An Comunn Gàidhealach Publications > Sruth > Volume 2 > No. 59, 26 June 1969

Eight
Sruth, Di-ardaoin, 26 latha de’n Og-mhios 19691
‘CRAGGAN CULTURE’
When John Murray won first by NORMAN MACDONALD inthemiddlc
prize in the BBC competition J ot last century,
for Gaelic short stories with his Indeed, some Gaels may be life, if I read him aright, is pre- were practical men of their N°w at last, as Mr Maclean
entry “ Briseadh na Cloiche,” guilty of actually propagating cisely one of the things that time, rather than impractical 50 says’ we 3X6 catc"in|
a Scottish newspaper stated that this narrow and materialistic John Murray is attacking in dreamers and seekers like the ^PL ilut: matching up on what.
- • ■ The tasteless and uniform west-
the theme of the winning story judgement. In an article in last his story. uuyuatu uitu uwn ., f >
was the final emergence of the year’s Eilean a Fhraoich, Ian An Oxford graduate to whom gods and myths and literature ern 1 ea 0 e £<?° , 1 e‘
Lewis crofter from the Stone jvi. Maclean appears to go along I showed the Eilean a Fhraoich upon the peoples they con- 1S,11: air i° ^ 1 c owest ^
Age. with it. He quotes, with appar- article was shocked to the core quered. They created material ° the^con^half0 of the
This is not merely a journal- ent approval, from a treatise to read about the backward things, that one can see and feel . . rpnriirvp 0r ,
istic over-simplification, it is called “ The Hebrides—A Cul- Barvas people and their rude and touch. Beautiful, near- , , V p ,
simply not true. “ Briseadh na tural Backwater,” by an on- craggans. She knows very little perfect objects, that demand ? s ? • . • ,
Cloiche” concerns itself with, named writer, “If we had visited about this part of the world but little imagination from us to ^\0 mat^er> Manv oeocle
among other things, the tensions Lewis even fifty years ago (say quickly put her finger on the appreciate them. The buildings consjder mind to be suo-
within a marriage and with one 1890), we should have been able weakness in the argument that and sculptures are there to this er-or ^ matter not icast sorj^
man’s final rebellion against the to study the life and manners “ culture ” can be judged by its day, right in front of our eyes ^ the of the H- h_
cult of “ keeping up with the of a Celtic-speaking race craggans alone. “ It is not fair and we are moved by them and jands and jslands g
Joneses.” It is a story for our emerging from the same state of to judge, simply by the arte- we admire those who made Yet the human souj. craves
times and for all places within culture as the Celtic people of facts,” she said. And, of course, them. But the dreamer, on the for an ouiter manifestatjon of
the “affluent society ” and not the Pre-Roman Iron Age in she was right. The English sys- other hand, takes his creations some kind And black houses
just for the Islands. The un- Wessex.” At least, he gives us tern of education had told her with him to the grave. And
breakable stone symbolises the the Iron Age! nothing about conditions in the because he did not realize them
blind, unyielding sterility of He also quotes from Dr Islands in the middle of last outwardly, in tangible form, look at It requires
century. (Nor would the Scot- people refuse to believe that he amouM of visio4n t0 fit froni
tish system of education, for made them at all. And the the cont lation of humble
that matter.) The poverty and Celts were—and are—dreamers c,„£ ,, ,v
land-hunger that reduced the par excellence,
people to eating shellfish from
Celts. They imposed their own
... i j j . and memorial cairns, it has to
nothing about conditions m the because lie did not realize them be admitted3 are not m.Jth t0
symbols such as these. And it
. was not entirely the Gael’s
- - - , Perhaps it is right to take fauitj jf be now appears to have
the shore were unwnown to her. the Celt to task for his failure produced so few enduring
A Lewis village today
OBAIR AN DEALAIN
Tha moran de na bailtean ann
an Uibhist-a-Tuath a nis air
solus an dealain fhaighinn. Tha
an luchd oibre trang an
Truimisgearraidh agus aim am
Beamaraigh na Hearadh, agus
tha e coltach gum bi an solus
aig muinntir nan ceamaidhean
sin a’s t-Fhoghar.
