06 10 07
It’s easy to make out the warp & weft of society here, how bards & poets are fabric, along with genealogists & story tellers. They’re in fact often the same person anyway, & there’s little distinction between personal history & society’s doings, real or imagined. Alec Dan Henderson, of Acharacle, in conversation with Donald Archie MacDonald, in 1967, as recorded in Tocher, discusses local folk of the time of the clearances: “The people were cleared away from Ardnamurchan. And he climbed out by Beinn Shianta and saw the places where the people used to be, and the old walls which were left. There was nobody there.” The he in this is the Doctor of Rahoy, one Dr John MacLachlan, a poet of whom Sorley MacLean writes: “ . . . your back was strong and straight / as you went up the face of Ben Shianta / with the burden on your shoulders / of seeing the land a waste / under sheep and bracken and rushes.” Alec Dan, although not a young man in 1967, may not have met John MacLachlan, who died at seventy years of age in 1874, but his memory is strong, & he sings a song from someone who had it from the Doctor of Rahoy: Direadh a-mach ri Bein Shianta; Climbing up Beinn Shianta. The doctor no doubt knew the Ben when its lower slopes were inhabited. The song has a verse: “And d’you think you’ll find peace, with your sheep and your cattle-folds?” addressing “Grey-headed MacColl of the evil deeds” who put out the people from their place. In the same poem [Dr John MacLachlan (of Rahoy in Morvern)] Sorley MacLean also writes of “The Cameron in Bun Allt Eachain, / that rare knowledgable man, / he told about a gleam of the sun / on beautiful Morvern / in the time of its emptying and its misery.” The Cameron, Alasdair Cameron, a road man, wrote elegantly in both English & Gaelic. Bun Allt Eachain is where I was walking yesterday, driven there by Cameron’s little book “Annals and Recollections of Sunart”, published in 1961, in which he writes of the nearby Tigh-na-Caillich: [which] “commemorates landlord despotism, which made a harmless old woman the victim of a son’s indiscretion. Why? Oh why, one may ask, should the iniquity of the son be visited on the mother – particularly when he did punishment for his crime of stealing a sheep.” I was looking for the “solitary Scots pine tree, a lone sentinel which has braved many a blast” at Bun Allt Eachain; but it was gone. Later I spoke to a man in Strontian who had known Alastair Cameron, or “North Argyll” his pseudonym, or “North” as he was affectionately known.
The Doctor of Rahoy, born in 1804, sees the results of mid-century clearance & makes a song. The song is sung in Ardnamurchan & Morvern, where it’s heard by Alec Dan Henderson and passed on; The doctor’s story is told, also in the middle of a new century, by one of the greatest Gaelic poets. (MacLean’s note to his own poem: “Dr John MacLachlan was one of the best Gaelic poets of the nineteenth century”) MacLean also remembers the knowledge of the road man, the Cameron of Bun Allt Eachan, where as a visitor I look for a Scots pine. In its topics, its feeling for people & its democracy of greatness, as neat an encapsulation of the last 200 years in the memory of Gaels as may be found.
That long memory is abroad in this parish today in other matters – the writing of a letter apparently questioning the mental faculties of another doctor of medicine, the calling to the General Medical Council, & “enforced” resignation. The consequences of that letter divided the usually polite co-existing communities here. There may be many odious reasons for clearances & more yet for sad & bitter resignations; but those who clear are not forgotten. Painted signs, nailed to oaks & chestnut trees, hung from deer grids & rock faces read “We support Dr Buchanan” all across the two peninsulas. Recently new signs have been hung: “Backstabbers Your Day Will Come” & the single word: “Traitor”
It’s easy to make out the warp & weft of society here, how bards & poets are fabric, along with genealogists & story tellers. They’re in fact often the same person anyway, & there’s little distinction between personal history & society’s doings, real or imagined. Alec Dan Henderson, of Acharacle, in conversation with Donald Archie MacDonald, in 1967, as recorded in Tocher, discusses local folk of the time of the clearances: “The people were cleared away from Ardnamurchan. And he climbed out by Beinn Shianta and saw the places where the people used to be, and the old walls which were left. There was nobody there.” The he in this is the Doctor of Rahoy, one Dr John MacLachlan, a poet of whom Sorley MacLean writes: “ . . . your back was strong and straight / as you went up the face of Ben Shianta / with the burden on your shoulders / of seeing the land a waste / under sheep and bracken and rushes.” Alec Dan, although not a young man in 1967, may not have met John MacLachlan, who died at seventy years of age in 1874, but his memory is strong, & he sings a song from someone who had it from the Doctor of Rahoy: Direadh a-mach ri Bein Shianta; Climbing up Beinn Shianta. The doctor no doubt knew the Ben when its lower slopes were inhabited. The song has a verse: “And d’you think you’ll find peace, with your sheep and your cattle-folds?” addressing “Grey-headed MacColl of the evil deeds” who put out the people from their place. In the same poem [Dr John MacLachlan (of Rahoy in Morvern)] Sorley MacLean also writes of “The Cameron in Bun Allt Eachain, / that rare knowledgable man, / he told about a gleam of the sun / on beautiful Morvern / in the time of its emptying and its misery.” The Cameron, Alasdair Cameron, a road man, wrote elegantly in both English & Gaelic. Bun Allt Eachain is where I was walking yesterday, driven there by Cameron’s little book “Annals and Recollections of Sunart”, published in 1961, in which he writes of the nearby Tigh-na-Caillich: [which] “commemorates landlord despotism, which made a harmless old woman the victim of a son’s indiscretion. Why? Oh why, one may ask, should the iniquity of the son be visited on the mother – particularly when he did punishment for his crime of stealing a sheep.” I was looking for the “solitary Scots pine tree, a lone sentinel which has braved many a blast” at Bun Allt Eachain; but it was gone. Later I spoke to a man in Strontian who had known Alastair Cameron, or “North Argyll” his pseudonym, or “North” as he was affectionately known.
The Doctor of Rahoy, born in 1804, sees the results of mid-century clearance & makes a song. The song is sung in Ardnamurchan & Morvern, where it’s heard by Alec Dan Henderson and passed on; The doctor’s story is told, also in the middle of a new century, by one of the greatest Gaelic poets. (MacLean’s note to his own poem: “Dr John MacLachlan was one of the best Gaelic poets of the nineteenth century”) MacLean also remembers the knowledge of the road man, the Cameron of Bun Allt Eachan, where as a visitor I look for a Scots pine. In its topics, its feeling for people & its democracy of greatness, as neat an encapsulation of the last 200 years in the memory of Gaels as may be found.
That long memory is abroad in this parish today in other matters – the writing of a letter apparently questioning the mental faculties of another doctor of medicine, the calling to the General Medical Council, & “enforced” resignation. The consequences of that letter divided the usually polite co-existing communities here. There may be many odious reasons for clearances & more yet for sad & bitter resignations; but those who clear are not forgotten. Painted signs, nailed to oaks & chestnut trees, hung from deer grids & rock faces read “We support Dr Buchanan” all across the two peninsulas. Recently new signs have been hung: “Backstabbers Your Day Will Come” & the single word: “Traitor”
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