Études Écossaises, 19 | 2017, « Scotland and the Sea » [En Ligne], Mis En Ligne Le 01 Avril 2017, Consulté Le 23 Septembre 2020

Études écossaises

19 | 2017 Scotland and the Sea L’Écosse et la mer

Cyril Besson (dir.)

Édition électronique URL : http://journals.openedition.org/etudesecossaises/1151 DOI : 10.4000/etudesecossaises.1151 ISSN : 1969-6337

Éditeur UGA Éditions/Université Grenoble Alpes

Édition imprimée ISBN : 978-2-37747-001-3 ISSN : 1240-1439

Référence électronique Cyril Besson (dir.), Études écossaises, 19 | 2017, « Scotland and the Sea » [En ligne], mis en ligne le 01 avril 2017, consulté le 23 septembre 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/etudesecossaises/ 1151 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/etudesecossaises.1151

Ce document a été généré automatiquement le 23 septembre 2020.

© Études écossaises 1

Si une grande part de l’identité, de la culture et de la politique écossaises sont informées par la relation qu’entretient l’Écosse avec l’Angleterre, cette polarisation a résulté de leur proximité géographique immédiate, les deux nations partageant une frontière terrestre au sein d’un même territoire. Par conséquent, on trouve, à la base de cette relation comme de bien d’autres domaines en ce qui concerne l’Écosse, la nature maritime d’un territoire partout ailleurs entouré d’eau. Bien sûr, l’insularité de la Grande-Bretagne, qui entraîne en quelque sorte une « péninsularité » de l’Écosse, ne devrait pas être envisagée de manière négative, dans la mesure où elle a permis un tissage de connections multiples, à une époque où la mer offrait un moyen privilégié d’établir des échanges culturels, diplomatiques et commerciaux. Qu’il s’agisse des marchands de tabac de Glasgow avec les États-Unis, des administrateurs écossais aux Indes, ou des brigades écossaises en Suède au cours de la guerre de Trente Ans, tous dépendaient de la mer pour faire avancer leurs projets personnels, qui participaient au rayonnement et au renforcement de l’influence de l’Écosse. Mais ainsi que le montre The Silver Darlings de Gunn (1941), c’est de manière ambivalente que les Écossais ont de tout temps perçu la mer : si les harengs dans ce roman sont une manne, la mer elle- même est souvent synonyme de perte et d’exil. À la fois limite et vecteur, surface et profondeur, la mer peut s’envisager comme l’incarnation même d’une dualité qui, de Hogg à MacDiarmid, a souvent été perçue comme le trait fondamental d’un supposé caractère écossais. Ce sont les différents aspects que prend en Écosse cette question de la mer, ses creux et ses lames, que se propose d’examiner ce numéro de la revue Études écossaises (Scottish Studies), dans sa partie thématique. Celle-ci est suivie d’une section hors-thème pour l’essentiel composée d’articles issus de l’atelier 2016 de la SAES.

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SOMMAIRE

Foreword David Leishman et Cyril Besson

Scotland and the Sea

Survivre au naufrage de l’Iolaire sur l’île de la Tristesse Jean Berton

Highlanders and Maritimers in Alistair MacLeod’s “Clearances” André Dodeman

The Silver Darlings: An Emblem of the Scottish Sea and History Danièle Berton-Charrière

From “the Doors of the Seas” to a Watery Debacle: The Sea, Scottish Colonization, and the Darien Scheme, 1696–1700 Sophie Jorrand

The Inner Seas in Deirdre of the Sorrows by John Millington Synge (1909) Céline Savatier-Lahondès

William Daniell’s “Periplus”: Littoral Travel and Aesthetic Representation in Scotland and Asia Elizabeth Mjelde

The Sea Kings of the North: Scandinavian Scotland in Nineteenth Century Literature Claire McKeown

Sound Waves: “Blue Ecology” in the Poetry of Robin Robertson and Kathleen Jamie Alexandra Campbell

Miscellany

“Original and Best”? How Barr’s Irn-Bru Became a Scottish Icon David Leishman

SAES Lyon 2016: Confluence

L’émigration écossaise vers l’Amérique du Nord britannique (c. 1783-1815) : vers une convergence des politiques du centre pour les périphéries Alice Lemer-Fleury

Le voyage d’éducation de Lord John Bruce (c. 1671-1711), gentilhomme écossais Clarisse Godard Desmarest

“One Person, Two Names”: Confluence in Jackie Kay’s Writing Marie-Odile Pittin-Hédon

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Confluences et renaissance dans Highland River (1937) ? Chronotope, allégorie et idéologie Philippe Laplace

The Uncanny in Writing the Picture (2010) by John Fuller and David Hurn Aurélien Saby

Review

Hugh MacDiarmid, Un Enterrement dans l’île, traductions de Paol Keineg Brest, Les Hauts-Fonds, 2016, 122 p. – ISBN: 978-2-919171-14-9 Stéphanie Noirard

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Foreword Avant-propos

David Leishman and Cyril Besson

1 While much of Scottish identity, culture and politics is informed by the relationship between Scotland and England, this polarization has resulted from their geographic situation as two neighbouring peoples and countries sharing a land border within a single geographic territory. Underpinning this relationship and shaping so much else about Scotland, therefore, is the maritime nature of a territory bounded everywhere else by water. Of course, the insularity of Great Britain, and the subsequent peninsularity of Scotland, should not be thought of in a pejorative sense, given the wealth of connections afforded by the sea at a time when it offered a privileged means of cultural, diplomatic and commercial exchange. Glasgow tobacco merchants in the USA, Scottish colonial administrators in India, or Scottish brigades in Sweden during the Thirty Years’ War have all been dependent on the sea for advancing their individual prospects and extending the wealth and reach of Scotland. But as Gunn’s The Silver Darlings (1941) recounts, Scots have viewed the sea in a profoundly ambivalent manner —as much as the herring of the novel represent a bountiful resource, the sea itself is often synonymous with loss and displacement. As both boundary and vector, surface and depth, the sea can be seen to incarnate this essential duality which, from Hogg to MacDiarmid, has often been seen as a fundamental trait of the supposed Scottish character. It is certainly true that the sea plays a federating role, binding local and regional specificities within a subsuming, shared experience. From the former shipyards, ports and naval bases of the Forth and Clyde to the seal-watching tours, ferries and oil terminals of the Shetlands, the Scots continue to share a common history bounded by the sea.

2 The thematic section of this issue of Scottish Studies/Études écossaises is related to the current focus of the research centre, ILCEA4 (Institut des langues et cultures d’Europe, Amérique, Afrique, Asie et Australie) on “Migrations and Borders”, with papers addressing how Scotland has been shaped by its proximity with the sea, with a particular focus on maritime communication and cultural transfer.

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3 The first part of the thematic section deals with the cultural representation of maritime communities. In his paper on “Surviving the sinking of the Iolaire on the Isle of Sorrow”, Jean Berton explains how, following the accidental sinking of SS Iolaire a mile from Stornoway harbour in the night of Hogmanay 1919, the whole community of Lewis and Harris had to face the loss of 205 boys who had survived the war and the Spanish flu. He explores the role of literature in handling the people’s mourning, through speech and distanciation, and the subsequent exploitation of the tragedy two or three generations later, the disaster becoming a metaphor of the evolution of Scotland, now regenerated and with a strong culture, reaching the gates of independence. In keeping with this notion of literature as consolation and consolidation, André Dodeman’s study of Highlanders and Maritimers in Alistair MacLeod’s “Clearances” addresses maritime displacement of a specific Scottish diaspora community, and more precisely the role played by the ocean in the preservation of a Scottish heritage and how it partakes in the restoration of a cultural continuity between Cape Breton and the Scottish Highlands.

4 The sea is also a backdrop against which cultural change can be measured in Scotland’s relation to itself. In “The Silver Darlings: An Emblem of the Scottish Sea and History”, Danièle Berton-Charrière presents a context-based approach to various artistic works on the silver darlings, whether belonging to the domains of literature such as Neil Gunn’s The Silver Darlings, or of cinema and drama with adaptations of Gunn’s novel to the screen and to the stage, or of realistic photography, or of history painting, or of popular traditional tales, music and songs, and to other arts such as James Maskrey’s glasswork. Through the examination of historical landmarks and selected interrelated semiotic and textual networks, she investigates the dialogical links between reality, legends and art forms, between the force of collective unconscious and the construction of a myth—between an emblematised fish and the identity of a nation. Appropriating the sea’s bounties, in ways literal or more symbolic, can also allow a perception of Scotland “in extension”, as the history of maritime commerce to and from Scotland shows, although it notoriously resulted in the nation’s greatest failure: Sophie Jorrand, in “From ‘the Doors of the Seas’ to a Watery Debacle: The Sea, Scottish Colonisation, and the Darien Scheme, 1696–1700” shows how in the context of Scotland’s greatest attempt at colonial expansion in its own right, before the 1707 Union of Parliaments, far from being perceived as an obstacle, the sea had a crucial part to play, both as a means of reaching the Americas and as a way of furthering overseas trade. But enemies too could come from the sea, and for many of the survivors of Spanish retaliation and tropical fevers, the Caribbean and the Atlantic were not only a way of escape, but also a watery grave, in an ambivalent reversal of what had first appeared as a dazzling opportunity.

5 A more imaginative extension might prove more beneficial, blurring the lines between here and there, leading to a reassessment of Scotland by itself on a less local, if not quite global, scale. Céline Savatier–Lahondès’s “The Inner Seas in Deirdre of the Sorrows by John Millington Synge” examines what role the inner seas motif plays in Deirdre’s story of travel from Ireland to Scotland and back to Ireland after seven years of exile, exemplifies how the characters will live their lives fully and decide to face their inescapable tragic fate, exemplifying one of the differences between Greek and “Celtic” tragic heroes, and the associated character in both senses of the word: in a classic tragedy, the main character struggles to avoid his fate whereas the “Celtic” one is

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determined to embrace it. Synge fully develops the theme of fate, adding a philosophical aspect to the original myth, questioning Man’s existence and meaning too, in the awakening of the modern era, at a time when the revival of the Irish culture was strongly felt in the Irish artistic expression. Elizabeth Mjelde examines in “Littoral Travel and Aesthetic Representation in Scotland and Asia in William Daniell’s ‘Periplus’” how as a practitioner of picturesque discourse, Daniell approached the production of landscape imagery according to aesthetic rules derived from the study of paintings by seventeenth-century Continental artists, but rather establishes how the imagery he produced for A voyage round Great Britain is based on compositions that he had constructed while traveling in Asia. His observations of people and land in Asia informed his descriptions of Britain’s shores, not because of actual similarities of topography but due to the aesthetic priorities he employed when seeking out views. This identification of the national self through an “other” is more explicitly present in Claire McKeown’s “The Sea Kings of the North: Scandinavian Scotland in Nineteenth Century Literature”, where she argues that modern Scottish culture demonstrates a keen interest in Scandinavian connections, not only through literature and television, but also through potential political links. During the lead-up to the independence referendum, comparisons between Scotland and Scandinavia acknowledged similar geographic positions and social settings, as well as the evocative power of older traditions. In examples ranging from literature and travel writing, Scotland takes on the role of a bridge between cultures, representing at once the distant Northern reaches of Britain, and a sense of connection with other, more exotic, Northern places. This creates a tension between similarity and difference specific to two cultural spheres which are historically linked, and share some contemporary lifestyle and landscape features, in a context of shared history and inherited identity. This extension dynamics further leads Scotland to global modernity if we consider Alexandra Campbell’s “Sound Waves: ‘Blue Ecology’ in the Poetry of Robin Robertson and Kathleen Jamie”, an article which presents new ecocritical readings of two contemporary Scottish poets in response to the recent rise of “blue cultural studies”. It suggests that contemporary Scottish poetry exhibits a distinct concern with oceanic environments, Jamie’s and Robertson’s collections contributing to a growing field of modern Scottish poetry that attends to the cultural, historical, and material interplay between the seas, oceans, and islands of the Atlantic archipelago. Engaging the “tidalectic” qualities of “blue ecology”, Jamie and Robertson’s respective works encourage us to fathom new relationships with saltwater bodies as a means of establishing new relationships with the nonhuman world. The article further suggests that these sea-facing collections engage an “archipelagic” sensibility that enables a critique of the cultural models which have long cast Scotland as a “marginal” or “fringe” literary space.

6 The second part of the journal is a miscellany of material not literally related to the main theme, but that still retains some convergence with it.

7 David Leishman, in “‘Original and Best’? How Barr’s Irn-Bru Became a Scottish Icon”, details how Barr’s Irn-Bru plays a considerable cultural role in Scotland as an ingrained element of Scottish quotidian consumption habits, representing a semiotic shorthand for “authentic” Scottish identity. Our understanding and reception of such commercially-rooted objects is inevitably conditioned by their historical grounding, which is important given that Barr’s Irn-Bru, through its packaging design and advertising, has built up a twin discourse linking the nation and the origins of the drink. However, it can be shown that the carbonated drink known as Iron Brew, the

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former name for Irn-Bru, is not innately Scottish. By investigating the drink’s true historical origins, D. Leishman is not challenging Scots to spurn inauthentic practices, but simply reaffirming how the cultural appropriation of markers of national authenticity always involves a degree of institutionalized forgetting.

8 The remainder of the volume is dedicated to a selection of papers from the Scottish studies workshop held at the SAES conference in Lyon in 2016, the theme for which was “Confluences”.

9 Alice Lemer-Fleury examines the ways in which Scottish immigration towards British North America (c. 1783–1815) made it possible for the British government, in addition to preventing Scotland from the risks of a “redundant” population, to present as convergent the needs of Canada and Scotland through emigration. Most of our prejudices on the policies concerning the migration policies of “the centre” are here shown to be erroneous, as the measures taken in London for the “peripheries” (at least in the case of Scotland and Canada) were fundamentally convergent. Clarisse Godard Desmarest studies how Lord John Bruce (c. 1671–1711), the son and heir of Sir William Bruce (c. 1630–1710), Surveyor-General and Overseer of the King’s Works in Scotland, travelled on a “petit tour” of the continent from October 1681 to July 1683. This article situates his education travel within the context of gentleman education in the 17th century and highlights the significance of such a tour as regards the building works at Kinross, an estate purchased by Sir William Bruce in 1675 and situated in Kinross-shire, Scotland. Marie-Odile Pittin-Hedon examines the many ways in which Jackie Kay’s writing is about confluence: as a Scottish writer with a Nigerian father, as a lesbian poet, as an adopted child, she is situated at the crossroads of our cultural, societal, racial landmarks, looking more precisely at her latest collection of short stories Reality, Reality, as well as to her memoir Red Dust Road and some of her poetry. Philippe Laplace, in “Confluences et renaissance dans Highland River (1937) ? Chronotope, allégorie et idéologie” first studies the novel in light of Bakhtin’s theory, before turning to the ideological elements that Gunn meant to express through his use of the chronotope, leading to an allegorical project that has so far been totally silenced by the criticism on the author. Lastly, in “The Uncanny in Writing the Picture (2010) by John Fuller and David Hurn”, Aurélien Saby contends that the uncanny is one of the points of confluence between Hurn’s and Fuller’s aesthetics, exploring the strangeness, oddness or weirdness characterizing the photos and how they are harnessed by the poet, but also examining Freud’s “unheimlich” as a way to better grasp the complex interactions between the pictures and the poems.

10 We would like to sincerely express thanks to all the contributors, whose varied and thought-provoking papers testify to the vitality of Scottish studies.

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AUTHORS

DAVID LEISHMAN Université Grenoble Alpes

CYRIL BESSON Université Grenoble Alpes

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Scotland and the Sea

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Survivre au naufrage de l’Iolaire sur l’île de la Tristesse Surviving the Sinking of the Iolaire on the Isle of Sorrow

Jean Berton

1 À tout prendre, l’Écosse, vue du ciel, est une grande péninsule au bout de la Grande- Bretagne. Ses seize mille kilomètres de côtes, incluant les quelque sept cents îles ou ilots — le premier mot que les élèves apprenaient à décliner en cours de latin était « insula » (Crichton Smith, 1979, chap. 18) — abritent des centaines de ports et encore plus de lieux de mouillage. C’est pour cela qu’Enric Miralles, observant que l’Écosse est une nation de marins, a choisi de donner la forme de coques de bateau à la toiture de la nouvelle maison du Parlement au début du vingt-et-unième siècle. Certes, l’histoire des mers qui entourent l’Écosse abonde en accidents innombrables que subissent les pêcheurs chaque année et en naufrages au cours de ces batailles navales que narrent les sagas scandinaves, les récits des chroniqueurs et les contes des bardes locaux. Nombre de ces histoires sont tirées de faits réels vu que des dizaines d’épaves sont encore protégées contre les pilleurs venus de toute la planète.

2 Dans l’interminable liste de catastrophes maritimes dans les eaux territoriales de l’Écosse on peut se pencher sur le cas du SS Politician, ce cargo de 8 000 tonnes venu de Liverpool en février 1941 et en partance pour la Jamaïque après avoir chargé 250 000 bouteilles de whisky, qui s’échoua au large d’Eriskay. Après avoir sauvé l’équipage, les îliens s’appliquèrent à sauver le fret avant que la tempête ne brise le navire. Il s’ensuivit une course acharnée entre les îliens intéressés par le contenu de la cale et les douaniers de Sa Majesté. Cet événement ne fut qu’une affaire de perte de biens de consommation pour l’armateur et son assurance, mais Compton Mackenzie en fit un roman, Whisky Galore, qui réjouit les lecteurs dès 1947.

3 Les Hébrides intérieures sont aussi célèbres pour la tragédie du galion espagnol venu avec la soi-disant invincible armada en 1588 pour envahir l’Angleterre mais qui parvint à échapper à ses poursuivants dans la mer du Nord pour venir s’abriter dans la baie de Tobermory, au large de l’île de Mull, espérant trouver refuge dans ces contrées catholiques. Les faits sont restés mal connus mais ils ont donné naissance à une

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légende : on ne sait si le galion a sombré dans la baie parce qu’il était en très mauvais état, suite aux combats contre les navires anglais et aux tempêtes du passage de la mer du Nord dans l’Atlantique, ou parce qu’il a été l’objet d’un attentat perpétré par les agents de la reine Élisabeth Ire. Cependant, l’histoire du galion a fait l’objet d’une tragédie écossaise, The Spanish Galleon, écrite par John Brandane et jouée à Glasgow en 1921.

4 Cependant, cette étude ne peut inclure toutes les mers intérieures qui baignent les Hébrides, car leurs fjords, baies, îles et détroits ont leurs propres histoires de naufrage : de fait, nous ne savons que peu de choses des drakkars et des currachs qui ont sombré accidentellement au cours de traversées ou de parties de pêche. Neil Gunn, dans The Lost Glen [1928] décrit une partie de pêche très risquée lors d’une tempête naissante où l’un des deux personnages de la barque meurt noyé. Le réalisme le dispute à la fiction puisque la petite fille, Annabel, a le don de double vue : « As they drew out of the creek, they saw Annabel standing by the little wall between the house and the rock-edge. Her features were indistinguishable, curiously pale. One hand was at her mouth. » (Gun, 1928, p. 64) La mort en mer est d’autant plus énigmatique pour ceux qui sont restés à terre que les corps ne sont pas toujours retrouvés. C’est le cas du naufrage de l’Iolaire qui survint dans la nuit du 31 décembre 1918 au 1er janvier 1919, dans la mer de Minch, bordée par Wester Ross, Skye et Lewis & Harris, à moins d’une encablure du rivage et à un mille du port de Stornoway. Suite au rapport fait par les experts, les faits, pour l’essentiel, sont connus. Mais, comme l’indique l’intitulé du présent article, nous nous intéresserons non pas aux récits et commentaires publiés dans la presse mais à la production littéraire consécutive au drame de ce ferry survenu sur la côte de Lewis — à cette occasion appelée l’île de la Tristesse, le gris étant la couleur dominante — et aux divers rôles que la poésie et la prose sont censées jouer auprès des Hébridiens au fil des semaines, puis des générations.

5 La tragédie, survenue il y a près d’un siècle, est abordée dans le contexte de la Renaissance écossaise qui a éclos au lendemain de la Première Guerre mondiale. Les textes sélectionnés reflètent la force des émotions nées de cette catastrophe absurde et portent en eux le pouvoir que la littérature, et tout particulièrement la poésie, peut avoir sur l’esprit des survivants et des orphelins.

6 Nous analyserons d’abord les sentiments immédiats nés de cet événement avant l’effet que les œuvres des bardes ont produit. Enfin, bénéficiant du recul du temps, nous nous intéresserons aux productions littéraires exploitant ce matériau légué par l’histoire, pour en déduire l’intention de l’auteur1.

Les faits et leur interprétation

7 L’accident, car il a été prouvé que cela en était un sans l’ombre d’un doute, est survenu dans le nord de la mer des Hébrides : le ferry s’est écrasé contre des rochers et récifs appelés « Beasts of Holme » très proches de la falaise, à un mille nautique de l’entrée du port de Stornoway, chef-lieu de Lewis. Le rapport officiel et complet des enquêteurs a été publié, de manière anonyme, sous le titre de Sea Sorrow, édité par The Stornoway Gazette. Deux ferries ont quitté le terminus ferroviaire de Kyle of Lochalsh à destination de Stornoway le 31 décembre 1918, peu avant 20 heures ; la durée de la traversée étant de sept heures. Au bout d’un parcours sans incident sur une mer forte, le Sheila est entré au port sans difficulté tandis que l’Iolaire, qui le suivait, s’est dérouté sans raison

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apparente (peut-être était-ce dû à des courants marins soudains), et s’est brisé sur les récifs et rochers qui bordent le littoral.

8 Sur les deux cent quatre-vingt-quatre passagers et membres d’équipage, seuls soixante- dix-neuf ont survécu. Malgré le froid et les longues nuits, les îliens n’ont pu repêcher que centre trente-huit corps. Et soixante-sept autres ont été portés définitivement disparus, emportés par les courants. Les survivants ont été entendus par la police et ont tous confirmé que le capitaine, le lieutenant Cotter, avait la réputation d’être un marin prudent qui avait le sens des responsabilités ; que ni lui-même, ni les autres membres d’équipage n’avaient bu ; que si l’Iolaire avait bien une radio l’opérateur n’avait pas réussi à la faire fonctionner cette nuit-là. La conclusion des autorités a été : The Jury […] returned a unanimous verdict that the Iolaire went ashore and was wrecked on the rocks inside the “Beasts of Holm” about 1.55 on the morning of 1st January, resulting in the death of 205 men; that the officers in charge did not exercise sufficient prudence in approaching the harbour; that the boat did not slow down, and that a look-out was not on duty at the time of the accident; that the number of lifebelts, boats, and rafts was insufficient for the number of people carried, and that no orders were given by the officers with a view to saving life; and further, that there was a loss of valuable time between the signals of distress and the arrival of the life-saving apparatus in the vicinity of the wreck. (Sea Sorrow, p. 28)

9 La mort en mer de tant de personnes est un événement suffisamment violent pour que son souvenir perdure. Cela dit, si l’on garde à l’esprit que, l’équipage mis à part, toutes les victimes étaient de jeunes hommes soit en permission, soit récemment démobilisés après la Grande Guerre, le drame devient une tragédie insupportable. Les résultats des enquêtes n’ont permis aux survivants d’exprimer leur colère à l’égard d’aucune institution puisque cela s’était passé en temps de paix et que cela n’était en aucun cas une expédition militaire ou de police montée avec l’appui de la Royal Navy, comme on en avait déjà vu au siècle précédent pour mater des rébellions de crofters hébridiens. Le gouvernement ne pouvait pas être rendu responsable du désastre. Seul le capitaine, lui aussi mort dans l’accident, et son navire mal équipé pour faire face à un éventuel naufrage pouvaient être incriminés. De plus, ce bateau à vapeur était stationné à Stornoway depuis quelques mois, ce qui donne à croire que tout l’équipage connaissait bien les parages du port. Mais l’Iolaire avait reçu l’ordre d’appareiller sans délais pour aller seconder le Sheila qui trouvait à Kyle of Lochalsh un trop grand nombre de soldats rentrant fêter la nouvelle année dans leur famille.

10 Pour une raison inexpliquée, le naufrage de l’Iolaire a été ignoré tant par la presse britannique que par les institutions concernées, ainsi que l’écrit John MacLeod dans son récit non fictionnel When I heard the bell, the loss of the Iolaire (2009, p. 10). En effet, non seulement le gouvernement refusa de déclarer que l’épave de l’Iolaire était une tombe de guerre pour qu’elle soit protégée et qu’elle devienne un sanctuaire, mais des décennies plus tard, la grande presse londonienne prononça que le naufrage du Harald of Free Enterprise à la sortie du port de Zeebrugge en 1987 était la plus grande calamité, pour ses cent quatre-vingt treize victimes, survenue en temps de paix depuis l’accident du Titanic de 1912. Une vague d’amertume balaya Lewis et Harris, non pas pour ce qui était compris comme un mensonge de cette presse britannique qui se complaisait dans l’esprit de compétition et de classement de tout et de rien, illustrant cette société libérale chère à Margaret Thatcher, mais pour le sentiment des Hébridiens d’être toujours et encore ignorés par ce Royaume-Uni dont ils avaient chèrement payé les victoires. Les Lewisiens et Harrisiens savaient que, proportionnellement à leur

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population, leur île avait été la région de Grande-Bretagne la plus touchée pendant cette Grande Guerre. Ils avaient répondu en masse à l’appel du roi, mais cela n’avait jamais été dit officiellement. Dans les Hébrides, comme un peu partout en Écosse, grandissait le ressentiment envers ce Royaume-Uni tout entier tourné vers Londres.

11 À la suite du traumatisme généré par la tragédie partagée par toute l’île — alors que chaque maisonnée se préparait à célébrer la nouvelle année avant d’apprendre la nouvelle de l’accident : The lights were lit last night, the tables creaked with hoarded food. They willed the ship to port in the New Year which would erase the old, its errant voices, its unpractised tones. (Crichton Smith, 1992, p. 237, « Iolaire », vers 18-21) — le chagrin ne pouvait se muer en colère parce que tout l’équipage avait péri et que l’insuffisance de sécurité à bord de l’Iolaire (le manque de gilets de sauvetage, etc.) pouvait s’expliquer par le fait que tout l’effort de guerre se concentrait sur les affaires bien plus urgentes que l’équipement réglementaire d’un modeste ferry. Ainsi, le ressentiment n’étant raisonnablement pas de mise pour soulager l’oppression de la peine, pouvait-il se remplacer par un sentiment de culpabilité que se partagerait toute la communauté presbytérienne ? Même si l’on peut avancer que quelques pasteurs aient pu être tentés de vociférer la colère divine contre les péchés de tous les paroissiens, comme cela avait été le cas pendant la période des Évictions, ils ont dû être vite invités à se taire en entendant les récits des soldats et de leurs aumôniers revenus du front en Picardie. Mais le déterminisme le plus aveugle, même s’il est lourdement asséné, ne peut pas étouffer tous les affects : l’affliction doit s’exprimer d’une manière ou d’une autre.

12 Dans cette région gaélophone, tout particulièrement dans les années 1920, ce désastre se disait sous la forme de conte traditionnel où le surnaturel pouvait intervenir pour justifier l’inexplicable. Cette forme d’expression populaire était appréciée partout dans les Hébrides où les compagnies de théâtre n’étaient pas toujours bien accueillies par les pasteurs les plus radicaux. Cependant, bien que le Théâtre national d’Écosse ait été fondé peu de temps après la Première Guerre mondiale avec cet engagement de traiter des sujets relevant de l’Écosse, il ne semble pas qu’il y ait de texte dramatique soit en gaélique soit en écossais, soit encore en anglais qui raconte la fin tragique de l’Iolaire2 ; et The Galleon, de John Brandane, joué dès 1921, ne peut pas servir de texte de substitution.

13 Partagés entre la douleur de la perte injustifiable d’êtres chers et l’obligation morale de baisser la tête devant une épreuve envoyée par Dieu comme l’imposait la pratique du presbytérianisme le plus extrême dans l’île de Lewis, les Lewisiens et Harrisiens disposaient du puissant médium qu’est la poésie, qui échappe toujours aux interdits, pour exprimer leurs émotions et leurs idées à travers les faits. Les Hébrides, à l’image de l’Écosse, sont un ensemble d’îles où se côtoyaient catholiques (les Uists) et presbytériens. Les paroisses presbytériennes n’étaient pas homogènes notamment dans leurs pratiques et interprétations de la Bible, d’où les multiples dissensions changeantes au gré des générations. L’antagonisme religieux n’empêchait pas la solidarité entre iliens : ce que les uns taisaient, les autres le clamaient. Quoi qu’il en soit, le chagrin consécutif à un naufrage dans pareilles circonstances était la chose la mieux partagée dans tout l’archipel et tout le pays.

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L’effet bénéfique des œuvres des bardes et makars

14 Le nombre de vers écrits à propos de cette catastrophe ne sera jamais connu ; en effet, en gaélique ou en anglais, beaucoup de poèmes n’ont jamais été publiés. Que l’écriture soit puissante ou faible, riche en figures de rhétorique ou fade et sans relief et spontanée, la valeur intrinsèque d’un poème s’évalue par la résonance tant émotionnelle qu’intellectuelle qu’il suscite.

15 Les cinq poèmes choisis sont présentés dans l’ordre chronologique afin de les saisir dans divers stades de l’évolution du contexte. Ils peuvent se regrouper selon trois points de vue : celui des victimes, celui des mères et des épouses, celui des pères ; ce dernier étant souvent négligé puisqu’un homme est éduqué pour ne pas pleurer.

a) The chart house heaved

16 Publié dans Sea Sorrow (p. 29), le premier texte est à la fois sans titre et anonyme. Il se compose de trois strophes de sept vers rimés. Seuls les deux derniers pentamètres présentent une modeste variation dans la rime. La première strophe décrit le désespoir du narrateur qui est tombé à l’eau ; pour amplifier le choix du réalisme, le dernier vers indique sa position : « The Beasts of Holm ». Ce narrateur utilise le cliché de la mer qui dévore pour exprimer le sentiment d’horreur qui l’habite et celui de l’impression d’abandon, parodie christique oblige, en entrant en ce qu’il pense être son agonie au pied de la falaise : le rivage inhumain est une tautologie à visée d’amplification puisque ce rivage bestial renvoie au toponyme attribué aux rochers et récifs : And there before us in the zigzag gleams Of waving light, the cliffs and the snarling roar Of feeding waters. This was no human shore. This was the snapping beast of my broken dreams.

17 La deuxième strophe est d’abord composée d’instantanés d’angoisse (la sensation d’accélération est créée par des asyndètes) qui servent à montrer la panique devant la forte probabilité de noyade, puis se termine avec l’acceptation de la mort pour sa douceur désirée dans le bouillonnement lacté qui l’aspire vers les profondeurs de la mer : Brightenings, darkenings, leapings call on call, Morsels of lifeboats clutched in the mounting showers. The death-struck faces. Cliffs abrupt and tall. Sailors on masts as thick as bees in flowers. […] The milky suckings as the bodies fall. Half sleeping faces rayed with the light’s hours.

18 La troisième strophe suit une ellipse dans la narration puisque le narrateur se retrouve au sommet de la falaise, épuisé, à peine conscient et que, sauvé des eaux, il est arrivé chez lui : Two hundred drowned. The lighthouse flashed its light A bare mile from home and there we lay Fished from the avid waters in the night.

19 Les derniers vers visent à démontrer la puissance du traumatisme sur cette terre imbibée de religion. En effet, des notions païennes viennent spontanément à l’esprit du narrateur qui ne les chasse pas : les flots ont été calmés par les hommes sacrifiés.

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The flood shone fatly south at break of day Assuaged by the New Year dead. From the safe height We gazed straight downward. Only God could say What dry and prayerless prayers we turned to pray.

20 Si le narrateur ne déclare pas ouvertement qu’il a perdu la foi pendant les mois ou années de guerre, il signifie clairement qu’il n’a plus de certitude sur le projet de Dieu. Le dernier vers peut s’interpréter comme un blasphème caché dans un paregmenon décroissant (puisque la série de mots sur la même racine conduit au terme de base) « prayerless prayers […] pray ». Dans la personnification de la mer en furie — visible dans le cliché de la mer qui dévore les enfants hébridiens à l’instar de Cronos, et la formulation élaborée « the snarling roar of feeding waters » présente dans la plupart des poèmes — le poète suggère à son lecteur d’interpréter de manière très négative la création que Dieu lui a léguée, selon l’Ancien Testament. Ce poème est un cri de désespoir chez les hommes de bonne volonté qui ont été abandonnés, comme si Jésus n’était plus dans la barque au milieu d’eux sur cette mer aux mains des puissances démoniaques3.

21 Compris dans ce contexte très religieux, ce poème décrit un glissement du réalisme vers un autre épisode d’angoisse de la mort si proche, puis vers des clichés métaphoriques pour aboutir à un rejet de cette confiance aveugle qui les avait poussés à s’enrôler à la demande de leur roi.

b) “Home at last!” they whispered

22 Le deuxième texte est un court poème caractérisé par son efficacité : « Home at last » (Sea Sorrow, p. 30) ; il a été écrit par John N. Maciver dans les jours qui ont suivi le désastre. Les cinq strophes de quatre vers ponctués d’un refrain, « Home at last », installent une atmosphère pathétique à l’aide d’amplifications. Maciver était un barde local qui avait une longue expérience, car sa technique est élaborée et ses hexamètres et heptamètres alternés donnent une description du paysage plutôt fidèle à la réalité. Lui aussi fait un usage délibéré de clichés qui produisent un effet apaisant chez le lecteur ou auditeur qui se sent proche du barde parce qu’il suggère sa connivence et son empathie. They dreamed of lonely hamlet by the edge of the moaning deep; They saw the Harris Hills so still, in their purple-cradled sleep And the brooding moorland called to them as a mother to her child; […] They heard the seagulls screaming where the blue sea breaks in foam; And the soft melodious ripple of the brooklet by their home;

23 Ces vers donnent à croire que le barde avait enduré, peut-être indirectement, une situation de danger similaire, car il laisse croire qu’il sait ce que les fils de Lewis et de Harris ont pensé et ressenti dans leurs derniers instants de vie. Pourtant, le narrateur prend garde à ne pas se montrer parmi les victimes par l’emploi constant du sujet « they ». Les verbes d’action, tels que « they whispered, they murmured, they dreamed, they heard… », rapprochent le court poème de la thanatographie, bien que les victimes n’aient su qu’à la dernière minute que le navire faisait naufrage.

24 Dans l’expression de la proximité et du fatalisme partagé, Maciver produit un sentiment puissant de compassion qu’il était nécessaire de manifester ces jours-là, qui suivaient les funérailles dans chaque village de Lewis et de Harris. Les deux derniers vers confirment la fonction sociale, sinon psychologique, de ce type de poème composé

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pour calmer les douleurs partagées par toute la communauté : « Theirs be the calm of heaven, the peace the world denied, / After life’s cruel tempest, the hush of eventide ». Ce chiasme, qui met un parallèle entre le ciel et la tombée du jour, vise à transférer le calme céleste sur l’île endeuillée et à susciter un début de sérénité. Le sentiment qui se dégage de ce poème est celui de l’affliction atténuée par la compassion. Le barde s’adresse aux familles des fils noyés comme s’il cherchait à les aider à verbaliser leurs pensées à l’aide de clichés partagés par tous. Cela peut les amener à déclencher une attitude défensive de distanciation : l’accident est arrivé à eux, pas à nous.

c) Sweetly she sang, the lass

25 Le troisième poème, non daté, est de Murdo MacFarlane : « Last night the Iolaire was wrecked ». C’est une traduction du gaélique « Raoir Reubadh an Iolaire » (MacLeod, 2009, non paginé, inséré après le prologue) ; composé de sept strophes de huit vers de deux ou trois pieds, il se présente comme une brève ballade qui décrit l’état psychologique d’une jeune veuve. La première strophe prépare le lecteur ou auditeur à un contraste saisissant : Sweetly she sang, the lass, Last night on Lewis, As she baked the bread With a heart full of joy, Expecting her sweetheart Coming on leave, Coming home to her safely, Her man beloved.

26 Et chaque strophe suivante déroule le récit du drame, jusqu’à l’avant-dernière qui résume en quatre prises de vue l’attitude digne de la jeune veuve : ses larmes, l’épave, le corps sans chaussures, son baiser d’adieu. Sore she wept, the lass, The morning of the morrow, When she found in the wrack Her drowned beloved. Without shoes on his feet, Just as he had swum; There she bent and kissed His chilled lips.

27 Tant la forme même du poème que la dernière strophe montrent qu’il y a une prise de distance de toute recherche de pathos, ce qui produit une forme d’effet apaisant. Et la traversée tragique de l’Iolaire devient une aventure de légende, car la princesse donne un baiser d’adieu à son chevalier dans son dernier sommeil. La dernière strophe offre une métamorphose des victimes en poussins du majestueux aigle de mer, ou « Iolaire » en gaélique. Ces jeunes hommes disparus deviennent des fiers aiglons tels qu’on les rencontre dans les contes : Last night the eagle was ravished, Her chicks drowned under her wings; From Harris they mourn To Ness4 of the blond boys.

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28 La seconde moitié de la strophe est une apostrophe lancée à l’océan, cette mer qui engloutit les hommes, l’implorant de rendre tous ces Jonas que la baleine avait avalés5. Qu’il les rende morts s’il ne veut pas les ranimer : Oh, if you could not give them to us living, Ocean, give us them drowned, Then from your devouring mouth We will expect nothing.

29 Ces derniers vers évoquent les cas de ces hommes morts noyés dont on n’a jamais retrouvé les corps, ce qui augmente le sentiment de solitude des veuves éplorées. De surcroît, ils laissent émaner d’eux l’idée de nihilisme comparable à cette sensation de désolation qui imprègne The Waste Land de T. S. Eliot, publié en 1922. La forme du poème et l’atmosphère qui s’en dégage l’ouvrent à l’intertextualité, qui à son tour augmente l’impression de distanciation par rapport à l’événement tragique. La prise de conscience de distanciation est une étape dans l’évolution naturelle et nécessaire de l’état de deuil.

d) April is the cruellest month

30 Dans le quatrième poème l’intertextualité se confirme puisque Neil Munro parodie le texte de Eliot : APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.

31 C’est à l’occasion d’une cérémonie du souvenir à la cathédrale de Glasgow qui confère à la tragédie une portée nationale (écossaise et non pas britannique), que Neil Munro écrivit volontiers ce « Prologue Spoken by the Players » (Sea Sorrow, p. 30) composé de six strophes de quatre vers : April has come to the Isles again blithe as a lover, Shaking out bird-song and sunshine and soothing the tides; April has come to the Hebrides, filled them with frolic, Only in Lewis of Sorrow, bleak winter abides.

32 À n’en pas douter, ce poème s’adresse aux femmes de Lewis : la fin est poignante, « we remember the widows, our thoughts are with them », sans être mièvre. Ce poème se distingue des autres, non seulement par le fait qu’il a été lu dans cet imposant édifice par des acteurs du National Players6 mais aussi par ses références implicites à Shakespeare. L’auteur fait preuve d’ironie à l’intention de l’Angleterre, ou plutôt à l’insensibilité des gouvernants de Whitehall : on saisit l’allusion à ce morceau de bravoure dans Richard II prononcé par Jean de Gand qui définit l’Angleterre, « this precious stone set in the silver sea » (Richard II, II, 1, 46) dans ce vers de Munro : « To the Isle of lamenting, that lies on the sea like a gem ».

33 Dans la cathédrale, l’assistance a dû réagir en entendant ces vers parodiant Macbeth — après que le roi a appris le suicide de Lady Macbeth, il dit : « Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player, / that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, » (V, 5, 24-25) — tandis que les acteurs déclamaient l’avant-dernière strophe : « We are but players in motley, brief moths of a season, / Mimicking passion and laughter, and loving and grief ». Ces acteurs en habit bigarré portent le costume du fou dont les attributions étaient, entre autres choses, d’apporter des nouvelles de décès. Donc, très logiquement, ils expriment leurs

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condoléances : « But yet we are kin to all souls that are sad and enduring, / Acquainted with sorrow ourselves, we would bring relief. » Par ces mots, les acteurs annoncent que leur fonction est proche de celle du barde tenant le rôle de celui qui apporte le réconfort de la force des paroles.

34 Neil Munro, qui était l’auteur des récits de Para Handy, avait pour but de soulager la douleur que les Lewisiens portaient encore dans leur cœur à l’aide de ce poème déclamé quelque dix semaines après la catastrophe. Munro démontrait ainsi que le pouvoir d’alléger sa peine résidait dans sa capacité à prendre du recul par rapport à une souffrance extrême. Dans ce « Prologue Spoken by the Players » le poète invite ses auditeurs à transférer le sentiment de mélancolie qui englue le « Lewis of Sorrow » sur un personnage de fiction censé représenter l’Écosse d’antan. À la suite de cette cérémonie, les commentaires n’ont pas manqué de fuser sur l’évocation de Macbeth où la première sorcière se vante d’avoir malmené un pauvre marin : « It shall be tempest-tost » (I, 3, 14-26). La comparaison entre l’accident de l’Iolaire et l’action cruelle de sorcières de théâtre ne pouvait que susciter un vif débat qui allait procurer quelque soulagement par la dilution d’un profond chagrin. Et cette forme de catharsis est une des raisons d’être de toute pièce dramatique.

e) The green washed over them

35 Le cinquième poème est de Iain Crichton Smith (1928-1998), qui a grandi à Lewis jusqu’à son départ pour l’université d’Aberdeen, et s’intitule « Iolaire » (Crichton Smith, 1992). Le texte, publié en 1971 et revu en 1984, est un monologue intérieur de quarante-cinq vers. Le narrateur est un ancien d’un conseil presbytéral debout sur la plage de la baie de Stornoway : il cherche le corps de son fils. Cet ancien voit passer des corps que les vagues amènent sur le rivage et trouve enfin le cadavre de son fils. Le traumatisme est si fort — le poète emploie des oxymores (« tart joy ») pour exprimer le trouble — qu’il en perd la foi et se suicide : I kneel and touch this dumb blond head. […] This water soaks me I am running with Its tart joy. I’m floating here in my black uniform. I am embraced by these ignorant waters. I am calm.

36 Crichton Smith choisit le point de vue inattendu du père. Mais que ce père soit un ancien du conseil presbytéral est l’expression de l’ironie, puisque jusque dans les années 1980 ses cibles privilégiées étaient les hommes de la Free Kirk qui jouaient les rôles de père auprès des nombreuses veuves dans les petites paroisses de Lewis. Dans tous ses textes — poèmes, romans, nouvelles et pièces de théâtre — les pasteurs et les anciens sont des personnages négatifs, sauf s’ils doutent et voient leur foi vaciller. Dans ce poème, le narrateur est davantage un père qu’un ancien puisqu’il ne supporte pas la douleur de perdre son fils dans des circonstances si absurdes que tout le credo qui dirigeait sa vie s’efface : « Have we done ill, I ask, my fixed body / A simulacrum of the transient waste ». Le mot « waste » est central dans ce désastre. Ici, le personnage ne se résigne pas, il n’accepte pas la loi divine mais il la récuse : I have known you, God, Not as the playful one but as the black Thunderer from hills. I kneel […] I kneel from you.

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37 L’adjectif « playful » est une référence manifeste à la détresse de Gloucester : « As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. / They kill us for their sport. » (King Lear, IV, I, 41-42) Le personnage de Gloucester sombre dans la désespérance.

38 Le poème recycle des images tirées de descriptions que l’on peut lire dans divers rapports et textes antérieurs et les mélange à des visions qu’a cet homme très religieux dans la lueur blafarde d’un matin au solstice d’hiver : In sloppy waves, in the fat of water, they came floating home bruising against their island. It is true, a minor error can inflict this death. That star is not responsible. It shone over the puffy blouse, the flapping blue trousers, the black boots. The seagull swam bonded to the water. Why not man?

39 Cette pensée fugace de la mouette qui traverse son champ de vision doit paraître, dans ces circonstances, irrévérencieuse sinon blasphématoire à l’égard de la religion. C’est le point de bascule dans la narration, puisque le doute qui apparaît entraine le personnage jusqu’au suicide : Have we done ill, I ask, my fixed body a simulacrum of the transient waste, for everything was mobile, plants that swayed, the keeling ship exploding and the splayed cold insect bodies. I have seen your church solid. This is not. The water pours into the parting timbers where I ache above the globular eyes.

40 Crichton Smith superpose de manière subtile des images du corps de l’ancien, de son église et de l’épave du ferry. Elles ondoient avant de sombrer : le bateau, parce que le pilote a commis une erreur de navigation, l’église parce qu’elle était trop rigide et inhumaine, le personnage de l’ancien parce que son Dieu n’a pas empêché la mort de tous ces innocents. Les faits, les symboles et les souhaits secrets se mélangent dans ce poème.

41 Dans le schéma général de pentamètres, les irrégularités du rythme de certains vers soulignent la douleur violente du personnage qui s’enfonce dans la folie : « It seems that men buzzed in the water […] », ou « the sun illumined fish with naval caps ». Ce personnage qui est le point focal du récit doit affronter une écrasante sensation d’absurde : il illustre, ici encore, la philosophie existentialiste de Iain Crichton Smith. En fin de compte, le texte s’imprègne du sentiment de folie née de l’incommensurable chagrin, que l’on pourrait qualifier d’hamlétienne, eu égard au personnage fétiche de Crichton Smith.

42 Ce cinquième poème est une exploitation de l’événement tragique pour illustrer, à la manière d’une métonymie, la pensée de l’auteur qui utilise une focalisation originale centrée sur un père qui vit, comme une implosion de tout son être, le conflit entre sa foi et sa paternité. Ne supportant pas le poids de la religion telle que l’imposait la Free Kirk, Crichton Smith, dès ses années à l’université, s’est déclaré athée et existentialiste. En exergue de sa postface de Call na h-Iolaire (Domhnallach, 1978, p. 98), l’auteur cite trois vers de Crichton Smith sans en préciser les références :

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Two hundred drowned. The lighthouse flashed its light A bare mile from home and there we lay Fished from the avid waters of the night.

43 Ils résument la catastrophe du point de vue d’un rescapé, soulagé mais pas heureux : le phare-métaphore est indifférent à sa situation. Le narrateur a échappé à la noyade, comme il a survécu à la guerre, il est revenu sur son île mais il n’y trouve rien pour le guider : quelle est cette souffrance qui atteint les hommes de Lewis et Harris ?

La fiction pour exposer des sentiments et élaborer des idées

44 Même si les batailles des guerres du vingtième siècle ont eu lieu loin des mers intérieures d’Écosse, la double île de Lewis et Harris s’est trouvée, à chaque fois, concernée par les conséquences des guerres. Si, par beau temps, l’environnement était calme, la tension y était continuelle puisque les fils, parfois les filles, des îliens mouraient dans des pays lointains. C’est ce qu’illustre la célèbre nouvelle « The Telegram » de Iain Crichton Smith : It was wartime and though the village appeared quiet, much had gone on in it. Reverberations from a war fought far away had reached it: many of its young men had been killed, or rather drowned, since nearly all of them had joined the navy, and their ships had sunk in seas which they had never seen except on maps which hung on the walls of the local school […]. What the war had to do with them the people of the village did not know. It came on them as a strange plague, taking their sons away and then killing them, meaninglessly, randomly. They watched the road often for the telegrams. The telegrams were brought to the houses by the local elder who, clad in black, would walk along the road and then stop at the house to which the telegram was directed. People began to think of the telegram as a strange missile pointed at them from abroad. They did not know what to associate it with, certainly not with God, but it was a weapon of some kind, it picked a door and entered it, and left desolation just like any other weapon. (Crichton Smith, 2001, p. 211)

45 Dans une proportion impossible à connaître, nombre de jeunes gens qui voulaient fuir l’ambiance étouffante des paroisses trouvaient dans les guerres une chance de quitter leur île natale avec une fausse bonne excuse. Les parents, et parfois les fiancées, ne partageaient pas l’excitation de l’aventure : « Mairi watches dry-eyed, seeing her son as clearly as you’d see the Harris hills before a storm—tall and confident, excited at the thought of this new war, the very picture of innocence and inexperience. » (MacLeod, 2001, p. 3) Mais ils enduraient ensemble quotidiennement en silence leur angoisse du télégramme fatidique que leur apporterait un ancien. L’accident de l’Iolaire, qui est au cœur de la dernière partie du roman d’Anne MacLeod, est survenu comme un dénouement cruellement ironique à la fin du récit de la Grande Guerre.

46 The Dark Ship fait partie de ces récits fictionnels construits sur des faits historiques et publiés pendant cette période de la Dévolution des pouvoirs à l’Écosse qui correspond à la première mandature de Tony Blair. Le récit couvre la quasi-totalité du vingtième siècle, durée de la Renaissance écossaise débutant avec la Première Guerre mondiale et prenant fin le jour de la réouverture du Parlement d’Écosse le 1er juillet 1999. Le lecteur perçoit une forme d’urgence à évaluer le passé de la nation écossaise afin de rentrer plus libre dans cette nouvelle ère : si le premier conflit mondial a libéré les esprits de l’union nécessaire avec l’Angleterre, la phase préparatoire à la réouverture du

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Parlement est un temps d’incertitude préoccupante et enthousiasmante tout à la fois. Au niveau symbolique, le roman d’Anne MacLeod est plus insaisissable parce qu’il met en avant les sentiments dérangeants d’amour et d’amitié parmi la jeunesse de Lewis avant, pendant et après la Première Guerre mondiale. Le récit couvre quelque soixante- quinze années pour permettre à la jeune génération de cette fin de siècle de reconstituer les vies de la vieille génération quand elle avait leur âge dans les années 1910. Ce processus établit les relations diverses et les transforme en autant de métaphores des attitudes nationales au sein du Royaume-Uni.

47 La dernière partie du roman, les pages de conclusion mises à part, s’organise autour de l’accident de l’Iolaire. Contrairement au texte de fiction documentaire de Colin Demet, Iolaire and the Beasts of Holm, publié en 2009, le récit de MacLeod progresse en alternant trois groupes de personnages unis par le désastre : ceux qui sont restés sur l’île, la jeune femme que Iain a mise enceinte et qui se prépare à accoucher à Édimbourg, et Iain qui revient de guerre. Iain, qui a été un des rares jeunes de Lewis à ne pas s’engager dans la Royal Navy mais dans l’infanterie (le régiment Seaforth), a été blessé deux fois : la première fois permet à l’auteur de faire revenir le héros en Grande-Bretagne de façon qu’il puisse coucher avec Mairi, réalisme oblige, avant qu’il ne reparte sur le front ; la seconde fois, peu de temps avant la fin du conflit, permet de le rapatrier à l’hôpital d’Inverness où il sera victime de l’épidémie de grippe espagnole. Pris en charge par la séduisante Barbara, Iain décide de rentrer à Lewis pour les fêtes du Nouvel An et bien qu’il ait acheté un billet pour rentrer à bord du Sheila, il embarque sur l’Iolaire.

48 Le héros embarqué, Anne MacLeod exploite toutes les informations disponibles sur le naufrage de l’Iolaire pour le diriger vers son destin. Mais le récit évite l’écueil de la fiction documentaire parce que l’auteure choisit de faire intervenir le surnaturel en faisant se rencontrer Iain et Ewan, une vieille connaissance qui avait lui aussi été gravement blessé à la tête mais qui avait curieusement survécu à la blessure que l’on aurait crue fatale. Après que le ferry s’est fracassé contre les rochers de Beasts of Holme, Ewan prend en charge Iain qui ne peut se débrouiller seul à cause de son état de grande fatigue. Ewan aide Iain à sortir du bateau et tente de lui faire saisir une corde qui pourrait l’aider à parvenir au pied de la falaise, mais il se trouve projeté dans l’eau (The Dark Ship, p. 341). Parce que Ewan s’évanouit dans l’air, et parce que le narrateur indique que Iain a eu le temps de remarquer le trou béant dans la tempe de Ewan et qu’il saigne, le lecteur est amené à déduire que Ewan n’est qu’un fantôme, plus précisément un « bodach » qui était venu pour accompagner le héros quand il franchirait les portes de la mort. Mais l’auteure ne produit pas de description de noyade : le corps de Iain sera trouvé plus tard par sa mère venue sur la grève au pied de la falaise (The Dark Ship, p. 345). Elle ne suggère pas d’explication sur les conditions de la mort du jeune homme. Toutefois, elle fait correspondre la mort de Iain dans la mer de Minch avec la naissance de son fils à Édimbourg : He has not left the rigging when the yacht lists heavily to port, and disappears into the boiling sea, all but the masts; a column of flame shooting up, then quenched in darkness. ‘Iain!’ Iain is pitched forward into air and water. * * * ‘Iain! Iain!’ Mairi is panting, desperate. Dr Sievewright restrains her. ‘Don’t push,’ says Jeannie. ‘Don’t push any more […] Here he comes. A fine son, Mairi. A fine boy! Iain, did you say? Iain? That’s a good name for this lusty fellow!’ […]

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‘It’s five to two,’ says Dr Sievewright. ‘Someone write that down […] Esther wipes her brow, wipes her tears away. ‘They’ll have to tell Dulcie,’ Mairi says. ‘Iain’s dead.’ ‘Shh, now,’ Esther soothes her. ‘Shh. The baby’s fine, Mairi. Fine.’ (The Dark Ship, p. 341-342)

49 Ces répliques exposent l’ironie dramatique pour amplifier l’effet de pathos — la communication à distance entre Mairi et Iain rappelle la scène de télépathie entre Jane Eyre et Rochester avant qu’elle ne se précipite chez l’homme qu’elle aime — tout en exploitant la suggestion de l’étrange phénomène du don de double vue conféré à Mairi. Ce frisson que le lecteur est censé éprouver souligne le passage ironique de la mort à la vie : le nom de Iain7 est transféré du père qui vient de mourir au fils qui vient de naître.

50 Le roman, The Dark Ship, parvient à saisir et transmettre le sentiment de malaise de cette jeune génération lewisienne qui traverse les affres de la guerre, et à le ponctuer par la tragédie du naufrage. Anne MacLeod accorde au lecteur la possibilité d’établir une correspondance avec la fin du vingtième siècle où l’entre-deux-référendums se conclut par un choc spectaculaire le 11 septembre 1997. De la sorte, le traumatisme du naufrage de l’Iolaire sert de métaphore à celui du référendum qui, bien que gagné, produit son lot d’angoisses.

51 Sir Phillip Sidney conclut son ouvrage The Defence of Poesie, en 1595 par ces mots : « Memorie dies from the earth for want of an Epitaphe. » Le processus de l’Union britannique et la réduction insidieuse de « Great Britain » à « Britain » étaient en train d’effacer l’Écosse de l’Union. Mais la dernière phase de la Renaissance écossaise a permis de ramener à la mémoire collective des événements et des textes fondateurs de la culture écossaise moderne : Walter Scott est redevenu écossais parce que la scotticité de ses textes a été reconnue. L’histoire et la littérature, pourtant de natures si différentes, se retrouvent dans le roman historique, pour faire revivre un grand nombre de souvenirs plus ou moins effacés de la mémoire collective, comme en témoignent les textes de MacLeod et de Crichton Smith. L’exactitude historique est peut-être bafouée mais le temps qui passe érode les anecdotes pour préserver le fonds du drame.

52 La parole prêtée au poète permet d’adoucir sa peine parce qu’elle est un relai jusqu’au jour où l’on peut prendre la parole. Les bardes ont su verbaliser le chagrin des survivants pour apaiser leur peine. Mais, la Deuxième Guerre mondiale n’a pas fait taire les annonceurs de mort et de damnation, comme le pensait Iain Crichton Smith qui a ravivé le souvenir du drame pour, symboliquement, y ensevelir un ancien habillé de sa propre hargne mise en lambeaux.

53 John Maciver a prêté aux victimes des sensations, des pensées, comme s’ils revoyaient leur jeunesse en accéléré ; Crichton Smith a fait dire à son narrateur sa détresse et son suicide ; Anne MacLeod a décrit les relations humaines qui se sont tissées autour de son héros avant de le blesser sur le champs de bataille, de lui infliger la grippe espagnole et de le noyer en compagnie d’un « bodach ». En superposant tous les textes des survivants, des bardes, des poètes et des romanciers, le récit de la tragédie de l’Iolaire fond les biographies de tous les personnages dans la thanatographie de Iain, le prénom le plus usité alors sur les rives de la mer de Minch.

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BIBLIOGRAPHIE

Sea Sorrow [1960], dans The Stornoway Gazette, 1972.

BERTON Jean, 1998, La hantise de l’exil dans l’œuvre de Iain Crichton Smith, Villeneuve-d’Asq, Septentrion.

BRANDANE John, 1932, The Spanish Galleon, Londres & Glasgow, Gowans & Gray.

CRICHTON SMITH Iain, 2001, « The Telegram », dans K. MacNeil (dir.), The Red Door, Édimbourg, Birlinn. (« The Telegram », paru en 1973, est une traduction par l’auteur du gaélique « An Telegram » publié dans An Gàidheal, vol. 60, 1965, p. 38-39.)

CRICHTON SMITH Iain, 1979, On the Island, Londres, Victor Gollancz Ltd.

CRICHTON SMITH Iain, 1992, « Iolaire », dans Collected Poems, Manchester, Carcanet, p. 237-238.

DEMET Colin, 2009, Iolaire and the Beasts of Holm, Lewis, Wordcatcher Publication.

DOMHNALLACH Tormod Calum, 1978, Call na h-Iolaire, Steòrnabhagh, Acair Earranta.

ECO Umberto, 1990, Les limites de l’interprétation, Paris, Bernard Grasset.

ELIOTT T. S., 1922, The Waste Land. Disponible sur (consulté le 20 octobre 2011).

FINDLAY Bill, 1998, A History of Scottish Theatre, Édimbourg, Polygon.

GUNN Neil, 1992, The Lost Glen [1928], Édimbourg, Chambers.

MACKENZIE Compton, 2004, Whisky Galore [1947], Londres, Vintage.

MACLEOD Anne, 2001, The Dark Ship, Glasgow, 11/9 (Publisher).

MACLEOD John, 2009, When I heard the bell, the loss of the Iolaire, Édimbourg, Birlinn.

