across cliff-tops, bringing her own style
to the season. Most of all I like her multi-coloured smile
stretching wide across her beak. There’s nothing false or fake
about it. Not a trace of make-
up. So natural and true
and brave when you consider how precarious her existence is,
all that both mankind and predators have put
that cute bird through.
Encounter with a
Soay Ram
He makes you seem so slight and superficial.
I love the way his deep
brown eyes always follow as we scale the steep
slope of the hill,
ensuring that we keep a careful distance
with dip of head and stamp of foot,
making it all too obvious it did not suit
him for us to shift closer with that imperious stance
with which he ruled the limits of this island.
Yet there is more to it than this.
I witnessed, too, the vigorous
way he bucked and thrusted; no man
could keep that up so long, so strong.
Top of the tups, he combined that stamina with a gaze
that encompassed life’s experiences. He’d known days
before you or I, our forebears, had belonged
to this world. That knowledge whirled
around his head, as if it were contained
in his great horns; each aeon of this planet’s life engrained
and scored within its semi-circles, whorls…
Sorry. I know rejection’s hard but, comparing him to you,
I’d like to be one of his flock, his fondest and most faithful ewe…
Origins / Toiseachadh
The Smell of Fish
(after Matthew Sweeney)
The stink of fish filled Village Bay as much of the herring, mackerel, haddock and other varieties found in the North Atlantic shoaled and was washed up on its shoreline. They were stacked upon the roof of the Feather Store, piled high around the doorway of the Church, lodged upon the window-sills of the houses.
As the sea-gulls gulped as much as they could swallow, the factor told the islanders that God had sent them a sign.
‘Even the fish are delivering themselves to you. They want to be hunted by your boats, caught by your nets and lines...’
His hand upon his Bible, old Lachie, one of the church elders, shook his head. ‘I disagree,’ he said. ‘This is not something we believe in these parts.’
‘Why not?’
‘We’re Presbyterians in this island. Not Pescatarians.’
Faith
Some of us persisted in the old faith,
believing paradise existed
at the top of the cliff-face
we scaled in dreams on moonless nights,
that it lay within our grasp
like fulmar eggs or gannet flesh
out upon the skerries, crags
concealed within a frail, white
shell or wintry plumage, ours to touch and hold
when a cold wind blowing across the island
brought us pain or discomfort,
causing crops to rot or suffer blight.
All this an illusion – we came to know
these nights a preacher’s words brought wings to us
that helped us climb through darkness,
knowing there was no alternative but to be lifted high by Christ.
Banned Books
The proscribed texts of St Kilda were stored next to gannet plumage stacked within the feather store. Copies of Marx and Darwin – smuggled in by dissident mainlanders – were stacked on a high shelf. Below them lay a book of fish recipes, imported by a dissident of another kind.
Most dangerous of all, however, was the Greek myth of Icarus, concealed behind a cover of gannet skin, chained and padlocked below a sack of feathers.
‘In case it gives youngsters ideas,’ the minister explained.
More Banned Books and Poetry
‘The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner’ – Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Banned because it suggests that the killing and slaughter of seabirds may cause a curse to fall on people’s heads. Heresy.
‘The Raven’ – Edgar Allan Poe
The bird in this book talks. Very disturbing.
‘To A Skylark’ – Percy Bysshe Shelley
The man in this poem talks to birds. Equally disturbing.
‘To A Nightingale’ – John Keats
Might affect the minds of impressionable young readers and put them off a diet of birds.
‘Sing a Song Of Sixpence’ – Nursery Rhyme.
Might be overheard by puffins, fulmars etc and encourage them to attack people by gripping their nostrils.
‘The Death and Burial Of Cock Robin’ – Nursery Rhyme.
Suggests that birds are capable of carrying bows and arrows. Might cause nightmares in young people.
‘Moby Dick’ – Herman Melville
Suggests an alternative and unacceptable diet.
‘There Was an Old Man With a Beard’ – Edward Lear
Strange nesting practices.
‘Robin Hood’ – various writers.
Might make the children long for greenwoods.
‘Treasure Island’ – Robert Louis Stevenson
Over-familiarity with a potential – though exotic – meal.
‘Tweet Off – A Sensible Person’s Guide to Twitter’ – Donald Donald…
Main Street, Village Bay
The downdraft in these houses stole our words
and raced them up the chimney
till every conversation turned into an absurd
contest with the elements where all that could be heard
was the constant spit and rattle of our throats,
sounds and splutters where we learned to tease
out the meaning of one another’s thoughts.
Soon we learned to do so much more than that.
In smoke, we practised semaphore, waved flags
through mist to tell our neighbours complex jokes
and stories. Philosophers and thinkers were invoked.
