Fay Young

Times and tides of a small island

Government cuts won’t hurt Canna museum or library but real life makes itself felt in other ways. Island life is not for softies.

We got back to Edinburgh in the early hours this morning, now it’s evening before the day has properly begun. I always have difficulty adjusting to the clocks going forward but today my mind is still running on Canna time.

The island is hard to leave behind. We’ve had almost a week there and it was a magical break for city slickers: resting screen-weary eyes on distant misty Skye; stretching legs on long walks round the bay and up Compass Hill; putting the world to rights round the table at night after watching sunset on Rum – or mists swirl where it should be.

The visitors’ book in Gerry’s cottage is full of enthusiastic comments. And rightly so. It’s a restored crofter’s home on Sanday, warm and comfortable with a kitchen looking out to Rum while living room windows watch tides roll in and out.

As always I wonder what it would be like to stay for real life after the holiday is over.  The outside world seems far away when you pick up odd snatches of news on the internet (we found wifi in the cottage)  but ripples of the wider economy reach the shore –  oil prices hit island tractors and diesel generators.

And real life makes itself felt in other ways. Government cuts won’t hurt Canna museum (lovingly curated by school children) or Canna House library (bequeathed by John and Margaret Campbell)  now owned by the National Trust for Scotland.  But while the NTS might preserve island infrastructure, the primary school can’t survive without school age children.

How to sustain island community? When Ray and I fantasised about living on Canna we always stumbled at the bit where children leave the island for secondary school. That’s looming reality for parents on Canna – though Eilidh, the school teacher, also tells us that the transition is now very well managed: from Primary 4 children are preparing for a move to lodgings in Mallaig.

So island life may not be for softies but it makes for fascinating conversations well into the wee small hours.

This year for the first time Canna House opens to the public allowing visitors a glimpse of the past  and not just in the house (I particularly like the garden history exhibition in the old laundry).  But the present is just as interesting and this time (fresh from my experience of the World Kitchen brunch) I have come home marvelling at the multicultural wealth of Canna.

On a small island with a current population of 21, the community is now a mix of English, Welsh, Irish, Spanish and Dutch as well as Gaelic and Scots. Canna primary school’s four children, who between them speak Gaelic, Welsh and English, are also learning French taught by Magda from Spain, whose first language is Basque.

The future is always uncertain for small island communities but I hope they find a way to make this great and wonderfully quirky wealth form the basis of a new sustainability for the next generation.

Add comment March 27th, 2011

Beyond the grave

I finally found James Grieve beneath a holly bush in the cemetery.  At least I think the bare stone plinth marks the spot where he was buried but dense prickles prevented me from burrowing too deep. I left the graveyard with a new curiosity about the man who made such a mark in life.  Why has his headstone disappeared?

The gravestone is a symbolic resting place when you are on the biographical trail. But of course the story rarely stops there. I remember the sense of satisfaction when Ray and I found the grave of Comptom MacKenzie in a sheltered corner of Barra – a surprisingly modest stone for such a flamboyant man.  In another seaside cemetery much further down the west coast, I was oddly moved to find Agnes McDouall’s name on a stone covered in moss – this was the woman whose love of gardening inspired her sons to create the sub-tropical fantasy that is now Logan Botanic Garden.

In the case of James Grieve an unmarked grave seems to add an intriguing layer of mystery to the man who gave his name to an apple more than 100 years ago. His face is in the National Portrait Gallery, his name is on a plaque outside his birthplace in Peebles, James Grieve apple trees still grow in old private gardens and some new community orchards. So why is his grave unmarked?

The reason for my search was a request from John Dickie of Broughton History Society to write a short biography for the latest newsletter. Kate Love, a member of the society, had rightly thought it would be interesting to feature the once celebrated nurseryman man who lived and worked in the area between 1859 and 1924.

So that’s why I was wandering round Rosebank Cemetery, mobile phone in hand. Apart from anything else it was a wonderful excuse to explore a space where the robust character of Leith is carved in stone (ship masters and wine merchants, candle makers and brass founders, along with their less publicly celebrated wives, mothers, sisters and daughters. In the good old days, women were best defined by their relationships to men.)

Luckily I was in no hurry; it’s not always easy to find a grave in a graveyard. And the plots on the ground were not quite as neat and orderly as they looked on the map provided by the very helpful man at Mortonhall Crematorium.  I got there in the end and the story will appear in the next Broughton History Newsletter. But I feel it might be just the first episode, there could be more to come. If nothing else perhaps one day we could make it easier to find James Grieve by planting an apple tree beside that holly bush.

No, neither an apple tree nor a holly bush just a terrific old tree near the Pilrig Street entrance to the cemetery.  A Camperdown elm maybe?

Add comment March 8th, 2011