PAPADILAll characters and places are intended as fiction, folklore, myth, poetry, to give essence to time & place for the journey ..............

Copyright Les Bates Text and images

Cover from a felt work by Sheila Bates

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Gulls stitch waves to edge of the sky. On white wingsCall echoing psalters Across the waves

Black sky Clear starsUpon black water drew Ones and twos of brightness From his outstretched hand.

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Priest Place

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PAPADIL a Short Story

First there had been a single boy spinning with a stout sea rod. He had been lucky on the first cast. All afternoon the boy had watched a fishing boat working the head of the bay, and then had come out himself to fish at dusk. Two seals had also been out in the bay for most of the afternoon, and were still there when the boy began to fish. Now there were more boys with hand lines and rods, seven or eight of them, and a few who were on their way.Fish had come into the calm and safe waters of the sea-loch from the rougher sea. Yet in coming into the bay, the whitebait, also being pursued by an early run of mackerel had entered waters of almost certain slaughter, since there was no safe exit back to the open sea. They lay, a seething black mass of frightened fish that sometimes turned together, showing white as the silvered edge of a storm cloud, before giving themselves up to the trapped blackness of fear once again.Green tiger backed mackerel sliced into the whitebait, a wedge of cannibalism that gorged itself on any flesh that hit their mouths. The boys began to haul out fish after fish, which flapped on the quayside till struck on the head by the smallest of the boys. Fish lay quivering, shivering; their lifelines snapped, but their life energy not yet enslaved by death.The eldest boy had cut one mackerel into strips,

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butchering it to lure it 's brothers in the sea. A strip to each of seven hooks on his hand line. Mackerel hit the hooks on the line, and he hauled in three fish at a blow. Nothing but blood and flesh interested the mackerel bent on their own destruction. Even when fully gorged, the mackerel continued to smash into the whitebait or any other flesh they encountered. The catch grew on the quayside. The boys had never known such fishing, and there was great excitement as the mound of slaughter grew higher and higher.Among the many young fish there could often be found a larger mackerel, old and scarred, too heavy with its burden to put up a decent fight. gorged with fish, heads and tails falling out of its mouth. The hook was not in him, but embedded in his gullet, wedged among the crop of whitebait. The smallest boy continued his pleasure, enjoying each successively larger fish, and sizing and laying out the fish, awarding points to the proud fishermen. Often he would squeeze an ancient mackerel's stomach, pumping out the whitebait from its mouth, some dead, others still flapping with fear. The small boy kicked those still alive back into the water, to re-enter the battle of life or death.The whitebait would turn away from one beach and head for a gap in the mackerel. Survivors from the ensuing onslaught would then be pushed round the head of the pier against the shoreline, becoming a flow of fish which moved from side to

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side of the pier. The eyes of the boys never left that flow of fish. Their hooks were continuously hitting the water while the fish continuously hit the quayside. Some of the boys had brought buckets and boxes to carry off their fish. Proudly they would distribute their catch amongst the islanders, their catch of plenty occasioned by the greed of the mackerel and the fear of the shoal of whitebait.Out in the bay the two seals fed off the escaping whitebait. Wounded and near dead, few would escape to survive and regain the open sea. The seals, with their heads round bobbing buoys of blackness out in the bay were now satiated with food. Soon they would find a more secluded shore and haul themselves out onto the rocks to rest.The old man watched the boys fishing in the dusk. He had watched the black masses, shoal after shoal of whitebait, being chased to either side of the pier. He had seen the mackerel, green black bolts that slaughtered the smaller fish as they trapped them against the shores while the small withdrawing breakers thinned the ever-blackening water.Three terns fell, hitting the sea surface now turning silver-grey in the gathering darkness. The old man watched the terns. Their orange-red tipped bills, sharp and deadly hit the water as they on the debris of slaughter. Their neat sharp set wings, with tail streamers forking out from their white bodies. Thrilled by the energy, thrust and

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surge of life and death, both in and out of the sea, the old man had watched the fish, the boys, and the terns intently. He had gone down among the boys and the smell of fish, and had spoken to the boys so full and excited by their kill.He had left them when the wind dropped and the midges came, immediately irritating and biting the old man and the boys. Also, he now felt cold and sensed the coming night. It was the time between sun and moon, when the sun no longer warmed the flesh, and it 's reflection was cool and white on the water.Against the north shore of the sea-loch, he watched a heron rise out of a black stand of spruce and larch. He watched it 's shape shift slowly inland towards where the mountain river ended its journey to the sea. He himself followed the heron's path on foot, on his way homeward to get inside and out of the night.When the old man had reached the river,the heron was standing still, it 's gaunt grey attention held entirely by the moving babbling water. It 's blue greyness moved slowly along as it worked the riverbed watching the stones for the dart of small fish, brown or sea trout that fed them at the mouth of the river. The heron was more a moving shadow than a hunter, but it 's dagger like beak was swift and sharp.This true fisherman interested the old man.They had certain similarities, and he felt a bond between this bird of the hunched shoulders and

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slow powerful flight and himself. There were moving, ageless rivers that ran within both man and bird, and there was something of the seer or sage in them both.He continued to watch the bird, with it 's grey blue back, white head and neck with the black eye streak reaching the very tip of it's long graceful crest. The tall yellow legs moved through the water as the heron waded nearer the sea. Then, catching sight of the watching man, the heron lifted itself, drawing it's head back between its shoulders and extending its long legs as it flapped broad wings ragged with age, and headed for the trees of the northern shore. The old man watched it go, a little annoyed at him self for disturbing the bird, but also imagining that there was little moving in the river. The tide was still slightly high, and the heron would probably return when the man was quiet and indoor.Reaching the stepping stones the old man thought he would take a short cut across the river. The night was clear now, and he could see a single bright star above the corner of the farmhouse.Upstream, the bridge, which he normally took, was a black arc, outlined against the cold blue light of the sky. Inky black water caught the yellow light of the windows from the farmhouse, then broke bubbling silver tipped as it flowed on downstream through the stepping stones. Stone by stone, the old man crossed the river, the more swiftly to gain the far bank.