SIDNEY Phillip, 2002, The Defence of Poesie [1595], in G. Shepherd and R. W. Maslen (éds), An Apology For Poetry, Manchester, Manchester University Press.

NOTES

1. Selon Umberto Eco dans Les Limites de l’interprétation, l’intention de l’auteur ne prime pas sur l’intention du texte et ne doit pas céder le pas devant l’intention du lecteur. 2. Le nom du ferry, Iolaire, est en gaélique et signifie « aigle de mer ». Cet oiseau de proie magnifique est un sujet de choix pour des contes et fables traditionnels. La symbolique de l’aigle, le roi des oiseaux, est peu cohérente avec le naufrage, l’ironie exceptée. 3. Voir l’Évangile selon Luc 8:22. 4. Ce « Ness » est la pointe nord de l’île de Lewis. 5. La parodie du Livre de Jonas de l’Ancien Testament est implicite. 6. Pour plus de précisions sur les origines du Théâtre national d’Écosse, voir A History of Scottish Theatre de Bill Findlay. 7. Le frisson que le lecteur peut ressentir est peut-être lié au fait que l’aigle (iolaire) est le symbole de l’apôtre Jean l’Évangéliste. Mais il ne semble pas que cette possibilité ait été exploitée par les auteurs que le naufrage de l’Iolaire a intéressés.

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RÉSUMÉS

Suite au naufrage accidentel du ferry SS Iolaire à un mille du port de Stornoway dans la nuit du nouvel an 1919, toute la population de Lewis et Harris a dû affronter la perte de 205 hommes qui avaient survécu à la guerre et la grippe espagnole. Cette étude porte sur le rôle de la littérature, poésie et fiction, dans la gestion du deuil de la population, par la verbalisation et la distanciation, et l’exploitation ultérieure de la tragédie deux ou trois générations plus tard. En étudiant divers poèmes et textes en prose concernant ce drame sur une durée de trois générations, on perçoit dans ce naufrage désastreux une métaphore de l’évolution de l’Écosse, régénérée et forte de sa culture, qui arrive aux portes de l’indépendance.

Following the accidental sinking of SS Iolaire a mile from Stornoway harbour in the night of Hogmanay 1919, the whole community of Lewis and Harris had to face the loss of 205 boys who had survived the war and the Spanish flu. This study explores the role of literature—poetry and fiction—in handling the people’s mourning, through speech and distanciation, and the subsequent exploitation of the tragedy two or three generations later. When studying several poems and prose texts about the catastrophe over three generations, one can make out in the disaster a metaphor of the evolution of Scotland, now regenerated and with a strong culture, that is reaching the gates of independence.

INDEX

Mots-clés : catastrophe, Iolaire, désolation, religion, distanciation, littérature Keywords : catastrophe, Iolaire, desolation, religion, distanciation, literature

AUTEUR

JEAN BERTON Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès, Département Études du monde anglophone (DEMA). Jean Berton est professeur à l’Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès. Il est actuellement le président de la Société française d’études écossaises. Son domaine de recherche dans les études écossaises porte plus particulièrement sur la littérature écossaise de Haute Écosse dans les trois langues nationales. Parmi ses dernières publications on trouve : « The Spanish Galleon, de John Brandane (1921) : drame archétypal écossais plurilingue » (2014) ; « La Gaélie, ou la face cachée de l’Écosse ? » (2014) ; « ‘Scotland’, Literature, History, Home, and Melancholy in Andrew Grieg’s Novel Romanno Bridge » (2014) ; « L’oxymore du posthumain dans le poème méditatif « Deer on the High Hills » (1962) de Iain Crichton Smith (1928-1998) » (2014) ; « L’héroïne scottienne et son père » (2015) ; « The Pirate de Walter Scott, flibustier de l’histoire » (2015).

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Highlanders and Maritimers in Alistair MacLeod’s “Clearances” Highlanders et Maritimers dans Clearances d’Alistair MacLeod

André Dodeman

1 Alistair MacLeod’s reputation as a short story writer began with the publication of The Lost Salt Gift of Blood in 1976, which revolves around the themes of loss, identity, exile and sense of place in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. MacLeod was born in Saskatchewan in 1936 and moved with his family to Cape Breton to live on the family farm. Before becoming a teacher and a writer, he worked as a miner and a fisherman, jobs that were to help him understand workers who struggled every day to survive and provide for their families. Drawing upon this experience, MacLeod’s work has extensively focused on the life struggles of the inhabitants of Cape Breton whose local history dates back to the eighteenth-century Highland clearances in Scotland. Many of the Highlanders who were defeated at the battle of Culloden in 1746 were forced into exile and had no other choice but to cross the Atlantic in search of a new life in the colonies. Those who chose Cape Breton in Eastern Canada had to face harsh living conditions and new challenges upon arrival, but they remained loyal to their Scottish origins by preserving their language and culture. The harsh winds and choppy oceans that MacLeod describes in his stories echo those of Scotland, so much so that Colin Nicholson, in one of his articles devoted to Alistair MacLeod’s first collection, labelled his stories “elemental fictions” (p. 90). Indeed, MacLeod uses the weather as a metaphor for the hardships of early Canadian settlers and diasporic communities, a metaphor that became one of the dominant features of early Canadian literature. In the 1970s, these features were theorized by Margaret Atwood in her seminal work, Survival, in which she argued that “for early settlers and explorers, [survival] meant bare survival in the face of ‘hostile elements’ and/or natives: carving out a place and a way of keeping alive” (p. 32). In 1968, MacLeod’s first short story, “The Boat”, tells the story of a young boy destined to walk in his father’s footsteps and become a fisherman. The story focuses on the tight connections between Cape Bretoners, their history and the ocean they depend on for their livelihood. “The Boat” was republished in Island: Collected Stories (2001), a chronologically organized collection of sixteen short stories that includes all the pieces

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from his earlier collections—The Lost Salt Gift of Blood (1976) and As Birds Bring Forth the Sun (1986)—and two new short stories, “Island” (1988) and “Clearances” (1999). This paper will focus on his last short story, “Clearances”, which concentrates on a nameless protagonist’s inability to come to terms with the changes implied by modernity.

2 To this purpose, I will examine the role played by the ocean in the preservation of a Scottish heritage and how it partakes in the restoration of a cultural continuity between Cape Breton and the Scottish Highlands. Even though “Clearances” will remain the main focus of this study, I shall refer to his novel and a few of his previous stories that deal with displacement and collective memory in a similar fashion. First and foremost, I will discuss how the Atlantic Ocean in his story serves a dual purpose to tell stories of loss and displacement on the one hand and reconnection through memory on the other. The second part of this article will examine how the vast distances implied by the ocean call for the narrative reconstruction of a line of filiation between Cape Breton and the Highlands and I will devote the last part of this essay to MacLeod’s narrative representation of the clash between local identity and globalization.

Memories of the ocean

3 Like many of his previous stories, “Clearances” deals with how strongly the past affects the present, and the narrator’s nostalgic tone illustrates the classic theme of regret over the disappearance of an entire tradition or way of life. The opening lines testify to the presence of the past in everyday life: In the early morning he was awakened by the dog’s pulling at the Condon’s woollen blanket, which was the top covering upon his bed. The blanket was now a sort of yellow-beige although at one time, he thought, it must have been white. The blanket was made from the wool of the sheep he and his wife used to keep and it was now over half a century old. When they used to shear the sheep in the spring they would set aside some of the best fleeces and send them to Condon’s Woollen Mill in Charlottetown; and after some months, it seemed miraculously, the box of blankets would arrive. (p. 413)

4 While MacLeod often uses the first person in his earlier stories such as “The Boat” or “The Lost Salt Gift of Blood” to depict personal experience, he resorts to the third- person in “Clearances” in order to set an anonymous character in opposition with his environment and his time. The verbs “used to” and “would” refer to an outdated time of hard outdoor work while the worn blanket is the metaphor for the gradual disappearance of an intricately woven existence of routine and ritual. Instead of telling the story through the subjective viewpoint of one of his narrators or characters, MacLeod focuses here on the subjected character who has no other choice but to accept change and “go forward”. In this respect, the story is in keeping with the rest of the collection insofar as it continues to foreground some of MacLeod’s favourite topics such as the individual’s struggle to cope with the social, economic and cultural transformations brought about by modernity and globalization.

5 MacLeod’s “Clearances” can be roughly divided into three main parts that recount the character’s departure to Europe during World War II and his return to Canada. When he wakes up one morning, the character journeys into the past: he recalls his first trip to a woollen mill on Prince Edward Island with his wife, the death of his wife ten years before the time of the narrative and his childhood when he used to go fishing with his

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father and grandfather. The second part of the short story relates his departure to Europe and his experience during World War II. He eventually manages to obliterate the horrors of the war from his memory, but he holds on to the only valuable memory of his experience in Europe: his trip to the Highlands when he was on furlough in London. The final section deals with his return to Canada after the war and the crises he had to face, namely the death of his son and ensuing loss of the land he had given him by passing it on to his daughter-in-law, the fishing quotas that prevented his other son from living off the sea and the increasing number of tourists who are ready to pay a generous amount of money for land with an ocean view.

6 The pivotal middle section of the short story recounts his experience at Ardnamurchan in the Scottish Highlands during the war. The character reconnects with a collective past that gives meaning and substance to the present. It is during his stay at Ardnamurchan that he grasps the original meaning of “clearance”: Where once people had lived in their hundreds and their thousands, there now stretched only the unpopulated emptiness of the vast estates with their sheep- covered hills or the islands which had become bird sanctuaries or shooting ranges for the well-to-do. He saw himself as the descendant of victims of history and changing economic times, betrayed, perhaps, by politics and poverty as well. (p. 420)

7 The transition in this passage from the collective (“people”, “their hundreds”, “their sheep-covered hills”) to the individual (“He saw himself…”) adds a mirror effect to the story, as what he finds in the Highlands is in fact the retroactive collective reflection of his individual self. Cape Breton and the Highlands are divided by the Atlantic Ocean which acts as a mirror where the present opens a window onto the past. In Ardnamurchan, he imagines his family on the opposite side of the ocean: “he looked across the western ocean, beyond the point of Ardnamurchan, and tried to visualize Cape Breton and his family at their tasks” (p. 421). And when he returns to Cape Breton, the view of the ocean triggers his memory of Scotland: “he would look across the ocean, imagining he could see the point of Ardnamurchan and beyond” (p. 422). For MacLeod, the ocean serves to mark a spatial and temporal difference that establishes the Highlands as a land of origins and Cape Breton as the island of its direct descendants. In this respect, he writes against the grain of twentieth-century poststructuralist thought that problematized the concept of origin and questioned its very existence.1 Indeed, MacLeod’s connection between Cape Breton and Highland culture cannot be made without postulating the existence of a historical origin. The character’s position on either side of the ocean creates a mirror effect that constricts the geographical space between Cape Breton and the Highlands and serves to show how illusory the distinction is between the two. The ocean may indeed be a powerful geographical barrier, but it fails to resist historical and cultural connections.

8 It is also important to bear in mind that oceans and seas are different—and not only in scale. In his introduction to The Sea: Thalassography and Historiography, Peter N. Miller extensively discusses these differences along with the influence oceans and seas have had on historiography: For while oceans are big history, seas are small-scale history. Oceans are the grand narrative, seas the microhistories. In other words, the sea can be viewed as the mirror image of the ocean: smaller, with identifiable networks, and full of local meaning. Let us be clear: seas are small only in comparison with oceans. This is microhistory only because of the density of available historical texture. But the

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move to the smaller scale is also a move to a different kind of history, one tuned more closely to questions of the relationships between. (2013, p. 10)

9 In other words, oceans suggest vast geographical spaces that sever the ties between the countries they separate while seas involve stronger local relationships and connections. For Miller, microhistories are made possible thanks to the “available historical texture” of important seas like the Mediterranean. The abundance of historical events, discourses and representations characterizing the Mediterranean Sea strengthens the connections between border countries, unlike oceans which, for MacLeod, evoke permanent displacement, loss and nostalgia for an idealized past. Indeed, the sea in MacLeod’s work is full of local meaning and associated with experiences of struggle and strife, while the ocean is the narrative of separation and displacement that seeks to reconnect Cape Breton to a larger history. This gaze to the East is in fact a way of positing the historical anteriority of Cape Breton’s Scottish heritage over more recent national developments.

10 Another important feature of the ocean is the contact zone it implies, the shore. Gillian Mary Hanson’s work on riverbanks and seashores in nineteenth and twentieth-century British literature argues that the seaside setting is culturally associated with memory: “The seaside setting is also the place where memory is evoked. These evocations take on the rhythm of the waves themselves, each born upon the retreat of the former, approaching and receding as past is brought into the present.” (2006, p. 134) The seashore is the place where the liquid and the mineral interact and where the past slowly erodes the present. By using the ocean as a reminder of Scottish displacement, the narrator takes on a bardic function. In her extensive study of Scottish literature and Romanticism, Katie Trumpener defines the bard as “the mouthpiece for a whole society, articulating its values, chronicling its history, and mourning the inconsolable tragedy of its collapse” (1997, p. 6). MacLeod’s bardic narrator serves to question the survival of a tradition threatened by the many changes caused by the growing interaction with the outside world at the turn of the twenty-first century. Like the shore itself, the character is caught in a liminal space between memories of the past and strong doubts about the future, and if MacLeod resorts to the third person in this short story, it is to voice the silence of many Cape Bretoners who are unable to come to terms with what MacLeod believes to be the modern world’s attempts to erode local memory and culture.

A Bard’s tale

11 The bardic narrator laments the loss of a traditional lifestyle based on hard work and Scottish heritage. The maritime provinces have indeed suffered the most from the development of the cities to the west that eventually claimed cultural and artistic hegemony. While cities like Montreal and Toronto grew into thriving business and cultural centres after Confederation in 1867, the maritime provinces to the east were left to their traditional lifestyles and economic decline. In her polemical introduction to Under Eastern Eyes, Janice Kulyk Keefer writes about some of the decisions maritime writers had to make if they wanted to attract readers: Traditionally, Maritime writers have been faced with as difficult a choice: whether to leave their native region in order to work in more varied and sophisticated cultural centres—Toronto, Montreal—as did Charles Bruce and Hugh MacLennan, Ray Smith and Antonine Maillet, for example—or whether, like Ernest Buckler,

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Alden Nowlan, and David Adams Richards, to ‘stand by their land,’ however problematic such fidelity might prove for their writing. (1988, p. 18)

12 MacLeod definitely belongs to the latter group, next to writers like Ernest Buckler whose The Mountain and the Valley is set in a farming community in the Nova Scotia countryside and David Adams Richards who, in the Miramichi Trilogy, lends his voice to the poverty-stricken underclass of New Brunswick. Although both writers were committed realists who aimed at portraying the living conditions of the working classes, they experimented with narrative technique to voice the concerns of their subdued maritime characters who would otherwise remain silent. In a similar fashion, the silence of maritime communities prompted MacLeod to play a bardic role and compensate for the inarticulateness of the masculine maritime character whose memory and identity have been affected by years of poverty and indifference. Rebuilding a maritime identity for MacLeod means rebuilding the lost ties with Scotland and restoring cultural continuity by first constricting the space symbolized by the ocean.

13 MacLeod’s fiction is primarily concerned with filiation and many of his short stories question the ambivalent relationship between an individual and his or her family. For instance, the narrator of “The Boat” is caught between his mother’s desire for him to pursue a traditional lifestyle and become a fisherman and his father’s wish to see him grow into something more. The tightly knit connections that characterize Cape Breton families echo the lifestyle of the clan, and MacLeod’s only novel, No Great Mischief (1999), shows how strongly the survival of the community relies on family ties. It tells the story of Alexander MacDonald who belongs to the clann Chalum Ruaidh and is known as gille beag ruadh, “the little red boy” because of the colour of his hair. Very much like the short story that narrates the character’s departure to Scotland and his return, the novel oscillates between the late 1990s, the present of the framing narrative, and the eighteenth-century Highland clearances when the narrator’s great-great-great- grandfather, Calum Ruadh, was forced out of Scotland and crossed the Atlantic to settle in Cape Breton in 1779. The ties that remain are obviously those of the clan but MacLeod goes further to discuss cultural continuity in genetic terms. In his article on orality in No Great Mischief entitled “From Clan to Nation”, David Williams insists on how words are associated in the novel with organic cells and DNA: “As it happens, saying and doing carry a common pedigree, as if there could be a bloodline and a voiceline reaching back to Moidart in the Scottish Highlands, almost as if words, like organic cells, could replicate their own DNA.” (2001, p. 55) Genetics involves the repetitions and patterns that safeguard cultural transmission. In the third chapter of the novel, the narrator describes the physical characteristics of the clan members, mainly those pertaining to hair colour and the tendency to have twins, in order to blur the distinction between individual and community—clan culture is symbolically woven into the characters’ genetic makeup—and laud the clan’s resistance to cultural dilution into a larger, more national order. However, genetic transmission has its weaknesses and can be affected by change and mutation. The novel and the short story share the notion that cultural continuity is bound to be threatened by the outside world of exchange and exogamy. In No Great Mischief, Alexander MacDonald moves to Toronto to become an orthodontist and his twin sister Catherine marries a petroleum engineer and moves to Calgary. When they meet and reminisce, the dialogue is oriented towards an idealized past of meaningful relationships and family cohesion.

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14 In “Clearances”, it is exogamy that chips away the family land. The character has two sons, but his elder son falls from his rooftop while cleaning the chimney one day and dies. Out of guilt, he gives his son’s land to his daughter-in-law, who will later remarry and sell “her property to a surly summer couple who erected a seven-foot privacy fence and kept a sullen pitbull who paced restlessly behind it” (p. 423). When a real estate agent pays a visit to the character with a German couple, his younger son John takes his father aside to evoke the possibility of a future transaction and the necessity to “go forward”. The father feels betrayed by his own son and walks down to his fishing shanty to journey back into the past and remember times of family and communal unity. The modern world of global exchange and transaction is here depicted in its most threatening features as it jeopardizes traditional family structures. As a condensed form, each of the short story’s developments has a specific meaning and the polysemic title of the story serves to link new events to other forms of clearance. Not only does the term recall the historical clearances from the Highlands, it also predicts his future clearance from his property, instilling the character and the readers alike with uncanny feelings of déjà-vu.

15 MacLeod draws a great deal of his inspiration from Highland myths and legends, so much so that the developments of his stories can often be read as new variants of a much older story. The story of the legendary dog called Cù Sìth who would roam the Highlands as a figure of impending death is retold and rewritten in MacLeod’s fiction. Very much like the mythical creatures of Highland folklore, dogs and animals play a crucial role in Cape Breton culture and literature as they become figures of cultural continuity. MacLeod’s stories often portray huge, powerful dogs that determine the outcome of the story, whether it is the cù mòr glas a’bhàis of “As Birds Bring Forth the Sun” or the terrifying pitbull of “Clearances.”

16 Dogs ensure continuity and have a narrative function in many of MacLeod’s stories. “As Birds Bring Forth the Sun” starts with the story of the cù mòr glas a’bhàis, the big grey dog of death and omen of impending doom. The form of the tale is identifiable at the start of the story: the characters are referred to as “the man”, “the dog” and “the family” and the text begins with “Once there was a family with a Highland name who lived beside the sea”. As the story goes, a man was very fond of his big grey dog who grew to such “a tremendous height” that she was unable to mate with ordinary male dogs because of their small size. When the spring came, the dog disappeared and gave birth to her pups on one of the small offshore islands. One day, when the man and his two sons were fishing, they got caught in a heavy wind and were forced to wait out the storm on the very island where the dog had found shelter. When the dog saw her former master, she ran to him, knocking him over in her excitement, but the scene is finally misinterpreted by her six full-grown pups as an attack that results in the man’s violent death. The dogs are never seen again and the readers discover, in the second half of the story, that the man was in fact the narrator’s great-great-great-grandfather. The framed third-person narrative of the big grey dog switches to a first-person narrator who is standing beside his father’s bed at the hospital with his five grey- haired brothers. This scene with the father and his six grey-haired sons repeats the story of the cù mòr glas a’bhàis and her six young pups. MacLeod includes communal stories and legends from the past to better illustrate the central role of repetition and story-telling in the preservation of cultural identity.

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17 The second section of “As Birds Bring Forth the Sun” foregrounds the act of story- telling and epitomizes the importance of orality and language in cultural transmission. Indeed, MacLeod’s fiction abounds with proverbs and songs that both have the advantage of resisting change. Walter Ong’s study of orality, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, lays emphasis on the importance of repetition in oral cultures: “In an oral culture, knowledge, once acquired, had to be constantly repeated or it would be lost: fixed, formulaic thought patterns were essential for wisdom and effective administration.” (1982, p. 24) The character’s interaction with his dog in “Clearances” is one example among many others of the patterns and repetitions that keep a community together. The shepherd he meets in Scotland addresses his dog affectionately by saying “S’e thu fhein a tha tapaidh (It is yourself that is smart)”, and when years later the neighbour’s pitbull escapes from the property next door, the character addresses his own shepherd dog in the exact same way to appease his fear and raise his spirits. MacLeod’s use of Gaelic unsettles the readers and introduces them to a foreign language that bears secret knowledge within it. The unfamiliar sounds of the phrase and even its antiquated translation pinpoint the existence of a meaning that has been lost in translation. Polyglossia in MacLeod’s text becomes an act of resistance against more dominant languages such as English that help to maintain political domination over minority cultures.2 Gaelic is an essential element in MacLeod’s Romantic portrait of Highland culture and language,3 but such incursions into the past can be helpful and risky at the same time. They can indeed have the effect of dwelling on memories of the past to the detriment of an articulation between past and present that would lay the groundwork for a viable future. Trumpener recalls how the colonized people’s “refusal to relinquish the memory of a preconquest society dooms them, personally and collectively, to a shadowy half-life, caught between past and present”, even though such a refusal also has the advantage of keeping “alive the hope of future autonomy” and blocking “the conquerors’ narratives of triumph and progress” (1997, p. 29). In “Clearances” however, the many losses the character has been forced to endure sets him aside from the rest of the community that has accepted to go forward.

Eroding the past

18 The character’s property “runs down to the ocean” where the ebb and flow recall the back and forth movements of memory and time. As mentioned earlier, the shore is a changing contact zone where the ocean slowly erodes and transforms land. Erosion serves as a structural metaphor in this short story insofar as the ocean’s erosion of the land evokes the slow erosion of the past by the present. The very meanings of the terms the character uses to refer to his environment are slowly eroded and replaced with new meanings and new values. MacLeod draws the readers’ attention to the polysemy of words such as clearances—associated with farming, trade and the displacement of the Highlanders in the eighteenth century—to represent the impermanence of meaning. The spread of capitalism and the advent of consumer society after World War II gave rise to a powerful middle class that can now profit from a wide range of commodities made possible by contemporary globalisation. For MacLeod, the ensuing development of white-collar jobs has led to a modern worldview that challenges traditional meanings and a blatant example is the ocean itself. While the ocean is associated by the

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character with hard work and livelihood, the German couple offering to buy off the land sees the ocean as a mere commodity. While earlier Romantics represented the ocean as a dark and powerful element designed to awaken feelings of the sublime in onlookers, the German couple sees little more than a landscape to be enjoyed. This fictional world of heteroglossia where words are polysemic testify to the changing nature of words and the values they convey. Unstable meaning is a central theme of “The Boat” which commemorates local dependence on the sea and the ocean. The lobster that used to be a staple food that only the poor would eat in the early twentieth century turns into a fashionable Canadian delicacy with the advent of consumer society and its laws of supply and demand. Even though “The Boat” was written in the sixties, MacLeod was already highly critical of the results of transforming the crustacean into a global commodity: The lobster beds off the Cape Breton coast are still very rich and now, from May to July, their offerings are packed in crates of ice, and thundered by the gigantic transport trucks, day and night, through New Glasgow, Amherst, Saint John and Bangor and Portland and into Boston where they are tossed still living into boiling pots of water, their final home. (p. 24)

19 The narrator poses this transformation from a traditional lifestyle to a modern global market as a desecration of the ocean and its “offerings”. The passive here alludes to the unidentifiable marketplaces that rule the economy and the polysyndeton in the final sentence illustrates the intricacies of a global market that ignores local culture. The narrator exposes a conflict between a local community who has developed an intimate and historical connection with its environment and a global market that plans to commodify it.

20 The ocean is not the only element in “Clearances” to be subjected to global capitalism as the land itself is presented as a commodity. The young local clear-cutter who offers to clear the character’s land of its spruce trees evokes the massive invasion of tourists: The tourists were a sore point with some people. They had begun to flood into what they saw as prime recreation area, marvelling at the pristine water and the unpolluted air. Many of them were from the New England area and an increasing number from Europe. They slept late and often complained about the whine of the clear-cutters’ saws. (p. 425)

21 The “Park”, that is to say the sections of the land used for tourism, is later compared to a “slow-moving glacier” (p. 426) that threatens to swallow up the land and force the father out of his property. Tourism has the eroding powers of the ocean and is accused of invading local space and culture. As a form of leisure, tourism downplays the father’s traditional values of hard, physically challenging work as opposed to modern white- collar city dwellers. In The Tourist Gaze, John Urry problematizes tourism and explains how the tourist’s gaze is “visually objectified or captured through photographs, postcards, films, models […]” that “enable the gaze to be endlessly reproduced and recaptured” (2002, p. 3). While Urry analyses tourism from a sociological viewpoint, MacLeod, as a short story writer, focuses on the dangers of allowing tourists to objectify local people, undermine the local work ethic and alter collective memory as a result. This derogatory view of tourism and the modernity it is associated with results from its opposition to tradition. In his extensive work on memory and history, Paul Ricœur defines modernity as the crossing of that moment in time when novelty clashes with tradition and consigns it to the past and subsequent oblivion.4 The character’s very existence in the short story becomes a hopeless act of resistance against

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modernity and the gradual shrinking of his culture and environment. As open-ended as it may seem, the story’s outcome is clear as to what awaits its protagonist.

22 Before short stories peaked in the 1940s with magazines such as Preview and First Statement, they had helped to convey a particular sense of place in order to familiarize Canadians with their own country. Even though the length of the short story has varied considerably over time, it was length that called for structure, thematic unity and a convincing conclusion or epiphany. The outcome of “Clearances” conveys a cyclical and ironic vision of history that condemns Highlanders and their descendants to forced migration and displacement. After the exchange with his son and the real estate agent, the character and his dog end up facing the neighbour’s pitbull who has managed to escape from the neighbour’s property: He felt the dog grow tense beside him and emit a low growl. He turned to see his neighbour’s pitbull advancing towards them. The large beast wore a collar covered with pointed studs and moved with deliberate measured steps. Its huge jaws were clenched firmly and strings of saliva hung, like beaded curtains, from its bloated, purple lips. (p. 430)

23 Dog specialists trace the pitbull back to England where bull dogs were mixed with other terrier types to fight bulls for popular entertainment. Even though these fights were banned in England as early as 1835, the dog’s reputation as a particularly aggressive animal never died out. The fact that this hellish dog is of English descent is no coincidence and adds a degree of cosmic irony to the story. MacLeod’s idea of having his character relive the fate of the Highlanders who were forced out of their country by the English is part of his narrative plan to restore the line of filiation between Scots and Cape Bretoners. The correlation between heredity and memory is an old debate that dates back to Buffon’s work in natural history during the French Enlightenment. In The World, the Text and the Critic, Edward W. Said discusses the problematic of historical and cultural filiation in the light of Buffon’s work as a naturalist. Said recalls: Buffon’s explanation […] that heredity, the pressure on the offspring, was guided by memory. Reproduction was the process by which organized elements from one generation were transmitted into the next generation; since this process was clearly not random, and since filiation involved strong resemblance if not always actual repetition, Buffon and Maupertuis postulated a faculty, memory, whose function it was to direct the transmission of generations. (1991, p. 115)

24 In “Clearances,” individual and collective memory is an essential part of local identity and the narrator elicits a pattern of historical repetition to foreshadow the character’s demise at the end of the story. In other words, local resistance to change, social reorganization and economic modernisation can only lead to disappointment and destruction. The character’s predicament repeats the eighteenth-century Highland clearances that triggered a series of reforms to rationalise the economy by having the remaining local inhabitants turn to enclosures and sheep raising and discard clan culture and feudalism. In Canadian literature, MacLeod takes the opposite view from a writer like Hugh MacLennan who was also of Scottish descent. For MacLennan, Highland culture belonged to the past and had no rightful place in a modern nation. Each Man’s Son, the only novel he set in Cape Breton, begins with a prologue that portrays a superstitious, curse-ridden people and he goes even further in Seven Rivers of Canada, the travel book he published in 1963, in which he writes that the Highlanders’ blind loyalty to their chiefs and their Pretender during the 1745 rebellion “had given the English no choice save to uproot and destroy the ancient clan system” (1963, p. 116), thereby clearing the English of any blame in the matter. As a liberal humanist,

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MacLennan believed in a strong, centralized, and therefore modern state that should pay little heed to local claims. MacLeod’s insistence on the importance of preserving local identity, culture and language is simply incompatible with MacLennan’s definition of a modern nation. Aware that the world was changing in the sixties and turning into an electronic village, MacLennan argued that only Canada as a unified nation could face the challenges of globalisation.5 MacLeod’s texts, on the other hand, estheticize local spaces and challenge such views that national recognition of distinct identities and languages can threaten a nation with division and separation. If his short stories are widely read today, it is mainly because they draw the readers’ attention to the complex relationship between the local and the global, not to mention the articulation between long-term memory and historical change.

25 Recent debates around globalisation have broached the concept of territory and its relationship with the outside world. For Christian Grataloup, a contemporary French specialist in geohistory, territory is an expression of duration. It is central to the birth and development of a group’s identity and defined by long-term memory and history. For him, territories imply slow changes rather than rapid transformations, which is why they are the most likely to conflict with what can be considered as acentric globalization.6 Bill Ashcroft’s definition of globalization as “the radical transformation of imperialism, continually reconstituted, and interesting precisely because it stems from no obvious imperial centre” (2001, p. 213) also supports the argument that globalization aspires to transcend and downplay the value of territory. MacLeod’s short story remains an illustration of this conflict between the local and the global and the outcome of “Clearances” reflects his fears regarding the survival of local culture and identity. The narrator not only relates the debasing commodification of the character’s environment, but he also pinpoints the fear of all small-sized communities of being overpowered by new forms of imperialism. In a way, the fear of cultural extinction that MacLeod depicts in his stories stems from feelings of historical déjà-vu that construe globalization as a Trojan horse bearing the return of imperialism.

26 MacLeod’s short stories have become popular by addressing the readers’ fears of being subjected to changes caused by unidentifiable powers. In “Clearances”, the refusal to “go forward”, an expression first used by the character’s grandfather in the story, has disastrous consequences for the protagonist and change is seen as essentially negative. The present has little meaning in this story except to repeat the past and scar the protagonist, which is one of the reasons why his work every so often indulges in excessive Romantic overtones. As Bill Ashcroft also implies in Post-Colonial Transformation, globalization and modernity are not the ruthless pitbull behind the fence, nor do they aim at excluding the local. In fact, MacLeod’s stories may very well illustrate a blatant contradiction insofar as he owes his renown to a transnational readership that would not exist without mass communication and globalization. His stories have been translated into over fifteen languages and the mass consumption so often criticized in his work has had the opposite effect of revaluing local spaces and art forms that readers have come to associate with authenticity. Moreover, the eighteenth- century Highland clearances failed to eradicate Highland culture and, however painful these clearances may have been, they were responsible for its growth and development across the Atlantic. Alice Munro’s short stories are of course an obvious example of this development in Canada and like MacLeod, she often wrote about her Scottish heritage. Her foreword to The View from Castle Rock recounts her travel to Scotland where she

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revisited her family’s past and discovered that she was the descendant of a long line of Scots who “went in for writing long, outspoken, sometimes outrageous letters, and detailed recollections” (2006, p. IX). Her short stories, just like MacLeod’s, confirm that the quest for origins remains a major component of contemporary Canadian writing and has even largely contributed to its reputation worldwide.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ASHCROFT Bill, 2001, Post-Colonial Transformation, London and New York, Routledge.

ATWOOD Margaret, 1972, Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature, Toronto, Anansi.

BOURDIEU Pierre, 2001, Langage et pouvoir symbolique [1982], Paris, Seuil.

GRATALOUP Christian, 2015, Géohistoire de la mondialisation : le temps long du monde [3rd ed.], Paris, Armand Colin.

HANSON Gillian Mary, 2006, Riverbank and Seashore in 19th and 20th Century British Literature, Jefferson (North Carolina) and London, McFarland.

KEEFER Janice Kulyk, 1987, Under Eastern Eyes: A Critical Reading of Maritime Fiction, Toronto, University of Toronto Press.

MACLENNAN Hugh, 1963, Seven Rivers of Canada, Toronto, Macmillan.

MACLEOD Alistair, 2001a, Island: Collected Stories, London, Jonathan Cape.

MACLEOD Alistair, 2001b, No Great Mischief [1999], Toronto, Emblem editions.

MILLER Peter N., 2013, The Sea: Thalassography and Historiography, Michigan, University of Michigan Press.

MUNRO Alice, 2007, The View from Castle Rock [2006], London, Vintage.

NICHOLSON Colin, 1985, “Signatures of Time: Alistair MacLeod and His Short Stories”, Canadian Literature, no. 107, pp. 90–101.

ONG Walter, 1982, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, London and New York, Routledge.

RICŒUR Paul, 2000, La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli, Paris, Seuil.

SAID Edward W., 1991, The World, the Text and the Critic [1983], London, Vintage.

TRUMPENER Katie, 1997, Bardic Nationalism: The Romantic Novel and the British Empire, Princeton, Princeton University Press.

URRY John, 2002, The Tourist Gaze [1990, 2nd ed.], London, Sage.

WILLIAMS David, 2001, “From Clan to Nation”, in I. Guilford, Alistair MacLeod: Essays on His Works, Toronto, Guernica.

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NOTES

1. In the 1960s, French philosophers Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida wrote extensively on the concept of origin. In their respective works, the concept of origin was derived from and thereby downplayed by larger notions of difference and historicity. 2. In his work on language and power relations, Langage et pouvoir symbolique, Pierre Bourdieu argues that political domination chiefly depends on the recognition by minority cultures of a single dominant language. “L’intégration dans une même communauté linguistique, qui est un produit de la domination politique sans cesse reproduit par des institutions capables d’imposer la reconnaissance universelle de la langue dominante, est la condition de l’instauration de rapports de domination linguistique.” (2001, p. 71) 3. Similar literary incursions into the past can be traced back to the eighteenth century with James MacPherson’s Ossian that still remains an instructive example of rising Romantic aspirations to delve into the past and celebrate Celtic landscapes and oral cultures. 4. This study of the passage from tradition to modernity can be found in Paul Ricœur’s La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli: “Ce seuil [de la modernité] est franchi lorsque l’idée de nouveauté reçoit pour contraire celle de tradition, laquelle, de simple transmission d’héritage est devenue synonyme de résistance aux idées et aux mœurs nouvelles.” (2000, pp. 403–4) 5. MacLennan exposed these views in The Colour of Canada, a photography book that was published in 1967, the same year Canada celebrated the Centennial and organized the World Fair. In the book, he expresses his concerns about the re-emergence of nationalist movements in Quebec and in the West in the sixties. 6. Christian Grataloup’s insights into the changes resulting from globalization can be read in Géohistoire de la mondialisation : le temps long du monde: the milieu is “une dimension essentielle de la fabrique de la communauté. On est là plus du côté de la reproduction d’une génération à l’autre, de la durée d’une société dans le temps long où le changement se fait lentement et avance le plus souvent masqué, plutôt que du côté de la transformation, des mutations rapides et parfois brutales. Le territoire, ne serait-ce que par la permanence du nom […], incarne largement la durée” (2015, p. 300).

ABSTRACTS

This paper examines how Canadian writer Alistair MacLeod, in his latest short story entitled “Clearances”, attempts to reconnect the twentieth-century maritime culture of Cape Breton, Canada, to an idealized Scottish past that dates back to the eighteenth-century clearances of the Highlands. Along with No Great Mischief, the only novel he published in his lifetime, his short stories tackle the themes of displacement, forced migration and collective memory. After focusing on the role played by the Atlantic Ocean in his short stories as a reminder of historical and cultural displacement, this study will explore how MacLeod’s “Clearances” reconstructs a forgotten line of filiation between Cape Breton and the Highlands that sends characters and readers back and forth in time. MacLeod’s purpose to emphasize the prime importance of local culture is twofold: his stories not only serve to resist oblivion, they also express a refusal to surrender to the powerful pressures of a present-day process of globalization that challenges and threatens the survival of local identities.

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Ce travail propose d’examiner l’une des dernières nouvelles de l’auteur canadien Alistair MacLeod, intitulée Clearances, et son projet de reconstruire le lien entre la culture néo-écossaise de l’île canadienne du Cap-Breton à la fin du vingtième siècle et un passé écossais idéalisé qui remonte aux « Clearances » du dix-huitième siècle. Tout comme son roman intitulé No Great Mischief, le seul qu’il écrira dans sa carrière, ses nouvelles abordent les thèmes du déplacement forcé, de la migration et de la mémoire collective. Une analyse du rôle que joue l’océan Atlantique en tant qu’appel au récit du déplacement forcé de cette communauté sera suivie d’une étude plus approfondie de la reconstruction d’une filiation entre le Cap-Breton et les Highlands qui permet aux personnages et aux lecteurs de voyager dans un passé collectif. L’auteur choisit cette thématique de la culture locale pour deux raisons : elle permet non seulement de résister au temps et à l’oubli, mais elle vise aussi à exprimer un refus de plier sous la pression d’une mondialisation qui semble menacer la survie des identités locales.

INDEX

Mots-clés: Écosse, Highlands, Canada, océan, local, nouvelles Keywords: Scotland, Highlands, Canada, ocean, local, short Story

AUTHOR

ANDRÉ DODEMAN Maître de conférences, Université Grenoble Alpes, ILCEA4. André Dodeman is currently working as a senior lecturer at the University of Grenoble Alpes in the Foreign Languages department. He defended his thesis in November 2008 under the supervision of Professor Marta Dvorak (Paris 3 – Sorbonne Nouvelle), and his work was concerned with the Canadian writer Hugh MacLennan and his novels. He has published articles on Hugh MacLennan, Margaret Atwood, Morley Callaghan, Mordecai Richler, David Adams Richards and Farley Mowat. He has also coedited two books on Postcolonial Literature.

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The Silver Darlings: An Emblem of the Scottish Sea and History Les Silver Darlings : emblème de la mer et de l’histoire d’Écosse

Danièle Berton-Charrière

‘Texts’ in contexts: preliminary words

1 In his work entitled Literature in Contexts, Peter Barry recalls that “A context is something specific outside the text which is activated and validated as an explicatory framework by something within the text” (2007, p. 52). Developing and refining the concept, he precises that what “has become the privileged, transcendent signifier of literary studies, universally assumed to be a good thing” remains “a floating signifier” (ibid., p. 22). He therefore tries to make distinctions between various categories of context exerting a form of pressure on the text, such as “broad” and “deep” ones: “the deep variety being the kind which, in addition to the pressure they exert, have specific textual warranty and are unique to the specific work of literature under discussion” (ibid., p. 24). This definition can obviously be extended to the notions of cotextual and transtextual clusters at the core of the second part of this paper. The textus1 meanings open the scope of the material to be analysed to several supports and to stage and screen representational forms. Starting from the Latin source of the word, Barry reckons that “perhaps texts should be looked at as ‘intermittent and extensible structures formed by a weaving together of strands’” (ibid., p. 37). Yet, following Roland Barthes’s works, he recognises that these structures “seem to have escaped the web of definition” (ibid.), the observer (reader or spectator) being attracted to textual presence and correlated and interrelated absences.

2 Treating the “question of material base” in his 1986 MLA presentation, J. Hillis Miller reminds that “literary study in the past few years has undergone a sudden, universal turn […] toward history, culture, society, politics, institutions, class and gender conditions, the social context, the material base” (Veeser, 2013, p. 15). Following these paratextual notions and reflections, this paper presents a context-based approach to

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various artistic works on the silver darlings, whether belonging to the domains of literature such as Neil Gunn’s The Silver Darlings, or of cinema and drama with adaptations of Gunn’s novel to the screen and to the stage, or of realistic photography, or of history painting, or of popular traditional tales, music and songs, and to other arts such as James Maskrey’s glasswork. Through a historical landmarks and selected interrelated semiotic and textual networks, the emphasis will be laid on the dialogical links between reality, legends and art forms, between the force of collective unconscious and the construction of a myth, between an emblematised fish and the identity of a nation.

Precious herring of all times: historical reminders and cultural contexts

3 Archaeologists reckon that herring has always been a subsistence food and activity to small Scottish fishing communities, even to the people who settled in Scotland around 7,000 BC. One of the most used sea resources, herring has provided the nation with a precious, inexpensive, abundant and wholesome food: The herring is an oily fish. Economically, it has been the most important fish and one of the earth’s most used marine resources. Herring has been very important to the Scottish diet. It provided a cheap, plentiful and nutritious source of food. They have been caught off the cost of Scotland for hundreds of years. (historyshelf 01)

4 Although game and salmon catching was conditioned to the restrictions imposed by land and river owners and by laws, maritime herring fishing was free. The sea could be compared to a reliable feeding mother securing her children when necessary, and to a generous provider that could also enrich them with her own natural wealth. Yet, her resources are not eternal and this, the Scots have learnt at their own expense.

5 By the Middle Ages, fishing was a natural industry and herring was exported to continental Europe. The many Scottish religious houses then granted exclusive fishing rights and demanded their part of their tithes in fish. Over the centuries, the trade developed encouraged by the Crown and the Government that “granted licences to catch and market fish, and provided bounties for boat-building and for the curing of herring” (historyshelf 01). The business rapidly increased from 1808 onwards due to private as well as governmental initiatives and schemes, despite the competition with the Dutch and Norwegian fishermen whose methods were more intensive. Earlier, Pieter Vogelaer had already illustrated an impressive army of “herring busses” escorted by a naval vessel in his work entitled The Dutch herring fleet ( Hollandse haringvloot). This ink on panel dated between 1656 and 1730, renders the power of the industry through the precision of his pen. The numerous boats, their crew and drifting nets are very neatly graph designed.

6 At the beginning of the 17th century, a 1614 English account praised the herring trade: The Hollanders do make both a profitable and a pleasant trade of this Summer fishing. For there was one of them that having a gallant great new Buss of his own, and he having a daughter married unto one that was his Mate in the Buss: the Owner that was Master of this Buss did take his wife with him aboard, and his Mate with his wife; and so they did set sail for the North seas, with the two women with them, the mother and the daughter. Where, having a fair wind, and being fishing in the North seas, they had soon filled their Buss with herrings; and a Herring-Yager cometh unto them, and brings them gold and fresh supplies and copeth [bargaineth]

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with them, and taketh in their herrings for ready money, and delivereth them more barrels and salt; and away goeth the Yager for the first market into Sprucia [Prussia]. And still is the Buss fishing at sea, and soon after again was full laden and boone [bound] home: but then another Yager cometh unto him as did the former, and delivering them more provision of barrels, salt, and ready money, and bids them farewell. And still the Buss lieth at sea, with the mother and daughter, so long, and not very long before they had again all their barrels full; and then they sailed home into Holland, with the two women, and the Buss laden with herrings, and a thousand pounds of ready money. (An English Garner, vol. 4, p. 345)

7 In a letter dated 31 July 1792, Count Zenobio mentions the commercial rivalry between the Dutch and the Scots. He states the problems related to the importation and exportation of preserved herring and asks for “the red herrings2 of Scotland to [be sent to] the Venetian and Italian markets, as Dutch herrings are no longer transmitted to those parts”: Sir, […] I begged him to give orders to send me some barrels of red herrings, caught and cured in Scotland, with the price it will cost, delivered at Venice, to try, if the price and the quality are equal, or better than those of Holland (Taymouth, 31 July 1792). (Sinclair, 1831, p. 3)

8 In his travel journal, Daniel Defoe himself praised what he called ‘the prodigy’, describing the shoal in the waters as ‘one third water, and two thirds fish’ (1983, p. 301). In 1738, he also described the Yarmouth Free fair (fishing fair) that lasted from Michaelmas to Martinmas from 29th September to 11th November. From the twelfth century onwards, Great Yarmouth in Norfolk was known as the centre of the herring trade (Kingshill & Westwood, 2014). Defoe mentions four million herring taken in one season (in Yarmouth and Lowestoft). He is astounded at their incredible prodigious quantities and at people’s diet more particularly. The consumption of herring has long been associated with religious rites, Lent to mention but one. Yet, current fishing, trading and eating habits became interrelated, intertwined and interwoven as strands. They were also meshed with political backgrounds: […] before the Reformation when people were expected to have fish rather than meat on Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and during Church fasts. In Lent 1265, the Countess of Leicester’s household consumed up to a thousand herring daily, and in the year 1307–8, Durham Priory bought 242,000. Cheap and plentiful, herring remained a staple food in Britain until 1951, when the catch dropped so catastrophically that a ban was imposed on North Sea herring fishing. (Kingshill & Westwood, 2014)

9 The evolution of the profession was hastened through financial aid and technical progress. Crews and owners were motivated by profit and new prospects. In the 19th century, a bounty of £3.00 per ton was allowed to owners of over 60-ton herring boats, as well as a bounty on all herring sold abroad. The market also expanded through the development of railways permitting quicker deliveries. According to seasons, fishermen worked off the east coast (in winter and spring), the north coast of Scotland and Shetland (in summer) and off East Anglia (in autumn). Through the growing numbers of vessels, the industry became the largest in Europe.

10 In 1907, 2,500,000 barrels or 250,000 tons were cured and exported. In 1913, there were 10,000 Scottish boats that followed the shoals. Because herring is a fat fish, it was necessary to cure it rapidly. From the age of 15 or 16, numerous ‘herring lasses’ gutted and packed the catches, which can be seen on sepia photographs (girlmuseum). They pose, with their headscarves on and sleeves up, smiling and laughing, in front of long

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tables covered in fish (Scottishmuseum) or next to big barrels (girlmuseum). Donald Murray shows some similar black and white family pictures in his newspaper article on the sea adventures of the 20th century Scottish female gutters.

11 Were called “Herring girls (or herring lasses) […] groups of women who would travel the east coast of the United Kingdom from as far north as Aberdeen to as far south as Great Yarmouth, following herring as they migrated throughout the year (EAFA)”. On sepia or black and white archive films (EAFA), one can see their working conditions. As soon as the boats unloaded the catches, the women worked mechanically, as fast as machines, with their bare hands manipulating sharp knives and salt, and their bending bodies half disappearing into the barrels where they laid the salted fish: Women worked in groups of three or four, gutting and salting, each group packing one barrel at a time. The women were paid depending on the amount of barrels they finished, so it paid to work fast. The work was all outside, so it could be freezing cold in the winter. Standing in a quagmire of mud and fish guts (imagine the smell!), the women worked with sharp knives to gut the fish, which could cause injuries, and combined with the salt and brine, the work could be very painful. It was also extremely tiring—the women had to work for as long as it took to gut and salt the whole day’s catch, which could be up to fifteen hours a day. It would have been scary for some. Some girls started work at sixteen. The women would often be away from home for months at a time. Some of the herring girls from the Scottish islands may not even have spoken English, only Gaelic. However, working in the herring industry gave these women huge amounts of freedom to travel and work, increasing their independence and confidence. Some crews travelled and lived together for a whole season, instilling a huge amount of camaraderie and community in the group. (girlmuseum)

12 Working long hours and days, in the cold and stench, with burning and painful hands and backs at an ever quicker mechanical pace was surely worse than assembly-line employment. Despite the difficulties they had to cope with, women gained some forms of liberty and autonomy. They travelled, earned money, and somehow felt independent.

13 Locally, the curers purchased the cashes through a system of engagement: With the engagement system, the curer agreed to pay a fixed rate for every cran (a measure of fresh herring) landed from each boat during that season, up to a maximum of 200 or 250 crans. […] It created a system of guarantee and stability that was fundamental to the Scottish herring fishery. However, the curer did have to anticipate the market, and there were years in the late 19th century when curers lost a lot of money. (historyshelf 13)

14 The rapid increase of the industry and the development of boats were necessarily correlated. The design of the vessels changed, and wind-powered at first, they then used steam, diesel and petrol as fuel. Some fishermen directly converted their sailing hulls to motor because it was an easier change. To compensate for the loss of space caused by engines and machinery, decked vessels were created. Progress also influenced the evolution of the nets and methods used to produce more and reduce the perils known at sea (historyshelf). Archive black and white silent films show these evolutions through fixed shots or very slow camera movements.

15 Historical events such as the Napoleonic wars or World War I and II affected the herring trade. In The Silver Darlings, Neil Gunn evokes post conflict periods when prosperity boomed: “It was the end of the Napoleonic era. For the Moray Firth it was

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the beginning of the herring fisheries, of a busy fabulous time among the common people of that weathered northern land.” (1941, p. 14)

16 The clearances and their correlated evictions did change crofters’ lives too, dragging them towards the sea-coast for survival and subsistence. Their ordeal and the historical context leading to their migrating are often referred to in paintings, novels and plays. In his stand-up show entitled “The Return of the Ginger Step-Kid AKA; STAND UP, HAGGIS! AKA The Last of the McSporrans. A ‘play’ by ‘Henry Adam’” (7 April 2013), the author ironically recalls this bleak period: From Caviar to cod roe to Farmfood’s fish sticks in less time than it takes a Gti to go from nought to sixty. The untold tragedy of one of Scotland’s greatest clans. We struggled on of course, staying close to the beaches, surviving on what we could pick there, cooking our moss and whelk chowder on the residue of washed up twigs and fishboxes, fighting the skorries for every bite. There was plenty of land inland of course, beautiful land, arable and sheltering compared to where we were now, but it had all been bought up by a bunch of English sheep, and we watched with jealous eyes from the edge of the links these fat bloated woolly bastards arrogantly munching on the fine grass and succulent thistles that were ours by right of birth. That’s when the men with the Bibles came, preying on our despair, and we got on our knees and prayed on the beaches for God to send us Salvation, but God must have been out of salvation that week, because he ended up sending herring instead. Herring! We raced into the sea with our nets of spun spiders silk—we had a lot of time on our hands remember?—and plucked those silver darlings, one by one, from the glittering surf. We plucked them and plucked them and plucked them and plucked them, then we plucked them a little more, and a few more besides, til[l] even the none too bright herring realised that this plucking wasn’t going to end any time soon, and plucked off themselves, probably to share an environment with some less greedy pluckers, who wouldn’t pluck a gift fish in the mouth. Well the herring left us on the beach, same as the credit crunch did in 1815. It was our own fault really. We were greedy pluckers. 60 years of living on moss and whelks does that to a man. We distrusted tomorrow so we plucked for all we were worth today. It was a plucking orgy, and when it was over there was nothing left to do but put our clothes on and go home. Only we had no clothes. And the sheep were still living in our home, smug bastards, eating our Heather, although Heather wasn’t complaining. Slag. (Unpublished playtext, with Henry Adam’s permission.)

17 In the past, herring and cod provided Atlantic Europe with most of its protein. Herring was once incredibly abundant and although the name of this species may have different origins (The American Heritage Idioms Dictionary),3 the Old German word for it meaning ‘multitude’ shows why the fish attracted thousands of boats from all over Europe to the Scottish waters. At the peak of the herring industry growth, Britain exported a quarter of a million tons a year. Small and tasty, people used to fry, smoke or cure them. Herring saved some unfortunate Scots’ lives and made other more privileged and lucky ones rich. Yet, there was an end to this god-sent manna. So to speak, men killed the goose that laid golden eggs. Years of bans and hardship came as the retribution of their greed and folly.

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The silver darling: ‘a fish of legend and song’

18 Silver-coloured, as slick and bright as mercury, the fish has poetically and affectionately been nicknamed ‘silver darlings’ in Scotland. This may also refer to the prosperous activities it permitted for centuries: “The money will be flowing like the river. As one man said in Wick: the creels of silver herring will turn into creels of silver crowns.” (Gunn, 1941, S. D., kindle edition)

19 The “silver darlings” expression was chosen by Neil Gunn as the title of one of his novels (1941), by Peter Arnott’s for its dramatic adaptation and for Clarence Elder’s film (1947). The prodigious past of the herring trade and the decrease of the natural food resource4 magnified its legendary dimension through folklore, songs and stories. The National Museum of Scotland exhibited a piece called The Last of the Silver Darlings by glassmaker and storyteller James Maskrey in 2014. Through its renaming, the fish was endowed with an iconic and aesthetic scale. Through circulation, the “‘contexts of (re)production’ strand of contextuality” (Barry, 2007, p. 39) opens up the scope, “context meaning larger contextual frame of reference” (ibid., p. 38). Socio-linguistic echoes and imprints, whether in Gaelic or Scots, resound in memories as forever engraved and indelible marks. The silver darlings conjure up, denote and connote the Scots’ memory, history, resistance, and identity. The darling designation also renders the affection and gratitude they felt for the species in their fight for survival. Through centuries of struggle, it has become a symbol of resistance. It helped them live on through periods of victimization, the clearances being the best known. Despite large numbers of Scots emigrating to the “new world”, many crofters outlived the English colonial greed by flying towards the coasts; they resisted fed on fish and other sea-shells and kelp.

20 It could be tempting to think of the analogical link with the first representation of Christianity.5 Yet, what is sure is that “silver darlings” have always been part of the Scots’ History and life, traditions, customs, culture, symbolism and imagery; the “herring-bone” pattern is currently used in masonry, skiing and slope climbing (Chambers Dictionary, 2016, p. 752). It belongs to their past and cements the generation links. In everyday language, the “herring” can be metaphorical. In their book, Sophia Kingshill and Jennifer Westwood mention a few proverbs and catch-phrases using the word “herring”: for example, “to throw a sprat to catch a herring” or “herring gutted” to describe a very thin man, or “to draw a red herring across the path” that is to say to distract from a subject by raising a side issue. There are about two dozen sayings that could be cited.

21 Despite its quantity and currency, the silver darling is no ordinary fish: in legends and tales, it is introduced as “the King of the Sea”. Not far from Scotland, there is a Manx story explaining how herring was selected by the other fish to be their king. In Manx Fairy Tales, Morrison suggests: “And, maybe, it’s because the Herring is King of the Sea that he has so much honour among men. Even the deemsters, when they take their oath, say: ‘I will execute justice as indifferently as the herring’s backbone doth lie in the midst of the fish.’” (1911, p. 26) She explains that the “Manx people will not burn the herring’s bones in the fire, in case the herring should feel it. It is to be remembered, too, that the best herring in the world are caught in this place off the Shoulder, where the fish held their big meeting, and that is because it is not very far from Manannan’s enchanted island.” (Ibid.) As a genre, the magic of tales and ballads counters and

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overwhelms reality, but the fable-like stories are didactic. The herring’s royal status is celebrated in songs: Oh! the herring, boys, the herring, Oh! the herring, boys, for me! Red or kippered, fresh or pickled, Oh, the herring is king of the sea! (manxnotebook)

22 One could suggest that, affirming the kingly position of the symbolic herring, subtly elected in tales, could be understood as questioning the supremacy of the English on the seas, a renowned domination they have had since the Renaissance. Counterbalancing their ascendancy in tales is subversive but politically correct: the context of the magic island and the fairy-tale genre serve as secure screens.

23 The lyrics mingle down-to-earth considerations about the fishermen’s labour, and about religious faith and gratitude: Up with the lug, and let her run Before the wind and tide; The gannets plunge, the gulls keep watch, The herring shoal is wide. […] Admiral Quirk has struck his flag, So down with the nets, and pray The fisher’s Friend to bless our homes And toil by night and day. (A Book of Manx Songs)

24 In the traditional Scots The Harrin’s Heid [The Herring’s Head], by the band called Folly Bridge, the lyrics and chorus detail the various parts of the fish in which nothing is lost: THE HARRIN’S HEID [Herring’s Head] Oh, what’ll we dee wi the harrin’s heid? Oh, what’ll we dee wi the harrin’s heid? We’ll mak it inte loaves of breed, Harrin’s heid, loaves of breed, And all manner of things. Of all the fish that’s in the sea, The harrin is the one for me. How a ye the day? How a ye the day? How a ye the day, me hinny-o? Oh, what’ll we dee wi the harrin’s guts? Oh, what’ll we dee wi the harrin’s guts? We’ll mak them inte a pair of beuits, Harrin’s guts, a pair of beuits, Harrin’s heid, loaves of breed, And all manner of things. Of all the fish that’s in the sea, The harrin is the one for me. How a ye the day? How a ye the day? How a ye the day, me hinny-o? Harrin’s fins, needles and pins. Harrin’s tail, a boat that sails. Harrin’s eyes, puddins and pies. Harrin’s scales, a barrel of ale. Harrin’s belly, a lass called Nellie. (Traditional, anon.)

25 A Youtube version presents a video with period photographs showing men and women working: some fishermen aboard their boats, hauling their nets; others on the quay;

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women either salting the fish or knitting while waiting for their fathers, husbands and sons, the steam- boats and their crews, active.

26 Silver darlings are both legend and reality, tale and toil. Common and ordinary, the fish has grown into the symbol of Scotland’s culture and History.