But she instinctively knew there to project much of his things. He could not help k, if
is more to a people’s way of life inner vision into the outer his inner-directed vision was
than the material bits and material world. Perhaps not. completely ill-suited to the
pieces they left behind them. His poetry, his myths, his cruef environmental situation in
No doubt there is some excuse music and the stories of his wbjcb be found himself, par-
for the over-emphasis on mate- gods were passed on by word ticularly during the last 250
rial comfort and possessions of mouth. A way of life based years
which now seems to be endemic upon imagination and oral But d we tbjnk we can deny
in the Islands; a reaction transmission is a very fragile 0ur apparently humble past, and
against the grindmg poverty of thing and that of the Celts al- ;mpr()ve our way of life to our
our forebears. But to write our most expired at the edge of complete satisfaction, using onlv
ancestors off as having been Europe during the Dark Ages, bungalows, deep freezers and
poor in spirit and imagination, Later on, when other peoples, an alien education, we will dis-
simply because they were poor nearer the centre, were stirring cover t00 latej tbat we have
in the most material sense is an from this long sleep, woken by thrown our “culture” away with
insult to them and a travesty of the Renaissance, the Gaels were the craggans
the truth. A betrayal in fact, left behind, barred from the ~
Are the children of today grow- new truths by language and dis¬
ing up contemptuous of the way tance. And before the new ex-
of life from which they spring? plosive ideas could penetrate to
Do they also accept that their them, there arrived instead,
great grandparents lived in the brutal men, dedicated to the
Stone Age? And whose fault is destruction of what they did
materialistic thinking every- Arthur Mitchell, a professor of it, if they do? not understand. While the rest
where The stone may represent ancient history, who said in the The Celts were a nomadic of Europe surged forward, the
something else too, something 1870’s, when speaking about people who travelled from the Gaelic outposts were plunged
that has been lost sight of, now craggans made at Barvas from centre of Europe to its very even deeper into the dark. The
that we don’t have to struggle local clay, “The rudest pottery edge and eventually beyond it, process lasted 200 years and
for a living, something eternal, ever discovered among the tp leaven the lump of dvilisa-
even spiritual. Is John Murray relics of the Stone Age is no tion in the new world. In Ire-
saying that the new gods are the ruder than this and no savages land and west Scotland, their
Island bungalows, with their now in the world are known to way of life absorbed that of the
three piece suites, wall to wall make pottery of such a coarse original inhabitants and later
carpets and television sets ? character.” Dr Mitchell’s use of stiU, tenaciously withstood for
Of course, these bungalows the word “ savages ” may be a 200 years the impact of the
that have taken the place of the Freudian slip that gives us a powerful — and materialistic —
traditional black houses are an clue to his general approach and Norsemen,
improvement from the point of attitude to the people of Lewis. European literature—especi-
view of modem ideas of com- It might have been more re- ady English literature—would
fort and convenience. And it is warding—and more honest— not be what it is today, without
natural that women should for Dr Mitchell to inquire into the inflluence of the powerful
seek to fill them with the latest the dire poverty that precluded Celtic romantic imaginaton.
furniture and equipment. But the purchase of a potter’s wheel. They produced much poetry
to imply that the old black Mr Maclean concludes his and music—they had a definite
house and what it represented article by saying that what he bias towards those pursuits that
as a way of life was all bad, calls “ the awesome cultural call upon imagination rather
and the new bungalow all good, gap ” has now been bridged in than practicality. They have
is a gross distortion of all that little more than a icentury and left nothing of note behind in
the word “culture” really repre- that our standards now challenge the field of the plastic arts—-no
sents. And the complacent comparison with those in any great sculpture, no beautiful
acceptance of the published part of the United Kingdom, buildings. They were too inter¬
statement that Lewis crofters The great grandchildren of Dr ested in things of the mind and
were in the Stone Age a few Mitchell’s “ savages ” are now they were often on the move,
generations ago, seems to sug- enjoying running water, electri- The Greeks and Romans, on
gest that many Gaels also city and television, working as the other hand, were basically
accept this point of view. A view air hostesses, studying Ceramics, settled peoples, who intended
thrust upon them from outside Here again, we have the com- to remain for centuries in the
and accepted by them, as they plete acceptance of material pro- same places. They were very
have accepted so many other gress as the only criterion of good with their hands, they had
insults to their way of life in the “ cultural ” development. This much time and leisure in which
past. one-eyed attitude to a way of to build and to sculpt. They
Remains of a broch