Hame

by Annalena McAfee

  A Fareweel

  Wi aw ma wull, bit sair agin ma hert,

  We twa noo pert.

  Ma Cushie Doo,

  Oor solace is, the dowie road rins true.

  It needs nae ert,

  Wi fent, avertet fit

  An greetin ee,

  Alang oor contrair paths tae pechin flee.

  Awa you Sooth, an Ah’ll gang Nor.

  We wullna say

  There’s onie howp the day.

  Bit aw, ma braw,

  When greetin’s ower,

  An bubblin disnae blur oor ees,

  Tae see the heather bloom neath gloamin skies,

  Mebbe we micht

  Gar fu circle o oor unco exile,

  Mak bricht day oot o derkest nicht,

  An meet agin upby oor blisset isle.

  —Grigor McWatt, efter Coventry Patmore, 2012*

  * * *

  * That’s Me Awa, Smeddum Beuks, 2013.

  27 December 2014

  I texted Jamie a picture of the box last night and he and Niall arrive this morning from the mainland.

  “It’s too soon to say what it is, exactly,” Jamie says, turning the box carefully in his hands. “But I think this could be really big.”

  We go with them up to Calasay on the quad bikes and he pokes around the cliff edge with a small hand tool.

  “I don’t want to disturb the site any more,” he says. “We need to get a proper team here.”

  He and Niall secure the area with a fence and we head back to number 19. Agnes is exultant.

  “Is it treasure, maybe? Kind of like Treasure Island?”

  “Maybe,” says Niall. “Without the pirates and the parrot.”

  She shows Niall her blue flower, retrieved and pressed after her fall—Galium McWatti, McWatt’s mattress, he tells her.

  “Wow!” she says. “The poet’s flower? That’s so cool.”

  As we drink our tea, Jamie admires her collection of shells and rocks by the window, poking through them with his index finger. He pauses and lingers over the grubby fish-shaped piece of burnt wood she picked up in the cave three months ago.

  “Where did you find this?” he asks, holding it up to the light.

  “At Slochd. In Uamh a’ Chlàrsair Chaillte,” she says, pronouncing the Gaelic with impressive fluency. “The Cave of the Disappearing Harpist…”

  “You’ve got a good eye, Agnes,” he says. “This is really interesting. Could I borrow it and get it checked out?”

  The Calasay Reliquary Casket, as it has come to be known, proved to be a prime example of Insular art, its decoration—stylised animals, griffons and dog-like beasts biting their own tails, are interlaced with spirals, circles and other geometric patterns—characterised by a fusion of Pictish and Irish Celtic design with Anglo-Saxon metalwork techniques. The Latin inscription—Hic est Rufus—was a clue to its contents: a small hessian-tied bundle of eight brittle ivory shards which the monks of Calasay had believed to be the miraculous bones of St. Maolrubha.

  The casket turned out to be only part of the Fascaray Hoard, a priceless collection of early-medieval ecclesiastical metalware excavated carefully over the following two months from the site just west of Grigor McWatt’s grave by a team of archaeologists led by Jamie MacDonald.

  The prize piece was a large, richly decorated two-handled chalice of gold, silver, lead pewter and enamel on a copper-alloy stem. Around its silver bowl, the names of the apostles are engraved in a frieze below a ring of wirework panels incised with animals and birds. Next to it, MacDonald unearthed a silver plate—the “paten” on which the Eucharist would have been placed—with twelve amber studs, one for each apostle, set in brass medallions around the rim. In addition there was a large basin of hammered bronze, in which the chalice and paten must have been placed by monks before they hastily buried their sacred hoard and tried to flee the Vikings.

  The story of the Fascaray Hoard, first broken in the Auchwinnie Pibroch in March 2015, was picked up by the world’s press; reports quoted the Scottish government’s Culture Secretary, who described it as “one of the most valuable and historically significant archaeological finds of the last two hundred years, contributing priceless new insights to our understanding of life and culture in early-medieval Scotland and shedding new light on the deepest roots of our nation.”

