Another Sunday treat in the form of an essay from the keyboard of Mick Bloor. Mick is so knowledgeable and this comes through in his stories which flow beautifully and record the passing of time in an easy to read and lyrical form.
The Last Man on the Island by Mick Bloor
On the north-west coasts and islands of Scotland, the grassy ground that lies between the sandhills and the rocky hillsides has its own gaelic name – the ‘machair.’ It had always been prized ground: the crushed shell grit blown in by the winter gales would serve to sweeten the grass for the sheep and the cattle; mixed with seaweed wrack hauled from the shore, it also yielded good crops of potatoes. Those families whose crofts stood on the machair counted themselves fortunate.
Yet these days, the machair on Swensay has a neglected look.
The island has no harbour. In the past, say in the time of Donald John MacKillop’s great-grandfather, that had been no drawback. Most families back then had a small boat from which they could fish for herring or check their crab and lobster pots – those boats could be hauled high up onto the beach in wild weather.
Just over a hundred years ago, the island families had sent their young men away to the Flanders trenches. Those that made it back, older and wiser, realised that the island had no future without a harbour: the herring were scarcer, and must be sought further away in bigger boats, with deeper draught. A harbour was needed to to unload and to protect those new fishing boats, and also for ferry boats, both to take their fish, cattle and autumn lambs to market, and to bring summer tourists to the island. But the landlord, in his florid Victorian castle on the mainland, was only interested in the crofters’ rents and his deer-stalking. Men left the island to work on boats elsewhere.
Those left behind would still catch crab and lobsters in their small boats. Every week, a vessel from Glasgow would come close inshore to pick up the lobsters,which were too valuable for the islanders to eat.When Donald John’s father was a child, the only lobsters he ever got too eat where those with just a single claw – damaged goods. Then the islanders got word that the Glasgow boat would stop coming.
The Presbyterian Free Church minister suggested that Inverness County Council might build a harbour, after all, they’d agreed to build a harbour on Gunnsay. But Inverness was far away. The minister, the Reverend MacInnes, was a good man even though his Argyllshire Gaelic was hard to understand, and he kept writing letters. The council did finally send a surveyor to Swensay, but nothing came of it.
The children left the island to go to senior school, staying in the school hostel. As those children came to school-leaving age, they realised that the island had no future. The girls mainly trained as nurses in Glasgow. The boys mainly joined the merchantile marine. One of them later became quite famous as a gaelic poet. A generation later, the island junior school closed: Donald John was the last pupil, back in the 1950s.
When well into his fifties, Donald John would still sometimes row himself across to the main island to go to dances in Tarbert, or to ceilidhs in friends’ houses. Women were courteous in his company, but none had any desire to be the only woman on Swensay.
He stopped going to the Tarbert Free Kirk, having found himself in disagreement with the minister over the doctrine of original sin. So, latterly, he would only leave the island about once a month to collect his pension from the post office and collect fresh supplies. He gave up raising cattle: if the summer rains spoilt the hay crop, then it was ruinously expensive to buy in and transport winter feed. There was enough grazing for the sheep, though transporting the lambs to the autumn sales was a tricky and tedious business. With no society but his own, he became a bit eccentric in his ways and was said, more than once, to have harvested his tatties by the light of a full moon.
One summer day, he saw a Scalpay trawler drop anchor and then a crewman rowed a passenger and some luggage ashore. The crewman waited as the passenger waded ashore, neither being sure of the passenger’s reception. The passenger explained, in good gaelic, that he was from The School of Scottish Studies in Edinburgh University and was hoping to interview Donald John for an oral history project. Donald John had received a letter about the visit a few months previously, but had been unable to make much sense of it, laid it aside, and forgot about it. The passenger, Dr Neil MacLean, not having received a reply to the letter, had taken the precaution of bringing camping equipment with him.
Donald John was unused to over-night visitors (the last having been a Round-Britain canoeist), but subscribed to the traditions of Scottish hospitality. Besides, he observed Dr MacLean’s broad shoulders and guessed that he’d be a useful helper at the peat-cutting. As he watched his visitor erect the tent, he regretted not inviting him to sleep in the house, but the spare room hadn’t been used in years: he shrank from the effort involved in getting it straight.
After he’d stowed his gear, Dr MacLean – Neil – emerged from within the tent, holding a bottle of Talisker, ‘a gift of thanks for the theft of Donald John’s time and memories.’ Once they’d broached the bottle and toasted the enterprise, Donald John led Neil up to the island high-point to give him the gaelic place-names for each nook and cranny. Despite the exertions of the trawler trip and the tent construction, followed by the whisky, Neil’s pulse quickened to the realisation that Donald John would have a tale to tell for a score or more of these rocks, bogs and inlets.
