Seasons on Harris Read online

  It is, in many ways, a depiction of life on the edge: of Europe, of the Atlantic world, of economic viability, of cultural inheritance, and of the powerful English-speaking culture province, to which Gaelic is still usually seen as a strange northern anomaly. But David Yeadon’s achievement here is to show this world not as something marginal, nor as teetering on the edge of something stronger and better, but as a place central to its own existence, by definition idiosyncratic, pursuing its own way of doing things, perhaps a little quirky in its habits, not at first entirely easy to understand, but undeniably and richly itself. These are qualities becoming rare in a modern world which consistently erodes the individuality of place. Gertrude Stein’s famous remark about the tedium of Oakland, California—“There is no there there”—can be applied to increasingly wide swathes of the world we know. Harris is different. It is, above all, a there, it is full of there. It is, in fact, a place which many of us think is one of the most wonderful theres there is.

  Cottage Weaver at a Hattersley Loom

  PROLOGUE

  Dreaming of Tweed

  THAT DREAM CAME AGAIN. As it has done now on many occasions since my first visit to Harris a number of years ago.

  It’s one of those floating/flying dreams I’m told possess significant—if ambiguous—interpretations. Assuming of course that you believe in such things. Which I usually don’t. Much.

  It goes something like this: I’m way up in the northern highlands of Scotland releasing myself like a bird from the jagged storm-gashed fangs of the Cuillin Hills on the astoundingly beautiful, legend-rich Isle of Skye. I’m floating dreamily, among high cirrus feathers toward the Outer Hebrides…that wild and fragmented 130-mile-long string of islands, thirty or so westward miles from the mainland—way out in the Atlantic.

  Below me—far, far below—I can see the lines of whitecaps frothing across a treacherous current-laced channel known as The Minch. Here, so folktales tell, is the haunt of the dreaded Blue Men who plague unfortunate sailors in storm-racked gales, often sweeping them down to the deep, dark depths when they fail to answer complex riddles and rhymes while frantically trying to keep their frail crafts afloat. Mainlanders and incomers often smirk at such tales. The island fishermen do not.

  And then, slowly through a blue sea haze, an island emerges—a looming surge of mountains to the north, broken black gneiss summits and the oldest known rocks on Earth, once Everest-sized, so they say, but now worn to somnolent stumps, wrapped in cloud tatters. Aloof and proud.

  This is the island of Harris.

  With just the slightest birdlike tilt, I ease my floating body down and sweep lower over a small harbor town, nestled cozily in a rocky cleft. The barren, treeless moors sweep back inland, great swathes of olive-green, bronze, and gold marsh-grass tussocks, and deep purple carpets of heather pocked with tiny acidic peat-water lakes, or lochans, frilled by explosions of golden gorse and broom. Torn and cracked strata burst through the sodden dankness of ancient peat beds, striated with close-cut lines where chocolate-soft slices have been cut in their millions by generations of island crofters for precious winter fuel.

  I’m floating now over the domed heart of this strange island, clouds ponderously billowing over the long ocean horizon, and down the green sweep of sheep-sprinkled, wildflower-adorned machair meadowlands (a rich mix of blown sand and peaty earth) to the soaring dunes of the Atlantic coast. And then suddenly—in a masterwork of topographical trickery—appear mile after glorious mile of slow-arcing, blond-gold beaches sparkling against a Caribbean turquoise ocean with slappy wavelets easing up talcum-soft sands. Surely the last thing one expects to see in such a surly-burly landscape. And yet, here they lie, arc after golden arc, framed by bosky, grass-sheened dunes stretching southward as I move down closer to the ocean, skimming the wings of herring gulls and golden eagles, seeing my reflection flash and ripple in the slow tides.

  And then comes a long, slow curl above scattered crofting homes and the weedy humps of far older dwellings with skeletal bones of stone walls, three or more feet thick—the bold remnants of island “black houses”—along with Bronze Age burial sites, and solitary standing stones whose origins are as mysterious and mythical as the place itself.

  The broken, boulder-strewn spine of the island emerges again as I curl around its southern shore, but this time even more pugnacious and lunar in its lonely isolation. No more glorious beaches here—just tight rock-bound bays and tiny huddled homes set in clefts and cracks of shattered gneiss.

