Retromode

These retro, stylised black birds are some of my favourite ceramic pieces, simple elegant shapes cast in earthenware with a black, satin or matte glaze. The tallest is about 12cm high. Unsigned, they probably date from the 1950s/1960s and are similar to pieces by Midwinter and Hornsea. I’m not sure if they represent a particular species of bird but I like to think of them as blackbirds.

These pie funnels, however, are definitely blackbirds, not quite four and twenty of them, though they probably have been baked in a pie. Blackbirds are such a welcome sight in the garden, signalling the beginning of spring. One of the loveliest sounds of early spring is the blackbird’s song, singing his heart out in the early hours of the morning or on a still evening, full of joy after the long, dreich winter here in the Highlands of Scotland. One morning this spring a pair of blackbirds fluttered just above my head amongst the white blossom of a cherry tree – a beautiful image which has stayed with me.

Speaking of blackbirds recalls a lovely song, ‘Morning has Broken’, which I remember Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam) singing in the early 1970s. Only recently, I learned that before it was performed by Cat Stevens, the song was a popular Christian hymn, first published in 1931, with words by English poet Eleanor Farjeon and set to a traditional Scottish Gaelic melody. An earlier Christmas carol, ‘Child in the Manger, Infant of Mary’, was written by poet, Mary MacDonald (1789-1872) of Bunessan on the Isle of Mull, Scotland, and set to this melody. When her carol was translated from Scottish Gaelic and published in 1888, the melody was named ‘Bunessan’ after her birthplace. In 1931 the editors of the hymnbook ‘Songs of Praise’ asked Eleanor Farjeon to write a hymn to the melody and since its publication ‘Morning Has Broken’ has become the hymn most identified with the tune, although other hymns have been set to it, including ‘Baptised in Water’.

In Gaelic, Bunessan means ‘foot of the little waterfall’.

There is a surprisingly long history to this lovely melody which I have always associated with the 1970s.