  Some press reports the following month also carried news of the identification of another significant, and even more ancient, historical artefact. Carbon dating revealed that a small piece of charred wood, discovered in 2014 in a Fascaray cave by a nine-year-old girl sheltering from the rain, was, according to a curator at National Museums Scotland, part of the carved bridge of a lyre dating back more than 2,300 years, making it the oldest stringed instrument found in Western Europe. Its discovery proves that music, ritual and verse, which such instruments would have accompanied, played an important part in the lives of Iron Age Fascaradians. It has also led to a new understanding of the Pictish people and has rewritten the history of complex Western music, pushing back its origins by a thousand years, and demonstrating the remarkable continuity of the Celtic love of music, song and poetry.

  A Granite Ballad—The Reimagining of Grigor McWatt, Mhairi McPhail (Thackeray College Press, 2016)

  The Flane an the Sang

  Ah shot a flane intae the aire,

  An where it fell Ah didnae ken;

  It flew sae fest that human sicht,

  Couldnae follae in its flicht.

  Ah peched a sang, intae the aire,

  An where it fell Ah didnae ken,

  Fur who has sicht sae shairp an lang

  That it can keek the flicht o sang?

  Years oan Ah foon the flane intact,

  In an aik tree, an that’s a fact.

  An ma sang Ah foon again,

  In the herts o richteous men.

  —Grigor McWatt, efter Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 2000*

  * * *

  * Thoog a Poog, Smeddum Beuks, 2012.

  31 December 2014

  But first there is the ceilidh. In the end, Agnes settles on a plaid shirt, jeans and the pink cowboy boots her father bought her in Tucson.

  “Good choice,” I whisper as we walk, swaddled against the chill in our down jackets under a starlit sky past the museum, which is in darkness, past the Silver Darling, transformed, a thing of beauty, freshly painted and fully seaworthy, her red sails tightly furled, ready for her first voyage next week.

  The hall is crowded and noisy with elated chatter. The children are dressed, like Agnes, for a hoedown while most of the adults, me included, are in variations of hiking gear. My concession to style is Agnes’s glass pendant. The only kilts I can see are worn by a party of Seekers and by Reinhardt Schneider, who is also wearing a tartan bonnet trimmed with pheasant feathers.

  Niall has had the pages of Agnes’s “My Hero” project enlarged to poster size and it’s displayed on boards around the hall. She barely notices—there’s too much going on—and she slips my hand with an excited cry; she’s seen Johanna and Ailsa, who returned from Aberdeen this evening, and she runs to join them. I wave. I’ll catch up with them later.

  Niall is here with Jamie, and we move towards each other and embrace in the crush.

  Across the stage, a banner made by pupils from Auchwinnie School, reads “Wha loues the laun, awns the laun,” and under it the musicians are setting up. Jessie McIntosh, studying for her Highers at Auchwinnie Academy, is playing her great-uncle Iain’s old fiddle; Shonnie MacDonald is shouldering his great-grandfather’s treasured bagpipes and Donal MacEwan is strapping on an accordion. Between them Iqbal Shah the Shop sits cross-legged on a cushion flexing his fingers over two tabla drums. For the purposes of the evening, the musicians, who play a gentle jig to warm up, have named their ad hoc band Dùthchas.

  There is a tug at my sleeve. Agnes is back.

  “Ailsa’s papa’s getting better,” she says, shouting to be heard over the din.

  “Something else to c
elebrate,” says Niall.

  “Her mom says he’s turned a corner. Is that a metaphor?” she asks.

  I nod and stroke her hair, which she’s braided with more patience and competence than I could ever manage.

  Gordon Nesbitt stands by the bar. In the rush of events I haven’t found time to tell him the truth about the Bard of Fascaray. He waves and I walk towards him, queasy with dread. I pass Ailish, who’s whispering to the Provost of Auchwinnie, a small man wearing an outsize gold chain that would be envied by an old-school rapper. Piers Aubrey is talking to Nigel Parsons. They’re jubilant; Nigel’s recent sighting of a group of basking sharks off the island’s north-west coast has been confirmed and the sharks’ protected status means the wind farm is likely to be scrapped.