  At first all is silence. Then comes a sound—a distant clicking, clacking sound that, as I float lower, becomes a patterned clickety-clack, clickety-clack, clickety-clack. And I swoop in a shallow loop to the source of the sound—in a small tin lean-to shack at the end of a croft home. And, gently, my feet touch the soft grass by the shack and I stroll slowly to a rain-stained window and peer inside…

  And there at a rust-crusted cast-iron loom sits an elderly man, perched on an angled wooden bench, his feet rhythmically pedaling the old noisy contraption. One hand guides the weaving shuttle across the hundreds of tight warp threads; the other strokes and caresses the finely patterned cloth slowly emerging on the spool, weft by tight weft. The colors of the cloth, woven in an intricate herringbone pattern, are the colors of this wild and enigmatic land—all those bronzes, burnt golds, ochres, olive greens, and deep purples of the peat moors. And I see his hands, rock-rough and thickly veined, gene-linked to generations of crofter-weavers—these weavers of the Clo Mor, the Great Cloth, for which this strange little island is known across the whole world. The tweed—that tough, instantly recognizable tweed of Harris. The “Cloth of Kings” is familiar to us all for its “peat-reek,” its “tickle,” and its enduring character. And the man’s huge hand strokes his cloth with the familiarity of an old friend and his rheumy eyes twinkle and he is proud.

  And I am here now with him, as the sound of the loom ceases. He sighs a long sigh and I watch his hands slowly pulling a worn oilcloth over the unfinished woven tweed, tight on its spool.

  The old man stands, a little unsteadily, reaches out to a small lopsided table near the loom and picks up a local newspaper, with a prominently dramatic headline that reads:

  THE END OF AN ISLAND—IS HARRIS TWEED DOOMED?

  As I said, I have been here before.

  Anne, my wife and best friend for over thirty years, was with me that first time and it was her enthusiasm to return for a far more extended period of residence and exploration that encouraged me to undertake this intriguing odyssey. Which surely must be the fantasy of many of us—to live simply on a remote island among warmhearted people, sampling strange and wonderful foods, and sipping, in this instance, the glorious malt whiskies so beloved by the Highlanders, and the world in general for that matter.

  Despite the island’s long, hard history, its social deprivations, cruel fortunes, and fickle future, Harris still possesses a deep spirit of fortitude and fun that is enticing, moving, and zanily entertaining.

  Let me share with you some of those earlier images and experiences. Much has changed of course, and is still changing, since that time and the future of the once great hand-woven Harris Tweed cottage industry is but one crisis being faced today by the islanders—the hardy Gaelic-speaking Hearaich. But not all is yet lost. In fact there is a resolute spirit here still determined to hold on to the mutual values and shared lifeways that have made the island and the islanders so unique. And, as we shall see, even the tweed itself, and the social fabric woven through so many island traditions, may well yet experience a vital revival. A fine and stirring story may still emerge here—one of those human, uplifting, rags-to-riches, determination-will-out, transformational miracles.

  But all this will come much later in our tales, these woven threads of plight and possibility revealed in the spirit of the islanders and their stories and lives. For the moment let’s visit the Harris Anne and I first discovered together many years ago. The Harris I wrote about then that has lured us
back once again.

  There’s a Hebridean Gaelic saying: “When God made time, he made plenty of it,” and here, on the desolate summit of Clisham, at 2,620 feet the highest point on Harris, you sense the infinitely slow passage of time. This is a fine place to know the insignificance of man and wonder if this is how the Earth may have looked at the very beginning.

  The Gaelic name for this island is Na Hearadh—a derivation of the Norse words for “high land” bestowed upon this place by eighth-century Viking invaders. And it is a primeval scene here—no signs of habitation anywhere, no welcoming curls of smoke, no walls, no trees, no dainty patches of moorland flora here among the eroded stumps of archaean gneiss, breaking through the peat like old bones on an almost fleshless torso. On the wild moors of the Outer Hebrides island of Harris, I sheltered in a hollow from a sudden storm where, as they say here, “the rain comes down horizontally” with “drops as big as bull’s balls.” I was crouched among the glowering bulk of the Earth’s oldest mountains, formed more than 3 billion years ago, gouged and rounded in numerous ice ages, and sturdy enough to withstand many more.

