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Leave Us Our Glens

  • (George Donald / Buff Hardie)

    I love Scotland's glens, and whatever else we lose
    Please leave us our glens, our glorious glens
    Our mountains as grand, Ben Nevis, Ben Lomond too
    You can have all those bens, but leave us our glens

    Glenfiddich, Glendronach, Glenlivet, Glen Grant
    Can you do without them? If you must know, I can't
    Put a drop in the glass of Glen Spey or Glen Drotter
    It's a perfectly bearable way to drink water

    I'd willingly lose our culture, or most of it
    Including that mess they call 'full Highland dress'
    With the whole ethnic bit of haggis and Hogmanay
    I'd gladly dispense, but leave us our glens

    Glenfiddich, Glendronach, Glenlivet, Glen Fall
    I once knew a man who had sampled them all
    Glenisla, Glenugie, Glenkinchie, that's plenty
    He looked sixty-five, but in fact he was twenty

    Take our Highlands scottische, take our marches, strathspeys and reels
    Take our old Scottish waltz, but leave us our malts
    You can take, if you wish, our ladies' conveniences
    And our gentlemen's - but leave us our glens

    Glenfiddich, Glendronach, Glenlivet, Glenfyne
    Was great at communion when we ran out of wine
    Glenisla, Glenugie, Glenkinchie, Glenmorangie
    I prefer them to Quantro which I find too orangey

    Oh breathe there a Scot whose aims and priorities
    When laid on the line, are different from mine
    Take our homes, take our jobs, take anything else you will
    Wife, family and friends, but leave us our glens

    (as sung by Iain MacKintosh)

Susannes Folksong-Notizen

  • [1987:] Buff Hardie (lyrics), George Donald (music). Written in 1975. (Hardie / Robertson / Donald, Scotland the What? Collected sketches and songs, Gordon Wright Publ., Edinburgh)

  • [1995:] Glenmorangie [...] has a special kind of floweriness, a delicate yet unmistakeable fragrance, that I find extremely attractive. It is bottled at 70°, ten years old, and [...] is what I would call an all- purpose whisky. It is equally good as a pre- prandial and as a post- prandial drink, and I confess I have drunk it at many other times as well. There is a Glenmorangie which I have drunk at the distillery which is older and more full- bodied than that which is available bottled, possessing more richness and less delicacy than the latter. It goes for blending, of course [...].

    At its best, Smith's Glenlivet combines a teasing subtlety of flavour with a distinctive 'nose' and fullness. These are not always sufficiently in evidence when bottled too young, but the firm's own bottling, twelve years old at 80°, gives one everything that could be desired in this noble whisky. I have tasted a Glenlivet put in cask in 1941 and bottled (by Berry Brothers & Rudd) in 1958, and the only note on it which I entered in my whisky scrap- book after the first glass was simply 'a superb whisky'. But later experience of comparing different ages and proofs leads me to believe that additional age over twelve years does not add all that much in quality and (within limits, of course) a twelve- year- old at a higher proof tastes better than an older whisky at a lower proof. But the twelve- year- old is decidedly better than anything younger. [...]

    How does Glenlivet compare with Glen Grant? In general character they are not dissimilar: each has that smooth integration of peatiness, softness and full sweetness (or almost sweetness) that needs age to bring it out. Like Glenlivet, Glen Grant is conspicuously better at ten or, better still, twelve years old than at, say, five (and it is available at five years old). There is a sharpness about a young Glen Grant that belies its true potential. [...] A well- matured Glen Grant has a splendid smoothness: it is not, perhaps, such a complexly patterned whisky in the combination of 'nose', taste and after- taste that is found in Glenlivet at its best, being a more single- minded whisky, as it were. [...]

    Glenfiddich [...] has a pleasing dry fragrance [...]. Glenkinchie, which so far as I know is not available as a single whisky but of which I have a sample bottle from an Edinburgh blending firm [...] is a very agreeable whisky, slightly sweeter and perhaps just a trifle sharper than Rosebank. (Daiches, Scotch Whisky. Its Past and Present 170ff)

  • [1998:] Written for 'Scotland the What?' 'Glen Drotter' is probably a made up name in order to get the rhyme. (Pr. comm., ICM)

Quelle: Scotland

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