‘IT FOLLOWS ME, THAT BLACK ISLAND…’: PORTRAYING AND POSITIONING THE HEBRIDEAN
‘FRINGE’ IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY GAELIC LITERATURE
Donald E. Meek
Peripheries and centres
are very much a matter of perception.
For those of us brought up in the Hebrides, as I was in the 1950s and
1960s, the idea that we were somehow peripheral was hardly worth a second
thought. We would not have known then,
of course, what the word ‘periphery’ meant, and if we had heard its Gaelic
equivalent, ‘iomall’, we would have thought of something else – the edge of a
garment or the edge of a plate of porridge.
Many a morning, when I was confronted with that delightful substance
before going to school, I would plunge into it with the wild abandon typical of
young people. Then, having scalded
myself, I would spit it out, and my aggrieved old relatives would say, ‘Ith e
on iomall’ (Eat it from the outer edge).
Sometimes ‘iomall’ could mean the ‘remaining scrap’, which was left when
the centre of a cake was eaten out by an earlier enthusiast. The vocabulary which is now the special
property of those advanced thinkers on Gaelic economics (usually based in
Inverness) was very personal and domestic to me in those far-off days. I still cannot conceive of ‘edges’ and
‘peripheries’ in geographical terms when I think of the Hebrides. If there was a ‘periphery’ at all, it was the
land mass of the Scottish mainland, which seemed mysterious and remote. I remember how sorry I felt for those
distant members of my family who had the misfortune to live off the edge of
things in smog-filled Glasgow, and could not share the delights of my island
paradise at the centre of the universe.
I had everything that I could have wished for, including an abundance of
food, almost all of it home-grown. It
was only later in life, when I myself had migrated to the aforesaid smog-filled
metropolis, that I began to realise that there was another view of the islands
which tended to see them as peripheral.
That was in the late 1960s and early 1970s. By the end of the twentieth
century, however, the concept of ‘marginalisation’ had become endemic among
those who planned the destiny of the Hebrides.
The term ‘The Celtic Fringe’ had been invented by Michael Hechter in
1975 (Hechter 1975), and it began to pop up everywhere, accompanied by a haze
of popular misconception and Celtic romanticism. By 1970, too, the islands were being opened
up to so-called ‘incomers’ and ‘white settlers’, and a new vocabulary of
remoteness and inaccessibility was finding its way into the area.
As I prepared this
paper, I was comforted to find that I was not alone in my perspectives. Poets down the centuries, far from feeling
isolated and remote, affirmed the centrality of the Gaelic world in its own
terms, and even those who had left the area lived with a very real awareness of
their former island homes. The nineteenth century, in particular, witnessed a
great deal of migration and emigration from the Highlands and Islands, but the
migrants did not suddenly lose touch with their native heath. They retained their links through their
families, and formed associations in the cities to maintain their territorial
loyalties – the Islay Association, the Tiree Association, the Lewis and Harris
Association. There was, admittedly, a
romantic dimension in such recollection and reconstruction. It is evident in the work of many poets and
songsters, as they idealised, and idolised, the homeland that they had
forsaken. But, however difficult and
decisive the physical separation may have been, the original homeland travelled
with them, and they were compelled to explore their relationship to it (Meek
2003).
The same is true of the
twentieth century. Twentieth-century
Gaelic writers and composers who have left the Hebrides have a very strong
sense of belonging to the area, and they are in no doubt about its symbolic
significance. Admittedly, the styles of
composition have been diversified, and the themes likewise, since the
nineteenth century. The relationship to
the homeland has come to be explored in a much more analytical manner,
particularly by the more ‘academic’ poets, who have been influenced by English
literature and its philosophies, and have turned from song and quatrain to free
verse. For those who remain in the
Hebrides, however, the islands have continued to be the centre of a
self-sustaining world, which they have been pleased to describe and affirm in
song and verse, formal and informal, light and profound. We will look at
specimens of twentieth-century Gaelic verse, traditional and more modern, in a
moment, but before doing so, it is essential that we consider Gaelic
prose.
