|
George Campbell Hay:
Nationalism With a Difference
Christopher Whyte
Please Note :This text contains numbers highlighted in BOLD. Each number refers to the appropriate number in the NOTES section at the end of the text.
It is very hard to
define just how much liberty a writer has in the choice
of his themes. If
we consider the more explicitly formal aspects of poetry,
such as metrical patterning
and the structure of rhyme and stanza, it is
clear that each new
poet must come to terms with an inherited repertory
which can be modified
only to a limited extent. Even if he or she should
decide to break entirely
with tradition, that break will nevertheless be
interpreted in the
light of the tradition itself.
Turning to thematic
material, we are still all too often influenced by a
mechanistic conception
of form and content, in which the form would be
the glass beaker which
allows us to perceive more or less clearly the
content which has
been poured into it, with all the propensity of liquids
to fill out an offered
shape while remaining firmly themselves. (We are
careful to choose
for such metaphors solids and liquids which do not
interact chemically
with one another. Otherwise we might find the
beaker disintegrating
on contact with the liquid it contains.)
If, on the other
hand, we see the relationship between form and
content as organic,
or even go so far as to abolish any valid distinction
between them, we are
forced to the conclusion that the things a poet
talks about may be
as derivative and as rigidly conditioned as the way he
chooses to treat them.
Within a highly self-aware poetic tradition, it may
be possible to break
down a single composition in such a way as to find a
previous literary
source for each of its constituent sections. This is as
much the case with
the lyrics of Robert Herrick as with Iain Dubh Mac
Iain 'ic Ailein's
"Oran nam Fineachan Gàidhealach" (1). So the
choice
of particular thematic
focuses for poetry is collaborative and public at
least as often as
it is individual or private.
Tensions of this
kind are very relevant to George Campbell Hay's
treatment of nationalism,
which can be seen as a theme imposed on him
rather than being
chosen. If he reveals a keen sensitivity to the rain-washed, wind-beaten
freshness of the Kintyre landscapes he grew up
among, rather than attributing this to some
kind of Celtic essentialism, a
closeness to and sensitivity about nature
which the Celt has because he
or she is somehow unspoiled, uncivilised and
by definition powerless, we
can simply say that they were the kind of thing
the Gaelic poets he knew
had tended to write about and therefore
a natural focus for his own
creative energies.
The same may apply to something very like
nationalism in the earlier
Gaelic tradition. By this I mean a lively interest
in the military conflicts
which condition the exercise of political
power within and on the
confines of a community defined by its
use of the Gaelic vernacular.
There is a grim appropriateness in the
fact that the first published
collection of Gaelic poetry, Alasdair Mac
Mhaighstir Alasdair's Aiseiridh na Sean Chánoin Albannaich, should
begin with a poem in praise
of the Gaelic language, and should, according
to legend, have been
publicly burned in what had only recently ceased
to be the capital of an
independent Scotland. Both issues, the potential
of the language and the
feasibility of its continued use given
the political and national
circumstances, are co-ordinates against
which much subsequent Gaelic
poetry could be plotted. We may well ask just
how free any Gaelic poet is
to avoid either of these issues in his work.
To speak of Gaelic nationalism sounds
very much like an anachronism, not least because it is problematic, to
say the least, to approach the
history of the Celtic peoples in terms of the
concept of a nation state. A
traditional poetic model, which certainly
goes back to bardic poetry in
Ireland of the Middle Ages and further,
has the poet addressing an
actual or potential wielder of political power
and urging him to a course
of action with respect to a specific issue.
Very often the issue is the status
of poetry, and of its practitioners, within
a Celtic society where the
impact of neighbouring cultures has not
yet become traumatic. At one
remove from this we have a poet such
as Ian Lom, in his "Cumha
Morair Hunndaidh/Lament for the Marquis
of Huntly", addressing a
ruler beyond his immediate cultural sphere,
the young king Charles II,
who has been deprived of his inheritance:
Ach a Theàrlaich òig Stiùbhairt,
'S bochd an dùsal a th'agad,
On is fhada gun sùnnd thu
'S còir do dhùsgadh o d' chadal;
Ma tha t'aire gu dìlinn
Air do rìoghachd a thagradh,
Na leig dhìot 'san droch uair i
Ma tha cruadal air t'aignidh. (2)
But young Charles Stuart, deplorable
is this slumber of yours;
since you have long been listless
you ought to be awakened from
your sleep.
If you have any intention whatsoever of claiming your
kingdom, do not abandon it in an evil hour if there is any
hardihood in your spirit.
If this leader is
outside the poet's own linguistic community, it is at least
still feasible that
the appeal should have some effect, and that the action
eventually taken
should he favourable towards his Gaelic subjects. In
the eighteenth century,
with the definitive shifting of political power to
London and the
increasing Anglicisation of a once Gaelic aristocracy,
both suppositions
lose any effective foundation. The chances of being
heard beyond the linguistic
frontier are negligible, and there is almost no
focus of political,
power within it. Thus political poetry on the old model
is no- longer possible.