  And then—an abrupt soft-focus, almost sensual transformation. The storm passes on, trailing its tentacles of gray cloud like a blown tornado, whirling out over the Sound of Shiant, heading for the dagger-tipped peaks of the black Cuillins on the Isle of Skye, etched across the eastern horizon. The mist and cloud, thick and clammy as hand-knitted Scottish socks, lifts; the air is suddenly sparkling, the sun warm, and far below is a scene that would seduce the most ardent admirer of tropical isles: great arcs of creamy shell-sand beaches, fringed by high dunes, and a turquoise-green ocean gently deepening to dark blue, lazily lapping on a shoreline unmarked by footprints for mile after mile on the great empty beaches of Luskentyre, Seilibost, and Scarista.

  “Aye—Harris—it’s a magic place you’re going to,” said Hector Macleod at the Ceilidh Place pub in Ullapool, a bustling port town of tiny whitewashed cottages overlooking Loch Broom on Scotland’s west coast. Hector was the elderly barman here, an enthusiastic and knowledgeable informant. “Less than three thousand people livin’ on an island but some of the kindest you’ll ever meet—not pushy mind…” He paused and then winked. “Well—they’ve a bit of the magic too. They’re Gaelic and Celtic—so what can y’expect—they’ve all got the touch of magic in ’em!”

  For years I’ve been promising myself a journey to these mysterious islands where the Scottish crofting families still weave the famous tweed in their own homes. “There’s over two hundred different islands out there in the Outer Hebrides—Vikings called ’em Havbredey—‘the islands at the edge of the Earth.’ In Gaelic it’s Na h-Eileanan an Lar,” Hector continued. “And there was a time—not so very long ago too—when every one had its crofters and its own kirks. But then—well—a’ might as well gi’ ye a wee bit of our history. It’s all bad stuff—right from the Romans invadin’ in 82 AD. They tried to conquer the Pict tribes up here but couldn’t and so they built Hadrian’s Wall to keep ’em out of England. Then there were the Dalriad Irish—called themselves Scotti—chargin’ in around 500 AD. And then the Vikings—the Norsemen—plunderin’ their way down the islands in the eighth century. And there were battles and backstabbings galore—most famous was King Malcolm’s murder of Macbeth—y’know, Shakespeare’s ‘Scottish play.’”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I remember that play well. We had to memorize great chunks of the soliloquies in high school.”

  Hector laughed with a whisky burr, revealing enormous teeth that would have made a carthorse proud. “Aye, it was a bit bloody in those days. But in 1266 Scotland started to get things together. That’s the time when all our big heroes—William Wallace, ‘Black’ Douglas, and Robert the Bruce—kept the English out. We hated ’em so much we even joined up with the French—the ‘Auld Alliance’in the late 1400s—and got the Stuart royalty in. Y’remember Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots—the Catholic. She came over to rule in 1561 but she got into real trouble with the Presbyterian founder, John Knox, and the big lords up here and so she rushed off to England to ask her sister, Queen Elizabeth the First, for help. Not a good idea that! All she got was twenty years in jail and her head lopped off in 1587! Her son, James I, calmed things down for a while…by the way, are y’gettin’ all this? It’s a wee bit complicated!”

  “Yes, Hector, I think I’m following. But it’s a long time since my school history lessons—in England!”

  “Aye, well, y’see—up here our history’s still alive an’ we don’t forget so easy—especially when your English Parliament tried to get rid of all our Stuarts. Then it became a real mess and a’ suppose y’could blame a lot o’ it on young Bonnie Prince Charlie and his Catholic-Jacobite rebellion in 1745. Now tha’s a date no Scotsman will ever forget when Charles Edward came over from France and raised a big army in the Highlands and islands to return the crown to his exiled Stuart family. It’s a long, long story—there’s a thousand books bin written ’bout it all…”

  Hector paused to refill a couple of beer glasses and then continued. “But it began right enough with Charlie battlin’ his way down into England—as far as Derby can y’believe! But then it all went bad and he had a terrible defeat. Battle of Culloden in 1746. Near Inverness. An’ remember that name—y’ll be hearin’ it over and over. Charlie escaped—y’know that story of Flora MacDonald helpin’ him and that song, the Skye Boat song—an’ I’m not gonna sing it t’ye but it goes—‘Sail bonnie boat, like a boat on the wing, over the sea to Skye.’”

