Re: O'er Roslin

[Niven Sinclair <niven@niven.co.uk>]

At 16:56 10/07/99 -0500, you wrote:
>While staying at the Roslin Glen Hotel last month, I noticed the poem
O'er Roslin framed and hanging in the entrance to the bar. I have been
trying to find a copy of it here in the states with no luck. Would
someone please type the text and send it to me? Thank You.
>Donald Sinclair.
> 
>
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Dear Donald,

You can contact Archie and Jennie (the owners of Roslin Glen Hotel) on
roslinglen@aol.com and I'm sure they will
be only too happy to send you a copy of the poem "O'er
Roslin".

May I add my favourite poem.  It is simply called:


      O R C A D I A 


      "The Land of the Engrailed Cross"

Land of thw hirlpool - torrent - foam,
Where oceans meet in maddening shock;
The beetling cliff - the shelving holm -
The dark, insidious rock:
Land of the bleak, the treeless moor-
The sterile mountain, sered and riven;
The shapeless cairn, the ruined tower,
Scathed by the bolts of heaven;
The yawning gulf - the treacherous sand -
I love thee still, my native land.

Land of the dark - the runic rhyme -
The mystic ring - the cavern hoar -
The Scandinavian seer - sublime
In legendary lore:
Land of a thousand sea-kings' graves -
Those tameless spirits of the past,
Fierce as their subject Arctic waves,
Or hyperborean blast:
Though polar billows round thee foam,
I Love thee! Thou wert once my home.

With glowing heart, and island lyre,
Ah! would some native bard arise
To sing with all the poet's fire
Thy stern sublimities;
The roaring flood - the rushing stream,
The promontory wild and bare,
The pyramids where seabirds scream
Aloft in middle air;
The Druid temple on the heath,
Old, even beyond tradition's breath.

Though I have roamed through verdant glades,
In cloudless climes, 'neath azure skies;
Or plucked from beauteous orient meads
Flowers of celestial dyes.
Though I have laved in limpid streams,
That murmur over golden sands;
Or basked amid the fulgid beams
That flame o'er fairer lands;
Or stretched me in the sparry grot, -
My country! Thou were ne'er forgot.

- David Vedder 


As we are two nations divided by a single language and, as there has
already been some criticism about the archaic form
of English which we are obliged to use when quoting from historic
papers,  I hope the under-mentioned explanations will
allow your subscribers to appreciate the descriptive beauty of this
particular poem.    Essentially, it is about the 200 islands           
in the North Atlantic which formed the base of the Sinclair pyramid of
land and sea power in the 14th Century.

Even today, when I visit Orkney and/or Shetland, I feel as if I am
walking on my own turf.   
   
meads = meadows 
holm = island
sparry = relating to spar or coal - in this instance meaning black
grot = grotto
laved = washed
fulgid = shining
runic = 'of a rune' .  A rune being a character of an ancient Germanic
language which was principally used in the Scandinavian
                            countries and examples of which are to be
found in the United States e.g. The Kensington rune stone.

Niven Sinclair 



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