GAELIC PROVERBS AND PROVERBIAL SAYINGS FROM THE ISLAND OF TIREE
Donald E. Meek
My subject for this evening is one which has been close to
my heart for many years, and has arisen quite naturally from my own connection
with this island. I was brought up on a
croft – 'Coll View', Caolas – within a
family which was predominantly Gaelic speaking: it was also a family which
showed the age-imbalance which is a feature of Highland society more
generally. As I remember 'Coll View'
first, it had no less than six older people within it – five of them siblings
of the MacDonald family, whose patriarch was my great-grandfather, Hector
MacDonald, otherwise known as 'Eachann Bàn'.
The older folk – my great-aunts and great-uncles – were Eachann Bàn's
children, and had been born in the 1870s.
These older folk, whom some of you will remember well, were:
Hector, who lived in the cottage down by
the shore, where Archie Eglinton's house now stands.
Charles, who retired from Vancouver,
Canada, in 1949, and went to live in Hector's cottage after Hector's
death. I will say quite a bit about
Charlie later.
Annabel, who similarly retired from
Vancouver in 1949, and went to live with her brother, Charles, in the
cottage. Previously, both had stayed in
'Coll View'.
Maggie, who lived on the 'Coll View'
croft all her life.
Donald, who inherited the 'Coll View'
croft from his father. Donald married a
MacLean from 'Càrnan': she was thus the only one of the older family who was
not a MacDonald.
My father, Hector Meek, was the son
of another member of the MacDonald family, Nancy, who had married James Meek
from Falkirk. After living in Falkirk
for a few years, James and Nancy emigrated to Vancouver in the early years of
this century, leaving my father behind in 'Coll View', in the expectation that
he would follow the rest of the family but he never did. My father learned Gaelic as a very young boy,
and soon became completely Highland.
What has all that got to do with
Gaelic proverbs? Well, two things:
First, Gaelic proverbs and
proverbial sayings were all around me as I grew up, and worked on the
croft. In the 1950s and 1960s, this was
a culturally rich environment, still maintaining many of the older customs. For example, I well remember attending the deireadh
bhuana, 'the end of the reaping', when a splendid tea was prepared for the
family and their helpers. Among the most
welcome guests was the maighdeann bhuana, 'the harvest maiden', which
consisted of the last sheaf of corn which had been cut, suitably dressed up as
a maiden. I was also given the rare privilege of hearing nineteenth-century
Gaelic at first hand; by 1970, all of the older members of the family had
passed on.
Looking back now, I am aware that
much of crofting life and, indeed, much of the community life in the island,
was surrounded by sayings and proverbs which underpinned the culture and the
way of life, and that the one supported the other. There were little sayings about most things,
from shoeing the horse to reaping the harvest maiden.
However, the main point is that
these proverbs were fixed in the conversation of the old folk in the house:
they flowed out of their mouths. My
father had learned a lot of proverbs from his uncles and aunts. They came out quite effortlessly, and it was
only in later life that I became aware that these pithy little statements – some offering an explanation of a particular
event, some gentle comments to soothe anger, some very witty, some very biting
and even quite sarcastic – were special sayings or 'proverbs'. They were part of the natural life of the
Gaelic culture of that time. To give you
a couple of examples:
One very calm morning, as I was
leaving to go to Ruaig school, I noticed that there were a lot of seagulls well
inland, in fact, right up on the inbye of the croft. This I mentioned to my father, who replied -
Comharradh na gaillinn, eòin na
mar' air an t-sliabh.
It is a sign of a storm when the
seabirds are on the rough ground.
If I did not know what that saying
meant when I set off for school, I certainly knew what it meant by the time I
came back, for it was blowing a howling gale.
On another occasion, we were very
busy at the harvest, making corn stooks.
