So here, where the Forthie meandered and spun with a seep of red clay down to the landfall of that lost childe Pytheas the little town crawled up into the years and the lights of history, dim and red-tainted, sometimes the outbye men came down to prowl the houses beyond the broch, till the city had a wall built round about, fit to repel the coarse landward men. Behind, on the hills, they built tall forts; and they lived and they died, worshipping their gods; and if it might be that a Dundon chief desired the wife of a Dundon pleb he stole her with unctuous voice and mien, being holy, a Dundon man even then would rape your pouches and cut your throat and tell you a funny joke while he did it, skilly and agreeable, and generally holy.
Well, this was fine, till the Norsemen came, with faces made of sour buttermilk, childes from the stinking straths and byres, squat and strong, black rotten their teeth, they never washed unless they were forced, and they’d better swords than the Dundon folk, so they couldn’t force them, apart from the fact that they thought themselves water better used for sailing a boat on than bathing themselves in. So they fought together at that first raid, some of the Northmen got into a hall and found Red Kenneth, the Sheriff of that time, sitting at play at a game of board with his lady, the Red Ane; and the fine Norse childes bulged out their eyes, sore surprised to see a woman unlike their own, not fine and squash, with a face like a mat; and they stripped her, and she took long to die under the eyes of Red Kenneth, kept raving. But afore they could finish with him as well the Dundon folk were chasing them back to their ships, and they ran with their sour whey faces blood dripping, and scrambled away through the pound and roll of the Forthie, and that was the end of them for the time. But Red Kenneth was a mad [man] from that day, and his tortures the Dundon folk might not endure after the passing of a while, a little squire cut his throat one night and ran and hid in the Dundon wynds that led down to the burned shipwright’s halls.
So Dundon was saved from the sour Norse childes, and rebuilt its kirk, and a Saint came there, a childe that cornered the droves of hogs that were pastured, black and grey they would grumph about, on the hills above Dundon itself. And he pressed the townsfolk sore for the prize of their meat, there were starving men about the wynds, some coarse creatures said that his throat should be cut. But instead he died and was made a saint. Good St Machar they christened the corp that had swollen fat on the profit of pigs, and they built a cathedral on his head and filled it full of those Catholic priests, awful creatures with brave gowns on that said when you took a sip at communion you really were eating Jesus Christ, they were awful ignorant folk in those times.
Well, the next thing that happened to Dundon toun was when Wallace came marching up from the south killing the English right and left, he fairly had the right way with vermin, him, and he came and chapped on the Dundon gates, and Dundon looked out and shook at the knees. For they had made pact with the English to kepp the port and give meal and milk in return for remission of all their taxes. So they parleyed till the Scots army lost its patience and battered in the walls, and went in and afore they had finished with that night’s work there was surety of a plenty of a population of patriot Scots for the future, no doubt, though the sour folk that were to call themselves fathers were mostly at the time hiding up their lums. Those were fairly the times, there’s little doubt, when Scotland had its glory bright and untarnished, folk went half-starved, when they weren’t that they were being broken on the wheel or hanged at the tail of a cart of manure for stealing a penny’s worth of meal, or led out and butchered on the dreich Μearns hills, in rain and the di[r]ty on-ding of sleet, white pelting, for the sake of Scotland and god and the wealth to fill up the gentry’s pouches.
But trade was coming into the burgh from far and near across the North Sea, from Bergen, brought by the Northmen loons that had taen to carrying packs, not swords, as handless near with the one as the other, they couldn’t cope with the Dundon folk, holy and solemn with great crude hands, they would dig in a pack, fell eident like, and get the packman to coup out his wares, and look at them all and walk round about and stare at the sky and scratch their heads and call the wife to bring them a drink (the Northman licking his dried up lips, the tink, as though he needed a drink); and syne’s they’d say How much for the pock? and the Northman would say a half-angel, maybe; and at that the Dundon childe would give a groan and argue it out the lave of the day till the birds were heard singing bonnily outbye on the heaps of sharn at each door; and the Northman childe would be dead for sleep and sell the thing for a shilling, Scots, and take to his heels and across the sea and swear that what ever else he might do, try out a sail to Greenland or Iceland, or kill a bear with his naked nieves, he’d be hanged with a tarry length of tow afore he went trading down to Dundon.
