‘I’ll risk the curse,’ he thought aloud, ‘Nothing will be lost
if I go out this morning and kill the albatross.’
That bird must have read his thoughts. It was uncanny, weird
how its wings swept down upon him, speared
him from his ledge from the rock.
They saw feet take off from under him. Shock
flash upon his features as he was shaken from the brink
of stone down into the water – too much for him to drink.
And then it rose up once again, how its flight tacked and veered
as if to guard its new friends if another threat appeared…
They went home that year empty. Not a fowl
within their boat; grief their only haul
as they walked up to their houses, lonely and forlorn
to be all sadder, wiser men when they woke the following morn…
Sabbath
Some weeks it would shudder, entering their lives
like a sudden snap of Arctic snow
that froze their whole existence,
and they would step out tentatively and go
inch-by-inch upon a layer of frost and ice,
aware if they put a foot wrong
they’d fall foul of the island’s strictures,
their step sliding from under them
so they’d no longer quite belong.
Sometimes, too, they’d make their way
through the rigidity of rainfall,
not lifting heads to recognise the surrounding calls
that on weekdays beckoned them to cliff or crags.
Instead, forced to ignore them, they scurried back
and forth between kirk and home,
drummed into strict procession
by the whip of wind and sermon,
the preacher’s endless, hectoring monotone.
And sometimes, too, it was a blessing.
These hours in kirk a breakaway
from their back-aching labours, all that work
that gained them little riches or reward.
A moment, too, when they could let their guard
down against the threat and risk of death,
the proximity of danger,
and seek the company of angels,
longing for that moment when they’d be swept away
from these shores and be tucked inside Heaven’s filament.
Lowering
And so it came to pass, on the far-flung feathery kingdom the islanders called home, that a man called Donald MacDonald of the Curly Red Beard lay dying for years, wrapped up in blankets and stretched out in the confines of his box bed.
Some days he complained the others were neglecting him, not including him in the talks and conversations that went on around his house-fire. At other times, he grumbled about his health and well-being, how his family were not feeding him properly or tending to his welfare in the way he thought they should.
But most of all, he was vexed about the way he was not allowed to go to the cliffs any more, that for all his legs were weak and feeble, his arms and hands were swift, dextrous and strong. They could still, he claimed, pluck birds and eggs from nests. They could wind their way into cracks and crannies in crags and cliffs to plunder the rich harvest to be found there.
For many years, they ignored his pleading but, eventually, aware his spirit was declining, that the heart which drummed inside his chest was quietening, ebbing away, they decided to give into his requests, lifting him on a stretcher that had been gifted to them by the Nurse. He was covered by an oilskin cloth, lashed down by rope fashioned from sheep-gut. Slowly, they hauled him out the doorway, taking him in the direction of the cliffs of Conachair, his body lifted by the hands of those who were going to be with him on the crags.
And they lowered him feet-first over the edge, gently and slowly, watching his face grow light with wonder while he hovered there, swinging back and forth, turning from side to side. All around him, the fulmars were swirling, brushing the air-space around him, almost touching his red beard with their wings. The others held their breath as they watched him hanging there, thinking it was one of the most strange and mysterious sights they had ever seen.
‘Seall! Seall! Seall!’ Donald shouted, fascinated by the strangeness of the birds, his voice urging them to look at creatures they had long taken for granted. The entire world seemed miraculous to him, after years of being confined to his home.
It did not take long for his hands to start moving, to whirl with energy and accuracy as they stretched out and grasped the birds that were in his reach, stuffing them down behind the rope that lashed down the stretcher. Soon, there were six or more tacked there, feathers fluttering in the breeze.
‘Suas! Suas! Suas!’ he shouted, demanding to be lifted to the summit once again.
They obeyed him, hauling him once more to the crest of Conachair, watching as his fingers brushed against sea-thrift, clumps of grass growing on the edge of rock, as astonished by their shade and texture as he had been in his youth.
‘Suithad! Sios a-rithist…’ he said excitedly once the others had divested him of his load, determined to be lowered down again.
‘Bheil thu cinnteach? Are you sure?’ they asked.
They could see from the gleam of sweat that covered his features that he had, perhaps, over-exerted himself. There was the gasp of his breath, the fingers that continued to tremble as if they were still reaching out for a harvest of birds. He had spent so much of the last few years in his bed that they were frightened this might be too much for him, that his last hours were not too far away.
