A Weekend in Appin

Last weekend I was lucky enough to be invited to give a paper to the Appin Historical Society on behalf of the Carmichael Watson Project. The drive up was rather eventful, with a caravan crash (luckily, nobody was hurt) a few seconds ahead of us at the Brander Pass necessitating a lengthy detour via Rannoch Moor and Glencoe. Nevertheless, we arrived at Port Appin Hall only five minutes late!

The subject of the paper was the lore and traditions of Appin which Alexander Carmichael gathered in the district during three days of intensive collecting in the late summer of 1883. Most of the paper was devoted to the wonderful material he scribbled down from the recitation of Donald MacColl (c. 1793–1886), ‘Domhnall Brocair’, the foxhunter then living at Fasnacloich up in Glen Creran. In his younger days Donald had met both Sir Walter Scott and Duncan Bàn Macintyre, Donnchadh Bàn nan Òran. He reminisced about both these literary giants to Carmichael, as well as about his own experiences during over fifty years of gamekeeping. Other stories Carmichael recorded relate to the Battle of Culloden, at which Donald’s paternal grandfather had been badly wounded and was lucky to escape with his life; to Colin Campbell of Glenure and the notorious Appin Murder; to the local hero Domhnall nan Òrd, the ‘Donald the Hammerer’ whose picaresque adventures so fascinated the youthful Walter Scott; and especially to the local MacColl burial ground Cladh Churalain, perched half-way up Beinn Churalain on the north side of Loch Creran. The ninety-year old Domhnall Brocair, clearly hale and hearty despite his great age, took Carmichael on a visit to the graveyard and its associated healing springs. One story he told particularly caught Carmichael’s imagination: the burning in the late eighteenth century of what appear to have been wooden images of saints Columba, Moluag, and the local holy man Curalan by three ‘scamps’ – sons of the gentry of the district, who all suffered divine retribution as a result.

The great thing about researching a paper on very local subjects is that you have to read the relevant manuscripts extremely closely. The field notebook in which Donald MacColl’s lore was recorded – CW120 – is horrendously difficult to read and leaps seemingly at random from subject to subject. Here I’d like to pay tribute to the transcribing abilities of our erstwhile colleague Dr Andrew Wiseman and the tireless and patient cataloguing of Kirsty Stewart.

The great thing about giving a paper on very local subjects is the feedback – and also corrections! – I always receive from people much more knowledgeable about the area than I am myself. I’d like to thank all those who attended, from Appin and further afield (including Lismore, Ardchattan, Oban, Taynuilt, Morvern, and the Isle of Luing) who kindly took the trouble to chat to me, to enlighten me, and to put me right! Especial thanks to Ronald and Sylvia Laing of the Appin Historical Society for their generous hospitality, and also for showing me two photographs of yet another ‘Carmichael informant’ – Janet MacColl the dairymaid, whom Carmichael met when hiking to Cladh Churalain with Domhnall Brocair:

‘Mòran taing a Chrìosdaidh chneasda’ said [supra: old] Seonaid Nic Colla, Glasdruim, when I helped her up the bank. [CW120/90; see also CW120/178]

Ronnie also told me the intriguing fact that the photographer Erskine Beveridge was taking landscape photographs in Lismore and Appin at exactly the same time as Carmichael was collecting lore there – surely they must at least have met?

Saturday morning was spent rambling in Carmichael’s footsteps up through scrub birch, old oak, and bracken to reach (thanks, GPS!) the graveyard of Cladh Churalain. Despite a couple of soakings, we had wonderful views and thoroughly recommend this fascinating site to our readers.

Images: Cladh Churalain

“Your Gaelic intuition must be extraordinary”

Fr. Allan McDonald and Alexander Carmichael were regular correspondents from at least the mid-1890s if not earlier until the former’s lamentably early death that took place on his adopted isle of Eriskay in 1905. This interesting and important letter was written just after Fr. Allan had received and obviously absorbed a great deal of Carmina Gadelica which, after all, had been a long time in the making and to which he had been given due acknowledgement in the introduction to Carmichael's masterwork. In general terms, the letter praises the work although at one particular point it is couched in irony bordering perhaps even on the sarcastic. One wonders whether Carmichael even detected this. Fr. Allan was in a position to know for he had done a great deal of collecting himself and he knew – though perhaps he does not state this explicitly – where Carmichael had been disingenuous with his sources and had been gilding the lily.

Eriskay

Sept[ember] 20th, 1900

Dear Mr. Carmichael,

The “Ortha” arrived safely and I am very thankful for it.

The work is well done. I am not surprised now at your delay. There is nothing to cavil at and everything to admire in the finished book you put together. The notes come in so well, scattered as they are instead of being all kept for the end. They balance the book and keep the interested equally divided between the sweetness of the hymns and the variety of your own patient researches. The translation is marvellous. It is a puzzle to me how you were able to interpret what I know the reciters themselves would tell you they could not understand, and yet when I read any such piece and look at the translation I say “Yes, it must be that”.

Your Gaelic intuition must be extraordinary. I once used to think that Alasdair Mac Mh[aighsti]r Alasdair coined words impromptu to express his feelings. If it had been the case, you intuition would have interpreted.

The English translation could not be excelled.

Your vocabulary is the most interesting I ever read. It hasn’t even the fault that the man found with Johnson’s English Dictionary when he said it was good reading if it didn’t change the subject so often. Every page of your vocabulary affords only another phase of the Gaelic spirit and culture.

You have done what no other could do now. Forty years have worked havock [sic] in our traditions. You stepped in and picked up these fragments in the search, and they more than anything else that we have will prove to the world the thoroughness of the Christianity that was spread from Iona and the piety of the people whose life in its every action was but a new act of worship of God. The traditions and the spirit are nearly gone and a bombastic bluster with no high or distinct ideals is nearly all we have left.

Many a time I have said, when hearing a pretty expression of politeness of the old Christian kind: What a fine old people were here when these expressions and the like of them were the natural expressions of the heart and not a mere lip of courtesy and politeness.

You have linked us with the Christian past, the best era that the Scottish Gael ever had, and have given us something more to be proud of than broadswords and bloodshed.

I am glad your picture is in the book. It could be nowhere better framed and set then there.

With thanks and congratulations and very good wishes,

I am, dear Mr. Carmichael

Yours truly,

Allan McDonald

P.S. Kindest wishes to Mrs. Carmichael and Miss Carmichael

Reference:

Canna House Archive, Letter of Fr. Allan McDonald to Alexander Carmichael, 20 September 1900.

Image:

Fr. Allan McDonald, styled Maighstir Ailein.