Seasons on Harris (31 page)

Well—a bit more than a tiddler, I suppose. It was eight inches long, twisting and sparkling-silver as I lifted it out of the water.

“Ah,” David was chuckling. “You've just caught a fine…
finnock
!”

“And what the hell is a
finnock
?”

“Well,” he said, trying to be tactful, “it's a wee sea trout…but they grow sometimes up to fifteen pounds.”

“Well, this one hasn't!”

“No, this is, unfortunately, less than a pound…a lot less.”

“Aw, I'll let it go,” I said, disappointed by its size and embarrassed by the fact that I couldn't even claim I'd caught it.

“Aye—that's the right thing to do,” agreed David, as he deftly removed the tiny blue fly and hook and lowered the fish gently back into the loch.

I tried to keep up my enthusiasm but, though I was casting far better now than my earlier attempts, by three o'clock in the afternoon I felt I'd had enough.

“You're the boss,” said David, and added by way of consolation, “It's not really the best of days anyway for fishing…and the breeze is way down now and…” He was trolling around for a final encouragement. I knew what was coming and we ended up saying it together. “And it's almost the end of the season.”

They say laughter cures almost everything, and in this instance they were right.

 

A
S PROMISED
, I
RETURNED TO
Ian MacSween's croft and fank the day after my well-intentioned but pathetic performance on the loch with David Brown. I was looking forward to meeting this corpulent, cheerful, and chuckling sheep farmer again.

From high up on the pass over the North Harris hills, I could see Ian's house overlooking Loch Seaforth and, just a little to the left, a great
white mass of woolly bodies crammed together and slowly churning in the fank pens.

Ian beckoned me over when I arrived and introduced me to three friends who had come to help with the dipping.

“An' so now, David, was y'fishin' expedition worth it?”

I was honest and told him the melancholy tale of the leaping salmon and my miserable little catch of a single sea trout
finnock
, not even big enough to keep.

“Well,” he said consolingly, “it's a wee bit late in the season now for a good catch anyway.”

“I reckon it was,” I mumbled, wondering if this “late in the season” remark was some kind of island mantra for ineffective fly casters.

“But y'missed a fine old gatherin' time with us yesterday up on the hills there. Ten of us and all the dogs. And look what we brought home with us. Now, there's a fine catch, don't y'think!”

It was an amazing sight. The fank pens were teeming with almost six hundred sheep, all remarkably quiet and docile and awaiting their biannual dipping. I looked up at Ian's so-called hills, now oddly denuded of sheep, and marveled at the kind of terrain they'd had to clamber over to get all the animals penned up. Huge crags and precipices, hundreds of feet high, scarred the ancient gneiss monoliths. Full, frothy waterfalls sliced and tumbled down their near-vertical flanks. Huge, dark swathes of lose-your-boots bogs and thick, chocolatey peat ridges bound by treacherous tussocks of marsh grass and ankle-tangling heather characterized most of the rest of the terrain. The worst kind of walking country with no handy footpaths or trails to follow. Manageable by fleet-footed sheep, reluctant to be rounded up and determined to dodge the dogs, but much more difficult and exhausting for humans, no matter how agile their bog-trotting abilities.

“Must have been quite a day for you,” I said admiringly, but thankful that I'd been elsewhere, despite the disappointments.

Ian and the three other men laughed in agreement.

“So today should be a doddle in comparison,” I said. “Only six hundred or so sheep to dip now…”

“Maybe you'd like to try,” said Ian with a mischievous glint. “Just one…”

“Maybe I will, but I'll watch you first, if you don't mind, just to get the hang of it.”

“Well, stand far back from the dip—they splash around a lot…”

And splash they indeed did. And buck and fight and do just about anything to resist the inevitable. Some tried to climb the metal railings of the fank fences; others formed tight circles and performed a kind of communal whirling-dervish dance to prevent Ian from grabbing their horns and dragging them—sometimes half carrying them—toward the dip.

