A Man In Assynt (extract)

Norman MacCaig

Glaciers, grinding West, gouged out
these valleys, rasping the brown sandstone,
and left, on the hard rock below –
the ruffled foreland –
this frieze of mountains, filed
on the blue air –
Stac Polly,
Cul Beag, Cul Mor, Suilven,
Canisp –
a frieze and
a litany.

Benighted in the Foothills of the Cairngorms: January

Olive Fraser (1951)

Cauld, cauld is Alnack …
Cauld is the snaw wind and sweet.
The maukin o’ Creagan Alnack —hare
Has snaw for meat.

Nae fit gangs ayont Caiplich
Nae herd in the cranreuch bricht. —hoarfrost
The troot o’ the water o’ Caiplich
Dwells deep the nicht.

On a’ the screes, by ilk cairn
In the silence nae grouse is heard,
But the eagle abune Geal Charn
Hings like a swerd.

Yon’s nae wife’s hoose ayont A’an
In the green lift ava
Yon’s the cauld lums o’ Ben A’an
Wha’s smeek is sna.

A’ the lang mountains are silent
Alane doth wild Alnack sing.
The hern, the curlew are silent.
Silent a’ thing.1

Ailnack, a spectacular meltwater ravine, lies west of Tomintoul at the northeastern corner of the Cairngorms

Buachaille Etive Mor by Moonlight

WH Murray

After an hour’s delay we went down to Coupal bridge in Glen Etive, whence we crossed the moor to Buachaille. I had imagined I knew this mountain under every whim of the elements, yet here was something more than new: for though we may not postulate absolute beauty of things material, the Buachaille was less clogged with the pollutions of mortality than is normally granted to an earthly form. The east face was washed by intense moonlight, so searching that no shade was cast by ridge or buttress. All detail merged in the vastness of one arrowy wall, pale as shadowed milk, impregnably erect. At the remote apex, a white crest broke like spume on the high seas of infinity:

So shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.

From ‘Mountaineering in Scotland’; final quotation from Coleridge, ‘Frost at Midnight’2

My page of Scotland posts

Queen Victoria at Caenlochan

From ‘Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands’ October 16, 1861

We sat on a very precipitous place, which made one dread any one’s moving backwards; and here, at a little before two o’clock, we lunched. The lights were charmingly soft, and, as I said before, like the bloom on a plum. The luncheon was very acceptable, for the air was extremely keen, and we found ice thicker than a shilling on the top of Cairn Turc, which did not melt when Brown took it and kept it in his hand.

This over, we walked part of the way back which we had ridden to avoid the bogs,—we ladies walking only a short way, and then riding.

We came down by the Month Eigie, a steep hill covered with grass—down part of which I rode, walking where it was steepest; but it was so wet and slippery that I had two falls. We got down to the road to the Spittal Bridge, about 15 miles from Castleton, at nearly half-past four, and then down along the new road, at least that part of it which is finished, and which is to extend to the Cairn Wall. We went back on our side of the river; and if we had been a little earlier, Albert might have got a stag—but it was too late. The moon rose and shone most beautifully, and we returned at twenty minutes to seven o’clock, much pleased and interested with this delightful expedition.3

The Isle of Mull

An t-Eilean Muileach, an t’eilean àghmhor,
An t-eilean grianach mu’n iath an sàile
Eilean Buadhmhor nam fuar-bheann àrd-a,
Nan coilltean uaine, ‘s nan cluaintean fàsail.

“The Isle of Mull, the joyous island,
The sunny isle of hills and hollows
Effective island of tall cold mountains,
Of woodlands green and sweet-bleak blasted pastures.”

leaving aside the real meaning of Buadh, usually translated as victory, success, influence, – how should we render ‘fàsail’? Usually translated as ‘desolate’ – but this is the island’s anthem of patriotic pride. In this context, we’d need a word meaning bleak and unvisited but with a positive implication, dreary in a desirable way. In ‘fasail’ Gaelic would seem to have such a term:. English doesn’t.

The Moorland (from bho ‘nuair bha mi òg’/ When I was young)

Màiri Mhòr nan Òran (Mary MacDonald)

Nuair bha mi gòrach a’siubhal mòintich,
’S am fraoch a’ sròiceadh mo chòta bàn,
Feadh thoman còinnich gun snàthainn a bhrògan,
’S an eigh ’na còsan air lochan tàimh;
A’ falbh an aonaicb ag iarraidh chaorach,
’S mi cheart cho aotrom ri naosg air lòn,
Gach bot is poll agus talamh toll ...
Toirt na mo chuimhne nuair bha mi òg.

