Songs, rockets and Gigha gents in Saskatoon
ISLAND social life in the early 20th century revolved around the ceilidh house, ‘ danns an rathaid’ (dancing in the road) and the luadh ( pronounced ‘loo-ugh’): the finishing, fulling or waulking the homemade tweed after the wool had been woven and taken from the loom in crofters’ homes.
The gathering of six to 14 women sang lustily to lighten the task, as they pummelled the cloth back and forth in unison, thump, thump, thump, on a door-like ‘cleith’. The cloth was sewn into a loop and soaked in warm, soapy water, stale urine with melted dog-fish livers to remove oil and dirt as well as soften and shrink the fabric.
The rhythmic waulking songs, known as orain luaidh (‘or-ine loo-ie’), were led by the best singer, like a shantyman on a ship, and the rest came in on the chorus while the leader took a breath. After nine songs, the cloth ought to be ready, noticeably softer, thicker and more tightly woven.
The ancient tradition, now coldly and clinically carried out in commercial finishing mills, survived long into the 20th century in the Hebrides and was sufficiently strong in 1938 to merit a Luadh Competition at the London Mód.
The Oban Times reported the prizewinners on April 2: Effie MacAskill from Harris, Agnes Gillies from Ness and Jessie MacSween, Marsali MacLeod, Mary Mackay and Joey MacSween from The Battery, Stornoway. The ladies were ‘televised’ in a BBC Television programme, explaining the waulking and the process of handmade Harris tweed and sang a Hebridean weaving song. By the late 1940s, the finishing of Harris Tweed was being taken over by the mills, and the last domestic waulkings took place in the 1950s.
The great Gaelic folklorist Alexander Carmichael from Lismore collected in his Carmina Gadelica a waulking song from St Kilda. Music opens one window onto the strange, vanished way of life on St Kilda, Britain’s lost world, from the rowing of boats in surging seas to tales of exile. One Herald reporter, chronicling the island’s evacuation on August 29-30, 1930, recorded a St Kildan cottage in which men in wet blue fisher jerseys and patched trousers sat steaming in the warmth. ‘ We wait for a sail, like Robinson Crusoe,’ he said.
‘A stock pot sat by the open fireplace. It contained one household supper of salted mutton, a staple dish, with porridge, syrup, baked scones, dried ling and the exclusive dishes of the islanders – salted fulmar and roasted puffin, the food of a race of expert fowlers. In a corner rested a broom of gannet’s wings used for sweeping the stone floor.
‘The transplantation from the island, with its distinctive life and habits, to the routinized mainland will be salutary. No longer will turfs be cut on the Mullack Mhor to be stored in drystone cleits. No more will barefooted St Kildans descend fearlessly that dreaded 1,000ft fall of Conachair to the frothed sea far below in search of the fulmar, that skunk of birds whose flesh, oil and feathers once sustained life.’ Following the evacuation,
The Oban Times, on March 22, 1958, reported a statement from the War Office on the use of St Kilda. Winston Churchill’s son-in-law, Christopher Soames, said the island would be used as an observation post for the guided weapons firing range in the Hebrides.
‘Everything possible would be done to make life agreeable for the men’, Mr Soames said, including TV reception from Northern Ireland.
The film Rockets Galore, the sequel to Sir Compton Mackenzie’s classic comedy Whisky
Galore, began filming on Barra in 1958, The Oban Times reported on April 5 – ‘but nobody is going to get hurt’, it added. ‘There will be nothing more lethal than a film camera.’
Events of note included the Irish actor Noel Purcell shaving off his beard for the important role of the island priest. The stars of the picture, Jean Carson and Donald Sinden, flew from Pinewood Studios to Renfrew and then by heron aircraft to Barra. Producer Basil Deardon followed by car, and then steamer from Oban, but it is a mystery how the remainder of the cast and 60 technicians reached the island. On July 7 last year, The Oban
Times published an article on the great Ballachulish piper Willie Lawrie of the 8th Argylls, who composed the retreat march The Battle of the Somme, played on the battle’s centenary at the Thiepval Memorial in 2016.
Amongst the photographs, we mistakenly printed one depicting A Company 1st Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, taken in Cyprus in 1958, for which we apologise, and are delighted to set the record straight.
We are further informed this photograph, printed again here, contains at least six Argyllshire boys on two years’ national service. They include Tom MacGeachy from Campbeltown, Sandy Munro from Lochgilphead, Colin MacIver from Mull, John Reid from Dunoon, Donald McCuish from Oban and George Ferguson from Barcaldine. The officer in charge was called ‘Mad Mitch’.
Finally, far away from conflict, in a photo caption from March 22 1958, The Oban Times showed: ‘ A Campbell and a MacDonald sitting in harmony watching the Highland Games in Saskatoon in Canada, far from their island birthplace off the mainland of Argyll. They are Mr Duncan Campbell, retired postman, and Mr Angus MacDonald, retired employee of the Saskatoon Electrical Department, who were both born and brought up on the island of Gigha.’