The Hills is Lonely Read online

  ‘It’s quite easy to learn,’ encouraged one of the accepted scholars of the village when he heard of my intention. ‘The Gaelic is pronounced exactly as it is spelled so you will not find it half so difficult as other languages.’

  I was enormously cheered by his words and was tempted to cut my estimate to six weeks, but the discovery that ‘Cnoc’ was pronounced ‘Crock’, ‘Dubh’ as ‘Doo’ and ‘Ceilidh’ as ‘cayley’ convinced me that his statement had been somewhat misleading. When I found that a simple phrase like ‘I have a cat’ is in the Gaelic distorted to ‘A cat is at me’ I felt that I must double my original estimate and, even so, doubted whether I should ever realise that to say ‘The dog is at me’ indicated possession and not attack.

  Previous to commencing the study of Gaelic I had noticed that the inhabitants always seemed to be slightly nonplussed by my formal English greeting of ‘Good morning!’ or ‘Good evening!’ Naturally I used ‘Good morning’ as a salutation, not as an observation on weather conditions, and I was not to know then that in such matters the Gael believes in being specific. In my anxiety to say the right thing I asked Morag to tell me the Gaelic way of wishing people ‘Good day’. She, taking me literally, taught me to say ‘He Breeah’, a phrase which, I later learned to my dismay, meant ‘It is a good day’, in the sense that ‘the weather is fine’, and it was singularly unfortunate that for practically the whole of that season there were no days when ‘He Breeah’ could have been called a suitable greeting. Through rain and cold, through wind, hail and snow, ‘He Breeah!’ I called gaily, and received in reply politely bewildered ‘He Breeahs’ from dejected figures whose boots squelched wetly and from whose sou’westers the rain streamed steadily. ‘He Breeah!’ I greeted the embittered roadman as he sheltered in his inadequate little hut from the merciless flurries of sleet which swept incessantly up the valley. ‘He Breeah!’ I hailed startled milkmaids as, blue-fingered and red-nosed, they huddled miserably under the cows’ bellies, seeking refuge from the torrential rain.

  The villagers accepted my misuse of the phrase with amused tolerance and were unfailingly complaisant, as is their way, but my suspicions were at last aroused when one old soul, battling homeward against a fierce northwesterly gale, her sodden cape billowing wildly in spite of her effort to restrain it, returned my ‘He Breeah’ promptly and then added conscientiously, ‘But there’s a fearful lot of wet along with it now, isn’t there?’ That night I learned to say ‘He Fluke’ (it is wet) and ‘He Fooar’ (it is cold) and by so doing ensured the finest spell of warm dry weather that the Island had experienced for some years.

  Though my Gaelic studies were not conspicuously successful they did at least help me to understand the propensity of my new friends for investing anything and everything with the masculine or feminine gender, for, like French, the language has no neuter. A shoe for instance is a ‘she’, while a coat is a ‘he’. The professions are all masculine, though the noun ‘work’ is feminine. (It is easy to understand the significance of this when one has lived in the Hebrides for a short time.) The circumstance that an object might be feminine in the English language yet masculine in the Gaelic added to the confusion, as did the complications of soft and hard consonants and shortened vowels; and when I heard of cows with calves at foot being referred to as ‘he’ I began to doubt very much whether anyone among the Bruachites was capable of classifying sex with any certainty.

  This use of either the masculine or the feminine gender persisted among the crofters even when speaking English, and I was frequently considerably agitated on hearing remarks which seemed to suggest all manner of nefarious or ludicrous practices.

  ‘When he’s done barking, Ruari’s going to hang him on the clothes line for an hour or so,’ I overheard Bella telling Morag one day, and was greatly relieved to discover that ‘he’ was nothing more animate than a fishing-net. For one like myself, possessing only a limited capacity for controlling my countenance, there were agonising moments such as the occasion when I met an old crofter and his wife stumping morosely along the road. The weather, which earlier had looked promising, had turned treacherously to rain and as we paused to commiserate with one another on this fact the woman bent down to tie her bootlace. Her husband studied her bent back, a lugubrious expression on his lined face. ‘Yes,’ he grumbled disconsolately, ‘and I did think we’d have got to the peats today, but it’s no use now she’s gone and turned wet on me.’ I need hardly point out that in this case the weather was the ‘she’.