In careless joy I would roam the moorland,
the heather tips brushing on my dress,
through mossy knowes without help of footgear,
when ice was forming on the lochan’s face;
seeking the sheep on the mountain ridges,
light as the snipe over meadow grass,
each mound and Iochan and rolling hollow ...
these are the memories of time that’s past.4

‘Lachin Y Gair (Dark Lochnagar)

George Gordon, Lord Byron

Away, ye gay landscapes, ye gardens of roses!
In you let the minions of luxury rove,
Restore me the rocks where the snow-flake reposes,
Though still they are sacred to freedom and love.
Yet Caledonia, beloved are thy mountains,
Round their white summits though elements war,
Though cataracts foam ’stead of smooth-flowing fountains,
I sigh for the valley of dark Loch na Garr.

The Harlot

Hamish Brown

Ben Nevis is a mountain
of loveless loveliness.
Like a fat woman she broods,
cold-shouldered of warm romance,
too drunk for gentle kiss.
Love has just scratched her. She reeks
like a discarded garment.

As so many cold hundreds
have pissed against the cairn,
she is soiled through and wet
and weary in her solitude.

Yet it is to this harlot
the generations come—brash boys
to test their nascent lusts,
a giggle that so often has an echoed death.

I have come to hate the bitch.

The sterile heart of her is stone
and her smile is slimy ice.
We should have heeded the kind advice:
Not all snowy frills—or hills—are nice.5

In Praise of Ben Dorain

Duncan Ban Macintyre

The side on which Leacainn lies
is covered with beauty,
and the small, rocky Frith Corrie
is standing adjacent—
with pillars and rock stacks,
with hillocks and hummocks,
with pits and depressions,
shaggy, rough-coated,
clumpy and tufted,
ringletty, lovely;
her rugged defiles
are rich pastures of tall grass;
‘twas most easy for me to praise her,
she was blest in abundance

translated Angus Macleod 1952: original Gaelic in footnote 6

Canadian Boat Song

Anonymous

From the lone shieling of the misty island
Mountains divide us, and the waste of seas—
Yet still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland,
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.

The North Face of Liathach (extracts)

Hugh MacDiarmid

The North Face of Liathach
Lives in the mind like a vision.
From the deeps of Coire na Caime
Sheer cliffs go up
To spurs and pinnacles and jagged teeth.
Its grandeur draws back the heart.
...
Seen through a murky patch of fog,
Violent, ruthless, incalculable.
I have seen a head blood-drained to this hue.7

Pioneer geologist Dr John MacCulloch 1811

An inconceivable solitude, a dreary and joyless land of bogs, a land of desolation and grey darkness …

No one will, from choice, take the road from this point [Tyndrum] to the King’s house and Glenco, which is dreary in the extreme. Loch Tulla makes no kind of atonement for the hideous blank presented by the remainder of the way over Badnashoag, or the Black Mount, and for the dreary vacancy of the moor of Rannoch, along the margin of which it is conducted.

From The Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland’

An Cuilithionn / ‘The Cuillin’ (excerpt)

Sorley Maclean

an Eilean uachdrach
a’ Chuilithinn ghruamaich,
nan loch suaineach
mo luaidh’s mo ghaol;’

In the high island
of the grim Cuillin,
of he winding lochs,
my glory and my love.

Scotland small?’

Hugh MacDiarmid

Scotland small? Our multiform, our infinite Scotland small?
Only as a patch of hillside may be a cliché corner
To a fool who cries ‘Nothing but heather!’ where in September another
Sitting there and resting and gazing around
Sees not only the heather but blaeberries
With bright green leaves and leaves already turned scarlet,
Hiding ripe blue berries; and amongst the sage-green leaves
Of the bog-myrtle the golden flowers of the tormentil shining;
And on the small bare places, where the little Blackface sheep
Found grazing, milkworts blue as summer skies;
And down in neglected peat-hags, not worked
Within living memory, sphagnum moss in pastel shades
Of yellow, green, and pink; sundew and butterwort
Waiting with wide-open sticky leaves for their tiny winged prey;
And nodding harebells vying in their colour
With the blue butterflies that poise themselves delicately upon them;
And stunted rowans with harsh dry leaves of glorious colour.
‘Nothing but heather!’ ̶ How marvellously descriptive! And incomplete!

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