Cogadh no Sìth? War or Peace? Hamish Henderson, Jock Duncan and the Voicings of War

by Professor Gary West, Chair of Scottish Ethnology, University of Edinburgh

As we gather to remember and pay tribute to Hamish Henderson, we also mark the centenary of the end of one global war, aware of course that it was a short-lived peace. Hamish Henderson and folksinger Jock Duncan both fought in the next major world conflict, and both have left us powerful voicings of the Scottish experience of war. Reflecting on the poetics of these legacies, Gary West argues that both men have contributed significantly to the creative process of bearing witness and of ‘remembering’.