We were so busy that we had hardly a moment to speak, and, of course, we
were keeping an eye on the weather. A
neighbour came to help us – Niall Ailein from Aird Deas – and even he didn't
have a moment to talk. My father's
comment was:
Harvest-time is a very stand-offish fellow
which meant, quite simply, that
there was no time to stand talking when there was a lot of hard work to be
done.
Or, to take another, instance. One day I was with my father and we were
about to launch a boat at the Port Ruadh.
We had the dinghy on a carrying pole, and held an end each. Her bow was pointing due west, and I pushed
hard to try to turn it anticlockwise. My
father stopped me, with the words
Deiseil air gach nì
Sunwise
with everything
and promptly turned the boat round
clockwise, in the direction of the sun!
My couple of illustrations of the
natural use of proverbs in my family has become three, but permit me to make it
four. Proverbs were used to pass comment
on different types of people, especially if they were doing odd things or going
beyond themselves in some way. My father
had a bit of an aversion to people who imitated the managerial style, shall we
say, when the real boss was absent. When he felt irritated by someone who was
doing that, he would say –
Is mise fear an taighe nuair bhios
m' athair anns an Ros.
I
am the man of the house when my father is in the Ross of Mull.
You will be aware, I am sure, that,
in the old days, the Tiree folk often went to the Ross of Mull for peat and
timber, and that is what the proverb alludes to. Proverbs often preserve the memory of old
customs and traditions, as we will see.
I often chuckle at that saying – it is so neatly phrased, and beautifully
understated.
So that is the first point well
illustrated, I hope. Members of my
family were brim-full of proverbs, and most families in Tiree, in the hey-day
of Gaelic speech, would have been the same.
Proverbs and sayings were as natural as breathing.
Here, then, is my second point, to
show how fond my people were of Gaelic proverbs, and how much they enjoyed
them. Not only did the 'Coll View' folk
use proverbs - one of the family also recorded a great store of Tiree
proverbs! I have here tonight a
collection of Gaelic proverbs made by my great-uncle, Charles MacDonald, whom I
have mentioned already. You will
remember that I said that he lived with his sister, Annabel, in a small cottage
where the Eglintons' house now stands.
Charlie, as he was known to many, was a very able man, who was very much
the seanchaidh or traditional historian of the MacDonald family. He was a joiner to trade, and was also a
shipwright, having served his time in Glasgow in the yard later owned by Harland
and Wolff. He then went abroad, served
as a joiner in South Africa, sailed as a ship’s carpenter during the First
World War, moved later to Vancouver, Canada, where he was a fisherman – and
then, as I said, retired to Caolas. In
my eyes, he was a very wonderful man – full of fun, stories, and songs. He was always active, and even in his
mid-eighties had the energy of a youngster.
I used to spend the weekends with Charlie and Annabel, and I felt always
that they were at least as young as myself.
Very often during these weekends, Charlie would start to tell stories -
about the Spanish galleon in Tobermory Bay, or about Ailean nan Sop, or about
Iain Garbh of Coll. He died in 1961 -
just before the School of Scottish Studies began to take a deep interest in
Tiree traditions, although Hamish Henderson was able to record him in 1958. I still miss him greatly.
It was only by chance that I
discovered that he had made the collection of proverbs. I was collecting Tiree proverbs myself in the
late 1960s and early 1970s, and my father drew this collection to my
attention. It had lain in an outhouse
for years, and came to light only because I asked my father if he knew of
anyone who had made a collection of Tiree proverbs! My father remembered, how, as a comparatively
young boy, he had acted as Charlie's scribe, writing and re-writing the
proverbs for him when he was home on holiday in Tiree. Charlie could not write Gaelic very well; so
he got my father to be his amanuensis, and between them they produced two
notebooks, the one containing the rough versions, and the other a fair copy.
