Shuffle Sundays: Loch Lomond

Each week Shuffle Sundays features a cover chosen at random. The songs will usually be good, occasionally be bad, always be interesting. All downloads will only be available for one week, so get them while you can.

My junior year of college I spent a term at the University of Edinburgh.  One weekend the exchange group traveled to the small island of Iona off the Western coast.  Populated more by sheep than people, it boasts an old abbey, a remnant of its role as the de facto headquarters of Celtic Christianity in the sixth and seventh centuries.

After a three-day weekend of drinking wine on the beach and poking around the grassy hills, we began the five-hour drive back east.  Due to overly ambitious planning we stopped at various towns and castles along the way, most of which we were too tired to fully appreciate.  However, one stop proved too beautiful for grumbling: Loch Lomond.

Loch Lomond is one of those idyllic places we Americans assume don’t exist anymore.  If locals are making tourist bucks around the loch, we saw no sign.  Our van just pulled off to the side of a small road and there it was, flat and deserted, the cloudy sky perfectly reflected in the still surface. 

Before that day, I’d always thought of the song “Loch Lomond” as a pretty but corny tribute to a land of forest sprites or something.  Once you see the loch though, you understand why it makes old-guard Scots tear up.  I couldn’t give you a dictionary definition of a bonnie bank, but I know exactly what one looks like.

Dartmouth Aires – Loch Lomond (Trad.)  [Buy]

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