I was reminded this week of the song, The Parting Glass…
Of all the money that ere I had, I spent it in good company.
And of all the harm that ere I’ve done, alas was done to none but me.
And all I’ve done for want of wit, to memory now I cannot recall.
So fill me to the parting glass. Goodnight and joy be with you all.
Of all the comrades that ere I had, they’re sorry for my going away,
And of all the sweethearts that ere I had, they wish me one more day to stay,
But since it falls unto my lot that I should rise while you should not,
I will gently rise and I’ll softly call, “Goodnight and joy be with you all!”
When I was a child, I listened as an old fellow who was visiting Limekiln Lake sang this song.
His slow, measured cadence and low melodic tones have never left my ears.
I often times revisit the song as I snow blow in the winter or on a quiet paddle in the summer.
It is funny how events, songs and stories that I experienced as an eight to ten year old child have clung to me.
In the mid-fall of 1977 I was fond of enjoying the solitude offered by the beach walks along Limekiln Lake.
The cottage dwellers had long gone and the only footprints were made by ducks, my dog Mutt and myself.
As I walked along I heard the strange tones of an instrument being played in the distance.
Then, a fellow with a grey beard and what he called small pipes clinging under one armpit approached me.
We introduced ourselves and he shared his knowledge of his small set of bagpipes; explaining how they worked and the various sounds it could make.
He said he had come to the quiet shore of the beach to say farewell to a friend who had passed away and who had loved the time he spent on Limekiln Lake.
His farewell was in slow melodic notes that drifted from the sands of the beach.
I sat cross-legged on the beach, listening to the music and the dark, lapping waters.
I was entranced at the movements of his fingers, with their memory for each note to make each sound blend into a musical journey for my ears.
It was much different from other sensory experiences I had along the shoreline.
The smell of wet sand and discarded leaves, hearing wind gusts as they rattled the Beech leaves still attached to their branches, and the last sight of southbound geese were normal.
But this was a rare and magical moment to share someone’s musical tribute to a lost friend.
Funny, now as I wander in the fall—still growing up Adirondack—I yearn for the moment to turn a corner of some marked trail or paddle the turn of a quiet river and again run into a grey bearded man playing the pipes.
Just as I did many years ago, I would ask, “Hey, are there words to that?”
And in answer to my question he would compose himself and sing, ending with a single tear.
—
Mitch Lee, Adirondack native & storyteller,
lives at Inlet. ltmitch3rdny@aol.com