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Reaching the other bank, he could see, silhouetted against the clear light of the still night, eight red deer, which had come down from the lower hills to feed by the river. He watched fascinated. There were three stags and five hinds. Suddenly they caught wind of him and were off, their fawn red hindquarters bobbing out of sight along the track of the northern shoreline.There were whirling clouds of midges around the edges of the old trees running along the arm of the loch where the deer had vanished. The old man was fast approaching the cottage and leaving the river and the sea. The boys would be gone by now, except perhaps for a lone straggler trying to reap his full harvest.The old man reached his cottage. Looking west up the glen, through the leaves and branches of a lime tree growing near his home, he saw the sickle shaped moon and a single bright star. Turning the door handle he entered his cottage and then closed the door on the night.Next morning everything was calmer. There were only two boys fishing at the pier. He stood and watched them in the morning light. There were fewer fish and the boys had only caught the odd mackerel, the run of them was over. The night had given the old man little sleep. He had been shaken and moved by what he had experienced the previous evening: the fighting fish and death within the living waves of the sea had hit him hard

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and fast.He was inspired and nervous, yet there was something free and moving within him. His mind was lucid and yet his blood chaotic and almost feverish. His whole being stung with intent. He made a decision. He would fish today, not there off the pier, too much had been done there. He had his own place in mind, away through the mountains on the southern shore of the island, at a small freshwater loch above the sea at Papadil.From the window of his bedroom he heard the sound of a tractor and knew the working day had begun. Two men, one driving and the other standing in the trailer, entered the field beside his cottage. The trailer was full of manure for the recently ploughed field, in preparation for a late sowing of potatoes. The two men reached the head of the field, put the tractor in gear, and left it to be guided down the field by its wheels within the furrows. Standing in the trailer they pitched pile after pile of manure and straw on to the field behind the downward moving tractor. At the bottom of the hill, one of them got down, regained control of the wheel and went off to fetch more manure from the farmyard.The old man watched the young men working the land. It was hard steady work. The tractor returned and the two men continued to cover the ground with manure. The old man reckoned that it would take them till at least midday to finish this initial stage in the sowing of the potato crop. In the

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afternoon, by which time he would be up the hill, the men would be sowing their quota of late potatoes, forking the manure into the furrows along with the seed potatoes. None of the nutrient value of the manure would be lost. The old man would sow his potatoes on returning from the fishing trip.Leaving the window, the old man decided that he would tell someone of his proposed trip, or leave a message to say where he had gone, before he finally left. He would go to the farm and collect his milk and perhaps he'd meet someone there and let them know his plans.As he left the cottage a cuckoo grumbled at him with a grating noise and then flew long-tailed and hawk-like away. Since their arrival the cuckoos were always calling, and often he saw them since the tree that this one had just left was used as a song post. The old man disliked the cuckoo. He often saw meadow pipits mobbing them, retaliating as best they could, trying to force the miscreant birds away from their nests. It was a brave effort, but nevertheless, many meadow pipits would continue to play host to the young cuckoos.Reaching the farm, the old man took the first door which led into the milking sheds themselves. He heard voices coming from the courtyard, and thought that in the distance he could hear the sound of ponies up the valley. At the gate into the courtyard, the old man halted as thirty ponies

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entered, filling it with a suddenness that was all the more amazing because of the wild beauty of the ponies.The ponies had been brought down the glen from their seashore retreat at Kilmory. They were of an old breed said to be descended from horses which survived the wreck of a galleon during the Spanish Armada. They were a cross between an Arab sire and a West Highland mare, and none of them exceeded fourteen hands in height. Now, they would be sized, and have their hooves attended to. Some would be cleaned of pebbles and grit, while others would have their hooves filed back to make them easier on their feet. The colts would be sold, leaving a herd consisting mainly of mares, which were used to bring the killed deer off the hill during the cull or stalking season.The old man watched a single white mare that was very frisky. Mostly he preferred the dun- coloured ones and longed to ride one. He enjoyed their shy wildness. A nervousness caused by the frisky mare, seemed to ripple and resound through the whole herd. Soon they were registered, let out of the farm gate. Now the mouse-duns with the black eel-stripe along their backs, chestnuts with silver flying manes and tails, the bays and the blacks had gone from the courtyard and were free to return to the mountains and the open hills.Collecting his milk, the old man left the way he had come. The men in the ploughed field were about midway across, while three herring gulls

