By Michael Bloor
(first published in Literally Studies, 25th August, 2024)
On the north-west coasts and islands of Scotland, the grassy ground that lies between the sandhills and the rocky hillsides has its own gaelic name – the ‘machair.’ It had always been prized ground: the crushed shell grit blown in by the winter gales would serve to sweeten the grass for the sheep and the cattle; mixed with seaweed wrack hauled from the shore, it also yielded good crops of potatoes. Those families whose crofts stood on the machair counted themselves fortunate.
Yet these days, the machair on Swensay has a neglected look.
The island has no harbour. In the past, say in the time of Donald John MacKillop’s great-grandfather, that had been no drawback. Most families back then had a small boat from which they could fish for herring or check their crab and lobster pots – those boats could be hauled high up onto the beach in wild weather.
Just over a hundred years ago, the island families had sent their young men away to the Flanders trenches. Those that made it back, older and wiser, realised that the island had no future without a harbour: the herring were scarcer, and must be sought further away in bigger boats, with deeper draught. A harbour was needed to to unload and to protect those new fishing boats, and also for ferry boats, both to take their fish, cattle and autumn lambs to market, and to bring summer tourists to the island. But the landlord, in his florid Victorian castle on the mainland, was only interested in the crofters’ rents and his deer-stalking. Men left the island to work on boats elsewhere.
Those left behind would still catch crab and lobsters in their small boats. Every week, a vessel from Glasgow would come close inshore to pick up the lobsters,which were too valuable for the islanders to eat.When Donald John’s father was a child, the only lobsters he ever got too eat where those with just a single claw – damaged goods. Then the islanders got word that the Glasgow boat would stop coming.
The Presbyterian Free Church minister suggested that Inverness County Council might build a harbour, after all, they’d agreed to build a harbour on Gunnsay. But Inverness was far away. The minister, the Reverend MacInnes, was a good man even though his Argyllshire Gaelic was hard to understand, and he kept writing letters. The council did finally send a surveyor to Swensay, but nothing came of it.
The children left the island to go to senior school, staying in the school hostel. As those children came to school-leaving age, they realised that the island had no future. The girls mainly trained as nurses in Glasgow. The boys mainly joined the merchantile marine. One of them later became quite famous as a gaelic poet. A generation later, the island junior school closed: Donald John was the last pupil, back in the 1950s.
When well into his fifties, Donald John would still sometimes row himself across to the main island to go to dances in Tarbert, or to ceilidhs in friends’ houses. Women were courteous in his company, but none had any desire to be the only woman on Swensay.
He stopped going to the Tarbert Free Kirk, having found himself in disagreement with the minister over the doctrine of original sin. So, latterly, he would only leave the island about once a month to collect his pension from the post office and collect fresh supplies. He gave up raising cattle: if the summer rains spoilt the hay crop, then it was ruinously expensive to buy in and transport winter feed. There was enough grazing for the sheep, though transporting the lambs to the autumn sales was a tricky and tedious business. With no society but his own, he became a bit eccentric in his ways and was said, more than once, to have harvested his tatties by the light of a full moon.
One summer day, he saw a Scalpay trawler drop anchor and then a crewman rowed a passenger and some luggage ashore. The crewman waited as the passenger waded ashore, neither being sure of the passenger’s reception. The passenger explained, in good gaelic, that he was from The School of Scottish Studies in Edinburgh University and was hoping to interview Donald John for an oral history project. Donald John had received a letter about the visit a few months previously, but had been unable to make much sense of it, laid it aside, and forgot about it. The passenger, Dr Neil MacLean, not having received a reply to the letter, had taken the precaution of bringing camping equipment with him.
Donald John was unused to over-night visitors (the last having been a Round-Britain canoeist), but subscribed to the traditions of Scottish hospitality. Besides, he observed Dr MacLean’s broad shoulders and guessed that he’d be a useful helper at the peat-cutting. As he watched his visitor erect the tent, he regretted not inviting him to sleep in the house, but the spare room hadn’t been used in years: he shrank from the effort involved in getting it straight.
After he’d stowed his gear, Dr MacLean – Neil – emerged from within the tent, holding a bottle of Talisker, ‘a gift of thanks for the theft of Donald John’s time and memories.’ Once they’d broached the bottle and toasted the enterprise, Donald John led Neil up to the island high-point to give him the gaelic place-names for each nook and cranny. Despite the exertions of the trawler trip and the tent construction, followed by the whisky, Neil’s pulse quickened to the realisation that Donald John would have a tale to tell for a score or more of these rocks, bogs and inlets.
On the way back, Donald John took Neil past the peat-cuttings and he in turn was heartened to discover that Neil’s parents on Skye still cut their own peats. Neil was silently unimpressed by the old heavy silage-cutter that Donald John was accustomed to use to clear the layer of heather from the top of the cutting. But Neil reflected that all historical studies have their price.
Back at Donald John’s crofthouse, a rough future programme was agreed over another glass of Talisker. Over the next three weeks, the two men laboured companionably at the peat-cutting and repairs to the sheep fank and to the rowing boat. In the evenings, the two men would spend their time recording Donald John’s reminiscences of old island stories, family trees, island customs, celebrations and tragedies. The old man quickly overcame his aversion to Neil’s battery-operated mini-disc recorder, and rediscovered his enjoyment in what had always been the favourite entertainment on Swensay – the telling of tales.
Once again, Donald John told the tale of The Ghost Bride and the terrible aftermath; the story of The Great Storm of 1878; what the widow had said to the laird’s factor when he came calling with the eviction notice; the funeral wake when too much drink was taken and the rowers accidentally left the coffin behind on the shore; The Giant’s Stone; and all the rest.
The Scalpay trawler returned on a perfect August day. Donald John watched Neil and the trawler dwindle into the distance. He recalled Neil’s promise of the night before. He’d patted his mini-disc recorder and told Donald John that, while he might indeed be the last man on Swensay, the island would live on through the tales in that recorder: ‘Just like The Tales of Troy.’