They’d tell those coarse stories about their own selves, the Dundon folk, caller, clear-eyed, grey folk with a twinkle deep in Pict eyes, and think no shame. They went on with building their ship yards at last, fine boats, long sailors to the waters of the Baltic, where the beat of the sea on long, long swaps [?swaths] dreich under German suns, fine boats, folk bought them from far and near. And …
Notes
There are no entries for places on the map on p.vi but most are treated in notes to the Canongate Classics editions of Sunset Song and Cloud Howe.
p.1 Windmill Place. ‘Duncairn is no imaginary city; Duncairn is plainly and visibly the Aberdeen that Grassic Gibbon knew as a reporter in his early working days, the Windmill Steps the very ones he lived at the top of in digs no doubt very like Ma Cleghorn’s, the mile-long Union Street nearby the Royal Mile of Duncairn, Footdee and Footforthie conveniently in the right place, the Commercial Bank and the statue at the end of Union Terrace and Wool- worth’s and all the familiar landmarks which make Duncairn instantly recognizable as Aberdeen. Granite is quarried in the outskirts: Hazelhead and Rubislaw are not mentioned as such, but they could not be more clearly hinted at’ (Ian Campbell, ‘Lewis Grassic Gibbon and the Mearns’, in A Sense of Place, ed Graeme Cruickshank, 1988, p.18).
p.2 Mounth. The great se spur of the Grampian mountain system.
p.6 the Broo. From ‘Bureau’—unemployment exchange.
p.7 MacDonald. J. Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937), the prime minister. See note in Cloud Howe, p.219, Canongate Classics edn.
p.9 War-horse out of Isaiah. Perhaps Robert had used a large Bible with coloured illustrations.
p.14 Howe of the World. The Howe of the Mearns. See the map on p.vi.
p.18 Dunedin. The Celtic form of Edinburgh. Tory Pictman. Cf the Scotsman, ‘Scotland’s National Newspaper’—now far from Tory in the narrow party sense.
p.30 Shaw. George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), the dramatist, essayist and pamphleteer.
Wells. Herbert George Wells (1866–1946), novelist, Utopian polemicist and popularizer of science. Both Shaw and Wells had enormous influence on Gibbon in his early years.
p.31 MacGillivray. J. Pittendrigh MacGillivray (1856–1938), poet and sculptor (he made the statues of John Knox in St Giles’ and Byron in Aberdeen Grammar School). He experimented in mild pastiches of Middle Scots.
Marion Angus (1866–1946) has been judged by Roderick Watson to be ‘within her chosen range, technically the most accomplished [poet in Scots] of her generation’.
Lewis Spence (1874–1955), anthropologist, poet, and general writer. Miss Murgatroyd may have been referring to The Mysteries of Britain; or, the Secret Rites and traditions of Ancient Britain restored (1928).
Hugo MacDownall. A joke at the expense of Christopher Murray Grieve (‘Hugh MacDiarmid’, 1892–1978), to whom the novel is dedicated and with whom Gibbon collaborated in this very year in writing The Scottish Scene. See also the note in Cloud Howe, p.219, Canongate Classics edn. Synthetic Scots was to be a deliberate creation, using words and syntax from the past and from all dialects of the Scots language.
p.32 Edgar Wallace. Wallace (1875–1932), an English writer best known for his crime novels.
p.38 The Sl
ug. The Slug Road runs from Stonehaven to near Banchory on Deeside, and climbs to a height of 757 ft. Dunecht. An Aberdeenshire village some twelve miles w of Aberdeen.
Montrose. James Graham, Marquis of Montrose (1612–50), Scottish general, supported Charles 1 after 1644 and took and pillaged both Aberdeen (1644) and Dundee (1645).
p.39 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 first marriage to Ewan senior. Stonehyve. The traditional pronunciation of Stonehaven.
p.40 Echt. A village in se Aberdeenshire, twelve miles w of Aberdeen and two miles s of Dunecht.
