The Rowan Tree - A Scottish Poem and Song of Nostalgia

The Rowan Tree

by Carolina Oliphant, (Lady Nairne)

Oh! rowan tree, oh! rowan tree,
Thou'lt aye be dear to me,
En twin'd thou art wi' mony ties
O' hame and infancy.
Thy leaves were aye the first o' spring,
Thy flow'rs the simmer's pride;
There was na sic a bonnie tree
In a' the countrie side.
Oh! rowan tree.

How fair wert thou in simmer time,
Wi' a' thy clusters white,
How rich and gay thy autumn dress,
Wi' berries red and bright.
On thy fair stem were mony names,
Which now nae mair I see;
But thy're engraven on my heart,
Forgot they ne'er can be.
Oh! rowan tree.

We sat aneath thy spreading shade,
The bairnies round thee ran,
They pu'd thy bonnie berries red,
And necklaces they strang;
My mither, oh! I see her still,
She smiled our sports to see,
Wi' little Jeanie on her lap,
And Jamie on her knee.
Oh!, rowan tree.

Oh! there arose my father's prayer
In holy evening's calm;
How sweet was then my mother's voice
In the Martyr's psalm!
Now a'are gane! We meet nae mair
Aneath the rowan tree,
But hallowed thoughts around thee
Turn o'hame and infancy.
Oh! rowan tree.

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With special thanks to the

Scottish Country Dancing Dictionary

website.

A Scottish Folk Song written by Perthshire-born Carolina Oliphant, known as Lady Nairne, 1766-1845. The song, Rowan Tree, who was a song writer and collector of Scottish songs. The Rowan Tree appeared in R. A. Smith's Scottish Minstrel (1822).

Lady Nairne was a song collector and wrote some of Scotland's best-known songs. Some of her songs and prose have been attributed to Robert Burns, Walter Scott or James Hogg.

Wikipedia - Nairne concealed her achievements as a songwriter throughout her life; they only became public on the posthumous publication of "Lays from Strathearn" (1846). She took pleasure in the popularity of her songs, and may have been concerned that this could be jeopardised if it became public knowledge that she was a woman. It also explains why she soon switched from Mrs Bogan of Bogan to the gender-neutral BB when submitting her contributions to The Scottish Minstrel, and even disguised her handwriting. On one occasion, pressed by her publisher Purdie who wanted to meet his best contributor, she appeared disguised as an elderly gentlewoman from the country. She succeeded in persuading Purdie that she was merely a conduit for the songs she gathered from simple countryfolk, and not their author. But the entire editorial committee of the Minstrel – all of them female – was aware of her identity for instance, as were her sister, nieces and grandniece. On the other hand, she shared her secret with very few men, not even her husband; as she wrote to a friend in the 1820s "I have not told even Nairne lest he blab".

Consideration for her husband may have been another of Nairne's motives for maintaining her anonymity. Despite his Jacobite family background he had served with the British Army since his youth, and it might have caused him some professional embarrassment if it had become widely known that his wife was writing songs in honour of the Jacobite rebels of the previous century. Somewhat testifying against that view however is that she maintained her secrecy for fifteen years after his death.

Related Scottish Country Dances

• Bonnie Tree
• Rowan Tree (Butterfield)
• Rowan Tree (Veranth)

Anne Lorne Gillies Rowan Tree

by Roy Stornaway

John McDermott - Oh Rowan Tree

by LadyGreyCarolyn

References

• "The Rowan Tree Scottish - Scottish Folk Song By Lady Nairne". www.scottish-country-dancing-dictionary.com. Retrieved 2024-01-27.

• WHITELAW, Alexander. Book of Scottish Song; Collected and Illustrated with Historical and Critical Notices. p. 59. United Kingdom, Blackie & Son, 1843.

• "Nobel-prize winner on why the Rowan Tree is moving film fans to tears in Living". 14 November 2022.

