HUGH MACDONALD UNRAVELS THE RIDDLE OF WHY HIS FATHER – A GLASWEGIAN OF IRISH AND CROMARTY STOCK WITH NO HEBRIDEAN HERITAGE – INSISTED ON

from me, a son relieved that the funeral the next day would not be deprived of a necessary guest. The frantic, even febrile area of my brain also divined a mutter from the casket that said: “Never in doubt.”

The question that did occur to me on that chilly night in December 2013 and has gently haunted me thereafter is: why was it imperative for a man born and bred in Possil, of Irish and Cromarty stock, to be buried on an island he first visited in middle age?

The answer lies in the profound depths of personality and the mysterious, powerful hold of culture and identity. My dad was an electrician from Possil who became an advertising executive from Busby. But he was always a Gael. When his father went to watch Celtic, he as a teenager studied Gaelic at night school.

WHEN his contemporaries played football, he strode out from Killearn Street to the Trossachs and beyond, burdened by a rucksack but buoyed by an innate sense of purpose. He was discovering Scotland. Is it too indulgent to suggest he was discovering himself?

As a businessman he travelled the world, spending some time as an executive in Iran, but when he retired early through ill health he retreated to Islay. He was to spend 30 years as an Ileach, flitting occasionally back across the water to a flat in Busby. But wherever he was he retained the air of a Gael. “I am descended from Somerled, Lord of the Isles,” he would tell me. “Aye, Somerled of High Possil, Lord of the Co-op aisles,” I would reply, evoking the family mantra of “if you can’t be funny at least be wounding”.

He was vindicated dramatically after his death. On the day my brother sent me a photograph of his newly erected gravestone, I was called to the editor’s office. I had been selected for a DNA test to discover my heritage. The results were in. ‘Interesting on your mother’s side,” said the organiser of the test. “There is Slav, Russian and Jewish lines. But your dad’s side is pretty boring.”

“Why?” I asked.

“It is 100 per cent Celt,” he replied. “So I am a son of Somerled?” “Yes.”

Five years on, in the summer of last year, I returned to Islay for the first time since the funeral. It was planned as a break at my sister’s holiday home with my partner Alison. I may not have consciously set out to find traces of my father – but he was everywhere.

There was no stated purpose to discover why he was seduced by Islay. But its charms were almost gaudily presented in a week the island was gilded by sunshine and by that peculiar, pure light that seems only to alight on Hebridean islands or Highland scenes that God in his generosity created for personal, spiritual uplift and the postcard industry.

This was the first time I had been on the island without my father. It was, of course, impossible to avoid him. The proprietor of the Celtic House, a gift shop in Bowmore with a splendid selection of books,