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1 Eric Bogle
Early life, work and a culture of protest
It was the woollen mills that had fed the economy of the historic Scottish Border town of Peebles for generations. In the face of stiff overseas competition and outdated manufacturing techniques after the Second World War, however, profits slowed, stalled and closures followed leaving many of the 5,000 or so inhabitants struggling to make a living. The Bogle household was no exception. Ericâs childhood (b. 1944) was spent in a home with little in the way of luxury, run on an extremely tight budget, and steeped in the gritty ideologies of post-war Britain. He recalls:
Here, we might assume, a sense of injustice at the social, political and economic systems that had brought with them such hardship, may have been instilled. And while hardship prevailed it simultaneously played its part in creating a respect for the dignity associated with a hard-working, honourable class of people who continued to struggle within an impossible class system. John Munro is unhesitant about the impact this had on Bogle and his writing: âHis attitude to authority is equally distrustful. And to things like privilege. Because of the way he was brought up, and probably because of his dad, he abhors privilege. Heâs still very Scottish in his heart.â2
Such circumstances might also have led in equal measure to the need, and the ability, to dream. Many of Bogleâs compositions relating to home have a strong autobiographical element to them. There are early romances recalled in âBelle of Broughtonâ and âCuddy River Reverieâ; an acknowledgement of a strong folk and story-telling heritage in compositions like âCampbellâs Daughterâ and âThe Ballad of Henry Hollowayâ; and introductions to childhood heroes like Roy Rogers in âFront Row Cowboyâ and Elvis Presley in âElvis ânâ Meâ. In the latter it is telling to note that while home is a âprisonâ it is music that liberates.
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For I couldnât help thinking as we went drivinâ
Of a boy I once knew from a far-away time
Who saw his whole life as a prison
And the only release he knew
Was when Elvis was singinâ, and the boy would start dreaminâ
As on the wings of the songs his heart flew.
But there is anger too in early compositions such as âBig Mansion Hoose on the Hillâ where Bogle defiantly takes aim at a class system that enslaves many.
For three hundred years how my brothers have toiled
Whilst oor masters exploited, enslaved, and despoiled
The sweat frae oor brows built their great marble haâs
While oor childrenâs sharp hunger pit meat in their craws
One day I will burn down that mill
And that big mansion hoose on the hill.
John Munro then tightens the focus by emphasising that to know Bogle and his work you must also know something of his family. This, he believes, is crucial as â[h]is politics, his pacifism, his distrust of authority and convention, his commitment to social justice and perhaps his strongest attribute, his loyalty, were all bequeathed to him by his parentsâ.3 In an interview with Warren Fahey in 2000 Bogle recalled the complexity of the relationship between personality, place and time:
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Bogle felt that for his parents, Laurnie (Laurence) and Nancy (Figure 1.1), he would be â[m]y mamaâs future heartbreak and my daddyâs short-lived joyâ.5 He also had two sisters, Laurette, two years older, and Sandra, Ericâs twin. Laurnie, he recalled, was â[a]n uneducated but intelligent man, and like so many of his generation he was a casualty of the Depression, war and the British class systemâ.6 He was a proud man, the war veteran evacuated out of Dunkirk, then the signalman who, when laid off by British Rail during the infamous Beeching cuts of the 1960s, had faded away â left only with his railway jacket and a paltry pension. In âNo Use For Himâ Bogle recalls:
But they broke him in the end when theyâd no use for him
So I watched him growing older and more bitter every day
As his pride and self-respect slowly drained away
There was nothing I could say â they had no use for him.
Father and son had also built a tenuous relationship through poaching salmon from the River Tweed, which was the property of the Earl of Wemyss, as were all the salmon therein. Poaching a few of them combined financial gain with political statement.7 In âPoacherâs Moonâ Bogle remorselessly states that âNothing tastes sweeter, nothing tastes as good / As a poor manâs belly fuâ oâ rich manâs foodâ. An introduction to music of sorts came through his father too as Bogle recalls how he
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Beyond this, his relationship with his father, though important, was distant. He recalls â[f]rom the day I was born to the day my father died we were mostly strangers to each otherâ.9 To another interviewer he admitted â[w]e lived in the same house for 23 years on and off and we were total strangers. I didnât know and still donât know what made my father tick.â10 He suggested in the song âThe Dalai Lamaâs Candleâ that today he owns only one photograph of them together though, crucially, in it are âwork-roughened hands / Resting lightly on my shouldersâ. With palpable frustration Bogle also recalls that as he was writing his first poems his father too was jotting down his observations of society, his hopes, dreams, his well-concealed love of the family . . . then hiding them in a drawer. John Munro describes the sequence of events that followed Laurnieâs death: