“The bathroom has sprung a leak. And so have I. I’m up to my oxters in domestic catastrophe. Fifty pounds would do it.”
The following week she tries again. The faulty plumbing isn’t mentioned. Now the problem is a broken bedroom window.
“Twenty pounds is all I ask. Don’t tell me you can’t afford it. Your Flooer is so dreadfully cold at night and without a poet to warm her she shivers and wastes away.”
Four days later, presumably having received a negative response from McWatt, she abandons any pretence.
“I’m broke and I’m thirsty and I need a drink. Buddy, can you spare a dime?”
By 1986 she was in hospital again and her letters refer to his frequent visits to the city. “Back in Auld Reekie, making a stir, I see,” she wrote in May. “Saw you on the telly in the patients’ day room. You’ve moved onwards and upwards and you’ve clearly no time for old muckers, let alone makars, these days. But I’m pleased for you, Griogal Criodhe. Honest I am. I hope you beat the bastards.”
The three-and-a-half-year campaign against Sapphire Holdings, from 1985 to 1988, now cited as an inspirational forerunner of successful community action and environmental lobbying, was said to have been launched by Grigor McWatt’s column in the Auchwinnie Pibroch in January 1986. His call to arms was picked up by the Scotsman, then by all the Scottish papers before the London press got in on the act. “SAPPHIRE FACES A WHISKY GALORE! UPRISING” recorded The Times. “RECLUSIVE ISLAND BARD TAKES ON SAPPHIRE” was the Guardian headline, while “THE BATTLE OF BRIGADOON” was the Daily Telegraph’s take on the story.
By the time the officially constituted Fascaray Preservation Society (secretary: Izzy Wallop) had amassed sufficient funds, some diverted from the island’s Residents’ Association (secretary: Izzy Wallop), to print posters, flyers and a small booklet of photographs of the island, arrange transport and accommodation and hire the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh, all the TV networks were in the city to film McWatt’s speech. The footage shows him transfigured by rage, his hair a silver starburst, jabbing his finger towards the audience.
“Our wee hill, Beinn Mammor, has been so long above the sea it makes johnny-come-latelies of the Alps,” McWatt thundered. “And these avaricious Sassenachs want to reduce Beinn Mammor to dust, simply to line their bulging pockets. They value Mammon above Mammor.”
Despite the island’s now-unanimous support for the Fascaray Preservation Society, it was not an entirely harmonious forum. How could it be? There were serious divisions over presentation and aims—Izzy Wallop and the Balnasaig Seekers attempted to push through a motion banning the traditional guga hunt—and in 1987 McWatt threatened to resign after the Seekers invited a reporter and photographer from a Sunday supplement to attend a weekend vigil at the foot of Beinn Mammor, “with sacred drumming, spirit channelling and vegan food.” The resulting article, with references to “the reclusive Bard of Fascaray” and “his famous pop song,” was not sympathetic.
Deputations of indigenous MacDonalds, McKinnons and Campbells eventually persuaded McWatt to continue his association with the society but there was another flashpoint the following year when a short documentary for a TV news programme about the Sapphire campaign was screened. McWatt had agreed, reluctantly, to be interviewed on condition that filming would be brief and the documentary would focus on the Fascaray Preservation Society and its aims, rather than on him. The journalist and cameraman were duly swift and respectful but when the edited film was broadcast in May 1988, McWatt was incensed; the backing track to the film was provided by an aural collage of cover versions of “Hame tae Fascaray,” including the recent spoof recording, with manic accordion and rapping vocals, by a Dundonian punk band.
A Granite Ballad—The Reimagining of Grigor McWatt, Mhairi McPhail ( Thackeray College Press, 2016)
A Jaikit
Ah made ma sang a jaikit,
Happed wi browstary
Oot o auld yairns
Frae fit tae gizzern;
But the gowks claucht it,
Wuir it in the warld’s een,
As if they’d wrocht it.
Sang, let them hae it.
Tae hell wi it,
Ah’d raither gang naikit.
—Grigor McWatt, efter W. B. Yeats, 1988*
* * *
* Warld in a Gless: The Collected Varse of Grigor McWatt, Smeddum Beuks, 1992.
In “Frae Mambeag Brae,” in the Auchwinnie Pibroch of 10 June 1988,* McWatt grimly reflected on the fact that Auchwinnie Council, backed by Westminster, continued to stand firmly behind Sapphire’s plan. For the first time, he seemed to accept defeat.
Our many failures have defined us as much as our victories. All good Scots bairns know the story of William Wallace and his Davidean victory over the English Goliath at Stirling in 1297. Fewer Scots know of Fascaray’s part in the battle in which three of its sons—Andrew and Grigor McWatt and Robert McDonald—formed part of the schiltron, circle of bowmen, that left five thousand English soldiers dead at Stirling Bridge. Wallace’s defeat by the Sassenachs at Falkirk the following year and the death in that battle of our Fascaradian forebears does not detract from their heroic status.
The valiant struggle which ended in Wallace’s torture and execution in London in 1305 was not in vain. Nine years later, in 1314, under the stewardship of Robert the Bruce, the Scots army decisively defeated the English at Bannockburn and settled the question of self-determination for four centuries.
Despite many setbacks, political, economic and cultural, the spirit of Wallace and Bruce is alive today—even here in our wee northern fastness of Fascaray, where the continuing struggle for liberty and dignity goes on. We may have lost the battle but the war continues. My hope is this: that in a quarter of a century’s time, when we celebrate the seven hundredth anniversary of Bannockburn, it will be with our heads held high as citizens of an island owned by its people and as part of an independent sovereign nation once again.
The following month, in a surprise move, the Westminster government bowed to the pressure of publicity and launched a public inquiry into the Sapphire plan, to which McWatt was invited to submit his arguments. International figures—ecologists, academics, a pop group from Glasgow with a reputation for political activism and a Hollywood actor who claimed a Fascaradian connection (his stepfather’s great-grandmother was a MacQuitt)—were recruited to the cause. In propaganda terms alone Sapphire, represented by a City lawyer spokesman in a charcoal suit, “a pinstriped popinjay” according to McWatt, could not compete.
Finally, after close questioning by a journalist from the Auchwinnie Pibroch, the managing director of Sapphire revealed that one of the longer-term plans for the “Mammor hole” would be as an international dump for nuclear waste, and any remaining local support for the superquarry drained away. As McWatt wrote: “If the arguments for the superquarry were purely economic—putting aside the health and welfare of Fascaradians and ignoring for the moment the island’s natural beauty and unique biodiversity—it stretches credulity to think that boatloads of high-spending tourists will flock to take their holidays on a radioactive wasteland.”
After a catastrophic drop in Sapphire’s share price, attributed to adverse press reports, the company abandoned its plans for the island in August 1988. Once more, Fascaray was up for sale.
A Granite Ballad—The Reimagining of Grigor McWatt, Mhairi McPhail (Thackeray College Press, 2016)
* * *
* Reprinted in Wittins: Mair Selected Columns and Essays of Grigor McWatt, Stravaigin Press, 2011.
Nae Waffin but Drounin
Naebdy heard her, the deid quine,
But still she ligged, greetin:
Ah wis muckle faurer oot than you thocht,
An nae waffin but drounin.
Puir lass, she aye loued daffin,
An nou she’s deid.
It maun hae bin tae cauld for her her hert gave oot,
They said.
Och, naw, naw, naw, it wis too cauld aye
(Still the deid wan ligged greetin)
Ah wiz ower faurer oot aw ma days,
An nae waffin but drounin.
—Grigor McWatt, efter Stevie Smith, 1988*
* * *
* Teuchter’s Chapbook, Smeddum Beuks, 1998.
In Lilias’s last letter to McWatt, written in an erratic hand with many crossings-out and arrowed additions, she congratulates him on defeating Sapphire—“you were always good at routing the enemy, as I know only too well”—and signs off with a couplet, a wry translation of the golden lads and lasses/chimney sweepers song from Cymbeline:
Gowden loons an quines nae doot,
As aw lum-scutchers come tae soot.