The predicament
is clear in William Livingston's treatment of the
Clearances. "Fios
thun a' Bhàird" has the message coming to, rather
than emanating from
the poet:
mar a fhuair 's a chunnaic mise,
thoir am tos seo thun a' Bhàird.
As I saw and
heard, take this news to the poet. CW (3)
The extended
semi-epic "Na Lochlannaich an Ile/The Vikings
in
Islay" opens
with a prologue between one of the last seanachies and
a
figure whom we may
interpret as a young déraciné on a return visit from
Glasgow. In a very
real sense, they have only each other to talk to, and
little more than a
nostalgic and slightly grotesque fiction to share:
Sìn gu grad a' chruit a-nuas
's feuchaidh sinn buaidh na ranntachd
air euchdan Lochlannach is Ileach
a dh'innseas tu fathast do chàch,
's bithidh òran no dhà againn do chòrr
mun stad an ceòl 's nach bi sinn ann. (4)
Reach down
the fiddle to me at once; we shall try what verse can do
with the heroic
feats of Norsemen and Islaymen, and you may tell
them to the
rest. We shall have a song or two more before the music
stops, and
we no longer exist. CW
Another reason for
the breakdown of the old model may have been a
conceptual shift
whereby sovereignty was no longer seen to reside in a
ruling figure, but
in the people, who elected their own representatives to
a governing assembly.
This is the background to much of the political
poetry of Màiri Mhòr. "Brosnachadh nan Gàidheal/An Incitement
to
the Gaels" was composed for the parliamentary
elections of December 1885:
Cuiribh Teàrlach suas te cliù,
Oir dhearbh e dhuibh a dhùrachd cheana,
Is gheibh sibh cead air fèidh nan stùc,
Is còir ás ùr air bhur cuid fearainn. (5)
Give Charles a resounding victory, for he
has already demonstrated
his good will towards you, and you will get
access to the deer on the
hills, and retrieve your rights to the land
that is yours. CW
This is not tremendously distant from the verse
Hay produced in his
capacity as unofficial Gaelic bard to the Scots
Independent during the
run-up to the referendum of 1979:
Chaidh guth thairis air cùisean ar dùthcha sa' chathair mu dheas
gun fhacal gun dùrd s gach dùil 'dol air ais sa' ghreis.
Tha caban s iad dùinte is sùilean gun aithn' air neach.
Bhith 'gan crathadh s 'gan dùsgadh o'n dùsal,
b'e rathad ar leas. (6)
They have let it drop about the matter of our
country in the city in
the south. There's not a word or a cheep and every expectation has
faded out for the moment. There are gabs
which are shut and eyes
which do not recognise a person. To be shaking
them and wakening
them from their snooze, that would be the right
way for us.
His writing at this juncture touches on very delicate
and still relevant
topics, such as the increase in the English component
of the Scottish
population, in an unpublished piece preserved in
manuscript:
Na muillionan tha 'n Sasainn fheuraich,
S mòr a meud iad, uain.
Tha iad ag iarraidh, ma 's fìor am beul seo,
bloigh Lebensraum mu thuath. (7)
The millions that are in grassy England,
they are proud of size,
lamb. They are seeking, if this mouth
speak true, a spot of
Lebensraum up north.
The verse considered so far is certainly political,
but neatly sidesteps
some of the major problems of dealing with nationalist
aspirations in
poetry. Poet and addressee are clearly defined,
and the lines have an
explicit practical end in mind. The necessity
to explain what makes a
national community,
how one decides who belongs and who does not, or
what is the
basis of this community's claim to recognition and
appropriate treatment,
is not yet felt. Yet the following lines, from Hay's
work of the same
period, imply shared membership of a community and,
through the traditional
image of the tethered beast, attempt to explain in
poetic terms the
predicament which that community faces:
thà sinn air raon an tsamhraidh
is taod umainn teann air a shnìomh.
Am fuasgail sinn an tsnaidhm le suairceas,
no uabhar a' chip an spìon? (8)
We are on
the meadow of summer, and a tight twisted tether
around us.
Will we undo the knot with urbanity, or will we wrench
out the haughty pride of the stake?
The question of
action to be taken is still uppermost, yet the terms of the
question have subtly
changed. In effect, Hay is asking how appropriate
the ballot box
is as a means of realising Scotland's aspirations to effective
nationhood. He
depicts it in more sanguine terms in "The Ballot not
the Bullet - a Victory with no Defeated":
Suas gun sìos, buaidh gun bhualadh,
buannachd gun chall, gun dìth;
nì ùr a th'ann san tseann shaoghal,
buidhinn saorsa le sìth. (9)
Up with no down, victory with no blows struck, gaining with no
loss or deprivation; it is a new thing in the old world, winning
freedom by peace.
