The Canoe Boys

by Alastair Dunnett

  It will be wrong to assume that the emigrant has invariably been the most enterprising of those who heard the call – or felt the push – to go overseas. A dour grip of the ground, a sheer triumph of durability, kept numbers of the best Highlanders where they belonged. There are strong impulses still to be released in the Highlander who has held quietly to his Highland earth, and from whom little has so far been heard. But it will take a mighty national effort to do it now. Nothing of the sort has been tried. On the contrary, facilities are still being freely offered to emigrant recruiting agents from overseas to stump the country in the hope of netting some of the remaining handful. So, during the whole story, the erosion of the racial topsoil has been fostered. ‘There have been no emigrations to America from this parish’ writes an island minister in the Old Statistical Account. By the end of the 18th century, then, it was already news that one parish had shipped nobody. The minister was tempting fortune with his boast: there is hardly a shipload left in that parish.

  Side by side with the endless physical draining away of the stock has been the softening antiquarianism of the ‘sweet-song-and-story’ school of writing, glamourising the emergent Celt into an other-worldly creature, when he might, with more masculine handling, have grown up where he stood. This literary approach to our wretched hero has spread the belief that he is a hero indeed, and that everything the Highlander has done is right. Alas, and this isn’t true either. He has done many wrong and foolish things, and is capable of many more. Long before the welfare state was anything like a reality he had become powerfully subsidy-minded, and it will be the major effort in his share of whatever new deal may come to him to abandon this way of thought. But, as we have seen, he always brings in his autumn harvest; he finishes his job; and, under Highland conditions, these are not ordinary feats.

  As for the charge of his laziness, it must be judged in relation to the pace of life, and the object of life. One form of the charge, of which I have heard much, deals with the lethargy of the Highlander in hiring cars or boats to eager visitors anxious to spend money. But why should he hire his car or his boat, if that is not his business? I myself feel that he should, and that he misses many chances of good will, apart from the cash, in refusing. But it is conceivable that he has not the inclination. He might be as likely, on his own winter holiday to Glasgow or Edinburgh, to jump upon the running board of a passing car, waving an offensive banknote and saying. ‘Here! You might drive me round the sights of this place. Don’t worry – I’ll pay you!’

  Outside of tradition, the great quality of the Highlander on which one can count is his willingness to experiment. At present, his experiments are confined to trivia. He is a great one for gadgets. The first place Seumas and I ever had a haircut with electric clippers was in Stornoway, and that was years before we saw the things in any of the cities. Sports and pastimes are subject to crazes which sweep communities. A shinty district will go football daft for a season, and switch back to playing shinty again. I remember how tennis once felled an area, sweeping away every other game for a summer. Or it might be pole-vaulting, or golf, or bowls, or throwing the hammer.

  The one object with which the Highlander will not experiment – as yet – is his way of life. There he is warily cautious, on his guard against any slipping out of the run and pattern. The reason is plainly visible. His life till now has been a long fight for security on the land. The Crofters’ Act of 1885 gave him this security, and guaranteed to him the benefits of any improvements to his holding he might make. He has what he wanted, and he will be slow to change. His mind is of such a shape that he can see no security without a hold on the land. He has gathered this security about him, and has been in no mood to step out from the shelter – although we shall be looking later at where such a step might take him. He has felt that with the wrong step he might gain the whole modern world – and lose his own soul.

  CHAPTER 14

  THE HERRING FISHERS

  Thou seest, Lord, our empty nets,

  We cast them under Heaven’s face;

  Thou art, for what the fisher gets,

  Giver and Witness of Thy grace.

  And if it fails, we ken there should

  Be pride in our humility,

  Since we have learned of quietude

  Within the brawling of Thy sea.

  Our pleasant progress around Mallaig, on that afternoon of our arrival, was broken by an emissary who came running to tell that ‘the canoes have been damaged’. With our tail of attendants we scrambled down the lumpy beach, discovering my canoe like a fallen Roman column, her sections stricken apart from one another and the three pieces clumped on the green stones as characterless as old herring bones. Eyewitnesses were at hand to tell what had happened. In the throng of the spectators some talk had got up about the lightness of the craft, and a young man had lifted my canoe’s bow in his hands high into the air, and hitched it up and down with all the weight bearing between the two extreme points. The stress had been too much for the stranding wire which held the whole structure together; it had parted with a twang, dropping the laden canoe to the beach in bits like an unstrung parcel. The unwitting saboteur had fled amid the curses of the onlookers, speaking for us.

  There was an aspect in which our own indignation did not quite reach the level of that around us. The sight of the sundered hulk was able to remind us that such a separation might well have taken place on the late voyage. It was difficult to believe, for example, that the solid thumps with which we had skelped and wedged our way ashore at Eigg two days ago had been less than the strain of the rash demonstration which had broken the wire. One item of the trifling repair outfit which accompanied us was a new galvanised-wire replacement. We were able to assure everybody – including the lad who had done the damage, and was now lurking miserably on the fringes – that a repair job would be simple. But not, we determined, in the meantime. Enlisting an adequate supply of volunteers, we ran the canoes into the garage at the pier, and left them there.

