Louis MacNeice speaks about, and recites, Bagpipe Music

MacNeice's fun poem about cultural change, written at a time when the folk culture of the Scottish Highlands was being replaced by modern commercialism. Also see luckdial.wordpress.com/2012/10...

[@gerardhamilton6928]

‘Though you break the bloody glass you can’t hold up the weather’ - read this in a second hand history book from the early 1970s, Googled, ended up here and pleased to have done so! Compelled to re listen more closely. Thank you for uploading.

[@btbmgmt7995]

This is wonderful. Thanks so much for sharing. Louis was the love of my grandmother, Mary Wimbush's life. I was raised in a home with his picture on the wall and always loved hearing stories of him from my dear grandmother. To be able to hear Louis recite his magnificent work is so special for me. Cant believe I'm just now seeing this.
Thanks again!

[@PhilipMaltman]

BTB MGMT I believe that a friend of mine, sadly no longer with us, Anne Murray, was a friend of your grandmother’s. Both were actresses I think.

[@jaybiskwee1138]

superb work

[@VictorRobertFarrell]

Moving. Beyond Brilliant.

[@Lindsay211251]

Never mind the Highlands, the Lowlands whatever - this is what was/is happening everywhere.

[@annettecboehm]

Thanks so much for sharing this! So cool to hear him read / recite this himself.

[@chriscooke5096]

I love you Sis

[@ShaneBordoli]

Thanks so much for this

[@Earnest66]

Visionary.

[@MrBarrowa]

A wonderful poem. The last stanza is desperately chilling.

[@davidkalugerovich2847]

I love the last stanza - turns the whole thing round

[@ShaneBordoli]

I find it strangely inspiring at the end

[@sansumida]

No 861 in The New Oxford Book of English Verse😊
Poem starts at 0:57.

[@danielshaw6610]

Any chance you could let me know where you found this? Would love to know where/when it was recorded etc. Cheers!

[@Caspar33]

Grateful for this. Thanks. It was surprising to hear that he sounded, in the reading, a little like Auden. Or was it perhaps, the other way round?

[@andrewnorris2]

This is my first time, too, to hear his voice. It certainly is a voice from the past, delightful.

[@Kilkelly899]

***** They were mates in Oxford together so it could stem from then. Too much time spent talking and writing poetry with each other was bound to have their styles come together at some stage.

[@arrancockroft2834]

Fred Proud either way

[@n.g.a.e.g.4534]

Cleaners from Venus .... its no go

[@Mazurka1001]

Rare find.

[@Jlipnicki]

Better poet than Eliot or Pound.

[@michaelboylan5308]

A brilliant poem,,but his insistence that the folk culture of the Highlands and Islands was dying and that the new slick urban culture was bound to supersede it was cultural fatalism of the very worst kind,The urban culture wasnt culture but commercialism,, And did he never speak to Hugh MacDiarmid

[@lynthornton9638]

Lyn Thornton. Absolute genius!