Troon Harbour. Hallaig.

Troon harbour

Up at the harbour by way of the ballast bank, early. A balmy autumn day. The first 'real' autumn day we've had this year. The air is cool and bracing. The sun a dazzling white. I'm trying out new walking boots. Tiso's best! The boots and my good self are on a path of fallen leaves thick as the forest floor at Hallaig where I first heard Sorley MacLean's poem 'Hallaig' in both Gaelic and English (poem below). It is also the place where I first learned to separate the good from the bad as far as eating wild mushrooms go. Mushrooms aside, where do the leaves come from? Wigton? Larne?

Whitelees Wind Farm

'The Red Emerald', a newly restored fishing tug with a glossy coat and snow white sign, is bobbing up and down on a tidal swell in the sheltered harbour. A wind farm whizzes in the distance. Puffing seal pups,  wide-winged cormorants, and jelly fish play close by. Gulls crying caw! caw! swoop and soar in the wide clear sky. Smaller tugs like 'The Blue Lagoon', 'The Lazy Lady', and 'The Empress' shudder and sway. I love the sound of their tinkling masts and the muffled thud of their gentle collisions. Lonesome lovers.

'The Red Emerald' deckhands, seven in all,  play cards, handball, on the quayside. Otherwise they stretch out sleeping away the hours on ragged towels beneath a pale sun. They are, on the whole, a jovial set of South-East Asian men, small in stature and with spare frames, quick dark eyes and rugged, weather-beaten faces. They live in check shorts, t-shirts, flip flops. Don't they feel cold? Homesick? They have a fondness for strong liqueur and black tobacco. Therein lies their secret, perhaps?

Huan Ho, captain of 'The Red Emerald', unties his skinny legs from the lotus position, leaps to full height on the roof of the tug boat, falls to his knees and begins to chant. Nobody notices him. After a while, he again leaps up and falls to his knees and chants some more. A deckhand in a t-shirt orange as a dying sun is hosing portholes down, suspended by a rope overboard. He is distracted by the chanting of Huan Ho aloft. He shouts out. He shouts out again. Meanwhile, the hands are on their feet hollering and stomping on the quayside. Two hands climb on deck. A sudden rush from the hosepipe sweeps a squealing Huan Ho aloft on his flying towel and into a rapid cycle down the rainbow to the murky waters of the harbour. A cry to my left. The hose bearer hanging like a cargo load from the claw of a crane, is about to join his captain. Hurray! All hands are jubilant.

Suidhe Fheargas from The Tower Hotel

A surprisingly delicious meal at The Tower Hotel. A wedding anniversary surprise. Good on ye
Alan. Am saddened tho' to think the hotel is due to close for business. So many happy happy memories. Stunning views of dipping suns over Arran, of white horses on grumbling seas and of wide wide skies. The woodsmanship in the lounge and in the restaurant speaks of craft and design. The dowelling is impressive, indeed. A stay of execution, surely?

Sundown over Arran

Sky over Arran

Hallaig by Sorley MacLean
Time, the deer, is in Hallaig Wood

There's a board nailed across the window
I looked through to see the west
And my love is a birch forever
By Hallaig Stream, at her tryst

Between Inver and Milk Hollow,
somewhere around Baile-chuirn,
A flickering birch, a hazel,
A trim, straight sapling rowan.

In Screapadal, where my people
Hail from, the seed and breed
Of Hector Mor and Norman
By the banks of the stream are a wood.

To-night the pine-cocks crowing
On Cnoc an Ra, there above,
And the trees standing tall in moonlight -
They are not the wood I love.

I will wait for the birches to move,
The wood to come up past the cairn
Until it has veiled the mountain
Down from Beinn na Lice in shade.

If it doesn't, I'll go to Hallaig,
To the sabbath of the dead,
Down to where each departed
Generation has gathered.

Hallaig is where they survive,
All the MacLeans and MacLeads
Who were there in the time of Mac Gille Chaluim:
The dead have been seen alive,

The men at their length on the grass
At the gable of every house,
The girls a wood of birch trees
Standing tall, with their heads bowed.

Between The Leac and Fearns
The road is plush with moss
And the girls in a noiseless procession
Going to Clachan as always

And coming boack from Clachan
And Suisnish, their land of the living,
Still lightsome and unheartbroken,
Their stories only beginning.

From Fearns Burn to the raised beach
Showing clear in the shrouded hills
There are only girls congregating,
Endlessly walking along

Back through the gloaming to Hallaig
Through the vivid speechless air,
Pouring down the steep slopes,
Their laughter misting my ear

And their beauty a glaze on my heart.
Then as the kyles go dim
And the sun sets behind Dun Cana
Love's loaded gun will take aim.

It will bring down the lightheaded deer
As he sniffs the grass round the wallsteads
And his eye will freeze: while I live,
His blood won't be traced in the woods.