Now, this is quite a
collection. I reckon it must contain about
1,000 proverbs and sayings, including riddles and rhymes, collected in Tiree
sometime before 1920. Of these 1,000
sayings, I estimate that about 400 may well be peculiar to Tiree itself. Every island and locality of the Scottish
Highlands had its own store of local proverbs, as well as its share of the
great floating corpus of proverbs which was the common stock of the whole of
the Highland area. I have been trying to
edit this collection for some time, and I hope that I will be able to publish
it as a little book in memory of Charles MacDonald and the 'Coll View' folk.
What I want to do tonight is to
give you just a little taste of the richness of Tiree tradition, and
specifically the east-end tradition, in the way of proverbs and sayings. I am going to give you some samples from my
own gathering, but I will be drawing a lot of material from Charlie's
collection, which is so full of interesting examples. The majority of the sayings I will use belong
specifically to Tiree, and I am choosing them because they are not in other
collections of proverbs or are found in distinctively different forms.
What strikes me whenever I look at
Charlie's collection is how very rich Tiree tradition once was. A large number of proverbs were gathered by
the Rev. John Gregorson Campbell, minister of Tiree in the second half of the
nineteenth century, and these were incorporated by Sheriff Nicolson in his
collection of Gaelic proverbs. Even so,
there are still about 400 in Charlie's collection not found in Nicolson's!
The best way to handle this large
topic is to take it in small bites, according to different themes in the
proverbs themselves: proverbs and sayings about people and places, about work
on the land, work on the sea, the weather, and so on. I will include some riddles, too, which will
test your ingenuity.
1.
People and places
I will begin with proverbs and
sayings about people and places in Tiree itself. This will prove to you very clearly that the
island had its own set of sayings, although similar types of sayings can be
found in other communities in the Highlands.
It is well known that people who
share the same island or district like to differentiate one another in a
humorous way. Friendly rivalries and
banter exist between different townships.
In the old days, special code-names or nick-names were often used; these
were commonly the names of animals or birds.
Thus, at the east end of Tiree, there was a saying about the people of
Ruaig:
Ròin Ruthaig a' tighinn 'nan
dusain, 's chan urrainn dhaibh am bruthach a dhìreadh.
The
seals of Ruaig are coming in their dozens, and they cannot climb the hill.
The Caolas people also had their
characters delineated in a similar way.
They were
‘Tunnagan a' Chaolais’ – 'the ducks
of Caolas' – and the saying continued ‘ithidh iad am maorach cho caol ris na
feannagan’ – 'they will eat shellfish as
bare as the crows [would eat it]' (?).
The people of Vaul were known as ‘Sgait
Bhalla’, 'the skates of Vaul'.
These, of course, are names from
the east end, and I would like to know whether the west end had a similar
selection. I think I have heard the
people of Cornaig, for example, referred to as ‘eich Chòrnaig’, 'the horses of
Cornaig'.
How were these sayings used? I remember my father telling me that they
were often used by schoolchildren as the prelude to an inter-township battle in
the playground. They were the words of
insult, by which you challenged your opponents to a fight.
How did they come about? I suspect that they reflect dominant features
of the townships concerned: there were perhaps a lot of seals on the rocks of
Ruaig, a lot of ducks in Caolas, and skate may have been a delicacy enjoyed by
the folk of Vaul, or perhaps commonly fished by them. Perhaps the people of Cornaig were good at
breeding horses. Somebody here will want
to tell me after the meeting.
Some of the sayings were focused on
particular families. I will give you one
example from my own family. My
great-grandfather, Eachann Bàn or Hector MacDonald, built 'Coll View' in 1891,
and acquired the stone by blasting it from a quarry. As a result, he was given a little saying
about himself, which went -
Eachann Bàn, blastair, a'
buachailleachd nam partan.
Fair
Hector, the blaster, who shepherds the crabs.
This was used to summon my own
family to a fight in the playground!
Wild people, the east-enders! But
were the people of the west end any better?
What did you call one another?