This shifting in
signification was already there in Màiri's "Brosnachadh
nan Gàidheal",
and these lines are remarkably close to some of the Skye
poetess's, from
a song celebrating the election of Charles Fraser
Mackintosh as
Liberal member for the Inverness Burghs in February
1874:
Nis seinnibh cliù nan àrmunn
Chuir am blàr aig Clach-na-Cùdainn,
Gun chlaidheamh thoirt à sgàbard,
Ach le'n tàlantan 's le'n dùrachd. (10)
Now sing the
praises of the warriors who gave battle at Clachna-
cudden without
drawing a sword from a scabbard, but with their
skill and
determination instead. CW
Gaelic poetry had at its disposal a vocabulary
for dealing with the
assertion of perceived rights, which was military
in nature. This
vocabulary seduced, as it were, William Livingston
into an archaising
and backward-looking celebration of Celtic self-assertion,
whereas Màiri
Mhòr and, more explicitly, Hay, took it over while
redefining it in a way
relevant to the political situation of their time.
It would be a mistake to assign any absolute
value to the word
nationalism, or to deny the predominantly negative
connotations it has
acquired as currently applied in Europe. Self-assertion
is rarely viewed
positively by those who witness it, as it almost
always takes place in open
disagreement with prevailing distributions of
cultural and political
power. We reserve the word for groups which
we perceive to be,
temporarily or irredeemably, unsuccessful in
creating some kind of
correlation between linguistic, cultural and political
boundaries. Seen in
this perspective, nationalism is intrinsically
a rearguard action, the
protest of a community whose identity is in
some way threatened or
placed in doubt. One consequence of this colouring
of the term is that we
may find ourselves requiring from actual or
potential losers a self-justification which is almost never required
of those we perceive as
historically victorious. A Gaelic or a Scottish
writer must demonstrate
his or her right to the definition in a way rarely
required of English or
French writers.
The quality of Hay's nationalism then, will
depend on the extent to
which he succeeds in exploiting Scottish and Gaelic
history and culture
without being trapped by them; in arguing
a case for self-assertion
without championing some imaginary ideal of
absolute Scottishness or
Gaelicness, rather than the basic urge and right
to self-definition.
"Ar Blàr Catha/Our Field of battle" (11)
is defined by Hay in both an
historical and a progressive sense. Historically
there have been two
battlefields: overseas campaigns in which Scottish
forces served the
cause of Empire,
màlrsal s dol sìos fo bhrataichean
nach d'fhairich gaoth ar n-àirdean
marching and charging under banners that
never felt the wind of
our heights
and the labour of colonising conquered territories:
Tha 'n treabhaiche taobh thall nan cuantan,
toirt beath' à gruaim nan coilitean aosda;
The ploughman is beyond the oceans winning
life from the gloom
of the age-old forest
With the advantages
of hindsight, Hay makes clear an irony that had
consistently escaped
Livingston:
buadhach an smùid nan còmhrag thairis,
is smùid an fhògraidh tiugh an Cataibh,
smùid an fhòirneirt feadh gach baile.
victorious in the smoke of the battles beyond the seas, while the
smoke of eviction lay thick over Sutherland, the smoke of
oppression drifted through every township.
He takes over
the imagery of nineteenth-century poetry of the clearances
in his evocation
of the neglect Scotland has suffered as a result of
emigration, and
recharges it by characterising the new society that must
come into being
there as a village galvanised by the return of its
offspring:
tha àite do gach buaidh a th' annainn
'na gleanntaichean is 'na bailtean;
tha feum air smuaintean s air tapachd
eadar an stairsneach s ceann a' bhaile.
There is room for every quality that is ours in her glens and her
cities; there is a need for thought and courage between the
threshold and the end of the township.
But the dominant
redefinition in the poem is of Scotland as the
appropriate battlefield
for its people's energies, no longer employed in
slaughter or imperialist
expansion but in the transformation of a civil
society. Scotland
is "the bonny land that our fathers entrusted to us from
God", in
a highly traditional statement of what constitutes a
community's claim
to its own territory, but is also, in a putative explanation
for past mistakes,
the mother who seemed to thrust her children from
her, and thus provoked in part the neglect she was so long to suffer. (If
we consider
that rejection,or a perceived excessive detachment on the
mother's part
is an important element in the choice of exile on an
individual level,
Hay's imagery acquires a very special significance.)
The eschewal of
both Gàidheal and Gall, words for the Gaelic and the
non-Gaelic speaking
Scot, and the enthusiastic adoption of the term
Alba, ambivalent
in that it can hardly be restricted to a single linguistic
community, are
further pointers to Hay's intention in this poem to go
beyond any narrowly
Gaelic or Highland sphere.
Military metaphors
also sustain "Feachd a' Phrionnsa" (12), Hay's
elegy to the
doomed armies of the Young Pretender in the 1745
campaign. They
have only just crossed the border into England when
they turn to look silently on Scotland "le dùrachd dhainginn/with steady
purposeful devotion". What matters is
not the success or failure of their
enterprise, but the quality of their self-affirmation,
the fact that they
maintained their vow. Such integrity stands
somehow beyond military
or political success, and also allows Hay to
see the incident as exemplary
for contemporary Scotland:
Aon chuairt, aon chuairt gheibh sinn air thalamh
a nochdadh an fhaghairt a th'annainn,
a dheuchainn faobhar ar tapachd,
a chosnadh cliù do 'r tìr no masladh.
