Dochans & Nettles & Butterflies & Wild Pansies

I've been hunting for a poem about dochans but to no avail. It seems that the poor dochan - unlike the nettle and the thistle - has never so far been celebrated in verse.

This surprises me. And pains me a little. The garden of our newly built house, a brown field site in mid-June, is now a wash of brilliant green, courtesy of the dochan.

Nonetheless, I have been fighting a rearguard action to extricate and contain it, for it is vigorous and abundant enough to choke out any namby pamby garden plant I might like to grow. One small segment of dochan root left in the earth will next year have a head of emerald leaves. One seed escaping down into the soil can remain dormant for forty years, before thrusting upwards into the light of day. Respect!

There are thistles too, though less plentiful. And yet thistles have poems. Here's one by George Mackay Brown:

Thistles

Walk along the way of our year
Past the stations 
Of snowdrop, crocus, the

Marvellous green trumpets opening 
To announce
Voar, spring, Easter,

A troop of yellow coats, daffodils
Jostling in ditches,
Laughing along the wind;

The fluent tulips;
The poppies like blood splashes;
The rare secret

Yesnaby primula
That will not root 
In sealess rockeries, southward;

Rose; seapink; meadowsweet ...
But few praise
The tinker thistle, the outlaw;

Knives in his belt, whetted,
A tall swaggerer going
With his tribe down

Lost lanes of summer.

Nettles too, I've come to realise, are quite a bonny plant, with their crimped leaves and purple hearts. If they didn't sting my feet in my sandals when I'm hanging out washing, I might let them stay. Edward Thomas praised them in a poem:

Tall Nettles

Tall nettles cover up, as they have done 
These many springs, the rusty harrow, the plough 
Long worn out, and the roller made of stone: 
Only the elm butt tops the nettles now. 

This corner of the farmyard I like most: 
As well as any bloom upon a flower 
I like the dust on the nettles, never lost 
Except to prove the sweetness of a shower.

But dochans have no champion. Or at least none I have found. When my two sisters came to stay, Maggie and I were clearing dochans and other weeds at the back of the house when Catherine who had gone in for a rest, appeared at the door and, observing two winged creatures above our bent heads, spontaneously recited a poem from memory:

Flying Crooked

The butterfly, a cabbage-white, 
(His honest idiocy of flight) 
Will never now, it is too late, 
Master the art of flying straight, 
Yet has - who knows so well as I? - 
A just sense of how not to fly: 
He lurches here and here by guess 
And God and hope and hopelessness. 
Even the acrobatic swift 
Has not his flying-crooked gift.

Robert Graves

Along with the cabbage white's erratic flight, it was swallows that swooped in and out of our vision that day, not swifts, but the line could equally apply to them.

So there are three lowly specimens of the natural world that have poems dedicated to them. 

Who will write about the dochan?

Today, as I waded through their lush greenery, I glimpsed something bright under the leaves. I parted them carefully and found this!

A wild pansy! And then I remembered a story my mother told about wild pansies:

"One year when I was small – about ten or eleven maybe, there was a field next to the yard at home, which was sown with oats, but it also had a myriad of wild pansies – violets – in the corner of the field where there were no oats.

And there they were, the violets, a magical triangle of hundreds of wild violets.  I picked them – as many as my small hands would hold.  I buried my face in their cool, exquisite scent – how can I tell you what it was like – the flowers were purple and yellow, rich, violent colours, but they felt so cool and the scent was so delicate – my lips felt the silkiness of the flowers and my hands, cupped round a huge bunch, felt the absolute opulence of such splendour – more flowers than I could hold.  Oh, the complete delight of that experience – I can see the lovely purple of the petals – I can feel the silky cool touch of them on my mouth. I can smell the faint almost ‘no scent’ of the flowers. I only need to close my eyes and I can taste the ‘violets’."

What my mother leaves out of this account is that she walked back towards the house with her armful of 'violets', turned a corner and, instead of fields empty save for a few dairy cows grazing, saw trucks and men pouring in and tents going up. This was her first sight of the platoon of soldiers who were to be billeted on her father's small farm during the war. 

I'll let my mother's words stand in for a poem about dochans. It was dochans that sheltered that single wild pansy in my garden and recalled to me my mother's memory.

George Mackay Brown The Collected Poems
Edward Thomas
Robert Graves

EXPLORING ANTARCTICA WITH GAVIN FRANCIS

It was while he worked as a doctor in the sweltering heat of the tropics by the Indian Ocean in Kenya that Gavin Francis first dreamed of travelling to colder climes. The tropics for him were not 'palm tree-strewn beaches' to lie about on, but relentless sun and teeming humanity. Perhaps it's not surprising that it was there that he conceived a desire to experience its antithesis: Cold and Emptiness.