* * * * * * * *

Commentary and Analysis of “The Rowan Tree”

by R.E. Slater and ChatGPT

The "Rowan Tree" is a beautiful, and deeply nostalgic,  Scottish poem of memory - not merely is it about a tree - but of home, childhood, family, loss, and sacred remembrance. The rowan becomes a living archive of relational existence, preserving within its branches and shadow the lingering presence of love, belonging, and the sacred continuity of remembered life..

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Introduction

“The Rowan Tree” is one of the most beloved songs and poems of Scottish sentimental literature. Written in Scots dialect by Lady Nairne in the early nineteenth century, the poem combines personal memory, rural imagery, religious devotion, and grief into a meditation on the sacredness of home and the irreversible passage of time.

The poem is deceptively simple. Beneath its pastoral surface lies a profound emotional structure:

• the rowan tree as memory,
• the family as sacred community,
• childhood as lost Eden,
• and remembrance as an act of spiritual continuity.

The repeated refrain — “Oh! rowan tree” — functions almost liturgically, as though the speaker is praying to memory itself.

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I. The Rowan Tree as Symbol

The rowan tree (mountain ash) carries deep cultural meaning in Scottish and Celtic traditions.

Traditionally, rowan trees symbolized:

• protection,
• ancestral memory,
• home,
• spiritual safeguarding,
• continuity between generations.

In folklore, rowans were often planted near homes to ward off evil spirits or misfortune. Lady Nairne subtly draws on this cultural background.

But in the poem the rowan becomes something larger:

a living archive of relational existence.

The tree remembers what time destroys.

• Its bark once held carved names.
• Its branches shaded children at play.
• Its presence witnessed prayer, play, motherhood, and family fellowship.

The rowan thus functions almost sacramentally by mediating personal, family, and community memory.

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II. Home and Infancy

The opening stanza immediately establishes the emotional center:

“En twin’d thou art wi’ mony ties
O’ hame and infancy.”

The tree is not merely associated with childhood — it is entwined with it.

The word “ties” is crucial.

The poem’s emotional force depends upon relational interconnectedness:

• family,
• place,
• memory,
• seasons,
• identity.

The self is shown to emerge from belonging.

This is one reason the poem remains emotionally powerful - it reflects a universal truth that identity is rooted in remembered relations.

In contemporary philosophical language - especially through a process-relational or  Whiteheadian lens - the poem suggests that the self is not isolated substance but accumulated relational continuity.

The rowan tree becomes the persistence of those relations across time.

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III. Nature and Temporal Cycles

The poem moves through the seasons:

• spring leaves,
• summer blossoms,
• autumn berries.

This seasonal progression mirrors the human lifecycle:

Nature                            Human Meaning

Spring leaves                       Childhood
Summer flowers                  Vitality and family flourishing
Autumn berries                    Aging, ripeness, memory
Winter (implied absence)    Death and loss

Importantly, winter is never directly named.

Its absence intensifies the grief.

The poem remains suspended in remembrance -

unwilling to speak the full finality of death directly.

This restraint gives the poem dignity and tenderness.

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IV. Memory Inscribed Upon the Heart

One of the poem’s most beautiful lines reads:

“But thy’re engraven on my heart”

The names carved into the tree have disappeared physically, but remain inwardly preserved.

This movement from external inscription to internal memory is central.

The poem suggests:

• material things fade,
• living relations vanish,
• but memory persists as inward continuity.

This is remarkably close to what later phenomenology and process philosophy would call persistence-through-relational-patterning.

The heart becomes the final archive of meaning.

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V. Family as Sacred Community

The third and fourth stanzas shift from landscape into communal life.

• Children play beneath the tree.
• The mother watches lovingly.
• The father prays in evening calm.

The domestic world is presented almost liturgically.

Especially important is this line:

“How sweet was then my mother’s voice
In the Martyr’s psalm!”

Religion here is not institutional power or doctrine.