But somehow, despite all the confusion and panic and the endless choruses of bleating cries, Ian and his companions managed to perform the ritual tasks methodically and efficiently. First came the horn trimming (only necessary if horns are growing too close to the sheep's eyes), then the administering of a dose of antigastrointestinal worm and fluke solution through the use of a squirt gun slid gently to the back of their throats, followed by an agile lift-twist-and-upside-down immersion in the narrow trough of sheep dip solution. And finally, another twist-and-push to force the sheep, now head up, along the eight-foot-long dip channel to the safety of the walled pen at the other end. Here the terrified, and outraged, animals—exhibiting a melancholy mix of quivering vanity and morose dignity—would emerge, wobbly and shaking their fleeces violently, to join their confused companions, all doubtless hoping that would be the end of the indignities for the day.

“There's the very devil in these Blackface sheep,” Ian called out as he was trying to twist the next violently struggling animal onto its back in the dip. “Compton Mackenzie said that—one of his few true utterances!”

I watched this process for quite a while, particularly admiring the ingenuity of some of the animals trying to escape the dipping fank. One actually clambered onto the backs of two of its companions and was about to leap over the fence when they abruptly pulled away and let the poor creature fall flat on its belly in the mud. Another managed to get its head and one leg between the bars of the fank gate. Then, having realized the unlikelihood of success, it tried to extract itself. Somehow the leg, the horns, and the gate bar became so entangled it took all three of the men to free the rebellious creature.

In one of the higher fanks I saw some odd behavior going on. So I strolled up for a closer look and what I thought was a rather touching display of male bonding turned out to be young tupps trying out their first head-butting contests. It seemed to be an instinctive ritual that even they didn't understand, beginning with a long period of mutual cheek-to-cheek nuzzling, then a back-off of a couple of feet or so, a bit of staring down, and finally a sudden leap forward at each other, followed by a sickening crash of skulls. Then they'd stand looking at each other as if asking, “Why are we doing this? Why on Earth are we performing this ridiculous and painful ritual?” This would then be followed by another one of those rather touching nuzzling exchanges—and then it was back off, stare, and crash again!

Eventually, after about half a dozen of these genetically driven behavioral quirks, they'd walk away from each other shaking their bruised heads and doubtless wondering what other bizarre tricks-of-instinct nature had in store for them in the future.

After a hundred or so sheep were dipped, Ian and his mates were beginning to take on the same dazed “why on earth are we doing this?” look as the head butters. So without thinking and in a surge of empathy engendered by their dip-dripping clothes and mud-caked faces, I asked if there was anything I could do to relieve the monotony of the process and their obviously exhausted state.

This is not an offer I shall make lightly again. Maybe I just assumed they would smile nicely and mutter something like, “No thanks, Dave, but we really appreciate your offer…” Unfortunately, they didn't. They thought it would be a splendid idea if yours truly stopped aimlessly wandering around the fank and got down and dirty and into the thick of things. So after that, my luxurious role as objective observer was relegated to something far more messy, and laborious, and smelly. And I decided, after it was all over, that despite moments of manly comradeship and a whisky-laced interlude or two, I'd had enough of fanks and sheep and dips for quite a while. Oh—and fishing too. I'd had my fill of that too, although I must admit I've always been moved by the last line of
A River Runs Through It:
“Eventually all things merge into one, and a river runs through it…I am haunted by waters…”

H
AVE Y'NOT MET SAMMY YET
?” asked Roddy over Friday evening whiskies, now a regular bonding ritual of our friendship.

“Sammy who?” Anne asked.

“Sammy MacLeod—the great poacher man of Harris. Well…ex-poacher. He's very reformed now…reformed from a lot of things. He lives just down the road. He's one of our island's best storytellers—a real
ceilidh
man. Once he gets going, y'll have quite a job stoppin' him…”

So down the road Anne and I walked together one afternoon to meet the famous storyteller. He lived by himself in a neat, whitewashed cottage overlooking Loch Bunavoneadar and greeted us both like long-lost family. Cups of tea, cookies, and even a plate of beef-filled sandwich “pieces” appeared as if by magic on a low table in his small, furniture-filled living room. The peat fire glowed white-hot. We were soon down to shirtsleeves and Sammy laughed. “Oh—I always keep it too hot—look, move over there away from the peats. Y'all right now? Not too warm? Have another piece…”

Sammy was a fine host. His lean, lined face constantly broke into smiles as we devoured his offerings. Anne pointed over to a set of drums by the window. “Are you a musician?”