For a time he worked as a GP in Stromness. Then he travelled further North through Unst in Shetland to the Faroes and on to Iceland, Greenland, Svalbard, Lapland. His account of these travels, True North, became an award winning book fascinating to all those for whom the north holds mystery and allure.

But he is clearly a man of opposites. His trip to the far north accomplished, he felt the call of the south. The extreme south: Antarctica. He spent six months there with the British Antarctic Survey in the company mainly of Emperor penguins.

In an interview on BBC Radio Orkney this morning he told Fionn McArthur how he became entranced by the place and by the penguins. 'It's so empty,' he said, 'the only species that survives there apart from humans, is the penguins. I'm not a specialist bird watcher or a twitcher, but I became fascinated by them and their behaviour.'

His book, Empire Antarctica is the result of that fascination. 

Fionn recognised that in this new book the writing is even 'more assured' and Gavin Francis agreed. He hopes, he says, to go on developing as a writer, because good writing is important to him.

There is a unique chance to come and see Gavin Francis at this stage in his writing journey. He will be visiting Orkney again on Monday to talk about his new book and to show his amazing slides of the area. Expect stunning images of aurora borealis, sunrises, sunsets, ice, spindrift. And Emperor Penguins.

Gavin Francis

7.00 pm

Monday 5 August

Orkney Library & Archive

The event is FREE but TICKETED

Phone: 01856 873166 to make sure you get your ticket!

Come on now, form an orderly queue!

THE STONE BLOGS #2: Eyin Helga, Eynhallow, Holy Isle, Hildaland

Last night I went to Eynhallow for the first time in my life. I used to look across at it from Evie where my fella stayed. Sometimes in the late evening sun the island stood out so clearly I felt as if I could step across the Burgar Roost and land dry-shod on its shores. Other times it disappeared entirely into the mist and left Rousay lowering darkly out of an otherwise seemingly empty sound. 

Maybe this is why it became associated with Hildaland, the island of the Finn Folk, mostly hidden from mortal eyes, but sometimes glimpsed by Orcadians travelling by. The guide last night told the assembled folk who had sailed out on the annual Orkney Heritage Society trip the story of how Hildaland was tricked away from the Finn Folk and claimed for mortal Orcadians.

There seemed to be plenty trickery afoot last night, enough to put folk off stepping onto the shore. When we disembarked, thousands of shrieking terns rose from the rocks like a storm of needles and made us humans feel very unwelcome indeed. We steered clear of them, though, and headed out sunwise round the island to see the archaeological remains; those who wanted to see the birdlife walked off widdershins. 

One of the main attractions on Eynhallow - named Eyin Helga, Holy Island, by the Vikings - is a chapel and monastery dating back to the 12th Century. It is a Romanesque structure with impressive arches and there are mysteries surrounding it. Check out the excellent Orkneyjar website for more information about Eynhallow, the facts and the fiction, the mysteries and the speculation. 

It struck me once again, that the building methods for dry-stane dykes - see previous blog - have remained the same for centuries.  Millennia even, as we shall see ... 

Here is what Jo Ben said about Eynhallow in 1529 in his Descriptio Insularum Orchadiarum:

"ENHALLOW

Enhallow, as if it were, the Holy Island, and very small.

It is of old times related that here, if the standing corn be cut down, after the setting of the sun, unexpectedly there is a flowing of blood from the stalks of the grain; also it is said that if a horse is fastened, after sun-down it will easily get loose and wander anywhere during the night [without hindrance from any one, if indeed these be not hindrance from evil intent.

Here you may discern the futitious and fabulous traditions of these people."

(This information is quoted from Orkneyjar website, as above.)

Eynhallow, with its holy order of monks lost sight of down the centuries, had an important part to play in the imagination of George Mackay Brown.

In George Mackay Brown:The Wound and the Gift, Ron Ferguson's exploration of GMB's literary and spiritual journey, he quotes a conversation:

'Irene Dunsmuir told me that at one stage, George got work as a road man on the island of Rousay. “He had to take the work,” she told me, “or his benefit would have been stopped. He told me how he enjoyed the view, looking over to Eynhallow.”
           I love it! I treasure the image of the frail but thrawn poet, dressed in workman’s gear, leaning on his shovel and looking wistfully out to the holy island of Eynhallow, the place of the monks. George Brown’s career as a labourer was a short one.'

In his early poem, The Storm, which clearly shows the influence of Gerard Manley Hopkins, GMB imagines a fisherman wrecked on the shore of Eynhallow:

... Rousay before me, the stout mast

Snapped, billowing down helpless sail.

               What evil joy the storm

               Seized us! plunged and spun!

And flung us, skiff and man (wave-crossed, God-lost)

On a rasp of rock! ... The shore breakers,

               Stained chancel lights,

               Cluster of mellow bells,

Crossed hands, scent of holy water ...

