‘you glitter too much
like a drawn sword’
– Sanjuro, Akira Kurosowa
Our Abumizuri is Glenelg
Our Shiroishi Castle is the 3 brochs – Dun Torve, Dun Troddan, Dun Grugaig
Our Sanekata’s grave is Diarmid’s Grave, Loch Duich
Our villages of Minowa and Kasashima, ‘seen from afar, among slopes’, is Eilean Bàn, gazed toward from Broadford
Our ‘susuki grass of memory’ is the seedy headed rush that flourishes around the Duns
Our ‘apt for the season’, is Tam and Stuart, chuntering away on Off the Ball
Ferry Crossing
20 Basho, Kylerhea Glen
Alec Finlay, 2010
20 Sora, Kylerhea Glen
Ken Cockburn, 2010
So ferry cross Kylerhea, putting Skye behind us. We followed a speed-cyclist down Kylerhea Glen, between Sgurr na Coinnich and Ben Asiak. He was nowhere to seen at the dead end pier. This narrow strait was named after Rea: of the band of Fianna who bounded off Skye only he fell into the kyle and drowned.
look –
there’s there ferry
turning sideyways on
20 ferry arriving on Skye
Ken Cockburn, 2010
As the ferry burled over ‘this great tidal river’ (SG), we looked out for otters, saw seals teasing the boat, raising the ire of Nak – named by the Celtic-mad ferryman, in honour of Nakamura, who is not a waka poet – who chased them from the gunwhale.
20 Nak
Alec Finlay, 2010
20 Nak's herd
Alec Finlay, 2010
Where Ben of The Quraing was a gentle furred spirit, Nak was proper collie, herding us off: first sturm-bikers, then the van, last of all Ken.
20 Beinn a Chapuill
Alec Finlay, 2010
Our brochs are cupped between the mountains of Chapel & Castle.
20 wordrawing: Beinn a Chapuill, Meal a’ Chaisteil
Alec Finlay, 2010
Looking back at Skye from the strand, the woods were more vulvar than volcanic – or maybe Basho has just been away from home too long.
the crotch of Kylerhea Wood
ebbs across from the flood
mouth of the river’s cunt
at Eileanreach
Glenelg
20 toad puffed
Ken Cockburn, 2010
I may think toad's
better off off the road
he puffs his dissent
20 wordrawings: Dun Troddan, Dun Grugaig
Alec Finlay, 2010
20 hokku-label, Abhainn a Ghlinnie Bhig
(‘the Abhainn a Ghlinnie Bhig / flourishes between // Meall a Chasteill / and Beinn a Chapuill,' AF)
Ken Cockburn, 2o10
(AF)
Broch I: Dun Telve
‘… to make the Stones give evidence of themselves’
– John Aubrey, Monumenta Britannica
20 Glenelg, Dun Telve broch
Ken Cockburn, 2010
Telve is time
in the round
alders and
the rivers sound
20 Telve entrance
Ken Cockburn, 2010
the broch bends
with each round
filling your mind
with gaps
20 T-E-L-V-E
Alec Finlay, 2010
2 buzzards
mewl
&
gyre
over Dun Telve
Susuki Sora almost tied to the broon coo’s tail.
20 hokku-label, Dun Telve
(‘susuki grass of memory / brown cow spends its days / forgetting’, KC)
Ken Cockburn, 2010
20 Dun Telve, An Cnoc
Ken Cockburn, 2010
At Dun Telve we drank An Cnoc in honour of Saigyo, whose poem on the exiled Fujiwara Sanekata of Kyoto, Basho refers to.
