Oh to be at Crowdieknowe

Here's the last of the volumes I picked up at 'Barter Books', when we were down in Northumberland a few weeks ago ...

... it's an illustrated biography of Hugh MacDiarmid, published in 1977 (the year before his death), to mark his 85th Birthday: I've never seen it before, and am pleased to report that this copy is in absolute pristine condition :-)

Here's the closing poem, as taken from within, which draws the volume to a close and concludes a wonderful pictorial (and poetic) record of MacDiarmid's life:


Crowdieknowe

Oh to be at Crowdieknowe
When the last trumpet blaws,
An see the deid come loupin owre
The auld grey wa’s

Muckle men wi tousled beards,
I grat at as a bairn
 ‘ll scramble frae the croodit clay
Wi feck o swearin.

An glower at God an a’ his gang
O angels i the lift
 - Thae trashy bleezin French-like folk
Wha gar’d them shift.

Fain the weemun-folk’ll seek
To mak them haud their row
 - Fegs, God’s no blate gin he stirs up
The men o Crowdieknowe!

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Hugh MacDiarmid (1892 - 1978)

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