Kay’s book evokes wonderful images of Ayrshire childhood

From young Galston boys organising what they believed could be the last game of football during the Cuban Missile Crisis to the devastation of a mining disaster.

Billy Kay’s book ‘Born in Kyle: A Love Letter tae an Ayrshire Childhood’ explores life in the region from a bygone era.

Kay, a Scottish writer, broadcaster and language activist, will talk about his book at this year’s Boswell Book Festival on Saturday, May 11.

The festival, named in honour of Ayrshire writer, James Boswell, the inventor of the modern biography, is held at Dumfries House in Cumnock from May 10 to May 12.

Billy Kay is well known in Scotland for his radio and TV documentaries for the BBC and for books including ‘Scots The Mither Tongue’, ‘Odyssey’, ‘Knee Deep in Claret’ and ‘The Scottish World’.

His latest book ‘Born in Kyle: A Love Letter tae an Ayrshire Childhood’ is written in both Scots and English, where Billy goes back to his own linguistic and cultural roots and celebrates a sense of place and belonging in his native Galston in Ayrshire’s Irvine Valley.

Billy said: “As an Ayrshire lad who like Burns, was born in Kyle, I am very much looking forward to coming home and engaging with an Ayrshire audience again.

“I am from Galston rather than Cumnock, Auchinleck, Mauchline or New Cumnock but we share a mining heritage, a linguistic heritage and a love for the green hills of our home county – all of which are celebrated in my book.

“I am also looking forward to seeing the magnificent Dumfries House for the first time, as it was not open when I lived in the area.”

In the book Billy writes about working-class family life and the loving environment created by his parents and extended family; about enduring cold winters in a council house where the only source of heat was a coal fire and a paraffin heater.

He writes about what they ate and drank; how children passed their time by collecting everything from football cards to war medals; the richness of the Scots-speaking world they inhabited, using words and sayings with a pedigree going back hundreds of years.

He also writes about the influence of American music and movies coming into the Irvine Valley; the strong sense of community that came from a still living mining tradition; the football heights and the gambling lows; through the singing of Scots songs, the awareness of the poets who had gone before and who gave the people an identity they celebrated at family gatherings.

There are other stories which will come as a surprise, one bringing in a remarkable incident where a woman uses the second sight to prophesy a mining disaster.

There’s even a story of the Galston boys organising what they believed might be the last game of football at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, balanced against a true story the author got from a friend later in life who was a British diplomat in Cuba at the time, and whose job it was to inform the Americans if the Russian missiles had in fact been moved and were no longer a threat to the United States.

Billy said: “People can expect a potent mix of tears from the pathos of a mining disaster and laughter as I turn back the clock with love and nostalgia and celebrate the way of life locally in the 1950s before television had such an impact.

“Scots speakers will be in their element and people who think they don’t speak or understand Scots will experience a dramatic extension and revival of their linguistic ability as long forgotten words re-emerge to claim their heart and soul.

“Because of the Boswell connection, I’ll also talk a little about James Boswell’s conflicted view of Scots and Scottish culture.”

Included in the collection are two short stories and a prizewinning poem also rooted in Kyle which were published in anthologies of Scottish literature many years ago, but which are now out of print.

One of the short stories ‘Famie’ is about an elderly middle-class lady from a family that had once owned the cinema in Galston and who suffered from dementia in her old age.

‘Inrush at Nummer Fower’ is a story of a tragic mining disaster from the 1920s that Billy got from his own grandfather’s brother – the character Matha Kay in the story.

It was first published in a collection in 1974 which also contained a story by a young James Robertson who wrote to Billy: “One of the most memorable things about Genie was your story.

“At that time the only other piece of prose in Scots I’d read was ‘Thrawn Janet’.

“It wasn’t my home language and ‘Thrawn Janet’ wasn’t an easy read but recognised what was going on and that this was the same language I heard going on all round me and could even use a bit of it when I had to.

“Then I read your ‘Inrush at Nummer Fower’ and it was a