So much for the people. What about places mentioned in Tiree
proverbs? My first example is fairly
well known -
Stad
e mu Ghot – 'He
stopped about Gott'. This is used when
something is delayed in the process - or when someone does not turn up for
rather dubious reasons. There was once
an inn or change-house in Gott, which was used as a staging-post by travellers
in the island, and people were inclined to spend too much time in it, sampling
the beverages.
Another about travelling in the
island –
Rathad Hogh a Hoighnis gu Beinn
Cheann a' Bhara
The
road from Hough to Hynish, up to (= via) the Hill of Ceann a' Bhara
This was used of a round-about way,
taking a detour rather than going straight from A to B. I have heard variants of this saying, and
some of you may have different versions.
Here is one which mentions the
township of Kennovay –
Is trosg an Ceann a' Bhàigh e.
It
is a cod in Kennovay.
How was that used? According to my father, it was used when
something was unattainable - hard to get.
If that is a correct explanation, it is obviously another east-end
saying.
Now here is one which is quite
definitely about the west end, and says something about the quality of the
harvest in Balephuil -
Cha b'fhuilear dha a bhith
seachdain air thodhar, bàrr odhar Bhail' a' Phuill
The
dun-coloured crop of Balephuil would be the better of going on the bleach for a
week.
The saying seems to imply that
crops in Balephuil did not ripen well, and needed to be given more sunlight to
take them to a natural colour. I wonder if anyone has a fuller explanation of
that one?
Tiree people, of course, travelled
well beyond the confines of their own island, for all sorts of reasons. There are Tiree sayings about other islands
and places on the mainland. For example,
about Barra -
Ge fada mach Barraigh, ruigear e.
Although
Barra is far out, it can be reached.
One reason for the travels of the
Tiree people was to find fuel, such as peat, and wood for building. People on the other islands and the mainland
were not always pleased to see them when they arrived. I suspect that they may have travelled as far
as mainland Argyll, and I know of one saying which may refer to a 'bad
experience' in mainland Argyll:
Gearr-ghobaich gun mhodh, gun
oilean, coillearan Mhucàrna.
The
foresters of Muckairn are short-snouted, mannerless, boorish bunch.
The Tiree folk took more than wood
and peat from the other islands. I know
of one little riddle that commemorates something else:
Gobhar iubhair adhair
A thug m' athair as an Ros;
Ged chuirte bheul fodha,
Cha tigeadh deur às.
A goat of yew and sky (???)
That my father brought from the
Ross (of Mull);
Though it should be turned mouth
downwards,
Not a drop would come out of it.
After a lot of head-scratching –
and I am still scratching – I was told
that the answer to that teaser was 'a cow's udder', so there you are! I think we may conclude that cows were
transported from Mull to Tiree! Not an
earth-shattering conclusion, but it is interesting to see the old 'trade
routes' being commemorated in this way.
Now a rather nice one about a place
called Achadh nan Tulach, which I am sure is not on the geographical map, but
is certainly on the map of human experience:
Chan eil Achadh nan Tulach
nan cnocan buidhe, bòidheach,
nach eil latha gu subhach
is latha gu dubhach, brònach.
Achadh
nan Tulach (lit. 'The Field of the Hills')
of
the fair, yellow hills
is not without its happy day
and its day of sadness and gloom.
2.
Boats and the sea
A few sayings now about boats and
the sea. My family had some memorable
sayings in this group, which must be close to the heart of any true Tirisdeach. Here was one used when circumstances altered:
Chan eil carraig air nach caochail
sruth, ach carraig dhubh Liosmòir.
There
is no headland which does not experience a change of current, except the black
headland of Lismore.
I have heard the first part
commonly in other parts and places, but the second part - 'ach carraig dhubh
Liosmòir' – I have heard only once
beyond Tiree. The tidal races at the
western tip of Lismore are well known, and the resulting, ever-present
whirlpool can be felt even on board the Lord of the Isles.
Another, applying to the seashore
(and found in my uncle's collection) –
Ged as ionnan cladach, chan ionnan
maorach.
Although
the shoreline is the same, the shellfish are different.
