A Wee Guest Poem: Brian Hill

Uamh an Oir / Cave of Gold

This is a film of Brian Hill's moving tribute to musician, Martyn Bennet.

Martyn Bennet was a Scottish musician who made music with traditional roots in a very modern idiom. You can hear some and find out more at http://www.martynbennett.com/ . Martyn died in 2005 of Hodgkin's Lymphoma.

Brian Hill explains:  I'd been listening to Martyn's stuff for some time and I knew he had cancer but his musical drive seemed too strong to be stopped. When he died, I was quite shocked and I wrote the poem used in the video. The title is borrowed from a traditional Gaelic song which was performed by his mother (and, according to her, recorded in a dungeon in Linlithgow Palace). The song is about a piper who enters the Cave of Gold and who says: 'Many a young maid in bloom of youth/Will pass away, will pass away/Ere I come, ere I return'. Margaret Bennet very kindly gave me the words in Gaelic and in translation.

In 2007, I made the video for the FilmG Gaelic film competition. For that I had the poem translated into Gaelic and voiced by a proper Gaelic speaker. The music is Uamh an Oir/Cave of Gold sung by Margaret Bennett, recorded and mixed by Martyn. The film made the short-list in the competitiion, which was nice. The Gaelic version is here, by the way - http://youtu.be/hsDuvEiBFq8