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The Tree of the Return

from The Woods by Hamish Napier

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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Almost a double-album at 1 hour 6 minutes!

    If you preorder the CD you get BOTH the CD and the digital album download.

    The CD also comes in a truly stunning 3-fold digipack (6 pages), containing:
    - an epic 28-page, 6000-word booklet with native tree facts & Highland folklore
    - a beautifully detailed drawing of the Caledonian forest by Somhairle MacDonald
    - stunning landscape photography by David Russell at Highland Wildscapes.
    - you INSTANTLY receive one album track download: Track 9: "Forest Folk"

    ....all in all: you get an album, a piece of art and a tree book!

    Includes unlimited streaming of The Woods via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ... more
    ships out within 3 days

      £18 GBP or more 

     

  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      £1 GBP  or more

     

about

15. The Tree of the Return

In the Scottish Gaelic alphabet 'G' can represent 'Giuthas'.

'G' is for Giuthas [Gyew-is], Scots pine, fir, bunnet fir, Pinus sylvestris.

We have always had special associations with conspicuous Scots Pines. ‘Firs’ as they were once known, were often used as important landscape markers by journeying Highlanders. One such sentinel, Craobh Phillidh [The Tree of the Return] marked the limit of the forest above Rothiemurchus. When the local farmers brought their cattle up to graze in summer pastures in Glen Eanaich, they would stop when they reached the halfway point at Craobh Phillidh and would just send the cattle on their way to make the last eight mile walk up the glen, unaccompanied, and the farmers then returned back down to their forest homes having saved themselves an unnecessary walk. The tree tipped over in 1927 in a storm but the remains of it can still be seen today. Pines also marked the burial places of chieftains, warriors and heroes. Old ‘Granny pines’ are one of my favourite sights in the Caledonian pine forest. Their dramatic, gnarled and sprawling forms stand out from the straighter trunks of the younger trees. They can live for up to 600 years, growing to a height of 20m, with a girth of 4m.

The Scots Pine my favourite tree. I love its resinous smell, the attractive ‘burs’ (cones) littering the forest floor and the comical conspiciousness of the bright-green saplings jutting out of the heather throughout the woods. The bark becomes highly fissured with age and the cracks support many insects that, in turn, attract birds and mammals. Pine is a keystone tree, with many species reliant on it, including pine hoverfly, red squirrel and the Scottish crossbill, a bizarre parrot-like bird (all drawn by Somhairle on the cover). Druids used to celebrate the passing of the seasons by lighting big pine bonfires at the winter solstice.

The wood is quite resinous and slow to decay and so a great deal of the forest was felled to make sewage pipes for the cities. When cut it was floated downriver to the shipbuilding yards at Speymouth or transported south on trains for the war effort.

The local town of Kingussie acquires its name from the Gaelic, Ceann a' Ghiuthsaich [Head of the Pine forest]. Abernethy Forest is the largest ancient Scots Pine forest remnant in Britain.

credits

from The Woods, released March 21, 2020
Musicians:

HN: piano, D flute, Wurly, Rhodes
IW: fiddles, strings
SL: cello
JL: bass
SB: guitar, drums
River Druie - vocals

All tracks composed by H Napier PRS/MCPS.

Produced by Andrea Gobbi & H Napier.

Arranged by S Byrnes & H Napier.

Recorded, mixed & mastered by A Gobbi at GloWorm Recordings & Carrier Waves, Glasgow.

Additional recordings by Barry Reid on location in Hamish’s livingroom, Grantown-on-Spey.

Field recordings by H Napier, W Boyd-Wallis and P Smith.

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Hamish Napier Grantown On Spey, UK

Hamish is a multi-instrumentalist and composer from the Scottish Highlands.

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