“Robbing people of their actual history is the same as robbing them of part of themselves. It’s a crime. Our memory is made up of our individual memories and our collective memories. The two are intimately linked. And history is our collective memory. If our collective memory is taken from us – is rewritten – we lose the ability to sustain our true selves.” Powerful words from Japanese author Haruki Murakami.
Words that are echoed by many others, including Julian Barnes, who writes, “Memory is identity….You are what you have done; what you have done is in your memory; what you remember defines who you are; when you forget your life you cease to be, even before your death.” Which raises the question of just how do we preserve the past? Who decides what remains of that collective memory? Who writes our history?
There’s a familiar quote which runs like this, “To the victor the spoils.” Those spoils, however, are more than just material gains. They include the power to create the account of events that will become history. Those victors are allowed to give the ‘official’ version of what happened. Versions that glorify particular events or people, and all too often fabricate a past that didn’t exist, taking the collective memory down a path of untruth. It’s been happening since the dawn of time, and it takes time and effort to redress the balance. Just think how many people still believe Shakespeare’s version of Macbeth, unaware of how successful a monarch he was, so much so that he could leave a stable, well-governed country and go on a pilgrimage to Rome. 
Wartime secrecy is a boon to those who wish to create history with a particular agenda. Churchill is a prime example of that. His orders to destroy so much at the end of WWII gave him room to write an account of events that put him centre stage and ‘do a Richard III’ on former colleagues. Fortunately there are now versions that show events more honestly, Clive Ponting’s Churchill being one of them. Accounts which redress some of the imbalance.
We’re awash with fake news today. Statements are made by politicians that are blatantly untrue, yet go unchallenged. And, more dangerously, seep into the public consciousness to become fact. Yet there are ways to counter this. Knowing where to look for original source material is one. Being aware that all historians, journalists and broadcasters present news from a particular viewpoint – no-one is totally impartial – is another.
But there’s also the pleasure of finding out for yourself. Of getting out and about in your own country and visiting those places which, through their very antiquity, have so much to tell us about past events and what those events meant to those who lived through them. And how those events shaped the lives of generations to follow. Taking Crossraguel Abbey as an example, I’ve tried to do just this in my current iScot article.
What you remember defines you. What a nation remembers defines it too. The past is all around us – just waiting for you to come and find what really happened!
The 25th of January 2019 sees the 260th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns. Burns has been voted the Greatest Scot by the Scots themselves and his work is known and admired the world over. For a man who died when he was only thirty-seven, that really is an amazing achievement.
How fortunate we are to have a man like Burns as part of our nation’s history and culture. How worthwhile it is to take a longer look at who he was and what he did. How worthy he is of that glass raised in his honour at your Burns Supper – a man whose works are definitely worth remembering, not just on the 25th of January, but all year round!
There are one or two places on the west coast of Scotland that are not islands as such, but which are, to all intents and purposes, islands. Scoraig on Little Loch Broom in Wester Ross is one. To reach Scoraig you can either go by boat (the easy way – though always weather dependent!) from Badluarach on the south shore of Little Loch Broom – or you can walk. There is no road, no vehicular access, only a dramatic 5-mile cliff-side path. This was the route we chose. The walk starts at the road end at Badralloch and offers spectacular views down the length of Little Loch Broom.
But battle on they did, and that so many survived is a tribute to the courage and determination of the inhabitants. Life continued, families grew and according to Scoraig’s community website, there were 61 children at the school in 1873. However, as steamer transport declined and road and rail routes passed Scoraig by – as well as the drastic toll of two world wars – the population began to dwindle and it looked as though Scoraig was finished.
Spent time in a queue in the Post Office recently? Stamps for Christmas cards? Parcels to post? This is probably the one time of year many of us use stamps. They’re such small things that we tend to take them for granted. Yet, before their introduction in 1840, you had to be rich to communicate with anyone who didn’t live close to home. The Penny Post was a huge, beneficial, change for ordinary people and letter writing flourished. Postcards appeared and greeting cards for every occasion soon followed.
The vital contribution made by postal workers was celebrated in the 1936 GPO film Night Mail, with W.H. Auden’s famous poem recited to the rhythm of the rushing wheels of the train.
Time and tide may wait for no man, but the hills do. And in Scotland we have some of the most magnificent hills and mountains in the world. Mountains that were forced into being over 400 million years ago when three continents collided, creating a mountain chain of umimaginable proportions. Mountains that, over millenia, have been worn away by ice, wind and water to reach the forms we see today.
