Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.
The Incredible String Band.
Today we are starting the piece I mentioned in the last ISB post concerning the penultimate track on the album, “Douglas Traherne Harding”:
“Arrival at my destination saw me grappling with a singularly strange beast – “that song with the delectably detuned fiddle solo”, as I seem to remember remembering it – bearing the name of some no-doubt mysterious individual, a Douglas somebody or other.
“It was not until many years later that I learned something more about the man – or men – behind the myth. I read in beGLAD [the ISB fanzine] that “Mike dug out books to try and explain, including Douglas Harding’s books on comparative religion, Thomas Traherne’s Christian mysticism…”. Hmmm… I was living in Edinburgh at the time, and ran out to the library and got me a copy of that old-time Christian mysticism, quite backwardsly [sic], as it would turn out, leaving Mr Harding for future perusals. I was not long into Thomas Traherne – Centuries, Poems And Thanksgivings (published by Oxford in 1958) – before I struck quotational [sic] pay dirt.
“But first, a little background on the man himself would be appropriate. Thomas Traherne was born in 1637 to a poor Hereford shoemaker, but, his parents having died when he was quite young, was raised as a son by the “rich and important innkeeper” Philip Traherne.”
More of this fascinating piece next ISB time.
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