His laugh had a whisky-and-cigarette burr to it, but apparently, in those respects at least, he had amended his errant ways. “Oh, yes indeed—I'm a drummer in our band, The Sound o' Harris Ceilidh
Band. Here, I'll put on a wee bit of our music while we chat. There's three of us now—accordion, pipes, and drums. For a while, though, there almost wasn't. We were all drinkin' ourselves to death. Our level of excess was what y'might call ‘dependent upon the dimensions of the drams'! I was the worst. I went through three wives—and a new one coming! I've just proposed. Before that a' was drinkin' two bottles of whisky a day, smoking sixty cigarettes. Doctor told me, ‘Y'shudda been in y'grave years ago.' So I says, ‘Doctor, I've had three wives. It takes a lotta whisky to help me forget 'em!' An' the last one—she really took me to town. She was what you might call ‘a stranger to personal happiness'! I lost a lot o' money over that one. She was a clever little…but I was a step or two ahead of her. One day she said, ‘Sammy, I've had enough. I'm leaving. I'm going back to my mother's.' So I said to her, ‘If y'hold on a minute, I'll get m'jacket and walk y' and make sure ye get there…and
stay
there!'”

Sammy had a way of talking that made us both laugh even when we sensed the subject was deadly serious.

“But a' knew she was right. A' was jus' no good to live with. No good at all. We were all terrible for the drink in those days. Och aye—terrible. I don't drink or smoke at all now. But then, all of us in the band—we were heavy, heavy drinkers. We was washed up. Because we all had troubles, y'see. We had to finish. Or it was to be finishin' us. So—it's been twelve years now with hardly a taste. Not even a wee ‘shandy' [a mix of lemonade and beer]. But it wasn't easy…the demon drink is always there.”

It seemed odd listening to such personal tales barely ten minutes after our arrival, but Sammy was one of those characters who just didn't hold back. He paused briefly in his raconteur flow, possibly still coming to terms with his demons. “Anyway—I put m'self into a clinic. I paid twelve hundred pounds for the two weeks. I couldn't get it for free. I was earning too much money. So—when I came out I went up the road to Roddy's shop. And Roddy said, ‘Well, how're y'feeling now, Sammy?' and I said, ‘Aw, I'm feeling fine,' an' he says, ‘D'y'think y'll have a drink again?' “Well,' I said, ‘I don't know. But I'll show y'this.' So I took out m'wallet and showed him the bill for the twelve hundred pounds and I says, ‘All I've got to do every morning when I wake up is to look at this bloody thing and that would stop anyone from drinkin' ever again.'

“So—six months down the line, I was feeling glorious, but then, wouldn't y'know it, I found a wee bottle in the cupboard and it was gone so fast. So I went back up to Roddy's store and I obviously had a stagger on going up the road and they watched me comin' and Roddy said, ‘I thought y'was off the bottle,' and Joan—she said, ‘Aye, well I'm thinking he must have gone an' lost that wee bill of his!' but, God bless 'er, she reminded me of what I'd said, and she never sold me another bottle…”

It was hard to stop Sammy once the storytelling started. And the stories were so rich, and raucous, and full of island nuances, that we didn't even try. We just settled back, sipped our cups of tea, nibbled his cookies and pieces, and let him tell us about his early life as a lobsterman.

“On and off I was for more'n twenty years. Best months were June to October. Around Taransay Island. Good rocky beds there. Lobsters love the rocks for all the hiding places. Prawns prefer it smooth—mud and sand—they're better on The Minch side of the island. Y'can make a good living at both at twelve pounds a pound for lobsters.”

“Twelve pounds—that's almost twenty-five dollars!” I said. “Sammy, that's extortion! Back in the States you can buy them alive from supermarket tanks for around seven dollars a pound. Sometimes less…that's less than four pounds a pound.”

“Oh—but these beauties here…they're different…much sweeter…very tender…”

Sammy was one of those quick-minded raconteurs, always ready with repartee responses, so I decided (after a gentle nudge from Anne) not to interrupt him as he launched into more tales of his checkered, but never dull, career.