Prose writing
It is a significant fact
that there is very little Gaelic prose, from the twentieth century or any
other, which describes the Hebrides, either in whole or in part, as a
geographical unit. I can think of only
one book which describes a Hebridean island, and is actually written in
Gaelic. It is Hiort: far na laigh a’ ghrian (St Kilda: where the sun went down),
by Calum MacFhearghuis (Calum Ferguson), a native of Portnangiuran in the Point
district of Lewis. It was published as
recently as 1995 (MacFhearghuis 1995).
It is noteworthy that this book should be about St Kilda, an archipelago
which lies west of Harris, and which was evacuated in 1930. The sad fate of St Kilda has given this
remarkable outcrop of small islands a particular resonance, and the number of
books about it in English is legion.
Memorialisation is common, but the later twentieth-century volumes often
have their own agendas, portraying the archipelago as either a utopia or a
dystopia. Such writing is not new,
however. St Kilda has had a special
niche in literary consciousness from the time of Martin Martin in the
seventeenth century, as it was the Ultima
Thule of the traveller seeking remoteness and the ‘Other’ (MacDonald
2001). Ossianic romanticism gave it an
indelible place as the uttermost and grandest expression of the Sublime on the
very edge of the Hebridean 'fringe', with its massive cliffs towering out of
the surging Atlantic billows, and offering a home to clouds of fulmars which
became food for the St Kildans. Its
inhabitants were sometimes compared to seabirds, or portrayed as animal-like,
living in a primitive zoo. In keeping
with the travellers’ cultural identity, writing about St Kilda, as about the
Hebrides, has been almost wholly in English.
It is perhaps an
indication of the penetration into Gaelic of that wider fascination with
desolate and formerly inhabited islands that we now have a Gaelic book about St
Kilda, and none about any of the other islands. This is not, however, a
traveller’s account, nor that of the sociologist researching for a Ph.D. about
the ‘natives’. MacFhearghuis is no
cultural or intellectual tourist. He
writes with the eye of a skilled film-maker, producing a documentary history of
the archipelago. The scenes shift from
the earliest inhabitants to the last, from folk belief to austere Christianity,
from emigration to evacuation. The book is interspersed with songs and tunes, accompanied with relevant photographs,
and sketches. In this splendid
‘docu-book’, it seems to me that what MacFhearghuis does superbly is to
repossess the ‘St Kilda experience’ from a Gaelic perspective, and to reclaim
the island for the Gaelic world, to which it properly belongs. The island becomes surprisingly normal in the
process. The island that we see is not
the human zoo that titillated the romantic travellers of the nineteenth century
(Cooper 2002). It is an island that once
throbbed with Gaelic life, a paradigm of the Hebrides, raising profound
questions for other Hebrideans about the sustainability of their own cultural
units.
MacFhearghuis’s work is
remarkable because it is in Gaelic. I have a very large shelf of ‘island books’
in my study, but only one of these – MacFhearghuis’s – is in Gaelic. Even when the writer is
fluent in Gaelic, he or she may well opt for English as the language of
Hebridean description. There are
various reasons for this code-switch. Volumes of this kind – like their
nineteenth-century predecessors – are evidently aimed at enlightening an
English readership in the first instance.
We may cite Finlay J. MacDonald’s trilogy – Crowdie and Cream, Crotal and White, and The Corncrake and the Lysander – on his boyhood in Scarista, Harris,
as a particularly good example of work in English by a fully fledged Gaelic
writer who evidently chose not to use Gaelic (MacDonald 2001). Finlay J., as we call him, was a pioneering
radio and television producer based in Glasgow, and he was at the forefront of
the development of twentieth-century Gaelic literature. He frequently wrote Gaelic short stories
which were set in the islands, but he evidently did not see the need to
describe his own island in Gaelic for the benefit of other Gaels. His upbringing would not have been unusual in
the Gaelic context, and therefore he may have assumed that it was hardly worth
his while writing about it in Gaelic.
Finlay J. may also have reasoned that what he had to say would be more
interesting for the non-Gaelic reader.
So English was chosen. Perhaps
the contract from the publisher determined the choice of language, but it is
nevertheless true that this is part of a general pattern.
By writing in English
about the Hebrides, it appears that Gaelic authors gain certain advantages
which are denied to them in a Gaelic context.
