I will be back, as soon as my duties are done here. Until then, keep my seat warm at Menzies’.
E’en wi a simmer’s day
Ye’re mair louesome an mair lown,
Gurl winds dae shoogle dautie bluims o May,
An simmer’s tack hae aw tae cutty speal.
Aye, Grigor
2 September 2014
The McWatt–Hogg correspondence will be exhibited in the new Heritage Centre and Museum, displayed in glass cabinets as the letters of Fanny Brawne and John Keats were once displayed in the Hampstead museum down south. To avoid offending local sensibilities here, I won’t mention Hampstead. It would be like bragging about the Hamptons in the Bronx. Down south, “enemy country” as McWatt called it, the correspondence between the nineteenth-century lovers was shielded from sunlight by chenille drapes which were rolled back for viewing. Here, in the gloomy north, we won’t need the drapes.
Until I came along, there was little enthusiasm from the locals for the MacRaes’ abortive Fascaradian Museum of Island Life. Now, it seems, there is a strong community will to preserve it. The Auchwinnie Board warned me that I might face some obstructiveness so, in the interests of local cohesion, I have invited islanders to submit their own suggestions for “enhancing” the new museum at a public meeting in Finnverinnity Hall in October.
My focus, as outlined by Gordon Nesbitt, chairman of the Auchwinnie Regional Development and Enterprise Board, which oversees the Fascaray Trust, is “Fascaray’s heritage and McWatt’s unique perspective on our cultural identity and the island’s place in Scottish history,” and my role will be to listen attentively to islanders’ proposals, express interest, ask them to elaborate and then press on regardless with our own plans, which have already been approved by the funding bodies.
An illuminated timeline of Scots history—a twenty-first-century electronic Caledonian Bayeux Tapestry—has already been commissioned from Minka Redpath, an Edinburgh artist, and will run in a strip around the walls, enabling visitors to press buttons beneath key dates, setting off audio recordings of McWatt’s prose and poetry, some read by McWatt himself and others by Scottish actors.
But, though my main interest is the letters and documents, the centrepiece of the museum (and here I imagine the sulphuric scorn of the poet) will be a gaudy jukebox—a digital player tricked up to look like a relic from a fifties coffee bar—with access to every recorded version of “Hame tae Fascaray” from Robin Hall and Jimmie Macgregor in 1959 to Paolo Nutini two months ago. McWatt’s shade may fume but the Auchwinnie Regional Development and Enterprise Board leapt at the idea: accessibility and interactivity in one neat, flashing neon-lit package.
CHRONOLOGICAL INVENTORY OF RECORDINGS OF “HAME TAE FASCARAY”
Robin Hall and Jimmie Macgregor 1959
Ewan MacColl 1960
Jimmy Shand (instrumental version) 1960
Kenneth McKellar 1962
The Corries 1964
Hamish Imlach 1965
Nigel Denver 1966
Andy Stewart 1967
The Incredible String Band 1968
Moira Anderson 1968
Donovan 1969
The Humblebums 1970
Eric Bogle 1971
The Wolfe Tones 1971
Lulu 1972
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band 1973
John Martyn 1974
High Speed Grass 1974
Average White Band (instrumental version) 1975
Bob Dylan 1976
Gil Scott-Heron 1977
Silly Wizard 1977
Gerry Rafferty 1978
Val Doonican 1979
Jack Bruce 1980
Simple Minds 1981
Boys of the Lough 1982
Big Country 1983
St. Andrew and the Woollen Mill 1984
Rod Stewart 1986
The Proclaimers 1989
Runrig 1990
The Waterboys 1991
Bert Jansch 1992
Rab Noakes 1993
The Chieftains 1994
The Three Tenors 1995
Dougie MacLean 1997
Emmylou Harris 1998
Michael Marra 1999
Dick Gaughan 2000
Eddi Reader 2002
Shooglenifty 2003
Dolly Parton 2005
Karine Polwart 2006
Peatbog Faeries 2007
Franz Ferdinand 2008
King Creosote 2009
Ewan MacLennan 2010
The Mighty Sparrahawk 2010
Donald MacDonald and the Islands 2011
Susan Boyle and the Caledonian Orchestra 2012
KT Tunstall with Nicola Benedetti 2012
Callum Rae and The Corellas 2013
Paolo Nutini 2014
4 September 2014
In my office, I shove the mangy desktop computer aside and open my laptop. The transcription. A sore point. Ailish had, without consulting me, over-edited Effie MacLeod’s interview, removing all pauses, hesitations and interruptions and, more controversially, ironing out Effie’s idiomatic grammar and converting her “Braid Scots” Lallans into Standard English. I was furious at the blunder and complained to Gordon Nesbitt. Irritatingly, he sided with Ailish.
