by David Yeadon
“And those fenced-off greens—they’re pretty unusual…”
“Well—they need them. Cows get everywhere. They even had to electrify them.”
“They don’t have those on Harris.”
The woman laughed. “Well, they don’t need them. They only have sheep there. But believe it or not, even though it looks pretty mild, Harris is a harder course than this one—more subtle and devious.”
Neither Anne nor I were golfers, so we just nodded and accepted their verdict. They seemed to be confidently knowledgeable about the refinements of the game.
“Well—this certainly seems a very challenging place to put a course,” I finally said.
“Y’shoulda been ’ere yesterday,” the man said, with what can only be described as a goofy golf addict grin. “Pouring down and winds that would send y’flyin’ on those top greens.” He pointed to the rocky summit of the promontory, a couple of hundred feet higher than where we stood.
“Y’mean the course goes up there? Right over the top…?”
“Oh—way over. It’s a real bugger in places. We only managed a couple of rounds.”
“In the storm?”
“Right—in the storm.”
“You must be very keen…on all this,” said Anne, with a kind of why-would-you-bother grin.
They both laughed. “Oh, yes, you could say that,” said the woman. “You two obviously don’t play golf.”
“No,” I said.
“Well, we like miniature golf, though…a bit…don’t we?” Anne suggested hesitantly.
There was a rather uncomfortable silence. The yawning gap between golfers and nongolfers was fully manifest as we all stood shuffling our feet by the shack.
“Well,” said the man finally, “enjoy your day…”
“So, where are you going now?” I asked as they turned away together.
The woman chuckled. “Oh—back for one more round.”
“Can’t keep a good golfer down, y’know,” said the man.
And off they went, dragging their hefty golf bags again, still looking rather stooped and weary.
“I guess I’ll never get it,” I said quietly to Anne.
“Ditto,” she said as we strolled back to our car. “But miniature golf can be a bit of a laugh…”
But we certainly “got” Castlebay. As soon as we entered this somewhat straggly community scattered around its cliff-bound bay at the southern tip of the island (the rugged cliffs of Muldoanich here tower over five hundred feet above the ocean), we sensed a lighter spirit of life here. Quite different from the restrained—even rather stern—modesty of Tarbert. Notices in the shop windows suggested a turbulent social life of ceilidhs, fairs, community dinners, visiting lecturers, pub and hotel “special evenings,” and a welter of New Age enticements, including massage, meditation, yoga, tai chi, and a few other odd practices we couldn’t quite understand.
There were tourists around too. We’d missed the peak of the season, fortunately, but there were enough backpackers, snuggling teenage lovers, and café-filling families to give this small community a distinct zing of incomer eclecticism. There was even a gaily painted hostel set on a bluff overlooking the harbor that exuded all the “make love, not war” spirit of the sixties—including drawling Bob Dylan songs wafting out across the road (definitely not a Stepford Tourist venue here). “Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man” never sounded so good.
“Great time-warp territory,” I chuckled.
“And time to find our B and B,” said Anne in her “let’s get organized now” voice.
And there it was, a short distance from the proudly gabled Victorian facade of the 1890 Castlebay Hotel, which was set high on a bluff alongside the more mundane-looking but, as we later discovered, maniacally popular Castlebay Bar. We’d booked in advance and were greeted with unabashed enthusiasm by the young couple who ran a cottage-like cocoon of cozy hospitality. Even though the place was full, we were treated as if we were their only guests, and they stood together, beaming brightly, as we admired our chintzy bedroom with windows overlooking the bay and the bulky ramparts of Kisimul Castle.
“You’ll be able to get a boatman to take you out there, if you like,” said our smiling hostess. “He’ll tell you some juicy tales about the MacNeils of Barra—some of them were real pirates, y’know. One of them—Ruari the Turbulent—even tried to capture one of Queen Elizabeth the First’s treasure ships. And they say when the castle was first built in the eleventh century, they had a herald with a trumpet up there in that tower and when the clan chief had finished his dinner each night, the herald would blow his horn and shout out across the town, ‘The MacNeil has dined. All other princes of the earth may now eat!’”
