– Altus Prosator, ‘The Maker on High’, attrib. Saint Columba, tr. Edwin Morgan
Our Mt. Shirane
is the Rhum Cuillin
coming in and out of sight
Our Mt. Hina
is the Skye Cuillin
going in and out of view
Our Asamuzu Bridge
is the Mallaig–Armadale ferry
Our reeds at Tamae
are the spaghnum moss bogs
of Tarskavaig
and milkwort and bog-cotton
of Dùn Sgàthaich
Our lodging at inn
is Meg’s House,
where the door
is always open
Our Castle of Hiuchi
is Dun Sgathaich
with its void drawbridge
and cliff-top rowan
Our first wild geese cry
heard at Mt. Kaeru
is our first wild geese cry
heard at Dun Sgathaich
Our moon is the aurora
via Ken’s computer
Our moon is gealaich
of Choluimb Chill
of Somhairle MacGill-Eain
Our moons are many
Our weather is also hard to tell
but kind on the grassy keep
Our Emperor Chuai is Cuchulainn,
leaping like a salmon, fine of form,
lover of Uathach, student of Sgathaig
Dùn Sgàthaich (Dun Scaith) – The innkeeper
51 Wish, rowan, Meg's House
Alec Finlay, 2010
51 View NE to Dun Scaith
Ken Cockburn, 2010
Meg’s email said come to Tarskavaig, 'Dun Sgathaich, has ancient stunted trees, quartz topped hills, prehistoric fort, sandy beach at Ord near-by, views over to the Cuillin, bridge over to the castle.' Since we last met she’s been to Japan, where she was as close to Basho's birthplace as the sign, but was inveigled instead to a Ninja house by the presence of young Colm. Her old boyfriend Mark said
the landscape
makes sense
of the music
As true in Honshu as Sleat.
We feel at home straightaway. Even before arriving, we pulled over on the hill road for a view of the bay, to see if we could spot her house, and there by the village hall was an overturned billboard for a talk by Tim Neat, on Hamish Henderson. We’re a day late, but still, it’s a good omen.
51 Last night's event
Ken Cockburn, 2010
The door stays open into the evening, and we meet Kenny, whose chicken’s eggs are sun-resplendent; and Betty, who chats about ceilidh’s at Sam’s house just after the war – a mental cog slips into place, that’s Sorley, Somhairle MacGill-Eain. Talk of Hamish and Tim brings up the letter-box bomb campaigns of the 50’s, and Meg recalls the later Gaelic campaigns, paint-splattering road signs that made a nonsense of both languages. Things do improve, if they’re forced to; OS maps integrate layers of culture that we wander through. Maybe we can even get them to do an Atlas Scotia Hosomichi.
51 circle poem (the cuillin)
Alec Finlay, 2010
51 Compassing Tarskavaig
Alec Finlay, 2010
Enjoying her role as Basho's innkeeper, Meg’s prepared our picnic, chosen today's whisky – an Islay Bruichladdich – a suitable tea for a warrioress, Keemun Black Tiger, and brought with her 3 sake cups from Japan – the shopkeeper threw them in when he dropped and slightly damaged a shell-dragon Colm wanted. A happy accident.
51 Sake cups
Ken Cockburn, 2010
(AF, KC)
Dùn Sgàthaich (Dun Scaith) – The wild geese
We park by the beach behind a mini-bus from Orkney. An older man and woman keep an eye out on a group of younger folk from a safe distance. Behind the beach there's grass covered in cowpats and seaweed, and pools of brackish water. Another happy accident occurs as Basho's wild geese rise from the sea, and sweep back across the bay. Eck rushes off to record and shepherd them, taking a snap of their take-off; but as they fly overhead Meg and I are gossiping and the photo-moment passes.
51 wild geese
Alec Finlay, 2010
51 Wild geese
Ken Cockburn, 2010
51 circle poem (one goose leads)
Alec Finlay, 2010
51 Meg as Pictish Warrior Queen
Alec Finlay, 2010
51 Thistle, Pictish Goddess
Alec Finlay, 2010
Meg's had a postcard in her car for some time, of a Pictish goddess. Perhaps she's been waiting for this moment, for this landscape to walk abroad in.
51 wordrawing (Dunscaith)
Alec Finlay, 2010
(KC)
51 Dun Scaith arch
Ken Cockburn, 2010
We enter Dun Scaith (the names means ‘Shadowy’) by its floorless entrance, climb to the flattish top looking north across Loch Eishort to Boreraig and the Cuillin – said to be named after Cúchulainn – , and west to Rhum and distant Canna. Sun emerges, and we've a sheltered picnic spot.
This castle features in The Tain, in 'Cúchulainn's… Training in Arms with Scáthach', for a year and a day. She is the patron saint of blacksmiths, and sometimes said to be the daughter of the King of Scythia.
