David Heavenor: Music

I was thinking about the Scottish west coast island of Iona as I was looking back at some old photo albums from time spent there with an old friend. I remember having the impression that it was impossible for human beings to really own the land in contrast to that possessive sense that leads to so much hatred and bloodshed throughout history. Not a rational moment of course and hardly a mantra of the mortage industry but these things come over you and defy explanation. Religions try and 'own' God to manipulate their followers usually to possess them or get them to hate. I was re-reading Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson a writer I love because of his associations with Edinburgh. The green drove road of the song is similar to the route taken by Davie Balfour at the start of his fated journey to The House of Shaws.

THE GREEN DROVE ROAD

I walked the green drove road
Past lochans lined in mist
My map was cracked and worn
I didn’t care, I just kept on
A village cast in stone
A history in ruins
Now the island lies ahead
Some secret there I’d read
I never took your name in vain
Iona lies here in my arms again.


The truth is hard to face
But it frees you in its grace
Beyond the dogma’s stain
Upon your Christian name
You don’t know who you are
Nothing ever is conceived
Where everything’s revealed
By someone else’s star
I never took your name in vain
Iona lies here in my arms again.


Many roads are crossed
To raise the pattern from the dust
And love from lonliness
And stars through storms
If I give you my onliness
Will you lie here dreaming
In my arms?

A name now etched in stone
To know as we are known
A figure scopes the hill
A serpent spins around a well
How can you every grasp?
How can you ever own?
The mercury of love
Deep riven in your soul
I never took your name in vain
Iona lies here in my arms again.