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flew and cried reeling behind them.Dornabac was the name he had given his cottage. It was the name of a loch which lay several hundred feet above sea level in a valley below the mountain An Dornabach, opposite Minishal, or the Black Hill, all of which only ever caught the back of the dawn.The old man had painted nearly every mountain on the island. His eyes knew so much and missed very little. His were the eyes of the silent observer. He had an image of the first man, from which his consciousness never released him.It was as certain as the stars and planets, uncanny and beautiful was the image. Every word he wrote, every stroke of his brush was an attempt at an unfailing attention to nature's order.The smoke always rose from his chimney, betraying the ever warm and glowing fire within. He had studied the movement of the sea, and his studio contained works vast and inspiring, completed and unfinished or still being worked on. Moonlight and sunlight were always changing, rearranging the waves, colours and complexion of the sea. For the sea was a woman, constantly moving, seductive and amorous, sucking him into the rolling and ebbing tides, so he could never catch her true likeness, but took her as his lover.Earlier that morning, before the ferry had arrived with the islanders' provisions and mails, the old man had taken a long hard look at the mountains

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and the weather conditions they foretold. The mountainside had been lit by the early rising sun, and already robin, wren and blackbird were alive in the trees around his cottage.From the doorway he had watched a pair of hooded crows flying against the hillside a few hundred feet below the pyramid peak of Hallival. A round shoulder of weathered grey rock, which belied the true height of the mountain, rose from a separating valley beyond the grey ridge some two thousand feet up from the loch side settlement at Kinloch below. Often he had watched a pair of buzzards, encircling the tiny orb of the sun, round broad winged birds rising and soaring on the hot air thermals.He loved to be in the mountains when the sun was high. Many of his hot summer days and nights had been spent bathing in the cool waters of rock pools held high up in the mountains. The waters were alive and refreshing. His naked body felt vibrant and tingled with pleasure and shock whenever he stood under the cascading natural shower of a waterfall. He would hear the sound of running water, feel the very silence, so still you could hear it. Only when the high liquid call of a curlew broke the echoing silence did he hear the sound of his breathing and the sound of running water.Norse sailors, who never settled on the island, had used the mountain peaks as steerage points, had named the mountains. They may never have

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settled because of the strange stories of trolls living high up in the mountains. The names they gave the mountains ended with 'val', and the valleys with 'dil', and the name they gave the mountain of the trolls was Trollaval.High up in the mountains were thousands of nesting shearwaters. These stiff winged black and white seabirds glided during daylight out over the sea. Their starkly contrasting black upper parts and white under parts showed clearly as they dipped in and out of the rolling waves. Great rafts of them settled on the sea where they were safe, and they would only return to their breeding grounds during the hours of darkness, crooning and calling as they sought the safety of their nesting burrows. It was these birds that lent themselves to the image of the trolls who lived in the mountains.Man's imagination and lack of investigation of the eerie and uncanny noises had created the myth.Sometimes the birds would return to their nest burrows on clear moonlit evenings, but then they were likely to fall prey to a moonlighting golden eagle. However, high up in their mountain threshold they were relatively safe from other predators.The old man had spent many nights up there on the mountain when these birds returned to their nest burrows. He had never worked out how a single chick, left deserted by its parents before it was able to fly, ever reached the sea. Surely it was

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a difficult pathway to survival for these young birds, but yearly he would see the great rafts at sea.When next the old man looked from his bedroom window the two men had finished the field. Now feeding in the furrows were the three gulls that had followed the tractor. The old man's eyes caught a flight of eight brown birds as they swung in toward the field revealing their jet-black faces bordered by a broad white band surrounding the black fronts of their bodies. But their most striking feature as they sank in and out of the furrows away from the gulls, were their gold speckled backs stretching over the crown of their heads to the tips of their tails. They were eight golden plover, and the old man heard their plaintive calls as they worked the furrows, a little nervous of the fighting gulls. Their cries were an echo of years in the old man's mind as he prepared himself for his journey.A single rough and rocky land rover track leads out from the shoreline community to the head of the Glen.Almost at the top of the glen the road forks with one branch leading north to the sandy beach of Kilmory while the other turns south to the rocky shores of Harris. At the centre of the island off the south bound track to Harris there lay the Long Loch, midway between the eastern and western mountain masses. From that point the island divides into three parts with glens radiating north,

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east and south. Kilmory Glen runs northward, it's river meandering through a wide marshy flat before cutting through a line of dunes, then a sandy beach to enter the sea opposite the larger island of Skye.The Kinloch River branches off at a point below the forking of the roads, running together with the Kilmory River before turning sharply eastwards and then flowing down the north side of Kinloch Glen. The river runs through

moorland and peat bogs, then past farmland to the low tide silt of Loch Scresort.

The south side of Kinloch Glen rises in a steep slope to a loch dotted plateau below

Barkaval nearly two thousand feet above the track below. The old man loved this tapestry of lochs and mountains and interlacing of streams and river. The shadowy branches of the lime fell across the front of Dornabac, throwing a mosaic of leaf shadows on the white walls. He reached the farmyard bridge and watched the river moving cool and soft below. His gaze leapt from the white watered rock upward into the glen arrested by the flicking tail of a small slender bird on a rock in the river. It was a grey wagtail, and shortly he saw the female join it, coming down the course of the river in a fast undulating flight while calling quickly and sharply to it's mate .The two birds rose off the rock into the air, swiftly hunting flies and then dropped down in a flutter of wings, splashing a yellow and grey-blue reflection on the water. Their long black tails, the