The Hill of Fare. A broad-based hill on the border of Aberdeen and Kincardine shires,1545 ft at the summit and some five miles nnw of Banchory.
The Barmekin. A conical hill (800 ft) near Echt.
p.41 Cairndhu. The farm-croft near Echt tenanted by John Guthrie before the family moved to Blawearie. See Sunset Song, pp.27–39, Canongate Classics edn.
p.42 Excelsior. The title of a poem by Longfellow which most children once learned by heart. It has an onward-and- upward theme, with lines such as: A youth, who bore, ’mid snow and ice/A banner with a strange device,/Excelsior! and Beware the pine-tree’s withered branch!/Beware the awful avalanche!/
p.44 Bennachie. A rather sprawling hill with six summits (highest, 1698 ft) near Alford and Inverurie in Aberdeenshire. The song mentions a stream in the area: O! gin I were where Gadie rins/Where Gadie rins, where Gadie rins./O! gin I were where Gadie rins,/At the back o’ Bennachie!
p.46 gotten out his rag. Made him lose his temper.
p.51 Douglas Scheme. The theory of social credit, which proposed that the government should distribute national dividends in order to spread purchasing power and thus increase consumption. Its leading proponent was Major Clifford Hugh Douglas (1879–1952). An attempt was made to put the scheme into operation in Alberta, and Douglas was made ‘Chief of Reconstruction’ to the state government there in 1935.
p. 53 pac Public Assistance Committees, which eked out unemployment and other benefits.
p.54 plates of meat. Rhyming slang for ‘feet’.
Up wi’ the gentry, that’s for me. A parody of the Burns song ‘Up in the morning’s no for me/Up in the morning early’.
p.55 Arise, ye outcasts. The beginning of one translation of The Internationale.
p.67 Trusta. A hill (1052 ft) in Fetteresso Forest, some six miles w of Stonehaven.
p.68 rattle in the lantern. Blow in the face.
p.72 Spartacus (d.71 bc). The leader of the slave revolt in Italy which began in 73 bc. He routed several Roman armies but was finally defeated and killed by Crassus. He is the hero of Gibbon’s novel of that name.
p.73 Parker. Richard Parker, English seaman, led thirteen ships of the line and a number of frigates in a mutiny at the Nore from 10 May to 13 June 1797. He was hanged on 30 June.
p.91 his Nannie was awa’. Another Burns song—‘My Nanie’s awa’.
p.108 presents on New Year’s Day. New Year was still the family festival in Scotland in the 1930s.
p.151 Hill of Βarras. About three miles inland from the coastal village of Catterline.
The Pitforthies. Three upland farms (Hillhead of Pitforthie, Nether Pitforthie, and Upper Pitforthie), some three miles nne of Arbuthnott.
Meikle Fiddes. A farm by the main Aberdeen road about one mile e of Drumlithie.
p.152 Drumlithie … steeple. In Sunset Song Drumlithie church is said to have no steeple (p.76, Canongate Classics edn). But see the note on p.216 of Cloud Howe, Canongate Classics edn.
p.154 Glen Dye. A rocky glen in Strachan parish, Kincardineshire.
Drumtochty. A hill and (nineteenth-century) castle about two miles w of Auchinblae in Kincardineshire.
Finella. See Cloud Ηowe, note on p.213, Canongate Classics edn.
Garrold Wood. Just s of Strathfinella and the Glen of Drumtochty.
Luther water. ‘A troutful rivulet of Kincardineshire’ (Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland).
Dunnottar Castle. See Sunset Song, pp.125–6, Canongate Classics edn.
p.155 Drumelzie woods. About one mile w of Auchinblae.
p.161 walls … cleared space. Chris is climbing the Barmekin, which is ‘crowned by remains of a prehistoric fortress, about six acres in extent, with concentric ramparts’ (Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland).
p.163 Εwan, Long Rob, Robert. The men in her life, for whom see Sunset Song and Cloud Howe.