The storm danced over all that night,

               Loud with demons, but I

               Safe in Brother Colm's cell.

Next morning in tranced sunshine

The corn lay squashed on every hill;

               Tang and tern were strewn

               Among the highest pastures.

I tell you this my son: after

That Godsent storm, I find peace here

               These many years with

               The Gray Monks of Eynhallow.

You can read this poem and all of his others in The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown, edited by Archie Bevan and Brian Murray.

It was possible, last night, to imagine the Gray Monks of Eynhallow, setting candle stubs in narrow windows and looking out on the wild stretch of sea between them and the Evie coast.

After a difficult but fascinating tramp round the island, negotiating the storm of terns again, we made it back to the boat.

I'd love to go again sometime - and stay longer ...

 

THE STONE BLOGS #1: Throughs, Covers, Hearting & Rags

Two weeks ago I went on a dry-stane dyke course. Why? you may ask! Well, I have recently moved into a new wooden house with a lot of stone on the site and I would like to use it to build some dykes. The photograph above is of a section of a dyke that I, along with five others, had a hand in repairing.

The craft of dry-stane dyking has a language all its own: foundations, builders, hearting, throughs, covers and rags; all the kinds of stone used in the construction of a dyke. And you have to get the batter right and make sure the stone you use presents a bonny face to the world.

This cross-section diagram has different names from the Orkney ones we were given by Brian of Orkney Training Group. 'Filling stones' just doesn't have the same resonance as 'hearting'; and 'rags' is more interesting than the more common 'coping stones'.

The dyke we repaired was at the Bu in Orphir. It had suffered through various phenomena: kye shouldering it down; the angle not being right, so that one side pushed the other over; and likely frost, rain and wind had played their part too. But it may well have stood for a couple of hundred years: it is said that many of Orkney's dry stone dykes were constructed by sailors from the time of the Napoleonic Wars during the longueurs between battles.

Robert Frost knew all about dry stone dykes too and their significance in the affairs of people living close to one another; though his stones - some are loaves and some so nearly balls/ We have to use a spell to make them balance - are somewhat different from the Orkney stone that falls so obligingly into flat grey slabs.

Mending Wall

Something there is that doesn't love a wall, 
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, 
And spills the upper boulders in the sun, 
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. 
The work of hunters is another thing: 
I have come after them and made repair 
Where they have left not one stone on a stone, 
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, 
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, 
No one has seen them made or heard them made, 
But at spring mending-time we find them there. 
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; 
And on a day we meet to walk the line 
And set the wall between us once again. 
We keep the wall between us as we go. 
To each the boulders that have fallen to each. 
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls 
We have to use a spell to make them balance: 
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!' 
We wear our fingers rough with handling them. 
Oh, just another kind of out-door game, 
One on a side. It comes to little more: 
There where it is we do not need the wall: 
He is all pine and I am apple orchard. 
My apple trees will never get across 
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. 
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'. 
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder 
If I could put a notion in his head: 
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it 
Where there are cows? 
But here there are no cows. 
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know 
What I was walling in or walling out, 
And to whom I was like to give offence. 
Something there is that doesn't love a wall, 
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him, 
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather 
He said it for himself. I see him there 
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top 
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. 
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~ 
Not of woods only and the shade of trees. 
He will not go behind his father's saying, 
And he likes having thought of it so well 
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Robert Frost

Watch this space in blogs to come for news of some dry stane dykes that predate the Napoleonic wars by a couple of Millennia. And we will return to the Bu in Orphir as well, to its Viking history.

A Chance Encounter with Keith Allardyce

From Found, photo by Keith Allardyce of Douglas Hollick in Stronsay

I was outside my newly built house talking on my mobile phone to the builder, when an unfamiliar character wandered up the path, rucksack slung over one shoulder.

Had the pile of stones at the side of the house once been part of an old dwelling? No, they had been the ruined remains of a mill and byre and had been attached to the kiln which still stands there.

Why did he ask? 

The Kiln and Remains of the Mill and Byre by Maggie Miller

There then followed one of those serendipitous moments that have happened so frequently during this residency. The stranger with the backpack was Keith Allardyce who took the photographs for some lovely books about Orkney. The one above is of Douglas Hollick holding part of a block and tackle in Stronsay and comes from Found: Beachcombing in Orkney.

This time Keith is travelling round Orkney photographing ruined and abandoned houses. Was there one in the neighbourhood with a tree growing out of it? Not that I knew of, but I am new to the area. 

I put down my car keys - I was about to travel in to Kirkwall to the library for work - and invited Keith in for a cup of coffee.


I knew about Keith's earlier book, Seahaven: Stromness in the Orkney Islands, a collection of stunning photos of the people and places of Stromness, with words by Bryce Wilson. I particularly like the elegant photograph of Gunnie Moberg, sitting on her desk in her studio and the unmistakeable figure of Ian MacInnes, at work on a painting in Thistlebank. 





