And there are grandchildren, and perhaps even now their children, out there in America who know nothing of this. After a while the morning sun becomes a memory and places you knew, sometimes reluctantly, as a child become indistinct and hazy. You remember a wall somewhere and how the moss grew on the cornerstone but can’t remember if there was a gate, and whether the stile that led up to the ash tree with the swing was painted green or blue. Other things replace memory and that grassy view towards the coral beach becomes overlaid with more recent images: do you remember how fast the cable cars in San Francisco moved when going downhill, and the taste of those fresh shrimps we ate that time in the Canaries? And you hear things, told by someone who was there, but it’s like a far away sound, like vaguely watching a film while having a conversation with someone else.
Donald sometimes told of such things but they seemed to his children like a wooden story, a jigsaw for old people.
I think often of the girl and the boy at the window, and how she said one thing and meant another, and how he heard one thing and understood another. The love we had was also spoken through the thin distance of a window to someone inches away.
I too will now set the table, open the window, and light the fire.
Some Other Books published by LUATH PRESS
Archie and the North Wind
Angus Peter Campbell
ISBN 978-1906817-38-1 PBK £8.99
The old story has it that Archie, tired of the north wind, sought to extinguish it.
Archie genuinely believes the old legends he was told as a child. Growing up on a small island off the Scottish coast and sheltered from the rest of the world, despite all the knowledge he gains as an adult, he still believes in the underlying truth of these stories. To escape his mundane life, Archie leaves home to find the hole where the North Wind originates, to stop it blowing so harshly in winter.
Funny, original and very moving, Archie and the North Wind demonstrates the raw power of storytelling.
The tale is complex, but told in confident style. Although every page is marked with some unquiet reflection, these are off-set by amusing observations which give the novel a sparkle. SCOTTISH REVIEW OF BOOKS
The Guga Stone
Donald S Murray with illustrations by Douglas Robertson
ISBN 978-908373-74-8 HBK £12.99
Place one guga [almost fully grown gannet chick] and one stone in a pan of water and boil.
Once you can pierce the stone with a fork, the guga is ready for eating…
Meet Calum. In 1930, the last remaining St Kildans evacuated their isolated outpost 100 miles off the west coast of Scotland. Calum returns a few years later, alone and troubled, the sole guardian of the islanders’ abandoned homes. Haunted by the memories that linger there, he begins to relive the experiences of residents long past.
Acrobats, airmen, cormorants, cragsmen and angels leap, climb, shimmer and swoop through the pages of The Guga Stone. With subtle humour, Donald S Murray mixes mythology, fiction and history to recreate St Kilda’s tales and legends for our time.
If anyone deserves to be considered a classic writer, Donald S. Murray does. CHAPMAN
He writes with an inherent understanding of Highland culture, language and way of life. THE HERALD on The Guga Hunters
Tall Tales from an Island
Peter Macnab
ISBN 978-0-946487-07-3 PBK £8.99
Peter Macnab was reared on Mull, as was his father, and his grandfather before him, He heard many of these tales as a lad, and others he has listened to in later years. Although collected on Mull, these tales could have come from any one of the Hebridean islands. They are timeless and universal, and they are the tales still told round the fireside when the visitors have all gone home. There are unforgettable characters like Do’l Gorm, and philosophical roadman, and Calum nan Croig, the Gaelic storyteller whose highly developed art of convincing exaggeration mesmerised his listeners. There is a headless horseman, and a whole coven of witches. Heroes, fools, lairds, herdsmen, lovers and liars, dead men and live cats all have a place in this entrancing collection.
Da Happie Laand
Robert Alan Jamieson
ISBN 978-1906817-86-2 PBK £9.99
In the summer of the year of the Millennium, a barefoot stranger comes to the door of the manse for help. But three days later he disappears without trace, leaving a bundle of papers behind.
Da Happie Laand weaves the old minister’s attempt to make sense of the mysteries left behind by his ‘lost sheep’ – the strange tale of a search for his missing father at midsummer – with an older story relating the fate of a Zetlandic community across the centuries, the tales of those people who emigrated to New Zetland in the South Pacific, and those who stayed behind.
Jamieson’s strange masterpiece Da Happie Laand haunts dreams and waking hours, as it takes my adopted home of Shetland, twisting it and the archipelago’s history into the most disturbing, amazing, slyly funny shapes. TOM MORTON, THE SUNDAY HERALD
Details of these and other books published by Luath Press can be found at:
www.luath.co.uk
Luath Press Limited
committed to publishing well written books worth reading
LUATH PRESS takes its name from Robert Burns, whose little collie Luath (Gael., swift or nimble) tripped up Jean Armour at a wedding and gave him the chance to speak to the woman who was to be his wife and the abiding love of his life. Burns called one of ‘The Twa Dogs’ Luath after Cuchullin’s hunting dog in Ossian’s Fingal. Luath Press was established in 1981 in the heart of Burns country, and is now based a few steps up the road from Burns’ first lodgings on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile.
Luath offers you distinctive writing with a hint of unexpected pleasures.
Most bookshops in the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and parts of Europe either carry our books in stock or can order them for you.
To order direct from us, please send a £sterling cheque, postal order, international money order or your credit card details (number, address of cardholder and expiry date) to us at the address below. Please add post and packing as follows: UK – £1.00 per delivery address; overseas surface mail – £2.50 per delivery address; overseas airmail – £3.50 for the first book to each delivery address, plus £1.00 for each additional book by airmail to the same address. If your order is a gift, we will happily enclose your card or message at no extra charge.
Luath Press Limited
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The Royal Mile
Edinburgh EH1 2ND
Scotland
Telephone: 0131 225 4326 (24 hours)
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email: [email protected]
Website: www.luath.co.uk
The Girl on the Ferryboat Page 18
