THE GREAT LADY FROM SKYE:
THIRD THOUGHTS ON THE LIFE AND WORK OF MARY MACPHERSON
Donald E. Meek
It gives me great pleasure to participate in this special
series of events, commemorating the life and work of Màiri Mhòr nan Oran, with
whom I have shared a good part of my life.
That may seem strange, given that our dates of birth are separated by
more than a century, but it is not unusual for those of us who inhabit the
so-called ‘ivory towers’ to feel that we are closer to figures from history
than we are to our own colleagues. We
suffer from various endearing ‘madnesses’, and that is one of them. In the case of Màiri Mhòr, I could even
claim that I had known her since childhood – my childhood, that is – as she was
often mentioned by my relatives in both Tiree and Skye as I was growing
up. On the Tiree side, I had a
great-uncle, Charles MacDonald, who was a shipwright to trade, and who had
served his time at Harland and Wolff, in Govan, Glasgow, in the late nineteenth
century. When I was a youngster, Charles
was my playmate, although he was into his seventies by the time I was under
way. I used to spend weekends with him
in his cottage, which he shared with his sister, Annabel, and I served my
apprenticeship as a riveter with him. I
was the equivalent of what the Glasgow folk used to call the ‘hauder up’ when
the rivets were to be clenched in the wooden boats which Charlie loved to
build. He was full of stories – a very
bright man who never aged, and who was always cheerful. Quite often, when in a relaxed mood and
having a cup of tea, Charlie would tell me about his Glasgow days, and, from
time to time, he would mention Màiri Mhòr nan Oran. By the time he got to know her, Màiri had
become a matriarchal figure among Glasgow Gaels, and would appear at concerts
and ceilidhs, or at picnics. He was
struck by her personality and dynamic interaction with the Gaels at every
level, and of every level. He was
familiar with her songs, and could quote them, though he did not sing them.
In the 1970s, when I was back in Tiree during a summer
vacation, I was given further insights into Màiri Mhòr’s interaction with
Glasgow Gaels through a very lively lady who had connections with both Tiree
and Skye. She was the daughter of the
Rev. Allan MacDougall, a native of Tiree who had been Baptist minister in
Strath in Skye. Allan had brought up his
children in Skye, but they were well aware of their Tiree connections, and some
of them, notably his son Johnnie, came to live in Caolas, Tiree, my native
village. To cut a long story short,
Allan’s daughter, by then an older lady, visited us in Tiree to renew
acquaintance, and soon she was regaling me with family memories of Màiri Mhòr
on the concert platforms in Glasgow.
Clad from head to foot in tartan, she would march up the central aisle
of the concert hall, while distributing clumps of heather to members of the
audience. She would then proceed to the
platform, whether bidden or not, and begin to sing her songs. A particular favourite was her song,
‘Soraidh leis an àit’’, which became her ‘signature tune’ in those days. Perhaps we can set the mood this evening by
asking Fiona MacKenzie to sing it for us.
[Soraidh leis an àit’]
In learning about Màiri Mhòr, I was particularly fortunate
to have input from both Tiree and Skye contacts. On my father’s side, my people belonged to
Tiree, but, on my mother’s side, I had close connections with both Sleat and
Uig, in Skye. My maternal grandfather,
whose roots were in Sleat, used to sing Màiri Mhòr’s songs, with tears in his
eyes. He had spent much of his life as a
fireman in Maryhill, in Glasgow, and Màiri’s songs had a special relevance to
him as an ‘exile’ from Skye. My maternal
grandmother, however, belonged to Uig, and my relatives there still remembered
Màiri Mhòr. They, however, had a very
different set of memories from those of my Tiree friends. To my Skye relatives, Màiri was best known
for her circuits of the houses – as we would say in Gaelic, a’ dol air na
taighean. She was often the worse
for wear, as she liked her drammie, and her blouse carried a tell-tale trail of
snuff down the front! By the time these
memories were formed, Màiri was an old woman, who was something of a nuisance
to folk. In her retirement, she lived
at ‘Bothan Ceann na Coille’ (Woodend Cottage) between Portree and Skeabost, but
she was frequently ‘doing the rounds’ in Uig, to which her mother, Flora,
belonged. It was said by some who knew
the area that Màiri was, in fact, born in Uig, and not Skeabost, as is the
usual story.
Màiri’s house in Skeabost was a well-known port of call for
visitors of all kinds, and even for some who sought her support. I remember well having a talk in the
mid-1970s with a well-known Skyeman, Colonel Jock MacDonald, who spoke Eton
English and Skye Gaelic. Colonel Jock
was one of the MacDonalds of Viewfield, Portree, and thus of a rather more
aristocratic lineage than Màiri Mhòr.