Whether Rousseau was correct when he spoke
of the ‘Noble Savage’. (Some blowhole bragged
he had us in mind with our prehensile toes.
Others claimed we’d long been spoiled by those
who gave us houses.) A moot point, some accepted,
before moving onto Kierkegaard or Freud,
Darwin whom we utterly rejected, Hegel, Marx,
(whose material dialectic one of us enjoyed
and would bring daily to the Parliament,
arguing for the social ownership of birds
before we set out to hunt them in the dark.)
Yet most of all, we studied Calvin – his Manichean view
appealed most at our fireside, for we could see no shade of white
within the homes we occupied. No source of light
other than God-given. We pondered the few
words by which we knew him before coming to decide
there was no thinker like him, seeing the clarity of his thought
when we stepped out from peat-smoke
and saw the steady brilliance that shone for us outside.
St Kilda and the Fulmar
For hours, the other monks watched Kilda kneel
with hands outstretched, an act of supplication
which fulmars noted as they reeled
above the island, before two touched down in solemn contemplation
of his strange posture, daring to creep up on him
and eavesdrop on his sacred prayers,
wondering if it were true that this man was free from sin,
unlike previous generations who had made their nests out there.
Slowly, these birds rested on his shoulders, tip-toed along
the long, still bridges of
his arms
before finally deciding they could depend upon
his cupped fingers for a warm,
clean nest, one that would never stir
or tremble in the dark force of a storm;
both palm and digits holding firm
until eggs cracked and chicks appeared in final, fledgling form.
And so it was. Kilda kept them safe until the hour flight came
to these feathers. Then they lifted from his hands,
rewarding his fond patience with a bright and holy flame
that brought healing to the bodies of those touched by his palms.
St Kilda and the Seals
Even saints stumble,
the good laid waste
by doubts and chill
that sometimes overwhelm them.
And so it was that winter,
snow falling
like the crests of unforgiving waves
upon that island’s cliffs and hills.
He sat upon the shoreline
in despair
till seals restored
his spirit
with the great heat
of their blubber
circling his tired flesh
with a warmth
engendered by the sheen
of sea-water,
granting him the comfort
of mating songs
that passed between them,
their sounds and cries
the balm of conversation,
noises that in desolation
his soul mistook for prayer.
St Kilda and the Stones
It was the stones to which they sent
all extremities of mind and mood;
Brother Anselm mumbling the obscenities
that troubled him to a monolith that stood
upon the island. Clement, who spent his nights alone
longing for a woman, would whisper his desires
to the Lover’s Stone.
Others, disturbed by a fire of rage would talk
of their hidden vices
to Lewisian gneiss,
trusting secrets would be held there
trapped within that rock,
including Brother Ciaran who’d admit his urge to kill
Kilda and the others to that stone
embedded high on Oiseaval.
St Kilda and the Cleits
The ocean was not enough
to maintain their isolation,
so Kilda told them to build walls
where they might say their prayers
with bowed heads undisturbed
by grace-notes and cries of terror
with which the seabirds troubled
the stillness of the morning air.
Sometimes wings rested on these structures,
defiling stone with jibes and blasphemies
and a monk would be forced
to build another cell,
helping to create
a legacy of worship,
cleits that reminded visitors
of all the prayers monks uttered
as they built that great estate.
Origin of the Species – Part 365
‘Siuthad! Ich an aired! Eat more! It’ll feed you up.’
It was what the women of the district were continually saying to Lachlann Gillies. He would always respond in the same way, smiling and nodding obligingly as they stacked one more potato on the edge of his plate, dangled yet another coalfish in his direction, trying to tempt his appetite. They would grin with satisfaction as they watched another bite slide down the length of his throat, imagining its speedy progress round his intestines before lodging in a waistline most of them could span with a simple flexing of their hands.
‘Balach math! Good boy!’ they would say to the 11 year old. ‘We’ll have you healthy looking in no time.’
It was what his mother, too, kept saying to the son who had long ago towered above her head, repeating the same phrases whenever it was mealtime as if she was casting a spell that might have some miraculous effect on her giant-sized, taper-thin son. In conversation with all the other women living in the area, she would spend her time bemoaning her offspring’s physique, trying to defend herself from, what seemed to her to be, a spate of accusations that she was barely feeding her boy.
‘He’s been like that since the very beginning,’ she’d declare, ‘Remember when he was only a few months old. We were forced to saw the end of his cradle, put a long extension on it. And his toes stuck so much out of the box-bed, we had to take a few stones out of the walls of the house to make room for him. It’s hard to make our way past him when he’s fast asleep. A hop, step and jump is always required.’
