Seasons on Harris

by David Yeadon

  “Yes, David.” Roddy’s voice seemed a little exasperated with my slow grasp of what sounded like very important—and good—news…about the tweed. “They’ve gone and got us a huge order from Nike—y’know, the people who make all those trainers…or what d’y’call ’em in America…”

  “Sneakers.”

  “Aye…those things.”

  “And what is Nike going to do with the tweed and its sneakers?”

  “Och, I don’t know all the details yet. Why don’ y’jus’ call Donald John. He sounds like he needs a nice calm voice like yours to soothe him down a wee bit.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “Sounds like he was having a heart attack t’me. Y’know how fast he talks. Well he was going a mile a minute…like he was running a race in a pair o’ those Nikes!” Roddy chuckled at his own impromptu humor.

  “Okay, I’ll give him a call and get the details. Sounds interesting…”

  “It’ll be more than interestin’ if it all works out. It’ll give our weavers some real work for a change!”

  “And your tweed factory at Shawbost too? Are you still involved in that?”

  “Oh aye, sort of…on and off, y’know…” Roddy was always a little cautious in revealing too many details of his considerable mélange of business activities on the island.

  “Well, that could be a bit of a lift for you, then?”

  “Ay, well, maybe…but it’s the weavers I’m thinkin’ about. This could be what they’ve all been waitin’ for—for far too long now. Far too long…”

  “Okay, Roddy, thanks for the tip. I’ll call the MacKays right now. See what the story is.”

  “Aye—why don’ you do that…and then pop round later…around dinnertime. We’ll have a wee dram or two to celebrate.”

  “Sounds like a grand idea!”

  “Let’s call the MacKays and get the real story,” I said to Anne, who was standing beside me, intrigued by all the possibilities of a sudden tweed revival on the island. “Although from what Roddy just told me that might not be so easy.”

  It wasn’t. Donald John picked up the phone and Roddy was right. His voice was half an octave higher, and his Hebridean accent even more pronounced than ever, with words tumbling out chaotically. “Ah yes, wonderful news, isn’t it, David…hold on…Maureen, it’s David from Ardhasaig and—hold on again—there’s someone at the door…oh, okay…David, sorry, it’s all a bit of a madhouse at the moment…no, no, you don’t need to call back…it’s jus’ that…Granada TV is coming this afternoon…they want something for the evening news…and then the BBC…Maureen, when’s the BBC comin’…Friday? Yeah, tha’s right. Friday. They’re talkin’ about a half hour special—a TV documentary about it all! Can y’believe it…everything’s going so fast…hold on—he wants me now, Maureen? Okay…tell him I’ll be out…can you speak with David and Anne…David, I’ve got a newspaper reporter here. Maureen…you speak to them…David, Maureen’s comin’…I’ll catch up w’you later.”

  Maureen’s slow, measured way of talking and her clear English Midlands accent eventually allowed us to extract the essence of the story, which went something like this:

  “Well, y’know how Donald John is always looking out for new clients and designers—y’know, people who’ll bring in new fashions and new ways of using tweed. He’s met so many people—I think he’s told you—Vivienne Westwood’s designers, Selina Blow, Timothy Everest, Miuccia Prada…a lot of clothes people from Japan, they love his new patterns he designed just for them, also quite a few Germans and Americans. The orders are not always large, but they’ve been consistent. And we’ve managed to farm out some of the work—to help other weavers. And Donald John has always been true to the tweed. You know that.”

  The Pride of the Tweed

  “Yes, we do,” I said. “He’s a stickler for tradition.”

  Maureen laughed, “Oh, that he is. And he’s been asked to do all kinds of things—y’know, weave in fluorescent colors, mix the wool with cashmere and suchlike, make an ultra-light fabric for young buyers…but he won’t do it. He says there are a lot of tweeds—so called—around the world, done in all kinds of ways—mainly made in factories—and with all kinds of weird stuff mixed in the weave. But he says he’ll only make his tweed the way that Harris Tweed is supposed to be made. Otherwise what’s the point!? And there are three weights nowadays anyway—standard, light, and bantam-feather—so there’s plenty of versatility already. And, as you know, he even makes his own bobbins of yarn and sets up his own warp—doesn’t use any factory-delivered warp ‘hanks.’ Anyway, word must have got around and a few months ago we got this call from the Nike company, asking if they could send someone over to look at samples and see how the tweed is made on the island—to check its authenticity, I suppose. So we said yes, of course, fine, c’mon and visit, and so they came and then they went and nothing happened, so we forgot all about it.

