The Silent Weaver (7 page)

Margaret Fay Shaw was entranced by the humour and hospitality of the people of South Uist, and captivated by their traditions. She diligently collected their songs and customs, sayings and stories. One day her friends Peigi MacRae and Angus MacCuish gave her a remarkable verse which had been written by a man called Allan MacPhee from Carnan, the township close to Balgarva in the district of Iochdar at the other end of the island. ‘
O mo dhuthaich
,' they sang . . .

‘O my country,' Fay Shaw translated,

The Pennsylvanian was also an expert photographer. She took a portrait of an old man, a celebrated stonemason called Iain ‘Clachair' Campbell. Campbell was sitting outside his crofthouse that day in the early 1930s, smoking a pipe. To his left a tangle of rough picked heather lay against a wall. To his right were coils of thick, strong rope. In the middle, in his big bare hands a sheaf of the heather was being expertly woven and extraordinarily converted into neat lengths of the rope.

Iain ‘Clachair' Campbell was plaiting heather into rope because he lived on the east coast of Uist, where there was a lot of heather but hardly any marram grass. Out on the west coast machair, in places like Balgarva, everything was truly plentiful. In that part of Uist marram grass was abundant. In Balgarva the MacPhees had no need to make rope or thatch solely from heather. In its season they also used marram grass.

Marram grass, bent grass or beach grass elsewhere in the English-speaking world,
muirineach
in Scottish Gaelic,
ammophila
(sand-lover) in Greek, is native to sand dunes all around the sub-Arctic coasts of the North Atlantic Ocean. Its relationship to dunes is symbiotic: it helps to create them by binding blown sand, and then marram grass flourishes in the stabilised dune.

It grows in thick clumps, and in Europe its broad, fibrous, resilient strands can reach a foot in length. Marram grass has always been exploited by the people who lived near its dunes. In Denmark, where it proliferates on the Baltic coast, it was used for fuel and cattle feed as well as thatch. In Ynys Môn, the Isle of Anglesey off north-western Wales, a Celtic domain 300 miles south of Uist, marram grass was turned into brushes and mats as well as thatch. Up and down the east-coast links of Scotland ‘the bents' became a generic term for the sea-shore.
All over the country marram grass was once so commonly harvested for thatch that in places the coast disintegrated, villages and farmland were buried under sand, and in 1695 ‘His Majesty does strictly prohibit and discharge the pulling of bent, broom or juniper off the sand hills for hereafter.'

In the Uists and other Hebridean islands where the King's writ failed to run, marram grass was used for thatch until the second half of the twentieth century – until, in fact, thatched roofs themselves were replaced by corrugated iron or slate. It was used for practical, playful and confessional purposes. It was woven into dolls, and even into Roman Catholic icons – perhaps half in appeasement. In Scottish Celtic legend, when the fairies stole away a Christian child they left in his place a facsimile made from marram grass. An echo of the Gaulish wicker man, this chimera had human faculties, but had no human soul.

The folklore collector Alexander Carmichael described a typical Hebridean household in the late nineteenth century as being one in which ‘The houseman is twisting twigs of heather into ropes to hold down thatch, a neighbour crofter is twining quicken roots into cords to tie cows, while another is plaiting bent grass into baskets to hold meal.' He noted a local saying:

Carmichael discovered a festive cereal cake called ‘struan Micheil' to which batter was ceremonially applied as it baked by the fire, and ‘in Uist this is generally done with “badan murain”, a small bunch of bent-grass'. Ears of corn were baked
by hanging them over a slow, smokeless peat fire in nets made of marram grass.

‘The people of neighbouring islands,' said Carmichael, ‘call Uist “Tir a' mhurain”, the land of the bent-grass, and the people “Muranaich”, bent-grass people. Even the people on the east side, where there is no bent, apply the name to those on the west, where this grass grows.'