A name unperishable
he left behind
but only plume grass
stands by, all withered
Another instance of bygone lairdies and belted knights remaining only in name, their tinsel castles o’ergrown with staggly grasses of memory. Here our 3 versions – the first,
20 tanka-label (after Saigyo)
Ken Cockburn, 2010
(I)
they have left nothing
but a steadfast circle
in this world
beyond this ruin in a distant glen
bracken and spruce are all I see
(II)
for Iain Pate
what with August coming round
I’m too tired of listening
for names from afar
“East Fife, Forfar”
apt for the new season
(III)
what’s left to us are teams
with famous names
whose fate each season
is to be cast
like dry stalks of yarrow
20 tanka, after Saigyo
poem, AF; photograph, KC, 2010
20 hokku-label, Dun Telve
(‘not that we’ve been here long / but the other visitors / have come, have gone’, KC)
Ken Cockburn, 2010
Broch II: Dun Troddan
20 Dun Troddan
Ken Cockburn, 2010
20 Shiroishi
poem, AF; photograph, KC, 2010
Dun Troddan grows over Corrary Farm, whose walls absorbed its missing stones. This is the collective domain of Amy, Neil the architect – who turfed the roofs, juxtaposing two eras of architecture – and Felix, absentee baronial Teutonic rockstar.
Invidious to say, but each broch’s more poetic than the last. Tallying Troddan: bending thistles and foxgloves for colour; gentle hazel and alder shading the wee burn; mewling buzzard over Meall Breac; swoops of swallows; ferny walls and tufts of grass growing on the broch top; and the way its cross-section reveals the bone and hollow structure. Even the nettles have an air of distinction. It adds up.
20 hokku-label, Dun Troddan's colours
poem, AF; photograph, KC, 2010
how describe
a thing’s colour
when it changes
with each shift
of the light
20 Basho on the walls of Dun Troddan
Ken Cockburn, 2010
From the way I loll on the grassy walls, a family from Fife guess I’m the guy who labeled Dun Telve. They’re led by Gran, who “just loves to show people this glen”, with her daughter, a storyteller from Pollock. The pink-clad girls think we’re really lucky, but that we should really be going by horse, as Basho did, or Johnson & Boswell. Off they pedal, leaving me with the swallows.
20 wish, sycamore, Dun Troddan
Ken Cockburn, 2010
20 hokku-label, Dun Troddan
Ken Cockburn, 2010
Dun Troddan hokku
(I)
where the broch bends
with each round
your mind
fills with gaps
(II)
neat
shingle
banks
await
October’s
spate
(III)
the burns thread
soft lines
of alder & hazel
thru the spruce
20 wish, Dragonfly Burn, Dun Grugaig, alder
Ken Cockburn, 2010
(AF)
Eddie’s Grainne
People often ask us, did we plan the whole trip, or is just happenstance, and we often explain that you make rules so that you can play in them. No station was over-planned, and no place has let us down. We will have known that the brochs were Shirishi, but we dinna ken whit the susuki grass of memory will be until we look around. When ‘Bashoing’ serendipity tags along with us, like tin cans rattling behind a newly-weds’ motor.
20 Delicious! Organic! Sparkling!
Ken Cockburn, 2010
Robert Duncan’s motto: ‘A correspondence is poetry enlarged’ held true at Troddan. We broke for tea at The Wagon Café, tucked in behind the yurt and poly-tunnels, growing lettuces which we’ll eat that night at the Inn, served by a young guy fresh in from Chicago, sent by his Celtic professor as part of the glen’s vita nuova,
wantea? –
just ring the bell
they’ll be in
the Polytunnel
I wanted to know the name of the wee burn we’d walked by on the way to the third broch, of which more anon, and there was a guy with a beard I thought might own the farm. This was Eddie, from Glen More, over the hill, who kindly mapped out the whole glen for us. He then told the tale of Grainne – perfect pair for Meg’s Scàthaig – from the Finn McCool cycle (our Fingal).
audio, the Grainne myth, Eddie Stiven
Alec Finlay, 2010
27 by the Waggon Cafe
Ken Cockburn, 2010
20 Eddie Stiven & the Glean Beag Clan
Alec Finlay, 2010
Broch III: Dun Grugaig
20 Dun Grugaig
Ken Cockburn, 2010
20 Dun Grugaig vista
Ken Cockburn, 2010
After Eddie’s yarn we wove our way up Gleann Beag, parking by the last farm, Balvraid. Tired already, we swither in the rosy late afternoon light wondering whether to go on; comparing the fort on the map with the view ahead, no broch to be seen, only a track winding around the ridge of Druim Isal into the mountains of Glenshiel Forest, the crags of Sgurr na Creige framed.