‘Tha… Sios a-rithist! Chuir sios mi a-rithist!’
And so they did as he asked, watching once again as they dropped him slowly over the cliff-edge. For a moment, the stretcher swivelled, caught by a gust of wind, before it steadied once again, moving down the face of the rock. This time, though, the birds no longer whirled round him, no longer made loud squawks and cries at his intrusion. This time, too, his hands no longer moved with the same speed and skill as before. Instead, his fingers crawled towards the rocks, moving slowly and hesitantly towards a gap where a fulmar nested.
His hand emerged with an egg. They saw it in his hand, white and lustrous, as pure and bright as any they had seen.
Moments later they watched it fall, crashing towards the sea below…
Shearwater
You’d think they’d be light and empty-headed creatures,
considering how they skimmed the surface of the sea
without height or depth of knowledge,
only a fleeting awareness gained at such velocity
that nothing could quite sink in
or be seen within a greater context,
but that was not how the islesmen saw them.
Instead, they marvelled at the stretch
of ocean they skipped over,
the accumulated detail their flight gained,
that they considered them the bird of greatest wisdom
and feasted hard upon them to improve
the slow and ponderous workings of their crag-bound brains.
Storm Petrel II
Alive, they are a flare of black,
a flickering after nightfall
these hours
they flocked home in the dark
to congregate in cracks of walls,
gnarled cliffs, houses, towers…
Dead, they gave off flame, a light
burning from their beaks,
tapping oil
within both flesh and feather, brightening nights
for fishermen below decks
resting from their toil
in that island’s shelter,
raiding ocean’s silver
far from familiar soil.
Bats
They came out of a starlit sky,
a swell of darkness,
threat of rain,
as if some great thunderburst was flaring
<
br /> out their way to rinse
and silence barking sheep-dogs,
soften peat-bogs,
make sure each ageing complexion
became fresh and young again.
But there was, too, the high-pitched squeak
unique to that night;
the sound bringing each man from his household
to stand his ground against them,
flinging lines and casting nets
into dark to catch that black flight,
discovering as they fell,
there was no plumage on these birds,
and they preferred
the taste of puffin
to pickings from the pelt of pipistrelle.
Moths
Moths must have tried to catch attention
each still and peaceful night,
spinning round the darkness,
clattering against the foul and flickering light,
as if to say ‘You fancy me?
Why don’t you try my flavour? Give me a little bite…’
The Tale of the Vain Puffin
This puffin used to preen himself,
proud of how he looked,
believing that his profile would one day
decorate the spines of children’s books,
and so, he often fluttered down
near the window of the island school
to hear the children recite verse,
learn ABC and simple rules
of grammar, that one day might help
them read aloud the stories he enjoyed,
like Treasure Island, Jungle Book,
Little Lord Fauntelroy,
until the day when learning puffed him up
to do something even braver, bolder,
when he rested on a seaman’s head
and nestled down upon his shoulder.
‘Captain Flint,’ he sang aloud,
‘Doubloons… Pieces of eight,’
till the sailor caught him by the neck
and he became the very next meal they ate.
And so the moral of this tale;
if you live in dangerous times,
don’t let vanity gush through your head.
Stay secure and safe with nursery rhymes.
Myths and Landmarks II
/ Uirsgeulan agus luilean II
Why St Kildans Ground Down
the Teeth of Their Dogs…
It was a child remembering the tale of Red Riding Hood that allowed the islanders to guess the nature of the long brown object that washed up one night on their shore. At first, they pushed and prodded it with their fingers, wondering if it were a strange, salt-soaked stretch of stone or – perhaps! – the turd of a constipated whale that had swam nearby, obtaining a moment of relief in their vicinity. The object was certainly hard and fibrous enough to fit that description.
Finally, Angus, one of the school’s pupils, worked it out. He had been given a book of children’s fairy stories by a summer visitor. He pointed out an illustration of a little red-coated girl being followed by a grey wolf down a forest path in its pages.
‘It’s a tree trunk,’ he declared.
At first, they were proud of his cleverness. A day or so later, however, they grew edgy and suspicious again. They wondered if the Big Bad Wolf that had swallowed the girl’s grandmother might also come towards them on one of the next full tides. Noting how similar they were to that creature, they eyed their sheep dogs warily, wondering if these animals could always be trusted to be loyal, on their side…
It was because of their doubts that after a meeting of the Parliament, they set out to catch their dogs, blunting their teeth with the edges of stones.
