Empty Vessel Hugh MacDiarmid

I met ayont the cairneyA lass wi’ tousie hairSingin’ til a bairnieThat was nae langer there.

Wunds wi’ worlds to swingDinna sing sae sweet, The licht that bends owre a’thingIs less ta’en up wi’t.

In EnglishI met beyond a pile of stones at the top of the

hill in an empty place.A young innocent woman with untidy wild hairSinging to a child that was not there.

Winds with worlds to swingDon’t sing as sweetlyThe light or power that looks down on

everythingIs less bothered with all they see than this one

sad girl.

Meaning

• Macdiarmid is saying in this poem that the most important thing in the universe is that emotional and instinctive bond of humanity that we share.

The Title ‘Empty Vessel’• The title is a wonderful metaphor that leads

us into the poem. A vessel is a container something that’s whole purpose is to hold something; a vase holding flowers , a bottle holding wine.

• MacDiarmid cleverly takes this notion and has us connect it metaphorically to the girl; she is a mother without her child ; she is the empty vase the empty bottle . Robbed of her purpose the girl sings like an empty bottle as the wind blows over its lip. She is the empty vessel. Her purpose seems obvious her focus and reason for existence has been the child and now that is gone she is empty purposelessness.

• MacDiarmid sees that as a powerful explanation of what it is that gives us a reason for life and to live and essentially what is important in the great scheme of things.

‘ayont the cairney’

• ‘Ayont’ suggests something beyond and apart just like the girl, like she is removed from the things in the world that have hurt her until the poet happens upon her.

• ‘cairney’ set the scene so well; somewhere alone and empty like the way the girl is feeling, at the same time giving the reader a picture in their head of this lonely place.

‘lass’

• ‘lass’ suggests that the girl is young and it also has the lovely Scots sense of being innocent and in this case out of her depth.

‘tousie hair’

• The word ‘tousie’ is suggesting that the girl’s hair is messy and blown about by the wind. The effect is for the reader to feel she is distressed and even neglected. The details about her lost child make us think about her appearance again and we sympathise with her even more the facy that she looks vulnerable.

bairnie

• MacDiarmid use this word again to make us feel sympathy for the girl and to point out the fact that this girl is maybe not so old herself. ‘Bairnie is an affectionate and intimate term which suggests emotion and a protective attitude from the poet.

Powerful and enigmatic second stanza

• Wunds wi’ worlds to swingDinna sing sae sweet, The licht that bends owre a’thingIs less ta’en up wi’t.

Wunds wi’ worlds to swing

• ‘Wunds’ could be God many people read it as that.

• Or it could be metaphorical ‘wunds’ meaning war, money, power, history or even time.

• It could mean science. At the time of writing this MacDiarmid was fascinated by the new discoveries in science. Einstein had just published his theory of relativity and it seemed we were about to unlock the mysteries of the universe.

• The real power in the image is in the fact that wind howling over an empty hillside is an evocative sound and idea and seems cold and insensitive unlike the ‘lass’ and indeed they ‘Dinna sing sae sweet’m and seem of far less importance.

a’thing

• Means everything, the lot, the world.MacDiarmid uses it to make the poem

jump from being about a girl in distress to a poem about the whole world and what it is for. We suddenly find ourselves asking the question … ‘just how important is this one sad tragedy in the great scheme of things?’

The licht that bends owre a’thing

• Again many read this as God . The biblical ‘I am the light’ gives us this idea.

• MacDiarmid teases us with the idea that like Einstein’s idea of the way in which matter acts when reaching the speed of light , the light which bends owre a’thing is then the laws of physics.

Is less ta’en up wi’t.

• This is the emphatic end point. After the powerful imagery of the first three lines he settles on the dismissive but final statement that whatever powers move our world none compare to the power of the way they feel and we, the reader, feel when it comes to the suffering of our fellow human beings.

• It is our common humanity and our capacity for empathy that swing the world.

The intimate and the cosmic

• This poem is a skillful adaptation of a traditional verse poem ‘Jenny Nettles’. MacDiarmid brings the immensity of the cosmos into the poem which seems to be about something more intimate in the first place. In Empty vessel we start out really small.

‘I met ayont the cairny A lass wi’ tousie hair’

The original

• The original is more concerned with story telling

‘ I met ayont the Kairney Jenny Nettles, Jenny Nettles Singing till her bairny Robin Rattle’s bastard’

Realism and Sympathy

• MacDiarmid takes away the girl’s name and puts in a description to give the poem a sense of realism and to increase our sympathy. In the original Jenny goes in search of Robin to beg him to make an honest woman of her, but MacDiarmid uses the simpler ‘was nae langer there’ and leaves the rest to the reader’s imagination.

• Was the child taken from her? Did she die? It has the direct effect of involving the reader and making us curious as to what has happened. Our sympathy for the lass is what matters here not the story behind her pain.

cosmic

• The poem then abruptly jumps to MacDiarmid’s ‘cosmic’ thinking, contemplating the power that shapes the world and finding it wanting in comparison to the mother’s anguished singing.

The leap from nursery rhyme

• The phrase ‘tak up’ has religious connotations as well as suggesting infatuation and the idea of worship. The leap from nursery rhyme and the change from iambic to the stressed first syllable ‘Wunds’ changes the tone of the poem and echoes the poet’s more strident conclusion about the lass’s song.

The poet’s unique vision • MacDiarmid uses language very precisely in

the poem; the word ‘bends could equally describe a mother bending over her child and the path of an object approaching our atmosphere and burning up in a spectacular arc. It has even been suggested that MacDiarmid, having just become acquainted with Einstein’s theory of relativity, was describing the path of an electron approaching the speed of light and nodding towards the big bang theory of creation. The metrically staggered sounds of ‘swing’, ‘sing’, and ‘sing’ hold this explosive bit of the poem together without taking away from just how unique the poet’s vision is and how surprising.

The Scot’s psyche.

• In the end we are left in no doubt as the poem arrives at it’s firm conclusion that the singing of the lass has more power and importance than the other powers mentioned in the lyric. We are very aware of MacDiarmid’s recurring stylistic device that he felt was so prevalent in the character of the Scots, that ability to talk or write about the intimate and the cosmic in a single breath, and that he felt that it sat in the Scot’s psyche.

It is our common humanity and our capacity for empathy that

swing the world.

Hugh MacDiarmid

• MacDiarmid wrote this poem while working for the Montrose Review in the 1920s. This is the house he stayed in in Links Avenue. This is also the house where he and a few friends invented the Scottish National Party and the Scottish Literary Renaissance

Essay• Choose a poem which uses an

apparently ordinary event to explore significant ideas and feelings.

• Show how the writer uses ideas and imagery to achieve this and explain what you think the poem is trying to convey to the reader.

Introduction

• A poem which takes an ordinary event and uses it to explore a significant idea is ‘Empty Vessel’ by Hugh MacDiarmid. He takes the accidental meeting with a girl on a bleak hill side and uses this chance encounter to comment on what makes life meaningful and the essence of what it is to be ‘human’ in the vastness of the universe.

Paragraph 2

• The title and why it is important…

• Paragraph 3• The first line … what does it mean what is

the writer suggesting by his choice of words?

• Paragraph 4• The second line … what does it mean what

is the writer suggesting by his choice of words?

Paragraphs 5,6,7,8,9…

• Take each line and using your notes explain what it is about and how it adds to the meaning of the poem.

Conclusion

• In conclusion ‘Empty Vessel’ seems like a inconsequential account of a sad encounter and ends up being an examination of the importance of our common humanity in the universe. It is as much about the Scot’s psyche as about the world but the poet makes a very significant point from such a small initial incident.