We don’t know who chose it, but OneKind is delighted that the opening of the new session of the Scottish Parliament (Friday 1 July) will include Robert Burns’ beautiful love song Now Westlin Winds.
The song, to be given by renowned folk singer Karine Polwart, evokes the thoughts of the weary farmer at the end of the day as he looks over his fields of waving grain, thinks of his love, and muses on the beauty of nature. He sings of the wild birds and the different habitats they choose:
The partridge loves the fruitful fells
The plover loves the mountain
The woodcock haunts the lonely dells
The soaring hern the fountain
Through lofty groves the cushat roves
The path of man to shun it
The hazel bush o'erhangs the thrush
The spreading thorn the linnet
But the poet knows that autumn brings something more than the westlin winds - the “slaughtering guns” come too. He protests at the jarring assumption that wild creatures are subject to human domination:
Avaunt! Away! the cruel sway,
Tyrannic man's dominion
The sportsman's joy, the murdering cry
The fluttering, gory pinion.
We at OneKind have long claimed Robert Burns as “one of us”. To his profound understanding of human nature, he added a genuine care for the animals that shared his environment. To him, the slightest “sleekit, cow’rin tim’rous beastie” - a field mouse - was worthy of his protection. The sight of a hare, wounded and left to bleed, made him curse the “barb’rous art” and “murder-aiming eye” of the shooter, and mourn that he would no longer see her “sporting o’er the dewy lawn”.
Can we – we wonder – interpret the choice of this song as an indication that the Scottish Government plans to do more to protect the wonders of nature, including animals? The last session left too much undone, with domestic animal legislation apparently stalled, the disappointing refusal to ban cruel snares, and only partial progress towards protecting seals from killing, even during their breeding seasons. It would be good to see the wind change direction soon.
Karine Polwart describes Now Westlin Winds aptly as “a statement of deep ecology, a musing upon our human impact on the environment”. Optimistically, OneKind plans to see its inclusion as a hint of better things to come for animals. And so, on this important day, we invite the Scottish Government, all the recently-elected MSPs, and all their guests to join us in echoing the song:
Come let us stray our gladsome way
And view the charms of nature
The rustling corn, the fruited thorn
And every happy creature.
Yes, every happy creature. Wouldn’t that be a great motto for the next five years?