27 In a newspaper article entitled “The resolute fishermen of Scalpay in the Outer Hebrides still dream of a simple fish of legend and song” (the Anglers Journal), Johan Hallberg-Campbell recalls memories of his childhood, when he used to visit his Scalpay Gaelic-speaking fisherman uncle. To the little boy, the far-away island where he was born, but which he had to leave at five, had become a strange, mysterious and magical place, with unknown specificities to discover, with some thrilling and fascinating story- telling, with enchanting and enrapting music and language. The infant’s mind created a world of fancies tinged with the surreal atmosphere oozing from adults’ discussions he couldn’t understand: I had heard much about Scalpay. My family is from Scalpay. My father was born there, and he and his family left when he was 5 years old. To me, the island was like a fairy tale, an unknown land, far away on a distant planet, with stories of crofts, religion and herring fishing. My Uncle David Morrison has lived his entire life on Gaelic-speaking Scalpay— Norse for “scallop island”—on the east side of the Outer Hebrides, about 35 miles from the Scottish coast. The island is just 4 kilometers long—one of 15 in the archipelago that are inhabited. I first visited Scalpay several years ago to see my relatives and to see for myself where I had come from. When I arrived, I was told that there had been no births for seven years and that the fishing traditions and the people who had kept them alive were fading away, too. (The Anglers Journal)

28 Paradoxically, the fairy-tale island where Johan Hallberg-Campbell’s relatives live is no fairy-land: “Over the years, its population has shrunk to 250. A third of the islanders are pensioners. The rest cling tenaciously to fishing or crofts—small tenant farms—to earn a living in what most people would say is a harsh and unforgiving environment.” (Anglers Journal) His uncle David recalls past times, his life as a fisherman, periods of prosperity and the decline of the activity: Uncle David talks of the prawn fishing—hard, unpredictable, modest in its financial return—as a painful plummet from the 1960s and ‘70s, when Scalpay’s fishermen were infected with “herring fever.” Back then, he ran the powerful ring-net fishing boat Hercules, which hauled in tons of “silver darlings,” as herring—a fish of legend and song—were called. The vessel would go to sea for days at a time and net my uncle and his six crew members a tidy profit. In those halcyon times, villages such as Scalpay that had a strong fishing tradition thrived, while those that didn’t depend so much on the sea’s bounty declined. Before the stocks dwindled, the herring fishery supported not just the village economy, but also a way of life and a vibrant network of buyers, sellers, harvesters and processors, who forged a strong bond and formed a caring community that looked after one another. (The Anglers Journal)

29 The old man regrets the traditional mode of living that has almost disappeared on the island: The collapse of fishing—the traditional livelihood of many of Scalpay’s men—has led to the collapse of a way of life here and elsewhere around the world. These coastal and island communities can hardly sustain themselves as more and more young people leave their home and heritage to look for work. Dependent on the ocean and traditional fishing methods, they are being swallowed by the modern world. (The Anglers Journal)

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30 Herring fishing was more than some sheer professional activity; it represented the coastal life and identity of the Scots; it merged all the joys and pains felt in their relation to the sea; it combined the hopes and hardships the men and women were submitted to in difficult landscapes and times; in their minds, it engraved the memories of the dead engulfed by untamed waters.

31 And now, what remains of the past prosperity is mainly cultural. Silver darlings are part of the myths Scottish identity is fed on. In his work on Neil Gunn, Philippe Laplace wrote about the author’s trilogy as founded on the collective beliefs and stories linking generations and times, political systems included: “Après le territoire dans Sun Circle, l’histoire dans Butcher’s Broom, c’est la fonction qu’assument les mythes, les légendes et les traditions qui constituent la clef de voûte de The Silver Darlings […] Les mythes, légendes et traditions facilitent l’intégration des communautés gaéliques à ce nouvel univers capitaliste.”6 (Laplace, p. 158) After the collapse of the trade, herring related behaviours and traditions somehow lived on, one way or another, in everyday habits or in people’s memories, hearts, poetical, musical and oral expressions: “Les anciennes traditions, même si elles avaient perdu beaucoup de leur influence, n’avaient pas totalement disparu dans les communautés du Caithness. Gunn semble donc suggérer qu’il suffisait de sortir les habitants de leur léthargie afin d’assister à la renaissance de ces habitudes culturelles.” (Laplace, p. 164) These cultural references and customs intertwine sociological, mythological and aesthetic lines and contents. Through an onomastic analysis, Philippe Laplace demonstrates how myths, whether Celtic or other, ooze from the fibres of the text.

32 Neil Gunn’s Silver Darlings is very well documented: the author relied on the expertise and experience of professionals and authors of technical books on the subject of herring fishing and Scottish fisheries. The historical dimension and the writer’s commitment are studied by Philippe Laplace in detail in his book entitled Les Hautes- Terres, l’histoire et la mémoire dans les romans de Neil M. Gunn. Somehow a family saga, Gunn’s trilogy corresponds to what Peter Barry defines as deep context: One of the ‘deepest kinds’ of contextuality occurs when a group of texts by the same author form a recognised ‘cluster’, so that the cluster as a whole constitutes a distinct ‘textual domain’ with its own integrity and cohesion, while the individual items in the ‘cluster’ contextualise each other, exhibiting a range of recurrent patterns, concerns and motifs. (2007, p. 52)

33 Yet, a more panoramic or “broad” contextuality tends to make the reader travel from and to Gunn’s texts. It facilitates the reading of the text. Set in a specific period of Scottish History, and rather faithful to facts and figures, Gunn’s fiction renders the spirit, manners, and social conditions of the time through some down-to-earth details: “Now with the four-shilling bounty and the price per cran to which Roddie had agreed, he could not for the life of him see a smaller profit than ten shillings a barrel, and it might well be a shilling or two more. But even at ten shillings on 800 barrels his profit would be £400.” (1941, S. D., p. 77)

34 To the essential matter-of-fact and sensible line of his novel, Neil Gunn added touches of what Man cannot rationally explain like prophetic dreams, premonitory visions and deep emotions. Through them, the Scottish tale-telling tradition and the influence of ballads tend to surface. These components have been kept in the various hypertextual versions despite the changes imposed by generic transpositions.

35 The characters seem to accept a form of determinism and the attraction of the sea is impossible to resist. Catrine hates the lethal sea: “He knew why his wife hated the sea,

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but she needn’t have gone to such lengths to show it. That first winter had been a terror. For one long spell, they had had little or nothing to live on but shell-fish and seaweed. Often they ate the wrong thing and colic and dysentery were everywhere.” (Gunn, 1941, S. D., p. 13) Tormad’s wife is obsessed with her uncle’s death. The preying sea seized him and kept his body: “They had cleaned the shore to the lowest edge of the ebb, and one day, following the suction of the receding wave, he slipped, and, before he could get up, the next wave had him and sucked him over a shallow ledge. His arms lathered the water for a moment while horrified eyes watched. Then he sank and did not come up.” (Ibid.) Like an enormous mouth, the sea swallowed him with a suction sound of greedy satisfaction.

36 The sea fascinates men and terrifies women. Catrine cannot convince her young son Finn to keep away from its waves and from fishing. She is desperately fighting against her natural rival that engulfs so many boats and men whatever their ages. Yet, Finn will prove strong and mature in his 16th year: the sea has made him a man. Paradoxically, the sea is both a source of life and death: “Yet it was out of that very sea that hope was now coming to them.” (Ibid.)

37 Neil Gunn’s nationalist and realistic novel has been adapted to the stage and to the screen. As Barry recalls, transtextuality can relate different genres and media: “Structural and semiotic analysis, and structuralist founding texts like Barthes’s Mythologies put forward precisely this expanded notion of textuality, by analysing advertisements, packaging, film images, and so on, in a very illuminating manner.” Barry mentions “the triad of text, context and intertext” (2007, p. 36).

38 Peter Arnott’s adaptation of Neil Gunn’s novel rests on the force of the author’s political statement. In his review, Ross Kinghorn wrote: The degree to which our lives are (mis)shaped by the financial opportunism of others has become more transparent in recent times, though soon it will naturally go back to hiding, thanks to Gordon Brown’s G20 decision to lay down no serious banking regulations. It’s this kind of political cowardice that makes those who work to keep the history of economic exploitation alive all the more important. Among their number is Neil M. Gunn, whose 1941 novel is here given the theatrical treatment by Aberdeen Performing Arts. (Kinghorn, TVBomb).

39 Similar lessons and messages delivered to today’s audiences through theatrical productions were in large numbers just before the 2014 Scottish referendum on independence. This has always been the function of drama and theatre. Alistair Beaton’s Caledonia based on the 1698 Darien expedition, points at the social, political and financial disasters engendered by greed and colonialism. Though different in their topics, the two plays reveal the same faults and correlated consequences on Scotland.

40 The Scotsman review of the play insists more on the emotional and epic popular dimensions of Gunn’s adapted story, a sort of Bildungsroman: Neil Gunn’s ‘The Silver Darlings’ is an epic adventure story, and one of the best loved Scottish novels of the 20th Century. Set in the early days of the herring fisheries around the Scottish coast, it combines human emotion with stormy seas in the story of a boy growing to manhood, of a man and woman finding love in the face of tragedy, and of a community recovering from the Highland Clearances to forge a new way of life from the forbidding ocean. (Scotsman)

41 The stage version had to be shortened and choices had to be made. As always, when well-known texts are adjusted to the theatrical space and requirements, reviewers

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disagreed on the final form. Some praised the force of the director’s work and of the actors’ performance: Strong, unflashy retelling of classic Scottish novel. Peter Arnott’s adaptation of Neil Gunn’s classic Scottish novel, telling the semi- mythic story of a people driven from their North-Eastern lands into the early, often dangerous fishing industry is a nuanced and moving (if necessarily truncated) version of the novel. (Fringe festival article) Kenny Ireland’s staging uses stylisation that’s effective but never flashy to tell his story, and the performances are universally enjoyable, with Lesley Hart’s put-upon, fragile yet strong mother a particular highlight. (The List)

42 Philip Fisher, as for him, appreciated how the theatrical production rendered the social historical dimension of Gunn’s source text: The real value of this book, stylishly staged by Kenny Ireland, lies in the picture of this lost people, whose individuality will long ago have been subsumed by the twin evils of emigration and mass media [sic]. (P. Fisher)

43 Other critics regretted the ellipses and pace they didn’t think suitable to the expression of the characters’ sensitivity and feelings. They didn’t welcome the director’s options as far as acting and theatrical devices were concerned: The difficulty Peter Arnott had in adapting a 600-page novel for the stage is apparent in the first half, with exposition and character development moving too fast to form an emotional engagement with the piece. It’s not helped by director Kenny Ireland leaning too heavily on cinematic devices, from slo-mo fight scenes to Mathew Scott’s crass Hollywood soundtrack. (Kinghorn) […] The second half tones it down, allowing the solid ensemble to get grips with the meat of the play; but as Catrine learns to allow her son to choose his own path, and we feel the familiar theme of letting go of the past creep in, you can’t help but feel Arnott has teased out the more trite aspects of the source material, resulting in a kind of irony; it’s precisely not letting go of the past that makes Gunn so valuable to us. (Kinghorn)

44 In the Guardian, although reviewer Mark Fisher agrees about the disturbing pace the first part of the play was performed in, and about the difficult truncating of the source text, he praises both staging and acting, as well as the rendering of the contextual atmosphere and spirit: These themes come into focus in the second half of Peter Arnott’s adaptation when, after a frantic first act that never settles, Meg Fraser’s sturdy Catrine finds independence from her past, her hot-headed son and her own emotional repression. Kenny Ireland’s production, staged on Hayden Griffin’s set of layered volcanic rock backed by projections of period photographs, is excellent on ensemble atmosphere, the 10-strong company acting as a chorus and reminding us of the community’s interdependence. The demands of compressing a long novel make it an uneven evening, but one that settles into a touching portrait of the survival of the spirit. (Mark Fisher, 8 Sept. 2009)

45 On another representational support, the 1947 black and white film directed by Clarence Elder and starring Clifford Evans, and Helen Shingler, offers a screen adaptation of Neil Gunn’s novel. As an informative doubly contextual “paratext” the 2006 Shipman Productions used the following abstract for their DVD back cover: A two-year labour of love by writer and director Clarence Elder and star and associate director Clifford Evans, The Silver Darlings is a sincere and stirring tribute to the men who forged the Scottish fishing industry with raw courage,

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determination and vision. With its stunning use of natural Highland location, it also offers a visual celebration of the Scottish coastline that has seldom been equalled.

46 The front cover, with a picture of Catrine in Roddie’s arms, defiantly staring at Angus, completes The Silver Darlings title, with a subtitle that reads “Through storm and tragedy they measured their strength and courage against the sea…” This interrupted line recalls the conclusion spoken by an off voice at the end of the film. It praises the crofters’ tenacity. Driven from their land to the sea, they could survive and progress. Clarence Elder celebrates their work and their nation, reckoning that they succeeded in making Scotland the daring mistress of the world. Not only are the people successful, but their country is too. This final highly political nationalist declaration shows no ambiguity.

47 The film is framed on both sides by the voice-over and images of the landscape. In the first pictures, the land is barren and rocky, delimited by high cliffs. A summary of the situation the people are in, is briefly given: the crofters were evicted from their land and they fled to the sea-coast. At the end of the film, new boats and fishermen in their best professional attires leave the harbour expecting big herring shoals and streaming money ahead. The sea is now calm, storms and tragedy behind.

48 The film uses typical post-war devices and special effects. The actors exaggerate their facial expressions and gestures as it was then currently done; it reveals the chronotopic anchorage of the work. Catrine’s eyes are lost on interior visions; her fear and former traumatic experience stiffen her looks and body. Emphasis is laid on the locus, landscape and seascape, to stress their intrinsic differences: raging and storming waters against which Roddie and Finn fight contrast with the quietness of the crofters’ place surrounded by hills and lakes. On her arrival at Kirsty’s village, Catrine discovers the symbolic “House of Peace”. The general focus is on the small community that can dance and laugh outside tragic moments. During the plague days, some do their best to help, regardless of the dangers. They also haul Roddie and Finn up the cliffs to save them from the raging waves. The story is one of love and death, sentimentalism overwhelming the historical and political contexts. Set against the magnificent Scottish natural background of the Highlands, the foreground is mainly realistic.

49 As well as plays, films dramatise reality and stir emotions: “‘le cinema […] a le pouvoir de recréer la réalité devant les yeux du spectateur et, par là, d’agir sur son intelligence et sa sensibilité.’ En effet, l’expérience prouve que le simple enregistrement d’une réalité confère à cette réalité une capacité d’émotion qu’elle n’exprime pas hors de l’écran.” (Séquences, “Le réalisme au cinéma”, p. 10) Generally said to be based on mimesis, even realistic and naturalistic artworks add an aesthetic dimension through the artist’s creation and technique. As André Bazin put it: “La réalité n’est pas l’art, mais un art ‘réaliste’ est celui qui sait créer une esthétique intégrante de la réalité.” (Ibid.)

50 Art may mimic Nature and reality in true-to-life styles, but it also conceptualises and symbolises. It may reproduce, but it always produces something different as Louis Marin explains in Détruire la peinture. Talking about Caravage, he insists on the essential narrative quality of art-pieces, on their story/tale/history telling: Les textes glissent, dérapent les uns dans les autres en se répétant : la surface, essentielle, dit le Maître ; le critique : le fondement, le fond, la profondeur par le dessin, par l’art (lequel ?) ont partie liée à l’histoire, au récit. Noblesse et excellence, savoir raconter, savoir raconter le mort en image ou peindre le vif : la noblesse du sujet ou le vif de l’objet ; faire revenir les morts, narrer l’histoire, tisser les figures sur la scène ou voir ce qui est ici maintenant devant l’œil. Et pourtant le Maître a dit : la surface. (Marin, 1997, p. 12)

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51 Thus through their sliding and intertwining, they amplify their function and power to relate, recall and commemorate. Besides, the translation process from one artistic and cultural object to another with the same “material base” opens intersemiotic possibilities.

52 Inspired by Scottish History, glassmaker and storyteller James Maskrey created a series of freeblown jars entitled The last of the Silver Darlings. Although they are topped with fancy button-lids, they could be compared to mono- and poly-chrome fine designed fishbowls enclosing a “dead” glass herring at the bottom. The paratextual title of the artist’s work indicates a clear historical context. De facto, through this denomination, these pieces belong to the broad intersemiotic and interlinguistic silver darlings cluster.

53 James Maskrey’s double artistic expertise, as a Caithness glassmaker and a tale-teller fascinated by Scottish History, offers a precious museum-preserved reliquary to the nation’s past, as well as to her symbolic fish and trade. As such, the urn-like exhibits help keep their memory alive. They can also be regarded as didactic reminders of national greed and folly, a lesson to bear in mind for future generations. Included in a transtextual cluster, James Maskrey’s works complete a form of inverted ekphrasis, and parodying Horace’s coined phrase Ut pictura poesis, we could talk about Ut sculptura poesis.

54 Beyond the dialogical exchanges intersemioticity and intertextuality recognize and develop, reciprocal relations between texts and contexts enlarge and enrich the informative networks of meaning and interpretation. Appropriate methodologies help decipher their codes, search the recesses of their discourses, and follow the strands of their material base as Aram Veeser explains: The writing and reading of texts, as well as the processes by which they are circulated and categorized, analyzed and taught, are being reconstrued as historically determined and determining modes of cultural work; apparently autonomous aesthetic and academic issues are being reunderstood as inextricably though complexly linked to other discourses and practices—such linkages constituting the social networks within which individual subjectivities and collective structures are mutually and continuously shaped. […] However, the prevailing tendency across cultural studies is to emphasize their reciprocity and mutual constitution: on the one hand, the social is understood to be discursively constructed; and on the other, language-use is understood to be always and necessarily dialogical, to be socially and materially determined and constrained. (Veeser, 2013, p. 15)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

ARBER Edward (ed.), 1882, “Typical Case of a Dutch Family Fishing”, in An English Garner, in Gatherings from our History and Literature, Birmingham, FSA & c., vol. 4.

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BARRY Peter, 2007, Literature in Contexts, Manchester, Manchester University Press.

DEFOE Daniel, 1983, A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain [1724–26], London, The Folio Society, vol. 3.

GUNN Neil, 1941, The Silver Darlings, London, Faber & Faber, paper edition and kindle edition.

LAPLACE Philippe, 2006, Les Hautes-Terres, l’histoire et la mémoire dans les romans de Neil M. Gunn, Besançon, Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté.

KINGSHILL Sophia & WESTWOOD Jennifer, 2014, The Fabled Coast, London, Penguin.

MARIN Louis, 1997, Détruire la peinture, Paris, Flammarion.

SINCLAIR John, 1831, “American Correspondence, XXV Miscellaneous Correspondence”, in The Correspondence of the Right Honourable, 2: With Reminiscences of the Most Distinguished Characters Who Have Appeared in Great Britain, and in Foreign Countries, During the Last Fifty Years, London, Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley.

VEESER H. Aram (ed.), 2013, The New Historicism [1989], London, Routledge.

Electronic resources

Reference books

The American Heritage Idioms Dictionary, 2002 [1995], Houghton Mifflin Company, (consulted 24 Sept. 2016).

Chambers Dictionary, New Delhi, Allied Chambers, online version (consulted 24 Sept. 2016).

Art and culture

COAKLEY Frances (ed.), 1914, “The King of the Sea”, A Book of Manx Songs (for WW1 troops), 1914, (consulted 3 Oct. 2016).

FISHER Mark, “The Silver Darlings, 8 Sept. 2009”, (consulted 5 Oct. 2016).

FISHER Philip, “Silver Darlings”, (consulted 30 Sept. 2016).

—, (consulted 30 Sept. 2016).

—,

“Folly Bridge”, The Herring Song, Harrin’s Heid, (consulted 2 Sept.2016).

KINGHORN Ross, “Scotland’s Arts and Culture”, TVBOMB, .

“Manx fairy Tales: How the Herring Became King of the Sea” (MORRISON Sophia, 1911, Manx Fairy Tales, London), (consulted 30 Sept. 2016).

MORRISON Sophia, 1911, Manx Fairy Tales, London, David Nutt, p. 26, (consulted 30 Sept. 2016).

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VOGELAER Pieter, The Dutch herring fleet (Hollandse haringvloot), pen and ink 84 cm x 114 cm work (Schilderijencollectie, Rijksmuseum), (consulted 22 Sept. 2016).

Society and History

ANDERSON-WOOD Jocelyn, “Herring Girls”, (consulted 6 Oct. 2016).

“Scots author reveals how herrings created jobs and wealth before leaving heartache in their wake when they vanished”, Daily Record, .

“Scotch Fisher Girls at Yarmouth. 1935 Great Yarmouth, Norfolk”, East Anglian Film Archive (EAFA), .

Silver Darlings: The History of Herring Fishing on the East Coast of Scotland, and (consulted 22 Sept. 2016).

Journals and newspapers

HALLBERG-CAMPBELL Johan, “Last of the Silver Darlings”, Anglers Journal, 25 Aug. 2015, (consulted 6 Oct. 2016).

Other

“Le réalisme au cinéma”, Séquences : la revue de cinéma, 1959, no. 18, .

COFFMAN Elesha, “What is the origin of the Christian fish symbol?’, Christian History, (consulted 30 Sept. 2016).

NOTES

1. “Since the Latin source of this word [text], he says, is texere meaning to weave, and the noun textus meaning ‘tissue’, ‘weaving’, or ‘web’, then perhaps texts should be looked at as ‘intermittent and extensible structures formed by a weaving together of stands’.” (Barry, 2007, p. 37) 2. Red herring refers to a particularly strong kipper, a fish that has been strongly cured in brine and/or heavily smoked. This process makes the fish particularly pungent smelling and, with strong enough brine, turns its flesh reddish. 3. “Old English hering (Anglian), hæring (West Saxon), from West Germanic heringgaz (cf. Old Frisian hereng, Middle Dutch herinc, German Hering), of unknown origin, perhaps related to or influenced in form by Old English har ‘gray, hoar’, from the color, or to Old High German heri ‘host, multitude’ from its large schools” (). 4. Nowadays, herring is not as popular as it was although its healthy oils are bought in expensive food supplements. 5. Cf. footnote 3. 6. Cf. footnote 3.

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ABSTRACTS

From the Middle Ages onwards, herring—one of the most used marine resources—has provided Scotland with a precious, cheap, plentiful and nutritious source of food. Fishing was first a subsistence activity, and it then developed into an industry. Once in unbelievable abundance— the Old German word ‘herring’ means ‘multitude’—herring attracted thousands of boats from all over Europe to the Scottish waters, and at the peak of the herring boom, Britain exported a quarter of a million tonnes a year. Political and religious institutions, the Crown and Government supported and encouraged the economic sector through exclusive rights, licences and bounties. Yet, severe competition and intensive methods of fishing endangered the species. Silver-coloured, as slick and bright as mercury, the fish has poetically been nicknamed ‘silver darlings’. This has become the title chosen by Neil Gunn for one of his novels (1941), by Peter Arnott’s for its dramatic adaptation and for Clarence Elder’s film (1947). The decrease of the natural food source magnified its legendary dimension through folklore, songs and tales. The National Museum of Scotland exhibited a piece called The Last of the Silver Darlings by glassmaker and storyteller James Maskrey (2014). This paper focuses on the importance of silver darlings in Scottish History, and on their aesthetic and emblematic use.

Depuis le Moyen Âge, les harengs — l’une des ressources marines les plus usitées — a fourni à l’Écosse une source alimentaire précieuse, économique et abondante. La pêche a d’abord été un moyen de subsistance puis elle s’est développée en une activité industrielle. Autrefois incroyablement abondants — en vieil allemand le mot hareng signifie multitude — les harengs ont attiré des milliers de bateaux de l’Europe entière vers les eaux écossaises et, à l’apogée de l’expansion du hareng, la Grande-Bretagne exportait un quart de million de tonnes par an. Les institutions politiques et religieuses, la Couronne et le Gouvernement ont soutenu et encouragé ce secteur économique par le biais de droits exclusifs, de licences et de bonus. Cependant, la concurrence âpre et les méthodes de pêche intensives ont mis l’espèce en danger. De couleur argentée, aussi glissant et brillant que le mercure, ce poisson a reçu le surnom de silver darlings (« chéris argentés »). Neil Gunn l’a donné en titre à l’un de ses romans (1941), Peter Arnott’s à son adaptation dramatique et Clarence Elder à son film (1947). Le déclin de cette source alimentaire naturelle a magnifié sa dimension légendaire grâce au folklore, aux chansons et aux contes. Le musée national d’Écosse a exposé l’œuvre du souffleur de verre et conteur James Maskrey intitulée The Last of the Silver Darlings en 2014. Cet article s’intéresse à l’importance des harengs dans l’histoire de l’Écosse ainsi qu’à leur utilisation esthétique et emblématique.

INDEX

Mots-clés: hareng, Silver Darlings, contextualité, intersémioticité, intertextualité Keywords: Herring, Silver Darlings, contextuality, intersemioticity, intertextuality

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AUTHOR

DANIÈLE BERTON-CHARRIÈRE Université Clermont Auvergne, CERHAC, IHRIM–UMR 5317 CNRS. Danièle Berton-Charrière is Professor Emerita, IHRIM-UMR 5317 CNRS, Université Clermont Auvergne, France. She wrote a French “Thèse d’État” on Cyril Tourneur and on computer assisted analysis, and has edited and published books and papers on the Renaissance, on drama and theatre of all periods, more particularly Elizabethan and Jacobean, on intersemioticity, and on computer assisted lexicometry and stylostatistics. She has also translated plays including contemporary Scottish writing, for the stage. Some of her most recent work includes the collective volume Témoigner : flibuste, piraterie et autres courses, de la Renaissance aux Lumières (Cahier de l’équipe Réforme Contre Réforme, no. 11 PUBP, Clermont-Ferrand, 2015), with Sophie Jorrand and Monique Vénuat, as well as the articles “Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue (Ben Jonson, 1618)”, in Jean-Claude Colbus and Brigitte Hébert (eds), Approches critiques du plaisir (1450-1750), L’Harmattan, Historiques, Paris, 2015; “‘Land-Scaping’ the Scottish Stage and Drama”, in Philippe Laplace (ed.), Environment and Ecological Readings. Nature, Human and Posthuman Dimensions in Scottish Literature and Arts (18th–21st c.), Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté, 2015; “Transtextualité, intersémioticité et pensée visuelle : chassés-croisés picturaux, textuels et sensoriels dans The Spanish Tragedy (T. Kyd) et The Atheist’s Tragedy (C. Tourneur)”, in Yona Dureau (ed.), Synesthésie et transposition d’art dans la littérature et les arts de l’Angleterre élisabéthaine, Paris, Genève, Éditions Champion, 2015.

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From “the Doors of the Seas” to a Watery Debacle: The Sea, Scottish Colonization, and the Darien Scheme, 1696–1700 Des « portes des océans » à une débâcle maritime : mer, colonisation écossaise et projet du Darien, 1696-1700

Sophie Jorrand

Sept. 10. — This morning wee passed the Tropick of Cancer with a fresh and fair gale, the ships performed the usual ceremony of ducking several of the Ships Crew, who had not passed before; they were hoisted to the main yard arm, and let down 3 several times with a soss into the sea out over head and ears, their legs being tyed somewhat closs, which was pretty good sport. (Rose, “Journal”, p. 192)1 We weighed and were under the sign of Cancer by the 10th of the month, at which time the usual ceremony of ducking from the Yards arm was performed on those that could not pay their tropick bottle. (“A Journal Kept from Scotland by One of the Company”, 28 September 1698, p. 72)

1 The men who wrote these journals were embarking on an exciting venture, leaving from Scotland to found the first-ever Scottish colony in Central America, right under the nose of the Spaniards, in a place they believed the best one for world commerce. This they were doing in spite of the joint opposition of the East India Company, which feared a challenge to its monopoly, the London Parliament, which shared their anxieties, and King William III, who was afraid of a quarrel with Spain and concentrated on European wars. They were sailing in ships which they had had to buy in Europe for want of a suitable shipyard in Scotland itself. They also hoped for the help of the Darien Indians, and especially their non–existent emperor. And they flew the Company of Scotland’s flag: a sun rising over a wide expanse of sea-blue calm water. The tone in their journals was optimistic, even cheerful. Much was expected from the Darien Venture.

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2 The Darien Scheme appears as Scotland’s greatest attempt at colonial expansion in its own right, as a still relatively independent country and nation. This project, one of several by the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies, raised the highest of patriotic and economic hopes, only to end in cataclysmic failure. At the instigation of its promoter, William Paterson, this venture was intended to link the Atlantic and the Pacific spaces and concentrated on the Isthmus of Darien, seen as the key to these wide oceanic expanses.

3 William Paterson’s conception of what the colony of Caledonia should have been will be looked into, and we shall also, mostly but not exclusively, draw upon journals by the first expedition’s eye-witnesses, such as those by Hugh Rose or Captain Pennicook, as well as another, anonymous diarist. Captain Pennicook, sometimes spelt Pennycook or Pennicuik, was captain of the Saint Andrew and commodore of the Company’s fleet, and Rose was the secretary of the Council of the Colony. Their journals sometimes replicate each other, being sometimes identical, and may show interpolations, especially in the passages about the Darien Indians—though they are different enough at times to be judged of joint interest—for instance, Pennicook mentions desertions, unlike Rose.

4 After a brief outline of the context, we shall try and assess what the Company of Scotland’s project meant, or could have meant, in geostrategic terms of maritime space and world trade. We shall then study the close interrelation of sea and land in the colonial project of Caledonia, in both its positive and negative manifestations, ranging from the choice of a good harbour as a future base and the establishment of the seedling colony on a peninsula, in close proximity to the sea, to the in-between (“entre- deux”), whether it be made manifest through mangroves, rainy weather, or even amphibious attacks. The ambivalence of the sea, symbolically linked to both life and death, is a well-known theme, but it seems particularly relevant in the case of the Darien Scheme, and the last part of this paper shall therefore study the conflicting presentations of the sea that appear, often simultaneously or nearly so, in contemporary accounts of the Darien experience.

A study in context: a strong tradition of emigration, and a late start at colonization

5 Portugal and Spain had launched themselves into colonial expansion in and then across the Atlantic space towards the Americas by the end of the 15th century, soon followed by France, England and the Low Countries in what Chaunu has termed an un- partitioning of the worlds (“décloisonnement des mondes”; translation ours). This led Sir William Alexander to declare, in 1624, in his Encouragement to Colonies in relation to the Nova Scotia attempt: “my countriemen would never adventure in such an Enterprise, unlesse it were as there was a New France, a New Spaine, and a New England, that they might likewise have a New Scotland” (1624, p. 32). Scotland was handicapped by several factors: its comparative small size, its poverty, and its minority status in the Union of Crowns (an “anomalous position” analysed by Devine, 2003, p. 3).

6 A long tradition of maritime connection and immigration, whether scholarly, mercantile, or soldierly, with Northern Europe especially, had been well-established from the Middle Ages. This included the Hanseatic cities, Poland, Denmark, Scandinavia, and France, not forgetting the Ulster of the 17th century (Devine, 2003,

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pp. 8–17, and pp. 20–4). Thriving Scottish communities existed all over Northern Europe (Devine, 2003, pp. 9–12). Scotsmen also played a part in colonizing Northern America, sometimes in the English colonies established there, despite a strong preference for the more ancient European connections (Landsman, 1999, pp. 463, 465). However, there had also been several attempts at Scottish settlements: Nova Scotia, sacrificed by London on the altar of good diplomatic relationships with France; Cape Breton, attacked by the French; East New Jersey, before its absorption in the royal colony of New Jersey; and Stuart’s Town in Carolina, attacked by the Spaniards in 1686 (Insh, 2004; Devine, 2003, pp. 38–9). The Americas were a place to emigrate for those freely seeking a better life, but also a place to transport political opponents during the Commonwealth (Armitage, 1997, p. 46).

7 Traditional European markets were shrinking in the second half of the 17th century, for example France, following Colbert’s protectionist measures, and these deteriorating trading conditions could not counterbalance agricultural problems at home: poor lands and cold, wet climate accounted for poor crops in some decades and made not starvation but dearth loom large (Devine, 2003, p. 15). By the 1680s and 1690s, neither the existing sea connections nor the land seemed to provide satisfactory opportunities; the time had come to try and go further, and embark on transatlantic ventures. It seemed vital to resort once more to the sea, and exploit the country’s peninsular situation, relocating the centres of decision-making, and looking to an Atlantic seaboard. Several English Navigation Acts had repeatedly stood in the way of Scottish maritime development (Devine, 2003, pp. 31–2), and as a direct result, pre-Union Scotland did not enjoy free trade with either England or its colonies, and neither did it enjoy independence at sea. By the 1690s, Scotland had but few ships at its disposal and even fewer maritime opportunities. But it also had this deeply ingrained tradition of emigration, and an Atlantic seaboard. Included within the sovereign powers of the Company of Scotland was, revealingly, the power “to Equipp, Fit, Set out, Fraught and Navigat their own, or hired Ships, in such manner as they shall think fit […]” in the “Act of Parliament Constituting the Company of Scotland, Trading to Africa and the Indies” of 26 June 1695 (Hart, 1929, p. 185).

8 The said ships, on which the hopes of a nation rested, were not Scottish-built, but bought elsewhere, from Amsterdam or Hamburg. In other words, commerce gave rise to the Company’s first fleet, and not the reverse. After loading the cargoes and victualling the ships, they set sail from Leith in a climate of high expectation, exhilaration and enthusiasm.

The Scottish Indies and the “Door of the Seas”: an ambitious rewriting of late 17th century-Geostrategy in Darien

9 There were in fact not one but two Darien Schemes. The first, joint-stock project funded by English and Scottish capital planned to follow the model prescribed in “Trading to Africa and the Indies”. It contained no direct mention of the Americas, though the Indies could be understood as the West Indies as well as the East Indies. Its intended scope was as ambitious as that of other commercial companies, and it aimed more specifically towards Africa and the East Indies, and consequently the Indianoceanic space—which triggered the fears and reaction of the East India Company,

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as “Some Considerations upon the Late Act of the Parliament of Scotland” or “Some Remedies to Prevent the Mischiefs from the Late Act of Parliament Made in Scotland, in Relation to the East-India Trade” tend to show, as well as the reaction of the English Parliament forbidding the joint-venture. Revealingly, no mention of America is made in these pamphlets, and they are still classified in the Indian and African Studies Section of the British Library of London, category “East India Tracts” (former India Office Library).

10 In contrast, the second Darien Scheme was an exclusively Scottish project, solely funded by Scottish capital. Investors thronged at Mrs Purdie’s coffee-house to enter their names in the subscription book, wishing as much to defend national pride as to invest in a promisingly prosperous venture. William Paterson, a Scottish merchant who had lived in the Caribbean and London—he was one of the founders of the Bank of England—played a crucial part in reorienting the new Darien Scheme towards Central America. He well knew from personal experience of the opportunities the West Indies had to offer; not only in relation to the Atlantic space, but also the “South Sea”, the Pacific. Yet Paterson had never set foot on the isthmus itself, which may account, at least partly, for his genuinely undaunted but purely theoretical enthusiasm about it. The scope of this second, independent project was, in itself, enormous, since it aimed at no less than bringing together the Atlantic and Pacific together, clearly breaking the Spanish monopoly in the matter and challenging their long-established rights to the area, by taking possession for Scotland of “these doors of what the Spaniards used to proudly call their king’s summer chambers, or, more properly speaking, the keys of the Indies and doors of the world” (Paterson, 1701, p. 147). It was more ambitious and novel than other chartered companies’ projects, as it meant substitute itself, peacefully or otherwise, for the main and most ancient colonial power in this part of the world.

11 The isthmus was, for Spain, the crucial point of the Carrera de Indias, not an easy pathway due to climate, vegetation and terrain, but the narrowest connecting “neck of land” as it is often described, between South and North Sea. It was the shortest route, though always difficult and even perilous to cross. Yet, the alternative was enough to frighten even the most hardened sailors: the passage round Cape Horn, or through the risky Straits of Magellan. Across this trans-isthmian trail, from Panama towards the Atlantic seaboard, trains of mules would carry overland the riches from Philippines and the Far East, together with silver mined from the Potosi, in today’s Bolivia. Here, they would assemble at Portobello—Nombre de Dios having been twice attacked by Drake, and then abandoned by the Spaniards—and sail from there or Cartagena, in modern- day Colombia (Tavernier, 1970, p. 102; Ward, 1993, pp. 29–66, 188–9). Paterson thought very highly of Darien and took in, in one wide rhetorical sweep, the part played by sea routes and the world interconnectedness which Scotland could now play its part in: “[T]hese doors of the seas and the keys of the universe would of course be capable of enabling their possessors to give laws to both oceans, and to become the arbitrators of the commercial world.” (Paterson, 1701, p. 159)

12 His objective was commerce, as, for him, “the isthmus of America [was] not only the natural centre of the west, but easily to be put in a state of being that of at least two- thirds of the trade and treasure of both Indies” (ibid., p. 127). Accordingly, he wished to create a world entrepot, in keeping with a venture focused upon trade rather than military conquest with its concomitant atrocities, which he did not condone and wished to avoid: in his own words, “without being liable to the fatigues, expenses, and

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dangers, or of contracting such guilt and blood, as Alexander and Cæsar” (ibid., p. 159). The merchant or tradesman was the new hero of the age, far from the bloodthirsty conquerors of the past, far from conquistadores themselves, implicitly. This outpost of future trade, a “Scottish Amsterdam of the Indies” (Callagher, 2015: “Amsterdam écossaise des Indes”; translation ours), was to welcome strangers and foreigners provided they intended to settle, thus making the settlement stronger and richer, and religious toleration was to be its hallmark (“a general naturalization, liberty of conscience, and a permission trade”, Paterson, 1701, p. 154). It was an enterprise set apart from the leyenda negra, therefore, with its massacres of Indians and the cruel Inquisition, not to mention the territorial monopoly jealously enforced by Spain, which regarded trespassers into their Darien and South Sea provinces, especially Protestant, English- speaking ones, as downright pirates (Botella-Ordinas, 2010, p. 146; Schurz, 1922, p. 185).

13 However, it would seem a stumbling-block was already present in Paterson’s noble, somewhat idealistic ambitions. To settle a colony in the teeth of colonial Spain, especially in a place of such geostrategic significance, meant that it needed the capacity to resist attack. Here appears the sharpest of contrasts between theory, “an international emporium without the costs of territorial empire” (Devine, 2003, p. 46), and practice. In order to endure long enough to trade, the colony of Caledonia would have to defend itself, and the recruitment of colonists accordingly took on a strong military imperative, although the official language resorted to double meaning, and demurely mentioned “Overseers” and “Planters” when “officers” and “soldiers” were actually meant (Prebble, 1968, p. 99). Of course, it may be argued, Ancient Rome itself had its peasant soldiers, but the conquered remembered the soldiers in them rather than the peasants, and the viceroys of the Spanish New World did not underestimate the threat. The terms “overseers” and “planters” apparently indicate landsmen rather than seamen, which means that the Councillors had survival in mind. However, the primary objective, once the settlement was effective, remained trade, and therefore sea ventures.

Places in-between sea and land

14 The meeting of land and sea might in fortunate circumstances provide the colonists with natural harbours, though it could just as easily present them with salt shallows and hazards such as mangroves. While the former are, clearly enough, in favour of human activities, the latter can be seen as obstacles to them.

15 In Modern, 16th to 18th-century Europe, a trading or colonizing venture started from one land, and sought to reach another one, thanks to the sea as connector, and bond: the supremacy of the maritime element in exotic ventures cannot be in doubt. In most cases, traders or colonists from Europe aimed for another continent, whether America, Africa or Asia, where they would establish themselves close to the sea, either as permanent settlers (Plymouth) or occupants in trading-posts (the Moluccas), on or near the coast, or up a river (the Hooghly), in the hinterland. Unsurprisingly, the first areas to have been colonized by Europeans in the Americas were the Caribbean Isles, the first commodious landfalls they had met on their way.2

16 A harbour, whether already existing or to be created, as Caledonia was, brings into contact both sea and land and allows commerce and interaction between colonizing nation, colonists, and colonized, hence its central importance. Consequently, the search

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for the best possible harbour was the Scottish settlers’ starting point, bearing in mind not only the necessary connection to be kept and developed with the outside world— the whole point of their enterprise, after all—but also the defensive matters, too. It had to be spacious enough to accommodate a flourishing traffic of boats and ships, quite safe and sheltered from both natural elements and enemies, easy to access and easy to defend. They needed solid ground rather than marshland, unsilted waterways with fresh water in the vicinity, and not brackish water. In other terms, one had to be assured of land before venturing at sea.

17 The site of the future, but short-lived, Caledonia Harbour, seemed to win general approval. It was judged “most excellent” by the anonymous writer of “A Journal” (4 November 1698, p. 74), which is echoed by Rose: “[wee went] in our boats to sound a bay about 4 miles to the eastward of Golden Island, and found it a most excellent harbour”, and, perhaps counting his chickens before they were hatched, he calculated it would easily shelter “1000 of the best ships” (3 November 1698, pp. 197–8). The natural protection it afforded was good, Pennicook thought: “here you ly Landlockt every way, that noe wind can possibly hurt you” (Pennicook, 3 November 1698, p. 82, echoed in Rose, 3 November 1698, p. 198). And the anonymous diarist saw in all this the hand of God, writing in a dutifully thankful tone: “We are certainly much bound to Providence in this affair; for as we were searching for the place we were directed to, we found this”, and he carries on, “and though the Privateers had been so often at Golden Island, and though English, Dutch, and French had been all over this Coast, from Portobelo to Cartagena, yet never one of them made the discovery; even the Spaniards themselves never knew of this place” (“A Journal”, 4 November 1698, p. 76). Apart from sounding over-optimistic, this is tantamount to denying Balboa knowledge of the area of the very town he founded, Acla.

18 Another example of place where this “entre-deux” is manifest and offers shelter to humans would be Captain Ambrosio’s dwelling, protected as it is from a surprise attack: “It stands upon the banks of this river with about 10 or a dozen lesser houses about it. Their houses are on the sea hand inaccessible in a manner, being so advantageously situate that no stranger can come at them that way by reason of the numerous unseen shoalds, small rocks, and banks.” (Rose, 21 November 1698, p. 207) This seems not unlike modern-day Kuna dwellings, as a majority of Kuna communities—the descendants of the Indians Wafer and the Scottish settlers met in Darien—now live on small coralline islands away from fevers while going every day on the mainland to till their fields (Severin, 2002, pp. 216–7; McKendrick, 2016, p. 99).

19 At first, a kind of balance appeared between the sea (dynamic) and the land (static), and the would-be colonists laboured at both: “The people ashoare are imployed in making of huts, clearing way, & c. and those on board in ordering their holds, overhauling their rigging, blocksails, & c.” (Rose, 11 November 1698, p. 205) The settlement had to be made first, but could only hope to endure thanks to communications with the outside world, through the coming of news, supplies, and at a later stage the development of commerce. However, a fundamental imbalance was soon to be observed, with the liquid element gradually taking over, preventing human activities or at least slowing them down considerably, and making men and women sick from mosquito-induced fevers.

20 Mangroves, where sea and land meet in a tangled vegetation of entwined aerial roots, were hostile to European activities, and the time had not yet come when they would be considered as shrines of biodiversity to be protected. Marshlands were justly feared, as

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they brought fevers, although the part played by mosquitoes as vectors was not yet known. Mr Rose described an unsuitable place in the following terms: “On the main and all the bay round full of mangrow and swampy ground, which is very unwholesome.” (Rose, 1 Nov. 1698, p. 196)

21 Wafer, trudging across Darien with an open wound in his knee, found the conditions truly appalling in the rainy season, and left an apocalyptic account of his experience in which water and earth seem no longer to exist as distinct entities: “But not long after Sun-set, it fell a Raining, as if Heaven and Earth would meet; which Storm was accompanied with horrid Claps of Thunder, and such flashes of Lightning, of a Sulpherous smell, that we were almost stifled in the open Air.” (Wafer, 1704, p. 13; emphasis ours) The New Edinburgh colonists did not arrive in the rainiest months, unlike Wafer, yet references to rain and poor weather conditions are recurrent in the testimonies of Caledonia’s early days (Rose, 12–15 November 1698, pp. 205–6; 19 November, p. 206; 1 and 2 December, p. 210): “24. Much wind and rain. 25. Wind and rain as above. 27. Very much rain and wind. 28. These 24 houres ther has fallen a prodigious quantity of rain. 29. Much rain with fresh gales.” (24–29 November, p. 208) Rain, thunder, and downpours again, in an endless litany: in what Kricher terms the “neo-tropical” climate (1997), rivers overflow their banks, swamps encroach, and, as in Wafer’s narrative, earth and water appear to merge. This other “in-between” was of course prejudicial to human activities, both in preventing regular work (“which hinders the work much”, Rose, 2 December 1698, p. 209) and in augmenting the number of the sick. Those still lodging onboard the ships suffered less from the fevers. It seems William Paterson and the Company’s Directors had overlooked this part of Wafer’s experience. After all, the Spaniards themselves had never actually settled the area around New Edinburgh, at least not for long.

22 Another potentially lethal admixture of sea and land is to be noticed in the Isthmus’s long-favoured military strategy, that of amphibious operations. Given the absence of roads or even permanent paths wide and clear enough for Europeans to circulate unhampered, and the difficulty of travelling overland combined with the necessity of attacking settlements on land, troops had to be shipped to a landing-point and disembarked close to the place they wanted to attack. This was exactly what privateers and pirates had done against the Spanish cities of the Isthmus: Henry Morgan organized a whole fleet before attacking Panama (Exquemelin, 1684, Part III, p. 3). Ironically, this was also the strategy the Spaniards resorted to in order to drive the Scots from Caledonia: their land forces—Campmaster Luis Carrisoli’s men, or the garrison at Toubacanti—were insufficient, and expeditionary reinforcements, from Colonial America and from Spain itself, under the command of Don Juan Diaz de Pimienta and Don Pedro Fernandez de Navarrete respectively, were shipped to the nearby Golden Island, then disembarked, to drive the Darien colonists away. When the Spanish troops arrived in the Spring of 1699, the settlement was already abandoned; but, on the second occasion, in April 1700, New Edinburgh capitulated, and so ended the “Scottish dream of empire” (Prebble, 2000; Storrs, 1999).

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The ambivalences of the sea: life and death, dearth and plenty

Eaux en mouvement, la mer symbolise un état transitoire entre les possibles encore informels et les réalités formelles, une situation d’ambivalence, qui est celle de l’incertitude, du doute, de l’indécision et qui peut se conclure bien ou mal. De là vient que la mer est à la fois l’image de la vie et celle de la mort. (Chevalier & Gheerbrant, 1982, p. 623)

23 The sea is a traditional mythological and literary theme, and, as a metaphor of human experience, the whole drama of human experience from beginning to end, it seems to sum up and illustrate the contradictions of the Darien project. Apart from the divide and difference between seamen and landsmen in the Council of the Colony (Prebble, 1968, p. 129, for example), the two Darien expeditions seem to have been characterised by high levels of hope—the first accounts sent home were almost lyrical in their praise —while the failure brought despair to not only the colonists but to the nation itself.

24 The sea was not only what made the colonization possible: it also meant the arrival of potential Indian allies, supplies, news, and reinforcements from the mother-country. As such, it concentrated the hopes in the seedling establishment’s survival. The former’s repeated visits occurred soon enough—Rose and Pennicook report them in similar terms. The latter, in contrast, had to be long awaited: even to send Edinburgh news of the safe arrival meant finding a ship bound for the Caribbean or, even better, Europe. In this respect, the shipwreck of the French vessel which had agreed to carry dispatches, just before Christmas 1698, was a sore blow.

25 Kuna chiefs appear to have been well-pleased with their new neighbours, and Captains Ambrosio, Pedro and Diego took turns to visit the settlers. The colonists saw them as potential allies, inspired in this by Wafer’s account and the Kunas’ own declarations of friendship for privateering and pirate captains (Rose, 2 November 1698, p. 197). However, as Gallup–Diaz has emphasised, the diplomacy at stake here was not one- sided, whatever the settlers might have thought; the chiefs had for long been negotiating alliances, with or against each other, and with or more frequently against the Spaniards, or with buccaneers and freebooters whom they sometimes helped to cross the isthmus. Kunas, Pocorosas, Urabaes, Spanish-supporting Chocos, all had agendas of their own, whereas the new arrivals failed to understand the advanced state and complex nature of “rainforest diplomacy” (Gallup-Diaz, 2005, chapter 4).

26 Supplies were greatly needed, but few arrived. Soon after leaving Leith, Paterson was appalled at the lack of some and the poor quality of others (“Report by William Paterson”, 19 December 1699, Burton, 1849, p. 179); in Madeira, the Darien fleet bought wine, but their autonomy in the matter of food was from the start less good than it should have been (Prebble, 1968, pp. 118, 144). Far from trading in spices or silk, sugar or tobacco, the settlers needed basic provisions. On 23 December 1698, a delighted Mr Rose noted that a sloop brought “flower, beefe, & c. from Jamaica”, but it was rather small, he noted (23 December 1698, p. 215), and, the readers may observe, quite alone.

27 Rather engagingly, echoing Wafer’s remark about a land of plenty, the secretary of the Council reported good catches, in keeping with the motif of the nurturing sea: “Sometimes most excellent fish taken here, as also Tortoises (but very few yet, not having time nor nets fit for them,) some of them above 2, others above 300 weight: they are the best of meat. One of them will serve 100 men of reasonable appetites.” (Rose, p. 210, 9 December 1698) A Short Account from, and Description of the Isthmus of Darien,

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Where the Scots Collony are Settled described the many resources of the place, drawing heavily from Wafer’s account: vegetation, both useful and exotic, land animals, with a strong emphasis on edible ones, birds, unknown, beautiful, and delicious, and fish, of course, such as “Paracoods” (barracudas), the “Sea-Cow” (the manatee) and the best way to catch it, for it, too, was exquisite, and turtles (1699, pp. 5–9). Yet, reading Rose’s journal, the last impression is not quite so favourable, as the catching of fish and turtles already seems in jeopardy due to lack of time. This may be understood as a reference to the harsh and slow process of land clearing and building, and, implicitly perhaps, to the high number of sick men too, making the progress harder and slower. The lack of adequate fishing tools (Rose, 9 December 1698, p. 210) added to the difficulties of their adaptation to their new environment, which might have been remedied had they had time enough to observe Indian ways and knowledge. As for the expected reinforcements, the first Darien settlers never saw them: when they arrived, they found a deserted colony, and what should have been a strengthening of the settlement proved to be, in fact, a second attempt and a second expedition.

28 Knowing that not only allies and friends, but also spies, rivals, or enemies could come from the sea, Rose explains their defensive effort: “The Council have ordered their ships in a line of battle in the mouth of the harbour.” (14 December 1698, p. 213) The need to have a clear view and anticipate an attack is evident when he adds: “There is a look out made from which ships or vessels within 10 leagues can be descried.” (Ibid.) Point Look-Out was indicated on contemporary maps of Darien.

29 Spies and rivals were feared, and the arrival of the English Captain Richard Long on board his Rupert Prize, officially commissioned to sail the area in search of sunken treasures from wrecked ships, was interpreted as a potential threat from London, the English capital interfering in Scottish affairs. Long was invited to dine several times and reciprocated the invitation (Rose, 13–23 November 1698, pp. 205–8; Pennicook, 13-26 November 1698, pp. 88–90) and the atmosphere remained courteous throughout his visit, but as soon as he had surreptitiously left, the alarm was sounded: “The Counsell mett, where Captn Long’s sudden departure being consider’d, it was resolv’d the Pink should be sent home to Scotland with all possible speed” (Pennicook, 26 November 1698, p. 90), and the anonymous diarist tartly writes that Capt. Long came in eight days after, and I believe we were a great eyesore to him, tho he said nothing. […] Hearing by the Natives that we were here, he came in with his Long-boat, as he said to see us, but I believe it was only to know the certainty of what he feared was too true. (“A Journal”, 4 November 1698, p. 77)

30 As they well knew, Captain Long was not there as a free-lance treasure-seeker, but had been sent on some official mission: “He commanded the Rupert Prize, a small English Man of War, fitted out by the King, upon what Design we know not, but he pretends it was to search for a Silver Wrack […].” (Ibid.)

31 Other rivals at this time took the modest shape of a group of French privateers at the San Blas Islands, who also benefitted from good relationships with local Indians and their chief, Captain Corbet (“Captain Long’s Letter”, 1699, Burton, 1849, p. 81). They were not necessarily hostile, but uncomfortably close. And, centuries after the Auld Alliance, France was known to mistrust the Scottish endeavour, fearing at first that they would aim for their own colonial possessions instead of Darien, thus verging from centuries of mutual support, friendliness and goodwill, following perhaps the well- acknowledged principle “no peace beyond the line”. Furthermore, Scotland was now

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included in the Union of Crowns, which made it part and parcel of William III’s kingdom, Louis XIV’s Protestant enemy.

32 The enemies the New Edinburgh settlers feared were, of course, the Spaniards, and they waited for sometimes contradictory news about their movements from the visiting Indian chiefs. The Spaniards could not admit of the Scottish intrusion in the geographical centre of their empire—“the fulcrum of [their] imperial economy” (Watt, 2007, p. 5)—, which would have split the viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru into two separate entities, and created a regrettable precedent, possibly paving the way for other Protestant settlers—“Luteranos” and heretics in the eyes of Carlos II’s subjects. Protestants or subjects of William III meant only one thing to colonial Spain, as it had endured repeated attacks from Sir Francis Drake to Sir Henry Morgan to Captain Bartholomew Sharp: pirates—although some of them had actually been privateers—, that is, arch-enemies to be eradicated as soon as possible. The Council of Caledonia took every step to reassure them on this point (“Letter by the Council of Caledonia”, Burton, 1849, p. 91),3 but fair words were not judged sufficient. The possibility of Spanish reaction had been underestimated, as was their enduring strength (Storrs, 1999, pp. 6– 7, 27), by those who saw colonial Spain as an empire on the wane, inhabited by slothful, cowardly, and degenerate individuals, and Spain itself as the very image of Carlos II, its perpetually ailing monarch whose death was expected any minute and whose succession agitated Europe. But the counterattack had to be reckoned with, as Caledonians themselves judged when they tried to take protective measures such as the digging of a ditch and the construction of Fort Saint Andrew, overlooking the sea. “[I]f Darien was, ultimately, a disaster for Scotland—a minor, peripheral European power—it was a triumph for a Spanish Monarchy which remained a Great Power and was by no means the desperate figure of legend on the eve of the advent of the Bourbons and the War of the Spanish Succession.” (Storrs, 1999, p. 27)

33 The Company’s Directors judged, somewhat harshly, that their fellow countrymen had under-utilised their ships in the first expedition, and thus not taken enough advantage of the sea element: And whereas we understand that the ships sent upon the first expedition for settling of the said Colony were after their arrival there all along kept wholly idle and useless, and not employed as they ought to have been in making reprisals upon the persons and goods of the Spaniards after that they broke out in acts of hostility against the said Colony; you are therefore hereby ordered to take care not to fall in the like errour and neglect […]. (“Instructions to Mr Daniel Mackay, Captain William Vetch, Captain Alexander Campbell of Fonab, and Mr Alexander Hamilton”, 1699, Insh, 1924, p. 189)

34 But, of course, it was easier said than done, and the second expedition did not, in the end, fare any better than the first. Paterson saw ships as a lifeline, an indispensible link with the outside world, and found that the Darien ships were far from meeting such requirements: “When we arrived first, we were, as it was, in a Prisone for want of sloops, briganteens, or other good, stiff, windwardly vessels.” (“Report by William Paterson”, 19 December 1699, Burton, 1849, p. 181)

35 Of these ships, the Saint Andrew managed with extreme difficulty to make its way to Port-Royal, Jamaica, after narrowly escaping wreckage off the coast of Cartagena, the Dolphin was taken by the Spaniards, the Endeavour sank, and the Unicorn had to be abandoned after reaching the Hudson River estuary; the Caledonia made it back to Scotland, after staying in New York, but only just made it there from Darien (Insh, 2004,

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p. 119; Prebble, 1968, pp. 305, 178, 202, and 215). As for the second expedition, the Rising Sun and the Hope of Bo’ness were wrecked, the Duke of Hamilton, sunk by a storm, and the Olive Branch, a supply ship which went with the Hopeful Binning, burnt accidentally. Despite the liquid element, wooden ships’ greatest enemy was fire (Prebble, 1968, pp. 306, 307, and 237). The aptly-named Speedy Return reached Scotland, but was to disappear on another, Eastern expedition with her consort the Content (Prebble, 1968, p. 312). To describe this as a hecatomb does not seem far-fetched, and this is also meant in human terms: “In our voyage from the Collony to New York we lost neare 150 of about 250 persons putt on boord, most of them for want of looking after and meanes to recover them”—amounting to 60%, therefore (“Report by William Paterson”, 19 December 1699, Burton, 1849, p. 196). Given the bedraggled survivors’ sorry condition, and despite the royal proclamation forbidding help to the Darien colonists, the numerous New Yorkers of Scottish descent, as well as John Nanfan, then acting as Deputy Governor for Lord Bellomont, tried to help them, at least to some extent (Insh, 2004, pp. 119–20). Some, however, never took to the sea again and chose to stay and prosper in the English colonies of America instead of returning to Scotland. For them, the sea experience was definitely over, and they had escaped a watery grave.4

36 Whilst the means to defend Darien had been chronically insufficient before the Scottish attempt (Schurz, 1922, p. 185; Elliot, 2007, p. 59), they were increased after 1700 (Storrs, 1999). Paterson appears to have stuck to his views of Darien when he wrote his “Proposal” in 1701, and in his 1704 edition of A New Description, Wafer still urged an English colonization of the area: the geostrategic charms of the place still had not faded, and were thought enticing enough to justify these publications.

37 The Company of Scotland had lost much, and so had the Scottish nation; but it courageously returned to its first, Eastern interests and managed to man a few more ships. It did not prosper there, either. Prosperity took much longer to achieve, and happened only after the Union (see McGilvary, 2011), which enabled Scotland to gain access to English colonies on equal terms, although this was far from being immediate (Clive & Bailyn, 1954, p. 201).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

“A Journal Kept from Scotland by One of the Company Who Sailed on Board the Endeavour Pink; With a Short Account of Darien, in Papers Relating to the Ships and Voyages of the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies”, in G. P. Insh (ed.), 1924, Papers Relating to the Ships and Voyages of the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies, Edinburgh, The University Press / T. & A. Constable, pp. 69–77.

A Short Account from, and Description of the Isthmus of Darien, Where the Scots Collony are Settled, Edinburgh, John Vallange, 1699.

ALEXANDER Sir William, 1624, An Encouragement to Colonies, London, W. Stansby.

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ARMITAGE David, 1997, “Making the Empire British: Scotland in the Atlantic World, 1542–1707”, Past & Present, no. 55, pp. 34–63.

BAILYN Bernard & CLIVE George, 1954, “England’s Cultural Provinces: Scotland and America”, The William and Mary Quarterly, Scotland and America, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 200–13.