  Two journalists from the Pibroch have joined Gordon and, as I force my way through the crowd to reach them, Kenny MacLeod turns to me, bows and mimes applause, then other heads turn and there is an outbreak of clapping and cheering. I can’t shake the sense that I’m being mocked. Then I realise they are cheering not me or the museum but Agnes. News of her discovery at the Calasay cliffs has got around fast. It will be months before excavations are completed and we find out what exactly is there and what story it tells. But for now rumours of “buried treasure” add to the party euphoria.

  By the time I reach the bar, Gordon has moved towards the stage. I order a couple of sodas—Margaret serves me but refuses to take any money—and Agnes is already off with Ailsa, Oonagh, Henry and Finn, practising dance steps.

  The musicians stop their warm-up, put down their instruments and make room for Gordon on the stage. The hall falls silent as he coughs into the microphone, testing the sound. But before he can begin his speech there is a sudden loud bang—the door has blown open in a gust of wind. A latecomer has arrived, bringing with him a flurry of snow. Agnes runs to him.

  “Papa!” she shouts, burying her head in Marco’s big coat.

  He sees me and waves hesitantly. I wave back but I’ve no time to gauge my feelings because Nesbitt is speaking now, celebrating the opening of the new museum, congratulating all those involved, praising me for my “diligence and resilience” and citing Grigor McWatt, “whose art, generosity and love for the island have made this whole project possible.” The audience nods and there are scattered whoops.

  “The recent exciting archaeological find,” continues Nesbitt, “may eventually mean a shift in focus for the museum but I am confident that McWatt himself would have given his approval. Meanwhile, tonight, we celebrate this remarkable island and its people, and in particular we thank Mhairi McPhail, descendant of one of the Fascaray Five, for uprooting her life and crossing an ocean to honour the birthplace of her grandfather.”

  Now they’re all cheering. Anyone looking at me closely might mistake my flushed cheeks for modesty, or even early menopause. No one will guess that it’s a blush of guilt.

  The applause dies away and Gordon leaves the stage. As the band starts to play I steel myself and make my way towards him through the throng.

  But I’m intercepted. It’s Agnes, holding her father’s hand.

  “You can do this one too, Mom. Please?”

  Marco’s taken off his coat and I notice he’s wearing a pendant round his neck. Pale blue sea glass on a leather lace.

  “I have no idea,” I say.

  “Just follow us,” he says.

  “Don’t worry, Mom. Papa and me worked it out. He’s got a book and he looked at YouTube and we went through it on Skype. He knows all the steps.”

  Of course he does.

  The crowd disperses and reconfigures into circles of four pairs and I am swept along in the dance with everyone else. Niall takes my hand while Agnes partners Marco. Jamie and Lorna McKinnon join us with Margaret and Kenny. We bow to each other, laughing. The tune is jaunty but sedate enough for me to follow the steps, which involve skipping, weaving and partner swapping—a long way from the free-form dry humping that passed for dancing in my bachelorette years. I find myself holding hands with Marco—when was the last time we did that?—and then it is over, we move on and I am bowing once more to a gallant Niall.

  The tempo of the next dance is wilder and I move to sit it out, find Gordon Nesbitt and have my difficult conversation with him. But Agnes calls me back.

  “It’s Strip the Willow! You got to, Mom! It’s so fun!”

  The crowd divides into two long lines and we all clap as the first couple, Eck and Isa, dance towards the end of the hall linking arms and spinning everyone in turn before moving on. Then Margaret and Chic take their place. It’s chaotic but good-natured and everybody has a go; Dot is linking arms with Barry MacLeod, Gordon Nesbitt is jigging hectically with Ailish, Balnasaig Seekers are dancing with fishermen, game seniors with scampering children, Campbells with MacDonalds, MacEwans with McIntoshes and McKinnons with MacLeods. This is how I come to have the odd experience of grasping my ex-lover’s hands and revolving with him at such reckless high speed that, when I’m not panting, I’m laughing so hard that tears brim in my eyes.

  Agnes looks concerned.

  “You okay, Mom?” she mouths over the music.

