Spotify https://open.spotify.com/track/4x8ePoqERQ9ODJliM5n3jf?si=74da7c3412764d85
Music
When Steve suggested we needed a song to introduce the Highsands fishing community a light went on in my head and I remembered an instrumental sketch which I had composed a few year ago inspired whilst sailing across to the outer Hebrides with my two young sons on a fishing trip. My mother was raised in a small fishing village on a peninsula just north of Stornaway and I spent many happy childhood holidays on the island visiting her family. I loved the rich welcoming aroma of peat fires as one sailed the final few miles into harbour and for three weeks or so I would experience the simple and often hard lifestyle so beautifully described in John Mackay’s Hebridean trilogy. I felt the experiences and imagery which inspired the musical sketch were very much in tune with the Highsands way of life.
Lyrics
The song ‘Hey-o-hey’ is currently the second song in the show, and sets the scene for the story that is about to unfold. (Following the previous song ‘Her Lonely Way’, the village of Highsands is now formed and we are in the main time period of the show.)
Clare, her sister Anna, and Anna’s daughter Katherine, live in the coastal village of Highsands. Fishing is their livelihood, and they stand on the shore, with other women, calling to the fishermen out to sea, asking if the day has gone well. The fishermen respond and ask them to prepare to land the catch.
I was looking to develop a call and response lyric. A working song as the villagers land the catch, with a consistent unifying rhythm. Overall presenting a sense of community, a village idyll, whose traditions, and way of life, are dependent on the sea
Hey-o to sea
Hey-o-hey
What news from wave to shore
Hey-o from quay
Hey-o-hey
How bends the back and oar
Come kith and kin
See the catch in
Gather the daughter and fisher wife
Come kith and kin
Bring the catch in
Take hold and sharpen the herring knife
What can ye tell
Went the day well
All hands, all hands, for the fisherman
Hey-o from sea
Hey-o-hey
Ready where tide meets the land
Hey-o to quay
Hey-o-hey
Gather ye folk to the sand
Come kith and kin
Haul the boats in
Down to the shoreline one and all
Come kith and kin
Bring the boats in
Darlings of silver and mackerel
For we can tell
Went the day well
Raise up the boats to the pebble strand
Hey-o my friend
Hey-o-hey
Welcome from wave to the shore
Hey-o my friend
Hey-o-hey
Rest now the back and the oar
Hey-o-hey