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longest of all the wagtails, were offset by white outer tail feathers which never stayed still, and every inch moved up and down in an excited jerking motion. The old man left the wagtails with their ballet along the dancing stream and moved onward towards the mountains.Just off the track, in a curve of the river, was a great hollow of water, a peaty pool where the children swam and the workers took a cold dip after their hot day's work in the fields. The old man enjoyed the many pools in the river, and the way the sun moved dancing bubbles of light and darkness over their stony bed. In the coursing river he watched small trout dashing out of sight into the shadow of bank or stone. The trout enjoyed the running cleanness of the water, but fed very poorly and only in the lochs were there any larger fish to be seen and fished for. Such a loch was the one held above the sea by a pebble beach at Papadil to which the old man was going. His was a long journey up the length of Kinloch Glen and then down the road to Harris. As he moved higher up the glen, the river fell farther away in to the plain below.The old man was enjoying the sun, it's warmth beating down upon him. His head was light with daydreams and thoughts. His heart was full of joy and memories and his eyes never left the mountain ridge. His soul was free and flying. The weight of his pack was little and the holdall containing his favourite rods hung comfortably

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from his shoulder. He had brought food and drink for the night, sketchbooks and water colours along with his reel and flies and spinners. He was glad and happy with his life, and all around him were the mountains, and around them the sea.He jumped a little when a pair of red grouse rose out of the heather beside him and flew away up the hill over the tops of the heather. He laughed at himself, and continued on his way. In the river valley he could hear curlew calling, and he saw one rise up off the river bank and watched it winging brown backed down to the sea shore as he listened to its bubbling clear pitched call.He flushed several snipe, and heard their cries as

they rose from the banks of the streams running down the hillside zigzagging away toward the river. These small compact brown birds, which flew with their long straight beaks pointing downwards, would sit tight and secretive like the grouse until almost trodden on, before rising and flying angrily away. They were most spectacular when 'drumming ' with their tail feathers spread wide during their mating display flight. At dusk they drummed rising from the marshy wet land.On the side of the road on a high rock was an old stone crunching machine, which had been used to construct the track, but was now little used. The track wound in curves as it climbed, hiding and reappearing from behind small rocky outcrops, travelling onwards into the mountain distance.

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The old man was a little over midway up the glen and nearing the Bealach Mhic Neill waterfalls. Very soon he could hear them as they fell down the mountain ridge, and passed under the road before entering the river twelve hundred feet below their source. His eyes never left the scree slope to the right of the falls as he drew closer and closer, listening to their sound of thunder, the powerful magnificence of the waterfall.Primroses lay in clusters upon the banks of the stream as the old man watched the racing waters pass under the bridge. Now and then he would hear the drone of a bumble bee as it buzzed around the flowers, and then he would lose it 's sound to the noise of the tumbling water.The old man looked up to the ridge with it 's long line of ragged black and grey rock. From a great gash white water spumed down and down, dropping in falls of gathering momentum, sometimes shooting out over a shelf of rock to land twenty feet below and five feet out from the brown and orange rock face. In other places, hidden from the road, the water slid and gushed out falling over and over itself in dazzling whiteness over great slides of rocky blackness.He stood staring skyward,moving his eyes down as he tried to catch the water, as it dropped seven hundred feet down the rushing water course until it vanished below him, only to continue it 's journey another four hundred feet below. There

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was a reverence in the pounding of his heart as he began to let himself be lost in the music of the falls. He continued his journey up toward the ridge, thinking that he would leave the track and make his way along the ridge and come down later to the point where the tracks met at the top of the glen.Pale blue violets, the first of the year, wavered and swept back upright as the old man moved along the deer track beside the falls. They were single and delicate flowers, and he was careful not to crush them. They grew out of this barren land with so much ease, re-appearing every year, even after the harshest winters. They were nowhere as common as the primroses he remembered from his boyhood wanderings in damp woodlands, where he had found them under the trees in the dark earth. Sometimes he saw both violets and primroses under the rocks, clinging to the soil on the thin grassy ledges tucked away out of the wind.The old man continued along the path of the deer, his feet following the now dry and solid track. Here and there would be a wet patch, muddy and slippy, and he found himself stopping for breath, watching the river in the valley below with it 's meandering course eroding away the peat banks in great arcs and curves as it passed through the rock gullies, showing where it had formed a new path. Everywhere beneath the turf and peat there was rock. Through and under the turf ran small

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streams which welled up to the surface wherever a rock prevented them from following their course.The whole island grew out of the sea which ran in caverns under the island. Ridges had grown from the seabed and flowing over these were the waters of the sea.The sea attacked the land, and just as a river dug curves into it 's banks, so the sea caused caves and bays to the island's mass.Though there were silences, nothing was ever still, for the waters and rock and earth were ever changing. The old man felt the vibrations of water, heard the sound of it passing underground, while in his body he could feel the pumping of his heart. He knew how easily the waterfalls had taken him up and held him in their power.On the ground he saw tiny yellow tormentils and the blue flowers and intermingling stems and leaves of the heath milkwort. These two flowers so small upon the earth reflected the perfections of his world.A pipit rose out of the heather a little over on the right hand side of the stream. Everywhere one walked upon the island there were pairs of meadow pipits. The small bird rose angrily, then began its thin piping call which grew faster and faster and more shrill till the bird reached its peak before drawing it's tiny wings back it dropped like a parachute, with a repetition of its song back, down into the heather. A few yards further up another rose, and the old man caught a glimpse of the olive glow on it's back, and noticed how when

