Robert Macfarlane in Tomintoul, Scotland - between 2000 and 2009

from The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot, pages 203-205:

My grandfather’s funeral occurred in the modest church in the village of Tomintoul […] As we filed out of the church, the organist struck up with ‘The Road to the Isles’. It’s a well-known Scottish folk song of nineteenth-century music-hall origin – rife with pseudo-Gaelicisms and tinged with remembered Jacobitism – about dreamed-of western landscapes, the open road that leads to them and the foot-travel by which they will be reached. It plays with the walk west to the Hebrides as a walk in the direction of loss, a journey towards the setting sun. …   more >>

cite as

Robert Macfarlane, The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot (2012), p. 203-205. https://led.kmi.open.ac.uk/entity/lexp/1420480595507 accessed: 29 March, 2024

location of experience: Tomintoul, Scotland

Listeners

Robert Macfarlane
University lecturer and writer
1976-

Listening to

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'The Road to the Isles'

Experience Information

Date/Time between 2000 and 2009
Medium live
Listening Environment in the company of others, indoors, outdoors, in public

Notes

Music heard at a funeral


Originally submitted by lcc5 on Mon, 05 Jan 2015 17:56:35 +0000
Approved on Tue, 21 Nov 2017 09:50:22 +0000