A Scots Quair

by Lewis Grassic Gibbon

  Bara. A hill of this name in e central Aberdeenshire, with a prehistoric fort and three concentric earthworks, is traditionally linked to Robert Bruce’s victory against Comyn Earl of Buchan and other magnates in 1308 (OGS).

  Monte Alto. The derivation of Mowat from Monte Alto is generally accepted. The first of the family in Scotland is said to have come from Wales, and the name appears frequently in chartularies of Arbroath and Brechin between 1198 and 1218 (Black, p.614). In Gibbon’s boyhood Mowats owned the tan works in Stonehaven.

  Mathers. The family name of the lairds of Mathers and of the builder of the Kaim of Mathers referred to above, was Barclay (Kinnear, p.21).

  p. 3 Fettercairn. Village and parish in sw Kincardineshire, five miles nnw of Laurencekirk.

  King Grig. Sometimes written Greg, sometimes Circ: a Pictish king said to have reigned c. 877 (Watt, pp.4,95–8). Mearniae decurio. Sheriff of the Mearns.

  Bannock burn. The site of Robert Bruce’s decisive victory against Edward II of England, 1314.

  Melville. The Mearns Melvilles were supposedly descendants of James Melvill, a Hungarian noble (Kinnear, p. 20).

  p. 4 four fierce lairds. Daniel de Berkeley (1406–37), laird of Berkeley, with Arbuthnott, Lauriston, Pitarra and Halkes- ton, were accessory to the slaughter by boiling of John Melville of Glenbervie (Watt, p. 8).

  Garvock. The hill of Garvock, a small range of high land covered with heath, rises to 810 ft. and runs through the Kincardineshire parish of that name, approximately 1½ miles e of Laurencekirk. It forms the eastern boundary of the Howe (OGS).

  Killing Time. The period of the greatest persecution of the Covenanters, 1685. The term was later extended to cover the whole period 1679–1688, during which Charles II and James VII tried to put down by force those Presbyterians who refused to worship in a Church headed by bishops.

  p.6 Bervie. It flows from the ne corner of Fordoun parish past Glenbervie, Mondynes, Arbuthnott and Inverbervie to enter the sea at Bervie bay.

  O Segget it’s a dirty hole. In Sunset Song Drumlithie church is said to have no steeple (p. 76, Canongate Classics edn), though the original rhyme was about Tarland parish in Aberdeenshire (Note by Gibbon in NLS MS Acc. 26041).

  p. 8 strange happening. Her love-making with Long Rob of the Mill (Sunset Song, pp. 232–3, Canongate Classics edn).

  p. 17 Stonehive. The traditional pronunciation of Stonehaven.

  p.21 Mondynes. About one mile s W of Drumlithie, which is seven miles W of Stonehaven.

  Christ tempted of the devil. See Matthew 4 and Luke 4.

  p.22 a dead. Pronounced ‘deid’; a corpse. try for his pulpit. In the Church of Scotland congregations have the right to choose their ministers, which is done only after they have heard the candidates preach.

  p.23 Judges Chapter xvi. 25–30.

  p.26 Dalziel. Pronounced ‘Dee-yel’ or ‘Dalyel’.

  p.27 option. The right of a town or district to decide whether and how many licences to sell liquor should be granted within its bounds.

  p.29 Wallace. Sir William Wallace, Scottish Independence leader (executed 1305).

  p.30 Blawearie. The Guthrie farm-croft in Kinraddie, whose lease was continued by Chris after her father’s death and on which she lived after her marriage to Ewan Tavendale, her first husband.

  blue. Chris’s favourite colour. She had worn blue underwear and a blue dress for her first wedding.

  p.33 salt and savour. ‘Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? (Matthew, v.13).

  p.34 her father. John Guthrie had lusted after Chris when she was a young girl.

  p. 38 all that were in their gates. ‘Gather the people together, men, and women, and children, and thy stranger that is within thy gates’ (Deuteronomy xxxi. 12).

  p.39 certificated. Malapropism for ‘certified’.

  p.40 Dundon. A made-up name for a city with some of the features of Aberdeen, such as the barracks that were the headquarters of the Gordon Highlanders.

  p.48 Tipperary. Though it will always be associated with the 1914–18 War, the song was first published in 1912.

  p.49 Old Kirk. The established (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland.

  the Frees. Originally members of the Free Kirk, which broke away from the established church at the Disruption of 1843, but at this time (and now) applied to the minority which refused to enter the union between the Free Presbyterian Church and the United Presbyterian Church in 1900.

  came from the south. She has a southern Scottish, not an English, accent.

  p. 50 Blood of the Lamb. ‘Have you been to Jesus for the cleansing power? Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?’, from a nineteenth-century evangelical hymn by Elisha B. Hoffmann.