  Apart from the curious idiom I was often disconcerted by the precise old ladies who, having little knowledge of English except for the English of the Bible, attempted to converse with me in distressingly scriptural language, utterly oblivious of the fact that many Biblical words are not used in polite conversation these days.

  To familiarise myself with the language and thus help along my Gaelic studies, I should have acquired the ceilidh habit. These ceilidhs, which were really nothing more than the impromptu dropping in of neighbours, were going on almost every night of the autumn, winter and spring, but whereas most writers on Highland subjects deem it their duty to depict the ceilidhs with a romantic pen—lamplight; peat fire flames playing on a cluster of honest friendly faces; rich Highland voices, joking, singing and story-telling; cups of tea and home-baked scones—I was never able to forget that the room was likely to be ill-ventilated; that the tight-packed bodies would be hot and unbathed; that the pipe-smoking old men would be spitting indiscriminately; that the boots of the company would be caked with dung and mud; that more than one of my neighbours might be belching with threatening violence, and the clothes of others reeking of stale peat smoke and sour milk. As a consequence I was inclined to view the ceilidhs with disfavour; so that I was not at all pleased when Morag relayed to me a most pressing invitation to attend such a gathering at the home of the village’s pet widow. I was tempted to refuse point-blank but, recalling that the house in question was comparatively large and airy and that the widow herself was an exceptionally genial lady, I decided that I might do worse than accept.

  Morag was delighted, and about nine o’clock on a bright starlit November evening we sallied forth. All day there had been a sharp frost and now our footsteps rang with a clear, staccato echo instead of the customary sloshing plod. A silvery glow behind the hills heralded the rising of the maturing moon and suddenly and impressively it emerged above the dark peaks, spilling light and shadow with superb artistry into the tranquil valley. My companion and I walked briskly; not because we expected to be late for the ceilidh—that would have been well nigh impossible as the Bruachites kept astonishingly late hours—but because of the invigorating effect of the chill air. Morag, never at a loss for some topic of conversation, pointed out various dwellings and amused both herself and me by recounting stories of their occupants past and present. Just as we came abreast of a low, thatched house on the high road the door was flung open and a woman of demi-john proportions stood silhouetted in the lamplit space. Morag immediately called out a greeting which was shrilly returned by the fat woman, along with the additional information that she would be catching us up presently.

  ‘Yon’s Anna Vic,’ said my companion. ‘You’ll know her likely?’

  I certainly knew Anna Vic both by sight and reputation. Ruari had described her to me as being ‘so fat that if you saw her on the skyline you didna’ know if it was herself or two cows standin’ side by side’, while Lachy asserted that ‘if you can see daylight between the ankles then it canna’ be Anna Vic’.

  ‘She is indeed a very big woman,’ I said.

  ‘Aye, and her heart’s the biggest part of her,’ replied Morag warmly. ‘My,’ she continued with barely a pause for breath, ‘but she holds a lot of water that one.’

  ‘Who does?’ I gasped.

  ‘Why, that fine rainwater tank beside the house there,’ answered my landlady, inclining her head towards the house we had just passed. ‘I must be seein’ about gettin’ one of them for mys
elf.’

  Our ears were assailed by a piercing shout and, turning, we beheld the panting Anna Vic waddling after us like an excited duck.

  ‘How fast you walk,’ she grumbled pleasantly as she toiled along beside us, but neither her corpulence nor our speed proved the slightest impediment to her conversational powers.

  ‘Why,’ she panted after a little while, ‘it’s warm enough walkin’ but in the house I was feelin’ the cold terrible. Indeed I was sittin’ that close over the fire that when I came to put on my stockings my legs was tartan with the toasting I’d given them.’