It wasn’t a question of cost, he said—the Auchwinnie Board was prepared to pay for a further transcription if necessary—but of demographics and, inevitably, accessibility. The board’s business projections show most visitors to our new museum will be heritage hunters from America, Canada and New Zealand who’ll need a little help with the language.
“There might even be the odd visitor from England and they’d certainly be stumped by Effie’s Scots,” said Nesbitt.
“This is cultural cringe,” I argued. “Completely against the spirit of McWatt. It’s a cowering acceptance that Scots is an uncouth bastard variant of English.”
“Maybe,” said Nesbitt quietly. “But it’s also sound business. Your purist approach will appeal to nats and language nerds. We want to draw more visitors to the museum. Let’s not exclude them. More visitors will mean more money for Fascaray. And that’s a good thing. Surely.”
This seems perverse, especially considering one of the biggest public supporters of the Grigor McWatt Heritage Centre has been the influential SFSL, the Societie fur the Forderin o the Scots Leid, which, part-funded by the European Union, promotes the Scots language and successfully lobbied for an additional Scottish government grant for the project. For a second, I wonder whether this is a resignation issue. But to walk out only weeks into a new job will look like a failure of nerve rather than a principled stand. I’ll put this grievance on hold for a later date when I might be looking for a respectable excuse to get out of here.
Meanwhile, the recording of my original, unexpurgated interview with Effie is safely in storage at Auchwinnie Library, ready to be shipped over and installed in our audio-visual display in the new museum; visitors will be able to hear Effie’s authentic voice, even if the transcription has been horribly neutered. And I’ll use the real thing—make my own transcription if I have to—in A Granite Ballad, and provide a glossary if my editor at Thackeray Press insists.
In fact I enjoyed the interview process—I haven’t done fieldwork since my sophomore research in Nova Scotia—though in the end I was more interested in Effie’s accounts of island life than in her sketchy recollections of the dead poet.
Listening to her I took an almost indecent pleasure in her language and accent. My own mongrel enunciation was ironed flat in a Canadian convent and further tortured by three scholarship terms in an English boarding school, which elocuted me away from my childhood Scots. Once I arrived in Manhattan in my twenties I felt I’d finally found my place and I did my best to go native, acquiring the trappings of a New York identity—smart-mouthed attitude and bohemian style—in the course of which any trace of my mother tongue was eradicated in favour of
a bland, keep-’em-guessing, rootless, if not completely classless, inflection.
Effie’s voice, earthy and true, resonated at a visceral level—my cradle soundtrack, not always comforting but ingrained—and it made me nod towards sleep. If Effie had been younger and more alert she might have been offended. But she was away, happy to talk on unprompted until long after the light dimmed.
Transcription of Interview with Effie MacLeod,
Margaret Lodge, Stamperland Road, Clarkston, Glasgow,
3 June 2014. Conducted by Mhairi McPhail.
“So, Mhairi—that’s a good Scots name, isn’t it? I’d a friend once named the same. We worked together one summer at the cigarette factory in Dennistoun. It’s all artists’ studios now. You wouldn’t believe it. You could have knocked me down with a feather when I saw it two years ago. Yes. Mhairi-Ann Galvin, from Bridgeton. We called her Wee Annie. Do you ever answer to Annie? No one ever calls you that?”
What Effie actually said was that she and Mhairi-Ann Galvin had worked “thegether” at the factory, which was “aw they artists’ studios nou. Ye widnae credit it. Ye cuid a bund me wi a strae…Aye. Mhairi-Ann…frae Brigtoun,” was “cried” rather than “called” Wee Annie. “Naebdy aye cries you that?”
“What? Oh yes—Grigor. There’s another old Scots name, fit for an old Scots man. Oh, he couldn’t have been so old when I first set eyes on him, I suppose. But he was the kind of fellow who always looked old.”