Cúchulainn travels from Ireland to Alba to complete his combat training with the female warrior Scáthach; learning how to use a mysterious weapon, the Gáe Bulg, deadly barbed spear, or an underwater dart. She is said to have offered the young warriors the "friendship of her thighs". Happy days.
The tale brings to mind Kill Bill, in which Uma Thurman's Black Mambo bride travels to China to learn martial arts from the master Pai Mei, and ultimately uses that knowledge to fulfill the film's title. One travels to find the spark from somewhere else, the glamour, to bring that strangeness home. (Kill Bill's other Scottish compass-point is Stevenson's The Master of Ballantrae, the pirates' vacuous-vicious ruthlessness recalling Tarantino's over-ripe assasins, not to mention the parallel buried-alive episodes. But that walk's for another day.)
Here’s the tale, told by Meg, where Cúchulainn flipped.
51 audio, Dun Sgathaich, Meg Bateman
Alec Finlay, 2010
A few days later we were told the landward pair, a tale of another Warrior Queen, Scáthach’s sister, Aoife, who some say was of Glenelg’s brochs.
(AF, KC)
51 Eck records Meg
Ken Cockburn, 2010
51 Meg & Eck libate
Ken Cockburn, 2010
In this breezy sun, watching cloud lift on and off the Cullin’s over at Elgol, there couldn’t be a better place to ‘poem’, sit, eat, talk, attend to the present relaxed in one-another’s company, and reminisce. And Meg suddenly gets it to, this thing we do, of letting the poem happen here on the castle, tying a label, leaving it to flap in the wind. And she’s off, adding her own verses.
We share today's whisky around the dried-up well, full of reddening docks. A rite as free and easy as could be, but meant all the same.
51 hokku-label
('the dram I drink on Dùn Sgàthaich / burns between the breasts / like the sword thrust there / by Cuchulainn', Meg Bateman)
Ken Cockburn, 2010
51 Wish, Dun Scaith
Ken Cockburn, 2010
Dùn Sgàthaich (Dun Scaith) – 3 strands
51 waters/clouds, Dun Sgathaich
Alec Finlay, 2010
51 thyme/time, Dun Sgathaich
Alec Finlay, 2010
51 twine/time, Dun Sgathaich
Alec Finlay, 2010
(I)
sifted
water
lifted
cloud
(II)
thyme
sun
time
dun
(III)
a strand
of twine
a line
of time
a line
of twine
a strand
of time
(AF)
We’re glowing and also calm, from this shared moment on the mount of the Warrior Queen. On our return we spot a rowan and lie on the cliff-top heather, to tie a verse and a wish, and a little further on, find milkwort and bog-cotton, in homage to MacDiarmid. Somewhere here is the great boulder where Cuchulainn tied his deer hounds, Luath and Bran, when they returned from the chase.
51 wish, clifftop
Ken Cockburn, 2010
51 hokku-label
('if you choose / to read this poem you do so / at your own risk', KC)
Ken Cockburn, 2010
51 Eck, ‘Cwa een like milk-wort and bog-cotton …’
Ken Cockburn, 2010
Meg talks of her recent visit to Luxembourg, where her host, James Reid-Baxter, our old friend from university days, collected litter when out walking. In honour of Jamie Meg agrees that it is the right thing to do. Which means we leave little heaps whenever we stop to make a poem and take a photo. The best I find's a bucket which saves us dropping our gatherings as we go.
(KC)
The woods at Gauscavaig were pollarded in ancient times. Colm and a friend from Sabhal Mor Ostaig cut hazel wands here for Meg’s coracle, which sits by her door.
Meg drives us on past Tokavaig to the old Druidic woodland at Sron Daraich – oak, hazel, ash, birch, willow, darach, calltain, fiseann, beithe, seileach. The trees are the more charmed for being not especially tall, the wood not especially dense – when we step into the open and see the sea and Cuillin it’s a surprise to be back here.
Sron Daraich Mesostics
..............................Donnan’s
.............................dArk
............................biRlinn
.............................sAils
.............................aCross
..............................Heaven
.............................(oak)
51 wish, oak
Ken Cockburn, 2010
.............................wAnds
............................wiLl
..............................fLoat
...............................The
...........................corAcle
...............................Into
...........................beiNg
..........................(hazel)
51 wish, hazel
Ken Cockburn, 2010
..............................deIrdre’s
..............................loSt
.............................lovE
...............................nAoise
..............................caNnot
..........................returN
.............................(ash)
51 wish, ash
Ken Cockburn, 2010
.......................... .thE
..............................lIght
..............................sTipple
..............................tHe
........................shadE
...........................(birch)
51 wish, birch
Ken Cockburn, 2010
......................... .....thE
.................................lIght
..............................spiLls
...............................thE
................................dAy
.................................Catches
................................sHadow
...........................(willow)
51 wish, oak, hazel, ash, birch
Ken Cockburn, 2010
(AF, KC, MB)
51 The Ord mermaid
Ken Cockburn, 2010
Our last stop is Ord, with its beach mermaid, and view of the Cuillin, our Mt. Hina.