BOTELLA-ORDINAS Eva, 2010, “Debating Empires, Inventing Empires: British Territorial Claims Against the Spaniards in America, 1670–1714”, Journal of Early Modern Cultural Studies, vol. 10, no. 1 (The Spanish Connection: Literary and Historical Perspectives on Anglo-Iberian Relations), pp. 142–68.

BURTON John Hill (ed.), 1849, The Darien Papers, Edinburgh, The Bannatyne Club.

CALLAGHER Graig, 2015, “L’Amsterdam écossaise des Indes”, Outre-Terre, no. 43, pp. 437–50.

CHEVALIER Jean & GHEERBRANT Alain, 1982, “Mer”, Dictionnaire des symboles, Paris, Robert Laffont [Jupiter, 1997], pp. 623–24.

DEVINE Thomas Martin, 2003, Scotland’s Empire and the Shaping of the Americas, Washington, Smithsonian [Books, 2004].

ELLIOT John H., 2007, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492–1830, New Haven, Yale University Press.

EXQUEMELIN Alexandre Olivier, 1684, Bucaniers of America, London, William Crooke.

GALLUP-DIAZ Ignacio, 2005, The Doors of the Seas and the Key to the Universe: Indian Politics and Imperial Rivalry in the Darién, 1640–1750, New York, Columbia University Press.

HART Francis Russell, 1929, The Disaster of Darien, Cambridge (Mass.), The Riverside Press.

INSH George Pratt, 2004, Scottish Colonial Schemes, 1620–1686, Nashville, American History Imprints, Facsimile Edition of Glasgow, Maclehose, Jackson, & Co., 1922.

INSH George Pratt (ed.), 1924, Papers Relating to the Ships and Voyages of the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies, Edinburgh, The University Press / T. & A. Constable.

KRICHER John, 1997, A Neotropical Companion. An Introduction to the Animals, Plants, and Ecosystems of the New World Tropics, Princeton, Princeton University Press.

LANDSMAN Ned C., 1999, “Nation, Migration, and the Province of the First British Empire: Scotland ad the Americas, 1600–1800”, The American Historical Review, vol. 104, no. 2, pp. 463–75.

MCGILVARY George K., 2011, “The Scottish Connection with India 1725–1833”, Études écossaises, no. 14 (Empires – Recherches en cours), pp. 13–31. Available on (consulted 1 September 2016).

MCKENDRICK John, 2016, Darien. A Journey in Search of Empire, Edinburgh, Birlinn.

PATERSON William, 1701, “A Proposal to Plant a Colony in Darien; to Protect the Indians against Spain; and to Open the Trade of South America to All Nations”, in S. Burton (ed.), The Writings of William Paterson, London, Effingham Wilson, 1858, vol. 1, pp. 117–60.

PENNICOOK Robert (Captain), “Captain Pennycook’s Journall from the Madera Islands to New Caledonia in Darien”, in G. P. Insh (ed.), 1924, Papers Relating to the Ships and Voyages of the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies, Edinburgh, The University Press / T. & A. Constable, pp. 78–97.

PREBBLE John, 1968, The Darien Disaster, London, Secker & Warburg, 1968. Alternative title: Darien, the Scottish Dream of Empire, Edinburgh, Birlinn, 2000.

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ROSE Hugh, 1929, “Mr Rose’s Journal”, in F. R. Hart (ed.), The Disaster of Darien, Cambridge (Mass.), The Riverside Press, Appendix 2, pp. 192–216.

SCHURZ William Lytle, 1922, “The Spanish Lake”, The Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 181–94.

SEVERIN Tim, 2002, Seeking Robinson Crusoe, London, Pan Books.

“Some Considerations upon the Late Act of the Parliament of Scotland, for Constituting an India Company. In a Letter to a Friend”, London, 1695.

“Some Remedies to Prevent the Mischiefs from the Late Act of Parliament Made in Scotland, in Relation to the East-India Trade”, London [?], 1695.

STORRS Christopher, 1999, “Disaster at Darien (1698–1700)? The Persistence of Spanish Imperial Power on the Eve of the Demise of the Spanish Habsburgs”, European History Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 5–38.

TAVERNIER Bruno, 1970, “La route de l’or et de l’argent. Séville, Panama, Manille. XVe–XVIIe siècles”, in Les Grandes routes maritimes, Paris, Laffont.

WAFER Lionel, 1704, A New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America [1699], London, James Knapton.

WARD Christopher, 1993, Imperial Panama: Commerce and Conflict in Isthmian America, 1500–1800, Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press.

WATT Douglas, 2007, The Price of Scotland. Darien, Union and the Wealth of Nations, Edinburgh, Luath Press Limited.

NOTES

1. The late 17th-century spelling has been left unaltered, random capitalization included. 2. One notable exception to this supremacy of the sea element would seem to be Russia, then an essentially continental, Eurasian power in the making, where colonies came into direct geographical contact with the colonial power, quite unlike the overseas territories claimed by Western European nations. Yet, even then, the sea was not absent from the ambitions of Peter the Great, who founded the national navy, or of Catherine II, during whose reign the search for an ice-free coastline in winter accounted for the Russian territorial extension towards the Crimea. 3. “Wee doe therefore, by these, signifie to you that wee are the subjects of the King of Great Brittain, by virtue of whose power and authority granted to us, with advice and consent of his Parliament of Scotland, wee have settled here, for the encouraging, advancing, and carying of trade and commerce.” At this point, in Spring 1699, the Council was trying to have the men of the Dolphin freed from Spanish gaols, where they were detained under an accusation of piracy. 4. Among those who chose to stay was Reverend Alexander Stobo, an ancestor of President Theodore Roosevelt.

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ABSTRACTS

The Darien Scheme (1696–1700) appears as Scotland’s greatest attempt at colonial expansion in its own right, before the 1707 Union of Parliaments. Due to its peninsular situation and overall poverty, the nation had a long tradition of emigration, and by the end of the 17th century, it also wished to take part in the trans-Atlantic venture. Far from being perceived as an obstacle, the sea had a crucial part to play, both as a means of reaching the Americas and as a way of furthering overseas trade. But enemies too could come from the sea, and for many of the survivors of Spanish retaliation and tropical fevers, the Caribbean and the Atlantic were not only a way of escape, but also a watery grave, in an ambivalent reversal of what had first appeared as a dazzling opportunity.

Le projet du Darien (1696-1700) apparaît comme la tentative coloniale majeure de l’Écosse en tant que nation indépendante, avant l’Union des Parlements de 1707. Du fait de sa situation géographique et économique, elle avait une longue tradition d’émigration, et souhaita également, à la fin du XVIIe siècle, participer à l’aventure transatlantique. Loin d’être perçue comme un obstacle, la mer avait donc au contraire un rôle crucial à jouer, permettant à la fois le passage vers les Amériques et la promotion du commerce extérieur. Mais de la mer pouvait aussi venir l’ennemi, et pour nombre de survivants de la riposte espagnole et des fièvres tropicales, la mer ne fut pas seulement une échappatoire, mais aussi un tombeau liquide, en un renversement non dénué d’ambivalence.

INDEX

Mots-clés: long XVIIIe siècle, Darien, Écosse et colonisation, Compagnie écossaise de l’Afrique et des Indes, William Paterson Keywords: long 18th century, Darien, Scotland and colonization, Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies, William Paterson

AUTHOR

SOPHIE JORRAND Université de la Réunion, Institut d’histoire des représentations et des idées dans les modernités (IHRIM) – UMR 5137 CNRS. Dr Sophie E. Jorrand is Senior Lecturer at Reunion Island University (France), and a member of Institut d’Histoire des Représentations et des Idées dans les Modernités (IHRIM – UMR 5317 CNRS). Her research, centered on the “long 18th century”, is twofold: gender in 18th-century England, including representations, ideologies and material culture; and travel and exploratory narratives, mostly in the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean. She has published articles about Daniel Defoe, William Dampier and Lionel Wafer, coordinated acts of colloquiums, and has recently co- edited two collective books, Maternité, paternité, parentalité dans l’océan Indien et ailleurs (Université de la Réunion/Epica, 2015), with Prof. Sophie Geoffroy, and Témoigner : flibuste, piraterie et autres courses, de la Renaissance aux Lumières (Presses universitaires Blaise Pascal, 2015), with Prof. Danièle Berton-Charrière and Prof. Monique Vénuat. She is currently working on translations of exploratory accounts of surgeons in Colonial America in the late 17th–early 18th centuries, and on the Darien Scheme (1695–1700).

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The Inner Seas in Deirdre of the Sorrows by John Millington Synge (1909) Les mers intérieures dans Deirdre des douleurs de John Millington Synge (1909)

Céline Savatier-Lahondès

1 The story of Deirdre1 (Dare-dra2 or deer-dree, according the Irish or Scottish pronunciations), is part of the Irish Cycle of Ulster, in which the high deeds of the famous hero Cuchulainn are told. Entitled Longes mac nUisna (Uish’na3)—The Exile of the Sons of Usnagh, it became part of what 18th century manuscripts used to compile as Trί Truaighe na Sgeuluigheachta (tri troo-ĕ-ă na skail-eeăchta) The Three Sorrows of Story Telling.4 Beside Longes mac nUisna, Oidheadh Chloinne Tuireann (Tirran)—The Tragic Fate of the Children of Tuireann, and Oidheadh Chloinne Lir—The Tragic Fate of the Children of Lir also belong to the Three Sorrows cycle. However, according to Douglas Hyde, who rewrote the tales from the original manuscripts in 1887: “Of the three stories, […] the Fate of the Children of Usnach is by far the most renowed and widely known […].”5

2 Deirdre’s tale is a story of travel from Ireland to Scotland and back to Ireland after seven years of exile. From Emain Macha (Evin Vaha6) to Slieve Fuadh (Sleeve Foo’a7) and to their Scottish refuge, the characters will live their lives fully and decide to face their inescapable tragic fate. In his preface to Deirdre, variations sur un mythe celtique, René Agostini stresses one of the differences between Greek and “Celtic” tragic heroes, stating that in a classic tragedy, the main character struggles to avoid his fate whereas the “Celtic” one is determined to embrace it: “Le héros tragique grec se perd précisément en s’efforçant d’échapper à un déterminisme auquel il ne peut se soustraire, parce qu’il le hante et le suit. Le héros celtique met d’autant plus de fougue et de détermination à ce qu’il vit, à ce qu’il fait, quand il sait ou qu’il devine que c’est sa destinée. Deirdre va au devant de sa destinée, elle la ‘provoque’.”8 (1992, p. 22) Synge fully develops the theme of fate in his play, which adds a philosophical aspect to the original myth. The author questions Man’s existence. He questions meaning too, in the awakening of the modern era, at a time when Ireland is

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on its way toward independence, when the revival of the Irish culture is strongly felt in the Irish artistic expression.

3 Our thesis here is that the inner seas motif plays an important part in this questioning.

4 In a first part, the accent will be put on geographical considerations as far as texts and territories are concerned. This will enable us to seize the mythic dimension of the tale and to define the space devoted to the inner seas in the play. Then, we will turn to the authorial mapping of the tale which will lead us on both sides of the marine territory under study. Inseparable from this is the political aspect which remains constantly interlaced in the history of the modern rewritings of Deirdre’s story. Our last part will lay the emphasis on the sea motif proper, showing how its apparently remote presence swells, until it produces a resounding echo which gives its proportions to the tragedy.

5 The original manuscripts for the story of Deirdre are, for the most ancient ones, the 12th century Book of Leinster9 and the 14th century Yellow Book of Lecan. They are both Irish manuscripts kept in Trinity College in Dublin. There is also a 15th century Gaelic manuscript kept in Edinburgh, the Glenmasan MS.10 Therefore, manuscripts of the text are kept both in Ireland and Scotland. Both countries take their share in the same literary tradition, as Professor Mackinnon stated in the 1904 Celtic Review: “The Tale of the Sons of Uisnech was well known in the Scottish Highlands as in Ireland from time immemorial. It was early committed to writing. It was one of the ‘principal tales,’ primscela, which a poet must know.” (p. 6) The oral poetic tradition was one of the major features of Gaelic society. The filidh (or file)—the specialized class of poets- prophets—worked with and transmitted an important corpus of tales, an “elitist” oral literature, according to Professor Proinsias Mac Cana (1997, p. 674). The process of oral transmission dated back long before the stories were transcribed on paper. This cultural phenomenon lasted until the Renaissance period which saw the coexistence of two systems—the literate and the oral.

6 This oral culture managed to travel through time but also through space. The existence of a common literature on both sides of the inners seas shows that the latter were not considered as a barrier, and that insularity did not necessarily mean isolation. Man sailed the seas even in the Bronze and Iron Ages. However rough and wild, the liquid element was part of Man’s way of life; it compelled them to develop sailing techniques. 11 If Deirdre’s tale undertook the voyage, other stories did cross the inner seas between Ireland and Scotland as well, for example that of Diarmuid and Grainne. Belonging to the Irish Leinster Cycle, it is found in Scotland too, as J. Watson argued in his History of the Celtic Place Names of Scotland: “The Gael carried the tale of Diarmid to Scotland, locating the scene of his hunting of the boar and his tragic death in many parts of the North, as for instance at Beinn Laghail (Ben Loyal) in Sutherland, in Kintail of Ross-shire, in Brae Lochaber, and in Perthshire.” (1993, p. 208) We have traced the contours of a literary territory, as it were. Within its boundaries, a water expanse unfolds: the inner seas.

7 On the following map, the coastal limits of the inner seas between Ireland and Scotland are colored in blue. The main places referred to in the tale are indicated. Such indications inform the importance of geographical elements within the tale. The map enables to understand how deeply rooted actual geographical locations are within Deirdre’s story. Besides, it allows to realize that not only the territory involved in the tale comprises the area of the inner seas but also the land on both sides. This is where the “real” landscape merges with legend.12 In Ireland, the places are Emain Macha, the royal house of the king of Ulster, Conchubor (Cunnahar13) macNessa, Slieve Fuadh,

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house of Deirdre’s nurse, Lavarcham (Lower’kem, as in allow),14 where Deirdre was brought up away from sight, and Uisneach, another royal site,15 said to be the centre of Ireland,16 from which Naisi and his brothers, the sons of Uisneach, originated.

Figure 1. – The Inner Seas in Deirdre’s Story, Geography of a Tale.

Map designed by Céline Savatier-Lahondès, from a blank map by Daniel Dalet, © histgeo.ac-aix- marseille.fr, with kind authorization.

8 Here is how Uisneach was founded, according to the Suidigud Tellaig Temra [The Settling of the Manor of Tara]: Then the nobles of Ireland came as we have related to accompany Fintan to Usnech, and they took leave of one another on the top of Usnech. And he set up in their presence a pillar-stone of five ridges on the summit of Usnech. And he assigned a ridge of it to every province in Ireland, for thus are Tara and Usnech in Ireland, as its two kidneys are in a beast.17 […] The points of the great provinces run towards Usnech, they have divided yonder stone through it into five.18 From a political as well as from a metaphorical perspective, it is important to consider Uisneach’s central position, that of a symbolic heart, to which all the parts of the body of Eire converge. It gives an aura to the characters of the sons of Uisneach in the present tale. They are part of the Red Branch House of warriors, to which Cuchulainn also belongs. They embody the power and strength of Ireland. Their planned destruction, according to the prophecy, sounds like a myth of Apocalypse.

9 In Scotland, Loch Etive, Glen Masain and most of the places mentioned in the different versions are situated in Cowal, Argyllshire. It is the geographical position of the kingdom of Dalriata, which developed in Scotland from 5th century to 9th century AD It is to be noted that the 15th century version of the Glenmasan manuscript provides the

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highest number of place names in Scotland among the other versions, as if some emphasis had been purposely laid on the Scottish territory by the scribe who compiled the story, a version which may well have been in circulation orally before being committed to writing. The fact that more than ten Scottish place names are present in this manuscript is an indication of how well the tale was anchored on the Scottish side of the inner seas.

10 Let us now turn to the plot. In its full version, the story of Deirdre—her name is said to mean “alarm” (Hyde, 1895, p. 161)—starts off with a prophecy uttered by the druid Cathbad during a royal feast at Feidlimid’s house. The latter is Deirdre’s father and King Conchubor’s storyteller. This is what happened, according to the oldest version: The Ulstermen were drinking in the house of Feidlimid macDaill, the story-teller of Conchobor. Now the wife of Feidlimid was attending upon the host, standing up and she being pregnant. Drinking horns and portions [of food] circled around, and they uttered a drunken shout. When they were about to go to bed, the woman came to her bed. While she was going across the middle of the house, the infant in her womb screamed so that it was heard throughout the whole enclosure. (Hull, 1949)

11 Then, to answer everybody’s concern, Cathbad the “seer” said that inside Feidlimid’s wife’s womb was a woman of great beauty, a woman “for whom there will be many slaughters among the chariot-fighters of Ulster” (Hull, 1949). The warriors wanted to slay her but King Conchubor refused to have her killed and she was raised away from the world until she was old enough to become his queen. A few years later, just before her wedding with Conchubor, she met the Sons of Usna, Naisi (Nee’shi), Ainlé (Ainlă) and Ardan in the hills. By uttering a “geis”,19 she compelled Naisi, the elder, to take her with him and flee to Scotland: While, therefore, the aforesaid Noisiu was alone outside, she quickly stole out to him as if to go past him, and he did not recognize her. ‘Fair,’ he said, ‘is the heifer that goes past me.’ ‘Heifers,’ she said, ‘are bound to be big where bulls are not wont to be.’ ‘You have the bull of the province,’ he said, ‘namely, the king of the Ulstermen.’ ‘I would choose between the two of you,’ she said, ‘and I would take a young bullock like you.’ ‘By no means!’ he said. ‘Even because of Cathbad’s prophecy.’ ‘Do you say that in order to reject me?’ ‘It assuredly will be for that reason,’ he said. Therewith she made a leap to him and grasped both ears on his head. ‘These [are] two ears of shame and of derision,’ she said, ‘unless you take me away with you.’ ‘Go away from me, O woman,’ he said. ‘You shall have that,’ she said. (Hull, 1949)

12 The persuading power of her voice prevented him from refusing since they eventually went to Scotland. They spent seven years there, some versions say sixteen years, and finally went back to Ireland, reassured by Conchubor’s message of forgiveness brought to Scotland by Fergus, one of his most faithful warriors. Once back in Ireland, the brothers got killed, Deirdre committed suicide, a war followed, and with it the ruin of Emain Macha Deirdre of the Sorrows’s genre oscillates between tragedy and epic poetry, in the modern sense of the terms, that is to say that ingredients belonging to both genres can be found in Synge’s work. The play relates the downfall of a central character, Deirdre, and with her of the whole Red Branch of warriors. The latter are legendary heroes who accomplished great deeds. However, Deirdre’s actions can also be seen as “actions of a heroic figure, whose deeds can change the future of a nation”.20 Proinsias Mac Cana argues that “the heroic cycles relate political situations after they were overcome in actual history. We know that Emain Macha was destroyed probably at the beginning or toward the middle of the 5th century AD, so that the founding facts

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of the stories which have reached us must have come from a more ancient although undetermined period” (Mac Cana, 1997, p. 679). Myth and history mingle in cycles where characters are heroes, close to semi gods sometimes, endowed with magical powers. Deirdre’s voice is performative, that is to say that the words she utters have the power to implement her will. It takes the value of a “geis”, in this case, an injunction, something Naisi cannot resist. The epic quality lies in the fact that Deirdre’s character has the potential to change the course of actions, while paradoxically, she is at the origin of the fatal process announced by the prophecy. In this story, hamartia, to use Aristotle’s definition of tragedy, is inherent to the main character. She was born with it. She has not accomplished any error herself. The play is a tragedy in the sense that it is “a dramatization of an individual’s sense of life and society as constantly under threat from the arbitrary chances of fate and humanity’s own innate savagery”.21 The act of the heroes, the young, perfect “better than ourselves” characters, their fleet to Scotland, “opens a gap in the fragile fabric of morality and civilization through which the primeval forces of anarchy and destruction pour”.22 They defy king Conchubor, thus provoking their downfall.

13 There are many modern versions of the story. They differ considerably, primarily in the choice of the episodes they tell. For instance, Scottish Fiona MacLeod (William Sharp) deals with the aftermath of the tragedy, once everybody is dead. Paradoxically, the Scottish author does not treat the characters’ exile in Scotland. Is it because the focus was mainly on Ireland during the Celtic revival? Yet, there was a Scottish Gaelic renaissance too. Politics and national culture are strongly intertwined when related to the histories of the two countries at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. As Professor James Hunter, from the University of the Highlands and Islands argued in his article published in the Scottish Historical Review in 1975, “When, towards the end of the nineteenth century […] in the Highlands and in Ireland, attempts were made to reform the agrarian order on the one hand and to revive and protect the Gaelic language on the other, it was almost inevitable that the two movements should come into contact”. (1975, p. 180) According to James Hunter who cites Daly: “The young Douglas Hyde [poet and future president of the new Irish Republic] who toured the Highlands of Scotland in 1886 and found Gaelic there to be in a ‘much healthier state than Irish is in Ireland’ was to draw considerable inspiration from the Scottish Gaelic revival, particularly from the work of folklorists like John F. Campbell of Islay”.23 Apparently, W. B. Yeats (1897) saw in Fiona MacLeod’s tales an accomplishment of this Celtic cultural revival.

14 However, Scottish writers seem to have been contemplating and even admiring the booming Irish Cultural Renaissance in the first years of the twentieth century, without getting involved in such a resounding movement themselves. Part of the explanation comes from the fact that the social context was different. In 1918, Ruaraidh Erkine, the Scottish nationalist, political activist, writer and Scottish Gaelic language campaigner, put forward the absence of popular support in the movement in Scotland: “Hitherto, the Celtic movement in Scotland has not been a popular even less a democratic movement. It has divided its attentions between the lairdocracy on the one hand and the bourgeoisie on the other”. (Hunter, 1975, p. 199) In the article previously referred to, Professor James Hunter claims that the economic context too was different: “Culturally, Scotland may have been a British colony. Socially and economically it was not. Insofar as Ireland—or India or Africa—was a victim of British imperialism that

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imperialism benefitted Scotland as much as England. Far from being a British colony, in other words, Scotland was an integral part of the imperial power”. (1975, p. 204) While, as James Hunter explains, the parallel between the situations in the Scottish Highlands and Ireland was relevant, the similarity could not extend to the whole Scottish Nation (Hunter, 1975, p. 203). This proposition shows a discrepancy in the degree of urgency that existed in both countries as regards the expression of national identity. It might also explain why in today’s polls, Scotland positions itself on a medium line between independence and remain. Nevertheless, at the time of the Irish revival, Scottish eyes were turned towards Ireland. Although he is concerned with politics, Hunter uses the word “obsession” to qualify the amount of attention granted to Ireland, especially at the time of the Easter Rising: “an obsession—and obsession is not too strong a word— with Ireland” (Hunter, 1975, p. 198).

15 William Butler Yeats’s Deirdre begins when the lovers set foot in Ireland, after their seven-year exile. He doesn’t consider the Scottish episode either. The Irish setting only is granted a place, as if to lay the emphasis on Ireland itself, once again. Conversely, John Millington Synge’s play opens when Deirdre, about to marry Conchubor, has just met Naisi and his brothers. Synge wrote a complete version, in which the plot is similar to that of the 12th century manuscript. So did George William Russel (A.E.) whose dramatic piece was written in 1902, before Synge’s. Critic Michel Bariou points out their similar structure, arguing that the latter probably “borrowed the tripartite structure of Deirdre of the Sorrows to AE’s play”24 (Bariou, 1990, p. 73). The drama unfolds in three acts, the first in Ireland, the second in Scotland and the last back in Ireland again. In Synge’s version, Ireland is given much presence, even when the characters are away. It possesses a power of attraction. The land motif bears a strong emotional signature. Deirdre chants her attachment to her “dear country of the East”25 before leaving Scotland. She expresses how strongly she will miss it. Yet, Ireland remains the place to which one must go back to: “It’s a lonesome thing to be away from Ireland always”26, Deirdre says in act II. Considering the time of the writing, at the beginning of the twentieth century, this statement sounds like an homage paid to the Irish Diaspora, forced to emigrate from Ireland massively in the second half of the 19th century.

16 In act II, while Fergus is trying to convince Deirdre and Naisi to go back to Ireland with him, his words sound as a plea for the beauties of the island: When I was a young man we’d have given a lifetime to be in Ireland a score of weeks, and to this day the old men have nothing so heavy as knowing it’s in a short while they’ll lose the high skies are over Ireland, and the lonesome mornings with birds crying on the bogs. Let you come this day for there’s no place but Ireland where the Gael can have peace always. (Synge, 1968, p. 225)

17 However, beauty alone is not sufficient to qualify the author’s style in the above statement. Its lyricism can be felt in Fergus’s expression of intense longing for the land of the Gaels. Vivid images of the local landscapes—the “high skies”, the “birds crying on the bogs”—convey Fergus’s powerful yearning and seem to sing the beauties of the land along with the character. Yet, far from rendering a uniformly mellifluous sound, the lyrical property of the passage gives way to specific features, revealed in the peculiar rhythm of syncopated sentences: “they’ll lose the high skies are over Ireland” vibrates according to the sea swell—irregular, sometimes brutal—which finishes its course washed up on the shores of Ireland. The bogs (line 4 in the extract above) are a common feature to Ireland and Scotland. In act II, Owen complains he has been “waiting three weeks getting ague and asthma in the chill of the bogs” (Synge, 1968,

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p. 221). Yet, Ireland only appears as the refuge of the “Gael” (last line in the extract above). In Deirdre’s story, the shelter is Scotland. Ireland embodies the seat of all dangers and potential death. Yet, Fergus is on Conchubor’s side. His interest is to bring the lovers back to Ireland. He extols the merits of his motherland and presents it as the ultimate home. Again, the focus on Ireland in the tale parallels the literary history of the time. The light is cast on a country that has undertaken its cultural identity awakening: Depuis le 16 janvier 1899, avec la fondation de l’Irish Literary Theatre par Yeats, un projet précis vise à donner au public des pièces nouvelles s’éloignant des conventions du théâtre commercial britannique et du répertoire shakespearien […]. Mais, jusqu’en 1902, ce théâtre nouveau a souffert d’un vice majeur : pour représenter ses pièces, il doit faire appel à des compagnies britanniques dont la diction ne correspond pas aux exigences du texte ni aux impératifs esthétiques des auteurs, de Yeats en particulier.27 (Bariou, 1990, p. 67)

18 The project was carefully thought of and its objectives were well defined. Yeats encouraged the creation of an authentic expression. That is to say, he encouraged authors to use a specific language for their characters; a language that would resemble the Irish people’s actual mode of expression. Synge tried to achieve this. René Agostini wrote : “Synge charrie toute une tradition orale des plus authentiques — un art, mieux, un artisanat du récit populaire […]” 28 (Agostini, 1992, p. 28). Not only is his style highly lyrical, in the sense that his characters sing the beauties of the land and sea in a deeply felt manner, but it also conveys a peculiarity which enabled him to be part of the group of the modern Irish dramatists. In one of his letters, Yeats said about Synge’s play: “I think it would be impossible to any company except ours. I can’t imagine anybody getting his peculiar rhythm without being personally instructed in it.”29 Distinctiveness and identity lie in the very rhythm of the sentence itself. Despite the multiple revisions he did on Deirdre, Synge couldn’t complete the play. Nevertheless, without any excess in the lyrical apparatus, his writing managed to let the oral tradition speak for itself. Although Synge was not as openly political as other Irish authors, like Sean O’Casey, for instance, it cannot be ignored that such a re-creation was used to boost the feelings that would lead to cultural independence.

19 The authors who undertook the rewriting of Deirdre’s story were thus Irish and Scottish. In our attempt to map the authorial history of the tale, we can see that it is still present on both sides of the inner seas in the awakening of the modern era. The marine territory appears as a metacharacteristic of the tale, always present, deeply rooted in its landscape, part of its very inner and outer structure. Among the examples cited above, the sea actually appears in the general structure of the play in the versions by A.E. and Synge only. Deirdre, Naisi and his brothers sail the inner seas twice in seven years’ time—first to reach their land of exile and secondly to go back to Ireland. The voyage occurs, to use a title belonging to Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts.30 The sea is not depicted as a major component of the story, yet it is present, and its “absent presence” (Pavis, 2002, p. 356, b) pervades Synge’s play. It is necessarily absent from the physicality of the stage but the text creates its presence off stage, like the Channel crossing of Henry’s fleet in Shakespeare’s Henry V (1965 [1954], act III). This fictional device the exchange between text and staging in terms of presence and absence, is characteristic of drama in Pavis’s words. It finds a particular application in Shakespeare’s play. At the beginning of act III, the Chorus once more appeals to the spectator’s imagination to conjure up images. After raging battles, it is question of sailing ships—Henry’s fleet navigating to Harfleur. Here, the relationship between the

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text and the performance reaches the far end limit of drama proper, to stand on the brink of story-telling. In Synge’s play, the motif of the sea itself is used to render the presence of an absence. Act one ends on Deirdre and Naisi’s wedding celebrated by Ainle who invokes all the natural elements, among which the sea, to bless the couple: “May the air bless you, and water and the wind, the sea and all the hours of the sun and moon.” (Synge, 1968, p. 215) This sounds as a pagan religious ritual in which the sea is included as a preeminent factor of the invisible action of the sacred.

20 Then, the curtain falls and opens again on the lovers in their Scottish dwelling. In act I, Naisi had imagined their stay in Scotland and had seen themselves “taking [their] journeys among the little islands in the sea” (Synge, 1968, p. 211). The imaginative work of the story-teller leads the audience on the dented shores of Western Scotland, as in a form of hypothyposis: “The stars are out Deirdre, and let you come with me quickly, for it is the stars will be our lamps many nights and we abroad in Alban, and taking our journeys among the little islands in the sea.” (Ibid.) The account is short and so vivid that it virtually transports the heroes to the Scottish shores, in a flash that constitutes their first voyage. Then, after a seven-year period described as a complete blessing for the royal lovers and their train, act II ends on Deirdre’s farewell to Scotland. She knows she is going to face death: “Woods of Cuan, woods of Cuan… It’s seven years we’ve had a life was joy only and this day we’re going west, this day we’re facing death maybe, and death should be a poor untidy thing, though it’s a queen that dies.” (Ibid., p. 239) Epizeuxis (the repetition of “woods of Cuan”) and aposiopesis (the unfinished sentence), both express Deirdre’s troubled emotional state. Then, anadiplosis, or gradatio, achieved through the doubling of the word “death”, shows the logics Deirdre’s character is following. Her own death appears more and more certain to her the further her thoughts unfold. The idea is all the more pregnant in her mind as it is repeated under derived forms: “death” and “dies” to which “west” can be added as symbolical of death, being the setting place of the sun. Besides, the rhythm of the whole passage is syncopated. Firstly, one single sentence groups several opposed thoughts: the seven- year period of joy and the looming death ahead. Secondly, the opposition in ideas is coupled with an unstable rhythm due to the missing conjunction “that.” We are tempted to read “we’ve had a life [that] was joy only”, or “only joy”. The figure, anacoluthon, produces a rupture in the sentence structure. The smoothness brought by the linking word is absent. Thus, the effect created is that of a broken oral speech. Deirdre’s agitated mind jostles the formal logics of speech. She operates an abrupt change. Uniformity and balance make way to instability and discord. Sentences are harshly disrupted, like boats on a raging sea.

21 The image of a dying queen, as Deirdre sees herself, announces an ill omen for the stability of the kingdom. Besides, the other world, the Sidh, in the Celtic mythology is situated beyond the sea, amongst other places (Guyonvarc’h & Le Roux, 1986, p. 418). It is generally a woman of the Sid, “bansid” (in English, banshee) who comes and fetches a mortal, always a man, to take him to the land of eternal youth (ibid.). Deirdre could be seen as a banshee, taking her lover to the other world and enjoying everlasting life with him. Although the place where the lovers enjoyed life most is Alba, the latter cannot be considered as the Celtic paradise. The land of eternal youth, Tίrnan Óg, the Celtic other world offers to live the same life as the human one, even a happier one. In Synge’s version, Deirdre feels the weight of time in Scotland. The magic of the land ceases after a few years spent there. Youth escapes the queen’s grasp. Although she doesn’t openly

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say it then, in act II the reader knows that Deirdre is aware of the prophecy. It is made clear in the first act, when Deirdre and Naisi meet for the first time: Naisi: You are Feidlimid’s daughter that Conchubor has walled up from all the men of Ulster? Deirdre: Do many know what is foretold, that Deirdre will be the ruin of the Sons of Usna, and have a little grave by herself, and a story will be told forever? (Synge, 1968, p. 209) The metanarrative statement emphasizes the weight of the prophecy which, right from the beginning of the play, oversteps the limits of the tale itself.

22 The argument Deirdre uses to leave her paradise is the fear of getting old. To Deirdre, dying young is better than slow decay (Synge, 1968, p. 237). In Ireland, both she and Naisi will meet their fates, but they will not see each other ageing. The contemplation of this outcome helps Deirdre decide to abide by Conchubor’s will, to trust his benevolence and go back to Ireland, where she will confront death. Like Ossian, who left the land of eternal youth and aged as soon as he set foot on the ground, after crossing the sea on horseback,31 Deirdre and Naisi face the condition of mortals in Ireland. They leave their dwelling of the east, cross the sea—the passage—and set foot in another world, as it were. When act III opens, the setting is that of Emain Macha. King Conchubor awaits the two lovers. The sea has been, at the same time, holding a safe distance between them and the jealousy of Conchubor and maintaining a link between the two territories.

23 In Fiona MacLeod’s version, the sons of Usna are “the noblest of all the Gaels of Eri and Alba” (1903, p. 32). One people for two territories separated by an expanse of sea—this is the mapping of what will become the kingdom of Dalriata, in the 6th century AD. The sea appears as a feature of interconnections between Scotland and Ireland. Deirdre and Naisi, queen and king with land possessions in Glen Etive, in some versions of the tale, can be seen as precursors of the Dalriatan sovereigns. Loch Etive is a sea loch which, in the story, serves as an umbilical cord linking the two countries as one, and enabling exchanges between them. In Synge’s work, Lavarcham says “maybe [she]’ll be sailing back and forward on the seas to be looking at [Deirdre’s] face” (Synge, 1968, p. 213). The nurse’s wish is plainly to go and see Deirdre in Alba. Yet, a double image also shows here. The sea becomes a screen on which Deirdre’s face is projected, or a mirror in which it is revealed. The use of the –ing forms, by focusing on the process, enables to visualize the voyage slowly unfolding, with the current and the waves. What the reader can conceive as being Lavarcham’s thoughts appears in between the lines. Synge manages to let the invisible materialize, as in some magical conjuring. More pragmatically, the back and forth sea sailings also let us consider the ordeal that such an enterprise would represent.

24 In the second act, Owen claims one has to be mad to cross nine seas, “nine waves” he says, “after a fool’s wife”, to which Deirdre answers that he has lost his manners after leaving the royal Emain for too long (Synge, 1968, p. 221). These nine waves may refer to the nine water bodies of the inner seas: the Minch and Little Minch, the Sound of Harris, the Inner Sound, the Sea of the Hebrides, the Firth of Lorn, the Sound of Jura, the Firth of Clyde, Belfast Lough and the North Channel. Their names may have changed through time. The geographical reality covered by the “nine waves” may be a lot different too. Nevertheless, they evoke the numerous expanses of water a sailor had to go through to reach Scotland. Furthermore, sailing on a curagh32 represents a perilous adventure, even if the small boat moved by oars could face the open seas.

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25 Deirdre chooses to sail back to Ireland “when the tide turns on the sand” she says (Synge, 1968, p. 233). “With the tide in a little while we will be journeying again”, she also declares (ibid., p. 229). The tidal motif informs the uncertain time and the risky adventure undertaken by the two heroes, Deirdre and Naisi. The wave’s swaying back and forth evokes the questioning that takes place in act II between leaving and staying. Arguments are put forward, but eventually, Deirdre’s will to face the inescapability of the prophecy prevails on Naisi’s simple desire to grow old with her in Scotland, yet considered by both as an ideal place. She purposely chooses flying from paradise, a hazardous sailing and a promise of destruction.

26 Some have seen Deirdre as a weak character unable to stand on her own two feet without her husband. This sole idea has been interpreted as a motivation for suicide (Doyle, 1999, pp. 33–46). Yet, in the oldest version of the story, Deirdre confronts a violent death: she crashes her skull against a rock. This doesn’t look like a sign of weakness. The episode is not present in Synge’s or in Yeats’s plays in which Deirdre “merely” stabs herself. However, both authors have revealed the character’s strength. In both versions, it is the sea metaphor which helps convey the heroine’s toughness. In Yeats’s drama, Deirdre asserts that she is not like queen Edain who “had but the cold blood of the sea in her veins”.33 Deirdre’s veins are “hot”, “[she has] not been born of the cold, haughty waves” (Yeats, 1934, p. 190). In Synge’s play, she says: “If Conchubor’ll make me a queen, I’ll have the right of a queen who is master, taking her own choice, and making a stir to the edges of the sea” (Synge, 1968, p. 199). The sea is used in two different ways. On the one hand, its coldness serves to emphasize the contrast with Deirdre’s fiery temper. On the other hand, the water expanse materializes the extent of the queen’s power. In both cases, Deirdre’s character amplifies into the figure of a great queen. The sea turns into a metaphorical device enabling her to do so.

27 In MacLeod’s The House of Usna, Duach, says of Cathbad’s prophecy: “Ay: that before his eyes he saw a sea of blood, and saw it rise and rise till it overflowed great straths, and laved the flanks of high hills, and from the summits of the mountains poured down upon the lands of the Gael in a thundering flood, blood-red, to the blood-red sea.” (MacLeod, 1903, p. 39) In this statement, the red sea does not open to let the elected people go. On the contrary, it is a sea of blood, flooding the countries of the Gael (Ireland and Scotland) and engulfing the warriors of the Red Branch, to which the Sons of Uisneach belong. Although it seems apparent, the Christian motif is absent from the symbolism chosen by MacLeod. Straths (wide glens) are flooded. The heroes of the tale cannot escape. They are not the chosen ones who will be saved by the Christian God. MacLeod may have used a Christian image to start with, but it is eventually distorted. The motif of the flood remains, which can be seen as a Christian undertone, but it is not treated in the same way as in the Bible. Besides, in Celtic mythology, there is no avenging or rewarding God. In Deirdre’s story especially, the emphasis is laid on the capacity of the woman to take the lead as regards the clan’s destiny. The heroes of the tale will meet their fates and the outcome will be deadly. The sea turns out to be a major symbolical element, suggesting looming peril. Once again, a concrete phenomenon (the sea is potentially mortal) is associated to myth. Nature proves a major source of inspiration for the epic. The tone is elevated and heroic. As in the Iliad, the heroes undertake a perilous voyage towards their fate. Although the sea image is prophetical rather than taking an actual part in the course of action, it remains this

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concrete, objective element which gives authority to the epic, according to Northrop Frye: “With the Iliad, once and for all an objective and disinterested element enters into the poet’s vision of human life. With this element, […] poetry acquires the authority that since the Iliad it has never lost, an authority based, like the authority of science, on the vision of nature as an impersonal order.” (Childs & Fowler, 2006, p. 70) This order is inexorable, it is part of the general pattern of the story, in which the fate of the characters appears as an inflexible combination of events. Deirdre is the epic heroin who leads her clan to their fate after a perilous voyage. However, the epic merges with the tragic when the sea takes the colour of blood. MacLeod’s writing renders the ambient hazard and looming downfall with the use of diacope. Words are repeated at brief intervals: “rise and rise”, “blood-red to the blood-red sea” creating an effect of deep, overwhelming emotion. The reader or the spectator cannot but be absorbed in the cleft created by the figure of speech. There is a break in the sentence rhythm together with an insistence on the image of the rising red sea. As a result, Cathbad’s words destabilize and submerge at the same time. The effect is all encompassing.

28 Later in the play, Duach warns Conchubor who wants his son Cormac to rule after him: “Beware, O Concobar, of the foam of dreams. It is only the great wave that can lift Eiré.” (MacLeod, 1903, p. 45) The tone has changed here, and the movement is different. Far from being feared, the wave seems to be expected. The word “lift” suggests a vertical movement as well as a major change. To lift a whole country, a great power must be at work. Deirdre can be seen as the wave that will change Ireland (and Scotland maybe) no matter what may come of it, even if war and bloodshed ensue. This can be interpreted as prefiguring the fight for the Irish independence from Britain, and the revival of Irish identity, which Scotland observed so closely. Therefore, the territory on both sides of the inner seas appears to be mapped according to the identity criterion as well.

29 The oxymoronic power of the sea suggests belonging and exile, bond and rupture, between the mythological past and modernity, between determinism and individualism, between fatality and freedom. In Synge’s lyrical play, words flow, forming a unique territory between Ireland and Scotland. Water becomes an element of “the self-metamorphosis of a girl into a mythic queen or a heroine, the parable of an individual who accomplishes himself” (Agostini, 1992, p. 24). The inner seas may serve as a rite of passage for the self-accomplishment of a territory too. In that sense, the character of Deirdre stands as the metaphor of countries involved in a cultural revival, which experience the indomitable yearn for the expression of their proper voices. Authors, among whom Yeats especially, had ambitions (which he later revoked) of an international pan-Celtism. Both Scotland and Ireland had to draw on their ancient roots to reveal their present identity.

30 Thus, wandering the inner seas indicates a quest for meaning and identity. The number of modern rewritings of Deirdre’s story shows how significant it was at the time of the Irish cultural revival. As we have seen, the myth seems to be inseparable from politics, on both sides of the inner seas. Scotland took a different route in her modern awakening but Ireland chose to meet her fate, as it were, however tragic. The fights for the independence of the country were recurrent and bloody. Yet, a renewal came from this will to confront the inevitable; the political status of the country changed.

31 In Synge’s case, the tragic quest was biographical since he died before finishing his play. In his preface to Deirdre of the Sorrows, Yeats asserts that the drama paved the way

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to Synge’s own end in the sense that it accompanied him: “[…] so much beauty is there in its course, and such wild nobleness in its end, and so poignant is an emotion and wisdom that were his own preparation for death.” (Synge, 1968, p. 180) The beauty of the wilderness comes to mind and remains present as a major feature of the play. Especially, the strength of the inner seas resounds as a permanent echo to the ear. Sounds of an ancient past come ashore and inform the present. The waves beat the irregular tempo of the words. They know stories that involve men on both sides of the inner seas. They tell who these men and countries are.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

BEST R. I. (ed. and trans.), 1910, Suidigud Tellaig Temra, The Settling of the Manor of Tara, from the Yellow Book of Lecan, col. 740–9 (end 14th–beginning 15th century) and the Book of Lismore, fol. 90a–92a (15th century), in Ériu, vol. 4, pp. 121–72. Available on .

COIMÍN Micheál, 1896, Laoi Oisin ar thír na n-óg: The Lay of Oisín in the Land of Youth, [AD 1750], with revised text, literal translation, new metrical version, notes and vocabulary, Dublin, Tomás Ó Flannghaile (ed.).

HULL Vernam (ed.), 1949, Longes mac n-Uislenn. The Exile of the Sons of Uisliu, [Reconstituted text based on the Book of Leinster MS, with introduction, translation, and notes], New York and London. Available on .

HYDE Douglas, 1895, The Three Sorrows of Story-telling and Ballads of Saint Columkille, London, T. Fisher Unwin.

MACLEOD Fiona, 1903, The House of Usna, Portland (Maine), Thomas B. Mosher, reproduced by Leopold classic Library.

SYNGE John Millington, 1968, Deirdre of the Sorrows, in Collected Works, Volume IV: Plays Book II, A. Saddlemyer (ed.), London, Oxford University Press.

SHAKESPEARE William, 1965, King Henry V [1954], J. H. Walter (ed.), London, Methuen.

YEATS William Butler, 1897, Review of Fiona MacLeod’s Spiritual Tales, in The Sketch, 28 April.

YEATS William Butler, 1952, Deirdre, in The Collected Plays of W. B. Yeats [1934], London, MacMillan.

Secondary Sources

Articles

AGOSTINI René, 1992, “À propos de Deirdre des douleurs”, in Deirdre, variations sur un mythe celtique, La Gacilly, Artus.

DOYLE Maria Elena, 1999, “A spindle for Battle: Feminism, Myth, and the Woman Nation in Irish Revival Drama”, Theatre Journal, vol. 51, The John Hopkins University Press, pp. 33–46.

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ERSKINE Ruaraidh, 1975, Guthna Bliadhna, XV [1918], in James Hunter, “The Gaelic Connection: The Highlands, Ireland and Nationalism: 1873–1922”, The Scottish Historical Review, vol. 54, no. 158, part 2, Edinburgh University Press, p. 99. Available on (consulted 18 September 2016).

HUNTER James, 1975, “The Gaelic Connection: The Highlands, Ireland and Nationalism: 1873– 1922”, The Scottish Historical Review, vol. 54, no. 158, part 2, Edinburgh University Press, p. 180. Available on (consulted 18 September 2016).

MACKINNON Donald, 1904, “The Glenmasan Manuscript, with Translation”, The Celtic Review, no. 1, Edinburgh.

NEWMAN Conor, 1998, “Reflections on the Making of a ‘Royal Site’ in Early Ireland”, World Archaeology, vol. 30, no. 1 (The Past in the Past: The Reuse of Ancient Monuments), Taylor & Francis, pp. 127–41.

Books and dictionaries

BALDICK Chris, 2004, The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Literary Terms [1996], Oxford, New York.

BARIOU Michel, 1990, Deirdre et la renaissance celtique, La Gacilly, Artus.

CHILDS Peter & FOWLER Roger, 2006, The Routledge Dictionary of Literary Terms, based on A Dictionary of Modern Critical Terms [1973], edited by Roger Fowler, London and New York, Routledge.

DALY Dominic, 1974, The Young Douglas Hyde: The Dawn of the Irish Revolution and Renaissance, 1874– 1893, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

GRELLET Françoise, 1996, A Handbook of Literary Terms, Paris, Hachette.

GUYONVARC’H Christian & LE ROUX Françoise, 1986, Les Druides, Rennes, Ouest-France Université.

MAC CANA Proinsias, 1997, Les Celtes [1991], Sabatino Moscati, Otto Hermann Frey, Venceslas Kruta, Barry Raftery, Miklós Szabó (eds), Paris, Stock.

MACKINNON Donald, 1912, A Descriptive Catalogue of Gaelic Manuscripts in the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh, and Elsewhere in Scotland, Edinburgh.

PAVIS Patrice, 2002, Dictionnaire du théâtre, Paris, Armand Colin.

WATSON William J., 1993, The History of the Celtic Place-Names of Scotland [1926], Edinburgh and London, reprinted by Birlinn, Edinburgh.

NOTES

1. In order to provide a certain reading comfort, the proper nouns have been transcribed within brackets. The pronunciation here advised cannot be but approximate. An accurate pronunciation indication would require a proper phonetic transcription. 2. “Glossary and Guide to Pronunciation” in Synge (1968, p. XXXV). 3. Ibid. 4. . 5. D. Hyde, The Three Sorrows of Story-telling and Ballads of Saint Columkille, T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1895, p. 149. Columkille is one of the successors of the Abbey of Iona situated in Scotland. Once again, in a single book, although written in the 19th century, Scotland and Ireland saddle across the Inner Seas.

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6. “Glossary and Guide to Pronunciation” in Synge (1968). 7. Ibid. 8. “The Greek tragic hero gets lost precisely by struggling to escape a determinism he cannot avoid because it haunts him and sticks to him. The Celtic hero puts so much more passion and determination into what he is living as he knows or guesses about his destiny. Deirdre chooses to meet her destiny, she ‘provokes it’”. [My translation] 9. Dublin, Trinity College Library, 1339 olim H. 2.18 al. Book of Leinster, pp. 259b–261b; 12th century (oldest version). Dublin, Trinity College Library, 1318 olim H. 2.16 al. Yellow Book of Lecan, col. 749–53; 14th century. 10. Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS 72.2.3 (Advocates Library, MS 53, Scottish Collection), 15th century, vellum, 27 leaves, of whom 25 folios are fully written upon, in 101 consecutively numbered columns; the outer two leaves cover the MS. (For details see Mackinnon, 1912, pp. 158–62.) 11. The curragh or currach, small boat moved by oars, was able to sail the high seas, despite of its simple making: “A small boat made of wickerwork covered with hides, used from ancient times in Scotland and Ireland; a coracle.” (OED online) 12. The points on the map show the approximate locations of places according to their actual archeological settings. The placement on the map was made visually. It is meant to give an idea of the locations referred to in the tale and is by no means a hundred percent geographically accurate document. The situation on the map of the place where Deirdre was brought up, Slieve Fuadh, is more of a guess work than anything else. There is a place by that name situated near Newtown Hamilton (County Armagh). Since it is not far from Emain Macha, the site was accepted for the present research. It would need further inquiry, provided we could actually find something satisfactory. 13. “Glossary and Guide to Pronunciation” in Synge (1968). 14. Ibid. 15. “The Royal sites […] were all sites of major royal inauguration, ceremony and assembly, representing each of the four Irish provinces: Ulster, Leinster, Munster and Connaught, as well as the region of Meath. Navan Fort is portrayed as the royal site for the kings of Ulster; Dún Ailinne for the kings of Leinster; Cashel for the kings of Munster and Rathcroghan for the kings of Connaught. Tara was the seat of the kings of Meath and the seat of the Irish high kings. In addition the Hill of Uisneach is traditionally the epicenter (navel) of Ireland, where the five provinces met. The sites are strongly linked to myth and legend and are associated with the transformation of Ireland from paganism to Christianity and Saint Patrick.” () 16. “There are five celebrated royal sites in ancient Ireland, Teamhair, Cruiachain, Emain Macha, Dun Ailinne and Caisel, all since identified with extant archaeological monuments and complexes, namely Tara (Co. Meath) […], Rathcroghan (Co. Roscommon), Navan Fort (Co. Armagh), Knockaulin (Co. Kildare) and Cashel (Co. Tipperary), with a sixth, Uisneach (Co. Westmeath), described in some sources as the umbilical centre of Ireland, the meeting place of the five provinces, a royal site in its own right, with traditions of druidical fire ceremony (Byrne 1973).” (Newman, 1998, pp. 127–41) 17. Best (1910): , stanza 32. 18. Ibid., stanza 33. 19. “ Geis, pluriel geasa : « injonction, obligation, interdit » […]. Le sens initial est celui d’une « incantation » basée sur le pouvoir de la parole vivante, inscrit dans l’étymologie de guidid « il prie » et de gûth « voix ». La traduction de geis par « tabou » est à proscrire : le tabou n’est pas une notion indo- européenne et son aspect uniquement négatif est en contradiction avec le sens souvent positif du mot irlandais.ˮ [Gais, plural geasa: “injunction, obligation, interdiction” […]. The original meaning is that of an “incantation” based on the power of the living word, as it is inscribed in the etymology

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of guidid “he prays” and gûth “voice”. The translation of geis by “taboo” is to be proscribed: the taboo is not an Indo-European notion and its purely negative aspect is in contradiction with the often positive meaning of the Irish word]”. (Guyonvarc’h & Le Roux, 1986, p. 394) [English translation is mine.] 20. Definition of an epic/heroic poem, in Grellet (1996, p. 36). 21. Definition of “tragedy” in Childs & Fowler (2006, p. 241). 22. Ibid. 23. Daly (1974, pp. 78–81, 105–6) qtd in Hunter (1975, p. 183). 24. “Synge, quant à lui a probablement emprunté la division tripartite de Deirdre of the Sorrows à la pièce de AE”. 25. Synge (1968, p. 238). As it is noted, “dear country of the east” is a variation in the version of Deirdre’s last speech in the second act as it is printed in the Cuala and Maunsel editions. 26. Ibid., p. 237. 27. “Since 16th January 1899, with the foundation of the Irish Literary Theatre by Yeats, a precise project aims to give new plays to the public, going away from the conventions of commercial British drama and the Shakespearean repertory. But up to 1902, this theatre suffered from a major flaw which is the obligation to appeal to British companies to stage its plays. However, their diction neither corresponds to the requirements of the text nor to the aesthetic needs of the authors, of Yeats in particular.” [My translation] 28. “Synge drags along a whole oral tradition of the most authentic popular tale telling—an art, better a craft.” [My translation] 29. Letter to John Quinn, 27 April 1908, The Letters of W. B. Yeats, ed. Allan Wade, p. 150, in Synge (1968, p. 179). 30. Between the Acts is Virginia Woolf’s last novel. It was published posthumously in 1941. 31. M. Coimín, Laoi Oisin ar thír na n-óg: The Lay of Oisín in the Land of Youth (AD 1750), with revised text, literal translation, new metrical version, notes and vocabulary, Dublin, Tomás Ó Flannghaile (ed.), 1896. . 32. “Whose curagh is rowing from Ulster? I saw the oars through the tops of the trees”, in Synge (1968, p. 217). 33. Deirdre’s words, in Yeats (1952, p. 192).

ABSTRACTS

From the ancient story preserved in the 12th century Book of Leinster to 20th century versions, Longes mac nUislenn (The Exile of the Sons of Usnach) has been told and retold. It is a story of travel from Ireland to Scotland and back to Ireland again after seven years of exile. Deirdre of the Sorrows (1909) is John Millington Synge’s highly lyrical version. It adds a philosophical aspect to the myth and deals with Irish identity, at a time when the Celtic Revival was strongly expressed by artists. In the awakening of the Modern era, the story was rewritten by Irish authors, Synge and William Butler Yeats, as well as by a Scottish writer, Fiona McLeod (William Sharp). Thus, not only is the area of the inner seas present within the story of Deirdre itself, but also it appears to be an important feature in

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the mapping of the authorial history of the tale, as a metacharacteristic, imbedded, deeply rooted, always present. This paper aims to show that it plays an essential part in a story which has become, through the ages, a quest for meaning and identity.

Depuis le récit datant du XIIe siècle, conservé dans le Livre de Leinster, jusqu’aux versions modernes, Longes mac nUislenn (L’Exil des fils d’Usnach), a été maintes fois raconté. C’est une histoire de voyage, de l’Irlande vers l’Écosse, puis vers l’Irlande à nouveau, après un exil de sept années. Deirdre des douleurs (1909) est la version de John Millington Synge. D’une beauté lyrique, cette pièce ajoute un aspect philosophique au mythe. Elle traite de l’identité irlandaise, en une période où le renouveau celtique était fortement exprimé par les artistes. À l’aube de l’ère moderne, l’histoire a été beaucoup réécrite par les auteurs irlandais, Synge et William Butler Yeats notamment, mais aussi par un auteur écossais, Fiona MacLeod (William Sharp). Ainsi, non seulement la zone des mers intérieures est-elle présente dans l’histoire de Deirdre elle-même, mais elle apparaît aussi comme un trait important de la cartographie de l’histoire auctoriale du conte, telle une métacharactéristique, intrinsèque à l’histoire, profondément présente. Cet article souhaite montrer que les mers intérieures jouent un rôle important dans une histoire qui est devenue, au fil du temps, une quête de sens et d’identité.

INDEX

Keywords: the sea, link and rupture, exile, identity Mots-clés: la mer, lien et rupture, exil, identité

AUTHOR

CÉLINE SAVATIER-LAHONDÈS Université Clermont Auvergne, IRHIM-UMR 5317 CNRS. University of Stirling, Scotland, United Kingdom. Céline Savatier-Lahondès is a fourth year PhD student, working under the joint supervision of Professor Danièle Berton from the University of Clermont-Auvergne (France), and Professor John Drakakis, from the University of Stirling (UK). She is also an “agrégée” secondary school English teacher in France. Her research center is IRHIM Clermont, CNRS, UMR 5317. She has already had the opportunity to communicate elements of her research in conferences in France and in Ireland. Apart from this one in Études écossaises, two of her articles have been recently accepted for publication: eCrini, in Nantes, on “Debt and Indebtedness in Medieval Texts” and Notes and Queries, Oxford (UK), on the walking forest in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. These articles are expected to be published between March and June 2017.

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William Daniell’s “Periplus”: Littoral Travel and Aesthetic Representation in Scotland and Asia Le Periplus de William Daniell : voyage au fil du littoral et représentation esthétique en Écosse et en Asie

Elizabeth Mjelde

For Daniel, with thanks

1 During the 1810s and 1820s, collectors of landscape imagery acquainted with the work of William Daniell may have found the aquatints in his new series of views, A voyage round Great Britain, to look curiously familiar.1 As a practitioner of picturesque discourse, Daniell approached the production of landscape imagery according to aesthetic rules derived from the study of paintings by seventeenth-century Continental artists—Claude Lorrain and Aelbert Cuyp, among others—but his debt to such artists is not discussed here. Rather, the imagery Daniell produced for A voyage round Great Britain, a project he began in 1813 and completed in 1825, owed a great deal to an earlier publication of his own, A picturesque voyage to India by the way of China, published in 1810.2 That the artist based imagery of the British coastline on compositions that he had constructed while traveling in Asia is a matter overdue for analysis and the subject of this essay.

2 The eight volumes and 308 individual views that comprise A voyage round Great Britain is a project sufficiently complex to necessitate multiple approaches of study. Scholars have explored individual aquatints from the series, especially from the standpoint of natural history.3 Since the aim of this study is to consider ways that Daniell’s observations of people and land in Asia informed his descriptions of Britain’s shores, significant attention is devoted to the discursive patterns within which he worked. Analysis reveals that his representations of Scotland’s coastlines share a great deal with

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his imagery of littoral sites in Asia, not because of actual similarities of topography but due to the aesthetic priorities he employed when seeking out views.

3 As a teen, Daniell worked as an apprentice to his uncle, Thomas Daniell, with whom he traveled in and around South Asia from 1786 to 1794, gathering material for paintings and aquatint publications. William Daniell continued to produce imagery based on his travel experiences well into the 1830s. The colonialist aesthetic that he and his uncle cultivated to convey ideas about people and land while abroad was strongly based on picturesque practice in Britain. For scholars of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British ideas, the picturesque must be wrestled with, not only because it was among the most popular means by which to produce travel accounts (hence a ubiquitous presence in the literature and documentation of British expansion), but because its rules required artists and writers to edit systematically their experiences of the natural world, a process that often resulted in the communication of misinformation about people and land subsumed by, or on the margins of, empire.