Not Ake alone … ‘She was’ is understood—i.e., she was beyond not Ake alone, but beyond them all.
p.182 Connolly. James Connolly (1870–1916), Irish Labour Leader, organized socialist ‘armies’ and took part in the Easter rebellion of 1916. He was executed on 12 May.
p.193 Cairn o’ Mount. In the words of the Ordnance Gazetteer, ‘a mountain on the mutual border of Strachan and Fordoun parishes, Kincardineshire … it culminates about seven miles ese of Mount Battock’ (see Gibbon’s map). There is a road from Forfarshire to Deeside over its eastern shoulder.
p.196 Invergordon. The Atlantic Fleet mutinied over a reduction in pay scales and resentment over harsh discipline from 16 to 21 September 1931. As a result, the Navy’s cuts were reduced from an extreme upper limit of twenty-five per cent to ten per cent.
p.201 that day that Robert had died. See Cloud Howe, p.210, Canongate Classics edn.
Glossary
Definitions followed by snd are from The Scottish National Dictionary, by csd are from the Concise Scottish Dictionary, edited by Mairi Robinson (Aberdeen 1985), and by lgg are from the glossary Gibbon provided for the 1933 American edition of Sunset Song. (There was no glossary for Cloud Howe.) Scots words which are generally known throughout the English-speaking world (e.g. auld, bairn, brae) are not defined, but some now rare English words have been included e.g. coulter, leman), as well as some quite common words not known in the USA
a-agant, all agape
affronted, humiliated
afore, before
agley, off the straight, awry
ahint, behind
Ake, dim. of Alexander
alow, below
a-lowe, alight
antrin, strange, eerie
ashet, oval serving-plate
a-skeugh, (of shoulder), twisted
ayont, beyond
bade, stayed
bap, soft bread roll
bar (n.), joke
basses, mats, rugs
Bee, bugger
ben, inside, towards the inner part of the house
Benny Dick Tine, Benedictine
bents, slopes covered with coarse grass
besom, impudent hussy
bide, dwell, stay
bigging, (of kirk) building; (of sheaves) stacking
billy, fellow
birkie, conceited fellow
birn, heap, pile, crowd
birring, whirring
bit, ‘a mildly deprecatory adjectival handle’ LGG
blate, bashful
blatter, storm, pelting
blether, chatter, talk nonsense
blow, boast
bodies, people
bothy, separate building for housing unmarried male farm workers
bout, stretch of land ploughd or of hay or corn cut
bouroch-och, crowd, heap
brows, fine clothes
bree, ‘stock, soup, gravy’ CSD
breeks, trousers
breenge, rush forward
brink, provide
bristle, scorch
britchen, breeching (rear harness strap)
broch, large round tower with hollow walls of stone
Broo men, the unemployed
brose, oat or pease meal mixed with boiling water
brosy, (of morals) ‘homespun’
bucht, shelter, sheepfold
buirdly, burly, vigorous
bull’s eye, policeman’s lantern with thick central lens
butt and a
ben, two-roomed cottage
by, (adv.) near, close
byke, nest (of insects)
cadger, pedlar
caller, fresh
calsay stones, cobble stones
calthrop, instrument armedwith four spikes, arranged so that one always stands upright, used to obstruct an enemy
canny, carefully
cantrips, antics
canty, lively
cap, wooden bowl
carle, man, fellow
cateran, rogue (orig. robber)
Chakie, ‘dim. of Charles’ LGG
champ, trample, crush; muddy, trodden ground
chapping, knocking, striking
chave, ‘toil back-breakingly’ LGG
chief-like, ‘over-friendly’ LGG
childe (Sc. chiel), ‘a full-grown, responsible male’ LGG
chinter, chop, hack
chirk, (to horses) make a harsh, strident noise
claik, gossip
clairt, smear, make dirty
clamjamfry (vb.), plaster (with mud)
clart, muck-rake
cleck, hatch, give birth to
cleeked, (of horse) crippled by leg-cramps
clishmaclaver, hubbub of talk
clorted, sorild
close, farmyard, courtyard
clour, Clout, blow, thump
clyak, last sheap of corn in harvest-field, end of harvest
clype, tell tales, inform on
coarse, boorish, wicked
cog, (for feeding calves) wooden container made of staves
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