Many more enticing stories flowed out from our hostess (her husband, who must have heard them a thousand times, left politely and apologetically “to fix a tap washer”) until eventually we were left alone to prepare for dinner at the adjoining hotel.
And what a fine meal that turned out to be. Despite the abundance of game, fish, and fresh seafood all around the Hebrides, it’s often frustratingly difficult to find authentic regional dishes and local ingredients here. But not at the Castlebay Hotel, where the menu ran the gamut from venison, grouse, Barra lamb, and haggis to a welter of seafood delights including fresh cockles, mussels, scallops, crabs, langoustines, herring in mustard sauce, herring in oatmeal (true traditional fare and a staple dish of the old crofters), and razorfish. We stuck with the seafood and fish and ended up with a vast sampler platter of just about every type of creature caught that day. I was particularly enamored with the razorfish—a strange elongated entity with a lobster flavor and a texture like tender scungilli. Anne seemed a little discouraged by its odd appearance and stuck to more familiar delights.
After leisurely coffees and a quiet digestive period in the large armchairs of the lounge overlooking the bay and the still-bright evening light, we wandered out for a walk. Those long Hebridean summer days seemed to inject fresh energy, and going to bed felt like such a ridiculous waste of playtime. So we played—next door at the Castlebay Bar along with what felt like the whole population of the island. And I would truly like to amuse readers with wonderful folktales gleaned from the old salts here, but for some odd reason, my mind draws a blank when I try to recall whatever occurred over the next few hours. I remember it was noisy. And there was occasional feisty music from a live ceilidh band. And laughter—there was a lot of laughter. And drinks. Well, yes, I do admit to maybe a slight overconsumption of traditional Scotch and beer chasers with a bunch of locals who kept insisting that I (Anne had wisely distanced herself from the fray) was “na keepin’ up, laddie” and implying that we English were no match for the wash-it-down-and-have-another spirit of the islanders. I guess I must have regarded this as some kind of challenge and so, merely in an effort, you understand, to show what we Yorkshiremen are truly made of, I may have overestimated my ability to keep up. But of course, I didn’t know that at the time.
The following morning, I certainly did. And I sat morosely at the breakfast table, woozy-eyed and fuzzy-minded, nibbling like a nervous mouse on cold, dry toast while Anne gleefully downed the full repast of bacon, haggis, black pudding, sausage, eggs, beans, tomatoes, and fried bread. Now, normally my wife avoids such gargantuan platters and eats a far healthier fare of oatmeal, fruit juice, and fresh-baked scones or little pancake-like bannock cakes. But for some reason, on that particular morning, she chose my kind of breakfast as—I suspect—a none-too-subtle rebuke of my antics of the previous night.
“I think I’ll go up to the room now,” I half whispered (a full-volume voice echoed around my head like a thumping bass drum).
“Oh, no, darling,” my darling replied, determined to get her message across. “Just wait a few more minutes. I’ve almost finished,” as she proceeded to devour every item on her plate and my stomach roiled in silent protest.
Fortunately, the fresh sea air outside our little B&B removed much of the porridgey mu
sh floating around my skull and, although I decided to abandon plans for a choppy boat ride out to the castle, we managed to enjoy a slow (geriatric-paced, actually) stroll around the town.
And what an odd, enticing place it turned out to be—dotted with bizarre characters and bathed in a spirit of benevolent bounty that made us wonder if we should add Barra to our list of must-revisit locales.
First we saw one elderly lady with a thick walking stick, dressed in wrinkled sporting trousers, rubber boots, heavy knitted sweater, and a huge paisley scarf wrapped many times around her head. She carried a plastic pail and kind of shuffled along in a hunched manner trailed by a large black dog. She took a rough path down to the shallows near the harbor and, balanced somewhat precariously on the rocks, started to pick things off the tide-etched strata.
Anne was a little concerned and asked a passerby if he thought the old lady was safe. The man laughed. “Och, don’t y’worry ’bout old Sarah. She’s always down there lookin’ f’ her winkles an’ cockles. She’ll be back up soon an’ go to the café and try t’sell ’em. Even if she doesn’t, she always gets a free cup o’ tea. Everyone loves ’er…she’s had a tough life but she keeps on goin’. Inspirin’ to all o’ us—tha’s what she is!”
