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.

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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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