Weekly Chat, Sunday, October 24, 2010

The talk of steam engines and whales have reminded me of my favourite ballad.

I first became aware of this song at 8.25am on 15 April 1999 playing on Radio 5. I heard it on the radio and immediately it became a must have. The problem was that I did not know the name of the song or the artist.

Also the BBC broke off for a report about Pinochet and I thought I might never find out. Well I e-mailed the BBC to ask them what was playing at 8.25am on 15th April.

Meanwhile the tune rang in my head for three days.

Three weeks later they had not replied so I e-mailed them again to ask them to least tell me that they were not going to tell me.

An e-mail came back and this was the reply.   Farweel Tae Tarwathie.    Enjoy.

Lyrics

This includes so many of our topics, bears, birds and whales. Apparently Tarwathie was big on the steam engines.

Thanks for the new week Tiger - very neat summary - but don't forget Phoebe, I am sure she'll put in a few appearances this week!

Annette - sensible decision about laptop, I would say.

Sunny start here - with frost.

Morning all,

Thanks for the precis of last week Tiger.

ChrisyB/Annette: The reason that the the bowl of catfood was out is that we look after a neighbours cat when they are on holiday. The trouble is that the cat has now adopted us and spends more time on our doorstep than at neighbours house. I have known for some time that there were hedgehogs around as I saw one scuttling across the street one evening plus there have been droppings around. No idea why it stayed to get its picture taken. I suspect hunger overcame shyness.

Nice and sunny at the moment although it was cold when I took Hamish out.

Tiger - listened to whaling ballad then looked it up - tune is older than lyrics - but original poem had 16 verses - written in 1857 - 100 years before the song was first recorded.

Unknown said:

Tiger - listened to whaling ballad then looked it up - tune is older than lyrics - but original poem had 16 verses - written in 1857 - 100 years before the song was first recorded.

Interesting. I take it you have heard it before?

ChloeB. Really nice moon picture.

Chloe - thanks for lovely moon pics - I was chasing it around while out yesterday evening but never could get decent compostion with little camera through window - country road too winding to stop and set one up!

Tiger - this one has been recorded by a number of artists, and I am sure I will have heard it before, but there are so many beautiful Scots and Irish ballads around, I don't remember them all!  Just know I like this kind of music because you can actually hear the words while enjoying such lovely melodies!!

Thank you re the moon pics, shame you couldn't get one yourself OG, and Alan, forgot to say, loved your pic of hedgie.

We shan’t get to church – got too interested on here!  OH is now following info about area around Strichen, in Buchan, which is where Tarwathie farm was - maybe still is?

So I will now continue with holiday!  Our last day began with Cromford Mill – full of Arkwright history, too much to go into here!  It is now part of a World Heritage Site – oh dear, I may have said this before in reply to somebody who mentioned Belper!?!   We continued to Carsington Water – a huge storage reservoir used to top up the system serving the big East Midlands cities.  The water was very low, but there were still plenty of Waterfowl – including the largest concentration of Coots I have ever seen.  Here is a view of one little inlet full of Coots and Ducks :

Lapwing in flight:

And finally a Cormorant hanging himself out to dry after a dive (poor definition due to much cropping):