Personal Blogs

Rùn-mòr (Scottish Gaelic) – A secret longing or 

 passion that quietly defines a person’s path in life.

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Echoes of Heritage: A Journey Through Music and Memory

In 1974, when I was in my late teens, I found myself at a crossroads. I shook off the friendships from my youth in search of something different. With no qualifications from school, I attended Cardonald College in Glasgow, aiming to gain the credentials needed to enter university.

During this transformative time, a chance encounter led to a significant pivot in my journey. One day, a man noticed I was watching a Scottish Gaelic programme on TV. The following week, he handed me a cassette of a Gaelic group called Na h-Òganaich (The Young Ones). I played it repeatedly, immersing myself until I could sing some of the Gaelic. This newfound interest soon led me to Runrig’s Play Gaelic album. Pardon the pun, but it felt like I was on a rocket to the moon. Those early experiences remind us that youth is a time of serendipity—someone hands you a cassette, and suddenly, something deep takes root in your soul, living with you eternally.

This nostalgic wave washed over me again last night when I attended a Runrig tribute concert performed by Beat the Drum at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. The audience, a gathering from the length and breadth of the UK, Ireland, and Europe, likely shared their own stories of how the Hebridean culture had influenced their lives.

Throughout the years, I've always felt a twinge of frustration about why destiny chose to drop me in Govan, Glasgow rather than the Hebrides. Now, in my later years, I've come to terms with being an outsider looking in. Yet, there's something profound and inexplicable that tugs at the edges of our consciousness, urging us to explore the realms of our heritage and the profound impact of music on our lives.

I mused on all this  as I watched Donnie Munroe, the former Runrig vocalist, traverse the rugged landscapes of Skye on a programme called Wilderness Walks. Skye was the place where he was raised. In an interview set against Skye's sweeping Cullins, Munroe spoke about the deep connection between music and the human soul. He recounted a poignant episode from Runrig's history—a concert in Ireland during the turbulent years of the Troubles.

The morning after the concert, a Catholic woman approached the band and blessing them. She shared a moving anecdote: her family had attended the concert, and upon returning home, the strife that often pervaded their lives was momentarily forgotten.

This story resonated deeply with my own journey with Runrig’s music from my early years. Despite being raised in Glasgow, far from the Hebridean islands where the language thrived. Over the years, my fascination only grew, leading me to visit Skye, Islay, and Jura. Each visit felt like a homecoming, a sensation that puzzled me until I delved deeper into my lineage.

Recently, curious about any ancestral connections, I submitted my DNA for analysis. The results were startling: 90% of my genetic makeup rooted in Celtic origins, including Brittany in France. Even more astonishing, my paternal line originated from Islay, adding another layer of personal history to lands that had always felt inexplicably like home.

These revelations have led me to ponder the mysterious ways in which our roots, and the cultural legacies of music and language, call to us. It may be easy to dismiss these connections as mere coincidences, yet I cannot shake the feeling that something deeper is at play. Perhaps it is the same force that inspired Munroe to speak so passionately about the soul-stirring power of music, or the same pull that guides a wandering soul back to ancestral lands.

As I reflect on these experiences, I am increasingly convinced that threads of destiny are woven into our lives, subtly guiding us back to our origins and resonating through the music that moves us. In these moments of connection, whether through melodies that touch our hearts or the lands that call to our spirits, we find a profound truth about our existence—there is indeed something deeper going on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CxhOoGE130

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The Donnie Monroe discussion

YouTube. (2025) Wilderness Walks. [Online video]. Accessed on 8 February 2025. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcPsINH-Ptc

You open your hand,

    and satisfy the desire of every living thing

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I was only a boy when my music teacher introduced me to the hauntingly beautiful music of Edvard Grieg. It was the kind of music that reaches deep into your soul and stirs something ancient and unnameable. Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite, especially Morning and In the Hall of the Mountain King, carried me far away, beyond the confines of the classroom, into a place where mountains stretched endlessly toward the heavens and fjords cut through the earth like jagged wounds of breath-taking beauty. That day, I was struck by a peculiar feeling—a homesickness for Scandinavia, as if I had lived there in some other time. I felt, with an intensity that has stayed with me all my life, that I was born in the wrong country.

The Germans have a word for this: Fernweh. It translates as a kind of homesickness but can have a twist. Instead of pining for a place you've been, it describes a longing for somewhere you've never visited. It's the pull of an unfamiliar land that somehow feels more like home than the ground beneath your feet.

As a boy, I couldn’t have understood Fernweh in such terms, but I felt it keenly. It was as if Grieg’s music unlocked a door within me, leading to a distant, mist-shrouded land I had yet to see but already loved. The ache that came with it was as real as homesickness, a longing so profound that it almost felt like loss. To this day, when I hear Grieg’s compositions, that sensation returns—a yearning for mountains I’ve never climbed, forests I’ve never wandered, and the crisp, cold air of Scandinavia that I’ve never breathed but know in my bones.

This feeling isn’t unique, though it is deeply personal. Whilst reading at the dentist yesterday, I read about the story of Pablo the Penguin from Disney’s The Three Caballeros fascinated me. Pablo, living in the icy expanse of Antarctica, dreams of warmth. He builds a little boat and sails toward the tropics, yearning for sunshine and palm trees. But once he reaches the warm seas of his dreams, something unexpected happens. He feels homesick. He misses the icy winds of Antarctica, the very place he had been so desperate to leave behind.

Pablo’s story resonates with me because it captures the paradox of longing. We yearn for something different, something distant and elusive, and yet, when we reach that place, there’s a chance we might long for the familiarity of where we began. I’ve often wondered if I would feel the same if I lived in Scandinavia. Would my heart still yearn for those fjords and snowy landscapes, or would I find myself pining for the rugged coasts and rolling hills of Scotland?

Like Pablo, I’ve come to understand that homesickness, whether for a place we know or one we imagine, is part of the human experience. It speaks to a deeper truth about us: we are creatures of longing. We seek out beauty, peace, and belonging, sometimes in distant lands or in the melodies of foreign composers. But this longing is often as much about the journey as it is about the destination.

For me, Scandinavia is a place where my soul feels it belongs, even though my body has only been there a few times. The mountains and fjords I dreamed of as a child feel as real to me as my own home. I wonder if this is because there is a part of us, perhaps, that has roots in many places. Some of those roots are nurtured by the landscapes we live in, while others are stirred by the music we hear, the stories we tell, or the dreams we dream. Additionally, my surname is Celtic where a rich history of Scandinavian connection once waved over these landscapes. Who knows if this rich connection is still impeded in our psyche.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s what Fernweh truly is: the recognition that we belong not just to one place, but to many. It is the ache of knowing there are pieces of ourselves scattered across the world, waiting for us to find them, in countries we’ve never visited, in melodies we’ve never heard, and in the hearts of people we’ve yet to meet.

Pablo may have longed for the warmth of the tropics, only to miss the cold of Antarctica, but perhaps that’s the nature of longing itself. It moves us forward, reminding us of the places that call to our souls, while always leaving room for the pull of home—wherever that might be.

My friends and I got to talking about God's future plans. Will faithful humans go to heaven or earth? Could the future Paradise that Jesus spoke of be somewhere that has not been revealed to us yet.? I am not sure. But one thing is sure: we will not be homesick.

You open your hand,

    and satisfy the desire of every living thing.

Psalm 145:16 WEB