  “Anyway, when was it? Last week, last Wednesday, I think, we suddenly got this e-mail”—[Maureen had long ago discovered the value to her wide-ranging customers of having a computer with e-mail access]—“bet most people don’t know we have an ‘electronic cottage’ here now! Donald John wasn’t too keen at first but I told him, if we’re going to keep this business going and you want my help we need a computer. It’s either that, I said, or I’m going to carry you off back down with me to my part of England to try another line of work! So—he agreed and now I’ve got my little work station where this e-mail arrived last week—from Nike—asking for nine hundred and fifty meters of our special tweed pattern—Donald John designed it himself—a lovely sort of sage green with touches of blue and red in it, the kind of amber-red y’used to get from the old crotal dyes. And we thought—well, that’s nice. That’ll keep us busy for a while. Donald John turns out thirty yards a day on a good day on his single-wide Hattersley in the weavin’ shed out there. So we said yes and told them the price. And they didn’t quibble or anything—they just said fine and when could they expect the rolls. And we told them. And everything was peachy until we got this second e-mail the next day…”

  “Oh, no,” said Anne. “Bad news?”

  “No, no. Just the opposite! They said they’d made a mistake in the first e-mail. They’d missed a zero, and they actually needed ninety-five hundred meters—that’s nine thousand five hundred meters—can you believe it?!”

  “Fantastic!” I said. “A very healthy order!”

  “Yes, it is. And, from what they told us, there’ll likely be more orders…a lot more…”

  “Congratulations to you both…you deserve it,” we said, almost in unison.

  “Thanks…now how about comin’ down for a cup of tea to celebrate?”

  So we did, and despite numerous phone calls and Donald John dodging in and out of the house like an excited rabbit, Maureen managed to prepare a brimming tray of tea, cookies, and homemade cake. We felt guilty taking up their time in the midst of all this entrepreneurial uproar. But somehow Maureen found the tranquility to sit calmly with us by the fire.

  “It’s been a hard few years—for all the island weavers, really. You know this well by now—you’ve talked with them. There used to be over four hundred, y’know, in Lewis and Harris—it was a useful income for the crofters. Something they could do in the evenings after dinner for a few hours. Then everything slowed down. The worst was when the American market collapsed. That was the daftest thing, but somehow they’d got stuck with a huge overstock of tweeds in the Stornoway mill and someone had the bright idea of selling it cheaply in bulk to clear warehouse space. And somehow it ended up as jackets selling in places like Wal-Mart in the USA! Can y’believe it?! Top o’ the line Harris Tweed in Wal-Mart! Well—y’can understand what it did for the high-end trade…y’know, in the posh clothing stores. It killed it stone dead. People wouldn’t pay five hundred dollars for a Harris Tweed jacket on Fifth Avenue in New York when you could buy virtually the same thing—admittedly tailored in Asia somewhere—but the same clo
th, for less than a hundred dollars in a Wal-Mart!”

  Maureen paused and gave a sigh of exasperation.

  “Anyway…it took a long while to recover from that…but if this Nike thing works out we’ll be well and truly on the map again, I hope. ’Course we can’t do it all ourselves so we’re going to partner up with Derick Murray at his Stornoway factory and let him find the other weavers we’ll need to complete the order—then who knows what it could lead to? We’ve already had one other sneaker company calling us and asking for samples…and Nike says this might be just the start…there’s some other new ideas they’re working on and they asked just this morning if we thought we could manage to produce another five thousand or so meters of the same pattern. So…it’s a little bit exciting at the moment as y’can imagine. I mean, this could be a whole new beginning for us all here—if we can interest the younger generation and get rid of the fuddy-duddy image of tweed a bit. Trainers might just be the answer, eh!?”