One spell, one spell only do we get on
earth to show the temper of
the metal in us, to test the edge of our courage, to win fame for our
country or shame.
The redefinition of traditional imagery
need hardly be underlined. The
sword edge stands initially for the potential
for action inherent in each
individual, and then becomes
seann lann lasairgheal ar dùthcha;
s a liuthad bliadhna meirg' is dùsail
a mhaolaich i san truaill dhùinte.
the old flaming-white sword of our
country - so many years of
rusting and slumber it has been growing
blunt, set fast in its sheath.
The existential point of this poem concerns
a hidden potential which is
dependent on a sense of belonging, of
identity conditioned by a
geographical place. It is linked to Scotland
by the historical incident
which functions as a pretext, yet the implications
of the poem move
beyond any single nationalism.
Much the same could be said of "Na
Trèig do Thalamh Dùthchais/Do Not Forsake Your Native Land" (13),
which repeats the title in each
of its six stanzas, placing this refrain, in
the simplest of oppositions,
against a series of nouns all preceded by
"air" meaning "for" or even
"in spite of". These concepts
change constantly, and are. extremely
varied when placed beside the monotonous
iteration. Many of them are
extremely attractive:
air ghràdh, air sith, air dhùrachd;
air bhàigh, air speuran ciùine
na trèig do thalamh dùthchais.
for love, for peace, for good wishes,
for kindly regard, for tranquil skies
do not forsake your native land.
The implication
is that being in the place one originates from outweighs
all these pleasures.
Hay couples opposites ("air onair no air siùrsachd/
for honour or for harlotry"), as if moral distinctions somehow blurred
into insignificance
against a standard that reverberates beyond moral
choice.
What we are
working towards is the philosophical position underlying
Hay's nationalism,
and outlined in a number of poems not directly
concerned with
Scottish or political questions. "An t-Eòlas
Nach
Cruthaich/The Knowledge That Does Not Create" (14) is on one level
a
dispraising of
the critical as against the creative intelligence:
Seallaidh e le cinnt itn cunntas,
mar ionnsramaid le gràdaibh mion;
slat-thomhais e gun anam-fàis ann,
nach toir nì ùr gu blàths is bith.
Cha n-eil òrd ann, gilb no clàrsach;
cha snaidh, cha ghràbhail e, cha seinn;
cha n-eil sguabadh fuarghuth sìn' ann,
cha n-eil grìosach ann no greim.
He shows with precision his recording, like an instrument with
delicate degrees; he is a measuring rod without any soul-of-growth
in him; he will bring no new thing to warmth and being.
There is no hammer or chisel or harp in him; he will not carve
or
engrave or sing; there is no sweeping of tempest's cold voice in him;
there is no hot ember in him or gri.
Overall, the poem is a paean to commitment, to headlong action
and
passion as
against detachment, discrimination and evaluation, which
are conceived
as sterile. The critic's mouth is able to appraise the bitter
and sweet of what
it tastes, but has no "gall or honey in it of its own."
Hay does not say
that detachment is an illusion but rather that it can
bear no fruit.
Qualities can only validly be perceived in so far as the self
contains and produces
them. That which in itself is neither hot nor cold,
neither bitter
nor sweet, is condemned to barrenness in a world without
difference.
Perhaps Hay's
most convincing championing of self-definition and
self-realisation
in their widest sense is to be found in "Prìosan da fhèin
an Duine?/Man His Own Prison?" (15), which must be counted
among
his most powerful
lyrics. It takes up where "An t-Eò1as Nach
Cruthaich" left off, describing the kind
of behaviour Hay sees as life-enhancing:
An cridhe fialaidh misneachail,
na bu chiomach e am fròig,
ùraich cridh' an tsaoghail leis -
cuir mu sgaoil e - cuir gu stròdh.
The generous, spirited heart, let it not
crouch, a prisoner, in a nook.
Freshen the heart of the world with it.
Unleash it. Be spendthrift
with it.
What is within must be expressed, bodied
forth. To show us what he
means, Hay takes as his example the way a bird
puts "all its being into
its music": in his view, creatures of nature
do not exercise falsely moral
choices with regard to their innate qualities,
approving some and
suppressing others. The affirmation Hay seeks
is comprehensive, all-inclusive, and the poem's refrain identifies this
total affirmation with life
itself: "Bi iomlan is bi beò/Be complete and be alive". Man's potential is
unlimited if all his qualities can work
together harmoniously. The
promptings of natural instinct will not
lead us astray provided we
maintain a balance between heart and head,
body and soul, because
individuality is God-given and infinitely varied.
Against this vision Hay
sets "an troichshluagh dàicheil rianail,/nach
robh riamh ach lethbheò/
the plausibic orderly dwarf-people, who were
never but half living",
whose self-realisation is hemmed in by their
respect and fear for the
opinions of others, as well as cases where the
head tyrannises the heart,
or the mind stands guard over a prisoner
body. Nature is imaged as
tartan cloth, a combination of many different
colours, which "the slow
seeping of the habitual" is in danger of reducing
to an insipid, uniform
grey.