However, Màiri always maintained a friendship with certain of the uaislean,
of course. Anyway, Colonel Jock loved to
tell the story of how, as boy, he had misbehaved rather badly, and had run away
from home. He sought refuge with Màiri
in Skeabost, and that tells you quite a lot about the esteem he had for Màiri. In due course, his father came looking for
the naughty Jock, and, as Màiri Mhòr saw him coming, she took a hold of Jock
and stuck him in under her skirts – which, as Jock used to say, were pretty
voluminous! When Jock’s father asked if
she had seen any sign of the boy, she denied it point blank, and the angry
father went on his way. Jock was saved
by Màiri, though, as he used to say with a twinkle, ‘It was rather hot in
there.’
That, in some ways, takes us to one of the hallmarks of
Màiri – not just the voluminous skirts, but her role as the protector of those
who were in difficulty. That sense of matriarchal protection grew from her own
experience. Born about 1820, she led a
tempestuous life, having had scrapes with the law when she was in service in
Inverness, and having to spend time in prison for an alleged theft – which I am
sure was a ‘frame up’, and entirely unjust, to judge by the various gentlemen
who came to her assistance. She also
endured the loss of her husband, Isaac, at an early age. As a result of these trials, she left
Inverness for Glasgow, where she trained as a nurse in the 1870s, and then
retired to Skeabost in 1882. She was
always ‘on the gallavant’, travelling from Skye to Glasgow to the concerts that
I have just mentioned, or supporting the Skye home side, wherever and whatever
it was, whether it was the shinty team or a crofters’ delegation. Màiri was larger than life, and she made an
unforgettable impression on the Gaels of her own time, as she sang her way
through hardship, and championed the cause of many who needed support at that
time, including, as we know, the crofters of Skye and other parts of the
Highlands and Islands during the period of the Land Wars.
We can now listen to a song in which Màiri expresses how
painful it was to endure the humiliation that came her way in Inverness, and
the injustice that she suffered:
[Ochòn a Rìgh]
Perhaps the most remarkable result of Màiri’s humiliation
was that it drove her to compose verse, and particularly those songs that we
know so well today. Another fine
informant of mine in the 1970s, the Rev. Norman MacDonald of Staffin, Skye,
used to say that Màiri was already something of a songster and poet before she
was humiliated in 1872. However, it was
that bitter experience that compelled her to compose ‘serious’ verse, first of
all about her own suffering, and then about the suffering of others.
Editing the songs
It is now thirty years exactly since I published the first
edition of my selection of the Gaelic songs of Màiri Mhòr nan Oran, as very
young and foolish academic, in 1977. It
was the first attempt at editing a body of Màiri’s verse since her own book had
been published in Inverness in 1891, and it was undertaken largely because my
former teacher, Professor Derick Thomson of the Chair of Celtic at Glasgow
University, believed that she deserved to be remembered in a selective
anthology, edited in Gaelic. I stress
the latter point because it was not fashionable then to edit books in Gaelic,
and indeed it was not fashionable to champion Màiri Mhòr either. She had been lost to view, and the fact that
she was retained at all in the canon of Gaelic literature was due not only to
Derick Thomson, but also to Murdo Murray, who wrote a fine paper (in Gaelic) on
her verse, and especially Dr Sorley MacLean, from Raasay, and a great admirer
of the strengths in Màiri Mhòr’s verse.
Dr MacLean recognised, as Professor Thomson did also, that
the quality of Màiri’s output was rather variable – she was capable of great
heights of passion and descriptive power, but she was also capable of becoming
very garrulous and repetitious, with little more than metre and tune holding
her words together. I remember well not
only Professor Thomson’s fine teaching, but also the impact of Sorley MacLean’s
paper on ‘The Poetry of the Clearances’ – the most powerful piece of
socio-political and literary criticism I have ever read. I can still remember where I was when I first
read that paper, and I can even remember the time of day, the weather and the
year! It was like walking into a new
world of critical appreciation and forthright communication, and at the heart
of the matter was the Gaelic verse of Màiri Mhòr. As Sorley MacLean made clear, Màiri was the
poet of the people, with all the strengths and weaknesses that attached to such
a position.