4 To address ways that William Daniell’s career as a colonial artist influenced how he saw and depicted home is partly a question of empire, but A voyage round Great Britain is also tied to the emergence of national identity in pre-Victorian Britain. The period during which Daniell worked as a professional artist coincided with the Peninsular War as well as the launch of Britain’s second empire, both of which spurred strong nationalist sentiment. In undertaking A voyage round Great Britain, Daniell produced a work of national scope, the scale of which rivaled other monumental projects of the era, from John Soane’s designs for the Bank of England to the establishment of the National Gallery.4 In 1821, he dedicated the fifth volume of A voyage round Great Britain to George IV, referring to the work as “my laborious Periplus round this highly favoured Island”. In doing so, Daniell equated A voyage round Great Britain with the celebrated first century document of ancient navigation and trade in the Indian Ocean, The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea.5

5 These strands for analysis—aesthetic discourse, colonial expansion, and nationalism— intersect in Daniell’s representations of Scotland’s coasts. It was there the artist came to terms with an alternative discursive practice that enabled him to fine-tune his conception and conveyance of nationhood during a period of intense colonial development. But why Scotland, in particular?

From the Pearl River Delta to Skyreburn Bay

6 Upon settling in London after travelling extensively along the littoral of the Indian Ocean and South China Sea, William and Thomas Daniell proceeded to publish numerous series of aquatints, most notably Oriental Scenery. Somewhat belatedly, they published A picturesque voyage to India by the way of China, a volume of fifty aquatints, in 1810. Therein they described people and land as if the subjects they depicted in their sketchbooks would remain unchanged over the course of time.

7 In China’s Pearl River Delta, “scenery near Hotun” likely caught the attention of the Daniells not because it was remarkable, unusual, or curious but because it reminded the artists of seventeenth-century landscape paintings that they and their British patrons admired. They referred to their aquatint of the region, Hotun, on the Canton River

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(Figure 1), as “a specimen of the general aspect” of the area’s riverscape environment, which they described as follows: The bordering hills crowned with lofty trees; the gentle acclivities, whose lively verdure is insensibly lost in the deeper foliage of the woods; the solitary pagoda, encircled by trees, the rice fields stretching to the water’s edge, and every where intersected by fertilizing streams; these are the general features of the country, and they are such as perpetually delight the eye by their variety, luxuriance, and amenity.6 Substitute “castle” for “pagoda” and “wheat” for “rice” and their description could just as well apply to one of the aquatints that William Daniell produced for the second volume of A voyage round Great Britain in 1816, Cardness Castle, near Gatehouse, Kirkcudbrightshire (Figure 2). Both images present tranquil riverscapes. Small sailing vessels positioned on a sequence of planes emphasize a serpentine course of water that reflects boats and local architecture. Daniell strategically positioned himself in relation to the landscape elements at each site to maximize the possibility of creating picture- like effects. Distinctive buildings (a castle, a temple) stand before a backdrop of hills, which extend deeply into the farthest plane, while tiny figures punt or row their way through both aquatints. Perceived similarities of locale, however, are due less to topographical similarities between Kirkcudbrightshire and the Pearl River region than to the employment of picturesque discourse at these sites.

Figure 1. – Thomas Daniell and William Daniell, Hotun, on the Canton River, 1810.

Courtesy of The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

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Figure 2. – William Daniell, Cardness Castle, near Gatehouse, Kirkcudbrightshire, 1816.

Courtesy of the Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.

8 The texts that accompany these aquatints indicate that Daniell not only imposed visual patterns of representation while traveling but that he approached local information by means of particular ways of knowing. It was not what was new in the landscape that was assumed to be of interest to readers but that which was already familiar. In Hotun, on the Canton River, the Daniells discounted the traditional religious function of the Chinese temple with the suggestion that its usefulness was instead aesthetic, writing, “it does not appear that these religious-looking edifices are consecrated to public or private worship, and they are often introduced for no other purpose than to embellish a fine prospect”.7 In the description of Cardoness Castle that accompanies Daniell’s aquatint of it, the artist’s writing partner, Richard Ayton, addressed not the castle’s function or history but its aesthetic value (or lack thereof), referring to it as “a specimen of the utmost degree of plainness that masonry can admit of.”8 It was the role that Cardoness Castle played vis-à-vis the other elements of landscape that was of primary interest to the picturesque adept, and which could redeem the “plainness” of the castle, since […] in spite of its exceeding rudeness, when seen from a little distance, and combined with the scenery of a very picturesque bay, is a good object, possessing the interest of evident antiquity, and not without some appearance of dignity.9 Ayton’s description of the castle in relation to its environment betrays the influence of Reverend William Gilpin, Britain’s most popular practitioner of the picturesque. Gilpin described Tintern Abbey in similar terms, that is, best appreciated in the context of its environment.10 While sketching the domestic landscape of Britain, Gilpin’s picturesque priorities led him to privilege certain landscape elements over others, a process of visual editing that at times amounted to misrepresentation.

9 An example of Reverend Gilpin’s influence upon Daniell’s project in this regard is the manner in which Daniell organized the composition of Cardness Castle, near Gatehouse,

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Kirkcudbrightshire. Gilpin strongly advocated for the representation of river imagery in the domestic landscape, going so far as to suggest that “the picturesque eye” could be pleasantly fooled by what could be perceived as a river.11 He noted that “lakes sometimes appear in the form of rivers of the larger kind, so rivers sometimes assume the form of lakes” and, at any rate, “rivers […] at the end of their courses become estuaries; and lead to sea coasts, and bays. There are very few modes of composition susceptible of greater beauty”.12 Richard Ayton described Cardoness Castle in relation to “a very picturesque bay”, but the vantage point chosen by Daniell for the aquatint excluded Skyreburn Bay. The artist positioned his viewers instead to look away from it, beyond even the estuary of the Water of Fleet, whose narrow banks are visible at the lower left and right, the boats upon it drawing one’s gaze towards the northeast.

10 Reverend Gilpin valued beauty more than an accurate accounting of landscape elements at a site, an aspect of the picturesque that points to its unreliability in transmitting local information. That Daniell depicted Skyreburn Bay to look like a river in his view of Cardoness Castle demonstrates his reliance upon the formulaic nature of the discourse. Even so, as Daniell made his way around the perimeter of Scotland, he demonstrated a willingness to bend or break the rules of the picturesque.

Between Dwygyfylchi and Forfarshire

11 Throughout the years William Daniell produced A voyage round Great Britain, picturesque discourse continued to be pervasive in the work of artists in the colonies. Its popularity within Britain, however, waned in favor of Romanticism, wherein artists attended to natural, local details at the sites they depicted. A shift away from the generalizing tendencies of the picturesque is apparent in Daniell’s work as one follows the artist into the latter volumes of his project.

12 In an aquatint from the second volume, Penman-maur, taken from near Aber, N. Wales of 1815 (Figure 3), a collection of objects on the near shore—a boat, rocks, a scattering of birds—anchors the left side of the composition. In a later print, Dundee, Forfarshire of 1822 (Figure 4), produced for volume six, the artist again anchored the composition at the lower left, employing a silhouette of natural foliage for this purpose. In both prints Daniell offset this visual weight by pulling one’s eyes diagonally upwards and to the right, to the large hill in Dwygyfylchi, Wales or the impressive boughs of a tree in Forfarshire, Scotland. Intersecting the diagonal thrust are representations of people. At Penmanmaur these figures walk into the view, becoming part of it. At Dundee they are positioned before the view, as if arrested by it. In the latter the sunlight is so bright that its reflections upon the water create sharp, white highlights. The cheerful disposition of the day in combination with an implied conversation among the figures suggests openness and companionableness. By contrast, the figures who make their way towards Penmaenmawr walk through a landscape in which the light changes depending on the cloud cover, traces of which wrap around the hill. If the figures in the Welsh landscape converse, their conversation is a private one. The local landscape is not a spectacle to be absorbed but a place to move through.

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Figure 3. – William Daniell, Penman-maur, taken from near Aber, N. Wales, 1815.

Courtesy of the Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.

Figure 4. – William Daniell, Dundee, Forfarshire, 1822.

Courtesy of The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

13 To accompany Daniell’s representation of Penmaenmawr, Richard Ayton included an account of his ascent of it, in the company of a local guide. Ayton found that the “very steep” and “horribly rugged” climb nevertheless afforded “a prospect that would have amply repaid the labour of a much more difficult expedition”.13 As with the figures in

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Daniell’s print, Ayton appears to have traversed the landscape without taking in its details. Acknowledging only the difficulty of the trek until he was rewarded with a view, Ayton then described the scene by means of Gilpin’s picturesque principles, naming the individual elements of landscape that comprised the whole: sea, shoreline, plain, and meadow: To my right was the blue expanse of boundless sea, and in front the yellow sands, divided by a thousand winding streaks of water, and bordered by a lovely plain, spread out beneath my eye, and covered with corn and pasture, and tufted wood […].14 Ayton compared the “long stripe of meadow land […] a brilliant green edging the sands, and the remaining surface adorned with a warm and blended colouring” to “the rich border of an Indian shawl”.15 Having dissolved the landscape into abstraction, he distanced one of its elements further from its own local self through comparison with a prized article of clothing from the East Indies.

14 William Daniell constructed the view of Dundee with the same organizational principles as the view of Penmaenmawr but placed greater value on the specificity of individual surfaces, down to the glittering reflections of light on the surface of the water, a natural detail that Gilpin rejected as undesirable in an image, finding that “broken lights” such as these had a tendency to “destroy the harmony” of an otherwise picturesque view, injuring its “repose”. That Daniell handled the depiction of light and surface differently at Dundee was likely the result of a willingness on his part to craft a response to what he called the “agreeable contrast” of visiting Dundee in comparison to “most, if not all the places of the north”; he found the city “a decided improvement in the aspect of both persons and things” and the result was a “change upon the mind”. In other words, Daniell went beyond observation at Dundee: he experienced it, a matter of “passing from solitude to society, from gloom to light, from melancholy to mirth”.16 Between Dwygyfylchi and Forfarshire Daniell adopted an approach to viewing and representing landscape in a manner akin to Romanticism, enabling him to offer ready opinions about the ways that changes in the “aspect of both persons and things” affected his mind and mood.

15 Romantic poets such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge based much of their subject matter on the domestic landscape, but unlike practitioners of the picturesque they drew a distinction between the familiar and the local. In a sonnet by Wordsworth of 1802, the poet characterized England as a “[…] fen/Of stagnant waters”, the result of Englishmen having become too self-absorbed.17 Coleridge, in agreement with Wordsworth, suggested that people’s minds needed to be awakened from “the lethargy of custom”. In his Biographia Literaria of 1817, Coleridge wrote that to truly experience the landscape was not possible if it was too familiar. To him, the world was “an inexhaustible treasure, but for which in consequence of the film of familiarity and self solicitude we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand”.18 For a colonial artist such as Daniell, depicting the British landscape according to a Romantic aesthetic required him to reconceive his relationship with the local landscape, the place where Romanticism and the picturesque collide.

16 Daniell conceived of A voyage round Great Britain as a picturesque project but questioned his reliance on the discourse after commencing with travel. Juxtaposition of two texts— his publication proposal for the series and the introduction to the first published volume—indicates that the artist was conflicted about adopting an approach to landscape representation characterized solely as picturesque. Daniell’s proposal reveals

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that his initial title for the project was A picturesque voyage round Great Britain, but upon publication the artist omitted the word “picturesque”. In the proposal, Daniell characterized the goal of the series, as follows: […] to give a Descriptive Account of the Coast, and of every object worthy of observation in its Vicinity; of the Towns, Harbours, Forts, and the general Character and appearance of the Shire round the Island.19

17 In the introduction to the first volume, however, he and Ayton claimed to value not generalization but specificity, inasmuch as that they would focus “minutely” on the coastline, examining “every point, and stone, and cranny”.20 They vowed to move beyond depiction of Britain’s popular coastal resorts, which lacked “ruggedness and sublimity, features for which coastal scenery is most to be admired”.21 In short, the team promised Britons the “boldness” of their own shores while simultaneously offering picturesque beauty.22 While Daniell was not willing to avoid sites that lent themselves to picturesque organization, he would capitalize on opportunities to engage in representation by means of a Romantic sensibility.23

18 Still, the fact that William Daniell initially planned to market A voyage round Great Britain as a picturesque project is a testament to the degree to which the discourse was fundamental to his way of seeing and conceptualizing landscape. Daniell’s decision to implement an admixture of discursive elements suggests not so much a diminishing of the presence of the picturesque in his work as it signified an attempt to implement an approach that allowed him to attend to the British landscape in a more direct way. I suggest that it was Daniell’s encounter with the work of Walter Scott that allowed him to achieve as much in the latter volumes of A voyage round Great Britain. Daniell and Scott shared a similar approach to the production of landscape imagery. As it turns out, the Romantic poet was a picturesque adept.

From the Sunda Strait to Ayrshire

19 In 1815, the year after William Daniell published the first volume of A voyage round Great Britain, Walter Scott brought out The Lord of the Isles, a chronicle in verse celebrating Scotland’s independence as a result of the leadership of Robert the Bruce. Reviewers of the poem found the narrative, and even Scott’s use of language, flawed, but were impressed by the poet’s ability to create a convincing and compelling sense of landscape. A gentle critic found the poem’s “imagery” equal to the story in “spirit, and perhaps superior in correctness”,24 but another found Scott’s attention to landscape disruptive to his narrative, to the extent that “the mere story was only a secondary object”.25 This writer went on to compare The Lord of the Isles to “the exhibition of a national gallery, containing old historical paintings, characteristic portraits, heroic landscapes, and sea-pieces in great variety”.26 A third critic blamed Scott’s descriptive tendencies on the public, since “all that the purchasers of poetry seem to insist upon is an interesting story, spirited narrative and good picturesque descriptions of visible objects”.27 In spite of this, the reviewer had to admit that Scott “describes […] such a flow of life”.28

20 Analyzing the distinctive visual properties of The Lord of the Isles, Ann Guest has identified the palette of the poem as “blue-dominated”: “Harmonizing with the nautical background are azure hills and ‘dark-blue land’, eyes that flash blue rather than red, an unusual blue horizon for a battle scene, and blue-gleaming swords.”29 And to what end?

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“Whether gloomy or sunny, misty or clear, Scott’s scenery is convincing—both visually and emotionally—and hence Romantic in the truest sense.”30

21 William Daniell took The Lord of the Isles to heart. In 1818 the artist dedicated the third volume of A voyage round Great Britain to Walter Scott, characterizing the aquatints therein as a “series of views” that “associate themselves with the vivid pictures which your last great poem presents of the magnificent scenery of the Isles”.31 Critics and literary theorists alike have discussed The Lord of the Isles within the parameters of Romanticism, its language capable of communicating “the desolate grandeur which marks the scenery of the northern Highlands”32 and “all the horrific grandeur and awful sublimity of which inanimate nature is capable”.33 But the degree to which Scott was rooted in picturesque discourse remains to be determined.

22 Scott was likely well read in the literature of the picturesque, since upon building his estate, Abbotsford, he would manage its physical environs according to picturesque principles.34 Concerning the degree to which the discourse informed The Lord of the Isles, one must peruse the journal Scott produced while traveling to remote sites as a guest of the Commissioners of Northern Lights in 1814, a trip that provided him with the source material necessary to build the poem. In the journal, “Vacation 1814”, Scott evaluated the landscape of Scotland’s islands in picturesque terms. When visiting the Isle of May to inspect an old lighthouse that was “to be abolished for an oil revolving-light”, the poet recommended that it be ruined “à la picturesque—i.e. demolishing it partially” to increase the visual appeal of the site.35 He found that island to have picturesque potential but, to his thinking, other sites fared less well from the standpoint of aesthetic satisfaction. At one point Scott complained about having to pass through a string of “low green islands, which hardly lift themselves above the sea—not a cliff or hill to be seen—what a contrast to the land we have left!”36 But he understood that the presence of hills did not guarantee a picturesque scene. At Cape Wrath, Scott wrote, “the countryside […] swells into high sweeping elevations, but without any picturesque or dignified mountainous scenery”.37 By contrast, he found the “Hill of Hoy”, which was “very steep and furrowed with ravines, and catching all the mists from the western ocean”, to have “a noble and picturesque effect in every point of view”.38

23 Scott had sufficiently schooled himself in the discourse to understand that the elements of landscape must be considered as a whole for a scene to have picturesque potential, and that the beauty of a scene could be qualified when those elements attained a cohesiveness to the eye. On 25 August 1814, having glimpsed the “highly romantic” coast of Skye with its rich vegetation, the party, after passing several small bays, finally reached “a most extraordinary scene”: […] we were surrounded by hills of the boldest and most precipitous character, and on the margin of a lake which seemed to have sustained the constant ravages of torrents from these rude neighbours. […] The proper name is Loch Corriskin, from the deep corrie or hollow in the mountains of Cuillin, which affords the basin for this wonderful sheet of water. It is as exquisite as a savage scene, as Loch Katrine is as a scene of stern beauty.39

24 Here Scott relied on picturesque discourse to differentiate between various kinds of beauty, but he would also rely on the discourse to complete a site unseen. In Morvern, Scott bolstered a description of the object of his attention—“the very imperfect ruins of the castle of Ardtornish, to which the Lords of the Isles summoned parliaments, and from whence one of them dated a treaty with the Crown of England as an independent Prince”40—by acknowledging “great promise of beauty” in its environs. He

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accomplished this by using a reference to Loch Aline as the scene’s mainstay, “a beautiful salt-water lake, with a narrow outlet to the Sound”: It is surrounded by round hills, sweetly fringed with green copse below, and one of which exhibits to the spy-glass ruins of a castle. There is great promise of beauty in its interior, but we cannot see everything.41

25 In this way, a key site in The Lord of the Isles could be included among those Scott visited in 1814 that lent themselves to a discussion of picturesque beauty.

26 Like A voyage round Great Britain, Scott’s poem was a project that concerned nationhood. A critic writing about The Lord of the Isles for The Gentleman’s Magazine found it difficult not to praise Robert the Bruce, the poem’s hero and “the deliverer of his Country”, with a surge of patriotism stemming from Britain’s difficulties with France: […] the present generation of Englishmen, Scotchmen, and Irishmen, especially brave and enterprising as their ancestors, now oppose the front of war to their foreign enemies only, under the glorious banner of the United Kingdom.42

27 William Deresiewicz finds the final canto of The Lord of the Isles particularly persuasive as a bid for national unity, in that it “explicitly likens the breathless pace of Bruce’s campaign of reconquest to that of the closing period of the Napoleonic war”.43 Scott’s narrative reconciled a fragmented political past into a cohesive whole, conjoining what was perceived as national to the realm of personal experience through Romantic description of the domestic landscape. As such, The Lord of the Isles may have motivated Daniell to reorder his aesthetic priorities and embrace an approach to the representation of nature that was both au courant and politically relevant.

28 To some degree, Walter Scott’s utilization of discourse was ambivalent. He conveyed regret about Scotland’s quickly changing rural landscape in Canto V of The Lord of the Isles, when musing about the Castle of Turnberry, the childhood home of Robert the Bruce in Ayrshire. Here the poet set past against present, “then” versus “now”: (Seek not the scene—the axe, the plough, The boor’s dull fence have marred it now,) But then, soft swept in velvet green The plain with many a glade between, Whose tangled alleys far invade The depth of the brown forest shade.44 Scott’s admonition to reader, to “Seek not the scene—” strikes of disappointment with the modern landscape, a frequent problem for picturesque adepts, who usually eliminated from their sketchbooks any object that caused obstruction or impairment to an otherwise picturesque view: “the axe, the plough, / The boor’s dull fence”. The hybridity with which Scott conceived of landscape, that is, structurally picturesque but emotionally Romantic, likely offered Daniell a way forward, allowing the artist to structure his compositions in a way that continued to feel “familiar” but convey experience of the landscape with greater immediacy.

29 For his part, William Daniell was less troubled than Scott by evidence of modernity in Ayrshire. He used it to claim the importance of the Scottish coastline for the purposes of the British Empire. Daniell pointed to Ardrossan’s potential for development as a major port, with a harbor “protected from the greatest exposure, that to the south- west, by an extensive ridge of rocks; […] It has an ample entrance for shipping as large as West Indiamen”. He noted too that there was “sufficient space for ship-building yards, and every necessary accommodation for a large port”.45 To demonstrate as much, Daniell’s “prospect of the Firth”, Pier at Ardrossan, Ayrshire of 1817 (Figure 5),

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reveals a placid harbor that easily accommodates an impressive trading ship. A pair of laborers work on shore, beneath the ship’s reflection. While Daniell found Ardrossan to be little better than “an obscure village”, its “advantages of inland and maritime navigation” would nevertheless enable it to be the object of “modern improvement”.46 To the artist’s eyes, new stone buildings in Ardrossan looked “substantial and imposing”; they recalled classical architecture, “presenting, in its fresh and nascent state, the image of a colony founded by the ancients”.47 But these impressive edifices did not make it into Pier at Ardrossan, Ayrshire, which Daniell based on an earlier aquatint, Watering Place at Anjere-Point (Figure 6), that he and his uncle had published seven years earlier, in A picturesque voyage to India by the way of China. Watering Place at Anjere-Point depicts colonial traffic along the northern coast of Java in the Sunda Strait, where an East (rather than a West) Indiaman occupies the center. Laborers and smaller vessels assume key spots in the composition that Daniell would transform into jagged, rocky outcroppings along the shoreline of Ardrossan.

Figure 5. – William Daniell, Pier at Ardrossan, Ayrshire, 1817.

Courtesy of the Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.

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Figure 6. – Thomas Daniell and William Daniell, Watering Place at Anjere-Point, 1810.

Courtesy of The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

30 Daniell required readers to think about Ardrossan’s potential as an imperial port even as he likened it to an ancient colonial outpost. But simultaneously modernizing and classicizing Ayrshire in this way required that Daniell move beyond thinking of Scotland of a foreign place, something that his writing partner, Richard Ayton, could not do. Upon arriving in Scotland, Ayton had been impressed, finding “the great expanse of the Solway Firth” a “beautiful and animating prospect”, but he failed to think of Scotland in any but partisan terms. “Had I been a Scotchman I should certainly have felt my heart leap within me at such an exhibition of my country”, wrote Ayton. “[W]ith no such right of exultation, I was not a little delighted with its beauty and the splendor of its effect.” 48

31 With Ayton’s departure from the project, however, Daniell was free to write a new role for himself, and the one he chose was characteristically Romantic: the solitary wanderer. In the concluding paragraph of the final volume, he referred to A voyage round Great Britain as “the periplus of a solitary individual”, 49 qualifying his project, finally, in terms of his Romantic self, whose attention, like the Romantic poets, was increasingly devoted to detailed representation of the “highly favoured Island”.

NOTES

1. Richard Ayton and William Daniell, A voyage round Great Britain, undertaken in the summer of the year 1813, and commencing from the Land’s End, Cornwall. With a series of views illustrative of the

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character and prominent features of the coast, drawn and engraved by William Daniell, A.R.A., London, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, and William Daniell, 8 vols, 1814–1825. 2. Thomas and William Daniell, A picturesque voyage to India by the way of China, London, Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme; and William Daniell, 1810. 3. See especially Louis Hawes, Presences of Nature: British Landscape 1780–1830, New Haven, Yale Center for British Art, 1982; Barbara Maria Stafford, Voyage into Substance: Art, Science, Nature, and the Illustrated Travel Account, 1760–1840, Cambridge, MA and London, MIT Press, 1984; and Charlotte Klonk, Science and the Perception of Nature: British Landscape Art in the Late Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1996. 4. John Soane’s Bank of England designs date from the 1790s through the late 1820s. The National Gallery was established in 1824. 5. William Vincent, a contemporary of William Daniell, published a new translation and notes on the The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea from 1800 to 1809. 6. The Daniells, A picturesque voyage, n.p. 7. Ibid. 8. Ayton & Daniell, A voyage round Great Britain, vol. II, p. 219. 9. Ibid. 10. William Gilpin, Observations on the River Wye, and several parts of South Wales, & c. relative chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the summer of 1770, third edition, London, R. Blamire, 1792, pp. 46–50. 11. William Gilpin, “River-Views, Bays, & Sea Coasts”, 1781. MSS 1978.39, Morgan Library and Museum, New York. Thank you to Cara Shatzman and Emily Leonardo of the Department of Drawings and Prints at the Morgan Library, for making a typescript of Gilpin’s manuscript available to me. 12. Gilpin, “River-Views, Bays, & Sea Coasts”. 13. Ayton & Daniell, A voyage round Great Britain, vol. II, p. 41. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. Daniell, vol. VI, p. 18. 17. William Wordsworth, “London, 1802”, in Poems, in Two Volumes, London, Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1807, vol. I, p. 140. 18. S. T. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria; or Biographical Sketches, of My Literary Life and Opinions, 2 vols, London, Rest Fenner, 1817, vol. I, pp. XIV, 2–3. 19. See “Proposal for publishing A Picturesque voyage round Great Britain, illustrated with coloured engravings…”, reproduced in Iain Bain, William Daniell: A Voyage Round Great Britain 1814–1825; an Exhibition of New Impressions Taken Directly from Daniell’s Original Copper Plates Now in the Possession of the Tate Gallery, London, British Council and Tate Gallery, 1979. 20. Ayton & Daniell, vol. I, p. IV. 21. Ayton & Daniell, vol. I, p. III. 22. Ibid. 23. Further, William Daniell may have thought twice about characterizing the project as “picturesque” due to marketing considerations. The publisher Longmans had expressed regret to Thomas and William Daniell about the slow sales of A picturesque voyage to India by the way of China. See Iain Bain, William Daniell’s A Voyage Round Great Britain, London, Bodley Head, 1966, p. 14. 24. Unsigned review, The Scots Magazine, and Edinburgh Literary Miscellany, vol. 77, 1815, p. 49. 25. Unsigned review, The British Review and London Critical Journal, vol. 6, 1815, p. 98. 26. Ibid. 27. Unsigned review, The Quarterly Review, vol. 13, July 1815, p. 288. 28. Ibid., p. 308.

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29. Ann M. Guest, “Imagery of Color and Light in Scott’s Narrative Poems”, Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, vol. 12, no. 2, Autumn 1972, p. 716. 30. Ibid., p. 719. 31. Daniell, vol. III, p. III. 32. The Quarterly Review, vol. 13, p. 300. 33. The British Review and London Critical Journal, vol. 6, p. 101. 34. Alexander M. Ross, The Impact of the Picturesque on Nineteenth-Century British Fiction, Waterloo, Ontario, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1986, p. 69. 35. Walter Scott, The Voyage of the Pharos: Walter Scott’s Cruise Around Scotland in 1814, Glasgow, The Chartered Institute of Library and Information, 1998, p. 8. 36. Ibid., p. 43. 37. Ibid., p. 73. 38. Ibid., p. 58. 39. Ibid., p. 84. 40. Ibid., p. 101. 41. Ibid. 42. Unsigned review in The Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Chronicle, vol. 85, January-June 1815, p. 148. 43. William Deresiewicz, Jane Austen and the Romantic Poets, New York, Columbia University Press, 2004, p. 151. 44. Walter Scott, The Poetical Works of Walter Scott, London, George Routledge and Sons, n.d., p. 634. 45. Daniell, vol. III, p. 10. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid., pp. 10–11. 48. Ayton & Daniell, vol. II, p. 169. 49. Daniell, vol. VIII, p. 64.

ABSTRACTS

Among the most pervasive visual characterizations of Scotland’s shores are those produced by William Daniell for A voyage round Great Britain (1814–1825), a monumental project comprising more than three hundred aquatints. Daniell worked as a colonial artist in and around South Asia prior to taking on extensive depiction of the domestic landscape. This essay not only explores the relationship between his imagery of littoral sites in Asia and Britain, but juxtaposes Daniell’s project with poetry and prose by Sir Walter Scott and a little-known essay by Reverend William Gilpin to ascertain the artist’s commitment to both picturesque and Romantic discourse. It is demonstrated here that Daniell’s imagery of Scotland’s coastline has a good deal in common with his own published representations of sites along the Indian Ocean and South China Sea, not because of actual similarities of topography but due instead to the discursive frameworks he employed.

Parmi les caractérisations les plus populaires des côtes écossaises, on trouve celles produites par William Daniell pour A voyage round Great Britain (1814-1825), projet monumental qui comprend plus de trois cents aquatintes. Daniell travailla comme artiste colonial en Asie du Sud avant

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d’entreprendre de dessiner les paysages britanniques. Cet article explore non seulement la relation entre sa manière de rendre les littoraux d’Asie et de Grande-Bretagne, mais aussi la façon dont s’enchevêtrent le projet de Daniell, la prose de Sir Walter Scott ainsi qu’un essai peu connu du révérend William Gilpin, pour démontrer l’engagement de l’artiste à la fois dans la catégorie du pittoresque et dans le romantisme. L’imagerie que Daniell déploie dans sa vision des côtes écossaises correspond de bien des manières avec les représentations qu’il a publiées de sites de l’océan Indien et de la mer de Chine, non du fait de similitudes réelles de la topographie mais plutôt à cause des structures de représentations qu’il employait.

INDEX

Mots-clés: imagerie, côte et littoral, le pittoresque en esthétique, romantisme, colonialisme Keywords: imagery, coastline, picturesque, Romanticism, colonialism

AUTHOR

ELIZABETH MJELDE De Anza College. Elizabeth Mjelde is currently Art History Program Co-Chair at De Anza College, California. She has published “Colonial Violence and the Picturesque”, in Violence, Colonialism and Empire in the Modern World, edited by Philip Dwyer, Lyndall Ryan, and Amanda Nettelbeck, “The Imperial Wye”, in Romanticism, vol. 19, no. 2 (July 2013), and “Love’s Labor Found”, in Eugene Rodriguez: The Middle of Somewhere.

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The Sea Kings of the North: Scandinavian Scotland in Nineteenth Century Literature Les rois des mers : l’Écosse scandinave dans la littérature du dix-neuvième siècle

Claire McKeown

1 Modern Scottish culture demonstrates a keen interest in Scandinavian connections, not only through literature and television, but also through potential political links. During the lead-up to the independence referendum, comparisons between Scotland and Scandinavia acknowledged similar geographic positions and social settings, as well as the evocative power of older traditions. Viking imagery abounded in pre-referendum media coverage of connections with Scandinavia, with references both to history and to recent reinterpretations, such as the Shetland festival Up Helly Aa.1 This is reinforced by a wider UK trend for modern Nordic culture, for example with the popularity of Scandinavian television and crime fiction, which have even found their own Scottish incarnation in Tartan Noir.

2 While literary connections go much further back, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries a similar interest in cultural links with the Nordic countries developed in Britain, with a significant contribution from Scottish writers. In Scottish writing, or writing on Scotland, there is often a specific emphasis on unifying Scottish and Scandinavian cultures through a specific Northern landscape mythology, linked with a proximity to the sea. In this article I will consider this literary inclusion of Scotland in the North, through Scottish literature and cultural commentary on the North, wider comparisons between the two spaces, and a look at how these links are reflected in Scandinavian literature.

3 19th century British interest in Scandinavia cannot be underestimated, as has been demonstrated by Andrew Wawn in The Vikings and the Victorians (2000), Peter Fjågesund and Ruth A. Symes in The Northern Utopia (2003), and Dimitrios Kassis in Representations of the North in Victorian Travel Literature (2015). The North of Europe was, and still is, a destination for travel writing as well as historical and cultural accounts. Many

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Victorian travellers and writers were motivated both by a Rousseauvian fascination with “primitive” or “natural” societies and a desire to create new “national myths” through connections with the North (Fjagesund & Symes, 2003, pp. 161, 111). The history of the Viking invasions provides well-documented roots for linguistic and cultural features, as well as a wider mythology which plays an important part in British self-image. The Viking revival sparked numerous translations and rewritings of sagas, as British readers became acquainted with a literary past which, while not entirely their own, was becoming an increasingly attractive part of their heritage.

4 Scotland’s geographical position makes it an obvious point of comparison with the Nordic countries, and especially with Norway. The Viking invasions left a Norwegian heritage which survives in the form of place names, mythology and traditions. In areas like Orkney, Shetland and Caithness the Norwegian cultural influence endured long after the Viking invasions, and indeed the Northern Isles can still be seen as a hybrid, Nordic-Scottish region, a vision which is encouraged by cultural events and tourism to Norse settlements like Jarlshof.

5 A trend for translating sagas began at the end of the 18th century, launched in part by Scottish writers like James Johnstone. Johnstone translated sections of Heimskringla and Haakon’s Saga, with a particular emphasis on the arrival of Vikings in Scotland (France, 2000, p. 554). Walter Scott was also among the first to participate in this trend, with his abstract of Eyrbyggja Saga which, although based on a Latin translation, was the first English version of a family saga (Clunies Ross, 2010, p. 159). Another significant contributor to the 19th century interest in Old Norse was Samuel Laing. From Orkney, he wrote several accounts of his travels in Scandinavia, and translated Heimskringla in full. As Kassis notes, Laing’s treatment of Old Norse material reveals a complex position regarding Scotland’s role in the idea of a shared British and Nordic history. His “split cultural image” is clear in the dual aim of his writing; while treating Scotland as “an integral part of Britain”, he also seeks the specific similarities between Scotland and Scandinavia, for example comparing the Swedish language with Lowland Scots (Kassis, 2015, p. 82).

6 Other approaches to the Norse traces left in Scotland also contributed to this trend, with numerous anthropological and linguistic studies into these links appearing in the course of the 19th century. Jamieson’s Etymological Dictionary (1808) begins with an essay presenting the author’s approach to Scottish language not as derivative of English, but through its other influences, giving specific attention to the Scandinavian roots (pp. XVIII–LIX). Similarly, the anthropologist John Earle seeks scientific and historical bases for his “impressions”, and the “popular opinion” that Norway and Scotland are alike (1877, p. 9). He mentions the merging of Nordic and Scottish folklore traditions, but his arguments focus on language. In order to demonstrate the “Danism of […] the Lowland Scots’ dialect”, Earle provides a list of words which appear to be “distinctively Scottish” but are Danish in origin, and also cites the Norwegian influence on English in general, which has led to closer phonetic similarities in Scottish English (p. 13). The conclusion returns to his perception of wider similarities between Scotland and Scandinavia, and his hope that more evidence will be provided that “the Scotch language is […] the great and permanent memorial of the overlapping of the Teutonic and Scandinavian races” (p. 19).

7 Just as Scottish writers contributed to the Viking Revival, sometimes with a specifically Scottish perspective, many English commentators have also compared their

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observations of the Nordic countries with Scotland. In the work of British writers in general, Scotland can at times serve as a more familiar North, in order to give readers a clearer image of Nordic specificities. Many focus on the landscapes; however, the distinctions between interlinked countries also provide a point of comparison. At the end of the 19th century, Edmund Gosse would use British dialects in order to reflect the equally small differences between the Scandinavian languages. He demonstrates the minor variations in Fredrik Hegel’s writing between the Danish and Norwegian languages through a more familiar point of comparison: “Now the Norwegian author wrote in a language not more to be distinguished from Danish than Scotch is from English.” (Gosse, 1911, p. 40)

8 Placing Denmark and Norway in parallel with England and Scotland makes geographical sense, and historical sense with regard to the specific locations of Viking invasions. As such, descriptions of Norway often include a comparison with Scotland. The ethnologist Robert Gordon Latham uses a familiar British cultural comparison in Norway and the Norwegians: The civilisation of Norway differs from that of England, as that of Inverness differs from that of London; not as the stages of culture in Isfahan and Paris differ from each other. It is a difference in degree, not of kind. The two countries are on different steps of the same ladder. (1840, p. 2)

9 This vertical image of Britain and Norway reminds readers that Britain itself stretches to higher latitudes, which are not so far from Scandinavia. This places the differences between England and Norway in a wider context which reduces any notion of extreme cultural disparity; Southern England is no more different, or geographically distant, from Norway than it is from the more peripheral parts of Britain. Latham reinforces this relative proximity by a comparison with a more clearly distant location; while Norway is different from England, it is not so different that it exists on another cultural scale. Norway is no more the “other” than the North of Scotland. Conversely, this also places Scotland on a par with Norway, as part of the distant North, making it distinct from the rest of Britain. Latham’s ladder comparison thus makes Scotland into a fluid, adjustable bridge to Scandinavia: neither exclusively British nor entirely Nordic.

10 George Webbe Dasent also makes use of this convenient perception of Scotland as an in-between place. In his introduction to Popular Tales from the Norse, a collection of tales by Asbjörnsen and Moe, Dasent admits that his translation of the stories cannot communicate the full power of the original version. He hopes that “some of that tenderness and beauty” will still be accessible to readers, but that for those unfamiliar with the North and its culture “no words can tell the freshness and truth of the originals”. This difficulty is not linguistic, suggests Dasent, as the languages are “more nearly allied […] than any other two tongues”, it is the “face of the nature herself, and the character of the race that looks up to her, that fails to the mind’s eye”. He continues this reflection by suggesting how British readers might try to imagine this literary beauty, and the landscape in which it flourished, by comparing it with Scotland: “The West Coast of Scotland is something like that nature in a general way, except that it is infinitely smaller and less grand […].” (Dasent, 1903, p. CL)

11 Dasent’s comparison presents Scotland as something of a pale reminder of the impressive Norwegian landscape. However, it also suggests that some part of Norway’s unimaginable grandeur would be recognisable to anyone familiar with the West coast of Scotland. The Scottish coast once again takes on the role of a bridge, providing a

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point of comparison between the British Isles and Norway. Earle makes a similar suggestion that Scotland possesses a hint of the more impressive Norwegian qualities. The “family likeness” he observes between Norway and Scotland does not indicate an equal distribution of positive traits: If I were to imagine an ideal Scotchman, tall, fair, square, open, fresh, friendly, cautious, inquiring, practical—though I have seen many such in Scotland, and, indeed, one in particular presents himself now before my mind—yet I think I should give this candidate the second place, and find my beau idéal in the person of a gentleman of the name of Vetlesen, in whose house I was an inmate while I sojourned at Christiania. (Earle, 1877, p. 9)

12 The ideal Scot is in fact a Norwegian. The most convincing embodiment of Earle’s Scottish type is a man he visited in Norway, and although he has encountered versions of the same type in Scotland they fall short of this “beau idéal”. This romanticised, mythical version of a familiar stereotype is perhaps typical in the treatment of Scandinavia in British literature and culture: Scandinavian roots provide a reflection of British origins which is “larger than contemporary life” (Elphinstone, 2006, p. 106). Norway is not simply a distant “other”, and it provides an intriguing combination of familiarity and exoticism.

13 In both his personal writing and his fiction R. M. Ballantyne evokes the historical importance of UK-Scandinavian relations, as well as the cultural similarities between these two areas, while also playing with notions of familiarity and exoticism. The final paragraph of his saga-inspired novel Erling the Bold (1869) highlights the importance the Viking characters represent for young British readers: Yes, there is perhaps more of Norse blood in your veins than you wot of, reader, whether you be English or Scotch; for those sturdy sea rovers invaded our lands from north, south, east, and west many a time in days gone by, and held it in possession for centuries at a time, leaving a lasting and beneficial impress on our customs and characters. We have good reason to regard their memory with respect and gratitude, despite their faults and sins, for much of what is good and true in our laws and social customs, much manly and vigorous in the British Constitution, of our intense love of freedom and fairplay, are pith, pluck, enterprise, and sense of justice that dwelt in the breasts of the rugged old Sea-kings of Norway! (p. 437)

14 Ballantyne presents these impressive, rather brutal characters as the source of various more conventional virtues associated with British culture and empire building. By reminding readers of their historical significance, Ballantyne also mythologises British culture through its association with the Viking invasions. This romantic view of the “Norse sea kings”, seen for example in their imagined “sense of justice”, provides a basis for descriptions of their sublime surroundings in Erling the Bold. The novel opens with a “mountain scene of unrivalled grandeur” (p. 1), with the arrival of two boats by the West coast of Norway at sunrise: “A silvery mist hung over the water, through which the innumerable rocks and islands assumed fantastic shapes, and the more distant among them appeared as though they floated in air.” (pp. 1–2) This fantastical character is in keeping with Dasent’s reflection on the power of the Norwegian countryside, which although unimaginable, is still somewhat similar to the Scottish landscape. Ballantyne’s descriptions of Scotland in Freaks on the Fells (1864) hint at a similar notion of Scotland as a point of comparison, and the Scottish landscape seen through the eyes of an English family resembles a diluted version of the Norwegian grandeur. When attempting to convince his wife of the benefits of a stay in Scotland, Mr Sudberry reminds her that the “mountain scenery is grand and majestic beyond

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description” (p. 21). Once there, the landscapes do not disappoint, and contain some of the same dramatic features present in descriptions of Norway: The mists of early morning were rolling up from the loch in white, fleecy clouds, which floated over and partly concealed the sides of the mountains. The upper wreaths of these clouds, and the crags and peaks that pierced through them were set on fire by the rising sun. Great fissures and gorges in the hills, which at other times lay concealed in the blue haze of distance, were revealed by the mists and the slanting rays of the sun, and the incumbent cliffs, bluff promontories, and capes, were in some places sharply defined, in others luminously softened, so that the mountains displayed at once that appearance of solid reality, mingled with melting mystery, which is seen at no period of the day but early morning. (p. 32)

15 A sense of mystery and the effects of the meteorological conditions on the landscape still dominate here, and the topographical details and colours produced by the misty sunrise also form a dramatic visual impression. However, while Norwegian mountain scenes are “dark” and “gloomy” in Erling the Bold (p. 42), the Scottish equivalent in Freaks on the Fells is a gentler effect, with emphasis on the soft clouds and the mingling of elements, with “water, earth and sky […] melting into blue and white masses that mingled with each other in golden and pearly greys of every conceivable variety” (p. 33). These distinct aesthetic qualities, sublime in Norway and somewhat more picturesque in Scotland, return to the idea of Scotland as a bridge to the North, and an accessible, homelier version of the more dramatic Northern landscapes.

16 Ballantyne’s work represents these Northern aesthetic similarities while also dealing with more concrete cultural aspects. As in the anthropological observations noted above, linguistic similarities also feature in Ballantyne’s treatment of Scotland and Scandinavia, and he cites the ease of communication in both his fiction and his personal writings: However, it is curious to observe how very small an amount of Norse will suffice for ordinary travellers—especially for Scotchmen. The Danish language is the vernacular tongue of Norway and there is a strong affinity between Danish (or Norse) and broad Scotch. Roughly speaking I should say that a mixture of three words of Norse to two of broad Scotch, with a powerful emphasis and a strong infusion of impudence, will carry you from the Naze to the North Cape in perfect comfort. (1893, available on )

17 This amusing observation on how easily a Scot can communicate in Danish or Norse also appears in the novel Chasing the Sun, with the protagonist discovering that his knowledge of Scottish dialect allows him to communicate with a Norwegian friend. In one humorous scene the character is forced to attempt to make himself understood despite speaking little Norwegian, and “at last he terminated in a mixture of bad Norse and broad Scotch”. His “knowledge of Lowland Scots” proves useful, as “there is great similarity between it and the Norwegian tongue”. (No date, p. 102)

18 Scottish literary treatments of Scandinavian connections vary between the pragmatic and the romantic, but the landscapes are frequently linked with the weight of history they represent. As Margaret Elphinstone demonstrates, Scandinavian Scotland features in literature spreading from the 12th century to the contemporary period, and often with a positive representation of the Viking influence (2006, p. 105). One example of this “older, more heroic Scotland” (p. 112) is Walter Scott’s The Pirate. Scott’s portrayal of Shetland as a place in which Scottish and Norse ancestries meet, and come into conflict, simultaneously distinguishes between these cultural traditions and shows how

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the lines between them blur. As Elphinstone points out, Scott’s character Magnus Troil embodies a primitivist view of the heroic Viking type, while also demonstrating the civilised behaviour of a gentleman. Elphinstone cites the description of Magnus as “strong and masculine” or “ruddy”, but also possessed of a “well-conditioned temper” and a sense of hospitality (p. 112).

19 The Pirate introduces readers to Northern cultural heritage through the incomer Mordaunt’s fascination with the sagas: At this time, the old Norwegian sagas were much remembered, and often rehearsed, by the fishermen, who still preserved among themselves the ancient Norse tongue, which was the speech of their forefathers. In the dark romance of those Scandinavian tales, lay much that was captivating to a youthful ear […]. (1898, p. 22)

20 Mordaunt learns of these stories through local oral traditions, which are an important part of the Shetlanders’ self-image. Scott’s narrative also makes use of knowledge of the sagas, for example by blending prose and poetry. Norna’s Song of the Reimkennar is presented rather didactically in the narrative as a “free translation” attempting to render the “terms of expression peculiar to the ancient Northern poetry” (p. 86). Mordaunt is highly receptive to these ancient stories, and also learns to associate them with the specific settings of the Northern Isles: Often the scenes around him were assigned as the localities of the wild poems, which, half recited, half chanted by voices as hoarse, if not so loud, as the waves over which they floated, pointed out the very bay on which they sailed as the scene of a bloody sea-fight; the scarce-seen heap of stones that bristled over the projecting cape, as the dun, or castle, of some potent earl or noted pirate; the distant and solitary grey stone on the lonely moor, as marking the grave of a hero; the wild cavern, up which the sea rolled in heavy, broad, and unbroken billows, as the dwelling of some noted sorceress. (p. 22)

21 While at sea, Mordaunt’s surroundings are presented to him as a part of these narratives, and as an incomer to Shetland he learns about the place through its mythological geography. The rich imaginative potential of the landscape makes it particularly well-suited to these stories, and consequently to the dramatic events of Scott’s narrative. The physical setting becomes part of the romantic fascination with Norse mythology: Such legends are, indeed, everywhere current amongst the vulgar; but the imagination is far more powerfully affected by them on the deep and dangerous seas of the north, amidst precipices and headlands, many hundred feet in height,— amid perilous straits, and currents, and eddies,—long sunken reefs of rock, over which the vivid ocean foams and boils,—dark caverns, to whose extremities neither man nor skiff has ever ventured,—lonely, and often uninhabited isles,—and occasionally the ruins of ancient northern fastnesses, dimly seen by the feeble light of the Arctic winter. (p. 24)

22 It is the Northern seas in particular which provide the ideal setting for spectacular stories. Here they are imbued with aspects of the sublime, with extremes of height and depth augmenting their atmosphere of danger and inaccessibility. Scott’s emphasis on reduced vision, in the dark caves and the weak polar light, underlines the sense of an unknowable, eternally mysterious part of the world. At this meeting point for Scottish and Norse tradition, the landscape is once again imbued with the specific power we have seen attached to Norway. In the examples from both Ballantyne and Scott this power is linked with masculinity, through images of virile Vikings and wild landscapes waiting to be conquered. Mackey identifies a similar tendency in the “nationalist

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mythology” of Canada as a “Northern wilderness”, which also relies heavily on “symbols [which] are deeply ‘gendered’ and ‘raced’” (“Death by Landscape: Race, Nature and Gender in Canadian Nationalist Mythology” in Canadian Woman Studies, vol. 20, no. 2, 2000, p. 126). Norna in The Pirate is to some extent a counter-point to this, with her “power over the elements” and air of “stern serenity” and “authority” (Scott, 1898, p. 85). Like Magnus Troil, she is a thoroughly Nordic character, however her power stems from ancient traditions, and her rejection of Christianity makes her a less civilised symbol of Northernness than her male counterpart.

23 While Scott emphasises the Norse influence on the isles, he also differentiates between this Nordic culture and wider Scottish culture. An agricultural comparison between Scotland and Shetland seems to return to the ladder image used by Latham: […] rude as the arts of agriculture were in Scotland, they were far superior to those known and practised in the regions of Thule. (1898, p. 58)

24 Triptolemus Yellowley, who comes to Shetland to implement modern farming methods, acts as a point of contrast with the culture of the islanders, but he himself is a mixture of cultures. A biographical narrative on the character reveals that his Scottish mother’s marriage with a man from Yorkshire was unpopular with her family, highlighting another North/South cultural gap. Northernness indicates cultural distinctiveness, but this can vary from suggestions of primitivism to differences of character. We learn that Triptolemus’s father finds himself farming difficult land as a result of being “come over by a certain noble Scottish earl, proving too far north for canny Yorkshire” (p. 43). This link between Northernness and cunning differs from the representation of relative Northernness in the wider narrative; here mainland Scotland might represent a morally dubious North, while Shetland is associated with both rustic simplicity and moral uprightness. The islanders are portrayed as respecting “laws of hospitality” (p. 4), as exemplified by the generous Magnus Troil. Some of the distinctions between mainland Scottish and Shetland culture are portrayed through differing musical styles; while the “simple music of the North” (p. 34) is “melancholy and pathetic” (p. 22), Mordaunt plays the “livelier airs of the North of Scotland” in order to “relieve their monotony” (p. 22). Scott’s narrative refers frequently to the nationalities and origins of characters, and indicates the dual identity of the Northern isles through Magnus Troil’s two daughters. While Brenda’s “healthy complexion” is proof of her “genuine Scandinavian descent” (p. 30), Minna has inherited her “stately form” from their mother, “a Scottish lady from the Highlands of Sutherland” (p. 28). The sisters switch between cultures, and while the more Nordic Brenda prefers the “livelier” Scottish music, Minna is specifically linked with the dramatic Shetland landscape: She had also a high feeling for the solitary and melancholy grandeur of the scenes in which she was placed. The ocean, in all its varied forms of sublimity and terror— the tremendous cliffs that resound to the ceaseless roar of the billows, and the clang of the sea-fowl, had for Minna a charm in almost every state in which the changing seasons exhibited them. (p. 31)

25 The parallel between Minna’s deep connection with the landscape, and all its potential for danger and drama, with her love for the pirate Cleveland is at the centre of Scott’s narrative. The events are linked with their thematically appropriate setting, and the mixture of Scottish and Nordic traditions link the dramatic 19th century narrative with the older narratives from the sagas.

26 Inclusive approaches to Scotland can also be found reflected in the work of Scandinavian writers. Hans Christian Andersen wrote enthusiastically of his journey

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around Scotland in 1847, and imbues the country with some of the same spectacular, even sublime, beauty Norway has in the work of British writers. He places Edinburgh in the same “picturesque” (Andersen, 1908, p. 485, my translations) category as Stockholm and Constantinople, viewing the whole country as a place of artistic discovery. He is already familiar with Scottish literature, especially Walter Scott, and he recognises some locations from his reading, such as the Old Tollbooth prison which, although he deems it of no particular note in itself, nonetheless “attracts the eye” thanks to Scott’s writing (p. 486). Later, he travels to Kirkcaldy and believes he has seen Ravenswood castle from The Bride of Lammermoor, until a local corrects him. Andersen reads Scottish places through their literary associations, and as he arrives by train the changing landscape seems to confirm his pre-formed mental images of Scotland: At last we were by the river which makes the border between England and Scotland; the land of Walter Scott and Burns lay before us, the landscape became mountainous, we could see the sea, the railway ran alongside the coast, a mass of boats lay out there, and finally we reached Edinburgh […]. (p. 483)

27 Viewed from the train, Scotland appears to be surrounded by water; the River Tweed forms a border with England, and the sea becomes visible as the journey progresses. The journey to Edinburgh summarises Andersen’s vision of Scotland, with a combination of mountains and sea making up a landscape he also associates with Scotland’s literary heritage. Referring to himself as a “Danish Walter Scott” (p. 489), Andersen includes this literary history in his own heritage, and mythologises Scotland through contemporary writing in the same way Ballantyne and Scott use Norse literary history.

28 Andersen appears to refer to notions of relative Northernness when comparing the Scottish landscape with Denmark. When travelling towards Loch Katrine, he concludes that if the Jutland moors are a “still sea”, the Scottish moors are “the sea in a storm” (p. 492). Scotland is a step closer to the dramatic Norwegian landscapes, and its seascapes are its most significant feature. Even inland Andersen feels he can hear the “sea rolling” in the sounds of a storm (p. 495). Edinburgh is also portrayed with emphasis on the significance of the sea. Princes Street looks like a river-bed (p. 477), and the whole city “spills over into the sea” (p. 485). The short poem inspired by the ruin Andersen takes for Ravenswood presents another condensed version of Andersen’s Scotland, with characteristic landscape features and literary significance. The landscape evokes Scott’s novel, in a composition made up of the forest and the ruined castle walls, all surrounded by water. Where the cliff juts into the sea With beech forests and ivy vines, Lucy and Edgar of Ravenswood, Wander into our minds; Appearing from the castle’s ruined walls, Where the thistle grows and the gull cries, Around them the great, free nature, And the sea which sinks and swells! Speak, forest, of those lovers: Scotland’s Romeo and Juliet. (Andersen, 2000, p. 641)

29 Just as Scott’s portrayal of Orkney links the narrative power of the region with the landscape, here Andersen experiences Scotland as an extension of his literary knowledge of the country. A proximity with the sea is one of the key links between Scotland and Scandinavia. Not only is it a major factor in historical relationships, it also

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allows for contemporary comparisons. While Andersen presents a romantic view of the country influenced by literature, he also notices social similarities with his own. He finds villages in Scotland “impressive […] but very similar to those of the Sjaelland fishermen”, and describes scenes which look Danish, but poorer (Andersen, 1908, pp. 491, 484).

30 In the Norwegian playwright Bjornstjerne Bjørnson’s Maria Stuart i Skottland (1864) geographical comparisons feature less prominently than Nordic-Scottish cultural characterisation. However, Maria’s description of her arrival in Scotland hints at the stormy northern seas of The Pirate: “Oh, when I saw Scotland’s shores in fog and cold I was standing freezing on the wet deck, then I felt something tingle as fire through my breast, and now I feel it again.” (Sahlberg, 1912, p. 114) This first impression of Scotland returns to her as she faces increasing political opposition. The cold sea-scape is threatening to Maria, but essential to the heroic characterisation of Bothwell as a descendant of the Vikings and a modern-day sea rover: I once stood in for the Orkneys, the ocean tossed us, the clouds flitted like wet sails, the breakers roared, and the coast was treeless and rocky; then I felt my family present, the Norwegian Viking stock that drove ashore here and from which we descend […]. (p. 178)

31 In the previous scene Bothwell is spurred on by Maria’s description of him as “the strongest she knows” (p. 175), and here it is this memory of his vigorous Nordic ancestors which gives him the “will” to act (p. 178). The depiction of Bothwell as a man of action thus rests on this image of him as a modern-day Viking, who could be compared with the gentlemanly Viking figure Magnus Troil. Bjørnson’s text emphasises the same impressive natural environment, and appears to participate equally in the construction of a shared Northern landscape mythology.

32 The influential Danish critic Georg Brandes praises Bjørnson’s creation of a historically justifiable “Norwegian-Scottish world” (Brandes, 1883, p. 28, my translations). While this allows him to create an appealing portrait of Bothwell, Brandes finds his highly psychological rendering of Maria less successful, as it involves too much “Nordic Idealism” (p. 29). This again refers to notions of relative Northernness and the varying characteristics associated with Nordic spaces. The Northern idealism of Bjørnson’s Maria is at odds with Scott’s use of “too far North” to suggest slyness, and even within The Pirate varying images of Northernness are attached to Shetland and mainland Scotland. Brandes’s reaction indicates the limits of a shared Northern literary identity, suggesting that the mythology surrounding it is too fixed to allow for unlimited personal reinterpretations. A unifying vision of Scotland and Scandinavia relies in part upon stereotypes of Northernness, ranging from virile Vikings to images of rustic simplicity, but these can act as a barrier to convincing characterisation.

33 In these examples from literature and travel writing, Scotland takes on the role of a bridge between cultures, representing at once the distant Northern reaches of Britain, and a sense of connection with other, more exotic, Northern places. This creates a tension between similarity and difference specific to two cultural spheres which are historically linked, and share some contemporary lifestyle and landscape features. While a “vacillation between the familiar and the alien” (Saïd, 2014, p. 71) is present, this is not quite Orientalism. Although cultural tropes associated with the far North abound, they are placed in a context of shared history and inherited identity. Similar everyday language, as observed by Ballantyne, and social conditions, noted for example

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by Andersen, provide clear similarities giving the sense of rich heritage a more concrete contemporary context. These more pragmatic links seem to justify the more fantastical images of Nordic landscapes and characters, presenting Scotland as a reminder of the sublime landscape native to its Norwegian ancestors. While Viking ancestry provides the basis for writers’ depiction of a Scandinavian Scotland, a similar urge is reflected in the work of Scandinavian writers, and in Andersen’s writing this creates a more recent sense of literary inheritance. The seascapes presented in Scottish and Scandinavian works combine the sublime with homelier images of the sea, creating a constant interplay between the popular appeal of shared history and the reality of Northern coastal regions.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ANDERSEN Hans Christian, 1908, Mit Livs Eventyr, Copenhagen, Gyldendal.

ANDERSEN Hans Christian, 2000, Samlede digte, Copenhagen, Aschehoug.

BALLANTYNE Robert Michael, 1864, Freaks on the Fells, Philadelphia, John C. Winston.

BALLANTYNE Robert Michael, 1869, Erling the Bold: A Tale of the Norse Sea-Kings, Philadelphia, Lippincott.

BALLANTYNE Robert Michael, 1893, Personal Reminiscences in Book Making and Some Short Stories, available on .

BALLANTYNE Robert Michael, [no date], Chasing the Sun, London, James Nisbet.

BJØRNSON BJØRNSTJERNE, 1864, Maria Stuart i Skottland, Copenhagen, Gyldendal. Translation: SAHLBERG C. August, 1912, Mary, Queen of Scots; a Drama in Five Acts, Chicago, Specialty Syndicate Press.

BRANDES Georg, 1883, Det moderne gjennembruds maend, en raekke portraeter, Copenhagen, Gyldendal.

CLUNIES ROSS Margaret, 2010, The Cambridge Introduction to the Old Norse-Icelandic Saga, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

DASENT George, 1903, Popular Tales from the Norse, Edinburgh, David Douglas.

EARLE John, 1877, “On the Ethnography of Scotland”, The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. 6, London, Trübner & Co.