This, then, is a poem in praise of difference,
which can as easily be the
difference between cultures and languages
as that between individual
personalities. Hay's sense of the brief, ephemeral
nature of human life
(and therefore identity) is still present, though
in tones more muted than
those of "Feachd a' Phrionnsa". The
soul is the body's guest only for a
short while ("air aoigheachd ann
car tràth"). This tendentially
pessimistic vision is most fully expressed
in the remarkably archaic
"Clann Adhaimh/Adam's Clan" (16),
a reworking of the allegorical
ship of fools or Narrenschiff. Superficially,
the poem is a lament on
human lack of awareness and inconstancy,
seen against the background
of eternity:
tha Amaideas is Gliocas, Naomh is Peacach
air a stiùir mu seach is càch 'gan èisteachd.
Folly and
Wisdom, Saint and Sinner take her helm in turn, and all
obey them.
Note how easily
and naturally Hay adopts the personified abstractions
from an older,
more mechanistic way of thinking, combining them with
a marine imagery
which was congenial to him, (though this journey is
not so minutely
evoked as that of "Siubhal a' 'Choire'/The Voyaging of
the 'Corrie'"(17)). Our interest in nationalism, however, will lead us to
discern a more
subtle meaning behind the lines, and one that is more
characteristic
of the writer. In so far as the poem is a vision of human
life, what matters
is not so much the constant shift in leadership on
board (indeed,
Hay seems to set remarkably little store by the identity of
the helmsman)
as the contrast between the ship and its surroundings.
On board there
is bustle, conflict, exultation, above all difference. As so
often, Hay groups
nouns and adjectives in pairs of opposites - "gul is
gàireachdaich
... clais is cìrein/weeping and laughter ... trough and
crest". The great
expanse of sea around is uniform, monotonous and
undifferentiated
like the faded cloth of "Priosan da fhèin". The
passage
of the ship
is an image of death ("a h-ùpraid ghuth 'dol bàs
'na
dèidhse/her tumult of voices die astern of her") and the close of the envoi
strikes a profoundly
pathetic note - "is cop uisge a stiùrach a' dùnadh s
'ga chall 'sa
mhuir mhòir/and the foam of her wake closing and losing
iselin the
great sea astern". Human life is a brief, transitory
but
colourful uproar,
eternally moving but directionless and ill-controlled,
with nothingness
before and after. The same vision informs Hay's
graveyard poem,
"Aonarain na Cille" (18), with its ranging of opposites
and its mourning
of the passage of turbulent life:
cha tig neul no fras no gaoth,
gormadh an là no 'n dùthrath,
sith no ùspairt, gràin no gaol.
no cloud
comes, or rain, or wind; no day's dawning or dusk of
evening; peace or tumult, hate or love.
"Fàire/horizon"
is a key word in "Clann Adhaimh", and a
key
element in Hay's
imagery of what it means to be human. The ship is
"alone within
the distant circle of the horizon" ("leatha fhèin an
cearcal
cian na fàire"),
one which "neither stem nor eye yet overleapt"
("nach
do leum saidh
riamh no sùilean".) Hay devotes a whole poem
to
in O Na Ceithir Airdean, and its outward and inward movement offers a
further perspective
on the kind of nationalism he advocates (19). It falls
into three sections,
of which the first concerns the traveller's insatiable
thirst for new
sights and new places:
Uair is uair, còrsaichean ùra,
is cùinneadh ùr 'ga chur a cheannach
blais ùir a dh' fhìon; is sriut de chòmhradh,
nach tuigear deò dheth, taobh a' chalaidh.
Time upon time, new coastlines, and a
new coinage spent to buy a
new tastc of wine; and a flood of talk, not
a word of it understood,
along the side of the harbour.
What we have here is constant stimulus, a sense
of difference which is
repeatedly energised and renewed. Interestingly,
what makes landing so
exciting is the incomprehensibility of the
language encountered. The
experience of hearing a language we do
not know, which provokes
impatience and insecurity in so many people, is
crucial to Hay's sense of
being alive. There is no aspiration to
learn or understand, a mere
acknowledgement and consenting to this pure
manifestation of difference. The second part of "Fàire"
turns to Kintyre, Hay's homeland,
insisting that two promontories there contain
enough to sate eye and
heart and mind. But the assertion is a brief
and ineffective act of pietas:
Ach, tha tos agam, ged chì mi
Cluaidh s Loch Fìne mu dheireadh,
tha fàire 'n sin deas air Arainn
a bhios 'gam tharruing uair eile.
But I know, although I see the Clyde and
Loch Fyne at last, there is
a horizon yonder south of Arran, that will
be pulling at me again.
On one level, the horizon is the point at
which the monotonous expanse
of water gives place to something else, the point
where land, or another
ship appears, and differentiation commences.
The horizon is the closest
thing to a destination the ship of Adam's
children has. On a more
general level, Hay seems to be saying that,
no matter how strong his
attachment to his own homeland, however great
the inspiration it offers
him, it can never be sufficient. There will always
be a need to depart and
to return as only through difference can Kintyre
achieve identity.