Dun Grugaig, Eddie told us, was the ‘witches Dun’, a ‘gallery Dun’ with a grave within, close to Abhainn a’ Ghluinne-Bhig, sheltered beneath Druim Iosal.
20 Sora’s libation
Alec Finlay, 2010
We libate the matriarch who, so the story goes, gifted 2 brochs to her sons, Telve & Troddan.
20 hokku-label, Dun Grugaig
poem AF, photograph KC, 2010
Dun Grugaig hokku
(I)
without the map
the broch has no name
so we call it
Shiroishi
(II)
sheepshit, bracken, midges
the 3rd fort’s a ruin
uncleared and the most
beautiful of all
(III)
the river
is louder
higher up
the glen
(IV)
ferns on
warriors’
dreams
(V)
one more cup of Hunnan for the road
one more cup of Hunnan before I go
to the valley below
20, audio, Dun Grugaig
AF & KC, 2010
20 hokku-label, Dun Grugaig
Ken Cockburn, 2010
20 hokku-label, Dun Troddan
poem AF, photograph KC, 2010
20 hokku-label, Dun Grugaig
Ken Cockburn, 201
20 shadow drawing
drawing, AF, photo, KC, 2010
20 toad/stool
(‘toad/hop//toad/stool/crop’, AF)
Ken Cockburn, 2010
20 Dun Gugaig ferns
Alec Finlay, 2010
Dragonfly Burn
20 wish, Dragonfly Burn, alder
Ken Cockburn, 2010
On the path back, exultant from the ruined beauty of Grugaig, in evening sun, Ken tied a wish on an alder where the path fords a tributary burn with no name.
We call her Dragonfly Burn, tracing her serpentine tree line and ferny crack where it leads up Coire nan Caorach, and recall the inscribed ‘wild’ pebble at Stonypath.
The alder’s female catkins are woody part-cones, the Greeks thought them the origin of boats for the way they float.
Q:
Floating their boats down-
stream how do they climb up?
A:
Windcast by a breezeburst
(AF, verses KC)
Glenelg Inn
That night Eddie was washing dishes at the Glenelg Inn, where the two waitresses were a Grainne of many moods between them. Basho at the best Sea Bream, Sora finest mussels, clams and razorshells.
27 hokku-label
('Back on shore, put up at inn / whose windows opened upon sea, / feeling of resting on the journey / now among wind and cloud')
Ken Cockburn, 2010
Sisters
We wound home to Glen Shiel, past Eddie’s Balcraggie, the old Manse in Glen More; on over the crown of Bealach Ratagain, ghosted by a roe deer, to a crowning matriarchal view, preserved in hill form and name:
20 hokku label, Bealach Ratagain
(‘our shadows on Bealach Ratagain / cloud shadows on the Five Sisters’, AF)
Ken Cockburn, 2010
And on for the day’s last task, the hasty ascent of Diarmid’s Grave and Dun – another perfect double hump form – by Loch Duich, in a bemidged smirr of rain.
20 Diarmid's Grave
Ken Cockburn, 2010
intimations
Eddie Stiven is an Ayrshire-born playwright and tutor. His website contains information about his most recent projects and commissions.
Eddie also runs cultural programmes for visiting overseas students; see Glenelg Colloquia for more details.
For a comprehensive introduction to Glenelg, Arnisdale and the surrounding area, visit the Glenelg & Arnisdale Development Trust website.
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