Between You and Me

by Sir Harry Lauder

I was sae sorry for them, puir weans! They had'na e'er ta'en a bit walk by their twa selves in the purple gloaming. They knew nothing o' the magic of a shady lane, wi' the branches o' old trees meeting over their heads. When they wad be togither they had to flee tae some such dead spot as this, or flaunt their love for one another in a busy street, where all who would micht laugh at them, as folk ha' a way o' doing, thoughtlessly, when they see the miracle o' young love, that is sae old that it is always young.

And yet, I saw the lassie's een. I saw the way he looked at her. It was for but a moment, as I passed. But I wasna sorry for them mair. For the miracle was upon them. And in their een, dinna doot it, the old, grey fronts o' the hooses were green trees. The pavement beneath their feet was the saft dirt o' a country road, or the bonny grass.

City folk do long, I'm sure o' it, for the glen and the beauty o' the countryside. Why else do they look as they do, and act as they do, when I sing to them o' the same? And I've the memory of what many a one has said to me, wi' tears in his een.

"Oh, Harry—ye brocht the auld hame to ma mind when ye sang o' roaming in the gloaming! And—the wee hoose amang the heather!"

'Tis the hamely songs I gie 'em o' the country they aye love best, I find. But why will they be content wi' what I bring them o' the glen and the dell? Why will they no go back or oot, if they're city born, and see for themselves? It's business holds some; others ha' other reasons. But, dear, dear, 'tis no but a hint o' the glamour and the freshness and the beauty o' the country that ma songs can carry to them. No but a hint! Ye canna bottle the light o' the moon on Afton Water; ye canna bring the air o' a Hieland moor to London in a box.

Will ye no seek to be oot sae much o' the year as ye can? It may be true that your affairs maun keep you living in the city. But whiles ye can get oot in the free air. Ye can lee doon upon yer back on the turf and look up at the blue sky and the bricht sun, and hear the skylark singing high above ye, or the call o' the auld hoot owl at nicht.

I think it's the evenings, when I'm held a prisoner in the city, mak' me lang maist for the country. There's a joy to a country evening. Whiles it's winter. But within it's snug. There's the wind howling doon the chimney, but there's the fire blazing upon the hearth, and the kettle singing it's bit sang on the hob. And all the family will be in frae work, tired but happy. Some one wull start a sang to rival the kettle; we've a poet in Scotland. 'Twas the way ma mither wad sing the sangs o' Bobby Burns made me sure, when I was a bit laddie, that I must, if God was gude tae me, do what I could to carry on the work o' that great poet.

There's plenty o' folk who like the country for rest and recreation. But they canna understand hoo it comes that folk are willing to stay there all their days and do the "dull country work." Aye, but it's no sae dull, that work in the country. There's less monotony in it, in ma een, than in the life o' the clerk or the shopkeeper, doing the same thing, day after day, year after year. I' the country they're producing—they're making food and ither things yon city dweller maun ha'.

It's the land, when a's said a's done, that feeds us and sustains us; clothes us and keeps us. It's the countryman, wi' his plough, to whom the city liver owes his food. We in Britain had a sair lesson in the war. Were the Germans no near bein' able to starve us oot and win the war wi' their submarines, And shouldna Britain ha' been able, as she was once, to feed hersel' frae her ain soil?

I'm thinking often, in these days, of hoo the soldiers must be feeling who are back frae France and the years i' the trenches. They've lived great lives, those o' them that ha' lived through it. Do ye think they'll be ready tae gang back to what they were before they dropped their pens or their tape measures and went to war to save the country?