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Am Bratach No. 209
Backcoaster’s Diary
Stranger than fiction We read in an Edinburgh broadsheet that six unnamed “historians and intellectuals” have been asked to provide information about the history and culture of Caithness, apparently with a view to demonstrating to councillors of that northern fastness that they have nothing in common with anything or anybody south of the Arctic Circle. Certainly not the dreaded Gaelic language that Highland-Council-writ-large is trying to foist on them by way of road signs and other public notices. What Gaelic, as opposed to the council, has done to warrant this outbreak of late winter madness, nobody quite knows, but it has gone beyond this tiny group of disenfranchised politicians. Even a prominent retired employee of the council has taken up the cudgels. David Morrison from Wick, one-time county librarian, published poet, painter and literary magazine editor, is said to have been writing letters to the local papers condemning the use of Gaelic in the county. And, according to one bemused witness, Morrison was beside himself with indignation when he came across a new sign outside his beloved library bearing legends in English and Gaelic, with Gaelic on top. What next? Certainly the end of civilisation as we know it. Morrison enjoys a long-standing relationship with Scotia Review, the literary magazine he founded and then edited for nearly forty years. One of the giants of Scottish literature it has championed is Neil M Gunn, the distinguished Caithness novelist who died in 1973. According to leading publisher, Birlinn, Gunn was a “fierce defender of Highland life and tradition, and although he never learned to speak or write Gaelic, his novels are filled with the fluid rhythms and syntax of Gaelic speech.” Another Gunn — George — wrote a letter to Am Bratach on Scotia Review headed notepaper last September praising an article about Gaelic in Caithness written by historian Dr Donald W Stewart. Gunn noted: “Caithness has a rich linguistic history and is that rare place in Scotland where the Gael and the Norse have melded. This we should celebrate not denigrate.” He added: “I suppose this is a case of how important history actually is, in as much as it counters ignorance.” What Caithness native George Gunn and Glaswegian David Morrison find to talk about when they meet over a dram we cannot imagine.
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