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the bird held back it's wings, it's tail feathers were edged with white. Otherwise, the pipit was the colour of the hills. Only by being flushed so readily was it such easy prey for predators.Suddenly below him, the old man's attention was drawn by a sharp 'ki-ki-ki-ki-ki-ki', a sharp shearing noise coming from a blue blot of a bird scanning the hillside below. It was a male merlin, it's blue back and smaller size distinguishing it from the female. Merlins had always nested near the falls, and the old man had done many studies of these fast little falcons. The bird was returning to it's old haunts on the ancient hillside, flying noisily in a buoyant and erratic flight.The merlin flew on down the valley till it was out of sight. The skylarks had stopped singing and the pipits had taken cover. The old man carried on up the hillside, the better to gain a view of the whole valley, while listening intently for the return of the falcon.The longest fall in the whole length of the stream stood before him, with only it's top visible from the road below. Standing on a half-submerged rock in the shallows below the falls, the old man took a drink of the water. Cupped in his hands the water was captured, dripping from his hands it was free. No one had harnessed the power of these falls. The water tasted good, cold and refreshing. The old man sat and rested awhile for he still had a long distance to go. He felt no real tiredness and he was enjoying the hills and the waterfalls. He

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wanted to get to the top of the ridge from where he would be able to see and feel the surrounding waters.A pipit rose up out below him, rising up over the falls of rushing white water tumbling blackly downwards. The hillside fell away below the bird as it continued to rise upwards, then dropped swiftly down and the old man watched it shoot low over the ground. Then from behind a rock shot the form of the merlin, silent and fast and swift flying. The pipit rose out from under the bird, which turned again in pursuit calling 'kee kee-kee-kee' with a sharp fierceness. It was a cry for blood.The pipit jerked across the road, going steeply downwards into the valley. The falcon pushed it down and then back up as it rose beneath it. The two birds rose encircling each other, one the hunter, the other the fearful prey. The merlin was little larger than a thrush, it's pointed wings cut the air cleanly. The pipit dropped again and the merlin with an effortless swoop and swift wing strokes seemed to glide and hit it like a bullet. The two were lost in the valley below, where the falcon would pluck and eat the pipit before continuing to hunt this ancient territory for a mate.The old man suspected that a female was in the vicinity. Earlier he had seen some hooded crows chasing a bird, but had lost sight of them while watching the falling waters. The pair of them would nest in the short grass, in a dry place

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amongst the heather, or in the cleft of some rocks upon a dry and protected shelf. Both birds would hunt and raise their young. Later would come autumn, and then winter engulfed the barren hillside of the island. So continued the cyclic world, with the cuckoos invading the nests of the pipits, and the merlins hunting the adult birds that survived the nest. Such was the pyramid balance of nature.He rose and continued his journey, with his mind and sight thrilled by the two birds. He knew that he would return often now to watch the merlins. He reached the top of the fall, and going over the rim of the ridge reached a plateau receding backwards across the mountain top. Running fast toward the rim and over its lip was the feeding stream, whose waters fell cascading over as inevitably as the skies drew up the earth's moisture and then let it fall again.Heading on inland toward Barkeval and the loch dotted plateau, he wanted to re-visit the lochs where he had watched and studied the mountain otters that lived in the safety of the high hills.The old man looked out over the island to the northern horizon. A long line of black peaks climbed knife ridge upon ridge, mountains so incredibly sky-cutting, sinister and cloud gathering, enchanting and full of legend. Such was Skye, an island like his own, swept by wind and sea, locked beneath sun, moon and stars.He intended a visit to an otter's halt. Although he

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thought it would long ago have been deserted by the otters, it drew him up here onto a plateau of sky reflected water below reeling mountains and soaring eagles. Grouse abounded in the heather and coarse grasses. From the tough turf sprang delicate orchids, violets and silver stranded rivulets of mountain waters which fed the loch. Sunk into the peat here and there were dark pools of water, surrounded by rock sculptures, fierce and defiant as they emerged from amid green and orange mosses.The otters had chosen to make their home on the north eastern shore of Loch Bealach Mhic Neill. Here a shielding rock provided defense from wind and rain. Tunnels of rough fibrous grasses ran in from left and right, entering steeply down into the living chamber, and running out in twists and turns down some twenty yards of sloping bank to a small beach of volcanic grit.From their position above the loch the otters had a clear view of the whole loch and it's shores. They lived in close proximity to their source of food, yet with a safe retreat if ever they should be threatened. It was on this small beach that the old man had first found their prints, which had led to his discovery of the then inhabited holt. He saw now that the holt was more exposed than it had been, and though it had a little sparse bedding it was now used as a resting place, probably in a chain of others along the small lochans in this secluded world above the world of man.

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He resolved to make once again his journeys into the night and continue his study of the otter's world, a world that came alive at night and on till dawn. Beast and man became one with the mountains, shadows and vague figures in the colours of night.The old man returned to the head of the falls and carried on along the ridge, watching the winding road a dusty track below him as he passed over the brow of Mam Tuath, a thousand feet above the sea. Slowly he descended back into the valley, his mind in the heavens, outside of himself. Immersed in the knowledge released by the mountains themselves his feet felt the rock beneath the turf. Stepping downward from this ancient solitary world to the dusty track below, he wound his way onward to the sea.The valley that ran down from Kilmory to Harris was rugged and rough, with marsh and large expanses of rocky outcrops. Yet it was in this valley that the past islanders had tended their crops and built their small dwellings. Now it was on the shores near Loch Scresort that the islanders lived, for it was only here that there had been enough land reclaimed and ploughed and cultivated to create the settlement of Kinloch. The island was a wild and desolate place.