ELPHINSTONE Margaret, 2006, « Some Fictions of Scandinavian Scotland », in T. Hubbard and R. D. S. Jack (eds), Scotland in Europe, Amsterdam, Rodopi, pp. 105–117.

FJÅGESUND Peter & SYME Ruth A., 2003, The Northern Utopia: British Perceptions of Norway in the Nineteenth Century, Amsterdam, Rodopi.

FRANCE Peter, 2000, The Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

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GOSSE Edmund, 1911, Two Visits to Denmark [1872, 1874], London, Smith, Elder & Co.

JAMIESON John, 1808, An Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press.

KASSIS Dimitrios, 2015, Representations of the North in Victorian Travel Literature, Newcastle, Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

LATHAM Robert Gordon, 1840, Norway and the Norwegians, vol. 1, London, Richard Bentley.

SAÏD Edward W., 2014, Orientalism, New York, Random House.

SCOTT Walter, 1898, The Pirate, London, John C. Nimmo.

WAWN Andrew, 2000, The Vikings and the Victorians: Inventing the Old North in Nineteenth Century Britain, Cambridge, DS Brewer.

NOTES

1. For example, references to Viking heritage can be found in the following articles: Richard Milne, “Scottish Nationalists Look to Nordic Model”, Financial Times, 2 February 2014, available on ; Lesley Riddoch, “Look North, Scotland”, The Guardian, 5 December 2011, available on ; Frank Urquhart, “Scotland to Strengthen Links with Scandinavia”, The Scotsman, 7 August 2013, available on .

ABSTRACTS

Scotland’s relationship with the sea is partly defined by links with seafaring Nordic neighbours. Scandinavia is an appealing example of modernity today, but the influence of Viking invasions on Scottish coastal regions has remained a source of intrigue in the popular imagination since the Viking Revival. Scottish writers contributed to this Victorian trend, with Laing’s translation of Heimskringla, and Ballantyne’s novel Erling the Bold. British writers noted similarities between Scotland and the Scandinavian countries, including features like landscape, character and language. This link also appears in Scandinavian writing, such as HC Andersen’s depiction of a Scottish seascape, and Bjørnson’s Maria Stuart i Skottland. This paper will examine the construction of a shared Scottish and Scandinavian landscape mythology through literature and cultural commentary.

Les rapports de l’Écosse à la mer sont indissociables de ceux qu’elle entretient avec ses voisins nordiques. Si la Scandinavie représente aujourd’hui un modèle de modernité, l’impact des invasions vikings sur les régions côtières de l’Écosse reste une source de fascination dans l’imaginaire populaire, notamment depuis le renouveau viking du dix-neuvième siècle. Plusieurs auteurs écossais de l’ère victorienne prennent part à cette vogue,

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tels Laing, traducteur de la Heimskringla, et Ballantyne dans son roman Erling the Bold. Ils relèvent des similitudes entre l’Écosse et les pays scandinaves, tant sur le plan de la géographie que sur celui du caractère ou de la langue. Ce rapprochement est aussi le fait d’auteurs scandinaves, dont Andersen à travers ses évocations des paysages maritimes de l’Écosse, et Bjørnson, auteur de Maria Stuart i Skottland. L’article analyse cette construction croisée d’une mythologie des paysages écossais et scandinaves dans quelques récits de fiction et autres écrits de cette époque.

INDEX

Mots-clés: Walter Scott, R. M. Ballantyne, Hans Christian Andersen, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, traductions de sagas, héritage viking, paysages littéraires Keywords: Walter Scott, R. M. Ballantyne, Hans Christian Andersen, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, saga translations, Viking heritage, literary landscapes

AUTHOR

CLAIRE MCKEOWN Université de Mulhouse. Claire McKeown teaches English at Université de Lorraine, and is currently completing a PhD in comparative literature at Université de Mulhouse. Her thesis is entitled “L’implacable lumière du nord : l’impressionnisme littéraire dans la littérature nordique et britannique à la fin du XIXe siècle”. Her research focuses on pre-modernist aesthetics in British and Scandinavian literature, as well as more general links between Northern European cultures. She recently published the articles “‘Scandimania’ and the Victorians: Exoticism or Self-identification?” in the journal Deshima and “Rapidité et action : techniques impressionnistes chez Henry James et Herman Bang” in Vertiges de la vitesse (éditions Orizons).

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Sound Waves: “Blue Ecology” in the Poetry of Robin Robertson and Kathleen Jamie Ondes sonores : des « écologies bleues » en poésie écossaise contemporaine

Alexandra Campbell

1 Described as a “dynamic model of geography” that is explicitly tied to island cultures, the concept of “tidal dialectics” or “tidalectics” works through the elucidation of the relationship between maritime history and cultural production, providing a “framework for exploring the complex and shifting entanglement between sea and land, diaspora and indigeneity, and routes and roots” (DeLoughrey, 2007, p. 2). First posited by the Bajan poet Kamau Brathwaite, the “tidalectic” foregrounds an open- ended “ripple and […] two tide movement” that actively considers the spatial and historical construct of island cultures (Naylor, 1999, p. 143). Presented as an alternative historiography to linear (colonial) models of temporal progress, the tidalectic takes its inspiration from the constantly changing coastal landscapes and seascapes of the Caribbean archipelago that is characterised by a “tangled urgent meaning to & fro” (Braithwaite quoted in Naylor, 1999, p. 162). Tracing ripples of connection and communication Brathwaite’s tidalectic thought gives voice to a myriad of submerged cultures, histories, and ecologies. This article will explore how the contemporary work of Scottish poets Kathleen Jamie and Robin Robertson similarly engage the space of the Atlantic archipelago as a means of exploring this “shifting entanglement” between poet and place. Across their collections the coasts, oceans, and seas of the Atlantic archipelago are positioned not only as powerful metaphorical sources, nor merely as sites of transnational crossings and connections, but as material sites that bear the traces of environmental decline. Focusing on two collections, Jamie’s The Tree House (2004) and Robertson’s The Wrecking Light (2010), this article presents a series of “blue ecological” readings of their work, and suggests that their archipelagic practice signals a wider trend of oceanic thought within modern Scottish poetry.

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2 Archipelagic frameworks have increasingly been applied to the space of the “British Isles” in an attempt to “uncover the long braided histories played out across the British-Irish archipelago” (Kerrigan, 2008, p. 2). Such models are akin to Brathwaite’s tidalectic as they stress the significance of the intermingled histories, languages, and locations, that wind their way across the Atlantic archipelago. Importantly, archipelagic frameworks encourage a re-orientation of Anglocentric paradigms that cast Scotland as a “marginal” and “fringe” space, and encourage a view of Scottish culture as “pelagic maritime and oceanic into which an extraordinary diversity of cultural and other movements has penetrated deeply” (Pocock, 2005, p. 78). This critical movement towards the “pelagic maritime and oceanic” is reflected in the recent rise of what scholars have begun to term “blue cultural studies” or the “blue humanities” (Brayton, 2012, p. 198). The school of “blue” ecocriticism has risen in response to the landed discourse of “green studies” and suggests that by embracing the interlinking quality of the “Global Ocean” we might begin to recognise that the oikos— the place of dwelling—is not always dry (ibid., p. 28). In relation to the work of Jamie and Robertson, I suggest that blue ecologies serve a dual function: firstly, they prompt us to consider the relationship between saltwater and place, and secondly, they enable a reorientation of the critical axis away from Anglocentric paradigms of space. Their collections present the archipelago as “a world of connection, networks, flow, openness, leakiness and change” that encourages a terrestrial ecocritical discourses to embrace a more terraqueous mode of reading place in contemporary Scottish poetry (Peters & Steinberg, 2014, p. 125).1 Through their ecopoetic practice both Jamie and Robertson interrogate “the complex relationship between poetry and place, and frequently address the significance of depths, tides, coastal environments, whales, fish, and winds” in establishing new entanglements between human and nonhuman worlds (Brayton, 2012, p. 198).

3 Defined as a form of poetry that responds to environmental crisis, ecopoetry “enacts through language the manifold relationship between the human and the other-than- human world” (Fisher-Wirth & Street, 2013, p. XXX). The recent emergence of blue ecology attempts to establish the equal importance of waterscapes within this relationship between nature and culture. Importantly, this poetic turn towards the blue does not attempt to perform an absolute break with the landed “green” discourse of ecopoetic traditions, but instead highlights the peculiar absence of saltwater narratives in contemporary ecocritical scholarship. In the recent work of Steve Mentz and Daniel Brayton the turn towards saltwater enables the emergence of fresh ecocritical perspectives which contest the “stable” and grounded discourses of “green” ecology (Mentz, 2015, p. XXIX). Regarding the role of the ocean within the works of Shakespeare Brayton suggests, “Ecocritical scholarship to date has been almost entirely terrestrial outlook” (Brayton, 2011, p. 173). While Brayton’s assessment may be slightly exaggerated, it is undeniable that large strands of ecocritical discourse have their theoretical basis in modes of reading the earth in which place “is conceived as stable, familiar and intimately knowable” (Alexander, 2015, p. 73). This construction of place is arguably characteristic of “first wave ecocriticism” (Buell, 2005, p. 17),2 in which the act of dwelling “bespeaks permanence and continuity” that promotes a “kind of rooted being” and explicitly emphasises “continuity, authenticity, and oneness” between the human and non-human environment (Alexander, 2015, p. 72–3). As Ursula Heise notes, this first-wave critical stance is not in keeping with movements in scientific ecology which have since moved away from holistic notions of “interconnectedness, stability

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and harmony” and have instead turned towards a “more complex image of ecosystems as dynamic, perpetually changing, and often far from stable or balanced” (2006, p. 510). Similarly, in his engagements with what he terms “Shipwreck Modernity”, Steve Mentz explores “the human-ocean encounter at its most violent and intimate” (2015, p. XXVIII) as a means of redirecting “stable” green ecocritical scholarship towards the dynamism of the ocean. In so doing, Mentz characterises the turbulence and magnitude of oceanic space as a “powerful antidote” for “representations of landed stability” (Mentz, 2009a, p. 1007). For both Brayton and Mentz, it is by looking toward the blue ecologies of “invisible submarine world of shoals, shelves, banks, sands, and tides” (Brayton, 2012, p. 198) that we may begin to consider more dynamic and protean models of contemporary ecocriticism that engage both global concepts of place and “neo- bioregionalist attachments to specific locales” (Slovic, 2010, p. 7). The work under consideration in this article in corresponds to a new palimpsest of ecocritical thought which extends the scope of “terrestrial”, “green” and “landed” discourses into the blue.

4 Looking to the discipline of Human Geography a more specific outlining of blue ecology can be identified. In a similar vein to Mentz and Brayton, Kimberley Peters and Jon Anderson note how the discipline of Geography has traditionally stemmed from terrestrial and earth-based discourses within which the oceans and seas are “not accorded the status of ‘place’ worthy of scholarly study” (2014, p. 3). The dismissal of the seas and oceans within geographical study has led to a characterisation of the ocean as “a quintessential wilderness, a void without community other than that temporarily established on boats crewed by those with the shared experience of being tossed about on its surface” (Mack, 2011, p. 17). This portrayal problematises conceptions of saltwater bodies as “empty”, void of history, “a space not a place” (ibid., p. 16). This problematisation of saltwater place is succinctly noted by Philip Steinberg: The ocean is constituted by vectors of movement—tides, currents, and waves—but these vectors do not simply occur in the ocean; they are the ocean. As such it is impossible to ‘locate’ a point at sea as an actual material place. Baudrillard’s […] observation about the map preceding the territory is as true at sea as it is on land. But in the ocean there is a further iteration because the territory subsequently washes away the map. Thus we can never truly ‘locate’ ourselves within the ocean. Or, if we must locate ourselves, we require a different kind of map. (Steinberg, 2014, p. XV) Here, the oceans and seas are cast in opposition to a form of “sedentary metaphysics” in which the process of place-making “involves carving out ‘Permanences’” which correspond to territorial categorisations of the world as “fixed, static and durable” (Peters & Anderson, 2014, p. 11). This inability to locate “place” complicates ecocritical perspectives that consider rooted or grounded “place-attachment” as a key component of environmental discourse. Rather than espousing “sedentary and surficial notions of ‘place’” the oceans and seas allow us to consider notions of “a dynamic world of relational becoming”, a “wet ontology” in which place is revealed through “partial encounters” with ocean creatures and environments (Peters & Steinberg, 2014, pp. 125, 129). Blue ecology is therefore identifiable as a mode that not only engages the oceans and seas of the world, but is specifically concerned with the ways in which saltwater affects and shapes our relationships with place. For Peters and Steinberg, this spatial reorientation is directed through the concept of a “wet ontology” which takes “space, time, and motion” as its key nodes of engagement (2015, p. 249). These coordinates of space, time and motion provide the bearings for the following analysis of Jamie and Robertson, paying particular attention to their respective treatment of time, “partial

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encounters” with aquatic creatures, and the mobility of marine environments. It is by actively looking to those ecopoetic narratives that are produced by, on, or near the sea that we may begin to understand the ecological and cultural significance of the sea in contemporary Scottish writing.

“Watching the ocean move”: Robin Robertson’s sea verse

5 The terrestrial discourses which take the “earth” as their key domain of concern easily lend themselves to linear trajectories of time which stabilise “history into material strata and immaterial epochs that can be neatly bordered, bounded, and contained” (Peters & Steinberg, 2015, p. 255). In contrast, as I have suggested, blue ecology locates history within a rippling and dynamic “tidalectic” movement that disrupts any notion of constancy or containment. Indeed, the “churning” and undulating activity tides, waves, and currents “suspends and distorts terrestrial markings of temporality” (DeLoughrey, 2007, p. 55). Importantly this “suspension” of temporality does not mean that seas and oceans are void of history, rather it reflects the physical action of being suspended “as particles, in a medium” (OED, 2016, web). This section argues that the sea in the poetry of Robin Robertson, provides a site of poetic suspension in which the “bounded and contained” control over time and space breaks down.

6 Robertson’s The Wrecking Light (2010) engages a multitude of modern and mythic seascapes. Across the collection Robertson roves from Scottish seascapes in the Outer Hebrides to the North East Coast, and beyond to Northern Ireland, India, Sweden, Northern Italy and Ancient Greece. The collection is driven by an impulse to navigate towards a sense of “home”. Across the text we encounter a series of Odyssean style voyaging poems that are shaped by motions of departure and arrival. Described by Robertson as a “very watery book”, The Wrecking Light embraces the “mythic word- hoard of Celtic stories” and is saturated with a sense of his childhood landscapes from the North East of Scotland and more recent travels abroad (Robertson, 2010b, n. pag.). Split into three parts, “I: Silvered Water”, “II: Unbroken Water” and “III: Unspoken Water” the collection places water at the centre of its engagement with place. Across the collection, the sea provides the location for a continuous interplay of temporalities where myth, memory and folklore are held in suspension, mixing and intermingling across various time frames. For example, Robertson takes great care to note the folkloric roots of “silvered” and “unbroken” water, describing the rituals of placing silver coins in water for the enactment of a “traditional Scottish blessing, or preparation for a wish” or healing “charm[s] against the Evil Eye” (2010, pp. 93–4). His choice of titles reflects an understanding of water as both a reservoir of human tradition, as well as an uncanny and biodeverse habitat.

7 In one of the most impressive poems of the collection, “Leaving St Kilda”, the speaker of the poem traces the land and seascapes of the Outer Hebridean archipelago as they watch the islands stream past on board a boat departing in the wake of the 1930 evacuation. Place names, in both Gaelic and English, are the only reference points for the poem. Throughout the sequence, names are rhythmically chanted in an order which provides an “anti-clockwise circumnavigation of the main island Hirta, then Soay, followed by a clockwise turn around Boreray” (Robertson, 2010, p. 94). Following

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these iterations, we move from the “edge of Mullach Mor” and “Village Bay” through a series of sea stacks and clefts […] to The Hoof, and the Cleft of the Hoof, to The Gap where the fulmars nest in their sorrel and chickweed; and on to Stac a’Langa, the Long Stack also called the Stack of the Guillemot, and Sgeir Dhomnuill. (Ibid., p. 25) The litany of naming enacts a memorialisation of the human histories which slowly give way to the nonhuman attentions of wind, wave and kittiwake. Across the sequence, the speaker is not only attentive to the places of human history (at last count over 100 place names are cited), but is acutely drawn to the biodiversity of the islands, noting “four mammal, three plant and fifteen bird species” which continue to thrive in their thousands (MacKenzie, 2013, p. 204). These sites “thrumming and ticking / with the machinery of sixty thousand squalling birds” indicate an intimate linkage between the human and nonhuman (Robertson, 2010, p. 28). The animalistic names of “The Hoof”, “The Beak of the Wailer”, “Cleft of the Grey Cow” reveal the community of St Kilda to be one that is tightly knit to the ecosystem of the islands (ibid., pp. 25–8).

8 Through this interplay the poem consistently draws connections between human and natural histories, where depending upon perspective, the “Gannetry of St Kilda: Stac Lee” is “From one side a bishops piece, from another, a shark” (Robertson, 2010, p. 28). The poetic encircling ensures that both perspectives: chess piece or shark fin, are equally portrayed. As we circumnavigate the archipelago we see how these sites, seemingly reclaimed by “puffins, petrels, shearwaters” are equally storied by human narratives (ibid., p. 26). In so doing, Robertson establishes the archipelago as a site of ecological relation, where humans are but one (departing) part of a wider ecosystem. As the sequence continues, the interplay between human and nonhuman history continues. Moving past places such as “The Well of many Virtues”, the “Cairn of the Green Sword”, and the “Chasm of the Warrior”, the speaker acknowledges a long history of human habitation and tradition (ibid., pp. 25–9). As the boat navigates the waters of the St Kilda archipelago the poem acknowledges the on-going and historical interconnection between human and nonhuman beings. Sailing past […] the northern stack: Stac an Armin, Stack of the Warrior, highest sea-stack in these islands of Britain, where the last great auk was killed as a witch a hundred and seventy years ago. (Ibid., p. 28) Here, Robertson constructs a poetic link between human and nonhuman history where the extinction of the “great auk” echoes the current evacuation of the islands. By Juxtaposing 19th century extinction, alongside the modern evacuation of the island, Robertson reveals how time shifts “Out on the ocean” (ibid., p. 26). The iambic rhythms, changing line length, and consonance of the text echoes the sound and movement of waves and tides that have through “centuries of close attention” forged the very “arches, pillars, clefts and caves” that the boat attempts to navigate (ibid.). Through these anachronic attentions, the archipelago is shown to be deeply bonded to a sense of “ecological time” which “situates human activities in a cyclical relationship with a natural environment that also bears the imprint of ancestral activities” (Heim, 2010, p. 149). The ritualistic anti-clockwise encircling of the islands prohibits and disrupts the progression of linear time, suspending acts of enclosure and containment. The constant and careful navigation of sea stacks, arches and inlets keeps the poem attuned

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to the active movement of the boat which appears to be moving through both time and space. As the poem navigates the rich waters of the archipelago the fleeting engagement with the islandscape and abundant marine life draws a constant flow between distant memories and continuous acts of arrival and departure.

9 As the poem closes, the actual act of leaving St Kilda is shown to be a balance between human and natural forces. In the closing stanzas the island shifts between a great “mountain range” and a human figure described as having “shoulders” adorned by a “shawl” of sea mist (Robertson, 2010, pp. 28–9). Unable to draw their eyes away from the “great sea-citadel” that was once their home the departing figures “hold the gaze of the rocks” as if spellbound, refusing to look away (ibid., p. 29). It is only when the natural forces of the ocean “close over” the archipelago, the islands “returning to the waves”, that “At last we turn away” (ibid.). Yet, as the boat begins to move east, the passengars are escorted by “bow-riding dolphins, our grey familiars, and thirty gannets” (ibid.). Protected by a “gannet guard” as they begin their “far passage, / for the leaving of St Kilda”, the poem establishes the continuation of human connection to the sea where the itinerant action of the gannets “in a line / drawing straight from Borerary” corresponds to the departing movement of the humans aboard the boat (ibid.). Interestingly, the hopeful flight of the seabirds contests the finality of the closing stanza where rather than signifying an absolute departure, instead hints at the possibility of a migratory return (ibid.).

10 Across The Wrecking Light the sea becomes a site of temporal dislocation and uncanny habitation, its unmappable waves and constant flow impart a sense of disruption to any form of stable dwelling. In “Easter, Liguria” a speaker “watching the ocean move” is troubled by the people surrounding him “going home, and I realise / I have no idea what that means” (Robertson, 2010, p. 81). Tuning in to the “shrieking of the gulls” overhad, the speaker contemplates “How long have I been leaving? / I don’t know” (ibid.). Here the ocean vista disrupts not only a sense of dwelling and home, but also prohibits a sense of temporal location. Across the collection, saltwater is repeatedly revealed to be a disruptive element that prohibits the comprehension of stable time and place. Importantly, saltwater is also shown to retain roots of myth and tradition. In the penultimate poem “At Roane Head”, which won the Forward Prize for best single poem in 2009, we can see how the ocean becomes a mechanism of subversion that destabilises a sense of human dominion and stable notions of home. Recounting the violent folkloric story of a woman and her four sons, “At Roane Head” takes the myth of the selkie as its central narrative.3 From the outset of the poem the speaker crafts a peculiar and unsettling atmosphere of familiarity and strangeness. The opening lines: “You’d know her house by the drawn blinds – / by the cormorants pitched on the boundary wall, / the black cross of their wings hung out to dry” (ibid., p. 87) intimates a personal knowledge of place, in which the house and woman are “known”. Yet the images of shuttered windows, sinister cormorants, and “Aonghas the collie, lying at the door / where he died: a rack of bones like a sprung trap” instantly disturb and unsettle, with the enjambment of the line subverting any form of comfortable homestead or ability to truly “know” (ibid.). As the poem continues, the image of the bound and bereaved house that lies hidden from the sea is placed in opposition to its occupants who display a peculiar affinity for the ocean. Describing the woman’s four sons the speaker notes that all were born “wrong”, “All born blind, they say, / slack-jawed and simple, web-footed” (ibid.). Uncomfortable on land, they walk “rickety as sticks” with a

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“hirpling” gait, yet “were fine swimmers” described as “more fish than human” with “herring-eyes” (ibid., pp. 87–8). Due to their comfort and affinity with the sea, the children are described as variously as “wrong”, “beglamoured”, and the products of “witchery” (ibid.). Here Robertson crafts the central tension of the poem in which neither sea nor land offers safe refuge or security.

11 This discomfort culminates in a violent scene in which the husband returns to the home “thick with drink” and (rightly) convinced that the children “couldn’t be his” (Robertson, 2010, p. 88). Forcing the children to stand “in a row by their beds” the husband moves “along the line / relaxing them / one after another / with a small knife” (ibid.). Notably, the killings are not a portrayed as a spectacle, but are presented as a slow, intimate, and familiar act, akin to an angler gutting fish. Despite their disturbing and uncanny presences, it is not the selkies that are depicted as the source of violence, but the human figures. The poem closes on the wife presenting to the speaker a series of tokens and gifts: “She gave me a skylark’s egg in a bed of frost: / gave me twists of my four sons’ hair; gave me / her husband’s head in a wooden box.” (Ibid., p. 89) Once again, the enjambment of Robertson’s lines destabilises the expectations of the reader, disrupting the flow of narrative to produce unforeseen consequences. By depicting the death of the husband at the hands of the wife, Robertson subverts the familiar Scottish folktale in which the romantic tragedy typically ends with the death of both selkie child and parent; instead, we are left with the speaker who at the culmination of the poem dons “the sealskin”, revealing his true nature. The donning of the skin at the end of the poem effectively restarts the narrative; having escaped death the speaker is free to continue his ways, to return to the sea, to find a new home and begin a new line.

12 Across his work Robertson espouses a form of wet ontology which disrupts the “linear trajectory of time that stabilises history” (Peters & Steinberg, 2015, p. 255) and instead proffer notions of time that are nonlinear and non-teleological. This lack of liner time and temporal control establishes a new ecology in which the human figure is set afloat within a sea of both human and nonhuman histories; cast adrift these figures must fathom new modes of relation in which the human is no longer the primary subject, and concepts of place are no longer stable.

Tilting, listing, listening: Kathleen Jamie’s sound waves

13 The watery navigation of place and dwelling is also evident within Kathleen Jamie’s 2004 Forward Poetry Prize winning collection The Tree House. While Robertson’s verse disrupts the continuity of history and progression of linear time through the chanting incantations of myth and folklore, Jamie’s lyrical works delve into the function of poetry itself as a means of connecting or establishing relations with place. While both Jamie and Robertson are avidly tuned to the aural dimensions of the sea, Jamie’s works express a more overt fascination with the acoustic dimensions of poetry, espousing a poetics of attention that is drawn to the ecological ethics of listening. The aural dimensions of her collections engage with and extend the function of ecopoetics as proposed by Jonathan Bate, who suggests that within poetry “metre itself—a quiet and persistent music, a recurring cycle, a heartbeat—is an answer to nature’s own rhythms, an echoing of the song of the earth itself” (2001, p. 76). These sound waves reverberate

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throughout The Tree House (2004) and presents poetry as a relational force which embraces the entire spectrum of human and nonhuman life across the Atlantic archipelago.

14 Yet from the outset of The Tree House, “the earth” is shown to be a problematic term for Jamie. The opening poem “The Wishing Tree” provides a triangulation point for the ethos of the collection, promising a string of work that considers the “tilt from one parish / into another” (Jamie, 2004, p. 3). Proclaiming that within this hinged space, “I stand neither in the wilderness / nor fairyland (ibid.) Jamie opens the collection with a decided statement against familiar forms of Romantic nature writing, and the secure “land ethic” of contemporary ecopoetry. Further to this, we can see how in “The Wishing Tree”, the speaker—presumably the tree—is tuned to the liminal spaces of the landscape, situated somewhere in-between, extending “towards the Atlantic” (ibid., pp. 3–4). The “tilt” Jamie describes, unsettles stable ground and places the reader within sites of transformation and change. This hesitation surrounding the stability of “earth” complicates Bate’s conception of ecopoetics as a form that proposes “that harmonious dwelling with the earth is a matter of staying put and listening in” (ibid., p. 29). Jamie’s poems most certainly do not stay put. For example, in “Landfall” she plays with the definition of the word that signifies both the arrival at land after a sea voyage, but also the collapse of land. The single stanza poem undergoes a series of transformations as the speaker’s attentiveness to the landscape shifts in an act of noticing: When we walk at the coast and notice, above the sea, a single ragged swallow veering towards the earth- […] can we allow ourselves to fail. (Jamie, 2004, p. 15) The inclusion of the comma after “notice” creates a pause within the poem, allowing room for both reader and speaker to become attentive to the scene before them. The initial vista of the coastal path opens up to include the sea, the sky, and a cleft form of “earth-” (ibid.). Looking upward toward the “ragged swallow”, the poem is instilled with a sense of vertigo as the bird suddenly plummets towards the earth. This sudden “veering” is akin to the opening “tilt” of the collection—a destabilising action that unbalances our position within the world, enabling us to adopt new perspectives from points of disruption.

15 Similarly, within “The Bower” we see Jamie play with the dual signification of words, and the destabilising motion of poetry. Signifying both a woodland dwelling and a form of anchor, “The Bower” explores fluid notions of dwelling. The familiar image of a forest bower is immediately placed into question with the opening lines “Neither born nor gifted / crafted nor bequeathed” indicating that once again this is a poem concerned with thresholds and instability, and acutely wary of Romantic forms of nature (Jamie, 2004, p. 17). As the poem progresses, the “entailed estate” of the bower is shown to be formed from “nothing / but an attitude of mind / mere breath rising in staves” at once an “anchorage/ or musical box, veiled / and listing deep” (ibid., p. 17). Music becomes an integral component of Jamie’s poetics, enabling an engagement with “patterns of repetition and fracture” (Falconer, 2015, p. 157) involving both biotic and abiotic forms within the environment. Through a continual flow of loose rhyme,

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assonance and consonance the poem expresses its “need / to annunciate” the song of the earth (Jamie, 2004, p. 17). However, in revealing that this “dwelling’s / little but warp or tease / in the pliant light” (ibid.), Jamie once again provides us with an unbalancing “tilt” of earth. This “plaint” quality of language and landscape combines throughout “The Bower” through a continued interplay of musical and maritime terms. The mixing of musical and maritime terms (e.g. warp, stave, listing, anchorage, waves) initially seems out of place within the apparent forest setting, but is in fact an essential component for the function of “return” which steers the poem. The marine language used throughout enables the poem to engage in a dynamic of arrival and departure where dwelling becomes a mobile act of “anchorage”, partial encounter, and a continued resonance.

16 Importantly, both “The Bower” and “Landfall” end on an open line enacting a resistance towards bounded enclosure and instead embrace reverberation. Jamie’s closing question in “Landfall”, “can we allow ourselves to fail” resounds outwards, encouraging further engagement and prompting a form of communication between poet, person and place. Similarly, within “The Bower” the open-ended final quatrain enables a sense of continued engagement: But when song, cast from such frail enclaves meets the forest’s edge, it returns in waves. (Jamie, 2004, p. 17) The multiple “waves” of return encourages us to think of poetry as a practice of exchange, where the vocal and aural engagement with the landscape incurs a relational musicality between human and nonhuman. Returning in waves, both “Landfall” and “The Bower” implement ocean and sea imagery as a means to disrupt static notions of “earth”. By engaging the ocean Jamie’s poems begin to “veer”, “list” and “tilt” away from stable concepts of dwelling and prompt us to retune our attention towards wet ontologies which are concerned with “flows, connections, liquidities and becomings […] of a world ever on the move” (Steinberg & Peters, 2015, p. 248). Much as a boat “tilts” or “lists” towards one side, unbalanced by the churning motion of waves and tides, so Jamie’s poetry unsettles stable points of anchorage and place. Her continued attentions to transient spaces and shifting landscapes extends Bate’s readings of ecopoetry as a static practice of listening, and instead proffers a vision of poetry as a reciprocal act of attentive communication, foregrounding “the fluid and unfinished act of poetic making as enactment of and attention to a fluid and transforming world” (Davidson, 2015, p. 93).

17 While saltwater is used in a figurative sense within “Landfall” and “The Bower”, Jamie also turns to the “dynamic three dimensional materiality” (Peters & Anderson, 2014, p. 8) of the sea in a loose sequence of poems focused on “partial encounters” with aquatic creatures. In “White-sided Dolphins” the speaker mimicking the “urgent cut and dive” of the dolphin flings themselves “flat on the fore-deck” at the appearance of the creatures, their bodies both skimming the surface of the sea and enabling a moment of connection where “just for a short time / we travelled as one” (Jamie, 2004, p. 22). Despite the human figure clutching a camera, it is the dolphins who “careen and appraise us / with a speculative eye” (ibid.), the sea inverting anthropocentric power relations which would normally position the human at the centre of the act of observation. Satisfied with their appraisal the dolphins “true to their own / inner

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oceanic maps” are the ones to end the encounter, veering off “north by northwest” (ibid.). Once again we encounter a sense of “tilt” in the poem, where the careening and veering action of the dolphins blurs the distinction between animal, human and maritime vessel.

18 In “Basking Shark”, the human speaker begins the poem by laying down upon a “cliff- edge”, providing a new line of sight which enables the figure to penetrate the depths of a “green- /tinted sea, so clear / it revealed, level below level, / not void, but a living creature” (Jamie, 2004, p. 23). From the precarious position at the edge of the earth, the speaker is able to perceive the seascape below as not merely a void expanse of water, but a thriving biodiverse harbour in which is currently “berthed” a magnetic creature (ibid.). The poem crafts a meeting point in which both shark and human, lying prostrate at the edges of their respective elements, encounter the “limits of its realm” (ibid., pp. 23–4). While the optics of the encounter are important, the speaker declaring repeatedly “what could one do but watch?”, the aural elements of the poem attempts to find balance within the “peculiar backwash” of the seascape (ibid., p. 23). The soundscape of the poem echoes acts of buoyancy, or suspension, where through a “corrective rippling” the lines navigate the varying levels of the sea (ibid.). The heavy plosives of “dull dark”, “peaceable and dumb” mimic the weight of the “ore-heavy body” of the shark “steady / as an anvil” which rests “buoyed like a heart” at the surface (ibid., pp. 23–4). The breathy cadence of the closing alliterative lines “waited, and was watched; / till it all became / unbearable, whereupon the wind / in its mercy breathed again” counteracts the heaviness of the preceding stanzas, the internal rhymes elevating the poem from the depths and up towards the sea-air (ibid., p. 24).

19 The final poem in this attentive sequence, “The Whale-watcher”, begins again at the edge of earth, occurring at the moment where “the road gives out – ” into a mix of “harsh grass, sea-maws, / lichen-crusted bedrock –” (Jamie, 2004, p. 25). The solid dashes mark the transition of the speaker from a purely anthropocentric domain into a relational and entangled dwelling place. The acoustics of the poem similarly change within this breakage, the long drawn out vowel sounds of the “road” cracking into the sibilance of “harsh grass” and consonance of “lichen-crusted bedrock” conveying the new soundscape of the ocean edge. The poem continues to forge a sonic connection between person and place, the “battered caravan” the speaker takes residence in echoing the “brittle waves” beyond (ibid., p. 25). Much like “Basking Shark” and “White-sided Dolphins” the position of the speaker as “watcher” soon shifts as the aural dimensions of the poem take precedence. Indeed, we are told that the whale- watcher stares at the sea “until my eyes evaporate”, the water becoming nothing but a bright “glare” necessitating a new mode of poetic attention (ibid.). No longer reliant on visual connection the poem engages an ethics of listening, in which the open vowel sounds of “breach, breathe and dive” effectively “repair” the harsh consonance of the preceding unrhymed quatrains with their brittle, battered and broken sounds (ibid.). The full rhyme of “glare” and “repair” closes the final quatrain with a sense of restoration, in which the “rent” ocean is stitched together by the movement of the whales, presenting a hopeful scene of environmental recovery.

20 Across her work,4 Jamie engages Scotland’s seas and coasts as a membrane which blurs the threshold between human and nonhuman worlds, her collections continually attentive to “porous edges and interpenetrations of being” (Falconer, 2015, p. 158). Her interplay of optic and acoustic modes of attention allow her poems to move beyond a

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distanced observation of the natural world and instead present the speaker as but one component of a reverberating and resonant environment. Looking to the various patterns and levels of the sea her poems “churn” seemingly stable space, allowing us to progress “on some sudden new trajectory” which is participatory, reciprocal and always questions how we might find “a way to live / on this damp ambiguous earth?” (Jamie, 2004, pp. 7, 21). Never quite “staying put” her work moves beyond the incantations of a steady and stable “song of the earth”, and embraces the fluidity and mobile song of the sea.

Conclusion: blue ecologies and archipelagic poetics

21 Due to scope, this article has limited discussion to only two poets and two collections. However, when looking to the current field of contemporary Scottish poetry the significance of saltwater narratives and blue ecologies become readily apparent. An extended study might include the itinerant “geopoetics” of Kenneth White, the eachscapes of John Burnside’s numerous collections, the tidal works of Valerie Gillies, the Shetland seascapes of Jen Hadfield, or the recent “poetic primer” Ebban an Flowan (2015) by Alec Finaly and Laura Watts’ regarding marine renewable energies in the Orkney islands. The discussion presented here is thus not exhaustive, but is instead offered as a means of opening the critical landscape to include and promote new “blue” readings of contemporary Scottish writing. The rise of blue ecologies within contemporary Scottish poetry reorientates the critical and creative axis away from continental and landed perspectives of place. Presenting saltwater space as an infinitely relational zone these poets continue a mode of writing that has begun a “diverse project of literary re-mapping in the British and Irish archipelago” (Smith, 2012, p. 2). Signifying any “sea, or sheet of water, in which there are numerous islands” (OED, 2016, n. pag.), the archipelago is a site which allows for a productive reimagining of the space of Scotland, both physically and poetically. The numerous islands and coastlines of Scotland feature prominently within the works of Jamie and Robertson, their poems continually navigating connective routes across saltwater space. To close this article, I would like to suggest that the blue ecologies of Jamie and Robertson not only engage with a new “wet ontology” that repositions human engagement with the natural world, but also engage with oceans and seas as a means of enacting a “spatial turn” within contemporary Scottish literature.

22 In tandem with the rise of blue ecology, archipelagic models have gained increasing traction within contemporary Anglophone literary studies, and are often found in relation to texts concerning the “geo-political unit or zone, stretching from the Channel Islands to the Shetlands, from the Wash of Galway bay, with ties to North America and down to the Caribbean” (Kerrigan, 2008, p. VII). By engaging the fluidity and mobility of sea space the term archipelago “designates a geopolitical unit or zone […] neutrally (avoiding the assumptions loaded into ‘the British Isles’); and it implies a devolved, interconnected account of what went on around the islands” (ibid.). Within a contemporary Atlantic context, archipelagic criticism allows us to reassess the Anglocentric ideologies which have ignored the “long, braided histories played out across the British-Irish archipelago between three kingdoms, four countries, divided regions, variable ethnicities and religiously determined allegiances” (ibid., p. 2). At its core archipelagic literature opens previously closed island imaginings which have for

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so long focused on insular and continental paradigms which focus on borders and boundaries between land and sea, island and mainland. Instead, the archipelago emphasises “connections between ‘island and island’” and prompts us to seriously consider how this new spatial assemblage might unsettle “static tropes of singularity, isolation, dependency and peripherality that presently dominate how islands are conceptualized in […] literature” (Pugh, 2013, p. 11). The works of Jamie and Robertson engage the broad and “pliant” seascapes of Scotland as a means of crafting “a different kind of map”, one that attends to the continuously fluctuating contours of the coast, and the multiplicitious histories and languages of the islands. Their tidalectic lyrics embrace the ever-changing sites of saltwater space in a means to recalibrate, and “tilt” our attentions to the more-than-human world. Further to this, their inclusion of Scottish myths, folklore and fable provides a different historical source material for the consideration of place and time, one that is unequivocally attentive to Celtic coast. In so doing, their works become exhibitive of a new archipelagic poetics, a form of practice that embraces the shifting entanglements of land and sea, poetry and place.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

“Archipelago, n.”, 2016, OED Online, Oxford University Press (consulted 6 September 2016).

ALEXANDER Neal, 2015, “Shorelines: Littoral Landscapes in the Poetry of Michael Longley and Robert Minhinnick”, in U. Kluwick and V. Richter (eds), The Beach In Anglophone Literature: Reading Littoral Space, London, Routledge, pp. 71–87.

BATE Jonathan, 2001, Song of the Earth, London, Pan Macmillan.

BUELL Lawrence, 2005, The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination, Oxford, Blackwell Publishing.

BRAYTON Daniel, 2011, “Shakespeare and the Global Ocean”, in L. D. Bruckner and D. Brayton (eds), Ecocritical Shakespeare, Farnham, Ashgate, pp. 173–90.

BRAYTON Daniel, 2012, Shakespeare’s Ocean: An Ecocritical Exploration, Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press.

DAVIDSON Lynn, 2015, “Repetition, Return and the Negotiation of Place in The Tree House”, in R. Falconer (ed.), Kathleen Jamie: Essays and Poems on Her Work, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, pp. 93–100.

DELOUGHREY Elizabeth, 2007, Roots and Routes: Navigating Caribbean and Pacific Island Literatures, Honolulu, University of Hawai’i Press.

FALCONER Rachel, 2015, “Midlife Music: The Overhaul and Frissure”, in R. Falconer (ed.), Kathleen Jamie: Essays and Poems on Her Work, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, pp. 156–68.

FISHER-WIRTH Ann & STREET Laura-Gray, 2013, The Ecopoetry Anthology, San Antonio, Trinity University Press.

GARRARD Greg, 2012, Ecocriticism, New York, Routledge.

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HEIM Otto, 2010, “Breathing Space: Ecology and Sovreignty in Pacific Island Poetry”, Dreadlocks: Oceans, Islands and Skies, vol. 6/7, pp. 141–73.

“Interview: Robin Robertson, Poet and Publisher”, 2010, Scotsman. Available on (consulted 16 September 2016).

HEISE Ursula, 2006, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Ecocriticism”, PMLA, vol. 121, no. 2, pp. 503–16.

JAMIE Kathleen, (2004), The Tree House, London, Picador.

KERRIGAN John, 2008, Archipelagic English: Literature, History, And Politics 1603–1707, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

MACK John, 2011, The Sea: A Cultural History, London, Reaktion Books.

MACKAY Peter, 2015, “The Tilt from One Parish to Another: The Tree House and Findings”, in R. Falconer (ed.), Kathleen Jamie: Essays and Poems on Her Work, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, pp. 84–93.

MACKENZIE Garry, 2013, “Utopias, Miniature Worlds and Global Networks in Modern Scottish Island Poetry”, Green Letters, vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 200–21.

MENTZ Steve, 2009a, “Toward a Blue Cultural Studies: The Sea, Maritime Culture, and Early Modern English Literature”, Literature Compass, vol. 6, no. 5, pp. 997–1013.

MENTZ Steve, 2009b, At the Bottom of Shakespeare’s Ocean, London, Bloomsbury Methuen Drama.

MENTZ Steve, 2015, Shipwreck Modernity: Ecologies of Globalization, 1550–1719, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.

NAYLOR Paul, 1999, Poetic Investigations: Singing the Holes in History, Illinois, Northwestern University Press.

PETERS Kimberley & ANDERSON Jon, 2014, “A Perfect and Absolute Blank”, in Water Worlds: Human Geographies of the Ocean, Oxon, Ashgate, pp. 3–23.

PETERS Kimberley & STEINBERG Peter, 2014, “Volume and Vision: Fluid Frames of Thinking Ocean Space”, Harvard Design Magazine, no. 35, pp. 124–29.

PETERS Kimberley & STEINBERG Peter, 2015, “Wet Ontologies, Fluid Spaces: Giving Depth to Volume Through Oceanic Thinking”, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, vol. 33, pp. 247–64.

PUGH Jonathan, 2013, “Island Movements: Thinking with the Archipelago”, Island Studies Journal, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 9–24.

POCOCK J. G. A., 2005, The Discovery of Islands: Essays in British History, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

ROBERTSON Robin, 2010, The Wrecking Light, Basingstoke, Picador.

SLOVIC Scott, 2010, “The Third Wave of Ecocriticism: North American Reflections on the Current Phase of the Discipline”, Ecozono, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 4–10.

STEINBERG Philip, 2014, “Foreword: On Thalassography”, in P. Kimberley and J. Anderson, Water Worlds: Human Geographies of the Ocean, Oxon, Ashgate, pp. XIII–XVII.

“Suspension, n.”, 2016, OED Online, Oxford University Press (consulted 6 September 2016).

“Terraqueous, adj.”, 2016, OED Online, Oxford University Press (consulted 6 September 2016).

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NOTES

1. Defined as “consisting of, or formed of, land and water” ( OED, 2016, web) the term “terraqueous” importantly does not incur a rejection of “landed” or “grounded” constructions of place, but points us towards the equal significance of water in constructing relationships to place. 2. Despite his initial concept of ecocritical waves, Buell almost immediately suggests that the term “palimpsest” is more accurate: “No definitive map of environmental criticism in literary studies can […] be drawn. Still, one can identify several trend-lines marking an evolution from a ‘first wave’ of ecocriticism to a ‘second’ or newer revisionist wave or waves increasingly evident today. This first-second wave distinction should not, however, be taken as implying a tidy, distinct succession. […] In this sense, ‘palimpsest’ would be a better metaphor than ‘wave’.” (2005, p. 17) 3. Selkies, also known as “Roane” in Irish, are mythical creatures that appear as seals in the sea, shedding their skins to assume a human form once on land. 4. Notably her non-fiction collection Findings (2005) published shortly after The Tree House visits many of the same sites and creatures as the poems and similarly expresses an ecological ethics of listening to saltwater spaces.

ABSTRACTS

Analysing the poetic seascapes within Kathleen Jamie’s The Tree House (2004) and Robin Robertson’s The Wrecking Light (2010) this article examines the ecological and geopolitical parameters of the so-called “saltwater turn” in contemporary Scottish poetry. Invoking saltwater space as a means of uncovering new environmentally tuned poetic framings the article suggests that Jamie and Robertson’s collections contribute to a growing field of archipelagic poetics which attends to the cultural, historical, and material interplay between the seas, oceans, and islands of the Atlantic archipelago. Exploring the dimensions of “blue ecology”, their work encourages us to fathom new relationships with the nonhuman world whilst also critiquing cultural models which have long cast Scotland as a “marginal” or “fringe” literary space.

À travers l’analyse de la poétique des paysages marins de The Tree House de Kathleen Jamie (2004) and The Wrecking Light de Robin Robertson (2010), cet article examine les paramètres écologiques et géopolitiques d’un « tournant marin » [pour évoquer le « tournant linguistique » connu au milieu du XXe siècle par la philosophie et l’histoire notamment] dans la poésie écossaise contemporaine. Suggérant que l’espace marin est un moyen de révéler de nouveaux cadres poétiques modelés sur l’environnement, cet article entend démontrer que les recueils de Jamie and Robertson contribuent à un champ, en pleine expansion, d’une « poétique des archipels », qui se préoccupe de l’effet culturel, historique et matériel du jeu conjugué entre mers, océans, et îles de l’archipel atlantique. À travers l’exploration des diverses dimensions d’une « écologie bleue », ces travaux nous encouragent à sonder les relations nouvelles qui s’instaurent entre monde humain et non humain, tout en critiquant les modèles culturels qui ont depuis longtemps cantonné l’Écosse à la marge de l’espace littéraire.

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INDEX

Mots-clés: écopoétique, littérature écossaise contemporaine, poétique des archipels, « écologie bleue », Robin Robertson, Kathleen Jamie Keywords: ecopoetry, contemporary Scottish literature, archipelagic poetics, “blue ecology”, Robin Robertson, Kathleen Jamie

AUTHOR

ALEXANDRA CAMPBELL PhD candidate, English literature, School of Critical Studies, University of Glasgow. Alexandra Campbell is a current doctoral candidate in English literature at the University of Glasgow. Her thesis “Archipelagic Poetics: Ecology in Modern Scottish and Irish Poetry” presents a series of ecocritical readings of modern Scottish and Irish poets in line with geological, biological and oceanic coordinates. She teaches in both the Scottish literature and English literature departments at GU and is the current General Editor of EnviroHum, a new interdisciplinary and experimental zine and digital platform for artists and academics working in the Environmental Humanities.

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Miscellany

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“Original and Best”? How Barr’s Irn- Bru Became a Scottish Icon « Original and Best » ? Comment l’Irn-Bru est devenu un icône écossais

David Leishman

1 Barr’s Irn-Bru1 plays a considerable cultural role in Scotland as an ingrained element of Scottish quotidian consumption habits as well as representing a semiotic shorthand for “authentic” Scottish identity. This has arguably been the case since the 1970s at least, but has become particularly apparent in recent times. Events such as the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow showed how a sense of Scottish particularism could be played out through the advertising of Irn-Bru, while the Independence Referendum and its aftermath gave examples of how consumption of the drink could become ideologically charged. Cans of Irn-Bru formed the structural foundations for a mock-up of the Forth Rail Bridge which featured in the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony, while AG BARR plc, one of the main sponsors of the event, launched an advertising campaign on the theme of the Scots as patriotic sports fans.2 In 2014 Former Secretary of State for Scotland and future leader of Scottish Labour Jim Murphy campaigned for a No vote on a stump tour of Scotland where he spoke atop two upturned Barr’s crates and sipped Irn-Bru before journalists. Jeremy Corbyn’s first official trip to Scotland as Labour leader in 2015 involved him being hastily photographed tasting the famous beverage on the train home after his earlier refusal of a can of the drink threatened to harm his image.3

2 That the cultural practices which inform national identities are rooted in the world of commercial production and marketing communications does not make them any less relevant as objects of study. Without disputing the significance of such commercially- rooted practices, our understanding and reception of them is however inevitably conditioned by their historical grounding. This is important given that Barr’s Irn-Bru, through its packaging design and advertising has built up a twin discourse linking the nation and the origins of the drink. However, since it can be shown that the carbonated drink known as Iron Brew, the former name for Irn-Bru, is not innately Scottish, drinking Barr’s Irn-Bru today only means something about Scottishness if other

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elements of cultural mediation have come into play such as the selection, framing and foregrounding of certain discourses and images that have displaced others. By investigating the drink’s true historical origins we are not challenging Scots to spurn inauthentic practices, but simply reaffirming how the cultural appropriation of markers of national authenticity always involves a degree of institutionalized forgetting. This cultural amnesia can in particular mask the confluence of the multiple sources from which such cultural constructs have emerged.

3 The growing body of literature on the commercial mediation of national identity, of which Kania-Lundholm provides a thorough review (2014), shows this to be a promising area of research and provides some useful methodological insights. Authors such as Billig (1995) have argued convincingly that the study of banal nationalism, which concerns itself with the daily occurrences of less ostentatious national signification— that of the unwaved versus the waved flag—should not be overlooked despite their often apparently trivial nature. Drawing from this study, Edensor (2002), with a particular focus on Scotland, shows how such “low” cultural practices can shape national identity. Brands, he notes, contribute to the physical environment of the nation thanks to the creation of a particular retail geography or through the inculcation of quotidian consumption habits as a type of national performance. A similar point that commercial consumption offers a key means to act out national identities has been made by Slater (1997, p. 132). Edensor is also interested in the sense of temporal continuity that brands offer the nation (2002, p. 110), which is important given the emphasis that theorists of the nation such as Renan (1997) or Smith (1991) have placed on the question of connecting the nation of today with its ancestral or imagined past. It is no coincidence if an author such as Holt (2004, 2006), whose important work in the field of iconic brands has criticised the limitation of studies which seek merely to criticise or rehabilitate the brand as a cultural phenomenon, reiterates the importance of scanning the trajectory of a brand over time in order to get a fuller understanding of how it inserts itself into a series of competing cultural myths.

4 To study such phenomena in Scotland, Barr’s Irn-Bru is a pertinent case study. Not only does the drink represent an almost unparalleled example of a nationally branded product, but it also reveals the preponderance of the notions of origins, authenticity, historicity (and also superiority), in its commercial discourse. These themes are potently tied together in the tagline “Original and Best”. While not being a slogan solely associated with AG BARR plc or Irn-Bru4—thus highlighting the sensitivity of many early brands to the issue of commercial plagiarism—the term “original” was a key feature of Barr’s early marketing communications for the drink and remains so today.

5 This article intends to briefly look at Barr’s official corporate discourse surrounding the origins of their flagship drink Irn-Bru, which they sold under the name Iron Brew until this was changed to its distinctive modern-day spelling in 1948 when the drink was reintroduced on the UK market after World War II.

6 This will be contrasted with archive research which shows how the drink has coalesced from disparate strands in the US and then UK markets, with the different stages of the drink’s development reflecting the legal and commercial environment in which it evolved. We will also consider how the post-war relaunch of Iron Brew as Irn-Bru

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helped to seal the notion of an original drink whose distinctive and idiosyncratic identity increasingly became associated with Scotland.

Protecting and promoting originality

7 The official back story of Irn-Bru for many years has been that the aerated waters manufacturers AG Barr & Co. in Glasgow and Robert Barr in Falkirk—two family firms with a strong degree of integration, Andrew G. Barr being Robert’s son—jointly launched their “original recipe” Iron Brew in 1901. However, despite this phrasing, the firm today AG BARR plc today are clear that they were not the first to present such a drink (Grant, 2004, p. 9). The firm describes the early days of Iron Brew as a period when the name was merely indicative of a generic type of beverage and the drink was produced by a multitude of local bottlers each producing their own version of the flavour. To explain their use of the slogan “Original and Best” today, AG Barr & Co. plc indicate that it simply alludes to the fact that they continue to use their own proprietary recipe as detailed in a vintage mixing book in their possession. According to AG BARR plc, the recipe contains 32 flavouring ingredients and was first used in 1901. Thus the slogan is reportedly intended to convey a sense of continuity rather than represent a claim that Barr’s Irn-Bru was the initial or authentic drink of this category.

8 The slogan “Original and Best” was used by Barr’s throughout much of the 20th century. A focus on the “originality” of the drink first appeared right after the launch of Barr’s Iron Brew, when commercial branding was still in its infancy and counterfeiting or imitating popular brands to benefit from the goodwill they had accrued was still commonplace. Early bottle labels for Barr’s Iron Brew included the mention “THE ORIGINAL. NONE GENUINE WITHOUT THIS SIGNATURE” above a facsimile of the appropriate signature of “AG Barr & Co. Ltd” or “Robt Barr” respectively. After the introduction of legislation concerning the protection of “Merchandise Marks” in 1875 and 1887, manufacturers could register graphic devices as well as distinctive trade names to protect the identity of their products in the face of less scrupulous competitors. In Falkirk, the signature of founder Robert Barr had been duly registered as a legally protected trademark (“Prosecution under the Merchandise Marks Act”, 1899, p. 3) and the same would also appear to be the case for the Glasgow firm, allowing them to distinguish their products from those of their rivals and initiate successful legal action against anyone who usurped their firm’s identity. However, the name of the drink Iron Brew could not be trademarked itself as a great many soft drinks manufacturers around the UK—and particularly in Scotland—were already selling Iron Brew drinks, often with very similar packaging.

9 Thus the use of the term “The Original” in conjunction with the signature of the manufacturers was applied to bottles to indicate that the Iron Brew in question was not counterfeit and that it was the authentic produce of AG Barr & Co. or Robert Barr. More subtly, the term also connoted the superiority of a product liable to be plagiarized due to its implied qualities, a commercial argument in itself. Nevertheless, while prompted by the profusion of counterfeit or look-alike products characteristic of the early history of branded goods, use of the term “original”, thanks to its ambiguous semantics, also allowed the drink to be presented as a historical original, the first and hence genuine instance of such a product. Barr’s openly invited this abusive interpretation of the term

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in advertising which appeared in the Falkirk Herald in 1904: “Drink Barr’s Iron Brew – The original and best – Owing to the many imitations of this famous brew insist on seeing the label”. This message strongly hinted that all rival makers of similar drinks were mere copiers attempting to unjustly reap the commercial rewards of a successful drink which was Barr’s invention. The tagline “Original and Best” has been displayed on all cans and bottles of Barr’s Irn-Bru for a number of decades now, this specific slogan being reintroduced in 1988 when the packaging was modernised.

10 Various other uses of the term “original” have also appeared recurrently on the drink’s packaging and advertising both before and after World War II. For example, the line “BARR’s IRON BREW / (The Original Iron Brew)” was in evidence in a Barr’s ad published in the Fife Free Press in 1930 (“Famous Athletes”) thus continuing to reinforce this impression of the authenticity and historical primacy of Barr’s drink, which was certainly enduringly popular and commercially successful but had no genuine claim to having distinctive Scottish origins.

11 Cubitt stresses how notions of temporal continuity, expressed via myths that located the legitimacy of the nation in its shared ancestral past, were particularly prominent in 19th century conceptions of national identity (1998, p. 9). From today’s perspective, Edensor, while acknowledging how evocations of past authenticity still importantly generate a sense of continuity and fixity (2002, pp. 116–7), stresses the benefits of refocusing on the role of popular and material culture in the construction of national identity. This allows us to escape the “temporal cul-de-sac” (ibid., p. 17) which has been characteristic of earlier attempts to theorise the nation and which have tended to neglect the repeated, performative, mundane elements of contemporary national experience in an era of consumerism. Edensor’s premise is neatly summed up by Foster who notes that consumption of Coca-Cola “allows the past to live in the present” thus yoking tradition and continuity to modernity (1999, p. 274). But the portrayal of origins can often connote this reassuring sense of fixity and authenticity only when framed in a reductive manner which excludes the inevitable geographic and cultural interactions which have been written out of the official story. This appears to be particularly true of the brands which represent industrial mass-produced products, individual goods necessarily existing as part of a broader network of supply, production and distribution (Edensor, 2002, p. 115). In order to illustrate this point it will be useful to study the actual commercial origins of the drink that became known as Irn-Bru.

The ideal American tonic

12 The earliest known ad for “Iron Brew” appeared in Kingston, Jamaica and was published in the Daily Gleaner on 9 July 1891 by the “Jamaica Aerated Water Coy”. The ad, little more than a trade notice announcing a change of premises and listing the flavours of beverage available, listed Iron Brew alongside the other drinks they sold. The company was run by the MacNish family and the father, having been a merchant in Glasgow, retained trading links with the whisky distributors of the same name. In subsequent ads, MacNish & Son—as the firm became known—claimed to have produced their “genuine and original” MacNish Iron Brew from their premises in Port Royal from as early as 1890. Yet, although they frequently warned customers over the next decade against purchasing inferior imitations of the drink, the Iron Brew they were bottling and promoting as their most popular product was not their original invention and was

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certainly not Scottish in spite of the bottler’s surname. Instead, it was mixed from a pre-prepared syrup that the MacNishes imported from the US along with other fruit flavours and essences. This was quite typical of the late 19th century market for sparkling drinks where large numbers of small independent soda fountains and bottlers mixed, carbonated and sold drinks at a local level but depended on large specialist flavouring houses which mass-produced the standardised essences and concentrated syrups that the former used in their recipes. The manufacturer of the Iron Brew essence used to make the drink sold in Jamaica was the Maas & Waldstein chemicals company of New York. As the inventors of an innovative essence which they marketed as IRONBREW, Maas & Waldstein can be credited as the true historical originator of the carbonated drink which went on to be copied as “Iron Brew” and which we know today in the form of Irn-Bru.

13 The Official Gazette of the US Patent Office records that on 5 January 1901 Maas & Waldstein filed a trademark application for a “medical tonic” named IRONBREW. While this registration process occurred relatively late, it is the date of the first use of the trade name which is significant in the application. The filing states that IRONBREW was first used commercially on 28 August 1889, a date which is compatible with claims by the MacNish firm that they had been selling Iron Brew since 1890 and which situates Maas & Waldstein as the first to commercialise a carbonated drink with this name.5

14 While one side of Maas & Waldstein’s business involved the production of solvents, lacquers and enamels, they also had an important line supplying independent bottlers and drugstore soda fountains with fruit essences, flavoured syrups, acids and colorants. Histories of the US soft drinks market tend to largely overlook Iron Brew, ignoring it completely (Dietz, 1973; Pendergrast, 1993) or mentioning it only in passing as an example of an early drink whose popularity quickly waned (Riley, 1958, p. 133; Tchudi, 1986, p. 20; Funderburg, 2001, p. 103). It is, however, clear from the trade press and from its advertising that Iron Brew was one of America’s most well-known sodas from the mid-1890s to the 1910s, enjoying widespread popularity all across the United States.