They gain, for instance, some critical distance, but perhaps the most
important thing that they gain is the opportunity to cash in on a more appreciative
and, of course, larger readership, gasping for the ‘Castaway’ experience which
has thrust the depopulated island of Taransay into recent general
awareness. The ‘Other’ and the
‘peripheral’ tend to go together for mainstream Scottish and British
readerships, and this external perspective lends itself more readily to being
conveyed in English. I have to confess that Finlay J.’s English writing makes
me very uneasy, as it seems to me to be in a quite different league from his
Gaelic writing, since it makes a pitch for the attention of non-Gaels, and has
a touch of caricature, occasionally reminiscent of Lilian Beckwith, whose
supposedly 'funny' books (of the 1960s and 1970s) about islanders ridiculed
their naivety and simplicity, and made 'Tonald' speak in a mock Highland
dialect. Finlay J. is very far from
being a second Beckwith (thank goodness!), but he occasionally touches this
exploitable vein of insular simplicity, as he shows islanders who gradually
emerge from the evasive shadows of tilley lamps into the full glare of electric
light. Sometimes, particularly in its frankly crude descriptions of sexual
encounters, Crowdie and Cream reminds
me of Laurie Lee's Cider with Rosie
(Lee 1962). The Laurie-Leeification of
the Hebrides does less than justice to the area or the author. MacDonald is a
highly sophisticated and immensely skilful writer, but he is perhaps too
deferential to external models, and prone to blotting his indigenous canvases
with imported fiction.
In short, when writing
about their own islands in English prose, the more self-conscious authors who
are aware of expectations are inclined to adopt external perspectives and
styles. This immediately positions their
islands in a different mental map. It is
one which exploits, often for the benefit of the publisher, the implied
distinction between ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’.
The Hebridean ‘Fringe’ inevitably appears to be quaint, remote and in a
time-warp. ‘Fringe’ can all too easily produce cringe.
There is, however,
another kind of less popular, less polished, writing in English which describes
Hebridean islands, and sits on a rather sharp bilingual cusp. This is not
because 'The Writer' is eyeing the big world out there; it is because the
writer lacks the confidence and the ability to write in Gaelic – a telling
comment on the educational system which prevailed for all too long in the
region. An example of this is Angus Edward MacInnes’s account of Eriskay Where I Was Born (MacInnes
1997). MacInnes’s book lacks the
stylistic smoothness of Finlay J.’s work.
Instead, it has a ruggedness which is convincing, both in its somewhat
chaotic structure and in its wonderful portraits of Eriskay people. It is plain, unvarnished stuff, filled with
rough and tumble, all hugely readable.
It is sometimes grim, sometimes angry, sometimes very funny. Eriskay, like St Kilda, has frequently been
romanticised, but MacInnes, a retired Caledonian MacBrayne Captain who
travelled the world as a sailor, has turned his back on the romantic recipe of
‘Otherness’ which sells so well. His
adventures in different ports put islanders in a global perspective, rather
than a cul-de-sac. MacInnes is a
marvellous storyteller, and he writes exactly as he speaks, with Gaelic idioms
woven effortlessly into his gloriously Hebridean English (and the publishers
had the good sense to let the book stand as it was). Eriskay is at the centre of his mental map,
despite his many global travels.
MacInnes is writing about community, and not really about himself as
‘self’ in any consciously autobiographical way; he writes about himself in the
context of various communities, including that of Eriskay, that of the Merchant
Navy and that of other sailors from different cultures. This is a voyage of self-discovery in which
the writer collides with others who are travelling round their own global
islands.
It is important to note
that we do have prose writers in Gaelic who describe, or portray, different
aspects of island life through their native language. The perspective which is gained thereby is a
much more immediate one, and it is directed at the Gaels themselves. Gaelic, the mother tongue, is the language of
intimate connection between the writer and the native island. It is the language of personal analysis
within the island frame, and more specifically the analysis of the relationship
between the writer and the community.
When Angus Campbell, from Ness, Lewis, wrote his autobiography, Suathadh ri Iomadh Rudha (Rubbing
against Many Headlands) (Caimbeul 1973), he did not offer the standard
writer-centred autobiography that one might expect. The ‘self’ for him (as indeed for Angus
Edward MacInnes) is a vehicle for engaging with the community on the one hand,
and with you, the reader, on the other.