  I nod.

  By the time the dance is over even the children are out of breath. The band signals a change of pace and Jessie steps forward to perform a fiddle solo as a guest singer is helped onto the stage. It is Hamish McIntosh, Jessie’s grandfather, now eighty-four, frail and stooped, here to perform the song he first sang in the Finnverinnity Inn as a young boy seven decades ago. He adjusts the microphone with trembling hands and as he starts to sing his voice is light and wavers on the higher notes.

  Blaw winds,

  An dae your warst!

  Stormy seas rise up!

  But the purity of pitch is still there and as we watch him a curious thing happens; his voice gathers strength, he stands more erect and he seems to grow younger, summoning the old passion and pride of a group of men and women brought together by a sense of injustice.

  Spite lashin rain

  An England’s shame,

  We’re comin hame.

  And now the chorus. Agnes looks up at her father, then at me.

  “You know the words, right?” she says, reaching for our hands. “Hame? It’s kind of a metaphor?”

  We take a breath and then, with every Fascaradian in the hall—old-timers, incomers, Scots, Gallgaels, settlers and visitors—we lift our voices to join in.

  Hee-ra-haw, boys,

  We’re awa, boys,

  Gangin hame

  Tae Fascaray.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to Alma McTavish, my scrupulous editor at Thackeray College Press, Pennsylvania, and to my colleagues at the Morgan Library and Museum, New York, who generously granted me leave of absence to finish this book, which would not have existed without the backing of the Fascaray Trust and Auchwinnie Regional Development and Enterprise Board.

  Thanks are also due to Sandy Balfour and Isabella Kerr of National Museums Scotland, Morag Maclennan of the National Library of Scotland and Ailish Mooney, current director of the Fascaray Hoard Museum and Grigor McWatt Study Centre. The late Jim Struan, former commando, Finnverinnity House veteran and historian of the SOE, was unfailingly generous in his response to my enquiries about Grigor McWatt’s war years.

  My biggest debts of gratitude are to the people of Fascaray—in particular Effie MacLeod, James MacDonald and Niall Kennedy—to my husband Marco Bartoli, and to our daughter Agnes, whose sweet nature and boundless curiosity illuminated a dark northern winter and helped to unearth the hidden history of that beautiful island.

  —Mhairi McPhail, New York, 22 June 2016, (A Granite Ballad—The Reimagining of Grigor McWatt, Thackeray College Press, 2016)

  HAME

  Annalena McAfee

  The questions, discussion topics, and other material that follow are intended to enhance your group’s conversation about Annalena McAfee’s Hame, an intricately woven emotional and intellectual journey into
the world of an ambitious literary scholar whose life is overtaken by a mysterious, controversial Scottish poet.

  Questions for Discussion:

  1. What was your experience of engaging with the different forms of writing—scholarly excerpts, poetry, journal entries, appendices, etc.—that comprise this novel? How did the entirety and mystery of Grigor McWatt’s identity unfold as you read these different documents?

  2. Discuss your impressions of Mhairi over the course of the novel—did they change as her personal and professional lives shifted course along the way? How did the intimacy and honesty of her journal affect your relationship with her?

  3. Mhairi describes her journal as “a public, online, real-time account of my mental and physical disintegration” (this page). What does this suggest about the expectations she has of her own voice/identity in her published work vis-à-vis how McWatt so carefully stylized and crafted his writerly persona in the Compendium and elsewhere?

  4. How does the novel explore the relationship between the past and present through written documents and archives? What about McWatt’s work and identity—including his interpretations of great poets’ works—suggest a confluence of time in art that can’t necessarily happen in life?

  5. Similarly, how does the book play with the boundaries between fact and fiction? Were there points when you believed McWatt to be real? What elements contributed to the authenticity of his account and Mhairi’s pursuit of his life?

  6. How would you describe Mhairi’s internal debate about her inability to confront her feelings head-on versus her ability to be consumed by her work? What effect does that have on the balance in the novel’s focus between her personal journals and other kinds of writing? How is her voice different when she’s writing in the first person compared with as an academic?