  “Oh, and there’s also the knitting too, y’know. That’s really coming up nowadays! The small factory up at Carloway is starting to produce as much tweed wool for knitting now as it does for weaving. S’quite amazing. Apparently it’s all the rage, not only in Britain but in Europe too. Knitting classes and clubs sprouting up fast as barley stalks. Ruth Morris—that island girl who created the famous Roobedo store in Edinburgh—has bought plenty of tweed from us and sells a lot of the new knitwear. And there are knitters sprouting up again all over the island—Mairi Fraser and Katherine Llips’s Isle of Harris Knitwear store in Grosebay sells a lot of their creations now. An’ there’s Heather Butter-worth and her Kells Tweed Company—oh, and Tweeds and Knitwear in Plocrapool too. And of course there’s Margaret MacKay at Soay Studio in Tarbert—I think y’know her—she’s done wonders for keeping and teaching the old traditional dyeing techniques from local plants and selling her knitting wool. Beautiful, subtle colors she produces—quite different from the chemical dyes. ’Course there was a time when every weaver would dye his own yarn but that’s long gone now. I think, before Margaret came, the last weaver who was still doing it was dear old Marion Campbell.”

  “Oh, Marion—yes—we met her years ago. She let us spend a whole afternoon with her. Couldn’t get her peat-soot dye off my hands for days. Lovely, gracious lady…”

  “Yes, she was. It was a sad day for us all when she passed…but anyway enough of all this—c’mon, have some more tea, and eat up the cake if y’will. I hate putting cut slices back in a tin…they say it’s bad luck to do that. And right at the moment, we prefer whole dollops of good luck for once!”

  AS OUR TIME DREW TO A close on Harris, we visited Donald John and Maureen one last time to say our farewells and to find out how the whole Nike episode was working out.

  This time there was an aura of calm confidence in their little house. Even Donald John seemed to be talking at a slower pace, smiling brightly, and full of new hope for the future of his own tweed making and for the island industry as a whole.

  “Did y’two see the local paper yesterday? What our Derick Murray just said? He’s like a new man now. He’s given up all his ideas of sellin’ up his two factories. Here”—he reached for the paper—“this is what he told the Gazette: ‘I’m far more confident than I was for a long time. And I’m sure this will be a great success and bring the industry back. Harris Tweed means everything to me. I’ve been at it all my life. If you are committed to an industry like this you are committed to the whole island.’”

  “Great!” Anne said. “We were worried about him—in fact about the whole tweed industry—when we met him last spring.”

  Donald John laughed. “Well he’s a different man altogether today an’ did y’hear he’s got ads out now for new weavers—not just the older ones. They’re already back at their looms now, but for new trainee weavers, mind you! Can y’believe that? I can’t remember when new people were comin’ in to start weavin’ in the traditional way. Young ones too. Now that’s a real eye-opener, and a good way to get some of our youngsters to stay on-island for a change. D’you remember that lovely old Gaelic saying: Sann o’n duthaich a thig an cló—‘From our land comes our cloth.’ Would be nice to hear more of that and a little less of ‘to get on you’ve got to get out’ attitude. The island needs its young people. I know it’s against all the trends—all the tourists, self-catering cottages, incomers buying up everything, and all that. But it’s good to know that there might be a better balance—y’know, of people comin’ and goin’. Wouldn’t it be a shame for Harris to wake up one morning and realize that there were hardly any real Hearaich left! What kind of island would that be now!? God help us and help our tweed is what I say! And it looks like he might—there are bigger orders on the way—so keep all your fingers crossed!”

  All great news, but I was struck by his previous comment. What kind of island indeed? Certainly not the kind of island that we were seduced by all those years ago and finally returned to—as enthusiastically as the first time—to celebrate its people, its spirit, and its deep, rich heritage. In a book. In this book of tales, adventures, traumas, and island people. A book that has allowed us to discover, explore, and learn the island and its ways far more extensively and enthusiastically than we ever thought possible. And maybe this is an appropriate moment to pay my respects to one of my favorite “travel” books—Henry Miller’s The Colossus of Maroussi—by quoting his summation of his own explorations and writings: “I give this record of my journey not as a contribution to human knowledge, because my knowledge is small and of little account, but as a contribution to human experience.”

