The Girl from Tokavaig
A Poem by Paul McCaskill.
A 19th-century Scottish immigrant en route to North Carolina tells his shipmates about his lost love on the Isle of Skye.
I see her by the water
Staring ‘cross the bay
Toward the rocky shores of Canna
The girl from Tokavaig
Tokavaig, my boys, Tokavaig
All my nights and all my days
Tokavaig, my boys
Oh, the girl from Tokavaig
Some nights there would be dancin’
All around me she would wheel
A whirlin’ top of indigo
When they’d call the eightsome reel
And I dream of her
I dream of love
I dream of summer’s long days
Of blue wool by low turf wall
And girl from Tokavaig
It’s hard to cross a river, and worse to cross a sea
And harder still remembering how she was close to me
Where the roofless walls of Dunscaith rise high above the foam
Where a shadow trained a hero Where we would stand alone
When the wind is in the foresails
And I smell the evenin’ breeze
I cast my memory backwards to the Inner Hebrides
For it’s there that I have left my heart
And there that it will stay
Across the sea from Canna
On the shores of Tokavaig
Tokavaig, my boys, Tokavaig
All my nights and all my days
Oh, how I weary for the girl from Tokavaig