The Joy of Living
August 25th, 2007A couple of months ago I had the radio on in the car, half-listening as usual, when they played a song that brought a lump to my throat and tears to my eyes. I don’t go much for folk music as a rule, but I quickly scribbled down the track – Ewan MacColl’s The Joy of Living – and have now bought the CD Black and White – Ewan MacColl, The Definitive Collection – where it is the final track.
So what’s so special about it? I’ve since read MacColl’s story of how he wrote it:
The last time I climbed Suilven, or to be more precise, failed to climb it, was in my seventy-second year. I was with my wife and fourteen-year-old daughter Kitty. “You go ahead,” I told them, “I’ll meet you at the top.” But ‘the flesh is bruckle, the fiend is slee’, and I hadn’t gone more than half the distance when my legs refused to carry me further. My body had given me plenty of warnings over the last seven or eight years but this was the final notice. My mountain days were over. I sat down on a rock feeling utterly desolate. The feeling lasted for several days and then my grief and feeling of loss gave way to nostalgia and I wrote The Joy of Living. In an odd kind of way it helped me to come to terms with my old age.
But it is far from being a sad song. It’s a triumphant celebration of the mountain landscapes of Scotland, England, and Wales:
Days in the sun and the tempered wind, and the air like wine.
And you drink and you drink till you’re drunk on the joy of living
and the satisfaction of a life bathed in the glow of a loving family:
You filled all my days, held the night at bay, dearest companion.
Years pass by and they’re gone with the speed of birds in flight;
Our life like the verse of a song heard in the mountains
The full lyrics are here. One to play at my funeral – no-one has ever said it better. And if there’s not a dry eye in the church, blame it on this master songsmith and an old Sicilian folk tune!