Loss

Fisherman

(George Mackay Brown)

The west flushed, drove down its shutter

And night sealed all.

Peaceful the air, the sea.

A quiet scattering of stars.

The great ocean

Makes the gentlest of motions about the turning world,

A thin wash through the pebbles.

No moon this night.

The creels lie still on their weeded ledges.

Not a sound, except far inland

The yelp of a tinker's dog.

Three days ago, a storm blazed here, and drowned

Jock Halcrow among his lobsters.

There's one dark croft tonight in the lighted valley.

An inevitable consequence of living and making a living from the sea is, unfortunately, human loss. The Pentland Firth, in particular, has extracted a heavy cost in lives over the years : even in our age of GPS and high technology, the fundamental power of the waves  and currents will still claim victims periodically. Eight crew from the freighter Cemfjord were lost in one night in 2015, and individual tragedies, such as the one described  above in Fisherman are an ever-present danger.
I took the theme of this poem to create a slow air : I tried to evoke the still emptiness left in the wake of the loss of a loved one : it is not so much the immediate aftermath of a death, but the hole left in the days and months afterwards that is often most keenly felt.
https://soundcloud.com/morag-currie-342215588/fisherman

(Band: Morag- fiddle; Grant MacFarlane- accordion; Stuart Taylor- piano; Andrew Herrington- bass)

This is a solo viola recording of Da Auld Swaara, an old Shetland tune mourning the loss of a fisherman: again, there is a sense of stillness and space in the music which is emphasised by the tune's uneven meter. This unusual 6/4 time signature is played freely, with a nod towards the Nordic tradition of emphasising the first and third beats of the tune throughout.
https://soundcloud.com/morag-currie-342215588/da-auld-swaara