It is clear from his preface that Campbell battled with an inadequate
grasp of the finer points of Gaelic literacy to produce this remarkable book,
which is an insider’s critique of a Hebridean community across a range of
events and experiences, from social engineering to spiritual remaking through
the power of the church. An essential
degree of critical distance is achieved largely by making the ‘self’ ambiguous
and non-central. This is the biography
of a community rather than an individual, and stands largely alone in its
self-effacing power and honest observation.
The Campbells of Ness -
the northern tip of Lewis, and of the Hebridean archipelago, as it happens -
have been remarkable for their literary skills. Angus’ relatives, Norman and Alasdair
Campbell, have written very effectively about Lewis life, through Gaelic
novels, essays and short stories. Their
concern is to provide snapshots of island life, as in Norman Campbell’s black
comedy, Deireadh an Fhoghair (The End
of Autumn) (Caimbeul 1979), in which he portrays a very small and isolated
Lewis community in its death-throes, and sustaining and entertaining itself by
living on recycled materials of all sorts, including memories of basic, and
sometimes very trivial, events. Poems and songs to things such as washed-up
casks figure in the narrative. The cask is admired for its technical excellence
and heroic qualities, and for the memories of the worthy ancestor who rescued
it from the shore and hauled it home. A
good meal of chicken with the neighbours provides ritual power, and
reconstructs fleetingly the dynamics of the dying community. This evinces
stories, genealogies, and reminiscences. The mental map represented in this
kind of writing is much more detailed in terms of local observation, and may
contain a considerable amount of local Gaelic dialect. Satire and humour intermingle too, and these
function at a level which a non-Gaelic reader could not grasp readily, if at
all. The book is thus beyond adequate
translation into any other language. At times even the Gaelic reader, and
especially the reader from another dialect area, feels almost overwhelmed, if
not excluded, by the relentlessly local perspectives. The critical nuancing of such books is sewn
into the language in such a way that one is not conscious of external
evaluation; it is 'friendly fire' from the inside.
Gaelic verse
Prose, then, has not
been fully exploited as a medium for describing or analysing island life in the
Gaelic context, but there have been very significant contributions from the
Campbells of Ness. Verse has been the main medium for exploring the
relationship between Gaelic people and their native islands. We can distinguish two types of verse. First, there is what may be loosely term
‘traditional’ verse, employing quatrains and commonly intended for
singing. This is the form which the
resident islander will normally use.
The traditionally-minded exile will also employ song. Then, there is modern free verse, employed
mainly by exiles who have been educated at mainland universities, and are often
academics themselves – poets such as Donald MacAulay, formerly Reader in Celtic
at Aberdeen and latterly Professor of Celtic at Glasgow, and Derick Thomson,
his predecessor as Professor of Celtic at Glasgow, and a very important figure
in the revitalisation of Gaelic literature in the twentieth century. Iain Crichton Smith is also in this
category. All three men come from Lewis,
two (Smith and Thomson) from Point in the east, and one (MacAulay) from Great Bernera
on the west side.
As might be expected,
there is a considerable difference between the approaches of the two types of
poet, though there is a certain amount of common ground. If I were to put it in nutshell, I would say
that the traditional Gaelic poet affirms the islands, using a well recognised
and time-honoured rhetorical code, while the more modern poet raises questions
about his relationship to the islands, using codes which belong to a wider
stream of contemporary verse in English and other languages, but which
nevertheless have a close connection with Gaelic rhetoric of various
kinds. As Iain Crichton Smith put it in
the English poem, ‘Lewis’, which gives this paper its title (Stephen
1993:44-5):
It follows me, that
black island without ornament,
which I am always
questioning.