This saying is used in other parts
of the Highlands, and applied when there has been a change within a
community. It may look the same – the same houses, the same lie of the land – but the inhabitants, the 'shellfish' have
changed. This saying is often in my
mind when I myself return to Tiree these days.
Here is one which I know only from
my uncle's collection:
Chan fhacas long mhòr riamh gun
gheòla bheag aice.
A
big boat was never seen without its little boat.
The meaning of that is fairly
obvious; even the biggest and strongest need to take precautions against loss.
And another from the same source:
Am fear a ghleidheas a long, gheibh
e latha.
The
man who preserves his ship will get a suitable day to sail.
This was evidently an exhortation
to be patient, when the weather was bad.
Better to preserve the ship, and wait until the weather had improved.
3.
Weather
A few now about the weather. Tiree
people watched the weather, and liked to be able to forecast it or understand
its patterns.
I remember well being at a funeral
in Kirkapol some years ago, on a terrible day in July. The day was so bad that you could hardly see
Gott Pier. As we came out of the church,
an older Tirisdeach (Archibald MacArthur, Heylipol, Ailig Beag’s father) commented
on the weather, and said:
Mar a theireadh na seann daoine, Trì
làithean den Iuchair san Fhaoilteach, agus trì làithean den Fhaoilteach san
Iuchair.
As
the old folks would say, 'Three days of July weather in January, and there days
of January weather in July'.
Strictly, the Faoilteach is not a month name, but a name for the angry weather at
the turn of the year. The Tiree folk had
a saying about it -
Iomadh sgobadh na Faoiltich,
caoilt' is gearan
The
Faoilteach is a season of many snatches, starvation and discontent.
Here is one about spring-time from
my uncle's collection -
Ceò earraich – thig sneachd às a dhèidh cho cinnteach 's ged
robh e glaiste 'sa chist' agad.
Mist
in spring-time will be followed by snow, as surely as it would come if you had
it locked in the chest.
And another which I used to hear
from my father, but which is fairly common elsewhere, commenting on perverse
weather, which goes against the pattern:
Chan uisg' ach uisg' on tuath, 's
cha thuradh buan ach on deas.
No
rain comes but from the north, and no lasting dry weather comes but from the
south.
That, as you will be aware, was the
opposite of the normal experience of people.
My father used to maintain that if you got rain from the north, it
tended to last much longer, and if you got dry weather with a south wind, it
could last similarly. (I see that this
proverb is noted in Nicolson's collection, and it is said to be of Tiree
origin. I know of one variant from the
other islands.)
4.
Work
Some sayings now about work on the
land. Earlier in the lecture, I mentioned a Tiree saying about harvest, and
here is another about work in general, which refers to the weather:
Is e an latha bagarrach a nì an
obair thogarrach.
A
lowering day makes the work go with a swing.
That is, people work more willingly
to avoid bad weather.
Work such as fishing was very much
dependent on the weather, and on the ups and downs of life. Here is a saying about a fisherman:
An ceann seachd bliadhna innsidh an
t-iasgair fhortan.
The
fisherman will announce his fortune at the end of seven years.
That is the Tiree and Gaelic
equivalent of 'not counting one's chickens before they are hatched'!
A nice one now, about making
butter:
Cha dèan corrag mhilis ìm.
A
sweet finger will not make butter.
5.
People of different kinds: human behaviour
Some sayings now about different
sorts of people, and especially their behaviour. There are some nice ones here, using all
sorts of images.
From my uncle's collection:
Cha b'fhiach an tràigh shìolag dol
thuice an oidhche nach robh Ceit a-mach.
It
wasn't worth going to the shore for sand-eels the night that Kate wasn't out
there.
I presume that this was used of
someone who never missed a chance.
Cha bu toigh leam a bhith 'nam each
aig ceàrd.
I
would not like to be a tinker's horse.
possibly because tinkers tended to sell their
horses frequently.
