Manadh

My Favourite State Of Mind (demo)

GAOL by MACANTA

A song about the repeated history of the Highland and Island Clearances. Once they were brought about by greedy land owners who considered sheep of more value than the people who dwelt on the same land. Nowadays the clearances are aided by greedy locals who have raised the cost of the houses they sell in response to the great demand and greater wealth of mainlanders. This makes buying an affordable home very difficult in our own villages. 

The song title points to the theme and literally means 'recycling'. This theme was reinforced by using the melody of an old walking song composed by women who used to gather in a group called a 'banal' and beat tweed cloth against a table to get it to shrink, thus completing the process of tweed manufacture.  

AC (ath-chuairteachadh) by MACANTA

English version:

He walks the streets at midday,
but it’s midnight in his mind.
He strays in his desert’s pathless way
no refuge there to find.

The water of life is stagnant,
a rusty coloured death,
there’s confusion in his limbs
there’s whisky in his breath.

Ask him what it feels like;
he describes it as a thirst,
and with the chance to call on Jesus
lets the devil answer first.

Woe is me, I am undone
to see the things I do
for he knows his scripture, knows his sin,
and he pleads the gospel’s true.

Johnny Walker’s in his grave
and he’s still causing hurt
when a poor soul meets a sorry end
and joins him in the dirt.
But the old man, he is funny
tells a joke or two,
you’ll laugh and give him what he wants
and the joke will be on you.

He used to go to town
for a drink out with his friends,
but now he likes the taste of gambling
with Johnny at weekends.

When Monday morning comes around
if he’s lucky he looks a state.
With liver cirrhosis, the anaemic diagnosis
of his hunger for a steak.

There’s a lonely grave by a barely field,
where as a child he used to play.
There his father lays, warning him
but he’s heading the same way.

At that sober stone where two ravens perch
a solemn inscription reads:
“Forsake the drink, flee from the world,
if you want to rest in peace.”

MACANTA

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