Friday August 26th

Liddesdale

(Part 1)

Call reiver, ride lord

Forth into battle, grey stones

Wash’d red with fresh blood

Land of cruel law

Debateable on both sides

No rule but our own

Centuries the same

But sons move away, no more,

Sheep replace people

A village is built

Street, house, civilisation

But under, red blood

Veneer, just surface

Old feuds die hard, man fighting

For his grandfather

(Part 2)

Mist slowly ascends

Revealing valley and hills

Sun-washed with gold light

Grass, bent and waving

In winds from the north, so cold

All colour bleeds out

White dots green hillside

So pretty from far away

Up close, bleak and bare

Curlew’s song echoes

High above reeds and heather

Where sheep rule, not man

Afternoon, sun set

Red light at the daylight gate

Looks warm, this deep cold

As twilight falls, dusk

Spreads grey and down-soft feathers

Over tired landscape

Black hill ‘gainst black sky

Strange now, starlit and moon-bathed

Sleeps this land till dawn

(Part 3)

Doctor Beeching took

Away our railway, left us

Stranded, with just roads

Trees, rows of green trees

March, rank’d and order’d o’er hills

The new invaders

Tractors in fields now

Where many men used to be

Now men make biscuits

Strangers now live here

Have reiv’d for themselves a place

Debateable home

The valley has changed

Commuter belt prices mean

No homes for old clans

(c) CP Brooks 2005