  At this stage initiative passed out of our hands with the arrival of a small beetling boy who shouldered through the onlookers.

  ‘Are you looking for a place to camp? Come on here and I’ll show you one.’

  He led us to the east side of the bay, and into a sloping field there, behind the houses.

  ‘How will this do? You’ll get water in the burn there.’

  When he had supervised the erection of the tent, he turned to the commissariat: ‘What about some scones for your tea? – fresh scones! And you could do with some eggs! You get on with lighting the stoves. I’ll be back in a minute.’

  He was back in a minute, with a warm parcel.

  ‘Here you are! I’ll get some more in the morning. Now, what about your wet things? My mother says you’ve to give me everything that’s wet. She’ll wash them through in fresh water; otherwise you’ll never get the salt out of them.’

  The bustling morsel practically stripped us with his own hands, and bore the bundle away, with ‘Good night! I’ll bring them back first thing in the morning.’

  His name was Duncan MacDonald, one of the many of that clan who played a kindly part in our expedition. By a happy chance, he had a superb nickname, in that countryside of nicknames. It happened that his father was a professional deep-sea diver, who had in his day worked on such tasks as the building of the Forth Bridge, and the search for the Spanish treasure at Tobermory. For these exploits he was known solely by the name ‘The Diver’. But for small Duncan there was an apter label, indicating at once his energy, stature, and ancestry. They called him ‘The Wee Dooker’.

  This black-eyed youngster emerged on several occasions during our Mallaig stay to organise us with a generous but firm hand. He summarised in more than one way the impact of an outside regional influence on the Highland character, which gives the town of Mallaig its apartness in the West. It is another of these recently created places, built about the turn of the century as a railway terminal and a centre for the herring industry
. Into it have come and settled families from the east-coast fishing villages of the Moray Firth, and these truly typical easterners have mingled to make a population whose other half is of perhaps the most distinctively Celtic elements of the West Highlands. The easterners have come as coopers, herring curers, buyers and merchants, grocers and bakers. The streets resound with the Buchan dialect, and Gaelic, or the good English of the Highlands. Houses, flats, hotels, and shops have risen from the stone of the hillside, few of them attractive. But it is a place with life and an urge to be clean. Mallaig was the only place in which we had ever seen casement curtains on the windows of the tenement common stairs. Somebody pointed out to us, with pride, a pub which, in the previous summer, had been ‘the bar with the biggest takings in Scotland’. During the 1930s, in seasons when the herring were running, scores and scores of boats would lie in strings off the inner pier, each boat with her nine or ten men, and most of them from the east coast. Our own Loch Fyne men used to come here in the season.

  Saturday night in this town was a hearty wonder, with some rough drinking but rarely a rough word. It was a sight to see the convivial swaying of the boatmen heading cheerfully home in the darkness, across slippery moving gunwales and net-heaped decks, ill-lit, striding from boat to boat across the open harbour water as confidently as on stepping-stones in a shallow stream.

  Whatever the violence of the night before, Sunday morning found them to a man making for the church on the hill above. And what men! Newly-shaved, with skins the colour of their red-tanned sails; with haircuts done by the engineer; everyone of them in his blue reefer and best ganzie, with new shoes and hat. They would stand shoulder to shoulder in the pews, and from the pulpit they must have looked like the very men who built the whole religion. We went up the hill more than once to worship with those who came to be our special crew – the men of the Golden Emblem, a drifter from Gardenstown.

  Pickling for kippering.

  For one good reason and another, Mallaig held us for 17 days, so that we changed our camp-site in the sloping field more than once, to lessen the wear on the October grass. During this time the weather blew up harshly enough to keep the herring fleet in the harbour for more than half the days. We settled to a routine of writing, and were able to report on the progress of the fishing at a time when its vagaries were growing towards a pitch of national concern. Every day we were in the station at the arrival of the Glasgow train to buy a Daily Record and discover what of our production had made its way into the columns.

  We were even able to receive one or two remittances for articles, and began to feel, in a state of mind reminiscent of Tobermory, that it was pleasant to be storm-bound in Mallaig. The place had other virtues in common with Tobermory. Dances were frequent, and we went to them all. I have never seen anything like the Mallaig quadrilles. This is danced with no less precision and correctness than in Mull, but at a galloping pace. One had the impression irresistibly that some crack Cossack dancers and tumblers were at large, with pivoting thighs of steel and spikes in their boots to preserve balance. A proper impression might be conveyed by filming an athletic troupe and projecting the result at double speed. No novice dared stray near the trajectory of the experts. ‘Visitation’ and ‘Gentlemen In’ were cataclysms of rhythmic violence. The eightsome reel, regarded as an insignificant item in most Highland ballrooms, was here used as mere warming up for the major demonstrations.