He began by describing home life when he was young: “Where y'sittin' just now, this used to be the loom shed and m'mother—y've prob'ly heard about the old looms, before the Hattersleys—the big wooden ones. Well, my mother worked with that type and my father worked a Hattersley over there. And I used to come wi' m'sister and before we had anything to eat—before we did our homework, even—we had to fill the bobbins. There was no stuff provided by the factory in those days—you know, the big rollers with all the warp set ready for the hand loom. You
had to do everything from start to finish—spinnin', dyein'—I even used to scrape the
crotal
(lichen) from the rocks with a spoon. It was cut to have a sharp edge on one side like a knife. And there were pails everywhere of brown and green
crotal
. Oh, and look at this photograph—that's my mother there—y'can just see her through the loom. Everyone worked very hard…very, very hard. No television, no electricity. Just the loom an' prayer an' homework an' the occasional
ceilidh
.”

“The
ceilidhs
are pretty well gone now, right?” asked Anne. “The ones in the home?”

“Och aye—true
ceilidhs
are rare nowadays. They've almost died out—at least in the
ceilidh
houses. We used to play at one every Friday. But the Gaelic's going. The youngsters are taught it in school, but they don't use it. It's not important to them. If they stayed on the island, they might. But they're always off. Fast. So things are fadin' away. Y'see, in the past, it was all up to you. All your food, your income, your entertainment, your cookin', bakin'—everything was up to you and the family. I remember round about October, November, we always brought in five or six of our sheep and slaughtered 'em and m'mother dressed 'em and they were left to hang for five or six days to tender 'em a bit until when my father used to cut 'em up. We had these half-barrels—you don't see 'em much now—they used to be used for salt herring but they were well scrubbed inside—so we salted the mutton pieces and they'd last us for all the winter. Nothing like salted mutton with taties. You soak the pieces a bit when you pull 'em out of the barrel to get rid of some o' the salt, and then bake 'em and—well—you'll never eat normal mutton or lamb again. Now it's all TVs, frozen foods, supermarkets, cheap vegetables, the kids moving away, families moving away, cars so you can move around everywhere, central heating—not so much sittin' around the fire together anymore—it's all changed. Most of all a' think it was those
ceilidhs
in the homes that made it so good. Anyone could come, people just popping in and stayin' a while to chat and maybe telling a few tales and singing a wee ballad or two.” Sammy paused and asked if we needed more “pieces.”

Anne laughed. “Oh, no thanks. Just more stories!”

“Well,” Sammy continued, “sometimes the
ceilidh
stories were so
scary—tales of ghosts on the moors and all that—that you'd come back from the
ceilidh
house late on and you'd be scared stiff wondering when some creature was going to spring up out of the darkness or from behind some rock.
Ceilidhs
were all kinds of things—songs, stories, poems, gossip, legends of the great clans—all that. Anyone could get up and play—fiddles, pipes, mouth organs, Jew's harps—whatever. Fairies was a very popular subject. They were always on about fairies and all that. And they believed in the fairies—oh yes, b'God, they did! They believed in all that. But it was easy to get fooled too. Once you believed, you'd start to see 'em everywhere!”

Sammy chuckled to himself, obviously preparing to tell another of his colorful tales. “Och, I remember when I was a boy I believed in 'em too. Real bad. I read too much of our Robbie Burns's poetry—do you know this one?

“Anyway, one night I was playing accordion down at Mackennar's—they had
ceilidhs
most Saturday nights in their house. It was always a good time but, you know, being Saturday, we all had to be back home before midnight. For the Sabbath, d'y'ken. It di'na matter where you were, you had to be right by the rules or you'd really be gettin' it from the parents. Oh yes you would! So—it was around eleven-thirty and I was leavin' and goin' up home and passin' by the old bridge at the bottom there—y'know it? Very old bridge on the road t'whaling station. And there were lots of tales about that bridge. Things—creatures—living under it. And there was I passing nearby and I saw these lights. Bright lights. Under the bridge. So I stopped suddenlike and ran back fast as a' could to the house. And I told the old man in there—I said, ‘I'm not walkin' past that bridge,' and he said, ‘So go by the shore. Past the old whaling station.' But
that was a pretty strange place too, and by now it was gettin' on fast to midnight. So I thought, I'll not be a coward. I'll just run like the clappers over that bridge. And I was coming up to it and I saw the lights again and I was gonna really race for it, but then I looked closer and—wha'd'ya think it was—the light? It was the damn moon, wasn't it—the stupid moon—round as a wheel, bright as silver, reflectin' in the water…