On the way back, Donald John took Neil past the peat-cuttings and he in turn was heartened to discover that Neil’s parents on Skye still cut their own peats. Neil was silently unimpressed by the old heavy silage-cutter that Donald John was accustomed to use to clear the layer of heather from the top of the cutting. But Neil reflected that all historical studies have their price.
Back at Donald John’s crofthouse, a rough future programme was agreed over another glass of Talisker. Over the next three weeks, the two men laboured companionably at the peat-cutting and repairs to the sheep fank and to the rowing boat. In the evenings, the two men would spend their time recording Donald John’s reminiscences of old island stories, family trees, island customs, celebrations and tragedies. The old man quickly overcame his aversion to Neil’s battery-operated mini-disc recorder, and rediscovered his enjoyment in what had always been the favourite entertainment on Swensay – the telling of tales.
Once again, Donald John told the tale of The Ghost Bride and the terrible aftermath; the story of The Great Storm of 1878; what the widow had said to the laird’s factor when he came calling with the eviction notice; the funeral wake when too much drink was taken and the rowers accidentally left the coffin behind on the shore; The Giant’s Stone; and all the rest.
The Scalpay trawler returned on a perfect August day. Donald John watched Neil and the trawler dwindle into the distance. He recalled Neil’s promise of the night before. He’d patted his mini-disc recorder and told Donald John that, while he might indeed be the last man on Swensay, the island would live on through the tales in that recorder: ‘Just like The Tales of Troy.’
literally stories 
Those who record living history as Neil does here rarely get the credit they deserve. We have a local heritage society here (Lake Oswego, Oregon, USA). LO started with the ambition of being The Pittsburgh of the West based on iron smelting. That story also happened in the 1800s. The smelter and the locations of the iron mines are still around. That ambition fell through and now it’s just a suburb to the south of Portland.
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Thanks Doug. Agreed: let’s hear it for the oral historians – they record the world we have lost, restore to us a sense of place.
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Very nice. Beautiful descriptions. Reminds me of Tom Sheehan’s writing.
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Thanks David. Honoured to be compared with Tom Sheehan! But I confess it’s easy to write ‘beautiful descriptions’ of Scotland’s Western Isles, since they are beautiful in themselves. Glad you enjoyed it.
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Mick
i always enjoy the lively, witty vibe in your writing. Only one misstep, and not by you. Bringing one bottle of Talisker is a serious faux pas!
Leila
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Dead right, Leila. They would’ve got through half that bottle on the first night. Neil should’ve bought a case. I need a copy editor!
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Mick
I really enjoyed the language use of this piece, and the lyrical way it builds and moves. The rhythm of the sentences, and the vividness of the word choices, add up to a beautiful essay of place that includes nostalgia and a strong sense of time passing, plus ongoing life. Paragraphing and punctuation are also wonderfully handled in your essay. I’m a massive fan of Scottish writers like Robert Burns, Thomas Carlyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, and James Boswell. Your essay tells a tale and creates a series of pictures in the reader’s mind. It does justice to the brilliant literary history of Scotland. Keeping this kind of detail alive through the medium of language use is more important than ever these days. Your love of the subject comes through, and that’s both noble and encouraging. Thanks for writing this way, with such grace and style!
Sincerely,
Dale
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Wow, thanks Dale. As far as I’m concerned there can be no greater phrase for a writer than to be compared to Stevenson! I feel I should come clean, however, and acknowledge that great swathes of this piece are stories I’ve heard from my late in-laws, Donald and Joan, both born and raised on crofts, and from islanders I’ve met on a dozen holidays on Harris over the course of forty years . On one holiday, I stayed in the elderly caravan of an elderly couple who I discovered were the last family to leave the island of Scarp. And on another holiday in Rhenigidale, the last crofting community on Harris to be without road access.
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Phrase = praise, damn it
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Mick
I enjoyed the Tale of The Island of Swensay very much.
I, myself and many millions of others, come from the western shore of an island, which you call Brooklyn. There, not only do they migrate and desert like the inhabitants of Swensay, they also pretty much destroy everything previously created on a rolling and regular basis — repave, rezone, repurpose, and reform everything. Every building, light post, splotch of grass, and spread of concrete is removed, leaving nothing but what’s next. And unlike Troy, they trash the layers before they rebuild.
Yes, the Tales of Brooklyn have been and are continually being written, but none of my grandparents’ B’klyn remains to see or step foot on. No Donald John to point to the old sights.
My mother was born under a super market. Shit, man.
Gerry
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Thanks Gerry. You’re right, for the people to move on is bad enough, but for the very place to be concreted over is even worse. At least, in The Western Isles, the tumbledown ruins of the houses are a marker of the past.