For “what” read “whit,” for “yes,” read “aye” (which also means always and ever) and for “oh” read “och.” The last two sentences, if faithfully transcribed, would have read “Och, he couldnae hae been sae auld when I first clapped eyes on him, I suppose. But he wis the kindae fella who aye looked auld.”
“Yes—it was after the war. I was not much more than a child myself at the time.”
“Aye…it wis efter the war. I wisnae much more than a wean masel at the time.”
“And your grandfather was a Fascaradian? Hector McPhail was it? One of the Five? Well, my memory’s not so good these days but the Five Men, I remember the story well.”
“…No sae guid these days…but I mind the story well.”
“I’d been evacuated to the island from Clydebank—we had the Blitz too, you know. It wasn’t just the English. Anyways, my mother sent me away to stay with my Macpherson cousins at Balnasaig Farm. My father, who was a Morrison from Lewis, wanted me to go there, to Stornoway. But the women were always the strong ones in our family and my mother won. She said Lewis was overrun with the RAF and the navy and I wouldn’t stand a chance there. If she’d known about the commandos at Finnverinnity Big House she might have had second thoughts. Would you not take a wee biscuit with your tea, Mhairi-Ann? No? Go on—Oh, there’s nothing of you. You need feeding up. You’re a splinter of a girl…”
“Ye ken…Wisnae jes the English…I wouldnae stand a chance…Och, you’re a skelf of a lassie.”
“It was hard at first. Even though I had family on the island, I was still what they called a ‘From Away.’ Like Grigor McWatt too, I suppose.”
“A wis still what they cried a ‘Frae Away.’ ”
“I didn’t have much of the Gaelic back then when I arrived on the island. My mother had stopped speaking it in Glasgow when she moved there as a girl. It was thought to be low-class, if you know what I mean. For tinkers and the like. And once I got to Fascaray, though it was banned at the school—they got a hiding with the Lochgelly tawse if they so much as whispered in Gaelic—it was what everyone spoke at home. I soon picked it up though. And then after a couple of years at the farm, Uncle Tam’s brother-in-law Donald John the Shop offered me a job in Finnverinnity, with a bed in the back stockroom. Well, to a young girl you can imagine, I would rather have been in Finnverinnity than Balnasaig. More of the action there, if you know what I mean.
“Most of the local lads were away fighting but some of the commando boys up at the Big House were very dashing. They had a nice line in patter. Anyways, I’ve always been quick—my mental arithmetic was so good we didn’t need an adding machine in the shop—and I must have got enough of the Gaelic at my mother’s breast to give me a basic foundation, if you know what I mean. Before long I was thinking in Gaelic, though Shuggie and me, once we were married, mostly talked Scots at home. We didn’t want to confuse the bairns and hold them back. But I still dream in Gaelic sometimes.”
For “very dashing” read “awfie dashin,” for “if you know what I mean,” read the more economical “ken.”
“Oh? Grigor McWatt. I remember him well. Wore the kilt. They all wear it now, especially the Americans, but in those days on the island it was only the laird who wore it, at Hogmanay. And he was English. The laird and Grigor McWatt. Yes. McWatt. He struggled with the Gaelic—he could never master it. He used to get hopping mad when we started to speak it in the shop or wherever. He was a funny wee man. Not the laughing sort of funny, no. More the odd sort. He’d come over from Calasay to the inn or for his shopping now and again—stamps, tobacco, maybe a bit of mince, a bag of broken biscuits—or call in to the farm at Balnasaig for a dram with Uncle Tam on his way back from Finnverinnity. Mostly, though, he kept to himself, up there in Calasay, up to his eyes in books.
“Shuggie had more to do with him, taking all those parcels of books up there to him. Grigor liked his books, Shuggie used to say, more than he liked folk. Books came first, then his collies. And then there were all the other animals, hens, wildcats, otters, that stupid creature Marty—the pine marten. McWatt was daft about them, though it ended not so well. Whoever heard of anybody keeping pine martens or otters as pets? As for folk, no, your poet didn’t have much time for folk.”