Apart from making baskets and thatching outbuildings and the family home, as a young
Muranach
back in Uist Angus MacPhee would have used marram grass and heather to make rope. It was a skilled process, but straightforward once mastered. Three strands of grass were plaited into a short string. Three of the strings were then plaited into a thin rope. Three of the thin ropes were plaited to make a thicker rope. Perhaps halfway along the length of the uncompleted plait, three new strands were introduced and bound in to increase its length. The process was continued until a rope as thick and as long as its weaver wished had been created. A crofting household could never have enough rope, but hemp or sisal rope bought from a shop cost money. Well-made grass or heather cords were equally strong. They had a short useful lifespan but they were easily renewed, and were free. Crofting women knitted and sewed; the men kept their hands busy at night by mending nets and creels, and plaiting rope. In a later age plaiting rope would not be cost-effective. An hour's paid work would deliver more than enough cash to buy yards of sisal rope. But well into the twentieth century most Hebridean crofters had more hours in the day than cash. They had too little spare time and too little disposable money, but in the balance they had more of the former than the latter. However long it took them, making such essentials rather than buying them made economic sense.

And as these things do, plaiting grass metamorphosed from a financial necessity into part of a culture. Perhaps because it was an individual rather than a communal exercise, grass-weaving would never assemble the rich store of cheerful shanties and stories that became associated with waulking tweed or rowing boats. It was a private, quiet activity. But it was as common, as skilled and as useful a pursuit as any, and it inevitably became linked with another powerful Uist custom that would also die later in the twentieth century: the horse aesthetic of the machair plain.

Like rope and baskets, horses had been a necessity in the islands for centuries. Unlike rope and baskets, horses were also a substantial asset and a source of pride, status and recreation. Horses must have been introduced to the Uists when there were ships big enough to carry them there, which is to say some 2,000 years before Angus MacPhee went to live in Iochdar.

Once stabled offshore they were not easily replaced or put out to mainland stud. So unique breeds evolved in the Scottish islands, most famously the Shetland pony, way out off the north-east coast of Scotland, and the Eriskay pony, a stone's throw from the south coast of Uist. Both breeds are historical mongrels. They were probably introduced in the Bronze Age, and over the centuries certainly interbred with Celtic and Pictish steeds from Ireland and the Scottish mainland, Viking ponies from Scandinavia, and much later Clydesdales and Arabs.

But they remained sufficiently isolated to retain distinct characteristics of temperament and appearance. They were small and muscular with large heads. They were intelligent, patient, hard-working and remarkably friendly to the humans with whom they had washed up on those distant outcrops of gneiss. They were easy animals to love.

Hebridean ponies were useful everywhere in the hilly, roadless islands. But on the wide west-coast beaches and flat machair of the Uists they became more than pack- or draught-horses. The machair, which ran for 40 miles from Sollas in the north of North Uist to Polachar at the southern tip of South Uist, and for two or three miles from west to east inland, was horse country as good as any in Burgundy or Northamptonshire. There, they could be raced.

The earliest travellers to the Hebrides recorded horse races. ‘The natives are much addicted to riding,' noted Martin Martin in North Uist in the 1690s, ‘the plainness of the country disposing both men and horses to it.'

They observe an anniversary cavalcade on Michaelmas Day, and then all ranks of both sexes appear on horseback.

The place for this rendezvous is a large piece of firm sandy ground on the sea-shore, and there they have horse-racing for small prizes, for which they contend eagerly. There is an ancient custom, by which it is lawful for any of the inhabitants to steal his neighbour's horse the night before the race, and ride him all next day, provided he deliver him safe and sound to the owner after the race.

The manner of running is by a few young men, who use neither saddles nor bridles, except two small ropes made of bent [marram grass] instead of a bridle, nor any sort of spurs, but their bare heels: and when they begin the race, they throw these ropes on their horses' necks, and drive them on vigorously with a piece of long seaware in each hand instead of a whip; and this is dried in the sun several months before for that purpose.

