Bodach a’Bhidse
Remembering someone who could have been easily forgotten
A century ago, a man from the Isle of Skye, supposedly jilted by a lover, made the decision to sail solo across the Atlantic Ocean from his home in Scotland to Cape Breton.
He settled on a promontory off Jimmy Gillis beach in Jamesville where he built a small hut that would become his home until his death in 1949.
Stories of this man and his eccentricities still circulate amongst the older generations. Referred to in Gaelic simply as “Bodach a’Bhidse” or in English as “The Old Man on the Beach,” he was a loner whose true name is lost to all but a few elders, who even still, need to pause to recall it.
While working on the Stòras Gàidhlig Cheap Bhreatuinn project at the Beaton Institute at Cape Breton University, the discovery of an unidentified collection of Gaelic songs (MG 6.43) prompted me to seek the knowledge held by my community. The songs did not make use of familiar stock choruses or characteristically Gaelic poetic conventions. They seemed unique and, to be honest, not terribly good.
I poured over the songs for the better part of a week noting that the author talked about being in Scotland and then the Iona area. A barely legible signature yielded the surname McKinnon. A second signature on the back was of that of Vincent MacNeil along with an address. The Sydney city directory confirmed Vincent was the son of Stephen L. MacNeil. He, as it turned out was husband to Helen MacNeil (née MacLean) who was the aunt of a friend, Helen MacDonald.
Maybe Helen MacDonald could tell me if Stephen L. wrote poetry.
He did not.
It is frustrating when an item refuses to open up about its past, but in the interest of efficiency I had to put it aside.
A few days later a song clipping from the Casket surfaced. The song was submitted for publication by a John MacInnis of Iona but was composed by “Eòghan MacFhionghain” who MacInnis stated was a recent immigrant from Scotland. I could not recall such a recent immigrant from Scotland to Iona, so I turned to the community member with the best memory of the Iona area I know, Rod C. MacNeil.
“Well, I suppose that would have to be ‘The Old Man on the Beach,’” Rod stated rather nonchalantly in Gaelic.
I returned to the collection of songs and checked the signature. Knowing the name allowed me to make out the elaborately scrolled “Ewen McKinnon.” Rod informed me that to make a little money, McKinnon sold his compositions. He
even recalled some lines of a song that McKinnon performed at his home in Barra Glen in the 1930s.
Finding Ewen McKinnon’s poetry and assigning authorship to the records has done more than simply describe a set of records. Instead of only remembered as an eccentric old man, McKinnon has been released from a prison of obscurity, with his compositions as evidence of his work and creativity.
His songs are not sung and do not seem to be of any great Gaelic literary significance. Their merit lies in their ability to speak of a community that bought his songs as gesture of
charity. The fact that his songs had an audience who could read and assess their quality by comparing them with songs from a large catalogue of local and Scottish compositions speaks to the strength of Gaelic language and culture in Iona in the 1930s.
Also touching is how people banded together to provide him with a headstone – even if he was to be relegated to Little Narrows cemetery, being a Protestant, after all.
The Beaton institute at CBU houses the memories of Cape Bretoners. It keeps alive the spirit and passions of people who risk being forgotten. It honours these people by carefully preserving the possessions
of strangers, people who in sharing their memories with present-day Cape Bretoners may be thought of once again, made relevant and perhaps even be re-named.
Visit https://beatoninstitute. com/ to learn more about the Gaelic holdings at the Beaton Institute.