  Whiter than – the whitewash on the wall! From ‘The Top of the Dixie Lid’, an anonymous soldiers’ song of the 1914–18 War.

  p.51 Ananias. He means old Leslie is a hypocrite, like the Ananias of Acts v.

  p.53 but they knew. Without knowing.

  p.54 High Places. In the Old Testament, ‘high places’ are associated with temples, altars, the prophets’ communion with God, and with worship and spiritual experience generally.

  Trusta. A hill (1052 ft) in Fetteresso Forest, some six miles e of Stonehaven.

  p.60 east-windy, west-endy. Fashionable (‘west-endy’) attire for active leisure, such as golf at St Andrews, where the chill east wind often blows in from the North Sea.

  p.61 Skite. Contemptuous name for Drumlithie. The most pejorative meanings of ‘skite’ are ‘mad’ (adj.) and ‘soil with excrement’ (vb.)

  Arbuthnott. Kincardineshire rural parish in whose churchyard Leslie Mitchell’s ashes are interred, and on which the Kinraddie of Sunset Song is largely based.

  p.63 W.R.I. Properly S.W.R.I., the Scottish Women’s Rural Institutes. They encouraged domestic skills through classes and competitions in baking etc. and were centres of leisure activity.

  Annie S. Swan, David Lyall. The two are one and the same. Annie Shepherd Swan (Mrs Burnett-Smith, 1860–1943), an immensely popular romantic novelist with a colossal output, also published under the pseudonym of David Lyall.

  p.64 Catcraig. There seems to have been no Catcraig in the Mearns, but Gibbon did not invent the name. There is a farm called Catcraig ½ mile s of Auchnagatt in Aberdeenshire.

  p. 69 Drops of Brandy. The steps are danced to a Scottische (J.Μ. and Τ. Μ. Flett, Traditional Dancing in Scotland, 1964, p. 20).

  when she did the line. The dancers were in two parallel lines facing each other. Each couple had a chance to lead the line and pass down the set in turn – ‘down the middle and up’.

  p. 93 slew … the French. Burns welcomed the French Revolution at first, but partly owing to fear of persecution and the possible loss of his job in the excise, swung round to support ‘the defence of the realm’ after France declared war on Britain. He helped to organise the Dumfries Royal Volunteers in January 1795, but his song for them – Does haughty Gaul invasion threat? has a refrain with radical undertones: ‘For never but by British hands/ Must British wrongs be righted.’

  p.94 pillar of cloud and fire. On the Israelites’ road to the promised land, ‘the Lord went before them in a pillar of cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light’ (Exodus xiv. 21).

  trumpet had cried. Robert has in mind God’s colloquy with Moses on Sinai: there were ‘thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud’ (Exodus xix. 16).

  p.96 shrouded dead in red. The allusion is to The Red Flag, anthem of the British Labour Party: ‘The people’s flag is deepest red/ It shrouded oft our martyred dead’ (lines 1–2). The words are by James Connell (1852–1929) and the tune is that of the German folk song, ‘O Tannenbaum’.

  p.97 on the bureau. Drawing unemployment pay. The ‘bureau’ (pron. ‘burroo’ in Scotland) was the local Labour Exchange, which paid out unemployment benefit.

&
nbsp; p.98 Chae Strachan. The well-travelled socialist crofter of Peesie’s Knapp in Sunset Song.

  p. 107 Dunnottar Castle see Sunset Song, pp. 125–6 (Canongate Classics edition).

  p.111 Edzell. A village some six miles n by w of Brechin. The magnificent ruined castle on its outskirts was formerly a seat of the Lindsays.

  Brechin. A ‘city’ with a cathedral in Εwan Forfarshire.

  p. 113 Twin Daughters of the Voice of God. Wordsworth’s ‘Ode to Duty’ begins ‘Stern Daughter of the Voice of God’.

  p. 119 Venricones. The ancient inhabitants ‘who, according to Ptolemy, occupied the country south of the Water of Carron, with Forfar as their capital’ (Watt, p. 14). ovates. Handaxes elliptical in shape, relatively thin in section, and sometimes with a twisted edge due to alternate flaking.

  tortoise-core. Tortoise-shaped nodule of stone from which flakes have been intentionally removed.

  p. 120 fabricator. Piece of stone used for detaching flakes from a core.