As a young man who considered himself a bit of a ‘radical’
in those far-off days, I was attracted by Màiri’s forthright challenge to the
establishment (with which I too have always lived uncomfortably, I have to
say). I was also fascinated by the way
in which she espoused what was to a large extent a man’s world – the world of
protest and resistance to authority – in her own time. Màiri was, of course, a sign of things to
come, as women began to gain prominence through the extension of the franchise
and other civilised developments. But
she was at the very front of campaigning for the extension of the vote to
crofters long before the Suffragettes came on the scene. Some may think, of course, that my
fascination for Màiri’s life and work reflected current literary and other
trends, but I would deny that. Back in
the 1970s, ‘women’s literature’ and ‘feminism’ were but young – ‘women’s lib’ had emerged in the late 1960s, but I was pretty innocent, and had no reason
to espouse these causes. However, I had
heard of Màiri Mhòr, and I was attracted by her personality, by the power of
her verse and by her struggle in society, at a time of immense change in the
Highlands and Islands.
My 1977 anthology of Màiri Mhòr’s verse was my first foray
into editorial scholarship, and I made many mistakes. Happily, however, the book sold very well,
and I was able to correct my various juvenile blunders in a new edition,
published in 1998, to commemorate the centenary of Màiri’s death. I restructured my earlier book, and added a
few more songs to the text. I also dealt
with what the ‘critics’ had to say about Màiri’s verse in the past and also in
the present. So, to explain the title of
my lecture, I regard the first edition of my book as my ‘first thoughts’ on
Màiri Mhòr; the second edition contains my ‘second thoughts’ – and this evening
you are receiving my ‘third thoughts’, for what they are worth!
Looking back over these thirty years since my book was
published, what I note particularly is how Màiri Mhòr’s standing has
changed. She has been given two edited
anthologies in addition to her own 1891 volume – and that alone sets her apart
from all other nineteenth-century poets.
A film has been made of her life (based, I may say, on my 1977 edition),
and this evening we will unveil a portrait of Màiri Mhòr – making her by far
the most celebrated and commemorated of the nineteenth-century poets. What a change!
This is something that happened in the last quarter of the
twentieth century, of course, though there were signs that the mood was
changing by the late 1930s. As a poet as
well as a person, Màiri was under something of a cloud in the early part of the
twentieth century, and it was not until Sorley MacLean and Murdo Murray began
to ‘rehabilitate’ her that she was given a better deal. Although she was extremely popular in Gaelic
circles, and especially among Lowland Gaels, towards the end of the nineteenth
century, she had her detractors, who did not like her songs and verse, any more
than they liked her snuff and her drams.
The trend-setters of Gaelic verse in the late nineteenth century were
poets like Neil MacLeod from Skye, and Henry Whyte from Easdale. The latter wrote scathingly of Màiri Mhòr’s
verse, partly because of her tendency to garrulousness, but more probably, I
think, because she tackled subjects which were unromantic, and did not take
people’s minds into the ‘never-never lands’ of the past. Màiri was certainly not an escapist. She reminded people constantly of the reality
of Highland life, the good sides and the bad.
Although she had her own way of being ‘sentimental’, she managed to hold
the balance between romanticism and reality, but she tipped the balance towards
reality most of the time. That, in my
view, is one reason that her songs are so appealing to many people today; they
strike a balance between ‘emotion’ and ‘evidence’ in a way that few other
songsters have been able to achieve, and, in so doing, Màiri offers us insights
from a very varied and challenging life that has been lived in the real world –
what we would call ‘experience’. These
perspectives are well encapsulated in ‘Eilean a’ Cheò’, and we will listen to
it now.
[Eilean a’ Cheò]
Màiri’s enduring qualities
Let me, then, reflect for the remainder of this talk on the
three ‘Es’ – ‘Emotion’, ‘Evidence’ and ‘Experience’ – that, for me at any rate, characterise Màiri
Mhòr’s verse. In the thirty years since
my book was published, I have studied numerous other nineteenth-century Gaelic
poets, and it is in that light that I offer my suggestions – my ‘third
thoughts’ as I have called them. Like
Màiri herself when she produced the final version of ‘Eilean a’ Cheò’, I have
the grey hairs that show my age, and I am soon to say ‘Farewell’ to my
‘fifties’! My qualifications for a retrospect are impeccable!
Let us begin with ‘experience’. In the course of many writings on the
nineteenth-century Highlands, I have often asked myself an important question,
namely, ‘How did it feel to be alive in those days?’ That question can resolve itself into a number
of other questions, depending on context:
How did it feel to be part of the old, pre-clearance society? How did it feel to see emigration taking
place before your very eyes? How did it
feel to sail on the old steamships that were so well known in the late
nineteenth-century Highlands? How did it
feel to have a scrape with the law, and to end up in a prison? How would a Gael of that time have felt about
Britain and the British Empire, and the various military adventures of Queen
Victoria’s reign? How did crofters and
their leaders feel about the Napier Commission of 1883 and its Report of
1884? How did Skye people feel about
Sheriff William Ivory?