It is woven into:

• evening peace,
• parental affection,
• song,
• home,
• shared ritual.

The sacred emerges through ordinary relational life.

This gives the poem extraordinary warmth.

Faith is not abstract theology.

It is embodied memory.

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VI. Grief and the Passage of Time

The emotional climax arrives quietly:

“Now a’ are gane!”

Three devastating words.

Everyone is gone.

No dramatic lament follows.
Instead, the poem settles into sacred remembrance.

This restraint is profoundly Scottish in tone:
emotion is deepened through understatement.

The final stanza transforms grief into reverence.

The rowan tree becomes:

• memorial,
• witness,
• shrine,
• surviving companion.

The speaker cannot return to childhood,
but memory allows participation in its lingering presence.

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The Scottish Rowan Tree

VII. A Whiteheadian / Process-Relational Reading

From a process-relational perspective, the poem becomes especially rich.

The rowan tree symbolizes:

• continuity amidst becoming,
• relational persistence,
• identity through memory,
• embodiment of past experience.

The family no longer exists materially,
yet their relational presence persists within the speaker’s ongoing becoming.

The poem therefore resists pure annihilation.

The past is not dead;

it remains active within present feeling.

This closely parallels Alfred North Whitehead’s idea that experience is preserved through relational inheritance.

In this reading:

• the tree is a nexus of remembered occasions,
• memory is relational continuity,
• and grief itself becomes evidence that love persists beyond physical absence.

The poem’s holiness lies precisely there.

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VIII. Why the Poem Endures

“The Rowan Tree” endures because it touches universal human experiences:

• longing for home,
• remembrance of parents,
• childhood innocence,
• sacred domesticity,
• grief over time’s passing.

Its power comes from emotional sincerity rather than complexity.

The poem never argues.

It remembers.

And through remembering,
it preserves what would otherwise disappear.

That is why the final refrain feels less like nostalgia and more like invocation:

“Oh! rowan tree.” 

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R.E. Slater - What Dies Within Us While We Live

Illustration by R.E. Slater and ChatGPT

What Dies Within Us While We Live

by R.E. Slater

Death is not the greatest loss in life -

  the greatest loss,
  is what dies inside of us,
  while we still live.

It is in how we speak to one another -
  or how we do not speak,
  not in the truths we soften,
  nor the trembling silences we keep.

But in the violence that has numbed us -
  the images we scroll past,
  the soulless disturbances we feel,

  that can no longer can be named.

There are so many things that numb us daily -
  the small surrenders we make,
  the barely noticed we chose not to see,

  the unwanted thoughts that flood us.

It is not only in the wounds we suffer -
  but the parts of ourselves we have laid down,
  to just keep moving,

  in-and-out of each moment.

We lose when kindness goes unspoken -
  when truth is withheld for comfort,
  when injustice is ignored,

  when indifference holds our tongues.

We lose something when we stop feeling -
  when we no longer expect goodness,
  when we forget how to be moved,

  when our tears have dried up.

And in the numbing traces there remains -

  a memory of who we once were,

  before we learned to close ourselves off,

  to cease to feel.

Something that waits within us -

  restless,

  undying,

  angry at our silence.

To live deeply is to awaken -

  to feel deeply not merely endure,

  to participate in life around us,

  to remain no longer silent.

To gently,

  deliberately,
  learn to speak.

These would be words enough.

Words one might live by.

R.E. Slater

April 16, 2026

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved

Authors Note

There are so many things in life that numb us daily, that quiet the better voice within us, that teach us to look away when we should look closer; to harden ourselves when we were meant to remain open.

They are not only the wounds we suffer, but the parts of ourselves we surrender in order to keep moving through pain and hardship.

Yet we lose something when kindness goes unspoken, when truth is withheld for comfort, when injustice goes ignored.

We lose something when we stop listening to each other's pain, when we no longer expect goodness from one another, when we forget how to be moved, to feel, to ache.