Another St Kildan Legend
Involving a Tree Trunk
They took it as a sign
and symbol
when in their last days,
yet another tree trunk
was felled upon their shore.
Within a crumbling wall,
they raised it,
rooted it in peat,
posted up a crudely painted sign
upon one of Main Street’s doors,
‘Come and see our Great Estate.
St Kilda’s thriving forest.
Shilling per adult visitor.’
Till the day, they
swung an axe and sawed it down,
heading off to Morven,
knowing their lives could not thrive
below its shade and foliage
any more.
How St Kildan Women
Foretold the Future
Within a throng of fulmar feathers,
womens’ hands would plunge
through plumage,
digging through entrails to discover
a knot of gut
and calculate the future
from its shade or shape,
discerning from colour
the onslaught of weather,
if there might be
the settled pink of summer sunsets,
dark scarlet
of encroaching storms;
each sliver, too,
foretelling what’s to come.
Rings slipping round their fingers.
Each cross a space within the graveyard
for a child that’s not yet born.
Loss
When they let loose their hair,
it swept like thunder on that island,
black, fair and grey rain pouring,
unbound from shawl and hairpin,
clip and band,
that for centuries it had been
curled and coiled within,
but had now become unfastened,
allowing torrents to fall
on places of confinement,
granting long locks liberty
to submerge the shoreline,
inundate the coast,
an overflow of tresses seeking out and flooding
the homes they’d once been held in,
the limits of that terra firma,
each contour of their territory.
These fine strands covering all,
concealing glen, cliff-face and mountain,
unleashing grief and tears
that choked and welled within them
now gushing like a fountain,
cascading from the souls of those
who had been nearly broken
by the loss of children, husbands,
the ones that crossed
over into the ocean’s hold
or the harsh grip of the cemetery
that would not let go their kin.
When they let loose their hair,
it was both signal and sign
that their restraint was now over
and mourning could begin.
Widows and Spinsters
It would have been a delight to discover
how the women there released themselves
from dark clothes
late at night,
that before they went to bed
they’d shed the black that shrouded skin,
begin
to cast off scarves and hairpins,
let long hair shine and glimmer
as they’d spin
for hours before their mirrors,
sure that no men would step in
and disturb them at their revels,
knowing in these hours they’d be
displaying curve and cleavage,
becoming merry widows, spinsters
before their dotage came,
dressing up for bedtime in scarlet lingerie.
It would be a delight to find
some enchantment overcame them,
when they were concealed and hidden
from men’s sight
and they could do
all that was forbidden:
put on lipstick and make-up,
take to flight,
dance fandango and bolero,
quadrille and Highland fling,
casting aside their funeral clothes
to meet and couple with the light.
Love-making in St Kilda
When a man makes love to a St Kildan woman,
her moans and sighs are like the cries of birds –
a cooing and screaming that seems scarcely human
but has been fashioned never to disturb
those who might mistake the sounds their passion makes
for flocks circling Village Bay at night.
Scanning skies for wings when morning breaks,
they wake unaware another soaring flight
has taken place in Main Street’s walls
where a man and woman coupled to break free
from an island’s bonds and strictures, all
that conspired to tie them down. Gravity
was shed along with trousers, skirt and shawl
as they touched the heights that birds can reach
with their bodies’ power and beauty, rise and fall,
arms changed to wings by the tumultuous air they breathe.
A St Kildan Woman Writes a Love Song
to Her New Husband
When I first heard you were to be mine,
my heart trembled
like a wren within a wall,
hoping your fingers
would be soft as down
and not rough
as touch
of quills on wing-tips,
trusting, too, that as we bedded down
on fulmar feathers,
you would not possess
the gannet’s savage thrust
but instead the slow and easy rhythm
of a cormorant
diving
for bright and gleaming fish.
Youthful Fashions on Hiort
(for Ian Duhig)
1
There used to be a gang of Goths
that hung around the crags near Village Bay.
Some thought they resembled cormorants
with hair permanently tufted by the wind.
They dipped into salt water
if they thought it was sufficiently dark and deep
to match their mood.
Incipient vegetarianism made them forsake the guga.
The Guga Stone Page 8