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Wildfire

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
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      £18 GBP or more 

     

  • Streaming + Download

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about

16. Wildfire

In the Scottish Gaelic alphabet 'O' is for the gorse bush or broom bush.

OIR [Ohr]
ONN [Oh-wyn]

- Gorse, whin, furze, atain, conasg, bearaghach, Ulex europaeus.

- Broom, bealaidh, bealach, giolc, sguab, brim, breem, Cytisus scoparius.

This track is a warning against forest fires. During a dry summer an unextinguished cigarette butt or unattended campfire can ignite plants and shrubs and rapidly spread out of control, wiping out acres of precious ancient forest. In 1960, Rothiemurchus was destroyed by a terrible fire. The peat still burned for four months until it was finally doused by heavy rainfall. The marks of burning may be observed on the bark of some of the oldest trees. There were other fires in 1731 and 1746. Sir Walter Scott once wrote (in a letter to Lord Montagu on 23rd June, 1822) about a fire in 1770, when the Laird of Grant had to send out the Fiery Cross for help. 500 men assembled, "who could only stop the conflagration by cutting a gap of 500 yards in width betwixt the burning wood and the rest of the forest.”

Both gorse and broom can be referred to as whin and from a distance both can appear quite similar. They also happen to be highly inflammable when set alight, hence the old Scots expression “to flee up like a whun buss” (to lose one’s temper). A hillside covered in gorse or broom in vibrant bloom on summer evenings was said to resemble a wildfire. In the hot summer sun their seed pods explode with a wee crack, spreading the seeds around. Gorse is a large, evergreen shrub, covered in needle-like leaves and has distinctive dark-yellow, coconut scented flowers. Common gorse blooms from January to June whilst Western Gorse waits until the autumn. It was used as fodder for livestock, fuel for firing bread ovens and was bound to make chimney brushes. Broom is a large deciduous shrub of heaths and coasts. Unlike gorse, broom has short flattened leaves and no spines. Its vanilla-scented light-yellow flowers appear from April to June.

credits

from The Woods, released March 21, 2020
Musicians:

HN: piano
IW: fiddle, viola, strings
SL: cello
JL: bass
SB: drums

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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