Wild Mountain Thyme

Before reading this short essay, let me encourage the reader to listen to a version of this song sung by The Corries. It can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKvB3g3HEPQ

The words of this song are found at the bottom of this essay.

As you listen to this song, notice several features. First, the melody is haunting, melodic, and fulsome, sung by two men who accompany themselves on guitars. As they sing, and especially as they come to the chorus, they are joined by the audience whose voices blend together to intensify the haunting quality of the song.

The time and place of the song, as one can see from the words below, is late spring, the time when summer is coming. The images are from nature, and within nature, the love of a young man and a young women. Although, ostensibly, there is nothing of sadness in the song, the whole effect is one of sorrow, especially as one hears the chorus. It is as if all of us have done something long ago, something we no longer do, the pulling of the wild mountain thyme from all around the blooming heather. The listener knows this because he or she knows that those who sing, and all of us who listen, no longer go together to pull the wild mountain thyme. Culturally, we are, even the few of us who live in the country, city dwellers and citizens of the modern age, a age that has long ago left the ancient ways behind. Given this knowledge, the song expresses longing.

There is an historical element as well. The song is Scottish. Scotland is a small country with a tragic history, being dominated by the English, and before that, bearing the brunt of the ancient, northern invasions. Many of the Scots no longer live in Scotland. They are scattered among the nations, and as they sing, one gets the sense of a people who exist at the margins, unknown, longing for their homeland and a way of life that no longer exists.

This, in fact, is the feeling of the song, haunting sorrow and unsatisfied longing. This longing, however, is not simply for Scotland, or even for springtime, although that is certainly in the song. There is something even deeper, the longing for a time prior to suffering, ambiguity, and guilt, before life became heavy and our hearts went awry. This was a time when life came to us in all its beauty and simplicity, as surely as the winter gives way to spring. In those days, love could be had without complications, attained as easily as the beauty that appears in the spring. And if this love fails (but why should it?), we know that we will "surely find another."

The Christian religion is utterly realistic, ruthless, and terribly difficult. It is realistic because it recognizes our longing as a legitimate desire, but it tells us that our home will never be found on this earth. We are strangers in this place and we will be strangers until we die. It also tells us that we can catch glimpses of our true home, that joy will come in the morning, and that heaven does, from time to time, appear upon earth. When that happens, and it does, everything we longed for, the innocence, the purity, the beauty, not only of heaven, but of earth as well, will be given to us. It is ruthless and terribly difficult became no one can enter this homeland except by the ruthless denial of oneself and an utter commitment to the Crucified, a grueling crucifixion that leads to purity of heart, the vision of God, and the reality of the the new heavens and earth. Those who pass that way will, indeed, all go together and do all things well, to pull, as it were, the wild mountain thyme from all around the blooming heather. It is this reality that includes, transfigured, everything that is scarcely glimpsed but surely sensed in Wild Mountain Thyme.

Do not look back. Your homeland is in heaven. Go there.

The words of Jesus, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God." (Luke 9:62)

Wild Mountain Thyme

Oh the summer time is coming
And the trees are sweetly blooming
The wild mountain thyme
Grows around the blooming heather
Will ye go lassie go........
And we'll all go together
To pull wild mountain thyme
All around the blooming heather
Will ye go lassie go

I will build my love a bower
By yon cool crystal fountain
And round it I will pile
All the wild flowers of the mountain
Will ye go lassie go............
And we'll all go together
To pull wild mountain thyme
All around the blooming heather
Will ye go lassie go

If my true love e'er should leave me
I would surely find another
To pull the wild mountain thyme
All around the blooming heather.
Will ye go, lassie, will ye go?
And we'll all go together to pick wild mountain thyme
All around the blooming heather.
Will ye go, lassie, will ye go?

The Rev. Robert J. Sanders, Ph.D.
2010