Wherever the ruins of man lay scattered and broken by wind and time, a real life struggle had been fought and lost. The old man had grown to learn and love a

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little of the history and ways of these early settlers, since theirs had been a mean and difficult mode of existence. A rewarding and sensitive love of the land and it's ever changing ways could only be won that way. So it was with all due respect and homage that he looked at the ruins of the dam that the islanders had built in the path of the Kilmory River.The old man had painted a large canvas, with an eye to capturing the building of the dam showing the tough simply dressed men working against the rocky hillside. He had tried to capture how the work was a matter of survival and continuation of their lives and not just in return for food, so that even the most dark and humble dwelling would have it's fire. Most important was the necessity of knowing that man was master of his fate, and that the elements could be halted and would not reduce their homes to ruins. He had tried to capture the men and children on the track with the valley sweeping away to the sea. In his mind's eye, the old man saw the canvas, the now ruined dam lying before him, and knew something of what an artist such as himself could never achieve. That was the knowledge that the earth, sea and sky held as it's very own.The new loch that the men built survived for only forty-eight hours. Two days later the wall burst and the impounded waters poured over and down through Kilmory Glen. The flood waters caused the tiny river to cut deep into the peat so

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becoming the much larger river, which now runs into the sea at Kilmocy.The loss of the dam meant the loss of income for more than three hundred islanders who had been engaged in this project. It also halted any commercial hope of a proposed fishery. Reluctantly, as the threatening potato blight became reality in 1847, many of the islanders emigrated to Nova Scotia.One person now lived in Kilmocy,near that wild and beautiful shore. To the islanders she was known simply as the deer girl. He had watched her call and bring down from the mountains as many as sixteen stags, which she then studied year in and year out. She would tcy to find out which was the most dominant stag among the wild red deer on the open hillsides. On the ground in front of her cottage she would lay out twenty-five piles of oats and wheat in a circle then retreat into her doorway. From here she would watch the stags as one by one they began to eat the food. Some began immediately while others looked as ifthey would never edge their way in. She had given them names: Rufus, Constable, Commander, Joey, Nelson, Bony, Goliath, and Pepi. Goliath would nudge Pepi out of the circle, which along with the other young and nervous stags would retreat, leaving Goliath to eat their share of the oats. Around the circle it was the more experienced deer who won the food and the right to continue feeding.

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The old man watched the pecking order form with great understanding, this social hierarchy of the red deer herds. It was always Bony and Nelson that were left combatting for food, antlers raised in warning and defence. There was no real conflict but perhaps even in the wild, Nelson rather ironically would nudge Bony out of the contest as leader of the herd, taking the prime hinds for his very own.Kilmory was a place of deer.It 's shores saw the setting of the sun and often the old man had watched it sinking down and burning up the Isle of Canna in a red and orange haze. Then would come the gathering darkness and the sky full of thousands of stars, and in the distance the mountains of Skye. Sometimes from the beach at Kilmory one saw the Northern Lights in a massive show across the heavens. The old man dearly loved this place of sea and sand with the deer running the length of the beach and bathing in the sea.The old man began walking away from the dam with his memories of time spent at Kilmory behind him, like the lives of past islanders beneath the turf of the island and in the voices of the wind which often ran the length of the deserted valley from seashore to seashore. He was moving onward down the track to Harris. Although he was now growing tired he strode out and onward through the silent valley.

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Flying from rock to rock and in the little tree plantations beside the track the old man constantly saw flickers of white, coal blue, black and the orange glow of a pink orange breast as he heard the chatter of a stonechat or the alarm call of the wheatear.The old man had intended to leave the track and cross the valley floor, but he needed to stay on it for a while longer as it moved in dusty curves and arcs towards the sea. The old man was tired and hot and there was still much distance to be covered. His white beard and rough hair made him one with the wilderness. His face was weather beaten, red and fiery, burnt by sun, rain and wind. He was short, yet as strong as most men, for his physical strength lay in his legs and his stamina , on the hills.The mountains lay before him, a tapestry of desolation with it 's mystery of light and darkness. He wished for the sea to fill valleys like some ancient fiord, and longed to be the first man, the warrior, returning home at the bow of his ship as it entered the mountain fastness. Rock and sky had clashed, dull edges of blades that cut the skies in the evening when the day was all but done. Grey and majestic, full of the power of the names given by the Norsemen, each mountain spelt out it's own hold and power, Ruinaval, the mountain of ruins, Trollaval and between them Ainshival.His mind strayed back to the ponies and how

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suddenly their beauty had been impressed upon him. Soon the mares would be served by the stallion that wintered on the mainland, or at the farm. All sleek in his summer coat, groomed to a wild and sheer perfection, he was powerful and darkly mysterious, almost mythical, yet vibrant with the wild passion that flowed through his blood.The arrival of the stallion came with the spring tides covering the stepping stones and flooding the banks of the river. The river running with the black streaks of tiny elvers in their hundreds in the clear water. The old man loved even the simplest of changes, young birds leaving the nest, the abundance of life. For so many years now these had governed his life.During hot days of May that had come one after the other, making the rock pools and river waters warm after midday,the old man had felt and seen the power of the west wind. The lime tree outside his cottage had swirled and swayed in the grip of the wind, and buttercups and grasses in the meadow had run in yellow and green waves. The west wind was a strong wind, coming down the Glen through the woodlands along the shoreline and out across the sea, chopping the waves so that they reared up showing reins of whiteness all across the head of the bay with the distant pink and purple mainland beyond. He loved the west wind, with it 's powerful warmth which rolled over and around you and was something you never