  It was also danced at excessive speed – although in neat and perfect timing – so that the arm-swinging noted in other parts was here translated into a galvanic twitch which sent two grown humans round each other like the balls of a speed governor. The whole scene would have sent a West End producer mad, and waving a sheaf of contract forms. It was at the Mallaig dances, by the way, that we first saw the Palais Glide, just then imported from Yarmouth, Mallaig being the first place north of the Border to dance it. (Or so it was claimed.)

  Participation in these ploys made many friends for us, and we had a range of invitations to tea. Characters of another sort were to be encountered in other haunts. There was, for example, a plain tearoom on the pierhead which was kept by five charming sisters. We made shameless use of this place, ordering in expensive meals, spreading out our manuscripts and settling down to mornings of literary work. On the first occasion we patronised the premises we had not realised quite how plain was the fare available. It was strictly a tearoom. At this time there was only one other customer in the place, a nautical man of about middle age, and he was quietly drinking tea as we took our seats. The ladies in attendance were in the back premises, from which came an entrancing aroma, and indeed a noise, of frying steak and onions. A flushed sister emerged soon to take our orders.

  ‘We’ll have some of that,’ we said, pointing to the source of the succulence.

  ‘Sorry!’ she said, smiling with regret. ‘Only plain teas here.’

  ‘There’s nothing plain about what’s going on in there,’ we said. ‘We’ll be happy with two platefuls of that and lashings of tea and bread-and-butter.’

  ‘It’s only plain teas, I’m sorry. Bread and scones and cakes …’

  ‘We’re desperate men. Two plates of yon and –’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry!’ She was laughing ruefully. ‘That’s for our own breakfast. I can only give you –’

  ‘Plain teas indeed! Who could eat a plain. tea with that smell going about! How is it you get all this and we don’t, eh … ?’

  ‘Well, we work here …’

  ‘Let us into the back shop and we’ll work too.’

  ‘We don’t need you! There’s plenty of ourselves …’

  And that was true enough. The tearoom was filling up with sisters, and we were practically holding a mass meeting, although they were not taking it very seriously.

  ‘Listen!’ we said, making what was obviously a final appeal to common decency. ‘Just a wee plateful! A wee ring of onion, even. Eh?-No? … Well, there’s a fine thing!’ We appealed to the world at large. ‘There’s a fine thing! How is this for an example of Highland hospitality!’

  ‘Hach!’ said the tea-drinking man, smacking his two hands down on the table and rising to his feet. ‘If it’s hospitality you’re looking for, you’ve got to carry it yourself!’

  In a smooth motion he was at our side, slapping down before us two teacups which he had swept up from his own table. With a practised movement he scooped up the skirts of his big reefer and out came a bottle backwards from his hip-pocket. He dived it towards the cups; plucking the cork deftly in mid-flight. From the generous mouth gushed a glocking of liquid which looked like cold tea, but most certainly was no such thing. He stopped only when the cups were brimming, performed the same rite over a third cup, and stabled the bottle at his stern again like a bolting fox. The whole thing had taken fewer seconds than lines of type to tell.

  Now, ‘Slan!’ he said unhurriedly, and showed us the next move by example. He emerged from his cup with a kindling eye. ‘By God!’ he said, in a tone of discovery, as if the stuff were new to him. ‘That’s better than onions yet!’

  Our hospitable fellow-diner was Alastair Campbell, one of the leading citizens of the island of Soay, a small lump of croft land a mile or so from the south coast of Skye, below the Cuillin Hills. He made the passage to Mallaig at least once a week, in his role of mail-boat skipper and transporter of passengers and merchandise. Later, after we had finished our plain tea, we went to the harbour and held an inspection of his boat, the Marys. This name was one of the many engaging mysteries about our acquaintance, who revealed it to be no more than the plural of Mary, the boat having been christened after more than one. It was a smallish fishing boat of the older West Highland type, engined and converted, not too thoroughly, for the ferry run. The boat was small enough for the job, and the solitary skipper and crew man must have got many a dose of heavy weather as he went about his business. His exuberance, however, was clearly difficult to quell, and his passion to show off his island found us at once seeking a
passage with him to Soay. This fell in with his own eager plans; but the time was not ripe for him to play to the full his warm double role of host and impresario.

  ‘We’ll leave it for another month, boys. I’ll bring you over when you’re on your way back south.’

  ‘What’s wrong with this time? Take us over today! We’ll carry the canoes on board and come back in them in a few days.’

  ‘It’s too soon, though.’ He was apologetic. ‘I wouldn’t be able to look after you right. I’ve still some hay to get in.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that. We’ll help you with the hay.’

  ‘Listen, boys!’ He was almost the offended host. ‘When you come to Soay it won’t be to work!’

  For plenty of reasons we never made that journey to Soay. It would have been a lively journey and sojourn, especially if there are several others in Soay like Alastair Campbell. He came to us, enraged, one day at the pier, and launched an expert tirade at the crew of Mr Tom Sopwith’s yacht Endeavour, then sailing against the American champion in one of the fruitless British bids for the America’s Cup.