Genealogy Poetry Challenge: Scotland

For 11 years, Bill West, a retired bookseller with a computer and an interest in genealogy and history, has hosted an annual genealogy poetry challenge.

Anyone is welcome to join the challenge. All you have to do is blog a poem or song (or in my case, both) about the region in which at least one of your predecessors resided. Within the post, share how that poem/song relates to your ancestors’ lives.

My spouse and I both have Scottish roots with many of those ancestors being Highlanders. My spouse’s father’s maternal line boasts the Broughman clan. In his mother’s paternal line are these surnames: McHenry, McClelland,  Kinkead, Moore, and McGinnis. In my father’s paternal line, I have Ferguson. In my mother’s maternal line, there is Moore, while her paternal line is laden with Campbell, Fleming, Hay, McCoy, Graham, Gordon, Stewart, Montgomerie, Douglas, and Sinclair kin.

In honor of these Scottish ancestors, especially those who left their homeland for a new land, I have chosen for this year’s challenge a poem/song written in 1789 by Robert Burns titled, My Heart’s in the Highlands. It is sung to the tune Fáilte na Miosg:

Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North,
The birth-place of Valour, the country of Worth;
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.

My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
My heart’s in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer;
Chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart’s in the Highlands, wherever I go.

Farewell to the mountains, high-cover’d with snow,
Farewell to the straths and green vallies below;
Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods,
Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.

My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
My heart’s in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer;
Chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart’s in the Highlands, wherever I go.

~by Robert Burns