  Golden Age. According to Diffusionist theory, men were organised in happy, peaceful groups of nomadic hunters before civilisation with all its corruptions was created in ancient Egypt.

  p. 121 People’s Journal. Published in Dundee from 1858, it became the most popular weekly printed in Scotland until overtaken by The Sunday Post.

  p. 141 Culdyce. Evidently a made-up name. ‘Culdors’ occurs in what appears to be a short list of such names in nls ms Acc.26041, a notebook containing fifty numbered ideas for Cloud Howe, and there is a Culdees Castle in Perthshire. Leachie. A hill (1289 ft.) some four miles WSW of Trusta.

  p. 142 Pytheas. A reference back to Sunset Song, where this Greek navigator and geographer of the fourth century bc is a potent historical symbol. (p.39, Canongate Classics edition).

  p. 148 The O.M.S. The Organization for the Maintenance of Supplies emerged in 1925 and had registered about 100,000 volunteers in the nine months before the General Strike of 1926. They drove cars, buses, lorries, and even trains, and also acted as electricians, mechanics and other maintenance staff (Patrick Renshaw, The General Strike, 1930, p. 130 and passim).

  p. 150 Quarles. Gibbon has brought this name in from outside; there is no Quarles on any of the 1:50,000 Ordnance Survey Maps of Scotland.

  p. 151 Carmont. A farm-settlement some four miles W of Stonehaven, below Carmont Hill (774 ft.).

  p. 158 Kinneff. A coastal hamlet eight miles s of Stonehaven. ten full years. The year is now 1932.

  p. 159 The wind goeth towards the south. (Ecclesiastes i. 6).

  p. 166 went with him. Ran away with him, took over. and watch. The first edition and all others have ‘and to watch’, but the intrusive ‘to’ is clearly an error not picked up at the proof stage.

  p.169 the Reisk. An upland area between Arbuthnott and Mondynes. The croft of Bloomfield where Gibbon lived between the ages of eight and sixteen was on the Reisk road, two miles n of Arbuthnott.

  Geyrie’s moor. The hill of Gyratesmyre and the farm of that name are just south of Bridge of Mondynes on Bervie Water.

  p. 170 Barras slopes. About three miles inland from the coastal village of Catterline.

  p. 172 the Wairds. Upland farms and moorland about 1 mile se of Gyratesmyre.

  p.173 he lived in London and wrote horrible books. A sly reference to Gibbon himself and his disapproving mother.

  Bervie. Inverbervie, ten miles s of Stonehaven. Like the Segget of the novel, it mainly consisted of three small irregular streets forming three sides of a rectangle. It had woollen, flax, and tow mills, as well as wincey and sacking factories (ogs).

  p. 177 Grieve. Christopher Murray Grieve (‘Hugh MacDiarmid’, 1892–1978), poet, essayist and publicist, was the dominant figure in Scottish literature from the mid 1920s to the 1950s. During the time-span of the novel he had sat on the Montrose town council as an Independent socialist, and was at various periods a member of the Scottish Nationalist and Communist Parties.

  Compton Mackenzie (1883–1974), popular novelist and publicist, was a founder-member of the Nationalist Party. Gunn. Neil Miller Gunn (1891–1973), novelist and excise- officer, joined the Nationalist Party in 1929 and had campaigned actively in 1931 for John MacCormick, Nationalist parliamentary candidate for Inverness-shire.

  Lord Loon of Lossie. James Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937) was a native of Lossiemouth, a fishing port on the Moray coast. He had been prime minister of a minority Labour government in 1924, but now (1929) had a parliamentary majority. In 1931 economic collapse and massive unemployment caused him to combine with the conservatives to form a ‘National’ government to solve the crisis.

  p. 179 A man’s a man for a’ that. Hairy Hogg perverts the revolutionary message of the song.

  p. 183 his heart was in the Highlands. The reference is to a song by Burns, ‘My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here;/ My heart’s in the Highlands, a chasing the deer.’

  p. 188 sailing ships. In Gibbon’s Diffusionist mythology, these contained the bearers of that corrupt, enslaving civilisation

  p.188 that had spread northwards from Egypt, destroying the idyllic life of the primitive hunters.

  p. 190 banking and braeing. The reference is to Burns’s ‘Ye banks and braes o’ bonie Doon’, with a pun on ‘brae’ (bray). Frellin. There is no such village in the Mearns, but Gibbon may have taken the name from the old pronunciation of Freeland in the Forgandenny parish of se Perthshire.

  p. 198 Means Test. The National Government reduced unemployment benefit by some ten per cent. After a claimant had been twenty-six weeks on benefit the income of the entire household was examined by the local Public Assistance Committee. All forms of income—pensions, contributions from sons and daughters, even household possessions— were taken into account (John Stevenson and Chris Cook. The Slump, 1977, p. 68). cut off the Bureau. His dole had been stopped.

  p. 199 Mearns Chief. The local paper’s name was, and still is, The Mearns Leader and Kincardineshire Mail.