Cha dèan sinn feum le Lachainn, 's
cha dèan sinn feum gun Lachainn.
We
cannot manage with Lachie, and we cannot manage without Lachie.
That is, more than one helper is
required, but he cannot be dispensed with, in spite of his inadequacies.
Here's one containg a wee laugh at
the minister, and specifically about the sort of calf that was reared at the
manse:
Fada caol, mar a bha laogh a'
mhinisteir.
Long
and thin, like the minister's calf.
This probably implies that the
minister's calf was denied good milk.
The cream etc. went to the manse!
There are a lot of amusing sayings
in this category, and I well remember how they would raise a wry smile when
they were used.
Another now about the virtuous
person, someone who is pure in heart -
An duine nach bi olc 'na chridhe,
cha bhi olc air aire.
The
man who is not evil in his heart will contemplate no evil.
Here is one which is a list of
animals and people to be watched with care -
Cù gramach, each breabach, tè
bheulach is fear sgeulach - bi 'nad earalas orra.
A
snappy dog, a kicking horse, a plausible woman and a tale-telling man - be on
your guard against them.
6.
Animal images
Some proverbs now which refer
ostensibly to animals, but which have an obvious human application -
Far am bi a' chaora, bidh an t-uan.
Where
the sheep is, the lamb will be there too.
Gach uan nas gile na mhàthair, 's a
mhàthair cho geal ris an t-sneachd.
Every
lamb is whiter than its mother, and its mother is as white as snow.
This was doubtless used sarcastically!
Now a couple about the cat -
Is toigh leis a' chat a chomalladh.
The
cat likes its own equivalent.
and
Cha chuir bainne cait mòran
uachdair dheth.
A
cat's milk will not produce much cream.
It doesn't get the chance to
produce cream, because the cat drinks it so quickly.
One now about the brown fly that
one used to see about the dunghills -
Is i chuileag ruadh as àirde srann
nuair dh'èireas i.
The
brown fly makes the greatest noise of all when it rises.
This was probably said of people
who drew a lot of attention to themselves, but were really not very reputable.
One referring to a cow:
Am fear a th'air an aona mhart, tha
a h-earball 'na dhòrn.
The
man who has only one cow holds her tail in his fist.
Here's a saying referring to the
horse:
Tha seana n-each an geall air
searrach.
An
old horse is very keen to get a foal.
I was told that this was sometimes
applied to expectant grandparents!
7.
Riddles
I would like to conclude tonight by
giving you a few samples of the riddles which were once so common in Gaelic
communities. You see if you can crack
these: the first person who gets them all right is the champion riddle-buster
of Tiree, and deserves a special prize:
Craobh dhìoganach, ghàganach,
ghuaganach,
A bun suas 's barr sìos,
'S i a' fàs mus-sun (= mar sin).
A
thorny, bunchy, stumpy tree,
its
roots at the top and its foliage at the bottom,
and
it's growing like that. (A cow's tail)
Muc dhubh, dhubh aig ceann taigh
Fhearchair
Dithis 'na ceann is triùir 'na
h-earball
A
black, black pig at the end of Farquhar's house;
Two
at its head and three at its tail. (A pot)
And the last one -
Chì mi thall air àilleagan,
Air bharr na lice ruaidh,
Am mac a' tighinn bho mhàthair,
'S a mhàthair a' tighinn uaith'.
I
see yonder, over the lovely plain (?),
on
the top of the red slab of rock,
the
son being born of his mother,
and
his mother being born of him. (Sunrise)
Conclusion
That was only a small sample from a
very large collection. We would need a
week to go through it all, and at least another week to discuss all the
different forms of the proverbs.
I hope that you will feel that the
evening has been worthwhile, and I hope even more that you will now go back to
your own part of Tiree and think about all the proverbs and sayings that you
know. If you can find time, write them
down, and we'll see how many more collections we'll have by this time next
year!
Fèis
Lecture, July 1993
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