15 Independent bottlers were recruited across the country and were supplied with IRONBREW essence, as well as the necessary labels, store signs and show cards which would help to market the drink by creating a distinctive visual identity.

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Maas & Waldstein IRONBREW bottle label, c. 1900.

16 Maas & Waldstein themselves were frequent advertisers in professional publications such as the American Bottler magazine, often taking out double-page spreads to promote IRONBREW as their flagship brand. Bottling agreements were secured in cities far beyond its East Coast base—as well as being introduced into California at an early stage and having a strong presence in Texas, Iron Brew was also present across the mid-west and even in Hawaii. Its popular appeal all across the US meant that the drink could be presented with some pertinence as a truly national, rather than local, product: As an ideal American tonic Ironbrew stands in the front rank. Men, women and children all like it for its stimulating properties and fine taste. As a most healthful and nourishing drink it is sold in hotels, cafes, restaurants and soda fountains everywhere. (“Maas & Waldstein Co.”, 1905, p. 72)

17 Maas & Waldstein underlined their role as the inventors of IRONBREW and frequently used this claim to affirm their product’s authenticity and superior quality: “BEWARE of infringers and impostors and similar names. There is only one IRONBREW” (“IRONBREW: The ideal American Drink”, 1906, p. 5). While, as we have seen, it was standard practice for firms of the day to exhort consumers to eschew disappointing substitutes or copycats, these arguments were here given more legitimacy by the primacy of Maas & Waldstein’s product. The Official Gazette of the US Patent Office includes a registration filed in April 1905 under the category “medical tonics” which defined the IRONBREW visual logo as “an uplifted arm and hand grasping a hammer” (p. 1790). This device would henceforth be given legal protection alongside the brand name. Maas & Waldstein were therefore in a position to make good their threats that legal action would be taken against manufacturers who infringed their trademark.

18 Consequently, Maas & Waldstein successfully sued plagiarists in the US. In 1913, in a case heard in California (Maas & Waldstein Extract Co. vs. Cornelius P. Henrihy et al.), they objected to the adoption of the name “Iron Brew” for a product sold by the Western Bottling Co. Maas & Waldstein were successful and the ruling confirmed their status as the sole legitimate owner of the IRONBREW trade name as well as variants of

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this. Indeed, the court concluded that no drink could be legally sold by a rival using any other name which might be similar in “sound, appearance or suggestion”. In the US at least the question of the custodianship of Iron Brew had been definitively settled.

19 The issue of sound-alike imitation products was particularly pertinent because as early as 1903 a drink known as “RON-BRE”, a close rendering of “Iron Brew” when spoken aloud, had been marketed by the Blue Seal Supply Company of Boston, Massachusetts as a cheaper alternative to Maas & Waldstein IRONBREW.

Blue Label Supply Co. RON-BRE trade advertisement, American Bottler, 1906.

This distinctive phonetic spelling—a trick the Blue Seal Supply Company also used with other products—was the basis for a successful, rival trademark application. The trademark for this “carbonated tonic beverage”, consisting of the hyphenated name RON-BRE and a logo featuring a standing bear, was duly registered on 27 March 1906 in the Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office. RON-BRE, despite its clearly derivative nature, once again sought to position itself in the trade press as an authentic, original product: “RON-BRE is copyrighted and the label registered. Bottlers, beware of worthless imitations. GET THE GENUINE.” (“Ron-Bre”, 1906, p. 8) A similar phonetic spelling would be registered by Barr’s in Scotland in 1946 although there is no evidence they had any knowledge of the Blue Seal Supply Company’s product.

20 Perhaps as a result of the Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906, which introduced new standards of accuracy for labelling and limited the presence of additives or harmful ingredients, the popularity of Iron Brew declined rapidly in the US. It did however retain a small regional presence in some markets such as Fredericksburg, Texas (where it remained available until the 1960s: Kirsch, 1969, p. 90), Utah (where it is sold under the name “Ironport” by Bandit Soda) and Connecticut, where Iron Brew is still bottled today by the Foxon Park soda company. Interestingly, Foxon Park, despite still using

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the original Maas & Waldstein logo device of a hammer held by a muscular arm, describes the drink on its website as “a unique soda that has its roots in old Scotland.”

21 Given the wealth of readily accessible trade publications for the US bottling industry which chart the rise and fall of the original American Iron Brew from the 1890s on, the subsequent attribution of specific Scottish origins for this drink reaffirms the ability of commercial myth to alter our understanding of the past. This is particularly the case when an apparently self-evident truth deters further serious investigation. Barr’s early advertising strongly hinted at historical pre-eminence for their brand—the “original and best” Iron Brew which was claimed to be superior to mere imitations. Consumers from an early stage were invited to view Falkirk or Glasgow as the locus of a product whose authenticity and distinctiveness would increasingly be associated with its Scottish manufacturers, an idea reinforced by the popularity of the drink in the Scottish market and the consequent longevity of the local brand. While explicit claims of historical originality are today rejected by AG BARR plc, their “original and best” slogan fills the vacuum left by the disappearance of the drink from its initial US market. What was originally mere commercial hyperbole has helped condition our view of the drink as a seemingly sound element of national symbolism. In his study of iconic brands, Holt states that understanding the identity value of brands requires them being situated in a specific historical context and viewed as “historical actors in society” (Holt, 2004, p. 37). While pertinent, Holt’s underlying premise is that brands tend to be conservative followers rather than shapers of public opinion, merely “enjoin[ing] and embellish[ing]” existing myths (Holt, 2006, p. 372). This appears to underplay the ability of brands to shape our perception of history.

Claiming English origins

22 With the American origins of the drink clearly lost from memory, rivalry appeared in the 1980s over whether the invention of Iron Brew could be attributed to English or Scottish producers, with attention being focused on historical soft drinks manufacturers in the Derby area. In 1983, journalist Tom Shields’ popular Glasgow Herald column drily recounted: “The English are now claiming they invented iron brew.” (1983, p. 8) This followed a claim made by English soft drinks producer Mandora St Clements Limited, which was based in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, that they were the original producers of Iron Brew. According to the firm, their Iron Brew had been produced in the Derby areas since the 1890s following its invention by a Belper chemist named Charles Southern whose original recipe they still used. In the article, Mandora’s operations manager John Hood was quoted as saying: Everyone associates iron brew [sic] with Scotland. But it has always been popular in this area. I feel that since the originator comes from here and we use his recipe, we have a better claim to iron brew fame than our Scottish counterpart.

23 The reaction of Robin Barr, chairman of AG Barr from 1978 to 2009, whom Shields also quotes, was that Mandora’s claim could not be proved or disproved. Robin Barr merely reiterated the popularity of the Iron Brew that Barr’s had been producing since 1901 and acknowledged that other manufacturers had been making it before that date, stating that the drink’s origins potentially dated from before the 1890s (Shields, 1983, p. 8). Mandora, under their previous names Sturgess & Co., and later Burrows & Sturgess, had indeed been England’s most prominent purveyors of Iron Brew

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throughout the early 20th century. Tom Shields’ wry treatment of Mandora’s “disconcerting claim” hinted at a certain degree of cultural sensitivity surrounding the notion that Iron Brew might, in fact, have been English in origin.

24 Burrows & Sturgess certainly claimed at length and without the slightest ambiguity in their advertising that they were the historical inventors and sole genuine producers of the drink (“Christmas Drinks”, 1912, p. 3; “Spa-Ticklers”, 1920, p. 2). Prominent local advertisers for their Spa Iron Brew in the first decades of the 20th century, Burrows & Sturgess often complained of plagiarists seeking to benefit unduly from the strong market they had created, but they were unsuccessful in their attempt to trademark Iron Brew (“Trade-marks Applied For”, 1909, p. 479). This was no doubt because many other UK producers were already using the name by this point in time, a detail which in turn points to how the British market was structured.

25 As in the US, the UK market for soft drinks featured large numbers of local carbonated drinks manufacturers who were supplied with colours, essences and fruit extracts by a collection of large, technologically innovative, national, or even international, flavour houses. One of the biggest and most well-known of these was the London firm of Stevenson & Howell (Abrash, 1982; Burnett, 1999, p. 100; Steen & Ashurst, 2006, p. 7), based in Southwark. Established in 1882 by chemists William Stevenson and Reginald Howell, the firm had agencies in the colonies as well as a branch office in Glasgow. Though not the sole UK producer of Iron Brew essence for the local bottlers who were beginning to commercialise the drink in the early 1900s,6 Stevenson & Howell appears to have been the first and was certainly the most influential. Whereas the US market had grown rapidly following an initial phase of expansion in the early 1890s under the impetus of Maas & Waldstein, the introduction of Iron Brew in the UK did not take place until the launch of Stevenson & Howell’s Iron Brew.

26 By referring to product catalogues and the trade press we can note that Stevenson & Howell first introduced their Iron Brew in 1898 (“Esencias Solubles Concentradas”, 1898; “Soluble Essences”, Chemist & Druggist, 30 July 1898). Accompanying this launch, on 15 August 1898, Reginald Howell personally filed an application for the copyright registration of a full-colour promotional showcard which had been executed for the firm. It was described thus: “Drawing of Show Card for drink called ‘Iron Brew’ representing ‘strong man’ in costume holding glass aloft in right hand.” (National Archives 1 143 002)

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National Archives 1 143 002

27 The full-colour image showed a strongman in a short tunic sporting a large moustache. Surrounded by weightlifting equipment, he proudly holds up a glass in salute and is encircled by a ring of text stating: “AN INVIGORATING & REFRESHING TONIC BEVERAGE (NON-ALCOHOLIC)”. The Stevenson & Howell illustration is instantly recognisable as that of the muscular figure who would grace bottles of Barr’s Iron Brew for the next twenty years or so—the wording, pose, colour scheme, and accessories are all identical. The same basic illustration was then remodelled in the 1920s with a rower replacing the original athlete. This figure was used by Barr’s until the 1980s when he was replaced with a more stylised, metallic version of the athlete. Yet it was a London essence firm, rather than Barr’s themselves, which invented one of the most iconic and longstanding representations of the drink’s promotional and national identity, the supposedly archetypal “Highland” strongman.

28 In Barr’s company archive, a note dated 13 May 1899 in a copy letter book for Robert Barr, Falkirk, records a printing order for one million Iron Brew bottle labels to be supplied to Barr’s by the firm Stevenson & Howell. This confirms the early commercial relationship between the two firms who would continue to work closely together throughout the 20th century. Robin Barr (who retired as chairman to become Non- Executive Director in 2009, and who still personally mixes all the Irn-Bru essence sold) indicates that this very sizeable order for labels shows that the drink must already have had proven sales by this date, suggesting that it had already been on the market for some time.7 This would situate Barr’s first commercialisation of Iron Brew earlier than spring 1899, allowing us to imagine it had appeared as early as the summer of 1898. However, despite Barr’s adopting Stevenson & Howell’s strongman image and using official Iron Brew promotional labels and showcards that they supplied, Robin Barr stresses that at no time did Barr’s purchase Stevenson & Howell’s proprietary brand of

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Iron Brew essence itself, the firm’s archives showing no record of this ever having taken place. AG BARR plc claims instead that Barr’s has always mixed Iron Brew to its own recipe using a combination of different flavours and ingredients (some of which were individually supplied by Stevenson & Howell).

29 The question of the identity of the “Highland” strongman is significant since Barr’s, in addition to appropriating the Stevenson & Howell image as their own, began to make it known that the illustration, used on the label, actually depicted early Scottish sportsman Adam Brown (also known as Lewis Lyon), a strongman and athlete from Shotts who performed at Highland Games events. This element of the brand’s history now features prominently as part of the “The Phenomenal AG BARR Story”, the timeline which appears on the company’s website. While this identification of the strongman as Adam Brown would appear spurious—the Stevenson & Howell figure represented a generic Victorian strongman at a time when the UK was caught up in enthusiasm for the German bodybuilder Eugen Sandow— the resemblance of the character in the illustration to Adam Brown reinforced the conception of an entirely local product championing Scottish cultural practices (Highland Games), thus channelling the attendant cultural values of strength, endurance and masculine vigour, which were already evident in the product’s name. Positioning of this sort was then reinforced from around 1904 when Barr’s began advertising campaigns which, in association with the generic strongman, featured likenesses of identifiable world champion athletes Donald Dinnie and Alex Munro.

30 The evacuation of Stevenson & Howell’s role in launching Iron Brew in the UK was clearly in evidence by the second half of the 20th century, with Barr’s pre-1901 commercialisation of the drink and the post hoc identification of the original strongman as a Scottish athlete both firmly anchored in the public’s mind from this period on. So complete was this new consensus that the management of AG BARR plc were themselves apparently unaware that the original advertising image had been created by Stevenson & Howell. AG BARR plc held commemorations in 2001 to mark the centenary of the introduction of their original recipe Iron Brew and celebrated the role of Adam Brown in a re-release of the strongman packaging in 2013. The 1901 date continues to be used on packaging, press releases and other marketing communications as the official launch date. However, Barr’s were clearly commercialising the drink before this date. The Falkirk local history archives hold the earliest published advertisement for Barr’s Iron Brew. Below the wording “ASK FOR… / … BARR’S IRON BREW. / The Most Popular Drink of the Season,” the ad features a colour strongman bottle label.

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Falkirk Archives.

31 The label is pasted directly onto the back page of a local cookery book which was printed as a fundraiser in advance of the St James United Presbyterian Church bazaar, held in Falkirk in October 1900.

Post-War positioning

32 Another element of the origin story of Iron Brew which is significant for how the drink became predominantly associated with Scotland is the disruption in the UK soft drinks market caused by World War II. According to AG BARR plc, after the drink was forced off sale from 1942–1948 as part of the government’s wartime rationalisation of the soft drinks market, they felt compelled to rebrand their Iron Brew as “Irn-Bru” to get round new food labelling regulations which insisted that brand names should be “literally true”: Barr’s “Iron Brew” did contain iron but it was not brewed. There appeared therefore to be no choice but to come up with a new spelling for the company’s No. 1 brand. (Barr & Jephcott, 2001, p. 28)

33 This version of events and their chronology is imprecise for a number of reasons, including the fact that the Labelling of Food Order (1946) did not restrict use of the word “brew” but banned unfounded “tonic” or “medicinal” claims, and specifically targeted Iron Brew drinks as an example of mislabelling over the suggested presence of healthful minerals (Ministry of Food, 1949, pp. 46–8). A small quantity of iron had been present in the drink from 1937 onwards although the addition of this mineral was halted from 1940 to 1942 in a context of wartime disruptions and shortages. In 1948 iron was reintroduced and from February 1949 the quantity was increased8 to comply

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with the guidelines, drawn up with the help of chairman Robert Barr in person,9 concerning the provisions for a minimum mineral content for such drinks (Barr, 1989).

34 Wartime legislation forced industry players to market only a small number of nationally standardised flavours under a common “SDI”—Soft Drinks Industry (War Time) Association—label. An advertisement for Barr’s Iron Brew published in the Fife Free Press on 26 December 1942 consequently announced the disappearance of Barr’s Iron Brew from 1st January 1943 onwards: “Au Revoir–But Not Good-Bye”. Iron Brew would not be in stores again until the SDI was wound up, allowing normal trading to resume on 1st February 1948 (Penn, 1948, p. 92). A Barr’s ad illustrating that Iron Brew was “NOW ON SALE” consequently appeared on 6 February 1948 and although this ad mentioned the new “registered IRN-BRU Trade Mark” that the firm had filed in July 1946, this appeared in small type below the product name “BARR’S IRON BREW”. Indeed, the old version of the name continued to be used until May of that year when it was definitively supplanted by the shorter phonetic spelling. When this new name was used in ads over the next three years, “BARR’S IRN-BRU” was followed by the line “The Original IRON BREW”. While this may have been merely to provide customers with a reassuring sense of brand continuity, it also encouraged them, by means of the ambiguous semantics of “original”, to view Barr’s as the historical originator of the drink. As the wartime disruption had led to the definitive disappearance of large numbers of rival bottlers, the hegemonic position of Barr’s was further consolidated, even though a number of small firms both in Scotland and in England began to sell Iron Brew again in the 1950s.

35 The official backstory of the wartime disruption also minimises the significance of Barr’s decision to maintain advertising for Iron Brew during the period when all manufacturers of what had been until then a generic flavour were forced to take the drink off sale. Using the popular Ba-Bru character that Barr’s had placed in regular comic strip ads from 1st April 1939 onwards, Barr’s had maintained near weekly ads in the local press for a full five years when the drink was off sale (1943–February 1948), urging consumers not to forget Iron Brew and to await its return. Barr’s decision to register the trade name “Irn-Bru” in 1946 was motivated by commercial concerns rather than statutory labelling requirements, in order to be able to protect the awareness and goodwill they had generated for their brand during this time. Whereas the generic name “Iron Brew” could be attributable to any number of manufacturers, Barr’s wished to ensure for themselves a legally protected, distinctive trademark which could be the basis for the brand once normal trading resumed: Once we came back with our own names we wanted to advertise our Iron Brew which we thought would sell… now there’s no point in advertising a name which everyone else has got. So we invented “I-R-N-B-R-U”. (Barr, 1989)

36 The new name, in addition to being similar in spelling to that of their advertising mascot “Ba-Bru”, was intended to sound like the original product name and is described as “the phonetic equivalent of Iron Brew” (Barr & Jephcott, 2001, p. 29). With its distinctively incongruous three-letter syllables and missing vowels, “Irn-Bru” was visually striking and immediately identifiable. Its unusual spelling has provided a visual cue for its indefinable taste which falls outwith the traditional categories of flavoured soft drinks. The brand’s promotion of a maverick product identity has also facilitated its identification with the idea of a nationally ingrained iconoclastic temperament, its oddly spelt name being the onomastic expression of a thrawn obduracy which has had resonance in the construction of Scottish identity. For example, this was encapsulated

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in the chorus of a 1988 Barr’s TV ad which, shot in the manner of a big budget Coca- Cola ad, parodied US advertising tropes by using Irn-Bru’s discourse of aggressive robustness to subvert images of 20th century Americana.10 Made in Scotland from girders Unpronounceable too Made in Scotland from girders It’s called Barr’s Irn-Bru.

37 The transformation from “Iron” to “Irn” has been cited as a further factor which reflects the drink’s identity as a distinctively Scottish product, given that the spelling is said to echo a Scottish (Barr, 1989), or more specifically Glaswegian, pronunciation of the original name (Pick, 2011, p. 16).

38 If we accept the principle that branding and marketing communications now represent a powerful vector for the articulation of national discourse, then to allow the corporate discourses which influence the construction of national identity to go unchallenged would be to allow corporations free rein over such a potent form of mythology. In Scotland, Irn-Bru consumption has become something of a cultural shibboleth and today conveys values of national authenticity. This is partly due to the fact that in the mass media as well as in specialist publications Barr’s Irn-Bru is frequently discussed as having Scottish origins (Bell et al., 2012; Burnett, 1999, pp. 103–4; Emmins, 1991, pp. 26– 7). But since Iron Brew was invented in the US where it was first known as the “ideal American drink” and since the iconic strongman that appeared on the Barr’s bottles was created in 1898 by an English essence manufacturer, it can be seen that there is little in the origin story of Iron Brew which is “innately” Scottish. Certainly the product has become Scottish over time, but this is despite, rather than because of, its national origins. More significant is the fact that is has now been produced in Scotland by a local firm for over 100 years and has enjoyed considerable popular and commercial success over this time. But the sense of the product being typically Scottish has also been the result of cultural mediation, in particular that informed by marketing communications which have reinforced the drink’s status as the “original” Iron Brew. These messages have not always set out to intentionally mislead. They have nevertheless helped cloud the multiplicity of actual historical sources and origins of Irn-Bru and contributed to a form of popular amnesia whereby the public often attribute the origins of the drink to a unique (and often entirely spurious11) national source, whereas the actual process of its creation was a confluence of extraneous, pre-existing elements. An awareness of these processes of re-writing and re-framing will be of consequence in future research into the national ramifications of the brand’s promotional strategies.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ABRASH Barbara, 1982, Stevenson & Howell: A Firm of Flavour and Fragrance, London, Greater London Industrial Archeology Society.

BARR Robert, 1989 [Unpublished public address], Larbert Age Concern, Falkirk.

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BARR Robin & JEPHCOTT Mark, 2001, Robert Barr 1875 to 2001 AG BARR plc, Macclesfield, Pentagraph.

BELL Matthew et al., 2012, “So, What Have the Scots Ever Done for Us? Just 101 of the Innovations Caledonia Gave the World”, The Independent, 15 January. Available on (consulted August 2016).

BILLIG Michael, 1995, Banal Nationalism, London, Sage.

BURNETT John, 1999, Liquid Pleasures: A Social History of Drinks in Modern Britain, London, Routledge.

CUBITT Geoffrey (ed.), 1998, Imagining Nations, Manchester, Manchester University Press.

DIETZ Lawrence, 1973, Soda Pop: The History, Advertising, Art, and Memorabilia of Soft Drinks in America, New York, Simon & Schuster.

EDENSOR Tim, 2002, National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life, Oxford–New York, Berg.

EMMINS Colin, 1991, Soft Drinks: Their Origins and History, Princes Risborough, Shire Publications.

FOSTER Robert, 1999, “The Commercial Construction of ‘New Nations’”, Journal of Material Culture, vol. 4, pp. 263–82.

FUNDERBURG Anne Cooper, 2001, Sundae Best: A History of Soda Fountains, Madison WI, University of Wisconsin Popular Press.

GRANT Tina (ed.), 2004, International Directory of Company Histories, vol. 64, Chicago, St James Press.

HOLT Douglas B., 2004, How Brands Become Icons: The Principles of Cultural Branding, Boston, Harvard Business School.

HOLT Douglas B., 2006, “Jack Daniel’s America: Iconic Brands As Ideological Parasites and Proselytizers”, Journal of Consumer Culture, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 355–77.

“Irn-Bru ‘in our blood’ by Leith”, Campaign [online version], 3 July 2014, (consulted January 2017).

KANIA-LUNDHOLM Magdalena, 2014, “Nation in Market Times: Connecting the National and the Commercial. A Research Overview”, Sociology Compass, vol. 8, no. 6, pp. 603–13.

KIRSCH Lucille Stewart, 1969, “Twigs and Trees”, San Antonio Light, 19 October, p. 90.

MAAS & WALDSTEIN EXTRACT CO. VS CORNELIUS P. HENRIHY et al., 1913, US Circuit Court, Ninth Circuit, Northern District of California.

MINISTRY of FOOD, 1949, “The Advertising, Labelling and Composition of Food”, HM Stationery Office.

PENDERGRAST Mark, For God, Country and Coca-Cola, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1993.

PENN Kenneth, 1948, SDI: Being an Account of the Soft Drinks Industry in Britain during the Emergency Years 1942–1948, London, Soft Drinks Industry (War Time) Association Ltd.

PICK Thomas, 2011, “Fancy a Bru?”, Fish Friers Review, no. 4.

“Portal:Scotland/Selected Article/Week 20/2011” [archived version of now modified Irn-Bru Wikipedia entry], (consulted January 2017).

“Prosecution under the Merchandise Marks Act”, Falkirk Herald, 17 June 1899, p. 3.

RENAN Ernest, 1997, Qu’est-ce qu’une nation ? [1882], Paris, Mille et Une Nuits.

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RILEY John J., 1958, A History of the American Soft Drink Industry, Washington DC, American Bottlers of Carbonated Beverages.

SHIELDS Tom, 1983, “A Dispute to Savour”, Glasgow Herald, 22 February, p. 8.

“Soluble Essences”, 1898, The Chemist and Druggist, vol. LIII, no. 5, p. 215.

SMITH Anthony D., 1991, National Identity, London, Penguin.

STEEN David P. & ASHURST Philip R., 2006, Carbonated Soft Drinks: Formulation and Manufacture, Oxford, Blackwell Publishing.

STEVENSON & HOWELL LTD, 1898, “Esencias Solubles Concentradas” [catalogue for overseas agents].

STEVENSON & HOWELL LTD, 1898, “Memorandum for Registration under Copyright” [Trademark application], National Archive 1 143 001.

STEVENSON William & HOWELL Reginald, n. d. (c. 1911), The Manufacture of Aërated Beverages, Cordials, Etc., 6th edition, London, Stevenson & Howell.

TCHUDI Stephen N., 1986, Soda Poppery: The History of Soft Drinks in America, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons.

“The Phenomenal AG BARR Story” [AG BARR plc website], (consulted August 2016).

“Trade-Marks applied for”, The Chemist and Druggist, vol. LXXV, no. 1547, 1909, p. 479.

Advertisements cited

“Iron Brew: An invigorating & refreshing tonic beverage” [Stevenson & Howell strongman showcard], UK National Archives, 1 143 001, 1 143 002.

“ASK FOR… / … BARR’S IRON BREW”, St James United Presbyterian Church, Falkirk Cookery Book, Falkirk, John Callander, 1900, n. p.

“Au Revoir–But Not Good-Bye” [Barr’s Iron Brew advertisement], Fife Free Press & Kirkcaldy Guardian, 26 December 1942, p. 5.

“BARR’S IRN-BRU”, Motherwell Times, 21 May 1948, p. 6.

“Christmas Drinks” [Burrows & Sturgess advertisement], Derby Daily Telegraph, 20 December 1912, p. 3.

“Drink Barr’s Iron Brew – The original and best”, Falkirk Herald, 26 November 1904, p. 8.

“Foxon Park: Iron Brew Soda”, (consulted April 2015).

“Famous Athletes are strong in the Praise of–BARR’S IRON BREW”, Fife Free Press & Kirkcaldy Guardian, 16 August 1930, p. 12.

“IRONBREW: The ideal American Drink”, American Bottler, vol. 26, no. 1, January 1906, p. 5.

“Jamaica Aerated Water Coy.”, Daily Gleaner, 9 July 1891, p. 1.

“Maas & Waldstein Co.”, American Bottler, vol. 25, no. 296, October 1905, p. 72.

“Made in Scotland from Girders” [Barr’s Irn-Bru TV commercial], 1988. Available on (consulted August 2016).

“NOW ON SALE” [Barr’s Iron Brew advertisement], Motherwell Times, 6 Feburary 1948, p. 11.

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“Ron-Bre”, American Bottler, vol. 26, no. 1, January 1906, p. 8.

“Spa-Ticklers” [Burrows & Sturgess advertisement], Derby Daily Telegraph, 15 December 1920, p. 2.

NOTES

1. The author wishes to thank Robin Barr (Non-Executive Director, AG BARR plc) and Jonathan Kemp (Commercial Director, AG BARR plc) for their invaluable assistance at various stages during the research and writing of this article. 2. For the video and a description of the campaign designed by the Leith Agency, see . 3. The improvised tasting session was overseen by Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale who tweeted pictures of it in response to an online journalist who had filmed Corbyn’s initial refusal. See . The story was widely reported in the Scottish and UK press including the Evening Times, the Herald, the Guardian, and the Financial Times. 4. It is, for example, also commonly associated with Kellog’s Corn Flakes. 5. While the Maas & Waldstein essence was consistently spelt IRONBREW (all in capitals), the drink which was subsequently bottled by a multitude of local firms was variously recorded as Ironbrew (with or without capital letters), Iron-Brew or Iron Brew. Consequently, when speaking of the drink more generally in the US market I have standardised the spelling as “Iron Brew”. If the role of Maas & Waldstein and the trademarked name is being discussed I have maintained IRONBREW. 6. By 1907, at least three other UK flavour houses were selling Iron Brew essence (Barnett & Foster, Duckworth & Co, and W. Meadowcroft & Son Ltd). 7. Personal interview conducted in July 2014. 8. Personal interview with Robin Barr and Jonathan Kemp, Commercial Director AG BARR plc, February 2017. 9. Robert Barr OBE (chairman 1947–1978), grandson of the founder of the Falkirk soft drinks business. 10. The ad can be viewed here: . 11. One urban myth, popularised in the Irn-Bru Wikipedia entry, stated the following: “When workers from the William Beardmore and Company Steel Works in Glasgow were dying from the large amounts of beer drunk to quench their thirst from the heat of the steel works, an alternative was sought. A local soft drinks manufacturer, A.G. Barr, approached the steel works and a contract was created to provide the workers with this drink. This unnamed drink later went on to be known as Iron Brew because of its connections to the steel (and iron) works.” This apocryphal tale has since been removed from the page. An archived version can be found here: .

ABSTRACTS

Building on theories of banal nationalism developed by Michael Billig (1995) and Tim Edensor (2002), this paper focuses on how a major 20th century icon of popular Scottishness, the

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carbonated drink Irn-Bru, has depended on the question of origins in its positioning. From the start, the manufacturers, Barr’s, keenly defended their product amidst strong competition by promoting authenticity over imitation. While today the firm AG BARR plc does not claim to have been the historical inventor of Iron Brew drinks (the original name for Irn-Bru) it still uses the strapline “Original & Best” which first appeared in 1904. In the second half of the 20th century the drink became widely perceived as a marker of Scottish identity. However, as recommended by Holt (2006), a more complete study of its historical trajectory as a brand shows that Iron Brew did not originate in Scotland at all. Indeed, rather than springing from a single source, the drink’s development in Scotland is the result of a confluence of other earlier elements. These will be studied to illustrate the mechanisms of appropriation and rewriting underlying this popular manifestation of “commercial nationalism” (Kania-Lundholm, 2014).

En s’appuyant sur le concept de nationalisme banal exploré par Michael Billig (1995) et Tim Edensor (2002), cet article s’intéresse à la manière dont un icône contemporain de la scotticité, la boisson gazeuse Irn-Bru, se positionne commercialement autour de la question des origines. Depuis le début, son fabricant, la société Barr’s, a toujours promu son produit au sein d’un marché très concurrentiel en insistant sur son authenticité face à des imitateurs. Bien qu’aujourd’hui la société AG BARR plc ne prétende pas être l’inventeur historique des boissons portant le nom d’Iron Brew (l’ancienne appellation de l’Irn-Bru), elle utilise toujours le slogan « Original & Best » qui est apparue pour la première fois en 1904. Depuis la deuxième moitié du XXe siècle la boisson est perçue comme un marqueur d’identité écossaise. Toutefois, une étude plus approfondie de sa trajectoire en tant que marque commerciale, comme le préconise Holt (2006), illustre que l’Iron Brew n’est pas apparu en Écosse. En effet, au lieu d’être rattachée à une seule et unique source, l’évolution de la boisson en Écosse résulte de la confluence de divers éléments antérieurs. Ceux-ci seront étudiés afin d’illustrer les mécanismes d’appropriation et de réécriture qui sous-tendent cette manifestation populaire de « nationalisme commercial » (Kania- Lundholm, 2014).

INDEX

Keywords: AG BARR plc, Irn-Bru, Iron Brew, national identity, Scottishness, Scottish, branding, commercial discourse, banal nationalism Mots-clés: AG BARR plc, Irn-Bru, Iron Brew, identité nationale, scotticité, écossais, marque commerciale, discours commercial, nationalisme banal

AUTHOR

DAVID LEISHMAN Université Grenoble Alpes.

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Miscellany

SAES Lyon 2016: Confluence

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L’émigration écossaise vers l’Amérique du Nord britannique (c. 1783-1815) : vers une convergence des politiques du centre pour les périphéries Scottish Emigration to British North America (c. 1783–1815): Implementing Convergent Policies for the Peripheries of Empire

Alice Lemer-Fleury

Introduction

1 Au cours de la période qui sépare la fin de la Révolution américaine et la fin des guerres napoléoniennes, l’Empire britannique, l’Écosse comme les provinces canadiennes connaissent des changements profonds. En Amérique du Nord, l’Empire est amputé des treize colonies américaines et il ne reste à la Mère Patrie que ses possessions les plus septentrionales et les moins développées, à savoir la province de Québec, la Nouvelle- Écosse et Terre-Neuve. Les colons américains restés fidèles à la couronne pendant la guerre d’indépendance fuient les États-Unis et affluent dans les provinces britanniques de Québec et de Nouvelle-Écosse. La population augmente rapidement grâce à ces 30 000 à 40 000 réfugiés loyalistes. Dès lors, l’agriculture, le commerce et les institutions politiques se développent ; notamment avec la création de la province du Nouveau- Brunswick en 1786 et la séparation de la province de Québec en Haut et Bas Canada avec la nouvelle constitution de 1791. Pour autant, vers 1800, les Canadas et les Maritimes sont encore des colonies en voie de développement : la population est bien moins grande que celle des États-Unis voisins, l’économie est principalement agricole et un peu précaire — elle permet aux Canadiens de se nourrir, de se loger et de se chauffer, mais ils dépendent des imports pour de nombreuses commodités et des aides

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financières de la métropole (McCalla dans Buckner, 2008, p. 245). La majorité des observateurs, et notamment les voyageurs britanniques, décrivent les possessions britanniques comme pleines de potentiel où beaucoup reste à faire en matière de développement agricole, économique, culturel et militaire (Weld, 1800 ; Heriot, 1807 ; Gray, 1809 ; Lamber, 18131). Les colonies britanniques seront d’ailleurs attaquées par les États-Unis une décennie plus tard, lors de la guerre de 1812 (1812-1815).

2 En Écosse, la fin du long XVIIIe siècle correspond au début des Clearances dans les Hautes Terres. Les propriétaires terriens tentent de moderniser l’agriculture et de rendre leurs possessions plus rentables : les fermes sont consolidées, l’intérieur des terres est réservé aux pâturages de moutons et les petits paysans sont déplacés sur les côtes dans des crofts pour développer les pêcheries, l’industrie des algues ( kelp) et les manufactures de textile. Ces changements poussent de nombreux Highlanders à migrer soit dans les centres industriels des Basses Terres soit en Amérique du Nord (Devine, 1994, 2000 ; Harper, 2004 ; Hunter 1997 ; Smout, 1985 ; Richards, 1985). Les historiens estiment qu’entre 11 000 et 13 000 Highlanders ont quitté l’Écosse pour l’Amérique du Nord entre 1775 et 1815 (tableau 1).

3 Lorsque l’on regarde ainsi la situation en Écosse et la situation dans les Canadas, il semble évident qu’une solution semble converger vers la résolution de ces crises ; à savoir l’émigration des Highlanders vers les colonies britanniques. Pour quelques officiels canadiens, mais surtout pour l’Écossais Lord Selkirk dans Observations on the Present State of the Highlands (1805), il faut tout faire pour rediriger l’émigration des Écossais vers les colonies britanniques au lieu de les perdre aux États-Unis. L’idée de convergence est évidente : en plus de protéger l’Écosse des risques d’une population redondante et donc de crises économiques et sociales, l’émigration permettrait de promouvoir les cultures et productions canadiennes et de renforcer le système de défense grâce aux qualités martiales des Highlanders. Cependant, on accuse souvent le gouvernement britannique avant 1813-1814 de s’être opposé à l’émigration des Highlanders (Bumsted, 1982, p. XIII, 129-154, 216 ; Devine, 2003, p. 131, 135). Le gouvernement central a-t-il manqué de faire confluer demandes écossaises et canadiennes ? Dans quelle mesure Londres a-t-elle su (ou n’a-t-elle pas su) percevoir la nécessité de faire converger les politiques pour l’Écosse et pour les Canadas à travers l’émigration ? Les dirigeants britanniques ont-ils été aveugles face à cette « confluence » qui parait aujourd’hui nécessaire et inévitable ? À travers l’étude de la correspondance officielle des secrétaires d’État chargés des colonies2, celle du Lord Avocat pour l’Écosse avec le gouvernement3, les débats au Parlement et les écrits publics des promoteurs et des opposants à l’émigration, nous allons montrer que la plupart de nos préjugés sur la politique migratoire du centre sont faux et que les mesures de Londres pour les périphéries (en Écosse et au Canada) doivent être considérées comme fondamentalement convergentes.

Les mesures « contre » l’émigration

Opposition à l’émigration en Écosse et en Angleterre

4 Une des idées qui dominent l’historiographie de la période 1783-1815 veut que le gouvernement central se soit opposé à l’émigration pour défendre les grands propriétaires écossais. La majorité des grands propriétaires terriens des Hautes Terres

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et les promoteurs du développement des pêcheries et des manufactures dans la région sont opposés à l’émigration, qu’ils considèrent comme contraire à leurs intérêts économiques. Les propriétaires qui investissent dans la manufacture de kelp sont particulièrement hostiles à l’émigration des Highlanders, car ils ont besoin de garder une main d’œuvre nombreuses (et, par conséquent, bon marché) pour augmenter le rendement économique de leurs propriété. L’émigration met aussi en danger les intérêts des propriétaires puisque, outre le potentiel manque de main d’œuvre, elle leur fait perdre leurs sources de revenus — à travers les loyers — et de prestige — notamment à travers la levée de régiments pour défendre la nation en période de guerre presque continue contre la France (Bumsted, 1982, p. 90 ; Devine, 2003, p. 135 ; Harper, 2004, p. 24 ; Richards, 2008, p. 1365, 1640). Ils sont plutôt bien représentés à Londres par quelques hommes politiques éminents comme John Knox, Sir John Sinclair ou Charles Hope. Certains se réunissent en groupe de pression au sein de la Royal Highland Society (1784) ou de la British Fishery Society (1786). Ils organisent des campagnes de persuasion à Londres pour promouvoir leurs intérêts économiques et tenter de limiter l’émigration de leurs paysans. Pour certains historiens, c’est la connivence, voire le « partenariat », entre les élites anglaises et écossaises qui auraient permis aux Écossais d’obtenir des mesures contre l’émigration (MacKillop, 2000, p. 190-195 ; Hunter, 2007, p. 128).

5 Dans l’historiographie on retrouve également l’idée que les élites politiques et économiques écossaises et anglaises s’opposent à l’émigration parce qu’elles sont imprégnées des principes mercantilistes qui dominent alors. Un des principes fondamentaux de la doctrine mercantiliste, outre l’idée centrale qu’il faut protéger et réguler le commerce, est qu’une population nombreuse est la source de pouvoir d’une nation. Il est donc d’une importance capitale pour les intérêts économiques et militaires d’un pays de maintenir une démographie élevée et donc d’éviter l’émigration. Le risque de dépopulation est ainsi régulièrement mis en avant par ceux qui souhaitent développer les Hautes Terres et mettre un terme à l’émigration4. Deux arguments corollaires viennent s’ajouter aux discours sur le risque de dépopulation. D’une part, cette dépopulation est dangereuse d’un point de vue militaire et stratégique. En effet, les Highlanders sont une « race hardie » qui est particulièrement importante pour remplir les rangs de l’armée et de la marine britannique en temps de guerre. Il est donc particulièrement important de ne pas « perdre » cette valeureuse population — qui plus est au profit de nations ennemies comme les États-Unis (Knox, 1787, p. 96 ; Irvine, 1802, p. 81-93 ; Fraser, 1802, p. 167, 171-173)5. D’autre part, l’émigration est dangereuse d’un point de vue économique. Certains observateurs expliquent que les migrants partent avec un petit capital : cela signifie donc que ce sont potentiellement des personnes qui participent à la vie économique du pays. Leur départ implique donc moins d’impôts perçus pour l’État, mais aussi moins de travailleurs, moins de développement des manufactures et donc moins de consommation (Irvine, 1802, p. 81-93 ; Fraser, 1802, p. 165-171).

Le danger de l’émigration et les mesures gouvernementales

6 L’idée que l’émigration représente un danger va permettre aux membres du gouvernement de faire voter un certains nombres de mesures favorables aux intérêts des élites terriennes et économiques des Hautes Terres. C’est le cas en 1784 au cours des débats pour rendre les terres confisquées après les rébellions jacobites de 1715 et 1745.

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Henry Dundas aux Communes (Parl. Hist., vol. XXIV, p. 1320) et Lord Sydney à la Chambre des Lords défendent la loi en insistant sur le fait que cette mesure va permettre de mettre un terme à l’émigration des Highlanders. Sydney déclare par exemple : […] a circumstance that weighed very materially with him was, the effect the Bill would have in checking the spirit of emigration which prevailed in so alarming a degree in Scotland. […] The present Bill appeared to him as a measure the most likely of any that human wisdom could suggest, to stop the progress of that spirit which threatened such dangerous consequences. It would rivet great numbers of Highlanders, who would not think of going from home when they knew that those for whom they had felt an affection from their earliest youth were to be put in possession of their family estates. (Parl. Hist., vol. XXIV, p. 1372-1373) Les ministres pensent qu’en rendant ces terres aux propriétaires historiques, qui sont attachés à leur région et à leurs paysans, ils vont promouvoir le développement de la région, et ainsi, à travers la création d’emplois et l’attachement à leur chef, empêcher l’émigration des Highlanders.6

7 Le « danger » de l’émigration va aussi permettre au lobby écossais d’obtenir des fonds pour le développement des Highlands. En 1786, le Parlement vote des fonds pour la création de la British Fishery Society dont le but avoué est de développer les pêcheries pour créer des emplois et mettre un terme à l’émigration (Knox, 1785 ; Caledonian Mercury, 27 mars 1786). La Royal Highland Society réussit également à se faire entendre et à obtenir des financements pour des projets dans les Hautes Terres. Vingt ans plus tard, en 1804, sur les conseils du Premier ministre Addington, le Parlement vote des fonds pour le développement des infrastructures dans les Hautes Terres, notamment le Canal calédonien, afin « d’empêcher […] l’émigration considérable » des Highlanders en créant des emplois. Il ajoute : I beg it may not be supposed that this emigration is in any degree to be attributed to the neglect of the great landed proprietors. A variety of causes have conducted to incline the Highlanders to abandon their native soil, and it is the duty of government as much as possible, to remove these […]. (Parl. Deb., vol. II, 1804, p. 334-335) Cet extrait du discours du Premier ministre laisse peu de place au doute sur sa position plus que favorables aux grands prioritaires terriens des Hautes Terres. Addington minimise l’impact des choix des propriétaires et leurs politiques d’amélioration du rendement agricole sur les flux migratoires. Il les défend sans détour et met le gouvernement au service de la protection de leurs intérêts. Néanmoins, pour de nombreux observateurs, la plus grande réussite du lobbying anti-émigration des grands propriétaires reste le Passenger Vessels Act adopté par le Parlement en 1803. Cette loi régule et améliore les conditions à bord des navires de migrants et a pour effet d’augmenter le prix de la traversée et de le rendre prohibitif. C’est donc une manière détournée d’interdire l’émigration pour servir l’intérêt des grands propriétaires écossais (Selkirk, 1805, p. 154-155 ; Bumsted, 1982, p. 90, 129-154 ; Devine, 2003, p. 131, Macdonagh, 1961, p. 1-61).

8 Un certain nombre de décisions prises peuvent donc amener à conclure que le gouvernement central a privilégié les intérêts des grands propriétaires avec des mesures contre l’émigration au lieu de faire converger les désirs des migrants et les besoins des colonies canadiennes.

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Les mesures pour promouvoir la redirection des migrants

9 Cependant, lorsque l’on regarde les faits de plus près, on s’aperçoit que si au Parlement les membres des gouvernements s’affichent comme opposés à l’émigration, les choses sont assez différentes en coulisse. L’attitude des secrétaires d’État et la politique qu’ils mènent sont ainsi souvent ambivalentes.

Une politique d’incitation discrète

10 Dès 1784, alors que Lord Sydney fait son discours à la Chambre des Lords sur les désastres de l’émigration, en sa qualité de secrétaire d’État à l’Intérieur, il prend des décisions qui encouragent l’émigration. Le gouvernement offre des terres aux soldats des régiments dissous en Amérique du Nord (parmi lesquels il y a de nombreux Écossais) et il envoie leurs familles les rejoindre en Nouvelle-Écosse7. L’installation des loyalistes et des régiments dans les colonies canadiennes va opérer comme un aimant en Écosse. On sait déjà à l’époque que les colons correspondent avec leurs proches dans les Hautes Terres ; les nouvelles qu’ils envoient, lorsqu’elles sont bonnes, ont tendance à inciter ceux qui sont restés en métropole à rejoindre leur famille et leurs amis dans les colonies. Ils créent ainsi des sortes de « lignes » de migration entre une région écossaise et une région en Amérique du Nord. Ce fonctionnement de l’émigration des Écossais est connu des autorités britanniques8.

11 À partir des années 1790, les secrétaires d’État utilisent ce mécanisme pour rediriger (et donc, dans une certaine mesure encourager) l’émigration. D’abord, ils donnent leur soutien aux officiels dans les colonies lorsqu’ils aident les migrants à leur arrivée. C’est le cas pour les passagers d’Arasaig et Egg sur le British Queen en 17909 qui se trouvent dans une situation de grande « détresse » lorsqu’il arrive dans la province de Québec. Le Gouverneur Général, Lord Dorchester, accorde l’aide de la province à ces migrants pour rejoindre leurs proches dans le district de Queensbury10. Sa décision est approuvée par Londres. Un rapport publié l’année suivante fait apparaître que les autorités coloniales de Québec prennent en charge les migrants les plus destitués qui arrivent des Hautes Terres depuis 1786. Dans ce rapport, on peut voir toute l’ambiguïté du gouvernement central qui à la fois donne son soutien tacite à l’émigration des Highlanders tout en refusant de sponsoriser ouvertement leur émigration et leur installation dans les colonies britanniques. Les officiels coloniaux doivent donc trouver un équilibre : ils ne doivent pas proposer de termes particuliers ou des « indulgences extraordinaires » mais, dans le même temps, ils peuvent fournir des bateaux11, des allocations de terres (sans conditions exceptionnelles) et éventuellement des aides pour éviter que les migrants se retrouvent dans des situations de « détresse »12. Comme Lord Sydney avant lui, Grenville soutient les officiels coloniaux lorsqu’ils apportent leur aide aux migrants. Mais Grenville va plus loin : il encourage les gouvernements coloniaux à bien recevoir les migrants afin de les inciter à s’installer dans les Canadas. En 1791, il écrit à Dorchester : With regard to the subject of your letter No. 72 respecting emigrants from Scotland, no encouragement is likely to operate so effectually to induce them to give the preference to Canada, as the favourable accounts which they will probably receive from such Persons of their own Country as may be already fixed in the settlements, of the reception they meet with and of the advantages they receive from the laws

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and Government under which they are placed. (Grenville à Dorchester, no 37, 7 mars 1791, NAC, Q50, p. 14-15) Grenville laisse ici entendre que le nouveau mode de gouvernance en Amérique du Nord, à savoir l’Acte du Canada de 1791 qui donne aux colonies une constitution britannique, va aussi agir comme un aimant auprès des migrants écossais pour les rediriger vers les colonies britannique. Quelques mois plus tard, son successeur et ami, l’Écossais Henry Dundas, écrit qu’il tente de limiter l’émigration depuis l’Écosse mais admet dans le même temps qu’il serait souhaitable de mettre en place des mesures « pour inciter » les migrants à s’installer dans les colonies britanniques plutôt qu’aux États-Unis. Il ne précise pas sa pensée — sans doute fait-il allusion, dans la lignée de ses prédécesseurs, aux allocations de terres et aux droits de propriétés (plus avantageux qu’aux États-Unis) qui sont aussi des mesures recommandées et mises en place par les conseils coloniaux13. Dundas ne va cependant pas mettre en place de mesures concrètes : en 1793, la Grande-Bretagne et la France entrent en guerre et, par conséquent, l’émigration depuis les Hautes Terres d’Écosse diminue considérablement jusqu’à la trêve de 1801.

12 Les ministres suivants, Portland et, en particulier, Hobart vont plutôt axer leur politique sur l’allocation de grandes étendues de terres à des individus privés, comme William Willcocks, Thomas Talbot ou Lord Selkirk. Dans la correspondance coloniale, on voit que les ministres savent pertinemment que lorsqu’ils octroient des terres, ces nouveaux propriétaires vont chercher à recruter des migrants pour peupler et développer leurs possessions outre-Atlantique. En 1802, c’est d’ailleurs Hobart lui- même qui conseille à Selkirk de recruter ses colons en Écosse. Ils savent aussi que ces nouveaux settlements, toujours dans l’idée de « lignes migratoires » (ou « migrations en chaîne ») vont attirer les migrants écossais14. On peut par ailleurs voir dans le Passenger Vessels Act de 1803 une forme de volonté de rediriger l’émigration vers les Canadas puisque les restrictions sur le nombre de passagers sont beaucoup plus souples pour les navires qui vont vers les colonies britanniques (un passager pour 2 tonnes) que vers les États-Unis (un passager pour 5 tonnes). Dès lors, dans les années 1805, quand les défenseurs du « shipping interest » (Remarks…, 1805, p. 103), certains représentants des colonies, ou encore Lord Selkirk (Selkirk, 1805) et quelques revues intellectuelles comme The Edinburgh Review (vol. 7, 1806, p. 195-202) ou The Annual Review (vol. 4, 1806, p. 232-237) commencent à faire entendre leur voix pour demander une politique de redirection de l’émigration vers les Canadas, ces pratiques sont en fait déjà mises en place depuis deux décennies.

Laissez-faire

13 On peut par ailleurs douter que les gouvernements successifs aient été franchement hostiles à l’émigration des Highlanders, particulièrement vers les Canadas. On voit que la Royal Highland Society a un peu de mal à se faire entendre au début de sa campagne et doit renouveler ses appels en faveur d’une intervention du gouvernement (Mackillop, 2000, p. 190-196). De plus, même après le vote du Passenger Vessels Act, l’émigration continue et le gouvernement ne fait rien pour la décourager. Dans les années 1800, et particulièrement à partir du blocus continental de 1806, le commerce du bois depuis les Canadas prend de l’ampleur ce qui a pour effet d’encourager l’émigration des Écossais. En effet, le trafic maritime augmente et il n’est pas rentable pour les armateurs de faire le trajet entre la Grande-Bretagne et les colonies à vide : le

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transport de migrants devient une alternative intéressante et le prix de la traversée commence à baisser. Ainsi, les effets de la loi de 1803 deviennent caducs. Le gouvernement ne prend pas de mesures à cet égard — au contraire, dès 1804, c’est Henry Dundas (à présent à l’Amirauté) qui prend des décisions pour encourager le commerce de bois avec les Canadas afin de subvenir aux besoins de la marine britannique (Bumsted, 1982, p. 192 ; Campey, 2002, 2005, p. 153-156).

Les projets d’émigration écossaise sponsorisés par le gouvernement britannique

14 En plus de ce laisser-faire, deux ministres vont prendre des mesures de sponsorisation directe pour rediriger l’émigration écossaise vers les Canadas. En 1804, Lord Hobart met en place un projet de « régiment canadien » : il souhaite recruter des soldats en Écosse pour servir dans les colonies et promet des terres dans les provinces canadiennes et une traversée gratuite pour les familles de ces soldats (ce qui, d’ailleurs, fait enrager le Lord Avocat pour l’Écosse). Le projet échoue cependant suite à une mutinerie (Bumsted, 1982, p. 155-184 ; Mackillop, 2000, p. 182 ; Prebble, 1975, p. 447-464)15.

15 À partir de 1813, les conditions en Europe et en Amérique du Nord changent et Lord Bathurst (cette fois, en partenariat avec le Lord Avocat Colquhoun) met en place des projets de sponsorisation de l’émigration vers les colonies britanniques qui conjuguent les demandes des migrants écossais et les besoins des Canadas. Le ministre, qui est encore moins que ces prédécesseurs hostile à l’émigration, ne cherche pas à limiter les départs des Highlanders mais au contraire veut les inciter à choisir les provinces canadiennes non seulement en leur offrant des terres mais aussi et surtout en payant leur traversée transatlantique et en fournissant des outils à bas prix. Ses objectifs sont multiples. D’un point de vue militaire d’abord, il souhaite développer le système de défense des colonies, car les hommes pourront s’enrôler dans les forces armées locales. Dans le même temps, il s’agit également de ne pas renforcer le pouvoir démographique (et potentiellement militaire) des États-Unis. D’un point de vue de la colonisation, il pense, comme nombre de contemporains, que les Highlanders sont des colons de qualité qui vont aider au progrès de la province. Bathurst projette ainsi de financer l’émigration des hommes mais aussi celle de leurs familles et de leur fournir des terres dans le Haut-Canada afin de développer et d’exploiter le potentiel de la province. Le gouvernement propose également de payer le salaire d’un instituteur et d’un prêtre. Son projet fait également sens d’un point de vue économique : avec la guerre contre les États-Unis (déclarée en 1812), de nombreuses troupes ont été envoyées en Amérique du Nord, les soldats qui ne souhaitent pas rester dans les colonies doivent donc être rapatriés en Grande-Bretagne. Bathurst veut se servir de la flotte qui doit aller chercher ces soldats pour transporter les migrants. Par ailleurs, il organise (comme ces prédécesseurs) l’installation des soldats des régiments dissous. Ce projet concerne des Écossais, mais aussi des régiments étrangers comme ceux des De Meurons et des Watterville. Les projets de Bathurst sont cependant remis en cause par les Cent-Jours de Napoléon : les soldats et les navires sont immédiatement réquisitionnés pour aller combattre en Europe. Seules quelques centaines de personnes partent à l’été 1815 à bord de l’Atlas, du Dorothy, du Eliza et du Baltic Merchant. Malgré ce demi échec, il s’assure que ces migrants soient bien reçus, toujours afin de rediriger l’émigration vers

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les Canadas et approuve dès lors les mesures et les dépenses du gouverneur général Drummond pour accommoder les colons et redresser leurs griefs16 (Calder, 2003, p. 48-53 ; Campey, 2005, p. 35-44 ; Cowan, 1961, p. 41).

Une politique timide ?

16 Au regard de la politique menée par les secrétaires d’État, il ne semble pas tenable d’affirmer que le gouvernement soit passé à côté de la nécessité de faire converger les intérêts écossais et les intérêts canadiens à travers une opposition doctrinaire à l’émigration. Pour autant, on pourrait sans doute émettre une critique sur le caractère très timide de cette politique. Pourquoi les secrétaires d’État ne se sont-ils pas tous impliqués davantage, à l’image de Hobart et Bathurst, dans l’émigration écossaise vers les Canadas ?

Les risques politiques

17 Premièrement, toute politique se doit de prendre en compte l’opinion publique. L’étude de la presse montre que l’opinion en Écosse et en Angleterre est plutôt défavorable à l’émigration mais aussi à l’augmentation des taxes — qui se multiplient en période de guerre. En outre, du fait de ces guerres contre la France (de 1793 à 1801 et de 1803 à 1815), l’armée a besoin de recruter des hommes et de renforcer les milices pour protéger les intérêts britanniques. Il faut aussi souligner que les projets de nouvelles colonies, qu’ils soient entrepris par le gouvernement ou par des individus privés (comme Selkirk) sont risqués, onéreux et sans garanti de succès17. Dès lors, augmenter les dépenses de l’État pour financer ostensiblement et massivement l’émigration des Écossais vers les Canadas de surcroît en période de guerre en Europe (où les intérêts de la métropole sont menacés) n’aurait sans doute pas été une politique très sage, ni très populaire.

La panacée des problèmes des périphéries ?

18 Il semble aussi que les secrétaires d’État ne s’impliquent pas plus vivement dans la sponsorisation de l’émigration parce que la solution n’est pas forcément la meilleure pour les périphéries. D’une part, les ministres sont conscients de l’attachement des Highlanders à leurs terres natales, mais aussi des difficultés qui attendent ceux qui décident de quitter la Grande-Bretagne. Les conditions de la traversée restent difficiles en dépit de la loi de 180318. L’installation dans les colonies est aussi rude (même pour ces « hardy Highlanders »). C’est ce que rappelle Bathurst à la Chambre des Lords en 1826, alors même que l’opinion a clairement changé en faveur de l’émigration (Hansard, vol. XVI, 1826). Au regard des difficultés rencontrées par les migrants, il semble ainsi que rechercher des solutions alternatives (comme le développement des infrastructures ou la création d’emploi) soit une attitude plutôt bienveillante. Il faut en outre noter que les mesures demandées par le « lobby écossais » et en général accordées par les gouvernements sont des mesures positives qui ont pour but de développer le potentiel économique de l’Écosse et de sortir les Highlanders de leur précarité. Si l’on sait aujourd’hui que les politiques d’amélioration du rendement agricole étaient vouées à l’échec, ce n’était pas le cas à la fin du long XVIIIe siècle. Les

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promoteurs du développement des Hautes Terres sont en effet très optimistes pour leur région. Inversement, certaines voix écossaises en faveur de l’émigration sont plus négatives et laissent entrevoir les violences des Clearances et des migrations forcées du XIXe siècle. En 1809 par exemple, un lecteur du Farmer’s Magazine envoie un long plaidoyer en faveur de l’émigration des Highlanders dans lequel il les compare à un membre sclérosé qu’il faut amputer. Il ajoute qu’il ne voit pas d’autres alternatives pour cette région pauvre, désolée, humide et aride. Il affirme enfin ne pas comprendre ceux qui considèrent que l’émigration forcée est inhumaine puisqu’il suffit aux Highlanders « d’un saut » au-dessus de l’Atlantique pour échapper à leur vie misérable et que les difficultés des premiers migrants seront rapidement enterrées avec eux, dans une « fosse commune » (vol. 10, 1809, p. 177-178). Dès lors, l’approche peu vigoureuse du gouvernement dans son soutien à l’émigration ne doit pas être perçue comme une forme de cécité des élites, mais plutôt comme le signe d’une politique qui tente aussi d’être humaine, voire progressiste.