For the traditional
poet, affirmation, rather than interrogation, of the islands is of the essence,
and there is often a focus on individual islands. The rhetoric of affirmation stresses
fecundity, beauty, flower-covered machairs, abundance of wild life, and
pre-eminently self-sufficiency. ‘Uibhist
mu Thuath’ (North Uist) by Dòmhnall Ruadh Chorùna (Donald MacDonald) of North
Uist represents this genre (MacAmhlaidh 1995:92-3). A theme touched on in this song is loyalty
to the island, and it is only when loyalty is affirmed that there is any
reference to the location of the island within Scotland. The poet claims (v. 4) that North Uist is
preferable to the whole of Scotland. The
poet does not want to be an exile, however attractive the prospects. The extent to which this affirmative rhetoric
can be used of other islands is well illustrated by ‘Uibhist nan Sguaban Eòrna’
(Uist of the Barley Sheaves), composed by the South Uist poet, Dòmhnall Iain
Dhonnchaidh (Donald John MacDonald) (Innes 1998:80-1). There again you will see that Scotland is
mentioned only to affirm the qualities of the native island (v. 2). Scotland serves for both poets as a ‘value
additive’, reinforcing a sense of identity which has little to do with physical
geography, and everything to do with the qualities of the homeland. Scotland is the periphery, and the periphery
is invoked to validate the superiority of the insular centre.
The focus in such verse,
as I have said, is usually on individual islands, but occasionally it can be
broader. Donald John MacDonald of South Uist composed a long ‘epic’ poem in
praise of the Hebrides (Innes 1998: 86-93).
This is a fine example of poetic positioning which allows us to see
South Uist as part of a wider Hebridean panorama. The poet’s concept of the Hebrides is very
much a northern one, taking in the Outer Isles, from Barra to Lewis, but
excluding the Inner Hebrides. (We may say in passing that poets from the Inner
Hebrides worked in the same way, positioning their particular island in terms
of their immediate neighbours. To Inner Hebrideans, St Kilda was, and is,
utterly remote - a place to send naughty children!) The poet takes pride in
what the Hebrides have done for the wider world, and his vista extends far
beyond Scotland (which is not mentioned once in the entire song). There is no sense of inferiority; rather, the
message is the opposite, as the poet claims that the defence of the wider world
was dependent on the contribution of the brave men from the isles. He is thinking particularly of the First and
Second World Wars. He himself was a
prisoner of war, and has left us a fascinating account, in fine Gaelic prose,
of his incarceration in a German concentration camp (MacDhòmhnaill
[1998]).
Donald John’s poem is a
proud celebration of the Outer Hebrides, but it is far from insular. The Hebrides are mapped globally. Scotland is missed out as a point of
reference, as it is irrelevant and not necessary for the argument. Like the rest of the world, it is dependent
on the islands, and not vice versa. In
such poets’ minds, then, the islands are self-contained, self-sustaining units,
whose riches sustain other areas. The
poets have no place for the language of economic subservience which has become
so much the hallmark of modern discourse about the islands. The islands are enduring and powerful,
independent and proud.
When we turn to the
academic poets, such as MacAulay, Thomson and Smith, affirmation is more muted,
but the themes of enduring, powerful islands are still very evident.
Their power and influence are, however, portrayed very differently. The
islands endure in the sense that they are ever-present in the poets’ minds, in
their mental geographies, so to speak, and they are powerful in wielding an
ongoing influence in shaping their outlooks.
Donald MacAulay’s poem, ‘Comharra Stiùiridh’ (Landmark) (MacAulay
1995:210-11), is a particularly poignant and incisive examination of the
exile’s relationship to the island, which he revisits and leaves year after
year. The picture is shot through with
irony. The poet leaves the island in
sorrow, but renounces the conventional remedies for sadness, such as drinking
and singing sentimental songs on the MacBrayne steamer. The normal palliatives will not suffice for
him. Each time he goes back, he returns to an island that has changed, but he
departs from an island that refuses to leave him, and sails his mental ocean
like an iceberg. There is a hint of
‘Titanic’ imagery here, as the island is also threatening. The poet has lost the
island, but it is still there nevertheless, submerged in himself and acting as
a kind of magnetic menace in his soul. MacAulay makes it clear that for him the
island is certainly not peripheral; rather it is very much central to his
experience, and to his self-awareness.
It has, however, been inferiorized and marginalized by others. The position is a mosaic of paradoxes, which
cut across one another in a splendid medley of conflicting emotions which those
of us who have shared MacAulay’s experience know only too well. The mapping is a personal one, which is drawn
by the pencil of inner self-analyis.