“Aye, I mind him well…He couldnae maister it…He’d come over from Calasay for his messages…Thon gowkit cratur, Marty…Embdy keepin pine martens…”
“Do you have any pets yourself, Mhairi-Ann? No? I was always a great one for cats. They can be very good company when you’re all alone. I had to give my last one, Missy, a Persian blue, away to my daughter Moira, who stays in Springburn, when I moved in here. No pets, see. That’s the rule. But the matron, Mrs. Drumlie, has a wee Jack Russell terrier and she brings him in once a week for the residents to pet. We all have a go. Those of us who aren’t away with the fairies.”
For “very” read “gey,” for “aren’t” read “arenae.” It’s not so hard, is it?
“I always had a soft spot for horses too. We had them at Balnasaig until the tractors came in—three pair of them, Clydesdales I think they were, two for ploughing and two for carting and two for—I can’t remember.”
“Ah cannae mind…”
“Can’t remember their names either, though I had my favourite, a big soft-eyed creature with a star on her forehead and furry hooves. She’d a way of nuzzling me when I went to feed her. And she had two foals, the bonniest wee things. I went about by pony and trap, down to the harbour to get the provisions from the puffer, loaded them onto the trap myself. You wouldn’t think that now, to look at me. I can barely get out of my chair here without the help of that nice wee Filipina girl over there, Lin…
“There was a byreman, Seumas McKinnon, Seumas the Byre, who looked after the horses and all the cattle and sheep and pigs—he’d muck out ten barrowloads of manure in the morning before he began his day’s work in the fields. He was daft on wee Effie Maclean who did the milking, but poor Seumas was much older, not much to look at and a Catholic besides, and Effie’d set her cap at Calum Donald MacEwan, the ploughman, anyway. We called him Calum Donald the Plough. There was a man who did everything else, the carting and heavy work and helping out; he was called the orraman. I can’t remember his name. Dougal, was it? Yes, he was one of the Mackenzies. Oh it was a hard life but we all pulled together.”
“A big soft-eyed cratur…We cried him Calum Donald the Plough…Aye, he wis one o the Mackenzies…Och…we aw pu’ed thegether…”
“Uncle Tam kept cows, Ayrshires, as well as the s
heep and pigs and he grew oats and hay, turnips and potatoes, a bit of kale. He did the road mending round our corner of Fascaray. But it was like painting the Forth Bridge—you were never done. Once you’d got the road straight up towards Calasay, it was time to go back and deal with the Balnasaig to Finnverinnity stretch. He used the horses for that too, until the tractor came in. A good horse was worth more than gold…”
“Mair than gowd…”
“They could be very stubborn, come harvest time after being out for the spring champing at the grass. Could you blame them? They’d gone soft, didn’t like the weight of the collar going on them and the noise of the carts, the reapers and the hayrakes, and all that would send them daft so Calum Donald the Plough would stuff their ears with cotton wool. Over at Lusnaharra, Joe McPhee always put butter in the horses’ ears to calm them before yoking them up. During harvest they’d work till eight or nine at night, men and beasts. It was hard work on the sunny days, with the heat and the horseflies. But everyone would help. There’d be a drink of oatmeal in a pail of water to keep you going, maybe a jam sandwich.”
“They could be gey thrawn, come hairst…The heat an the clegs…There’d be sowans in a cuman…mebbe a piece an jam.”
“Before I moved to the shop, I’d help with the milking in Balnasaig. That was always the girls’ work. Me and Effie Maclean. The two Effies. And I’d make the butter. You’d put the milk in these shallow dishes and after a couple of days you’d skim off the cream and put it in an earthenware crock. You’d leave it for three days then you’d churn it with the plunger. That was hard work. I’d muscles like that Charles Atlas. And it was always going wrong. It wouldn’t set…”
“Aye, lassies’ work…you’d ream aff the cream…then you’d kirn it…Aye gangin wrang…thon Charles Atlas…It widnae set…”
“What? Oh yes…McWatt…[LAUGHS] You’re a great conversationalist, hen. I’m getting carried away here. So. Grigor McWatt. Well, he was known to help out at harvest time too. And with the peat cutting. But he could be a sour old devil, skulking round the island, snapping at the children. And he was a mad keen nationalist. Not that I’m against the independents. Not now that is. In the old days, they were a bunch of hotheads. I nearly lost my hand that night they blew up the postbox. Still got the scar. See? Just by my thumb. No? Just there. No?
Hame Page 11