‘Terrible, terrible…’ her female companions would shake their heads and mutter, pretending to believe every word of her tale. In their own homes, though, it was a different matter. They would hover closely round the boy the moment he stepped in the door, offering all sorts of delectations and delights that might fatten him. A helping of lamb stew might be laid before him. A slice of barley bread smeared with butter and sprinkled with sugar would be pressed into his hands. They would even forego the feeding of their own children as they contemplated the possibility of fattening Lachlann up.
‘It’s terrible, terrible, terrible…’ they would say. ‘How that woman doesn’t feed the child. It’s unnatural. Unnatural, I tell you. And you can see that even in the way the poor soul looks.’
And so the nourishment of Lachlann became one of the most important missions of the people of the district. It continued throughout his years of adolescence, as he stretched and stretched to ever greater heights. In every house he came across, there would be yet another feast as one more portion of porridge, a further helping of cabbage and turnip would be placed before him…
* * *
For all that these occurred in strange and unexpected ways, there was little doubt that the feeding of young Lachlann brought results. There was evidence of that in the way his height increased year after year. It wasn’t long before he was taller by far than all the other inhabitants of the district. The people spoke of him wherever they went till it wasn’t long before visitors came even from the mainland to stand in his shadow. He was as rare a sight as the single tree in Maransay that one of his fellow villagers had mistaken for an overgrown cabbage or the old broch in Cairnbost where the one-eyed giant, Mac an t-Cyclops had been said to live centuries before.
There were other aspects of Lachlann’s appearance that inspired a great deal of awe. His hands and feet were so huge that it was rumoured that this was where the excess food he had been given as a boy was stored. His toes were so long that they possessed the ability to grip as firmly as his fingers, able to move and shift, too, in a blur of speed. And then, too, there were his wrists and ankles. For all the thinness of the remainder of his body, they were the thickest anyone had ever seen. The women who could span his waistline with a stretch of their fingers needed the length of their arms to circle the bones of that part of their anatomy.
‘It’s uncanny…’ Ruaraidh, a man from the district, would say when he examined him. ‘I’ve never seen the likes of that in all my days.’
‘Aye. Aye. T-t-there’s no d-d- d-oubt about that. N-n-o doubt about that…’ Tormod Glugach echoed in his usual way.
There were some, of course, who disparaged Lachlann’s unusual anatomy. They mocked his huge ankles. ‘About the same size as that stupid tree in Maransay,’ they declared. ‘And just about as useful too.’ They made fun, too, of these fingers, the way they could nip and tuck, cut and whirl. ‘Fine talent for a girl,’ they would say, ‘For someone who might spend all her hours knitting and sewing. Useless in a man.’
Then came the day when even the most sceptical saw the value of his spindly frame. They were going out hunting for seabirds on the cliffs near the village. The 14-year-old came with them, only in their company because they needed as many as possible to bring their catch home
, an additional puny shoulder to bear their harvest. As they made their way to the cliff-edge, Ruaraidh turned to his neighbour, nudging him with his elbow.
‘We’d better be careful that no puff of wind blows that straw away. We’d never be forgiven if we lost him.’
And then, as they watched him, their scorn turned to wonder. He slipped over the edge of the cliff, his long toes secure on every ledge and layer that creased and lined the rock-face. From its crest, he took giant strides. His feet leaped from crack to crevasse, finding every flaw and fissure in its stone, resting for a moment in each available clump of sea-pinks. At the same time, too, his hands reached and swirled, grasping the necks of every nestling, every gannet chick, the young of the guillemot, puffin and shag. They followed his every move with awe and amazement. They had never seen a hunter quite like this, able to overcome obstacles that none of them could ever dream of conquering. Perhaps, they now conceded, there was a reason why their mothers, wives and spinster aunts had chosen to feed this startling specimen of humanity with such diligence and care. Here was someone who had been bred to perfection to master all the demands of this task. A new kind of human. A bird-hunter of quite extraordinary power and majesty, as exotic as any of the birds he captured on the cliffs.
* * *
The men from the furthest island in the Hebrides soon came to hear of Lachlann. A few years later, they arrived at the village pier in their boat, having rowed across the many miles of the Atlantic to reach there. The group of small and scrawny beardless strangers waded to the shoreline, speaking to the first men that waited to greet them; the women, of course, having vanished to their homes as soon as they saw the vessel appear on the horizon.
‘We have heard strange legends of a special one,’ the oldest, most frail one declared, ‘A man who is designed perfectly for both the rigours and delights of our island.’
At first, the men of the district denied there was any such figure as Lachlann in their midst. They snorted as they towered above these miniature men who had come to their district, dismissing their every word.
‘Someone must have been telling you stories,’ they declared.
The Guga Stone Page 12