Thomson’s ‘An Uilebheist’ (The Monster) likewise explores this theme
(Thomson 1982:126-7).
In verse, as in prose,
there is a bilingual tension at the heart of the poets’ presentations of their
island experiences, and this reveals itself particularly clearly in
anthologies, which often provide the poets’ own translations into English. All the poetry that I have mentioned is
available in translation in readily accessible texts, and this makes a concession
to external readers who are interested in Gaelic verse but cannot read it for
themselves. The periphery, it seems,
needs to ensure that the centre knows that it is there, and that it is aware of
the quality of the local production!
Only one writer – Iain
Crichton Smith – wrote comfortably in Gaelic and in English about his native
island, namely Lewis. The poem which
gives this paper its title was written originally in English, and has no Gaelic
equivalent, though Smith frequently has Gaelic and English versions of the same
poem or short story. What is fascinating
is that when Smith presents a word picture of Lewis in English rather than in
Gaelic, the choice of language and artwork is rather different. In English, his pictures of Lewis tend to be
more romantic and less gaunt than his Gaelic ones. In ‘Lewis’ (Stephen 1993:44-5), the picture
is one that is much closer to traditional Gaelic verse when celebrating the
homeland, and in this way we encounter another paradox, which reminds us of the
problems which I identified in Finlay J. MacDonald’s English prose. When writing in Gaelic about Lewis, however,
Smith tends to eschew the romantic palliatives of the exile, and he goes out of
his way to confront the insularity of the islands by referring to the crises of
the wider world, such as the nuclear threat (MacAulay 1995:174-5).
Conclusion
For most writers who
describe the Hebrides and who belong to the area, the islands are central,
rather than peripheral, to their experience. Yet there are considerable
differences in presentation and approach. The more traditional composers of
Gaelic verse are firmly rooted in their own communities. They do not ask questions; they affirm
certainties, at least rhetorically.
Their concern is to keep the morale of their communities high within
these communities themselves. Their
rhetorical codes, handed down through the centuries, bind the islands into
their own physical and cultural archipelagos, with their own centres and
peripheries (the Inner Hebrides versus the Outer Hebrides, St Kilda versus the
rest of the world). Scotland is a remote
concept, which, when occasionally invoked, usually serves only to strengthen
(by contrast) the value of the islands concerned. The writers of Gaelic prose, on the other hand,
are prepared to be more critical than the traditional poets, and to offer
critiques of their own areas, while affirming community values. The liberated power of prose, however, has
not been fully exploited in Gaelic, as there is a general tendency to turn to
English when describing localities in detail.
The frame of reference
for ‘non-traditional’ writers is much more complex and ambivalent. We can see the tensions fairly clearly, in
both prose and verse. Gaelic writers
who operate between cultures are commonly exiles, functioning in an adopted
culture beyond the islands. This means
that they have to face up to the demands of
a variety of maps before they begin to compose. The geographical map is submerged in a range
of other drawings, imposed from the inside and the outside. The creative
tension in this complex fusion nullifies any meaningful distinction between
core and periphery.
As a result of their
position outside their own communities, such writers face considerable
challenges when presenting their native islands to themselves and to their
readers. They have to confront the issue
of which language(s) they will use - Gaelic, English, or both? This in turn helps to determine the
positioning of the islands on the creative map (or maps). Which readership should they address; Gaelic
intellectuals like themselves, the Gaels back in the islands, the general
Scottish readership, or can they address all communities at once? Should they pander to romantic external
interest, and titillate the palates of the Home Counties in the hope of selling
their work? How they travel according to
their linguistic and rhetorical charts will determine who sails with them; who
is on the outside of the experience, and who is on the inside.
To sum things up, one might say that,
while the islands are never presented as a remote Hebridean ‘fringe’ in the
work of the modern exile poets, any more than in the work of the traditional
poets, the centre in which the exiles operate is much broader, much more
ambiguous, and much less secure than that which sustains the traditional
composers. The centre, like the
periphery, is also infinitely portable and easily expandable. For any Gaelic
writer, at home or abroad, there may be no periphery which is not central to
his or her experience.
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