

in which your forebears lie. 

I am alive. I am a tomb. 

I burn, but I am not consumed. 

I burn, but I am not consumed.