Liam,
There were many times when your Reunion Concert was my companion. I played that tape so many times that I knew the running order of the songs. I knew each line spoken and each word sung. Only in my car could I ever sing along, I would have been thrown out of anywhere else.
You could make even asking people if they had no homes to go to into a work of art. The concert comes to its farewell point with words from William Shakespeare
“Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep”.
An then you sang, ‘Will ye go, lassie, go?’ and that song made me cry when I was 21 and the tears still come now.
Oh the Summer time is coming
And the trees are sweetly blooming
And the wild mountain thyme
grows around the blooming heather
Will ye go lassie go . . .
And we’ll all go together
To pull wild mountain thyme
From around the blooming heather
Will ye go lassie go
I will build my love a bower
Near yon pure crystal fountain
And on it I will pile
All the flowers of the mountain
Will ye go lassie go . . .
If my true love she were gone
I will surely find no other
Where wild mountain thyme
grows around the blooming heather
Will ye go lassie go . . .
Sleep well, Liam, rest a while, the summertime is coming.