‘Eilean a’ Cheò’ alone, if you look at it carefully and
dwell on its words, will answer quite a few of these questions for you. It will tell you about pre-clearance society
and the self-sufficiency of the people of Skye – the use of home-grown meat and
potatoes, the weaving of cloth (something that Màiri Mhòr loved to engage in),
the military contribution of Skye and the pride that Skye folk had in that,
but, in a surprisingly forthright way, Màiri gives vent to the need to turn the
tables and fight the good fight against injustice at home. In a sense, that song is a great summary of
Màiri’s experience, and it is pulled together in a series of metaphors which
are unforced in any way – so unforced that the song does not always hang
together well, and may merit just criticism from the literary ‘set’. But that is what gives it power – it is
spontaneous, effortless and non-deliberate, an expression to be uttered time
and again, rephrased and refocused across the years. Màiri herself understood its weaknesses, and
called it a ‘rope’. In a way, life is
exactly that – a rope of many cords, all woven round one another. Perhaps we could say that the cords are
‘tangled’ rather than ‘woven’, as that may imply too much. Life does not hang together well for many,
many people, and Màiri was one of them.
There are, nevertheless, unities of approach and understanding, within
the individual persona. In her
own unpremeditated way, and through her own personality, Màiri tried to
capture, and ‘unify’, the untidiness of life’s experience.
She was aware of connections and disconnections as part of
that untidy picture. Recently I had cause to reflect particularly closely on
the way in which steamships had interacted with Highland life and society in
the nineteenth century, and my first port of call, so to speak, was the Gaelic verse of Màiri Mhòr nan
Oran. What was it like to see the
islands from the deck of a steamship?
What were the thoughts of an islander who left the island, or returned
to it, by means of such transport? How
did one’s view of a familiar landscape change when one was approaching it
gradually from a distance on a steamship?
Màiri’s songs answered all of these questions, and the answers popped up
in some surprising places, mainly because Màiri was so concerned to chronicle
‘experience’ as it bore in upon her immediately. Some of her ‘steamship songs’ – about the Claymore
and the Clydesdale, for instance – kept very much to their subject, but
there were other songs in which the steamships appeared ‘unexpectedly’, in
order to make a deep and meaningful experiential point.
For example, if we look at ‘Nuair bha mi òg’ – a truly
splendid song in my view – we have a blend which is reminiscent of ‘Eilean a’
Cheò’, but the images, the pictures, the scenes, are somehow even more sharply
focused, as if Màiri were using a camera with a close-up facility. We touch on how Màiri experienced childhood,
and how she lost her sense of childhood innocence. Part of the feeling of loss was occasioned by
her boarding the ‘smoky steamship that has no sail’, and moving gradually away
from the island as the paddles churned and the ship made a noisy
departure. Let us hear ‘Nuair bha mi òg’
now.
[Nuair bha mi òg]
What then of ‘evidence’? Màiri Mhòr’s
verse is important as a source of ‘evidence’ as well as ‘experience’, though it
is sometimes hard to disentangle the two ‘cords’ in this particular
‘rope’. Her songs offer us an
opportunity to ‘see’, as well as to ‘feel’.
It is particularly noticeable that Màiri was a highly convivial person,
and she is often at her best when describing gatherings of people, large or
small, and the emotions they generate.
In this way, she provides evidence of significant happenings, and their
significance to her own world and that of the nineteenth century. We can take several songs in succession to
demonstrate the validity of this point.
First of all, we can look at an event in Glasgow which Màiri
commemorates for us – a shinty match. In
those days – the end of the nineteenth century – cameras were cumbersome
machines, and tape recorders were not invented.
As we see in the case of ‘Nuair bha mi òg’, sight and sound are often
very prominent in Màiri’s verse. If we
ask ourselves how a shinty match looked and sounded in those days, and what
emotions it generated, we will find the answer in such songs as ‘Camanachd
Ghlaschu’. We can hear the crack and
whack of shinty-sticks, and we can see the players in full flight across the
pitch. The song is filled with good
humour.
[Camanachd Ghlaschu]
Energy and muscular power are everywhere apparent in Màiri’s
songs, whether she is chronicling a shinty match or viewing the fishing-boats
setting sail from Portree. One of the
songs which reflects a process, rather more than an event, and constitutes
evidence for major change in the nineteenth-century Highlands – change for the
better, that is – is ‘Nuair chaidh na ceithir ùr oirre’. This commemorates a crossing from Strome
Ferry in a small boat, which Màiri undertook with several politicians who were
canvassing for the General Election of 1885.