  “Yeah—I know the one. It’s a shame you won’t sing it, though!”

  Hector gave a wheezy chuckle. “Y’ would’na think that if I did! Anyway, after that the English came up and tore Scotland apart. The Duke of Cumberland—‘the Butcher’ they called him—wiped out the whole clan system, burnt down towns and villages and made the Highlands a wasteland. Oh aye it was a bad, bad time all right—and so t’was for the next hundred years an’ more. Too many people trying to live on tiny bits of poor land—all outcasts of the great lairdic feasts—then all those terrible famines—the potato famines—the collapse o’ the island kelp industry—they burnt seaweed y’know to produce alkali in Napoleon’s time. Valuable stuff then. And all these great ‘clearances’ in the 1800s when the big feudal-system lairds got together an’ kicked s’many people off the land—burnt their cottages down, even smashed their precious quernstones they used for grinding their grain—and bundled them off to Canada and Australia and suchlike places—and moved the sheep in. Now I think there are only ten islands—maybe less—with any people at all. Croftin’s a hard life. Always has been—but now it’s dyin’.”

  I thanked Hector for his succinct—if depressing—summary of Scottish history and ordered drinks for both of us.

  “Well—cheers t’ you for that,” he said, and began again. “But you know, in spite of it all, life goes on. Y’remember that old sayin’: ‘The happiest people are those with the fewest needs. ’An’ for a long while there it was best t’keep y’needs simple! But things are changin’—we’ve even got oil up here now—lots of that lovely North Sea stuff—and our own parliament too. Some think it’s not powerful enough, though. Our famous Scottish comedian—Billy Connolly—calls it ‘a wee pretendy parliament’! But the poor islands hav’na done so well. Sometimes you wonder how much bad luck th’ can take. A’ mean look at what happened jus’recent—’specially that Chernobyl thing—y’know the nuclear power station mess in Russia. They had to destroy the sheep on Harris ’cause of fallout. And that BCCI bank that went bust and took all the Western Isles money with it—twenty odd million pounds. Every penny they had. And then the herring—that’s pretty much finished with all those Spanish an’ Japanese an’ English trawlers overfishin’—an’ the salmon farms, they’re having problems with fallin’ prices an’, would y’believe—even the tweed itself—the great cloth of Harris and Lewis—that seems t’be dying out now too…”

  A frisky three-hour ferry ride from Ulla
pool brought me—a little shaken by the turbulent journey and Hector’s dour revelations—to Stornoway, capital of the 130-mile-long Outer Hebrides chain. This small town of 8,600 people is the hub of activity on the main island of Lewis, and the epitome of all the best and worst of island life. Fine churches, big Victorian houses, lively industries, new hotels, even a mock castle and a colorful fishing fleet mingle with bars, pool rooms, fish and chip shops, and, according to one local church newspaper, “palaces of illicit pleasures whose value to the community is highly questionable”—referring to the town’s two rather modest discos.

  Stornoway was obviously a place deserving leisurely investigation, but my mind was set first on island exploration as I drove off across the bleak, hairy humpiness of the moors and peat bogs looking for the tweed makers in the heart of Harris. Then—on a whim—I paused for a while to climb Clisham, and that’s how I got stuck in the storm.

  But as the weather cleared, I came down slowly from the wind-blasted tops and could see, far below, the thin crofting strips on the fertile machair land, fringing the coastal cliffs.

  They say the milk of cows grazed on the machair in the spring and summer is scented by the abundance of its wildflowers—primroses, sea spurrey, campion, milkwort, seapink, sorrel, and centaury. Each strip, usually no more than six acres in all, had its own steep-gabled crofter’s cottage set close to the narrow road, which wound around the boulders and burns. Behind each of the cottages lurked the sturdy remnants of older homes, the notorious “black houses,” or tigh dubh. Some were mere walls of crudely shaped bedrock, four feet thick in places; others were still intact as if the family had only recently moved out. They were roofed in thick thatch made from barley stalks or marram grass, held in place by a grid of ropes, weighted down with large rocks. Windows were tiny, set deep in the walls, and door openings were supported by lintel stones over two feet thick. Nearby were dark brown piles of peats, the cruachs, enough to heat a house for a whole year.