But know that what has quieted in our souls has not left. Even in the numbing, there remains a trace, a memory, of who we were before we learned from others how to close ourselves off.

And perhaps the deeper work of living is not merely to learn to endure and be numb - but to notice when we have gone silent within, and gently, deliberately, begin to speak again.

To feel - and be willing to awakened to harm that truth, beauty, and love might live again.

R.E. Slater - A King of Folly

A King of Folly

by R.E. Slater

For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer,

he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror;

for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he

has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was.

- James 1.23-24 (ESV)

To the King of Folly whose wisdom
    runs dry like rivers in drought -

Whose follies lie worthless as deserts

    absorbing their own acid rains.

Whose fractured thoughts echo

    daily sycophant dreams,

Warped and estranged in unholy

    flattery's indulgent haste.

Who build’st golden, gilded towers

    on the shifting sands of turning tides -

Proclaiming seering mockeries

    that stab and hate unbowed knees.

Every word a poison that chokes and rots,

each lie a festering wound meant to kill.

Thy haughty counsel strides

   heaven and earth in mighty roar -

Tracing the mortal lives of men

    across its directionless glare.

Thy pomposity soars to the heavens

    mocking reason, caution, or claim -

And vanity stand'st fetid chambers in

    uplifted chin and waggling tongue.

Believng all the world is thine

    to remake in graven image,

thy bluster its throne

    'neath a crown of derision.

Across mere span of months and years

    sense stands aside in exhausted despair -

Though truth refuses any such games yet

    its speech falls hollow hardened souls.

So here’s to the Greatest Marvel of our Age -

Hail, to our King of High Folly,

    exalted and lifted up,

A born deceiver - our man of lawlessness,

    untamed and untameable.

A chosen nation's man-made golden calf

    whose false signs and wonders -

Rises its golden altar of unholy deeds

    and ruinous destructions.

Hail, O' King,

Hail, O' Nation,

Unwise, and

Alone.

R.E. Slater

April 16, 2026

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved

R.E. Slater - The Woman Who Tends

Illustration by R.E. Slater and ChatGPT

The Woman Who Tends

by R.E. Slater and ChatGPT

There's so many different reasons why we need old trees.

They sequester carbon. They create habitat that younger

trees cannot provide. [Aesthetically], they carry a unique

beauty in their old age. - Beth Moon, photographer

What saith the woman

  who tendeth another’s garden -
  whose hands nurture what she does not own,
  whose labor blooms in another’s name?

She speaks in the language of soil,
  in the patience of seasons that do not remember her.
Her fingers learn the roots of foreign things,
  tracing their thirst into the borrowed ground.

Morning finds her before the early light has settled,
  as shadow among the soils calling her kin.
She waters what will not bear her name,
  prunes what will never speak her story.

Yet, there is a knowing

  beneath her tending care -

The receiving earth does not ask
  who owns the seed.
But ingests
  what is given.

And in the quiet

  between wind and breath
she feels within the quieting earth -
  a loosening, an understanding.

Neither of duty,
  nor of boundary -

But of calling,

  as living soul to living soul.

For what is a garden
  but a crossing of lives -
root into soil,
hand into growth,
self into what is not-self?

The toiler gathers no harvest for herself,
  yet something within her ripens -

Not fruit,
not flower,
but a widening of understanding.

A slow re-awakening

  that care is its own belonging.

And when the evening shadows

  lengthen across the spreading beds,
and last lights linger on leaf and stem,
  there, she pauses -

not as owner,
not as stranger,
but as living witness.

Where garden and gardener

  for a moment,

answer one to the other -

  We are connected

  by our entangling roots.

R.E. Slater and ChatGPT

April 10, 2026

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved

Author's Notes

The garden is more than metaphor. It is a site of processual becoming in which reality is encountered as a relational field; soulful identity is understood as participation; and meaning arises through lived encounter. Together, these several elements suggest a form of lived, and embodied, processual realism.