One of the most important points here is the evidence that the song
provides for the importance of Màiri Mhòr herself in the time of the crofters’
land agitation. She was obviously an
‘asset’ to the politicians, because she could communicate with the people, and
transmit the message of land reform by means of her songs. She appeared on political platforms
throughout the Highlands. Other Gaelic
poets were utilised by the pro-crofter lobby in a similar way, but Màiri Mhòr
was probably by far the best known. The
evidence here is, once again, highly visual, as big men try to get into a small
boat, and the seventeen-stone Màiri Mhòr attempts to join them. It is a song which not only releases a sense
of purpose, but also of incongruities, as Màiri delightfully exploits the
‘weight problem’ to lighten the load.
[Nuair chaidh na ceithir ùr’ oirre]
Màiri Mhòr was the poetess of ‘change’ in many different
ways, and at many different levels. She
had a great eye for what was happening around her, whether on the shinty pitch
or at the political meeting, or in the community. As she was resident in Inverness and Glasgow
for a considerable part of her life, she
was able to observe, on her frequent returns, how communities in Skye were changing,
often through loss of people in processes of migration and emigration; she felt
the change in ways that were more than merely demographic, and that is
particularly evident in her song, ‘Soraidh leis an Nollaig Uir’, in which she
puts starkly before us how ‘cold’ communities have become as a result of
population displacement and change. She
is now a stranger in her own township, and even the dogs bark coldly as they
offer her a welcome.
[Soraidh leis an Nollaig Uir]
Let us round off with the third dimension of Mairi’s
verse which makes her work distinctive – ‘emotion’. An emotional charge is more than evident in
‘Soraidh leis an Nollaig Uir’, and a powerful emotional charge appears in many
other songs. Màiri had a remarkable
ability to convey emotions in her verse, by means of individual words which
resonate deeply in a human context – even the mist itself takes on human
characteristics, implicit in such words as ‘tàmh’. Visual and tactile sensations intermingle, so
that our senses are gripped. In
‘Eilean a’ Cheò’, for example, there is a mixture of several emotions, while other songs convey a
happy, celebratory mood, or an elegiac farewell or leave-taking or a profound
sense of loss, as in ‘Soraidh leis an Nollaig Uir’.
One of Màiri’s indisputably happy songs is ‘Oran Beinn Lì’
which commemorates the lowering of rents as a result of the Crofters Commission
and its enquiry in 1887. Màiri looks
back joyfully, and celebrates what has been achieved by those who took a stand
at the Battle of the Braes in 1882.
[Oran Beinn Lì]
There was an optimism at the heart of Màiri’s songs. Indeed, one of the dimensions of her verse
that I find appealing is its ability to look through the mist (a common image
in her songs) to sunrises, bright mornings, and better futures. This is evident in the ‘bardic blessing’
which she sent to Gaels at New Year time, and in which she uses the imagery of
a shinty match to convey her message about the ‘goals’ of the future.
[Beannachd Bliadhn’ Uire]
It is often said that Gaelic songs tend to be sad in
general, and that happiness is hard to find in the nineteenth century. Màiri Mhòr knew all about sadness, and her
songs reflect that, but she also tried to convey her joy and optimism, and her
sense of achievement, as well as of loss.
That points to the ‘balance’ that is, I believe, characteristic of the
Great Lady from Skye. Life, if we follow
her line of thinking, has to be seen as the strands of the rope, interweaving
sadness and happiness, weakness and strength, hope and despair, and that is
what continues to make Màiri’s songs attractive and relevant today.
Conclusion
Looking back across the years that I have known Màiri Mhòr’s
songs and reflected on their significance, I find that they impress me with the
range of perspectives which they offer.
As I have tried to show, they contain evidence, emotion and
experience. They are about life itself,
and one of the ideas that I would like to explore more fully, if I have time
and energy in the days ahead, is the possibility that Màiri Mhòr’s verse, in
its entirety, is a form of autobiography, chronicling incidents, events,
processes, friends, enemies, good days and bad days, hope and despair, darkness
and light. We reflected at an earlier
stage of this talk on how untidy life is, and how it is beset by challenges of
all kinds. Màiri Mhòr knew that, and she
tried to make sense of her own life, by pouring her thoughts into song and
verse. The product, so to speak, was
uneven, with many peaks and troughs, but the intellect was sound, the heart was
strong and the intention sincere. The
verse form helped to provide a ‘mould’ for Màiri’s mind, and overall it brought
order into a disordered life. Perhaps
her song does that for some of us still, and it may well be that we bring
ourselves to some sort of order by identifying with the experience of the Great
Lady from Skye.
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