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wanted to lose as it reached every inch of your body like warm caresses of a lover.The old man had watched the sea with the west wind sweeping around him and had longed for the spring tides which swept strongly into the mouth of the river. It was during one of these times that he had painted one of his most evocative paintings.Two seals, silver edged black arcs which dripped and shone as they rose up out of the incoming tidal waters, like the leading pair of horses harnessed to the chariot of the sea gods.Along the river shoreline, on the water swept rocks, he had sketched the tiny yellow and blue wagtails being fed by their handsome parents. Young coal tits, dusky grey-blue sooty birds with a white patch on their necks, flying with much noise or clinging to the orange cones of dark green conifers.The old man knew all of these things and had grown to know when they would happen, and had tried to capture them. All was important to the old man, and such were his inspirations and flights of fancy. Mostly he loved to be on the mountainside with the sea surrounding the island. That never-ending relationship of land and man, sea and sky, was forever causing him to stretch his abilities to rediscover himself within the world. Often he would just let things pass through him, like a cleansing thought or smell of blossom. So did nature give spirit to his sense of wonder, and

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he would look more keenly into the eye of the wind.An eagle hung soaring and circling below the sun, a broad winged shadow across it. Below the one eagle circled another rising higher and higher into the afternoon sky. Below them the old man was coming down the last stages of the descending track into the long deserted settlement of Harris.The land was good here. A herd of some eighteen highland cows with their calves grazed alongside groups of red deer. The cows raised their calves amid scenery as prehistoric, ancient and rugged as themselves. They stood massively ragged beside the track eyeing the old man who walked warily among them. Only as calves did they lose some of their docility and were apt to be a little more defensive and inquisitive to the intentions of man. There had been an old bull who served and lived with the cows, and wintered back at the Kinloch farm. He often wandered away from the herd, taking off after a favourite cow to Harris Glen or up onto the open hill. But he had wandered off and got himself into difficulties and was now dead, though the young who carried his fierce fighting blood were all around the old man now. The bull had been frightened off into the hills by the herd of ponies, which had moved from their Kilmory feeding grounds down the glens to the greener southern pastures of Harris.

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The old bull had fallen and cast himself in the furrows of the lazy beds upon the hillside, these remnants of an older farming system. The bull had turned upon his back, and held down by his great bulk, had starved to death, unable to regain his footing and return to the herd.The old man loved the cows dearly ,both the sandy coated calves and the older ones with their great horns and flaming gold coats, thick and necessary protection against the bitter winds and rains of winter. These were the hardiest of beasts, able to survive the most vicious weather year after year.The old man's mind had woken to a time before man, when the great glens had been cut into the existing landscape by great flows of ice before the coming of the last ice age.On a vast winter canvas he had tried to capture mountains emerging out of the windblown and slanting hail and snow, and below the mountains the pastures where cow stood against cow, heads down as they fought against the blizzard of swirling snow .In that painting he had come close to depicting an age when these cattle were the ancient survivors, suited to the mountains. They belonged here in the very midst of desolation as did the free flying eagles that long ago had been lost to sight, claimed by the silver circle of the sun. Harris was now a bleak deserted shore. As at every other shore where the valleys ran down to the sea, man had attempted to scrape and win a living

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from the harsh land. The old man was climbing the hillside, moving on towards Papadil and had passed the deserted turf covered remains of the early islander's homes, which had once belonged to the husbands, wives and children of this wilderness. On the hillsides were the lazy beds, row upon row of now barren furrows, once cultivated by the womenfolk of this community.How difficult had been their methods compared with the tractor assisted work of the two men in the potato fields at Kinloch. The women had carried their great baskets of seaweed up from the seashore and onto the hillsides, using a strap tied across their brows. The weed was laid in the furrows for the following year, while wheat and other grains were sown in the previous year's manured furrows. Potatoes were grown elsewhere which, with the tough black bread, formed the staple diet of the islanders. Gradually the soil would produce a yield that rewarded the months and years of toil, which the hardest winter could sweep away as if nothing had ever been done to farm the land.The old man was now leaving behind that deserted shore, as he began walking high above the sea across the brow of Ruinsival, mountain of ruin, with it's steep sloping sides running down to the rocky shores. Above him towered the higher slopes of Sgurr nan Gillean which rose up some two and a half thousand feet above the loch at Papadil.

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Something drew him to this place where dark water nestled into a hollow above the breaking waves. A dark and ominous group of spruce and larch trees grew around an old hunting lodge, a remnant of when the island was a pleasure ground for the rich and opulent Victorian men of money from Kinloch.But for him there was no falsehood. Something drew him and entered into his spirit, moving him so utterly and desperately to the edge of his own being. The calm gathered waters were a catchment of darkness and light, blue-black and turquoise, with the sun spinning in reach of the all-engulfing sea.There was said to be a spirit here, the white lady of Papadil, lady of the pool, siren of the rocks.Passing fishermen had seen her and believed she was the protector of this place. The old man knew these tales, but cared not for them. He only knew an air of peace and detachment, of enlightenment. On the rocky slopes of the hillside and on the sea cliffs, wild goats moved in small groups cropping the short wiry grasses and turf amid the sea pinks. The goats ranged high upon the most inaccessible crags, herds of them led by a master billy. Their coats were brown, white and black, and their horns like those of their ancestors the Persian wild goats. They mostly originated from domestic stock, but once gone feral they quickly reverted to