  Then Miller adds this final line, which we echo here on behalf of all the inhabitants of these small, wild islands: “Peace to all men, I say, and life more abundant.”

  Black House on The Bays

  Postscript: Toward a New Abundance?

  As we slowly prepared to leave, making farewell visits to all our friends, we decided to invite a few of them to offer some final thoughts and perceptions on what Harris still means to them in their lives—and their hopes, along with a few fears, for their mutual future and a possible “new abundance” here.

  Roddy MacAskill—of course—was one of the first. During our stay in Harris we’d spent countless hours discussing just about every aspect of island affairs with him, and I knew from past experience he’d present his opinions clearly and without wile, guile, or gush. Which is precisely what he did.

  “You’ve got to remember who we are—we’re still the descendants of crofter-weavers. They’re our family—our heritage. That’s what almost all of us were—and in our hearts, that’s what we still are today despite all the many changes.”

  “So—you’re still ‘the little island that could…’”

  “Weel—if we’re not, it’s not for want a’ tryin’. A’ mean, you can’t fight everything…. And some of the changes are good. People are livin’a lot better nowadays, gen’rally speaking. And the tourists have helped with that. They bring in a bit o’ fresh air y’know…and fresh cash! Nothin’ wrong wi’ that….”

  “So long as Harris doesn’t start going Disney!”

  Roddy laughed, “Ah, a’don’ think there’ll be much chance of that on our wee place! We’re too stubborn! I jus’ wish we could find more for our youngsters…things to keep them on island doin’ worthwhile work an’ such.”

  “I heard—after Donald John’s big Nike contract that really got the weavers back at their looms—there was talk of setting up a training workshop for young weavers….”

  “Aye—well, they did—they have. And a few got involved but you never know how long it’ll last y’know…although I have to tell you—tweed’s really rolling at the moment. Big new orders comin’ in—so I heard. Derick Murray seems to be awful busy and Donald John MacKay is quite a local hero…. But, listen—don’t just take my word. Go and talk with others—you know just about everybody on island by now…. I think y’might be pleasantly surprised….”

&
nbsp; And indeed I was.

  Willie Fulton, as I expected, turned my questions about all the new “trends” here—the proposed wind turbine farms, new salmon farms, the Harris Tweed Center in Tarbert, and others—into one of his jokes. “There was this councilman y’see an’ he was asked by an impatient incomer why ideas took so long to become realities here—why there seemed to be so much mañana-lethargy around. The councilman thought for a minute and then slowly replied: ‘Mañana, y’say…och, well, I dunna think we have a Gaelic word here as immediate as that….’”

  It was typical Willie humor. Apt but good-natured too.

  “I do sense a change though, y’know. The rebounding of the tweed—while no one knows how long it will last—it’s given us all a little bit of a boost. Wee David’s facing up to Goliath at last—So…y’canna write this fine place off yet by a long way!”

  Another boost came when I called Robert Fernandino at Celtic Clothing in Stornoway—the man who had sold me my first tweed jacket. He was away on vacation but his spritely assistant, Lorraine, gushed about “all these big new orders comin’ in…. it’s back in fashion now, y’see. I heard it on Radio One—that famous Irish DJ—he said it’s okay to wear the tweed again! It’s not considered old-fashioned anymore!”

  Derek McKim’s reaction as Head of Strategy at the Western Isles Council was a little more studied—but still upbeat. “I don’t think we’ll ever get back to the good old 7-million-yards-a-year days—but so long as the ‘niche markets’ and fashion houses keep using our tweed, I think we might be all right. Oh, an’ don’t forget—we’ve just reopened two small plants, one making parts of wave power devices for Portugal—and a fish oil biotech factory. Quite a few new jobs there—all ‘fine green shoots of recovery.’”

  Similar conversations with Margaret MacKay, Morag Munro, Ian MacKenzie at the Harris Tweed Association, Angus Campbell and his weaver-mother, Katie, Catherine Morrison, Bill Lawson, John Murdo Morrison, Alison Johnson and others reaffirmed something of a “renaissance spirit” wafting through the islands.