And “inspiring,” I guess, is one word to describe the gentleman we met at the far edge of town. His tiny cottage, gaily painted in cream with red trim, was the epitome of the “doll’s house” style, and his garden was a mini-wonderworld of flower varieties, neatly trimmed bushes, garden gnomes, and meticulously pebbled pathways. We had been accustomed to typical Hebridean homes that possessed what might be called a kind of “crofter-chaos” appearance. Not exactly untidy, but usually reflective of a wide range of “projects in progress.”
The owner of this almost-fairy-tale creation was putting away his collection of gardening implements into a tiny, brightly painted shed and we stopped to congratulate him.
“We don’t see many places as neat and colorful as this,” I called out.
He gave a warm smile of acknowledgment and came over to where we stood by his brightly painted fence. And as soon as he opened his mouth, it was obvious that he was no islander.
“Let me guess,” said Anne. “That’s not exactly a Yorkshire accent…so I’ll try…Lancashire.”
“Spot on, luv,” he laughed. “Manchester born and bred and proud of it.”
“So what are you doing here?” I asked.
He grinned. “My—it’s been so long now, ’most on twenty years—I’ve almost forgotten why I first came up. But when I did, I decided I could do awright ’ere. People’re friendly. Property were cheap then an’ I had a small pension. An’ I just sort of got…involved…with this place. Doin’ it up like. Makin’ it look nice.”
“Well, you’ve certainly done that,” said Anne, with a wide smile. “Quite an example you’ve set.”
“Oh, well—y’know, they tease me a bit about that. But it’s what I love to do…so…y’know, it’s as they say: ‘If y’do what y’love, it’ll love ye back.’”
I’d never heard that particular aphorism before, but it certainly seemed to apply to this man’s work. The place glowed with…well, love, I suppose. It made you happy just to look at it—and him, too (despite the fact he was a Lancastrian, once dire enemies of us Yorkshirefolk).
After that the day became a collage of serendipitous meetings and conversations, and we shall never forget our final experience. We’d sat with one elderly gentleman—a sturdy little troll of a person—down by one of the harbor cafés. We only intended to join him briefly for a coffee. But Andy MacLean turned out to be one of those splendid human repositories of historical fact (and maybe a little colorful fiction too) who insisted on clarifying our somewhat jumbled understanding of Barra’s heritage.
“It was awful hard to be a Catholic in this place,” he told us after a little idle chitchat, his rheumy eyes brightening with pride and his mop of silver-white hair shaking with emotion. “Back in the seventeenth century those bloody Presbyterians persecuted us Catholics all over Scotland. And it was ver’ bad here—even our MacNeil chiefs gave in an’ turned Protestant and brought in the Church of Scotland ministers to punish us and tax us and even evict us and send us off on those immigrant ships in the mid-1800s. Quite a time that was…there were riots by the crofters an’ it got so bad that there were government warships runnin’ up an’ down The Minch.”
Andy spoke with such intensity that we felt as if these traumatic events had occurred just recently rather than a century and a half ago. It was obvious that more coffees would be needed. “No, no!” said Andy. “Let me get ’em.” He leaned across the table and half whispered with a mischievous gleam in his eye and a lopsided smile revealing a Callanishlike line of broken teeth, “Mairi usually gi’es a second cup fer free.” Mairi was apparently the owner of the place and she did indeed show such generosity—in a way that’s quite customary in America but rather rare in thrifty-spirited Scotland.
“Anyway…what was I…oh—the warships. Quite a time that was, what with all the people leavin’ an’ even talk of makin’ tiny Barra into a prison colony! Can y’believe that?! Our beautiful island bein’ turned into another Botany Bay. But it didn’t happen and those that were left got some new land rights—an’ all that time they stayed Catholic. Hardly a one converted over. For sixteen centuries we kept the faith. An’ there’s our lovely church to prove it.” Andy pointed to a large gray stone church with a prominent crenellated tower on a rocky bluff overlooking the town—“Our Lady, Star of the Sea…now that’s determination f’ye, don’ y’think…”
Anne smiled and nodded.
“And maybe a little luck,” I added. “Apparently the government warships never landed.”