Aye, Lilias
We’ll never know whether she received his reply, sent to her hospital ward three days later.
Dinnae Gang Saft*
Dinnae gang saft intae thon guid nicht,
Auld age maun scaum an feuch at dit o day;
Feuch, feuch forenenst the dwynin o the licht.
Tho cannie fowk at tail-end ken the mirk is richt,
Acause their wirds had fowed nae fire-flaucht they
Dinnae gang saft intae thon guid nicht.
Gurly loons wha claucht an crood the sun in flicht,
An leirn, ahint, they maned it on its airt,
Dinnae gang saft intae thon guid nicht.
And you, oor pal, upby your dowie hicht,
Winze, fair faw us wi your rammish hert,
Dinnae gang saft intae thon guid nicht
Feuch, feuch forenenst the dwynin o the licht.
The next day, while Fascaray was still celebrating its victory over Sapphire, Lilias Hogg, the Flooer o Rose Street and Muse o Menzies’, whose youthful charm had bewitched and inspired a generation of poets, was dead, aged forty-seven, of bronchial pneumonia exacerbated by cirrhosis of the liver.
A Granite Ballad—The Reimagining of Grigor McWatt, Mhairi McPhail (Thackeray College Press, 2016)
* * *
* Grigor McWatt, efter Dylan Thomas, 1988. Teuchter’s Chapbook, Smeddum Beuks, 1998.
2 December 2014
It was drugs, not drink, that did for my own coterie. First there was Hal and then there was Pascal, born in the indecently recent year of 1987, long after flower power had shrivelled in the icy blast of seventies realpolitik. Yet Pascal saw himself, spiritually speaking—and there was way too much spiritual speaking from him—as a child of the sixties.
Surely anyone who’s ever popped a party Quaalude knows that recreational drugs aren’t necessarily a gateway to enlightenment. Peace and love? The stoned hippies may have been stardust and golden but ungilded soccer hooligans now smoked weed to prep for mass brawls.
The legacy of the surviving soixantes huitards was expressed in that excruciating catchphrase: “Let it all hang out.” “No! No,” I feel increasingly, “put it away! No one wants to see it.”
In this respect, as Marco liked to needle me when our relationship disintegrated, I’m more Scots than North American. I would retaliate: “Bigots might attribute your poor time-keeping and loud voice to your Italian heritage but I don’t deal in cheap national stereotypes.” When I first knew him I marvelled at his emotional expressiveness—I’d never known a heterosexual man who wanted to talk about a relationship as a work in progress that could be tweaked and recalibrated on the move—but I never had him down as a Woodstock warrior. Then again, I never reckoned on the intervention of Karmic Kate.
Now Marco’s out of my life, there’s no need to be defensive. I can face it and finally come out: give me Caledonia over California any day. I admire dourness and the stiff upper lip, favour the Protestant work ethic over the pagan shirk ethic, and I’m coming round to the case for dutiful repression over self-pleasing self-expression. Yes, I’m uptight and proud. It was the sixties that gave moral authority to appetite and encouraged the view that passion and impulse are nobler than drab old rationality, that every itch must be scratched, that at the merest hint of boredom we must jettison existing relationships and move on to the next. It’s bad enough that we do this to each other, but what are we doing to our children?
—
After a week of unexpressed terror, my blood tests came back. We—Marco, Agnes and I—were in the clear. With that good news it should have been easy to start over, take another tumble in the Super Kingsize, forgive past misdemeanours, get reacquainted. It would have made Agnes happy. I had to spoil it though. I had to tell the truth.
I knew that Marco would be hurt to hear details of my affair—though he had no right to be. I also thought he might be jealous—again, that prerogative was surely mine. I thought he might share my concern and relief about the blood tests. But no. He was outraged.
“A kid? A dumb junkie kid? What the hell were you thinking? Was that your idea of revenge? Were you trying to get us killed?”