  We laughed, and so entertained did she keep us that it seemed no time at all before we were pushing open the door of the ceilidh house where we found several people already comfortable ranged in front of an enormous peat fire. On the inevitable wooden bench sat Alistair the shepherd, Angus, Murdoch, Adam the gamekeeper and one-armed Donald. Roddy and Callum, the hostess’s bachelor brothers, sat determinedly in their favourite armchairs. A wooden chair was shared awkwardly by twin sisters whom I had already christened ‘Giggle’ and ‘Sniggle’; Johnny the bus-driver was perched precariously on one end of the roughly hewn kerb, while Elspeth, the young schoolteacher, sat, with arms akimbo and knees locked virtuously together, on a corner of the table, her feet resting on a low stool. Greetings were exchanged and the men, after catching the intimidating eye of our hostess, executed a sort of ‘general post’ as they outdid one another in their anxiety to make room for us. We settled ourselves on a horsehair sofa drawn close to the fire; the conversation was resumed and in no time at all Anna Vic and Morag were involved in an argument with Donald as to the price of whelks for the previous season. I listened impartially, being far more interested in the setting than in the dispute.

  The room was cosily warm; the mellow lamplight, reflected by the varnished wood walls, whitened the hair and smoothed the wrinkles of the aged, while it burnished the hair and enhanced the already ravishing complexions of the young. On the gleaming hob two sooty kettles spouted steam and beside them a magnificent brown teapot squatted complacently. Against one wall stood a homely dresser bedecked with gay china, and flanked on either side by ‘Vesuvius in Eruption (daytime)’ and ‘Vesuvius in Eruption (at night)’. On the opposite wall, nearly surrounded by its festoon of weights and chains, hung an old-fashioned clock, its pendulum lazily swinging the night away; its ticking rivalled only by the repetitive sniffs of the company, for sniffing is as sure an accompaniment to a ceilidh as is the popping of corks to a champagne party.

  Tea and biscuits began to circulate and the conversation ranged from such topics as the prospect of winter herring to the existence of witches; from the price of whisky to the efficacy of willow bark for cold sores; from the condition of the cattle to the miraculous traffic lights of Glasgow. It was Murdoch who regarded the latter thus, explaining carefully to his unsophisticated audience that: ‘When the lights is blue the cars can go; when they’re yellow they can still go; but when they’re red!’ the old man’s fist dropped expressively on to his knee and his voice became emphatic. ‘Why ’tis just like a tether on their wheels,’ he told them, ‘and they canna’ move, no not an inch!’ After one glance at his spellbound audience he added knowledgeably ‘It’s the electric d’you see?’

  It was plain that Murdoch believed the secret of the traffic lights to be a powerful electric ray which effectively immobilised all engines in the vicinity, and it says much for Glasgow motorists that Murdoch, who had studied them intensively during the fortnight he had spent in the city, had apparently never seen a car ‘jump’ the lights.

  ‘Have you ever seen them?’ he asked me.

  ‘Yes,’ I told him. ‘We have them in England too.’

  Murdoch regarded me with a sceptical stare. ‘Is that so?’ he murmured with polite disbelief.

  Tea drinking was well in progress when the rampant Lachy burst into the room, followed by Euan the halfwit. Without ceremony Lachy snatched the stool from beneath Elspeth’s feet, ignoring her sudden collapse as blandly as he ignored her profane remonstrance. He seated himself on the major portion of the stool and generously allowed Euan to make himself comfortable on the remaining two inches. The latter opened his mouth to begin a vituperative protest but a quelling glance from his hostess not only silenced his protestations but also appeared to paralyse the muscles of his jaws, so that he sat for the remainder of the evening staring stupidly before him, his mouth with its one front tooth gaping as rigidly and seductively as a baited mousetrap.

  So far as I was concerned Lachy’s arrival was inopportune, for the discussion had turned to old country cures—a subject in which I was intensely interested—and I had made mental notes of numerous, half-remembered remedies. As I have mentioned previously, Morag’s mother was reputed to have possessed great skill in concocting medicines from plants, but Morag always appeared embarrassed when I tried to pump her for information. It was as though she was ashamed to confess her knowledge. Tonight, however, she was not averse to discussing the subject and I heard her prescribe sea urchins for the cure of asthma; scabious roots for jaundice; plantain leaves for poultices and plasters; clover heads for cancer, and a fantastic-sounding remedy for a soaring temperature as in the case of fevers, etc., which was to split and fry a red herring, then to tie the halves to the soles of the patient’s feet. This treatment, though claimed to be efficacious, was considered to be rather drastic and was accompanied by the warning that in the case of an adult the fish should not be left on the feet for more than twenty minutes by the clock; while in the case of a child ten minutes was the maximum for safety, otherwise it might do more harm than good. I hope I may never have occasion to try out this cure; nor, for that matter, would I care to try out the recommended cure for piles, which was to ‘sit in a bucket of pneumonia every night for half an hour before going to bed’.

