5 QUESTIONS TO RACHEL WOOLF

Rachel is a wordsmith who devised the textual content of the Meadows Mural.

1. What was your brief?

To provide text which could be interpreted visually and would reflect the history and character of the Meadows and Bruntsfield Links and appeal to the wide variety of folk who use the Meadows as a thoroughfare and a place of recreation.

2. What was the inspiration for your poem, ‘A Throng of Folk’?

One of my lullabies is inspired by the names of all the stations from Waverley to North Berwick and, in the same vein, the names of four of the walks on the Meadows gave me an intriguing starting point.

Weaving a story round the names of the walks resulted in a fairy tale about the Coronation of the May Queen. It focuses on her Carnival procession from her Jawbone Throne up Middle Meadow Walk to the stone unicorns, which date back to the grandeur of the 1886 exhibition, and have stood guard ever since.

3. Why did you choose the quote from ‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’ by Muriel Spark for the Middle Meadow Walk wall?

I felt that this major piece of public art should draw on some of the great writers who have a connection with the area. Muriel Spark was an obvious choice.

I was amazed and delighted to find that she had had the same vision - a child hopping to a chant made up of local place names! And right on Middle Meadow Walk too.

        ‘Edinburgh, Leith, Portobello, Musselburgh and Dalkeith.’ It was a glorious discovery.

I had strung the names of the Meadows Walks in sequence,

        Boys Brigade, Middle Meadow, Coronation, Jawbone

This has a jaunty rhythm and can be chanted as a skipping or hopping rhyme by children as they make their way on foot across the Meadows, just as the Brodie girls did.

This led me to PROCESSIONS as the title of the mural – one for the May Queen and one of a line of school girls and their teacher – each crossing the Meadows from Jawbone Arch to the Middle Meadow Walk Unicorns.

4. You have also used a few lines from a Robert Burns poem

Absolutely! The story is about a great celebration with much music and merrymaking, and, in Scotland, such an event always includes Burns. But also it is reputed that the Bard’s father worked on draining the quagmire of the Burgh Loch, some years before the land was eventually drained and set out as a park.

A contemporary document tells us that the ‘fashionables and Literati’ liked to promenade there and take in the fresh air above the smoke of the Old Town. Perhaps Burns was among them.

Also, I wanted to bring in a bit of romance and his tender words about love on a windy lea, or meadow, hit the spot.

5. You have also drawn on folklore. Please tell us more about this theme.