Andy laughed and pushed back his mop of hair, which now hung so low over his eyes he looked like a shaggy sheepdog.
“Aye, well, there’s some truth in that. The MacNeils were known for their luck! Y’know the story of Ruari the Turbulent’s takin’ o’ one o’ Queen Elizabeth’s ships, d’ye?”
We both nodded. We’d heard this famous story from our hostess and a couple of others already.
“Well—they tricked ’im off the island and sent him to Edinburgh fer punishment, but he told King James that he’d done it as a gesture against Queen Elizabeth the First—‘the woman who murdered Your Majesty’s mother, Mary Queen of Scots’—and so he escaped a hangin’! And also—when Bonnie Prince Charlie came to Eriskay after the rebellion to take the throne back for his father, the MacNeils were a canny lot an’ didn’t show much support, an’ even though the clan chief was arrested and put in one of those terrible prison ships in London, he was never properly prosecuted. So that’s two escapes. Pretty clever bunch, eh?”
“Flora MacDonald in South Uist wasn’t quite so lucky, though, was she?” I said, trying to remember my island history. “I know she tried to help the prince escape after Culloden—dressed him up as a servant girl, or something…but wasn’t she caught later on and imprisoned?”
Andy laughed. “Well, no—actually not. She told such a good story to the judges in London that they let her off. Then she went to America for a while but came back and met Dr. Johnson and Mr. Boswell on that famous trip o’theirs. An’one o’them, I think it was the Boswell fella, said she was ‘a little lady of most genteel appearance, mighty soft and well-bred…,’ an’ ’e said that she will be remembered forever and ‘if courage and fidelity be virtues, mentioned with honor.’ So she turned out to be as canny and as lucky as the MacNeils!”
Again we had the sense that history to Andy was alive and almost tactile. These were not just legends to him. They were rather a source of pride and island identity that for him remain right up to today.
“But you had good times here too,” I suggested. “Y’know, after the Napier Commission—much better conditions for the crofters. And the kelp and the herring and cod fishing in the last century—they were pretty lucrative.”
“Ah, yes yes—an�
� all those lovely herring girls…scores of ’em at the curing stations on shore…beautiful creatures…”
Andy’s eyes seemed to water a little as he recalled memories of an obviously private nature.
“Yes—but weren’t they always on the move…following the fleets to the English ports?” asked Anne.
“True, true, some were but…they always came back, y’know,” said Andy, “always came back.”
We didn’t want to disturb his reveries, so we sat quietly watching the gulls wheel over the harbor and looking out for seals, which we’d been told occasionally frolicked around the rocky shallows here.
And then he was off again. “An’ y’know, at one time in the late 1800s, our little harbor here held more fishing fleet boats than Stornoway! Sometimes more’n four hundred boats.”
“And didn’t old Compton Mackenzie help keep the industry going with his Sea League?” I asked, hoping I’d got my history right.
“My, my, you’ve been doin’ a wee bit o’ readin’!” chuckled Andy. “Tha’s good—ver’ good. Most visitors ’ere know nothin’ ’bout us. They come fer a few days o’ scenery an’ eatin’ an’ drinkin’ an’ then they’re off again. But y’right, Mackenzie did ’is best to stop the foreigners—the Spanish were the worst and the English—from overfishin’ The Minch. But even he couldn’t stop that stupid use of the big nets and the dredgin’ which wiped out the spawnin’ beds and killed off the whole damn thing…so bloody stupid!”
He sat quietly again. This was a sad tale of greed, shortsightedness, and the insidious political clout of big trawling companies and we’d heard it many times before throughout the Hebrides.
“Tha’s the whole history of these islands—stupidity, cruelty, and no power for the wee folk—we had so little power…y’should listen to some of our Gaelic long songs and stories. They tell y’all about it—an’ they tell it in a way that’s so much richer than English, so many levels o’ meanin’ in the words and the way they’re said. Coddy MacPhearson up at North Bay—he helped us keep them, and Angus MacMillan on Benbecula, and Angus MacLellan, a great storyteller, an’ books like Colm O’ Lochlainn’s Deoch-slainte nan Gillean. But I don’t suppose y’understand the Gaelic s’much.”