- R.E. Slater

Attribution Notes

The opening thematic and stylistic inspiration is drawn from the authored work, "Trees and Other Entanglements," by Tasneem Khan, whose sensibilities are also reflected in the documentary work associated with the same title.

The initial four lines are a creative reconstruction inspired by Khan’s prose style and are not presented as a direct quotation.

The poem itself is an original composition, written in the mood, cadence, and thematic field of Khan’s work. Its visual and narrative interpretations give particular attention to themes of displacement and belonging, labor and invisibility, relational identity, and quiet interior of rupture and transformation.

- R.E. Slater

Trees and Other Entanglements

HBO Documentary

"Trees and Other Entanglements," is an 2023 HBO Original Documentary by filmmaker Irene Taylor  showcasing the deeply human tale of mankind's relationship with the natural world - and with one another. It premiered on December 12 on (HBO) Max. In the film Taylor explores the deep, symbiotic relationship between humans and trees through several interconnected stories, including a bonsai master, a photographer, a mother protecting forests, and a man planting saplings, all while weaving in personal narratives about family, loss, and survival - including the director's own struggle with Alzheimer's.

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Tasneem Khan Bio

Tasneem Khan is a biologist, educator, photographer, and interdisciplinary storyteller whose work moves between ecology, art, and experiential learning. Trained in marine zoology, she has spent over a decade developing programs in conservation, environmental education, and creative science communication.

Khan’s work does not sit neatly within a single category. She is not only an “author” in the conventional sense, but rather a field-based thinker and creative practitioner whose writing emerges from lived ecological engagement. This helps explain why her voice often reads less like conventional prose and more like compressed, contemplative poetry shaped by environment and experience.

Her career includes significant field-based work with the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Environmental Team, where she helped design and lead immersive ecological learning initiatives.

Khan is also a co-founder of EARTH CoLab, an initiative focused on outdoor education, ecological awareness, and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Across her writing, photography, and educational projects, she explores themes of:

• human-nature relationships
• place-based learning
• ecological consciousness
• relational and experiential knowledge

Her literary work, including Trees and Other Entanglements, reflects this same sensibility, blending scientific awareness with poetic, reflective prose.

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Links & Presence

• 🌐 EARTH CoLab (project site): http://earthcolab.com
• 📷 Instagram (creative + writing): https://www.instagram.com/t.a.s.n.e.e.m.k.h.a.n/
• 📝 Author/profile page: https://jlrexplore.com/authors/tasneem-khan
• 🌿 Nature inFocus (articles & photography): https://www.natureinfocus.in/author/tasneem-khan

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Where to Read Her

Here is a thoughtful entry sequence, moving from ecological grounding to literary expression.

1. Foundational Voice (Ecology & Reflection)

• Nature writing and essays via Nature inFocus
  → https://www.natureinfocus.in/author/tasneem-khan

These pieces show:

• her observational discipline
• her sensitivity to landscape
• the roots of her later literary tone

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2. Interdisciplinary & Reflective Writing

• Author page and contributions:
  → https://jlrexplore.com/authors/tasneem-khan
• Collaborative/essay platforms (e.g., Dark ’n’ Light):
  → https://darknlight.substack.com

Here you begin to see:

• ecological thought blending with philosophy
• short-form reflective prose approaching poetry

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3. Core Literary Work

• Trees and Other Entanglements

This is where everything converges:

• ecology becomes metaphor
• metaphor becomes identity
• identity becomes relational inquiry

Read this slowly. It is not plot-driven in the conventional sense. It is atmosphere-driven.

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4. Ongoing Creative Presence

• Instagram (visual + textual fragments):
  → https://www.instagram.com/t.a.s.n.e.e.m.k.h.a.n/

This functions almost like:

• a living notebook
• a stream of images + thoughts
• fragments that echo her larger themes

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