Hers was a small, hurried funeral held in a pitiless rainstorm. Of the old Menzies’ crowd, only Willie McCracken attended. McWatt chose to stay in Fascaray for the funeral of Tam Macpherson, who had died, aged eighty-six, in his sleep at Balnasaig Farm. From Edinburgh, McCracken wrote to McWatt that evening giving him an account of the day’s sad event. Lilias’s surviving relatives—sister Dolina, her husband and son, and an elderly cousin from Berwick—hung their heads, dry-eyed throughout the service in Liberton Kirk, “conducted by a minister who had clearly never met Lilias—all that empty talk about resurrection and eternal reward—and wouldn’t have approved of her if he had.” Lilias Hogg was buried in a plot next to her parents; “reunited at last,” wrote McCracken, “how she would have hated that!”, within sight of the Braid Hills—“at least she could turn her back on her parents and gaze on the hills.” There were no speeches; no wake or purvey and no drinks for the mourners either. “The final indignity. Lilias would have hated that too,” wrote McCracken.
From Calasay, McWatt arranged delivery of a wreath of lilies and wrote a valedictory poem.
Elegy fur Lilias*
Her quinie’s bluim wis but a dowie cranreuch,
Her foy o joy an ashet pan o pain,
Her crop o barley but a midden hauch,
An aw her guid wis vauntie howp o gain.
The day’s awa, an yet she keeked nae sun.
An nou she pechd, an nou her pech is done.
She socht release, and foun it in the drink,
She leukt for loue an airt oot anely scorn,
She trod the yird an ceilidhd tae the brink,
An nou she dies, and nou she wis but born.
Her gless wis fu, and nou her gless is drunk,
An nou she lives, and nou her sun is sunk.
His poems, rueful but curiously detached, are the only testimony we have of Grigor McWatt’s response to the death of Lilias Hogg. But, given the couple’s shared history, he would have been a rare, cold man, far along the spectrum as psychologists would say, if her sad end didn’t stir up bereavement’s usual anguished aftermath—guilt, self-reproach and the hopeless yearning for another chance to start over and get it right.
A Granite Ballad—The Reimagining of Grigor McWatt, Mhairi McPhail (Thackeray College Press, 2016)
* * *
* Grigor McWatt, efter Chidiock Tichborne, 1988. Teuchter’s Chapbook, Smeddum Beuks, 1998.
The island was in limbo for six months, after Sapphire’s defeat in 1988, as Fascaray’s fate was haggled over in the auction houses of London. Limbo was not a bad place to be. There was no one to check the poaching, no one pressing for the month’s rent and the feudal dues. It was a fertile time for Grigor McWatt’s work too. He retreated to Calasay, to the Compendium and his “reimagined” poetry, content to live up to his reputation as a recluse. In the Auchwinnie Pibroch in October that year he wrote:
As readers of this column know, I have on occasion taken issue with the English tax collector Robert Burns. His whimsical bent gives me, as my friends at the howff like to say, the dry boak. But he did get a few things right, among them t
he fact that fame, celebrity, whatever you like to call it, is the most bogus of achievements.
The “tinsel show” of false regard and the “ribband, star” of mob worship demean the famous and the fan alike. To be “recognised” by unlettered schoolchildren and housewives is an excruciating humiliation. To be pointed at and stopped in the street by strangers is an affront and an intrusion. The letters—some of the begging variety—are an irritation to me and a burden to our long-serving postie.
Fame, so often won for the mildest of accomplishments, is a curse. In my case, a life of quiet toil in the service of Scots poetry goes unacknowledged by the general, but a simple song, cast long ago in a few bevvied minutes in my local hostelry, has doomed me to exist in the scorching heat and glare of public renown. If I could unwrite it I would.
My island home, I would like to tell my unasked-for admirers, is not for me a dull way station, a temporary halt on the journey to mass adulation and a busy social life. I am not here because I have somehow lost my way en route to the abundant pleasures of the metropolis. I am here because I choose to be alone.
Without an owner, corporate or private, Finnverinnity House was decaying further and its disintegration was, on a magnified scale, surpassing that of the island’s crofts and cottages. Fascaradians were used to applying corrugated-iron patches to the leaking roofs of their former blackhouses and polythene sheets to cracked windows. Who was going to perform that service for the Big House, whose roof tiles were disappearing at a shocking rate?
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