Bill Nighy Sings ‘The Rowan Tree’

Bill Nighy. Photo by Gordon Correll, (CC BY-SA 2.0), via Wikimedia Commons

Year after year the Academy Award for best song goes to overblown and underwritten disappointments. There may be exceptions, but the fact that so many nominated songs come from Disney features where everything works out wonderfully for another doe-eyed princess and are delivered with soulless athleticism by young women who lack the slightest touch of world weariness is disheartening. This year, the queen of the weepy power ballad, Diane Warren, acquitted herself quite nicely on piano, but the song was, once again, average. Lady Gaga was her usual brilliant self and, in a daring move, didn’t bother with make up or a designer gown. She saved the day. The Bollywood boys brought the house down and deservedly so.

The song that should have won this year wasn’t nominated. I guess the Academy has a problem with songs that break off before reaching the end. When Bill Nighy gets swamped with emotion singing “The Rowan Tree” in the fine and quiet film Living, he puts his head down and surrenders. It is the best argument I’ve seen in a while for banning CGI and suing Marvel for malfeasance.

Nighy plays a very buttoned-up office worker in what I assume is London. It’s a period piece, taking place in whatever era British men were wearing bowler hats. The atmosphere in the office he runs is one of unbreakable silence and propriety. Nighy’s character is a widower and shortly into the movie he’s told he has six months to live. What he does with that time makes up the rest of the film.

“Rowan Tree” is a Scottish folk song and has its requisite bairnies (children, I think) running around. I’m assuming “hame” is “home.” But you don’t need to understand or even listen to the words he sings to be moved. It’s all in his voice, his posture and face. This is a man who knows he’s going home soon.

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

© Caroline Oliphant (Lady Nairne)

You don’t really need a copyright on a song from who knows how long ago. Lady Nairne died in 1845, so no red carpet for her. All she really did was collect the song and, I assume, put it in a book. There was a time when all music was created on site without electricity. You didn’t hear a different Spotify playlist everywhere you went. There were no clever “sound designs” running through your favorite NPR show. there were no radios!

That may be why this performance (in a widely distributed movie — I know) has such weight. It’s a man, a not particularly nice piano, and a small crowd, some of them singing along. It could have happened when the song was new. It probably caused tears to flow in pubs like the one in this movie. It was portable, carried in people’s hearts and minds wherever they went. The sentiment is not just in the words, the melody is grand and sweeping. As delivered by a peerless Bill Nighy, it’s almost enough to make you want to toss your iPhone in the lake.

Sign Up for John Sieger’s Song A Week Club!