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After the dedication ceremony at Westminster Abbey, back at the Scottish office in Dover House, Orcadian poet Harvey Johnston read a wonderful, Burnsian poem entitled Rae in the Abbey. He graciously agreed to let me publish part of it. The final four stanzas run as follows. I have no photo of Johnston, but the above image of Our Hero captures the spirit of the thing:
Cheust like the
Cree and Inuit
He’d grown tae
understand
Ye work wi’
watter, wind and wave
Tae live aff sea
and land.
Wi’ snowshoes, long strides and a gun
Up North wi’ dog and sledge
He learned the
fate o’ Franklin
Bae the cruel Arctic’s
edge.
And on he strode
tae find the strait
Weel named on maps
ye view
The final strait
Amundsen sailed
The North West Passage
through.
Wan hunder noo,
and sixty years
Hiv passed by
since that day
High time indeed,
that in This Place
We mark the name
of Rae.
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