Hay's nationalism, his sense of Scotland
as a place, is rooted in
Kintyre. "Luinneag/It was the hardness
of the wind" (20) describes
how its sights and sounds haunt him in
England, coming between
himself and sleep, between his eyes and
his book. In "M'Oilein is
M'Altrum" ("My education and my
upbringing" (21)), he asks which
has had the greater influence on his poetry,
teaming or natural
environment:
Na doireachan s boladh
na roide sna glacan;
na leabhraichean, s eòlas
na Ròimhe s nan Aitein;
cò aca fo'n ghrèin
bu mhò èifeachd air m'ealain,
no an loch is na slèibhtean,
no a' Ghreugais s an Laideann?
The copses, and the scent
of bog myrtle in the hollows;
books, and the learning
of Rome and of Athens;
which of them under the sun
had more effect on my art,
the loch and the hillsides
or Greek and Latin? CW
Later in the same
poem he comes down unequivocally on the side of
environment, of
place:
Gach cainnt is gach cultur
a chunnaic s nach fhaca,
aiste is nobhail
sonaid is saga,
ceòl stàtail na Gearmailt
is na dealbhan dathte
is cumhachdaiche 'm monadh
is motha c agam.
Every language and culture
I saw or failed to see
essay and novel
sonnet and saga,
the stately music of Germany
and painted pictures
the moor is more powerful
and nearer to my heart. CW
In the long poem
"Air Suidh' Artair Dhomh Mochthrath" ("Early one
morning on Arthur's
Seat" (22)) Hay is seen comparing the beauties of
Lothian with those
of Kintyre, when there is a sudden interruption:
Is ann de t' àbhaist bhith moltach
mu 'n t-Sloc Dhomhainn 's mu 'n Ordaig;
mu Chruach Doire Lèithe
is Cnoc Na Mèine cùl mòintich;
mu Rubha A' Ghrianain,
is mu chian Lagan Ròaig.
Cluinnear glaodh bho Dhùn Iubhair
a bheir an diog às an òran.
He is chanting placenames from around Tarbert
Loch Fyne when a
voice intervenes to remind him that his own ancestry is mixed, that he is
not a pure Gael: his ancestors had come to Kintyre
from Ayrshire, and
this means that he himself is a hybrid of
Highlander and Lowlander
(and, one might add, a learner and not a native
speaker of the language
he is writing in). He proudly answers that
chuir iad sgothan air acair,
's b'e sin an dachaigh 's an eòlas.
Sin a' chomain a mhaireas,
is gur Cainntrich fadheòidh sinn.
they anchored their skiffs
and that became their home, the place they
knew.
That is the Lasting debt,
and when it comes down to it we are Kintyre
people. CW
Kintyre was colonised from Ayrshire as early
as the seventeenth century,
and this makes it an appropriate symbol of the
kind of Scotland Hay
envisages, one which is not -uniform but richly
differentiated. This is why
he introduces himself (24) as
Deòrsa Ciotach mac Iain Dheòrsa,
sin e mar is eòl dhaibh mi;
'nam dhalt' aig Gàidheil is mi leth-Ghallda;
fuinn is rainn is dàin mo dhriop.
Left-handed George son of John son of George.
that's how I'm known to them;
a stepson to the Highlanders since I am
half a Lowlander;
my business is with tunes and verses and
poems. CW
"Fhearaibh s a Mhnài na h-Albann/Men and
Women of Scotland" (25)
makes the same point with greater seriousness:
air a mhachair, air na monaidhean
dheoghail sinn a cìoch,
ma's Goill, a ghaoil, ma's Gàidheil sinn
dh'àraich ise sinn.
On plain and on upland we have suckled at her breast. Be we
Lowland, my dear, or Gaels, it was she that nurtured us.
Hay's nationalism,
then, does indeed reveal a more superficial and
pragmatic political
side; yet the depth of his commitment to Scotland
and to Gaelic
can only be assessed within a discourse which has deeper
and more carefully
pondered roots. To be human means to have a
character, a "gnè",
which is itself varied and contradictory, and which
has to be externalised
in its entirety, transformed by conscious choice
into something
we may call an identity, which can only be perceived in
terms of difference.
At this stage, national identity is unlikely to be
oppressive because
the attempt to assimilate other cultures to itself
would be self-destructive.
The Arab world
offered Hay perhaps his crucial context for the
affirmation of
Gaelic, and Scottish identity. Why did he need to go so far
afield? The
confrontation with English culture could not have been
fruitful in this
sense. In so far as, in present-day Scotland, English
language and English
identity are intrusive and threaten to supplant, in
the short or the
long term, the existing culture, they will do this by
denying any
effective difference between themselves and what they
replace, by
claiming that the distinction between Scottishness and
Englishness is
insignificant, or alternatively that Scottishness is a subset
of Englishness.
(The success of such strategies is evident in the way,
until recently,
the Scots language could still be represented as a form of
English, a dialect
of the intrusive language and therefore, according to
current (mistaken)
usage, a derivative and distorted form of it). Hay
could not construct
a nationalism, a Scottish identity, in a void, but
rather by contrast
with a culture sufficiently alien for any hegemonistic
overlapping to
be impossible. Among the Arabs of Northern Africa he
found such a culture.