“But y'know, if I'd done what I said to m'self and run like the clappers and told me parents about the light and all that—they'd have believed it! And they'd have told others. And it would have spread around like wildfire. And everyone would end up believing there were lights and fairies under that bridge…and that's the way these things start, y'know. A wee mistake. A cockeyed illusion—but because you believed in all these stories, it became something real. A little local legend.”

“What about all those stories of waterhorses and other creatures up there in the high lochs,” I asked. “Are they just based on bits of local hysteria too?”

“Och, right enough they are. M'be an attempt to keep the poachers away. These are always nighttime creatures and that's when the poachers are out on the moors…”

“And of course you're speaking from experience!” Anne laughed, familiar with Roddy's tales of Sammy's famous poaching prowess.

Sammy's face lit up and you could tell we had touched upon one of his favorite subjects. “Och, yes—plenty of experience there! I've poached salmon all my life. Everyone knew that and th'all tried to catch me. But no one ever did. I was known for it. But I wasn't a rogue, y'ken. I was doing it the proper way. I always gave the water bailiffs all the respect in the world. But they never seen me do anything. I was into poaching since I was very, very small. I was going to write a book because I've had so many experiences. I was gonna call it
One for the Pot
. I remember one particular night when my friend was with me. He was with me practically everywhere a' went. And we never talked ‘on the job'—we used signals and that kind of stuff. And we went into the pub in Tarbert and there was this English guy. Bit of a show-off guy. Flashy dressed. And we got to talkin' 'bout fishing and stuff and he buys us drams…and more drams…and then he whispers that he'd like to do
a wee bit of poachin', just for the experience. So we wink at one another and he buys us more drams and I say to him, ‘Would you like a wee bit of the fishing tonight?' ‘Oh yes,' he says. ‘I'd like that.' So I said, ‘Well, y'd best bring a couple o' bottles o' whisky 'cause it gets awful cold,' and he says, ‘Oh, that'll be no problem.' So I says, ‘Fine. We'll pick you up by the pier at eleven o'clock tonight.' We were going to poach the Harris Hotel lochs.”

Sammy paused to scan the table. “Sure you've both had enough t'eat…I can get more…”

“No, no, we're fine,” said Anne. “Go on with your story.”

“All right, fine—so, we all set off and went up to the lochs and fixed up one of our nets. And it was a real good night. We got four good ones. But then I could see someone coming on the far side. He was carrying only a wee torch, but I could see it. The local gamekeeper didn't have much sense when it came to catching poachers. But I knew who it was and he was a mean fellow—bald as a neep [turnip] and tough as one of our wee Scottish terriers—so I whispered to this English guy, ‘We best be off. There's trouble coming.' So I scooped up the net and the salmon and off we ran. And this guy, he was fallin' and trippin' all over the place. And he had a hold of m'jacket and he was holdin' me back and he was trippin' and tumblin'. He didn't have a clue what he was doin'. I had to take care of him because he was useless. And then he panics and says, ‘What's gonna happen if we're caught?!' and I says, ‘It's jail. Guaranteed.' And he goes a wee bit crazy. ‘Oh my God!' he says. ‘Oh my God! I'll lose my job…I'll lose everything!' Which seemed a bit overdramatic to me, 'specially as he would only get a warning. I told him jail just to get him movin' faster. I'd mor'n likely get some jail—but not him. And there he was, running like the clappers and oh-my-Godding…and I said to him, ‘How will you lose everything?' and he says, ‘You don't understand. I'm a lawyer!' ‘Oh,' I said. ‘That could be a problem…' ‘And I'm a judge!' he says.”