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the older and wilder form.The grass around the lochan was rich and fertile from the accumulated droppings of centuries of breeding sea birds. Facing south across the sea, the tumbled down walls of the early settler's homes lay amid soft springy turf.Many red deer fed on the grasses here. Orchids and violets abounded on the sunny slopes of the mountains and in the clefts of rock. At the same time the promontories of the rocky coastline provided hauling out points for seals and nesting sites for hundreds of gulls. On the steeper cliffs were the nests of cormorants and shags, kittiwakes and razorbills.The old man washed his face in the cool waters of a hillside stream, put down his pack and rods, and settled himself for a rest with the sun cool on his face. The day was fast turning to dusk and the sky's blue was giving itself up to an orange and cobalt stillness that told of the coming of stars and moonlight.He lay on the sweet turf, with the sound of sea birds ringing in his ears. He would rest and then fish. All day he had walked and journeyed to this place, his footsteps telling him of his age and all the dreams of youth rattling in his head.The sun was making its way around the island. Several fishing boats were heading into the orange glow, half-lit mariners becoming confused as the sea and the sky met in an all-enveloping haze. Soon it would be moving westwards to go down

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over the Sound of Canna. The old man slept on, resting his mind and body.Then came the stars; stillness broken by occasional sea cries carried on the night air awoke him as he lay utterly alone in the night in this wilderness. Nearby a dark pool showed blueblack, while silver tipped waves moved the sandy gravel of silts and grit around the edges of the shore.There is beauty in darkness and beauty in light. The sun with its brother the moon, are the keepers of day and night. Mysterious and strange thoughts passed through the mind of the old man. Papadil was a place of idyll, of things he did not know or understand, a place he had often avoided for it took him and moved him face to face with himself. Rooted in the sound of the sea, like wrack and weed he wavered in the motion of his soul.The boys and the run of mackerel were what had caused him to make this journey here, to come back to this place from which he had been apart for so long. Something beyond had called him, like sailors called to their deaths upon rocks because of a mistaken bearing.The old man took up his rod and line and began walking to the edge of the water. He cast out the line to land like a crease on the surface where several fish were rising. Cool moonlit ripples were spreading outwards and growing larger and larger till they became lost in the blackness. The old

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man cast again, becoming increasingly lost in the rhythm of the cast and rewind, the lilt of the curving line in the air and the landing of the fly onto the water. The song of the line in the stillness of the night sounded in his inner ear.All the movements of man have rhythm if theyare done naturally and with purpose. The casting, gathering in and recasting, the sowing and reaping, the swinging of a scythe all have their own rhythm.The old man let himself enter into casting of dreams and memories. He described the crescent of a moon and the circle of a full moon fell upon the black water, with ripples of whiteness moving outwards from the resting fly. Gathering it in, the line making love to the air as surely as the sea to the shore, from each became a million fusions of life. Casting and recasting the old man entered into the spirit of Papadil.He forgot himself as he moved into the water, casting out gently. The rod became an extension of him, like an old limb become youthful once more, a sapling sprung back and released in a wind. The line was going out straight with the fly landing where the old man's eyes held the blackness of the water.He was in water up to his knees, lost in himself, given up to the fishing and air and movement of the sea. This was a timeless action of another place. He did not feel the water around him, or the silt and pebbles under his slowly moving feet.

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His eyes followed the fly and his mind lost itself in the rhythm of the movement under the moonlight. Then suddenly, he was into a fish. He could feel it through the rod and line, something of the struggling, something of the water, another life.The old man was going in now, into the dark water, feeling the fish and the throbbing rhythms of it 's movement with the hook in it.The old man was up to his waist, going out into the water with the rod bending and the fish taking the line. The man felt the fish with the hook in it at the end of the line.Pain hit the old man. His body crumpled into the water. He fell and barely struggling was taken up by it. The rod disappearing in the blackness was still grasped in his hand. His heart, his mind, his pain gone into the water, but not into blackness but light, for in the east there were already signs of dawn.The sun appeared rising above the sea, above the body of the old man. The sea was ebbing out from the shore.Fishing boats were passing, cutting the sharp clean new horizon. Salt lashed fishermen, bitten by wind and sun, but they had no knowledge of the old man. It was dawn. They had their nets to tend.

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55

KAILYARD

Sickle moon Two bright stars Dark ridge upon ridgeThrown up by a light in the east. It seems two steps backwards Are taken for every one forward. Doing spadework. Steel against soil. Turning over autumn ground Scatter up the seasons potatoesLeft by slug and worm.This another`s vegetable patch My own remains undone.Before frost breaks hardI must attend my own kailyard.

IN THEIR OWN SEASON

The rasping of the corncrake, Slapping of the harnessIn their own season may not come again. For we have reapedA bitter harvestOf calling bird And work of men.

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THE GOOD DAYIs it still morningOr night come without warning ?Sun grow strongerDay stay a little longer.

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At Easter 1971 as a school boy the author first visited the Isle of Rum. Travelling from his home in the county of Warwickshire to carry out one month of "work experience.... He has worked permanently, on the land and at sea in the North West Highlands of Scotland since 1977. He now lives and works in Torridon.

Published by Kailyard Press Torridon 2016

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