  The manner of Lachy’s entrance had thrown everyone into a state of expectancy and though I attempted several times to bring the conversation back to cures my efforts were unavailing.

  ‘D’you know who I’ve just seen?’ the newcomer demanded.

  Everyone professed ignorance.

  ‘I saw Hamish MacAlistair Oulliam,’ announced Lachy dramatically.

  His statement was greeted with cries of ‘Oh, my, my!’ and ‘Surely not after all this time?’ and ‘Whoever was expectin’ to see him again indeed?’

  ‘Well, he’s home again this night, true as I’m here,’ affirmed Lachy. There were even more exclamations and in the middle of them he turned to me.

  ‘You never knew Hamish MacAlistair Oulliam, did you, Miss Peckwitt?’ he asked, and then continued: ‘No, you couldn’t have.’

  I had to admit that I had never heard of Hamish MacAlistair Oulliam.

  ‘Well I’m tellin’ you, Miss Peckwitt,’ he explained solemnly, ‘’tis three years now since that fellow—and he was only eighteen or thereabouts at the time—he jumped on a sheep and away he went and not a soul has seen breath, nor line, nor trace, nor shape of him from then until he walked into his own house tonight.’

  As I have said, the talk during the evening had touched upon various aspects of the supernatural; I had listened to the most impressive tales of present-day fairies, tales which would be vouched for by witnesses still alive and of impeccable character. As a result I was in a particularly receptive mood, but even so the existence of an enchanted sheep which could carry away a man was too much for my prosaic mind. Covertly I studied the circle of intent faces, watching for the slightest quirk of the lips or glint in the eye to confirm my suspicion that the story was a deliberate attempt at pulling my often too-susceptible leg. I could, however, discern nothing in their expressions save profound interest.

  ‘I don’t believe a word of it,’ I said decisively.

  My words brought a chorus of indignant and sorrowful rebukes from the company.

  ‘Why, there’s plenty knows the truth of it,’ they told me.

  ‘Indeed,’ someone insisted, ‘he�
��ll like as not be tellin’ you the truth of it for himself soon enough.’

  Their earnest asseverations were obviously made in the sincere belief that the sheep had indeed run away with the man, but try as I would my faltering imagination boggled, first at the idea of any sheep being able to carry on its back even the smallest of men, and then at the possibility that, even in such a wild part of the country, the steed and its rider could disappear completely for three years. It was a tale for the superstitious Gael or an infants’ school; not for a town-bred Englishwoman.

  ‘Sheep don’t do that,’ I insisted. ‘It’s not possible.’

  ‘They don’t?’ Murdoch enquired haughtily. ‘I’m tellin’ you. Miss Peckwitt, if the sheep is carryin’ a mixed cargo she might be away for even five years. It all depends on the cargo and the Company.’

  The ensuing silence was broken by a snatch of song. So long as the Gaels stick to their own melodies I like to hear their singing, there being a primitive and unrestrained passion in their music which perfectly expresses the spirit of the wild hills and lonely glens of their land, and completely suits the curious vibrancy of their untrained voices. Listening sometimes I had the vague feeling that the beat of the tom-toms was missing, so strangely reminiscent are some of their songs of those of native tribes.

  Adam the gamekeeper was considered to be Bruach’s best male singer and it was he who started now, nodding the beat of the music to himself as he sang, and interspersing each verse with a colossal guttural sniff which twisted his nose like the thong of a whip, and jerked his head up from his chest like a marionette on a string. Everyone joined in the choruses and I could not help noticing that the mannerisms and facial expressions of all the singers were almost identical.

  It was the custom for every person present at the ceilidh to be asked to sing, and it was equally the custom for everyone to deny that he or she could sing. Giggle and Sniggle were addressed when Adam had finished.