This is why the accuracy of Hay's representation of
Arab culture is
of secondary importance. What matters is his perception
of it as different,
as other.
"Meftah
Babkum Es-Sabar?" (26) is constructed on this model.
It
opens with a
café scene in which an Arab interlocutor preaches
submission to
destiny, a philosophy which Hay at once connects to the
climatic environment
which produced it:
Ghin aintighearnas na grèine lasraich,
is ainneart speuran teth na h-Aifric,
gliocas brùite sgìth nam facal.
The tyranny
of the flaming sun and the violence of the hot skies of
Africa had
begotten the bruised, tired wisdom of these words.
He rejects such
a philosophy for his own people, and introduces the
polar opposites of which he is so fond.
The fate of Scotland is to choose
between "peace and death, or struggling
and life". Next we are told the
kind of cultural products not to expect
from contemporary Scotland:
"soft, downy things" or "nice,
habitual, certain opinions", everything
that is safe, static, insipid, and which
the poem gradually identifies with
the impotence and servility of the Arab
before his god. A new climatic
reference enters ("Is fuar a' ghaoth
thar Ile/gheibhear aca an Cinntìre"
("Cold is the wind over Islay
that blows on them in Kintyre")), and
Hay defines the culture he hopes for in
terms of opposites:
Iarraibh gàire, gean is mìghean,
càirdeas, nàimhdeas, tlachd is mìothlachd,
iarraibh faileas fìor ar n-inntinn.
Ask for laughter, and cheerful
and angry moods, friendship,
enmity, pleasure and displeasure.
Ask for the true reflection of our
mind.
A culture of this kind is in perpetual
movement between opposing poles
and therefore resists stereotyping or definition.
While the English threat
to Scottish identity is never explicitly
mentioned, it is clearly indicated at
the close of the poem, which warns of the
danger of being taken over and
exploited by another culture, with
consequent draining of content and
selfhood:
b'e sin ar tìr. No, mur an gleachdar,
rud suarach ann an cùil 'ga cheiltinn
a thraogh s a dhìochuimhnich sluagh
eile.
such will be our land. Or, if there
be no struggle, a mean thing of no
account, hidden away in a corner,
which another people drained
dry and forgot.
The poem Hay regarded as his major
work, drawing a parallel with
Sorley Maclean's An Cuilithionn, survives
only in fragments. What we
have of Mochtàr is Dùghall supplies a
rough idea of the form the whole
was to take, although the plan might
well have undergone considerable
alteration had the author been able to
carry it through. Basically, Hay
sets side by side two young soldiers who
have fallen in the North African
campaign of the Second World War. One
is an Arab, the other a Gael,
and their only meeting with one another
has been in death:
Mhochtàir is Dhùghaill, choinnich sibh
an comann buan gun chòmhradh. (27)
Mokhtâr and Dougall, you have met in an everlasting fellowship
without conversation.
Hay sees their
death as extending forwards and backwards so as to
involve both their
ancestors and the children they might have fathered:
Bhàsaich am fear a bha ri 'uilinn,
dhubhadh às a shinnsreachd uile;
mhortadh a chlann nach do rugadh. (28)
There died
the man who lay at his elbow. All his ancestry was
blotted out.
His children were murdered unborn.
What died in each
man was not just the individual but a culture, the
culture that can
find no fuller expression than in living, moving beings:
Chaidh an domhan beag a bhruanadh,
a dh'fhàs ann fhèin 'na earrach uaine;
a ghin, gun fhios, na bha mun cuairt dha,
is a rinn e 'chumadh le a smuaintean
air na chunnaic e 's na chual' e (29)
There was
reduced to dust the little world that grew within him in
his green spring time, which was created, unknown to him, by
everything
around him; which he formed by his thoughts on all that
he saw and
heard.
The double movement
here, the working of impressions on the growing
child and the
elaboration of these impressions through thought, is a very
clear definition
of the process of identity on which much of this paper has
focused. Hay
directs our attention to the blood relatives of the two men,
in an attempt
to construct an image of what has been lost. Only very
limited material
dealing with the Gaelic side survives. On the Arab side,
Hay begins with
Mochtàr's great-grandfather, Ahmad, and this division
of the poem peters
out having come down as far as his father Obaid.
There may just
be an intended parallelism in the histories of Arab and
Gael, moving from
the heroism and military defeat of Ahmad to Obaid's
religious obsessions.
For the present we shall concentrate on a single
episode in the
poem's most extended and impressive section.
Mochtàr's grandfather
Omar is returning across the desert from the
Sudan with a
rich convoy of slaves and other merchandise, when his
encampment is
surrounded by Tuareg raiders. The confrontation with
the alien could
hardly be depicted in more striking terms. Where "Clann
Adhaimh"
showed a fragile ship traversing the featureless ocean, here
it
is the desert
that stands for the monotony of non-identity. The Arabs are
surrounded by animate but alien beings,
in a context of utter non-differentiation. Omar reacts to the Tuareg
leader's speech with an
ethnocentrism which must bring a smile to the
reader's face:
Lean e a' cluich a làimhe 's uchd air,
s a phlabartaich 'na sruth 's 'na sriut
as;
bu mhanntach, briste, tùchte, tiugh
i
mar chàrsan duine, 's a chìoch-shlugain
air at 's ga thachdadh. (30)
He went on gesturing with his
hand and swelling out his chest,
while his blabbering streamed and
poured from him; it was
stammering, broken, stifled and thick
like the hoarseness of a man
whose uvula is swollen and is choking
him.