Holiday accommodation comes in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes the reality turns out to be not quite as it seemed in the brochure, while on other occasions you arrive to find it’s even better than expected. Coillabus on Islay was one of those, especially when we arrived at the lodge and saw the breathtaking 180° views over the north-west of the Oa. In fact, we could even see all the way along Glen Astle to the Rinns of Islay lighthouse on the small island of Orsay!
Set into the hillside, the lodge is almost invisible from the road, with curving stone walls and a turf roof that blend into the surrounding landscape: “Traditional black house meets neolithic with a healthy dose of contemporary chic”, as one description imaginatively puts it! And that’s not far wrong. Even the instructions on how to get there were magical: “The road becomes narrow with twisty corners in places. Continue past…the house with hens and other livestock. Go up round past Connachan’s Grave, a chambered cairn on your left…then up a really steep bend past a house with…more hens who might be responsible for your breakfast eggs”! How often do you get directions like this!
However, there is continuity with the island’s past as the Coillabus lodges lie within a family-owned working hill farm and were built with local stone by local craftsmen. The modern, environmentally-friendly underfloor heating makes for a warm and comfortable stay. We were fortunate to have good weather during our visit, but the lodge is so well insulated the weather almost didn’t matter! In fact, you could say it’s a ‘weatherproof’ house where the drama of a storm raging outside would be thrilling to watch through the magnificent panoramic windows.
In the current issue of Scottish Islands Explorer I look at some of the ways architects are taking the best from the past and combining it with modern technology. Coillabus, and properties like it, give the lie to the notion that eco-friendly living means a primitive existence! In Scotland we’re well on the way to meeting our electricity needs through renewables. Using air and ground source heat pumps, it’s great to see a growing number of buildings where the old meets the new to create something both sustainable and comfortable – and in this case very much in keeping with a glorious island setting. Coillabus is undoubtedly an example of the way to go!
South of Drymen, the gorge is 100ft deep, at times very narrow, with sheer, dripping moss-covered walls. An old Victorian stone stairway is one way down to the bottom of the gorge. Over the decades the steps have slipped and become precipitous. Winter gales have brought down trees, some of which have crashed onto the steps, dislodging sections. But despite that it’s still possible to get down as ropes have been strung across the most difficult sections.
Diana Gabaldon’s phenomenally popular Outlander series, has caught the public imagination and interest in its filming locations in immense. Finnich Glen is the setting for St. Ninian’s Spring, where a drink from the sulfurous water acts as a type of lie-detector. Should Claire lie to Dougal after drinking it, she will suffer dire consequences. However, she tells him again that she is not a spy and remains unharmed, at which point Dougal finally accepts this as the truth. This ‘truth forcing spring’ has brought more and more visitors to Finnich Glen.
In 1986 the Guardian newspaper showed a powerful advert in which a skinhead looks as though he’s about to rob a pedestrian. Then the whole scene is revealed and rather than being a thief, the skinhead is in fact saving the man’s life, dragging him to safety as a pile of bricks crashes down from the scaffolding overhead.
Sometimes all it takes is a slight shift in perspective and a whole new scenario opens up in front of us. Take the time to look at things from a different standpoint, and you’ll find a lot can change. In a way it’s a bit like the fake news that’s so prevalent today. We need to step back and look at the other side of the coin before believing what we’re being told to believe. What we’re being presented with as ‘truth’. But we’re intelligent beings. We can think. We can ask questions. Ask for proof before simply accepting the newspaper headlines
It could be easy to overlook Eilean Bàn as the mighty Skye Bridge soars overhead. But it’s an island with a long and interesting history, and a visit to the Gavin Maxwell Museum or the island’s impressive wildlife hide is a worthwhile day out.
Among the speakers are the journalist and broadcaster Lesley Riddoch; Maggie Chapman, co-convenor of the Scottish Green Party and Rector of Aberdeen University; Prof Sarah Pederson of Robert Gordon’s University, who led the influential ‘Suffragettes in North East Scotland’ project; Aberdeenshire East MSP, Gillian Martin; Petra Pennington, Art and Community worker at Deveron Projects; Alison Evison, president of COSLA and Dr. Cait Murray-Green, CEO of a young Scottish company Cuantec, which produces compostable packaging from langoustine shells, a natural alternative to plastic. An impressive line-up!
There’s a lovely poem of William Blake’s, Auguries of Innocence, which opens with these lines: “To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour”: sentiments echoed in the writings of the 19th century Austrian author and poet Adalbert Stifter, who believed that if you couldn’t see wonder and beauty in a tiny flower, then you were missing some of the greatest glories around us.