51 Teampull Choain cairn
Ken Cockburn, 2010
51 Mt Hina
Alec Finlay, 2010
Slightly uphill is Teampull Choain, a monument to the 8th-century St Comgan on the site of his church. Signpost and path and well tended but the site itself is a mass of bracken, cleared somewhat around the cairn.
51 hokku-label
('"enjoy him forever" / a sea of bracken beats against / St Comgan's stones’, KC)
Ken Cockburn, 2010
For the Temples of the Gaels
Our Homesickness Lasts Forever
AF, after IHF, after Hermann Hesse
(KC)
Basho’s moon
the moon pure and clear
Yugyo carried carrying
sand to cover up
Basho, tr. Cid Corman
Columba’s moon, Choluimb Chille gealac
‘Legais runa, ro-ch –uaid eter scolaib sceptra
sceo ellacht imm-uaim, n-esci im rith
raith rith la grein ngescaig,
sceo rein rith.’
Amra Choluimb Chille
‘… and he put together the harmony concerning the course of the moon,
the coure which it ran with the rayed sun,
and the course of the sea.’
tr. Thomas Owen Clancy & Gilbert Markus
Sorley’s moon, Somhairle gealaich
‘Cha ghrinneas anfhann na gealaich
no maise fhuraidh na mara
na boath sgeulachd onfhaidh a’ chladaich
tha nochd a’ druhadh air m’ aigne.’
Somhairle MacGill-Eain
‘It is not the frail beauty of the moon
nor the cold lovelines sof the sea
nor the empty tale of the shore’suproar
that seeps throgh my spirit’s to-night.’
tr. Sorley Maclean
Ken's sand moon
51 hokku-label
('the beach is a poem / the moon rewrites / each day'. KC)
Ken Cockburn, 2010
Eck’s lichen moon
51 hokku-label
(‘for her whiteness / gealaich / for their moon’, AF)
Ken Cockburn, 2010
Dun Sgathaich’s moon
51 circle poem, AF
Ken Cockburn, 2010
bruichladdich moon
51 circle poem, AF
Ken Cockburn, 2010
51 circle poem, AF
Ken Cockburn, 2010
Tarskavaig moons
Alec Finlay, 2010
(AF)
During the long chat we shared with Meg on our first night, we got onto Achnabrek, Angus' intuitive archaeological psychogeograhy, the wisdom of applying ideas to places.
For her the cup-and-ring mark rocks are breachadh, dappled, patterning.
speckled trout
cratered moon
pockled tattoing of the earth
the breachadh of Coire Bhreacain
The gods, such as they are, live down here – often as weather.
putting our waterproof
trousers on
a charm
against rain
Basho’s hokku catches this knowingness
here’s the harvest moon
good old Hokkoku weather
don't depend on it
Lit. ‘certainty non-existent’, as in, ‘unsettled in the north’.
the certainty
of uncertain weather
is August
in the Highlands
51 circle poem (the Cuillin disappear)
Alec Finlay, 2010
(AF)
compasses don’t work here
the mountains
are full of lead
Basho describes peaks coming in and out of view, as the Cuillin did for us. As Skye is always to share, we’ve left The Cuillin to friends, who composed this renga there a few summers ago.
Cuillin renga
walking on rock
feels like you are sticking
to the planet
from beneath feet
shines the first yoke-rose
whiteness
of the stonechat’s breast
through magnified ayes
silent contemplation
in gaslight glow
paper tigers
garnish the evening
rest beckons
have I slept well?
conditioned to need the clock to tell
rock slabs call
but rain squalls
dampen ambition
drawn to the turquoise pool
in my mind I jump in
after the eagle
ramparts acquiesce
to game probing
pesky seams pull
but Drium nah Ramh points us home
tealight scratchings
commit the day
to paper
overnight rain clears
ferryman’s clock urges us upwards
gabbro moon rock
grips us tight
on our path
hands placed over solid feet
offer new perspectives
two roots
split between rocks
a silver rowan
harbour boats invade our space
attack with fiery chips
bound for home
can rain soak through skin?
a breath of elderflower
the miles slip past
but memories of rock and space follow
from eagle, seal and fulmar
to Soulwax, Little Chef
and QPR tickets
without excuse
journey with no end
renga word-map
composed over 5 days in The Skye Cuillin
Rob Bushby, Toby Clark, Anne-Marie Culhane, Angus Miller
51 skyline (Cuillin)
Alec Finlay, 2010
intimations
Meg Bateman is a Scottish academic and poet. She currently teaches at Sabhal Mor Ostaig, the Gaelic College in Skye.
Read more about Sgathaich, Gaelic Goddess of the Dead, and other faery folklore relating to the islands.
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