Our point of view is Omar's, but the very
use of Gaelic imposes a
distance between him and the reader. This
has an effect very different
from that of a text dealing with the same
incident in the language of
either of the protagonists, or even translated
from these languages. So
Omar's ethnocentrism is relativised right
from the outset, as well as
being made slightly comic by his situation
of total powerlessness. Two
distinct identities confront one another in
a void, and the solution is an
exquisitely cultural one. Mint tea has
its place and context in Omar's
culture, but to the Tuareg chief it is
a marvel, something outside his
world. One single sign has comically
different meanings for two ethnic
groups. "Is maith an gobhar a shil a
leithid,/ge b'e càite no co leis e", he
cries. ("Good is the goat that gave
such milk, wherever it might be and
whoever might own it").The gift of the
herb both mystifies and mollifies
the Tuareg, and saves Omar from despoliation
and death.
Mochtàr and Dùghall may seem
far from the world of more
conventionally Gaelic poetry, but I think
it can be shown to be very
relevant to Hay's view of the nature and
purpose of cultural difference,
and therefore central to the concerns which
had informed so many of his
shorter pieces. (Significant in this respect
is the figure of the interpreter,
a pathetic Arab forced to undertake this task
in the interests of survival,
condemned never to return among his
own people, eternal exile and
eternal foreigner. The tragedy of his difference
is that it can never be
perceived as communal, but only individual,
within the world of the
Tuaregs.)
Hay's nationalism goes far beyond a
commitment to Scotland or an
exaltation of Scottish qualities and traditions
as in some way superior or
preferable to those of other nations. What
he offers us is a meditation on
the nature and necessity of identity as a
function of conscious choice, an
essential prerequisite of creativity. His
discourse is not political in the
conventional sense. His nationalism has
no leftist colouring, or indeed
any party colouring. He is as far from
Derick Thomson's astringent,
topical satire
as from Sorley Maclean's overriding concern for the defeat
of fascism
on the European scale. He is not one of those who would
vote
for an
independent Scotland provided that Scotland were securely
socialist.
His plea for autonomous cultural activity in a self-defining
nation has
deeper, existential roots, and offers extremely fruitful
material
for observation and meditation by all those whose responsibility it
must be to realise such a vision, in Scotland and elsewhere
in the
world.
NOTES
I am extremely
grateful to Michel Byrne, of Edinburgh University, who
is currently
preparing an edition of George Campbell Hay's poetry,
for
making available
to me the material he has gathered, and for his advice
and encouragement
in the preparation of this paper. Where I have had
to supply
my own English translations, these are marked CW.
(1) John Mackenzie (ed.) Sàr-obair nam Bard Gaelach (Edinburgh
1907): 80. See also Derick Thomson An Introduction to Gaelic
Poetry (London 1977): 148.
(2) Annie M. Mackenzie (ed.) Orain Iain Luim (Edinburgh 1964):
50.
(3) Uilleam
MacDhunlèibhe Duain agus Orain (Glasgow 1882): 152.
(4) Ibid.:4.
(5) D. E.
Meek (ed.) Màiri Mhòr nan Oran (Glasgow 1977): 94.
(6) Scots
Independent 84 (March 1987): 3.
(7) National
Library of Scotland, Accession 9082/1.
(8) Carn
18 (Summer 1977).
(9) Scots
Independent 68 (November 1976): 8.
(10) Op.
cit.: 48.
(11) Deòrsa
Caimbeul Hay O Na Ceithir Airdean (Edinburgh 1952):
26-29.
(12) Ibid.:
20-21.
(13) Ibid.:
37-38.
(14) Ibid.:
16-17.
(15) Deòrsa
Caimbeul Hay Fuaran Sléibh (Glasgow 1947): 38-39.
(16) Ibid.:
20.
(17) Ibid.:
12.
(18) Ibid.:
2 1.
(19) 'Fàire'
in O Na Ceithir Airdean: 35-36.
(20) Fuaran
Sléibh: 17.
(21) Gairm
102 (Earrach 1978): 158-159.
(22) Gairm
38 (Geamhradh 1961): 127-130.
(23) 'Gu'm
Chur an Aithne', Gairm 102: 157.
(24) Fuaran
Sléibh: 30.
(25) O Na
Ceithir Airdean: 22-25.
(26) Deòrsa
Caimbeul Hay Mochtàr is Dùghall (Glasgow 1982): 5,
46.
(27) Ibid.:
44, 59.
(28) Ibid.: 44-45, 59.
(29) Ibid.: 21, 53.
(30) Ibid.: 25, 55.
Back to Gaelic and Scots
|