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So gently-paced & beautifully detailed. Those tatties harvested by the light of the full moon . . . And Donald John’s face comes so into focus the moment he rediscovers his delight in the telling of tales.
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Ha. Yes, the harvesting by moonlight was one of my father-in-law Donald’s stories and I remember his delight in telling it.
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Hi Mick,
I have mentioned many times that your love of the subject comes through with every word you write. You don’t emphasise this, you aren’t sycophantic but the enthusiasm you have for the subjects that you take on are a joy to behold. No-one can teach this, you simply need a love of what you are writing about and the talent to not word it. (If that makes any sense!)
You made me think on fresh caught Herring straight onto the griddle – Delicious!! And the last time I was in Tarbert, I had the best fish supper that I’ve ever tasted!
As long as you have enthusiasm, with the writing talent that you have, you will always have something to write!!
All the very best my fine friend.
Oh, and I agree with Leila, that one bottle of Talisker is never enough!!!
Hugh
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Thanks for your kind encouragement, Hugh. It’s much appreciated, especially now with your own writing under misconceived attack. Can I add WH Auden’s contribution to Diane’s Stephen Fry contribution? WH Auden wrote that obscene or scatological writing can be wonderfully funny and, as proof, added a verse of his own:
‘While shepherds watched their flocks by night,
All shitting on the ground,
An angel of the Lord came down
And handed paper round.’
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Cheers Mick!!!!!
The support means a lot.
I think it was the genius that is Mr Connolly who said that there is no phrase that says so much in so many ways than ‘Fuck Off’!!!!
Stay happy, healthy and inspired my fine friend.
Hugh
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The depth of knowledge and respect for history and place come through so strongly in these excellent pieces of yours, Mick. As a reader I feel completely transported there and it leaves me with a thirst for wanting to know more.
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Thanks Paul! Yes, I did want to convey a sense of place. And I know that can be conveyed in stories, so many of the stories I mentioned (even the one about the inebriated pall bearers leaving the coffin behind) were ones told to me.
ps. I saw that you were back in Bridlington, I remember it very fondly from a childhood holiday there.
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Very cool, I can’t find any record of a Swensay Island, but the story can be applied to so many remote areas, all these iconic stories and old ways disappearing….as everyone moves to city areas…. the old romances of the islands linger on. Indeed, let’s hope there is a Dr. Dr. MacLean (good name) with the energy to record these tales. There’s a kind of mischievous humour under all this. Where I am from, lobsters even with one claw are a delicacy! Very well crafted in its documentary way, and could be made into a TV movie, maybe Stephen Fry or even Billy Connolly starring as Donald John.
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Thanks Harrison! Quite right: let’s be clear, there is no Isle of Swensay, though the Isles of Scarp and Taransay have both become deserted in my lifetime. I was a bit surprised when LS classed my piece as an essay, rather than a fiction, but (as you astutely pointed out) it has a ‘documentary vibe.’
And the children’s diet is indeed an irony: as well as one-clawed lobster, my late mother-in-law ate various autumn berries, fresh-caught herring and cod, wild carrots, seaweed, baby gannets (‘guga’), and various unusual cuts of sheep carcass like sheepsheid broth – a much richer diet than the landlord’s children were getting at their private schools.
It was a good life, it was just that there was no way to earn a living.
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Hi Mick,
Sorry for butting in but I wondered if you have ever read ‘The Black House’ by Peter May. A large part of the plot is around the Guga hunters. If you haven’t read it, I think you would get a kick out of it.
All the very best my fine friend.
Hugh
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Yes, I’ve read it, Hugh – a great recommendation. I’ve read several of his Western Isles murder mysteries. I believe the people of Ness (on Lewis) have a special legal dispensation to kill and eat the young gannets being reared on those rocks north of Lewis.
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Hi Mick,
It was a cracking book that I just happened upon.
I got two recommendations from an old gaffer of mine. One was ‘The Grey Man’ by S.R. Crockett and also ‘The Land Of The Leal’ by James Barke. I enjoyed ‘The Grey Man’ as I knew the countryside, the feud and legends but I must admit – I gave up on the other. Maybe one of these days I’ll give it another go.
…Hah! I’m only six hundred pages into ‘The Count Of Monte Cristo’ so less than half-way there. I’ve been there for the last ten years – Another I need to get around to finishing.
All the very best my fine friend.
Hugh
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Hugh
Big Tick for ‘The Grey Man.’ I never finished ‘The Count Of Monte Cristo’ either, though strangely I galloped through that other fat French tome, Les Miserables (Jean Valjean is a cracking hero). These days, I mainly re-read – that way I’m not disappointed.
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What a cracking read! Missed it last Sunday and am so glad Leila reminded us of it.
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Thanks Steven, that’s kind of you. Glad you liked it!
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