16th February 2008

What shall be given unto thee? or what shall be done unto thee, thou false tongue?

Sharp arrows of the mighty, with coals of juniper.

Psalm 102

Juniper burns very hot, without smoke, maybe that’s why it was used in the whisky stills in the hills; no betraying smoke for the Revenue men to spot. Alastair Cameron tells the story of two other Camerons, Donald & Hugh, their ponies laden with whisky, who met a gauger for the Revenue at a river. “He did not reveal his identity, neither did they express any sign of suspicion.” “As there was a good flow of water”, Donald offered to carry the gauger across the river on his back, to save him from getting wet. The Revenue man agreed, but when in mid stream, Donald flung him into it, yelling to Hugh to give stick to the ponies & “take to your heels, son of John, son of Hugh.”

It’s only ten or eleven miles from here that happened. I leave the new road, a highway for these parts, & backtrack a little onto the old road, leaving it immediately to cross Abhainn Coire an Iubhair, the river of the yew corrie, which runs, flatly at this point through a stone bed in something approaching ox-bows, north to south. The river is fed by so many small tributary burns that they have no names. To the west, curving round to the north is the corrie, a cauldron, a blind glen, with its head turned back on itself by Beinn Bheag. Here lies the actual cauldron, a lochan surrounded by twisted contours & contorted outcrops & upthrusts, all worn to a smoothness, save for where they’ve been more recently cracked by frosts. From here down to the sea loch, it’s steep-sided, a classic glacier scour. Along the river bed at this level, not far above the sea, the banks are lined with holly. With alder, which it outnumbers, it’s the only tree here. The dead spate-borne grass stalks are three feet up the trunks, showing the rough & tumble of the winter rains & snow melt, though all week it’s been dry & the river soon drops. Heading north & up, with the corrie sides enclosing now, the hollies peter out. Nothing but heather. To the east the ridge, Druim an Iubhair, becomes more pronounced. Iubhair, yew, in this instance, as with most other place-names containing it, does not refer to yew, but to mountain-yew, iubhair-beinne as Carmichael had it from Eoghan Wilson in the Blessing of the Struan, iubhair-creige elsewhere. Juniper. & there, at the turning west of the whole corrie, but on the low ridge to the east, it’s lowly growing.

In the nineteenth century, it was so common here that sacks of berries were sent to market in Inverness & Aberdeen, where they were bought by merchants to send to Holland to make their gin, jenever. Juniper & jenever are cognate, from the Latin juniperus, which is its genus name, communis being the specific; but the procumbent form of these beautiful conifers, one of three native here, clinging like a waterfall to the rocks from which it cascades, is the subspecies nana (syn. sibirica, alpina). This plant, to thrive, needs a certain lack of competition from heathers & grasses when seeds set; a controlled grazing provides that; but latterly the glens & corries have suffered from the sheep & are very much overgrazed, meaning the sheep (& deer) will eat the seedlings as soon as they appear. The fact that this has happened for more than one generation means that all the juniper is old & making little, if any seed. The future may hold only extinction; like the yew itself, juniper might only be found in captivity – churchyards, botanic gardens.

Which all adds to the quick joy of finding plants here, some with their flowing trunks as thick as my forearm; a pleasure only to be found by prolonged looking, sometimes in the bitter cold, as today. The scramble up a ridge, slick with seeping water, finger & toe-holds carefully sought, bringing a soft green, light to dark, slightly pricky-leaved plant up close, to caress, is to come to terms with the Gaelic name & to breathe in the plant. Mountain yew it certainly is. A true psalm zinging in bare rock, livening the whole corrie with its ancient presence.

I once spent an entire day at Taynish searching for these plants (though not the dwarf subspecies found here) without success (albeit with the consolation of chanterelles). As well as the overgrazing, maybe the illicit stills in the glens & hills helped the depletion to the point where I rejoice to see a couple of plants; where before it was plentiful enough to lend its name to river, corrie & ridge. Maybe the psalm is lament.

As it is, I toast the survivors with Waterford sloes potent ly & redly infusing Cork gin, a birthday gift made by Morven. My own small shebeen back at the Byre, with the shade of Donald Cameron.