Canal du Midi: A Flower of Scotland (#710)
There are surprises that are carefully advertised as surprises and consequently surprise nobody.
And then there are the real ones.
One evening aboard Saraphina, our barge on the Canal du Midi, Captain Finn casually announced that there would be a surprise before dinner.
That was all he said.
We were moored against the bank of the canal, somewhere in that wonderfully indeterminate world that exists between one French village and the next. The engines were silent. The day's cruising was over. Beyond the barge were the trees, vineyards and countryside of southern France. The canal itself had settled into the stillness of evening.
Then Gordon arrived.
He was a musician associated with the Scottish folk group Off The Boat, and Captain Finn had arranged for him to come aboard and play for us.
What followed became one of the highlights of the entire week.
Off The Boat
Off The Boat is a Scottish folk and Celtic group transplanted, rather wonderfully, from Edinburgh to France.
The duo is generally billed as Goggs and Marko, two musicians from Edinburgh whose friendship goes back more than 30 years. Their music draws upon Scottish and Celtic traditions but is not imprisoned by them. Their repertoire includes traditional songs, contemporary folk, covers and their own compositions, performed with combinations of acoustic guitar, Irish bouzouki, harmonica and percussion. Above all, there are the voices and harmonies.
Goggs and Marko describe themselves as bringing the music of Scotland to France, and there is something rather appropriate about that. Scottish music has always traveled well. It belongs in pubs and halls, certainly, but also beside fires, around tables, on boats - and, as we discovered, beside a 17th-century French canal.
Their performances have been described as intimate and passionate rather than grand theatrical productions. That was certainly the Gordon we heard aboard Saraphina.
There was no stage. No auditorium. No rows of seats.
Just a handful of people on a barge moored beside the Canal du Midi, listening to a man with a guitar as evening settled over France.
It was difficult to imagine a better concert hall.
A Request
At some point, Gordon asked for requests.
I had one.
Flower of Scotland.
My connection with the song comes from a very different setting.
Rugby.
As an Australian, I first came to know Flower of Scotland by listening to Scottish crowds sing it before international rugby matches.
Anyone who has heard tens of thousands of Scots sing it before a rugby match will understand that it is much more than a sporting anthem.
The first voices begin.
Then thousands join them.
And something happens.
The stadium changes.
Flower of Scotland was written in the 1960s by Roy Williamson of The Corries, but its subject reaches back centuries, recalling Robert the Bruce's victory over Edward II's English army at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314.
Over time, the song escaped from the folk repertoire and became an unofficial Scottish national anthem, particularly associated with rugby and football.
It is a song about Scotland.
But also, about memory. About resistance. About belonging. And, perhaps most importantly, about longing for a country to remain worthy of those who came before.
There is defiance in it, certainly.
But there is melancholy too.
That is what makes it haunting.
Gordon Sang
And so, sitting aboard a barge in southern France, I asked Gordon if he would sing it.
He did.
I have heard Flower of Scotland many times. I have heard recordings of it. I have heard it sung by crowds before rugby matches. I have heard it performed with all the ceremony and emotion that accompanies an international sporting contest.
But I had never heard it quite like this.
There were no thousands of voices behind him.
There was just one.
And somehow that made the song more powerful rather than less.
The great roar of Murrayfield Stadium had disappeared. What remained was the song itself.
Gordon slowed it down and allowed the words and melody to breathe. The familiar tune seemed different in the quiet of the barge. The notes hung for a moment in the air before disappearing across the canal.
Scotland had somehow arrived in France.
I found myself thinking about all those rugby matches between Australia and Scotland. I could picture the Scottish supporters standing shoulder to shoulder, singing words that I had gradually learned simply by hearing them again and again.
But this time I wasn't in a stadium.
I was sitting on Saraphina.
A barge on the Canal du Midi.
Dinner was still to come.
The water was almost motionless.
And Gordon was singing Flower of Scotland a few feet away.
It was one of the most moving renditions of the song I have ever heard.
Perhaps intimacy changes music.
A song sung by 60,000 people can be overwhelming because of its power. The same song sung by one person, close enough that you can watch his fingers move across the guitar strings, can be overwhelming for precisely the opposite reason.
There is nowhere for the emotion to hide.
The Best Surprises
Travel is supposedly about places.
We construct itineraries around them. Paris. Aix-en-Provence. The Camargue. Béziers. Narbonne. Carcassonne. We photograph buildings, landscapes and monuments. We visit cathedrals and museums. We eat in restaurants we have carefully researched.
And then, every so often, something happens that wasn't on the itinerary.
Those moments can become the ones we remember most clearly.
A Scottish musician boards a barge on a French canal.
A captain smiles because he knows what is about to happen.
Someone asks for a song.
And for a few minutes Edinburgh, Murrayfield Stadium, Australia and the Canal du Midi somehow occupy exactly the same place.
When the final notes of Flower of Scotland faded, there was that brief silence that sometimes follows a truly moving performance - the moment before anyone wants to break what has just happened.
Then came the applause.
Dinner followed.
The barge remained tied quietly to the bank.
Captain Finn's surprise had worked.
He and Gordon had given us something no itinerary could have promised:
A memory.
And somewhere along the Canal du Midi, I will forever hear a Scotsman singing of the flower of Scotland.
Further Information
Flower of Scotland Live! https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=508562761513932
Off The Boat.
Comments