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    Jez Hellard & The Djukella Orchestra

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    1. Now Westlin Winds

    From the recording The Fruitful Fells

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    Now Westlin Winds

    Jez Hellard & The Djukella Orchestra
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    Now Westlin Winds - Robert Burns
    For Yasmine Zarrouk, my father, Dick Gaughan & Alastair’s dog Sampson

    I’ve loved the music and uncompromising spirit of Dick Gaughan since first hearing snippets as a teenager, and some years ago when we first met, he provided me with a deep sense of affirmation and indeed inspiration with one characteristically blunt comment. I had just played an opening set for him at Bath Folk Club and we were outside smoking in the set-break. He’d been deeply impressed that I’d sung a reggae song at a folk club and everyone had loved it. I mentioned that tuning my guitar mostly in DADGAD, I’d often have guitarists coming up to me saying that tuning in such a way is “cheating” as it makes picking tunes easier. Before I could get in my punchline, Dick chirped in saying, “I hope you tell them to fuck off!”, which ranks amongst the greatest compliments I’ve ever received”

    His seminal arrangement of Robert Burns’ Now Westlin’Winds has echoed in my head for many years, but it wasn’t until very recently that I ever thought to sing it. Returning from Alastair Caplin’s wedding to all-round powerhouse, Leonie, where we’d been positively bathed in Burns; the congregation consisting largely of the cast and crew of Band of Burns who’d recently been touring to great acclaim, I was caught in a hideous rainstorm somewhere in the Cairngorms, pulled over and whilst trying to tune the radio, caught a brief weather report which told me that though the east was driech, the west coast of Scotland was looking forward to a glorious sunny spell. Having spent the year so far driving furiously from Kent to Cornwall, Scotland to Germany and back to Scotland again, I was blessed with a couple of days with no schedule, so about-turned, and headed west to the considerably longer but far more rewarding way south.

    I spent a couple of days exploring a bit of Glen Nevis and Glencoe, where I found a sunny place to park and learned the song perched on the step of the van, from the antique copy of Burns’ Poetical Works Yasmine had bought me years before at a Ramsgate street fair, balanced on my knee, and ruffled most distractingly by the very same westlin winds. Since then it’s pretty much the first song I think to play when picking up my guitar. Deepest thanks to the gentlemen of the orchestra for their breathtaking subtlety.

    Published in 1786, it remains one of the most perfectly seductive love songs, and an invaluable guide to the birds and bushes of the British countryside.

    Lyrics

    Now westlin winds and slaught’ring guns
    Bring Autumn's pleasant weather
    The moorcock springs on whirring wings
    Among the blooming heather
    Now waving grain, wlde o'er the plain
    Delights the weary farmer
    And the moon shines bright as I rove at night
    To muse upon my charmer.

    The partridge loves the fruitful fells
    The plover loves the mountains
    The woodcock haunts the lonely dells
    The soaring tern the fountains
    Through lofty groves the cushat roves
    The path of man to shun it
    The hazel bush o'erhangs the thrush
    The spreading thorn the linnet

    Thus every kind their pleasure find
    The savage and the tender
    Some social join, and leagues combine
    Some solitary wander
    Avaunt, away, the cruel sway
    Tyrannic man's dominion
    The sportsman's joy, the murd’ring cry
    The flutt’ring gory pinion

    But Peggy dear, the evening's clear
    Thick files the skimming swallow
    The sky is blue, the field's in view
    All fading green and yellow
    Come let us stray our gladsome way
    And view the charms of Nature
    The rustling corn, the fruited thorn
    And ev’ry happy creature

    We'll gently walk, and sweetly talk
    Till the silent moon shines clearly
    I'll grasp thy waist and, fondly prest
    Swear how I love thee dearly
    Not vernal show’rs to budding flow’rs
    Not autumn to the farmer
    So dear can be as thou to me
    My fair, my lovely charmer.

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