What I didn't know was that he had produced an earlier book about the disappearing way of life of Scotland's lighthouse keepers, At Scotland's Edge and a sequel, Scotland's Edge Revisited. This arose out of his time as a travelling keeper himself. He was 'third man,' he told me, on Suleskerry, the Pentland Skerries and Copinsay, all Stevenson Lighthouses, 'always the third man on the rock stations.' North Ronaldsay was a family station and there he would be fourth or fifth man. I wish I'd asked him what the differing duties were of the first, second, third, fourth and fifth men! Hard to imagine that much employment happening on stations now completely unmanned.

Keith lives on the Northumberland coast near Alnwick and runs holidays there for people with learning disabilities from the Camphill Village Trust.

But he has had a connection with Orkney stretching back to the seventies when he worked for the RSPB and lived in a cottage in Evie. He returns to the islands when he can and photographs aspects of island life he finds interesting. 

Thinking about it, all his projects have something of an elegiac air, trying to capture experience, character, place as they change and disappear. His fine books can be borrowed from Orkney Library & Archive.

I wish him luck with his latest venture, whatever it may turn out to be.

THE POETRY GROUP AND THE SEPTIC TANK

It's the Summer Solstice, the Longest Day, a day for poetry and magic.

For the Poetry Reading Group the brief was simple: bring in some poems about midsummer, about the solstice.

And people did: How the Lovers Found True Love After All by Marvin Bell, set to music and performed as a duet between a singer and a double bass. I brought Strawberries by Edwin Morgan, a beautiful love poem, and Summer Solstice, Batticaloa, Sri Lanka, by Marilyn Krysl:

... small crabs, the bright yellow of a crayon,

had come onto the sand. Their numbers, scattered
resembled the galactic spill and volume of the stars. ...

And there were poems by Vera Rich about midsummer in Orkney, written after a visit in the 1960s. I had never heard of her and have yet to search the archives here for her poems. But I will ...

Once I get my head out of my septic tank!

If you want to write or read, especially about the finer things in life, don't move house. Especially don't move into a new house with a new septic tank, when you have never encountered such things before. The builder says septic tanks are like death: nobody wants to talk about either!

I had to tell the poetry group that my head was elsewhere. They were full of sympathy and advice.

To start off a septic tank, 
get a bucketful from someone else's
and tip it over the sill. Then
throw in some roadkill:
dead rabbit, dead duck, dead rat, 
no matter,
though rats, it must be said, 
can be problematic ...

Well, it might be worth writing a poem about! Though I'd rather shake the similarities to friendship cakes, ginger beer plants and sour dough out of my head first.

While we're mining this scatalogical seam, I might mention that Stewart Bain, after a long absence, made a guest appearance on the Orkney Library Facebook and Twitter pages again this week, with the photo below and the caption: "Panic over. It turns out the staff on duty this morning actually found a Jobey in the book drop box ..."

It is Stewart who put Orkney Library & Archive on the cyberspace map with his Westray wit, gaining him fans from all over the world, including big name writers such as Val McDermid. 

My favourite this week was: "You have to hand it to this lass, looking alluring whilst gutting fish is something not many women could pull off. Jim Dale from the Carry On films doesn't seem one bit interested though.... "

But let me end by wishing all readers of this blog

A Very Happy Summer Solstice!

And here are some skies from my house taken the last few evenings ...

   

ONDINE, UNDINE, UNDONE: Amy Sackville Brings 'Orkney' to Orkney

When Richard, a sixty year old Professor of English, takes his slippery young bride to Orkney for their honeymoon, it is clear from the outset that she will slide away from him one way or another. 

Finn wife, mermaid, selkie, undine ...? the references to mythological creatures mount, the sea imagery swells with every page till the book is flooded with salt-watery light.

The cottage on an unnamed island in Orkney, where the honeymoon couple find themselves marooned, becomes the setting for the deeply psychological under-sea struggles of the professor and his wife.

For Orcadians, the attempt to use Orkney dialect words and phrases will doubtless raise a wry smile. But that irritation aside, the book builds in intensity and other-worldliness right up to the inevitable ending. There are echoes of Mary Shelley, of Wuthering Heights, of Possession, and there is a kind of heightened professorial language harking back to earlier times. The Orkney depicted also looks to a mythological past.

I'm partial to a bit of watery imagery myself; as a child my favourite story was Andersen's The Little Mermaid. And we are lucky to have the prize-winning author of Orkney come to these islands to talk about her book.

 AMY SACKVILLE

on ORKNEY

Wednesday 26 June

5.00 pm

MacGillivray Room

Orkney Library

Entry FREE but TICKETED

Contact Orkney Library:

general.enquiries@orkneylibrary.org.uk

Tel: 01856 873166