  Naomi Mitchison. Novelist, social critic and travel writer (b. 1897). Her anthropological and historical novel The Corn King and the Spring Queen had just been published (1931).

  p.208 rock of Christ’s kirk. ‘Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it’ (Matthew xvi. 18).

  p.211 It is Finished. (John xix. 30).

  Lewis Grassic Gibbon

  GREY GRANITE

  Introduced by Tom Crawford

  To

  Hugh MacDiarmid

  Contents

  Map of The Land of a Scots Quair

  Cautionary Note

  Introduction

  Note on the Text

  I Epidote

  II Sphene

  III Apatite

  IV Zircon

  Grey Granite: Curtain Raiser

  Notes

  Map

  Cautionary Note

  The ‘Duncairn’ of this novel was originally ‘Dundon’. Unfortunately, several English journals in pre-publication notices of the book described my imaginary city as Dundee, two Scottish sheets identified it with Aberdeen, and at least one American newspaper went considerably astray and stated that it was Edinburgh—faintly disguised.

  Instead, it is merely the city which the inhabitants of the Mearns (not foreseeing my requirements in completing my trilogy) have hitherto failed to build.

  L. G. G.

  Introduction

  When Grey Granite was published at the end of 1934 it was advertised as the last volume of a trilogy. Yet many who had missed the first two novels were swept off their feet when they read it. This seems to have been the experience of Tom Wintringham, the influential editor of Left Review, who termed it ‘the best novel written this side the Channel since Hardy stopped writing’.1 And it was certainly that of the Sheffield Daily Telegraph reviewer, who was glad he had not come across the earlier volumes because, after the overpowering experience of Grey Granite, the ‘pleasure of their first perusal’ was still t
o come (31 January 1935). Page Cooper of Doubleday (Gibbon’s American publisher), who did of course know the other books, could not keep it out of her mind and found it ‘a bigger, more disturbing, and beautiful book than Cloud Howe. One hesitates to label anything with the word genius, but there isn’t any other for the quality of his mind.’2 Of those who went in for comparisons, the New York Times reviewer was almost as enthusiastic, calling it ‘Gibbon’s most swiftly moving book and most adventurous in ideas’ (3 February 1935). More significantly, perhaps, Gibbon’s greatest Scottish contemporaries, Hugh MacDiarmid and Edwin Muir, both liked it: MacDiarmid enthusiastically, Muir less so (though he preferred it to its predecessors).3

  The majority of those who had read all three parts seem to have agreed with the Glasgow Herald in the judgment that is still, I think, standard among ‘common readers’: ‘Sunset Song stands by itself, a good novel; Cloud Howe and Grey Granite are two rather ramshackle outhouses which have been added to it.’ This, however, is to forget that Gibbon had planned a trilogy from the first, 4 and to ignore the fact that each of the outhouses has its own effective structure, however different from nineteenth-century and Edwardian norms. Like all creative writers Gibbon had not worked out the total shape right at the start; once begun, the novels flowed with their own momentum and took on new features as he wrote. That his original title for Cloud Howe was The Morning Star indicates that he cannot at first have thought of organizing it around contrasting cloud-formations passing over the vale of the Mearns, but perhaps around heavenly bodies ironically conceived. And when he came to grips with Grey Granite he scrapped his original plan of a Prelude that would make the beginning of Grey Granite formally parallel to those of the earlier novels, with their milieux firmly set in place and time (this is given in the Appendix). The result is that Duncairn has depth, history, and background only for those in the know; for them, Gibbon’s city is more like Aberdeen than Dundee, Glasgow or Edinburgh, and the glancing identifications and allusions provide, quietly and unobtrusively, many of the in-jokes of which Gibbon was so fond.5 For the wider readership, Duncairn is an imaginary city, the crumbling backdrop to the personal and political paradigms set within it. The novel has thus a much freer form than Sunset Song, framed by Prelude and Epilude; its frame consists of two passages about Chris, where interior monologue deftly incorporates third-person narration. With the first, we begin in medias res with Chris—‘old at thirty-eight?’—puffing and panting as she lugs her groceries up the urban height of the Windmill Steps, and end with her in the countryside, above the croft she has ‘retired to’, enigmatically losing consciousness on top of the Barmekin.