This is a happy opportunity for the vulgar, who have few occasions for meeting, except on Sundays: the men have their sweethearts behind them on horseback, and give and receive mutual presents; the men present the women with knives
and purses, the women present the men with a pair of fine garters of divers colours, they give them likewise a quantity of wild carrots.

That image preserved by the Skye man Martin Martin, of young men riding bareback, using loose reins of woven marram grass and whips of seaweed, could have been caught anywhere in the Uists over a period of centuries. Horse culture was there as prevalent as on the Great American Plains. The tone of Martin's last words on leaving South Uist by boat for Eriskay would be echoed by many a European catching first sight of the Cheyenne or the Sioux somewhere west of St Louis:

As I came from South-Uist, I perceived about sixty horsemen riding along the sands, directing their course for the east sea; and being between me and the sun, they made a great figure on the plain sands. We discovered them to be natives of South-Uist, for they alighted from their horses and went to gather cockles in the sands, which are exceeding plentiful there.

Hebridean horsemanship was justifiably famous. It was not restricted to men and boys. Early in the 1890s a newly arrived schoolteacher was talking to a South Uist parish priest on the pathway to his church door, when

Along the road came at full gallop a large white horse with a young woman seated sideways on its back. Just as we reached the gate it stopped and she slid easily to the ground almost before it came to a standstill. I noted she had ridden without saddle or bridle.

After a rapid conversation in Gaelic, she put her foot on the bar of the gate, sprang lightly to the back of the horse which immediately started off at full gallop on receiving
a slap from its rider. It transpired that she had come with some important message from the priest of Bornish, the next parish eight miles away. On my speaking of her remarkable riding my companion exclaimed: ‘Oh, that's nothing,' as if it were not worthy of comment.

In 1901 Alexander Carmichael reported that the yearly Uist
odaidh
, or horse races, were dead. ‘By a curious coincidence,' wrote Carmichael, ‘the horse-races of Norway and the principal horse-race of the Western Isles, that of South Uist, ceased in the same year, 1820, and in two succeeding months . . .'

The last great ‘oda' occurred in Barra in 1828, in South Uist in 1820, in Benbecula in 1830, in North Uist in 1866, and in Harris in 1818. In the Small Isles the ‘oda' continued later, while occasional ‘oda' have been held in all these places since the years mentioned.

In Barra the ‘oda' was held on 25 September, being the Day of St Barr, the patron saint of the island; in all the other places on 29 September, being the Day of St Michael, the patron saint of horses and of the Isles.

In Barra the sports were held on ‘Traigh Bharra', Strand of St Barr; in South Uist, on ‘Traigh Mhicheil', Strand of St Michael; in Benbecula, on ‘Machair Bhaile-mhanaich', plain of the townland of the monks; in North Uist, on ‘Traigh Mhoire', Strand of St Mary; and in Harris, on ‘Traigh Chliamain', Strand of St Clement.

All these places are singularly adapted for man-racing, horse-racing, and other sports.

Carmichael was referring to huge annual events held on holy days, which certainly lapsed during the tumultuous Hebridean nineteenth century. There had been for hundreds of years a confessional connection between the equestrian festivals and the islands' residual Roman Catholic faith. A South Uist priest
who was born in 1818, Father Alexander Campbell, wrote later in the nineteenth century,

At a distance of two and a half miles from Bornish lies the foundation of an old church, surrounded as usual by a burial ground.

This Church was dedicated to St Michael the Archangel and Captain of the Heavenly Hosts. St Michael was the patron of the whole of the Long Island. Of old it was observed as a holy day of obligation by the Catholics of this place, but long since this obligation was done away with. Still, in my younger years, it was kept as a day of rest by the voluntary consent of the people.

There was always great preparation made for this festival. The good wife, assisted by her daughters, prepared on the day particular kind of bannocks called ‘struan', whatever that word means. This ‘struan' consisted of eggs, cream and other good ingredients which rendered it very palatable. It was made of a very large size and one was made for every member of the family. I heard that during the time I was at college that my good mother baked one in my name, though it was impossible for me to taste a morsel of it.