Back in the days before digitalisation,
when recording was real musician's work (and we remember it well; one
stoked, one regulated the steam pressure, one at the sound controls and
the rest in the recording room), we started our very first album with a
clap of thunder and this song.
Many miles of tape have passed through the time coder
since, and sound engineers no longer require hard hats and protective
footwear. Nine albums later, this being the tenth, much has
changed. For example, ye olde plastic long playing record album has
nearly, like the dinosaur and the dodo, disappeared from the planet.
Happily, some things remain full of life. This Robert Tannahill song
is one of them. Whether you caught this one the first time round or
not, we hope you enjoy our reworking of this fine song. It is, in
fact, the song with everything: the starless night, the hooting
owls, thunder, lightning, the lot. Straight out of Transylvania,
which as every Scot will tell you, is just outside Paisley, the birthplace
of this song.
Our hero, sack of grain on back, is looking for a 24
hour windmill when he decides he would rather visit his true love.
This is when he becomes afraid. Not of the thunder, lightning,
hooting owls or eerie shadows in the forest, however, but of his true
love's father. He's afraid of waking him, thus relegating the visit
to one of the formal variety.
The tune we have tagged on to the end of the song is
The Noose and the Ghillie by P. Gautier.