19 D’autre part, l’arrivée massive de migrants n’est pas non plus dans l’intérêt des colonies. L’Amérique du Nord britannique n’a pas encore les ressources financières et encore moins alimentaires pour faire face à un afflux massif de nouveaux arrivants. Les migrants écossais qui arrivent à Québec en 1786 mettent par exemple les autorités dans l’embarras : l’arrivée de ces migrants a coûté 613 livres sterling qui n’ont pas été remboursés. Trente ans plus tard, la situation financière des colonies canadiennes est encore précaire. Ainsi, en 1813, avant de lancer son projet, Lord Bathurst demande au gouverneur des Canadas si les provinces peuvent subvenir aux besoins de nouveaux arrivants avant de recruter ses migrants19. Dès lors, les demandes émanant d’officiels canadiens pour encourager l’émigration des Highlanders vers les colonies sont extrêmement rares. Sur toute la période étudiée, nous n’avons trouvé qu’une seule demande explicite pour encourager l’émigration des Highlanders vers le Haut-Canada dans une lettre d’Alexander Grant à Lord Castlereagh en mai 1806. Nous ne connaissons malheureusement pas la réponse de Londres : Castlereagh perd son ministère lorsque les Talents prennent le pouvoir. Grant quitte son poste d’administrateur en août et ne réitère pas sa demande auprès du nouveau secrétaire d’État, William Windham20. Enfin, l’arrivée massive de Highlanders, qui sont en grande majorité catholiques, inquiète aussi par moment les autorités protestantes dans les colonies21.

20 Pour l’Écosse comme pour les colonies, l’émigration de masse, même sponsorisée, n’est donc pas la panacée et n’est pas une solution évidente pour la période 1783-1815. Pour le dire très simplement, avant 1813 (voire 1815), les conditions qui rendent inévitables le déplacement massif et sponsorisé des Écossais vers les Canadas (comme l’échec des politiques d’amélioration du rendement agricole dans les Hautes Terres, la crise économique de 1815 ou le retour de la paix en Amérique du Nord) ne sont pas réunies.

Une politique efficace ?

21 Il faut enfin ajouter que, bien que les politiques aient été modérées et timides, elles semblent avoir porté quelques fruits. Lorsque l’on regarde les chiffres de l’émigration il apparaît clairement que les migrants écossais choisissent de plus en plus les colonies canadiennes au détriment des États-Unis (tableau 1). Cette tendance apparaît tant dans les chiffres compilés par les historiens à partir des manifestes de passagers que dans ceux que nous avons réunis à partir de sources contemporaines, notamment dans la

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presse et dans les statistiques proposées par les opposants à l’émigration. Le nombre de migrants vers les États-Unis reste flou, mais il est clair que la majorité des Highlanders qui quittent leur région rejoignent les provinces britanniques. S’il nous est impossible de déterminer le degré de l’influence des politiques et des mesures de Londres sur la redirection de l’émigration, pour les contemporains, cet impact existe bel et bien. Pour de nombreux observateurs, les mesures prises par le gouvernement encouragent en effet l’émigration vers les colonies canadiennes. Des articles de presse montrent clairement que les migrants qui quittent l’Écosse choisissent de s’installer en Amérique du Nord britannique parce que leurs proches et amis partis avant eux ont été bien reçus. Les exemples d’aides apportées aux migrants dans les colonies sont connus dans les Hautes Terres et propagés par les promoteurs de l’émigration. Les politiques de colonisation — notamment l’allocation de terre, des impôts peu élevés et aussi la mise en place d’une constitution britannique en 1791 — sont reconnues comme étant des facteurs qui encouragent l’émigration vers les colonies britanniques. Ces analyses se retrouvent tant dans la presse, dans les revues intellectuelles que dans les récits publiés par des voyageurs britanniques22. Les mesures gouvernementales sont aussi dénoncées par les opposants à l’émigration. Par exemple, l’Écossais Alexander Irvine considère que l’allocation de larges étendus de terres à des individus privés revient à un encouragement de l’émigration par le gouvernement central (Irvine, 1802, p. 147). La subtile distinction entre redirection et encouragement est aussi dénoncée par les opposants à l’émigration : selon eux, inciter les migrants à choisir les colonies britanniques plutôt que les États-Unis revient à encourager ce qu’ils nomment « the spirit of emigration23 ».

Conclusion

22 Sur cette question de l’émigration, il semble que, loin de accusations présentées dans l’introduction, les gouvernements successifs n’auraient pas pu adopter une attitude plus « convergente », ni plus habile. Si l’émigration des Highlanders n’est certes pas la priorité des secrétaires d’État, les ministres ne mènent cependant pas une politique doctrinaire, bornée à s’opposer à l’émigration sur des principes vieux de plusieurs siècles. Au contraire, ils mènent une politique plutôt éclairée et ancrée dans les réalités de la période, une politique qui cherche à prendre en compte tous les aspects de la question (en Écosse, dans les colonies, pour l’Empire), et qui répond aux demandes contradictoires des différents groupes de pression. C’est une politique qui tente de faire converger au mieux les intérêts du centre et des périphéries. C’est une politique réellement, profondément à la confluence de tous ces groupes, une politique qui cherche à contenter tout le monde — mais qui, sans doute, ne peut satisfaire personne.

Tableau 1. – L’émigration écossaise vers l’Amérique du Nord c. 1784-1815.

Sources contemporaines24 Chiffres compilés par les historiens25

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Provenance/ Migrants Migrants Migrants Migrants Nombre de destination écossais vers les écossais vers écossais vers les écossais vers Highlanders colonies les États- colonies les États------britanniques Unis britanniques Unis Date

1763-1775 20 000 à 30 000 1 100 20 000 10 000

1784-1789 entre 918 et 1784-1789 1 220 1 300 entre 1 040 et 2 000 à 3 000 1 000 Highlanders 1 080 entre 1775 et entre 2 700 et entre 1 358 et 1 120 au 1801 1791-1800 3 650 2 800 1 931 minimum

? 5 500 au entre 7 100 et entre 193 et 1801-1803 (1 navire au 5 000 minimum moins depuis 8 093 1 000 Skye)

entre 1 289 et 1804-1815 ? 3 400 ? 3 000 1 299

entre 2 231 total entre 10 709 et 4 950 au entre 11 858 et et 3 120 au / 1784-1815 10 819 minimum 14 504 minimum

BIBLIOGRAPHIE

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only Means of attaining that most Important Object) the Encouragement of the British Shipping Interest, and the Cultivation of Naval Stores in Upper and Lower Canada, Londres, 1805.

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NOTES

1. Voir aussi le journal de voyage de Lord Selkirk, qui n’a pas été publié de son vivant : Patrick C. T. White (éd.), Lord Selkirk’s Diary, 1803–1804: A Journal of His Travels in British North America and the North-Eastern United States, Toronto, Champlain Society, 1958. 2. De 1783 à 1801, les colonies sont gérées par le secrétaire d’État à l’Intérieur, à savoir Lord Sydney (1783-1789), Lord Grenville (1789-1791), Henry Dundas (1791-1794) et le duc de Portland (1794-1801). À partir de 1801, les affaires coloniales sont rattachées aux affaires militaires au sein du secrétariat d’État à la Guerre et aux Colonies, tenu par Lord Hobart (1801-1804), Lord Camden (1804-1805), Lord Castlereagh (1805-1806, 1807-1809), William Windham (1806-1807), Lord Liverpool (1809-1812) et Lord Bathurst (1812-1827). 3. Ilay Campbell (1783-1789), Robert Dundas (1789-1801), Charles Hope (1801-1804), Sir James Montgomery (1804-1806), Henry Erskine (1806-1807) et Archibald Colquhoun (1807-1806). 4. The Political Magazine, vol. 8, Londres, 1784, p. 182 ; The Times, 8 février 1785 ; Kentish Gazette, 9 février 1785 ; Chelmsford Chronicle, 11 février 1785 ; « Address to the Proprietors of Lands of the

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Coasts of the Highlands » dans Knox, 1787, p. LXXXVII-XLIII ; Aberdeen Journal, 4 août 1802 ; Fraser, 1803, p. 7 ; Morning Post, 12 février 1803. 5. Voir aussi : « A Discourse Containing a Summary of the Proceedings of the Directors of the Society for Extending Fisheries… », Londres, Wilkie & Debrett, 1789 ; Morning Chronicle, 16 juin 1803 ; Aberdeen Journal, 22 juin 1803 ; The Farmers’ Magazine, vol. 10, 1809, p. 42. 6. La même année, le gouvernement publie un décret pour interdire l’émigration des artificiers et des travailleurs qualifiés britanniques vers les pays étrangers, notamment la Russie. Cette interdiction ne s’applique pas aux colonies britanniques (The London Gazette, 7 février 1784, no 12517, p. 3-4). 7. Sydney à Parr, 5 octobre 1784, NAC, A106, p. 14-17. 8. Des hommes politiques et des officiers des douanes notamment y font référence dans leurs écrits publics ou officiels. Voir par exemple : Knox, 1787, p. 96-97 ; Robert Hepburn, David Reid, J. H. Cochrane (Custom House, Édimbourg) à George Rose, 30 août 1792, TNA, HO102/5/298-301. 9. Et aussi pour les passagers du Sally en 1784. Parr à Sydney, 1 er septembre 1784, NAC, A105, p. 216-218 ; Sydney à Parr, 5 octobre 1784, NAC, A106, p. 14-16. 10. Dorchester à Grenville, no 72, 10 novembre 1790, NAC, Q49, p. 80-81. 11. Petit navire à fond plat commun en Amérique du Nord au XVIIIe siècle. 12. « Minutes of the Council from the 19th November 1790 to the 4th of January 1791 », NAC, Q51, p. 30-35. 13. « Proper steps will be taken to put a stop to Emigrations from hence, but as that cannot be entirely effected, it is to be wished that such as quit this country may be induced to become settlers in His Majesty’s Colonies abroad » (Dundas à Simcoe, 12 juillet 1792, NAC, Q278A, p. 10 ; Clarke à Dundas, no 26, 28 avril 1792, NAC, Q59, p. 189). 14. Willcocks à Portland, 27 novembre 1798, NAC, Q286, p. 446 ; Hobart à Selkirk, 30 juillet 1802, SPNAC, vol. 52, p. 13851 ; Hobart à Hunter, no 16, 15 février 1803, NAC, Q294, p. 37 ; Selkirk à Hobart, 6 juillet 1802, SPNAC 13840-13841 ; Hobart à Selkirk, 30 juillet 1802, SPNAC 13851-13852 ; Hobart à Hunter, 4 septembre 1802, NAC, Q239, p. 61 ; Selkirk à Sullivan, 13 février 1803, SPNAC 13859-13860 ; « Proposition relative to Prince Edward Island », 26 février 1803, SPNAC 13861-13862 ; Hobart à Hunter, 15 février 1803, NAC, Q294, p. 28 ; Talbot à Sullivan, 27 octobre 1802, NAC, Q293, p. 248-251 ; Hobart à Hunter (séparée), 15 février 1803, NAC, Q294, p. 35-36 ; Hobart à Hunter, no 16, 15 février 1803, NAC, Q294, p. 37-39 ; Hobart à Hunter, no 17, 1er mars 1803, NAC, Q294, p. 41-42. 15. Voir aussi : Sulivan à Pole Caren, esq (Home Office) et copie au Lord Avocat, 23 mars 1804, TNA, HO42/74/241-242 ; Cook à King, 24 aout 1804, TNA, HO42/76/232-233 ; Charles Hope à Home Office, 4 septembre 1804, NAS, RH2/4/89, p. 140-144. 16. Bathurst à Prevost, no 48, 29 octobre 1813, NAC, Q125A, p. 189-190 ; Bathurst à Prevost, no 72, 12 juillet 1814, NAC, Q136A, p. 40 ; Bathurst à Prevost, no 79, 15 septembre 1814, NAC, Q136A, p. 52-56 ; Bathurst à Drummond, 20 mars 1815, NAC, Q136A, p. 75-77 ; Bathurst à Drummond, 13 juin 1815, NAC, Q136A, p. 89-94 ; Bathurst à Drummond, 12 juillet 1815, NAC, Q136A, p. 116 ; Campbell à Gouldburn, 23 juin 1815, 28 juin 1815, 24 juillet 1815, 3 août 1815, NAC, Q135 p. 189-204 ; Inverness Journal and Northern Advertiser, 31 mars, 23 juin, 18 août, 27 octobre 1815, NLS, CBWall.2/96. 17. Les différents projets d’émigration et de colonisation qui se sont imposés aux administrations successives, comme l’installation des royalistes français dans le Bas-Canada ou les Maroons jamaïcains en Nouvelle-Écosse dans les années 1790 ont été très coûteux — sans pour autant être des réussites. De même, en dépit du soutien gouvernemental, les colons de Bathurst vont rencontrer de nombreuses difficultés. Les récoltes vont par exemple échouer les premiers temps et la colonie devra être financée par le gouvernement jusqu’en 1819. La colonie va se développer avec succès, mais aura coûté beaucoup d’argent (Johnston, 1972, p. 21 ; Campey, 2005, p. 45-48).

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18. Voir mon article « La traversée transatlantique de l’Écosse vers le Canada au tournant du XIXe siècle : angoisses, propagandes et réalités », Études canadiennes, vol. 78, 2015, p. 207-220. 19. « Minutes of the Council from the 19th November 1790 to the 4th of January 1791 », NAC, Q51, p. 28 ; voir aussi Caledonian Mercury, 8 décembre 1784, 11 décembre 1784, 22 décembre 1791 ; Bathurst à Prevost, no 48, 29 octobre 1813, National Archives Canada, Q125A, p. 189. 20. Grant à Castlereagh, no 20, 5 mai 1806, NAC, Q305, p. 2. 21. The Missionary Magazine, vol. 9, Édimbourg, Ritchie, 1804, p. 522. On voit aussi pointer çà et là, dans des discussions sur l’émigration et la colonisation en général, des arguments presque humanitaristes contre l’arrivée massive de Britanniques et de leurs idées civilisatrices pour préserver les populations autochtones (The Parliamentary History, 1792–1794, vol. XXX, p. 675-676). 22. Voir par exemple : Saunders’s Newsletter, 4 août 1786 ; Caledonian Mercury, 22 décembre 1791 ; The Political Herald and Review, vol. II, Londres, 1786, p. 417 ; The Monthly Review, vol. 20, Londres, 1796, p. 479 ; The Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. 66, 1796, p. 942 ; The Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. 71, 1801, p. 250 ; Weld, 1801, p. 289 ; Lambert, 1810, p. 145. 23. « Mr Horner thought it much better that Government should not have interfered at all, as it was impossible to hold out facilities of going to our Colonies, without exciting a spirit of emigration. » (Morning Post, 22 juin 1815) 24. « The British Newspaper Archives » ; The Times ; E. S. Fraser, « On Emigration from the Scottish Highlands and Islands », unpublished manuscript, NLS, Ms. 9646, p. 31 ; T. Telford, A Survey and Report of the Coast and Central Highlands of Scotland, Made by the Command of the Right Honourable the Lords Commissioners of His Majesty’s Treasury in the Autumn of 1802, Edin. F.R.S, 5 avril 1803, p. 15 ; Brown, 1806, p. 7-8. 25. Adams & Somerville, 1993, appendix 4, p. 211-212 ; Bumsted, 1982, appendix A, table III ; Campey, 2005, p. 27 ; Devine, 2003, p. 129.

RÉSUMÉS

Entre la fin de la Révolution américaine et la fin des guerres napoléoniennes, l’Écosse comme les colonies canadiennes doivent faire face à de nombreux problèmes : dans les Hautes Terres, les changements socio-économiques bouleversent la société traditionnelle alors que les colonies britanniques en Amérique du Nord demeurent sous peuplées, mal développées et en proie à de possibles attaques des Français et des Américains. Une solution semble converger vers la résolution de ces crises : l’émigration des Highlanders vers les colonies britanniques. L’attitude du gouvernement central est souvent supposée hostile à l’émigration des Highlanders et décriée par certains historiens qui accusent Londres de n’avoir pas su écouter les demandes en faveur de l’émigration émanant des périphéries en Écosse et en Amérique du Nord. Dans quelle mesure Londres a-t-elle su (ou n’a-t-elle pas su) percevoir la nécessité de faire converger les politiques pour l’Écosse et pour les Canadas à travers l’émigration ? Cet article réexamine le débat public sur l’émigration et analyse les décisions prises par les secrétaires d’État chargés des colonies. Il montre que les cabinets successifs n’étaient pas fondamentalement hostiles à l’émigration mais, qu’au contraire, ils ont tenté de mener une politique éclairée qui cherchait à prendre en compte tous les aspects de la question et à répondre de manière habile aux demandes contradictoires de différents groupes de pression afin de faire converger les intérêts du centre et des périphéries de l’Empire britannique.

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Between the end of the War of Independence and the end of the Napoleonic wars, both Scotland and the British colonies in North America were facing challenges. In the Highlands, the improvement policies of the landlords and the Clearances were disrupting the traditional Highland way of life and society. In North America, the remaining British colonies were still under-populated, underdeveloped and ill-defended, which made them vulnerable to French and American attacks. To some contemporary observers and modern historians, Highland emigration to British North America seemed to offer a perfect solution to these different crises and issues. However, the British government is often accused of having been hostile to emigration. Were London politicians blind to the necessity of implementing convergent policies for the peripheries of the British Empire? This article reassesses the British government’s emigration policies between 1783 and 1815 by re-examining the public debate on Scottish emigration. It also focuses on previously neglected sources and retraces the policies and decisions taken by the Secretaries of State in charge of the colonies. It thus appears that the British government was not inherently opposed to emigration but that London attempted to lead an enlightened policy and made choices that tried to satisfy all the contradictory demands of the different groups involved both in Scotland and in British North America.

INDEX

Mots-clés : émigration, Hautes Terres, Amérique du Nord britannique, politiques migratoires, colonies, Empire britannique, 1783-1815 Keywords : emigration, Highlands, British North America, emigration policies, colonies, British Empire, 1783–1815

AUTEUR

ALICE LEMER-FLEURY Université de Nantes. Alice Lemer-Fleury, agrégée d’anglais, est doctorante en civilisations écossaise, canadienne et britannique rattachée au CRHIA (Université de Nantes). Elle travaille sur « L’Amérique du Nord britannique en métropole : politiques, perceptions et débats publics sur les colonies canadiennes en Angleterre et en Écosse (c. 1783-1815) » sous la direction du Pr. Françoise Le Jeune.

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Le voyage d’éducation de Lord John Bruce (c. 1671-1711), gentilhomme écossais The Education Travel of Lord John Bruce (c. 1671–1711), a Scottish Gentleman

Clarisse Godard Desmarest

1 Cet article vise à analyser le voyage d’éducation de Lord John Bruce (c. 1671-17111) sur le continent et à mettre en lumière son importance pour la construction de Kinross (fig. 1). Située entre le bourg de Kinross et la rive ouest du Loch Leven dans le comté de Perth et Kinross, la demeure de Kinross est construite au cours du dernier quart du XVIIe siècle par et pour l’homme politique et gentilhomme architecte Sir William Bruce (c. 1630-1710). Ce dernier occupe les fonctions de Surveyor-General and Overseer of the King’s Works in Scotland, soit l’équivalent de surintendant des bâtiments du roi en Écosse, entre 1671 et 1678. Pour Daniel Defoe, il est le Christopher Wren écossais et pour Sir John Clerk of Penicuik « The chief Introducer of Architecture in this Country » (Defoe, 1748, p. 159 ; Mackechnie, 2002, p. 499). Kinross House constitue l’un des exemples les plus remarquables d’architecture classique en Écosse et est inscrite par Historic Environment Scotland au titre des monuments historiques. À la suite d’un changement de propriétaire en 2011, cet édifice a fait l’objet d’une profonde restauration achevée en 20132.

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Fig. 1. – « Kinross, The House of Sr. John Bruce ».

William Adam, Vitruvius Scoticus, 1812, planche 62

2 Cette demeure majestueuse au plan en double profondeur et au toit à la Mansart traduit une forte influence de l’architecture française. Deux dessins c. 1685 d’Alexander Edward (1651-1708)3, le dessinateur et assistant régulier de Sir William Bruce, présentent la demeure en élévation et au cœur d’un jardin clos sophistiqué, lequel est entouré d’un parc boisé (fig. 2 & 3). Située au centre d’un axe orienté est-ouest, la demeure est reliée au bourg de Kinross à l’ouest par une allée majestueuse et est alignée, à l’est, sur le château de Loch Leven, là même où Marie Stuart fut détenue prisonnière. Comme souvent en Écosse, le domaine s’intègre dans un paysage symbolique. La demeure s’inscrit dans un système élaboré de cours, de jardins et de parterres construits autour d’un axe central. Le dessin d’Alexander Edward figure des passages latéraux couverts en arc de cercle reliant le corps de logis aux ailes latérales et comparables à ceux des villas palladiennes.

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Fig. 2. – Élévation et plan des étages de Kinross.

Dessin et encre d’Alexander Edward, c. 1685, dimensions 27 cm x 31 cm. Edinburgh College of Art, CCECR0052.

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Fig. 3. – Plan du jardin de Kinross.

Dessin et encre d’Alexander Edward, c. 1685, dimensions 27 cm x 31 cm. Edinburgh College of Art, CCECR0052.

3 Ce travail sur Lord Bruce s’inscrit dans les recherches actuelles menées sur Sir William Bruce, sa carrière d’architecte et sa postérité. Un symposium a été organisé à l’université d’Édimbourg en 2011 à l’occasion du tricentenaire de sa mort et a permis de révéler de nouveaux éléments biographiques, en particulier sur sa jeunesse de marchand à Rotterdam. Une sélection d’essais a été par la suite publiée dans Architectural Heritage4. Ces recherches viennent compléter les ouvrages de John Dunbar et de Hubert Fenwick5 et les notices de John Lowrey et de Howard Colvin respectivement publiées dans l’Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004) et le Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600–1840 (4e éd., 2008).

4 Si Sir William Bruce fait l’objet d’un intérêt renouvelé, Sir John Bruce est présenté par une courte notice biographique dans The Complete Baronetage (Cokayne, 1904, p. 270)6 et sa carrière politique est, pour l’essentiel, consignée dans The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1690–17157. Sir John Bruce est décrit, dans le Peerage of Scotland, comme « a man of parts, and as he had got a liberal education, was looked upon as one of the finest gentlemen in the kingdom, when he returned from his travels » (Douglas, 1768, cité dans Burke, 1841, p. 618). Il est également mentionné par Thomas Hamilton (1680-1735), sixième comte de Haddington, pour les conseils en matière de plantations qu’il prodigue à la famille Haddington, propriétaire de Tynningham, un domaine situé dans l’East Lothian (Hamilton, 1761, p. 7-10)8.

5 Cet article entend replacer le voyage d’étude de Lord Bruce (1681-1683) dans le contexte de l’éducation du gentilhomme au XVIIe siècle et souligner son importance pour les travaux effectués à Kinross à la même époque. Ceux-ci débutent en 1679 par l’aménagement des jardins, se poursuivent par la construction de la demeure à partir

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de 1685 et s’achèvent en 1693 (Gifford, 2007, p. 483-484). On dispose, pour analyser ce voyage, des douze lettres adressées par Lord Bruce à son père, des trente-cinq lettres de James Halket, le tuteur de Lord Bruce, à Sir William Bruce et de plusieurs listes de comptes de James Halket9. Cet article évoquera pour finir une transition difficile, lorsque Lord Bruce succède à son père à la tête du domaine.

6 Lord John Bruce est le fils unique de Sir William Bruce issu de son premier mariage avec Mary Halket, la fille de James Halket of Pitfirrane. En 1687, Lord Bruce épouse Lady Christian Montrose, la fille de John Leslie (1630-1681), premier duc de Rothes, et veuve du troisième marquis de Montrose. Lord Bruce devient donc le gendre d’un homme politique puissant (Chancelier d’Écosse sous Charles II) et le beau-père du futur premier duc de Montrose, une figure importante du parti Squadrone au moment de l’Union de 1707. Lors de son mariage, Lord Bruce acquiert l’entière propriété du domaine de Kinross. Ce transfert est, en réalité, assez théorique en 1687 parce que Sir William Bruce poursuit alors le chantier de construction de la demeure et réside pour partie à Kinross10. À l’inverse de son père, Lord Bruce se montre beaucoup moins inflexible à l’égard du nouveau régime en 1689 et espère, l’année suivante, que le parlement écossais pourra adopter la religion presbytérienne11. Sir William Bruce refuse, quant à lui, la succession d’Orange, ce qui lui vaut d’être suspecté de sympathie jacobite et d’être emprisonné à plusieurs reprises, en 1693, 1694, 1696 et 1708.

7 Lord John Bruce représente le comté de Kinross au sein du parlement écossais entre 1702 et 1707, puis au sein du parlement britannique entre 1707 et 1708. Il succède à son père en 1702 en tant que sheriff héréditaire de Kinross, une fonction à laquelle Sir William Bruce a dû renoncer car ses sympathies jacobites lui valent d’être considéré comme un traître. En 1707, Lord Bruce est l’un des commissaires de la reine Anne en charge de l’« équivalent », ces montants compensatoires destinés à dédommager l’Écosse pour sa participation à la dette de l’Angleterre au sein de l’Union12. Lord Bruce devient second baronet de Kinross à la mort de son père en 1710, mais décède à son tour le 19 mars 1711.

8 Le voyage d’étude ou « petit tour13 » du continent réalisé par Lord Bruce dure d’octobre 1681 à juillet 1683. Ce voyage, d’une durée inférieure à deux ans, est moins long que celui effectué par les deux fils aînés du troisième comte de Lothian au milieu du XVIIe siècle et n’est pas motivé par des impératifs politiques ou religieux 14. Lord Bruce parcourt la France et les Provinces-Unies, reçoit l’instruction générale destinée aux gentilshommes de l’époque et est accompagné pour ce périple d’un tuteur bienveillant et précautionneux membre de la famille de sa mère, Dr James Halket. Comme pour de nombreux aristocrates, ce voyage constitue un rite de passage obligé de l’enfance à la maturité dont l’objectif est l’acquisition d’une forme de sagesse, ce qui transparaît d’un portrait de Lord Bruce (fig. 4). Ce séjour sur le continent résulte, dans le cas de la famille Bruce, d’un fort désir d’ascension sociale. Sir William Bruce n’appartient pas à la haute aristocratie mais aspire à rejoindre la pairie, et l’éducation de son héritier est de toute évidence très importante.

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Fig. 4. – Portrait de Lord John Bruce d’après Sir John Michael Wright, n. d.

Artnet, (consulté le 5 octobre 2016).

9 Ayant œuvré à la Restauration des Stuart sur le trône, Sir William Bruce récolte à partir de 1660 les fruits de son soutien au futur Charles II. Grâce au patronage de John Maitland (1616-1682), premier duc de Lauderdale, il est nommé au poste de Surveyor of the King’s Works in Scotland en 1671 15. S’il perd ce poste prestigieux en 1678, Bruce demeure un propriétaire terrien puissant exerçant les fonctions de sheriff de Kinross à partir de 1682. Il est également responsable des douanes pour l’Écosse à partir de 1671. En l’espace de dix ans, Bruce a pu faire l’acquisition de deux domaines, Balcaskie dans le Fife en 1665 puis Kinross dans le Kinross-shire en 1675. L’achat de ce dernier domaine lui permet de représenter le puissant comté de Kinross au sein du parlement écossais en 1681-1682 puis à nouveau en 1685-168616. Le dépôt d’armoiries auprès du Lord Lyon en 1675, peu après avoir été élevé au rang de baronet (en 1668), constitue un exemple supplémentaire de l’ambition sociale de Sir William Bruce17. Ce dernier est donc au faîte de sa carrière politique lorsque son fils séjourne sur le continent, lui- même y ayant séjourné dans les années 1660 dans des conditions bien plus rudimentaires puisqu’il était alors marchand (Wemyss, 2005, p. 14-30). Pour preuve, Sir William Bruce est remercié par le Conseil privé en 1682 pour sa loyauté18.

10 Peu d’éléments permettent de connaître la nature de l’éducation reçue par Lord Bruce avant son séjour sur le continent mais, au vu de son jeune âge, il est peu probable qu’il ait eu accès à une formation universitaire avant de quitter l’Écosse. Ce voyage vise à faire de l’héritier de Sir William Bruce un courtisan et propriétaire terrien accompli capable de gérer, à l’avenir, un domaine imposant et d’administrer la justice locale. Sur le chemin du retour, en juillet 1683, Lord Bruce ne manque de se rendre à la cour à Londres où il rend hommage à Charles II et au duc d’York, futur Jacques VII. James

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Halket rapporte alors à Sir William Bruce : « For now there is nothing to doo but kisse the king and Dukes hands19. » Le baiser royal, rare privilège réservé à la haute aristocratie et à la famille royale, traduit l’influence dont bénéficie alors la famille Bruce à la Cour. Au travers le chantier de reconstruction du palais de Holyrood à Édimbourg, mené entre 1671 et 1679, Sir William Bruce a en effet participé à l’affirmation symbolique du pouvoir du roi Charles II en Écosse.

11 Bien que des lettres de change payables sous huit jours soient régulièrement envoyées par Sir William Bruce à James Halket, ce dernier peine à trouver de l’argent sur le continent en raison des délais d’acheminement du courrier et de la faiblesse des institutions bancaires, ce qu’Halket nomme « [the] breaking of the banquiers20 ». Le coût de ce périple inquiète Sir William Bruce et Halket doit justifier des dépenses, lesquelles sont étroitement consignées. Les frais de blanchisserie et la consommation hebdomadaire en bougies sont ainsi précisément répertoriés. La première lettre adressée par Halket à Bruce est datée du 19 novembre 1681 à Paris et fait déjà état d’un manque cruel d’argent21. Si le taux de change est susceptible de varier, on considère alors que la livre écossaise et la livre française (ou le franc) sont à parité. Une livre sterling équivaut quant à elle à douze livres écossaises et donc aussi à douze livres françaises22. Les dépenses dans la capitale française, bien plus élevées que prévu, tiennent à ce que Lord John Bruce voyage en véritable gentilhomme, un valet à sa suite. Halket se félicite, auprès de Sir William Bruce, de ce que sa pupille est vêtue à la dernière mode de Paris : Your son has two suits of cloathes, one of fine cloath lined with satin and a fine flowered stuff waste coat with fringed gloves and stockings conforme; the other plain of droguet23 lined with [itselfe?]. He has a large hairstuff riding coat lined with scarlet satin with gold aggreements and galoon upon the neck; he has doublet and breeches of sateen for riding and a vustian waistcoat for fencing […]24

12 De novembre 1681 à juin 1682, Lord Bruce est pensionnaire d’une académie équestre, ce lieu d’apprentissage où depuis le XVIe siècle sont enseignés l’art équestre et l’escrime25. La première d’entre elles est fondée en 1594 par Antoine de Pluvinel, le grand écuyer d’Henri IV, au retour d’un séjour à Naples auprès du maître Pignatelli26 et, au milieu du XVIIe, de nombreuses académies sont installées dans le bourg du Pré-aux-Clercs, à Paris27. Les Britanniques choisissent alors la France pour y suivre une formation de qualité alors que leurs ancêtres au XVIe siècle auraient plus certainement fait le choix de l’Italie (Howard, 1914, p. 22 ; Dubost, 1997, p. 104). Dans les directives qu’il énonce à l’attention des candidats au voyage, l’érudit et voyageur anglo-gallois James Howell (1594-1666) recommande aux gentilshommes de son pays un séjour dans les académies, ou écoles d’équitation, françaises : For private Gentlemen and Cadets, there be divers Academies in Paris, Colledge-like, where for 150 pistols a Yeare, which come to about £150 sterling per annum of our money, one may be very well accommodated, with lodging and diet for himself and man, and be taught to Ride, to Fence, to manage Armes, to Dance, Vault, and ply the Mathematiques. (Howell, 1642, p. 51 ; Wood, 1817)

13 Dans son guide de voyage, le courtisan et voyageur Sir Robert Dallington (1561-1637) admirait, dès 1598, la formation dispensée en France et incitait les Britanniques à se nourrir de celle-ci (Dallington, 1605). Il notait en particulier la supériorité de la formation en danse, une aptitude nécessaire au courtisan.

14 Il est probable que Sir William Bruce ait eu accès aux ouvrages de Dallington et de Henry Peacham (c. 1576-c. 1643), l’auteur de The Compleat Gentleman (1622). Ce texte,

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ainsi que The Gentlemans Exercise (1612), du même auteur, sont largement commentés par Alexander Edward, le dessinateur et assistant régulier de Sir William Bruce, dans l’un de ses carnets28. Edward y compare point par point sa technique du dessin à celle de Peacham. Edward, avec lequel Sir William Bruce collabore à de fréquentes reprises, entreprend par ailleurs un voyage sur le continent en 1701-1702, lequel est financé par plusieurs aristocrates écossais dont les comtes de Hopetoun, de Mar et de Panmure29.

15 Peacham, pour lequel l’apprentissage constitue « an essential part of Nobilitie » (1634a, p. 18), n’est pas sans observer d’un regard critique cette formation qui fait une moindre place à l’enseignement académique. Il résume ainsi l’attitude de certains parents qui, pour avoir détecté que leurs fils ne seraient jamais de grands lettrés, « send them either to the Court to serve as Pages, or into France and Italy to see fashions, and mend their manners, where they become ten times worse » (ibid., p. 33). Les académies fleurissent en France au XVIIe siècle et rencontrent un franc succès auprès des gentilshommes britanniques30. Ce n’est qu’au cours de la seconde moitié du XVIIIe que ces derniers deviennent plus réticents à l’égard d’une formation accusée de freiner l’anglicisation des élites31. Cette opinion est notamment partagée par John Moore, le précepteur de Douglas Hamilton (1756-1799), huitième duc de Hamilton32. Cette critique est aussi celle des Whigs, toujours prompts à affirmer la supériorité de l’Angleterre dans leurs carnets et récits de voyage.

16 Lord Bruce passe environ sept mois à l’académie où il est interne et, à titre indicatif, les frais de sa pension s’élèvent à 556 livres françaises par trimestre33. James Halket se veut rassurant en informant Sir William Bruce que, par comparaison, Lord Drumlanrig et son frère ont dépensé pas moins de 1 000 livres sterling l’année de leur séjour à l’académie34. Aux frais de pension, il faut ajouter ceux des cours particuliers auprès des différents maîtres et éducateurs. Les progrès de Lord Bruce sont rapides si l’on en croit Halket qui détaille l’emploi du temps chargé de sa pupille : « The exercises he most delights in are riding, fencing, and designing, he understands almost all he reads in French and hears spoken, and begins to speak35. » L’apprentissage du geste équestre est fondamental pour des aristocrates tels que Sir William et John Bruce, car il permet de se distinguer d’une haute bourgeoisie au pouvoir croissant, en affirmant la noble tradition chevaleresque (fig. 5). Lord Bruce monte jusqu’à six chevaux par jour et se familiarise aux figures de dressage et aux exercices de cavalerie36. L’apprentissage des langues étrangères, en particulier du français, fait également partie du projet éducatif de James Halket pour Lord Bruce. Ce dernier apprend aussi l’art de la danse, le dessin, la musique (il joue de la flûte), mais aussi les « mathématiques », ce qui équivaut en réalité à l’art de la fortification37. Halket peine néanmoins à trouver un professeur d’architecture « for there are but two or three that teach it in all Paris38 ».

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Fig. 5. – « Le roi Louis XIII, à cheval, galope vers la droite ».

Antoine de Pluvinel, Le Maneige Royal, gravure sur cuivre de Crispin de Passe le Jeune, 1623, Bibliothèque nationale de France.

17 Les progrès de Lord Bruce dans la maîtrise de l’art du dessin et de l’architecture sont mentionnés dans la correspondance, ce qui est intéressant étant donné qu’il est le fils d’un gentilhomme architecte de talent. Une encre sur papier de Lord Bruce réalisée en 1682 (fig. 6)39 atteste de sa maîtrise du croquis et offre un complément à cette remarque emprunte de naïveté : « As much as I have seen (of Paris) I think it is a much finer place than London, but for the country I think England is much finer than any of France that I have seen40. » Ce jugement de novembre 1681 paraît d’autant plus présomptueux que Lord Bruce vient à peine d’arriver en France. Dans The Compleat Gentleman et The Gentlemans Exercise, les techniques du croquis, du dessin, de la gravure (notamment sur verre) et de la peinture sont décrites avec précision. Peacham propose, par exemple, une méthode de préparation de la toile et des pigments et offre des conseils avisés pour la peinture des ciels et des paysages41.

18 L’académie permet à Lord John Bruce de se policer et de fréquenter des jeunes nobles fortunés. Lord Bruce se vante ainsi de côtoyer un fils de Louvois, le surintendant des bâtiments du roi, deux princes allemands et Lord George Howard, l’un des fils du sixième duc de Norfolk issu de son alliance avec Jane Bickerton42. À l’été et en début d’automne 1682, Lord Bruce et James Halket visitent les châteaux de Versailles, Chantilly et Liancourt puis se dirigent vers Blois, Angers, Nantes, La Rochelle, l’île de Ré, Rochefort, Poitiers, Orléans, Châtellerault, Richelieu, Chambord et Amboise43. Lors de précédentes visites, ils s’étaient rendus à Saint-Cloud, Rueil et Saint-Germain-en- Laye44. De retour à Paris en octobre-novembre 1682, ils occupent une pension rue des Boucheries, Faubourg Saint-Germain, dans le quartier où se concentrent hôtels et pensions à la fin du XVIIe siècle (Du Pradel, 1878). Lord Bruce semble bien davantage

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intéressé par les villes où il se rend et qu’il décrit à son père que par les paysages de la campagne française. En cela, son goût rejoint celui des gentilshommes français qui, dans les gravures du XVIIe siècle, sont souvent représentés posant devant des villes. Parmi les compatriotes écossais rencontrés par Lord Bruce, ou dont la visite en France est annoncée, citons Lord Kincardine, Lord Drumlanrig, Lord Traquair, Lord Primrose et Lord Glamis45.

Fig. 6. – Encre sur papier de Lord John Bruce jointe à une lettre adressée à Sir William Bruce, Paris, 28 mars 1682.

Édimbourg, National Records of Scotland, GD29/1914.

19 Ce voyage ne vise pas seulement à perfectionner l’éducation de Lord Bruce. Outre des épées et une paire de pistolets achetée à Paris pour la somme de 110 livres et destinée à Sir William Bruce46, Lord Bruce et James Halket rassemblent, dès leur arrivée sur le continent, des arbustes, racines, semences et plantes pour le domaine de Kinross. Ces achats coïncident avec les travaux de nivellement de terrain et de drainage ainsi qu’avec les plantations effectuées dans le parc et les jardins de Kinross. Les archives témoignent de ce qu’Alexander McRackin, jardinier, procède à des plantations dans les jardins et dans le verger en 1680 tandis que la pierre destinée aux murs d’enceinte est taillée en 168147. La construction de Kinross n’a alors pas encore commencé, le contrat de construction de la demeure datant de 1685. La famille Bruce vit alors dans « Newhouse », cette demeure située au nord du jardin clos et indiquée sur le plan d’Alexander Edward (« Old House »)48.

20 James Halket veille en personne au conditionnement des plantes et à leur expédition de Rouen à Leith, le port d’Édimbourg, où la marchandise doit être réceptionnée par un certain William White49. Pour leurs achats, les deux voyageurs sont conseillés par Monsieur Marcian50, l’intendant du jardin du roi, qui ne manque pas de leur indiquer les meilleurs botanistes auprès desquels s’approvisionner en plantes de qualité. Sir William Bruce et James Shanks, le chef jardinier de Kinross51, ont probablement apprécié les recommandations détaillées de James Halket pour la plantation du laurier fin et de certaines fleurs (croix de Jérusalem, jonquilles doubles, anémones) et pour divers semis (amarantes et coquelicots)52. Pas moins de trois cents marronniers sont ainsi achetés par James Halket pour le parc de Kinross : « There are in the little barrel

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300 horse chestnuts put up with sand, they must be presentlie set in the places where you have a minde to have them grow, they take best with a hot sandy soil53. » Avec les chênes et les sapins, ces marronniers, que l’on retrouve encore nombreux aujourd’hui dans le parc, ont pu servir à dessiner les allées de Kinross. Sir William Bruce est tenu régulièrement informé de leur coût et de leur transport délicat54. James Halket s’attache à répondre à chacune des interrogations de Sir William Bruce en matière de plantation, et ses directives rappellent celles du botaniste écossais John Reid (1656-1723)55. Dans The Scot’s Gardener (1683), Reid insiste sur la nécessité de placer une maison au centre d’un jardin et de faire converger vers elle toutes les allées du domaine : « Make all the Buildings and Plantings lye so about the House, as that the House may be the Centre; all the Walks, Trees and Hedges running to the House. » (Reid, 1721, p. 2) Cette esthétique du jardin à la française où demeure et jardin sont en parfaite harmonie apparaît très clairement dans le plan de Kinross d’Alexander Edward.

21 Cet intérêt pour la botanique ne saurait surprendre, car Sir William Bruce est associé aux recherches scientifiques menées par Sir Robert Sibbald (1641-1722), médecin du roi Charles II et Geographer Royal pour l’Écosse à partir de 1682, et par Sir Andrew Balfour (1630-1694)56. Ces scientifiques formés sur le continent sont à l’origine de la fondation du jardin botanique à Édimbourg en 1670. Le chapitre concernant le comté de Kinross de l’ouvrage A History Ancient and Modern of the Sherifdoms of Fife and Kinross (1710) est d’ailleurs dédié à Sir William Bruce et à Lord Bruce, son fils et héritier (Sibbald, 1803, p. 271). James Sutherland (1639-1719), l’intendant du jardin du roi à Holyrood et professeur de botanique à l’université d’Édimbourg, est également un ami de Sir William Bruce57. Plusieurs ouvrages spécialisés figurent dans la bibliothèque de Sir William Bruce, et notamment celui de William Hughes, The Flower Garden (1672)58.

22 Parmi les ouvrages achetés par Lord Bruce sur le continent, citons La Méthode de dresser les chevaux, Les arts de l’homme d’épée, L’Architecture de Blondel (payé neuf livres), mais aussi des pièces de Racine et de Raymond Poisson, un contemporain de Molière59. Le traité de Blondel est certainement destiné à compléter la bibliothèque de Sir William Bruce où figurent déjà les traités d’architecture de Vignole et de Palladio60. Pendant son séjour en France, Lord Bruce est abonné à la Gazette et au Mercure Galant. Les événements politiques sont rarement évoqués par Lord Bruce et James Halket dans leur correspondance. Il est seul fait mention de l’affaire de la Régale, ce conflit qui opposa Louis XIV au pape Innocent XI au sujet du droit de régale et qui culmina en France en 168261. Le monarque est alors tout puissant, avant la révocation de l’édit de Nantes (1685) et le début de la guerre de la ligue d’Augsbourg (1688-1697). Lord Bruce et James Halket déclarent par ailleurs assister aux feux d’artifice d’août 1682 organisés en l’honneur de la naissance de Louis de France (1682-1712), fils du Grand Dauphin62.

23 Au printemps 1683, Lord Bruce et James Halket visitent les Flandres et les Pays-Bas et passent notamment par Utrecht, Amsterdam, Haarlem, Rotterdam, Delft, La Haye et Leyde. Une forte communauté d’Écossais réside alors dans cette région, en particulier des soldats, des marchands et des exilés protestants ayant fui la restauration des Stuart en 1660. De nombreux Écossais fréquentent aussi certaines universités réputées comme celle de Leyde. Pas moins de 1 460 étudiants écossais sont inscrits à cette université entre 1575 et 180063. Sir John Clerk of Penicuik (1676-1755), second baronet de Penicuik, y suivit les enseignements d’Herman Boerhaave (1668-1738), un professeur renommé de médecine et de botanique64. Comme pour de nombreux voyageurs, la visite du château de Honselersdijk, à proximité de La Haye, constitue l’une des étapes du périple

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de Lord Bruce et de James Halket en Hollande. Ils y saluent le prince Guillaume d’Orange et la princesse Marie d’York, son épouse, en 168365. Construit par les architectes Van Campen et Pieter Post, ce palais aux jardins remarquables exprime la puissance de l’architecture baroque. Si l’Italie et les pays méditerranéens constituent la destination phare des Britanniques au milieu du XVIIIe siècle (Boswell, 1980, p. 742), le voyage de Lord Bruce se limite à la France et aux Pays-Bas et est en cela assez comparable à celui mené, au milieu du XVIIe siècle, par les fils du comte de Lothian lesquels sont accompagnés de Michael Young, leur tuteur. Ceux-ci passent pas moins de six années sur le continent dont la moitié à Leyde, en Hollande, et l’autre moitié en France, principalement à Saumur, Angers et Paris, échappant ainsi aux guerres civiles en Angleterre.

24 Après une traversée de Calais à Douvres, Lord Bruce et James Halket mentionnent rencontrer à Londres le comte d’Ailesbury (un cousin de Sir William Bruce)66, le comte de Middleton (secrétaire d’État à l’Écosse et futur conseiller de Jacques II pendant son exil), le comte de Dumbarton (futur commandant en chef des forces armées en Écosse pour Jacques II et aussi exilé à Saint-Germain-en-Laye) et Sir Andrew Forrester (un jacobite)67. Ces courtisans, fervents soutiens des Stuart, connaîtrons tous l’exil en 1689. Leurs passeports obtenus, James Halket et Lord Bruce peuvent traverser l’Angleterre et regagner l’Écosse à l’été 1683, un an avant que Sir William Bruce ne se sépare du domaine de Balcaskie et ne s’emploie à son grand dessein, la construction de la demeure de Kinross.

25 Ce périple de Lord John Bruce, en France et aux Pays-Bas, coïncide donc avec le début des travaux entrepris par Sir William Bruce sur le domaine de Kinross. Le parc doit accueillir l’un des plus beaux jardins à la française, lequel sera remarqué par Daniel Defoe au cours des années 1720. Au début des années 1680, Sir William Bruce est animé du désir d’asseoir sa position sociale et ses espoirs de fonder une dynastie prestigieuse reposent sur son héritier. La correspondance analysée ici témoigne d’un voyage sur le continent qui égale celui entrepris par les héritiers des plus grandes familles.

26 De retour en Écosse, Lord Bruce ne tarde pas à mettre en application sa formation aux arts de la guerre. Il contribue à mater, en juin-juillet 1685, une rébellion contre le pouvoir royal menée par le duc de Monmouth et Archibald Campbell, neuvième comte d’Argyll68. S’il devient officiellement propriétaire du domaine de Kinross en 1687, Lord Bruce ne s’en voit confier la gestion que plus tard, à la fin des années 169069. La construction de la demeure est alors achevée, mais les dettes dissimulées par Sir William accentuent les désaccords entre père et fils70. Sir William Bruce doit, en outre, affronter un long et coûteux procès intenté par le comte de Morton au sujet de la légalité de la vente de Kinross71. Par ailleurs, à l’inverse de son père qui demeure un partisan des Stuart, Lord Bruce soutient le nouveau régime politique72. Si la correspondance étudiée plus haut témoigne des relations apaisées entre Lord Bruce et son père œuvrant ensemble pour le bien du domaine, les dissensions se renforcent après le décès de Mary Halket, la mère de Lord Bruce, en 1699. Sir William Bruce choisit de se remarier moins d’un an plus tard à l’âge de soixante-dix ans et à la surprise générale de son entourage73. Il procède à la vente de plusieurs éléments d’ameublement de la demeure de Kinross, et en particulier à celle des pentes en cuir de Cordoue acquises à grands frais moins de dix ans auparavant74. Lord Bruce et la marquise de Montrose, son épouse, s’opposent à cette vente ainsi qu’à celle des cheminées, de la

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vaisselle et des portraits de famille75. C’est donc avec émotion et une colère à peine voilée que Lord Bruce écrit à son père : After you have bestowed a considerable limb of your estate to make this on of the finest places in the kingdom and that it was at the best but dirsproportionatly furnished, you now propose entirely to disgarnishe it unless your son will burden your estate with more debt to prevent it76.

27 Le contentieux entre père et fils s’ébruite et Sir William Bruce, qui s’en est retourné vivre dans l’ancienne demeure du domaine (« Old House » ou « Newhouse ») pour laisser place au foyer de son fils (en 1700), se plaint auprès du voisinage d’être désormais étranger à sa propre demeure. Il n’aurait même plus accès au potager de Kinross pour pouvoir préparer sa soupe, une accusation dont Lord Bruce se défend : […] there is only on imputation I desire to clear my selfe of that I am told you are pleased to cast upon me, that is that I will not so much as allow you keall to your pot upon what this is founded its impossible for me to find out77.

28 À son décès en 1711, Lord Bruce est le gestionnaire d’un domaine imposant, quoique endetté. Il a su participer au patronage dans le comté de Kinross et acquérir une stature politique au travers l’Union. Sans héritier, il n’a cependant pas pu exaucer le plus cher vœu de son père, celui de forger une longue dynastie prestigieuse. Le domaine passe alors à la sœur de Lord Bruce, Lady Anne Bruce, puis à John Hope, son fils, lequel représentera le comté de Kinross au parlement sous George II.

BIBLIOGRAPHIE

Manuscrits

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Acc. 4151. Pitfirrane Papers, MS6409, no 78.

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HAMILTON Thomas, Earl of Haddington, 1761, A Treatise on the Manner of Raising Forest Trees & c. [1733], Édimbourg.

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HYDE Edward, Earl of Clarendon, 1727, A Collection of Several Tracts, Londres, T. Wooodward & J. Peele.

MALINGRE Claude, 1640, Les Antiquitez de la Ville de Paris, 2 vol., Paris.

PEACHAM Henry, 1634a, The Compleat Gentleman, Fashioning him Absolute in the Most Necessary and Commendable Qualities, Concerning Minde or Body, that May be Required in a Noble Gentleman [1622], Londres, F. Constable.

PEACHAM Henry, 1634b, The Gentlemans Exercise, or an Exquisite Practice, as well for Drawing all Manner of Beasts in Their True Portraitures; As also the Making of all Kinds of Colours to be Used in Limning, Painting, Tricking, and Blazon of Coates, and Armes […] As also Serving for the Necessary Use of Generall benefit of Divers Tradesmen ad Artificers, as Namely Painters, Joyners, Free-Masons, Cutters and Carvers […] [1612], Londres, F. Constable.

REID John, 1721, The Scots Gard’ner in Two Parts. The First for Contriving and Planting Gardens, Orchards, Avenues and Groves, with New and Profitable Wayes of Levelling, and How to Measure and Divide Land. The Second of the Propagation & Improvement of Forrest, and Fruit-trees, Kitchen Hearbes, Roots and Fruits, with Some Physick Hearbs, Shrubs and Flowers. Appendix Shewing How to Use the Fruits of the Garden. Whereunto is Annexed the Gard’ners Kalendar Published for the Climate of Scotland [1683], Édimbourg, John Moncur.

SIBBALD Sir Robert, 1803, The History, Ancient and Modern, of the Sheriffdoms of Fife and Kinross; With the Description of Both, and of the Firths of Forth and Tay, and the Islands in them. In which, there is an Account of the Royal Seats and Castles; and of the Royal Burghs and the Ports; and of the Religious Houses and Schools; and of the Most Remarkable Houses of the Nobility and Gentry [sic]. With an Account of the Natural Products of the Land and Waters [1710], Cupar, R. Tullis.

WOOD Anthony, 1817, Athenae Oxonienses [1691], éd. Philip Bliss, vol. 3, Londres.

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BRAUER George, 1959, The Education of a Gentleman. Theories of Gentlemanly Education in England, 1660– 1775, New York, Bookman Associates.

BURKE John, 1841, A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Extinct and Dormant Baronetcies of England, Ireland and Scotland, Londres, Scott & Webster, 2e ed.

CAVERS Keith, 1993, A Vision of Scotland. The Nation Observed by John Slezer 1671 to 1717, Édimbourg, HMSO, National Library of Scotland.

COKAYNE George E. (éd.), 1904, The Complete Baronetage, vol. 4, Exeter, William Pollard & Co.

CRUICKSHANKS Eveline, HANDLEY Stuart & HAYTON David (éds), 2002, The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1690–1715, Vol. 1: Introductory Survey, Appendices, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

DOUGLAS Sir Robert, 1768, The Peerage of Scotland, Édimbourg, Printed for John Donaldson.

DUBOST Jean-François, 1997, La France italienne aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles, Paris, Aubier.

DUNBAR John, 1970, Sir William Bruce 1630–1710, Édimbourg, Scottish Arts Council.

EMERSON Roger L., 1988, « Sir Robert Sibbald, Kt, the Royal Society of Scotland and the Origins of the Scottish Enlightenment », Annals of Science, vol. 45, p. 41-72.

FENWICK Hubert, 1970, Architect Royal: The Life and Works of Sir William Bruce, 1630–1710, Kineton, The Roundwood Press.

GIFFORD John, 2007, Buildings of Scotland: Perth and Kinross, New Haven, Yale University Press.

GRAY John M. (éd.), 1892, Memoirs of the Life of Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, Baronet, Baron of the Exchequer, Extracted by Himself from His Own Journals, 1676–1755, vol. 13, Édimbourg, Scottish History Society Publications.

HOWARD Clare M., 1914, English Travellers of the Renaissance, Londres, John Lane.

LOWREY John, 1987, “A Man of Excellent Parts”, Alexander Edward: Minister, Architect, Jacobite, 1651– 1708, Saint Andrews, University of St Andrews, The Crawford Centre for the Arts.

MACKECHNIE Aonghus, 2002, « Sir William Bruce: ‘The Chief Introducer of Architecture in this Country’ », Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol. 132, p. 499-519.

MOORE Margaret, 1952, « The Education of a Scottish Nobleman’s Sons in the Seventeenth Century: I. Study in Holland », The Scottish Historical Review, vol. 31, no 111, Part. 1, p. 1-15.

Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, 1661–1689, éd. P. H. Brown, Ser. 3, vol. XI, Édimbourg, H. M. General Register House, 1918.

SMOUT Thomas C. (éd.), 1986, Scotland and Europe, 1200–1850, Édimbourg, John Donald.

SOTHEBY, WILKINSON & HODGE, 1889, The Hopetoun House Library. Catalogue of the Library of the Right Honourable the Earl of Hopetoun, Londres, Dryden Press.

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UNDERWOOD Edgar A., 1977, Boerhaave’s Men at Leyden, Édimbourg, Edinburgh University Press.

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NOTES

1. Lord John Bruce (c. 1671-1711) ne saurait être confondu avec Sir John Bruce (1685-1766), Hope of Kinross, le troisième fils de Lady Anne Bruce et septième baronet de Kinross. 2. Jusqu’en 2011, la demeure appartenait à la famille Montgomery. Le nouveau propriétaire des lieux, Donald Fothergill, est issu du monde des affaires. 3. À l’instar de Sir William Bruce, Alexander Edward est jacobite. Voir Lowrey (1987). Ces dessins de Kinross, conservés par l’université d’Édimbourg (CCECR0052), étaient probablement destinés à être inclus dans l’ouvrage de Jan Slezer, Ancient and Present State of Scotland (c. 1695). Voir Cavers (1993, p. 91). L’attribution des dessins à Alexander Edward est désormais admise. 4. Architectural Heritage, vol. 23, no 1, 2012. 5. J. Dunbar, Sir William Bruce 1630–1710, Édimbourg, Scottish Arts Council, 1970 ; H. Fenwick, Architect Royal: The Life and Works of Sir William Bruce, 1630–1710, Kineton, The Roundwood Press, 1970. 6. Selon cette notice, Lord Bruce serait décédé le 19 mars 1710. 7. Cette information est erronée puisque Lord Bruce décède un an plus tard (Cruickshanks, Handley & Hayton, 2002). 8. Thomas Hamilton est le fils de Charles Hamilton, cinquième comte de Haddington, et de Margaret Leslie, huitième comtesse de Rothes. Il est donc apparenté à la famille Bruce of Kinross. 9. GD29/1914-1915. Les lettres écrites en France sont d’abord adressées à « Sir William Bruce of Balcaskie, to be left at the Bill Chamber, Edinburgh, Scotland ». Acheté par Sir William Bruce en 1665, le domaine de Balcaskie est revendu en 1684. Bruce renonce à la fonction de Clerk to the Bills en 1681. Les lettres qui lui sont destinées portent donc, à partir de janvier 1682, la mention « to be left at his lodgings in the foot of the Canongate ». Le successeur de Bruce à la fonction de Clerk to the Bills, James Anstruther, offre une somme d’argent importante à Bruce pour qu’il renonce à cette fonction. Il est probable qu’une partie de cette somme ait servi au financement du voyage d’étude de John Bruce sur le continent. 10. GD29/1220. Contrat de mariage entre John Bruce et Christian, marquise de Montrose, 3 mai 1687. Sir William Bruce obtient plusieurs sinécures sous Jacques VII, lequel est couronné en 1685. Pourtant Bruce tombe rapidement en disgrâce et est exclu du Conseil privé du Roi le 17 mai 1686. Le transfert de propriété vise donc probablement à éviter une saisie du domaine de Kinross par le gouvernement de Jacques VII. Voir Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, 1661–1689, éd. P. H. Brown, Ser. 3, vol. XI, Édimbourg, H. M. General Register House, 1918, p. 13. 11. GD29/1918/8. John Bruce, Édimbourg, à Sir William Bruce, Kinross, 9 juin 1690. 12. L’« équivalent » est aussi destiné à couvrir les pertes subies par les actionnaires de la Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies à la suite du désastre de l’expédition Darien au Panama. Lord Bruce figure parmi les investisseurs de la compagnie marchande écossaise (£500). Voir The Darien Papers: Being a Selection of Original Letters and Official Documents Relating to the Establishment of a Colony at Darien […] 1695–1700, Édimbourg, Bannatyne Club, 1849, p. 372. 13. GD29/1915. James Halket à Sir William Bruce, Paris, 28 mars 1682. 14. Robert, Lord Kerr, futur premier marquis de Lothian, et Sir William Kerr, son jeune frère, parcourent le continent entre 1651 et 1657. Voir Thomson (1971) et Moore (1952, p. 1-15). 15. Ce poste équivaut à celui de Christopher Wren en Angleterre et à celui de Louis Le Vau en France. 16. Sir William Bruce représente le comté de Fife au parlement écossais entre 1669 et 1674. 17. Sir William Bruce a conscience du « pedigree of the Bruces » (Lord Ailesbury, Londres, à Sir William Bruce, Édimbourg, 28 avril 1685, GD29/1924/2). Sir William Bruce est issu d’une branche cadette de la famille Bruce. En France, à la même époque, Colbert fait la chasse aux faux nobles.

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18. Sir William Bruce a alors permis d’arrêter les participants d’une assemblée religieuse secrète (presbytérienne) dans le comté de Kinross (Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, 1661–1689, vol. 7, p. 362, 384). 19. GD29/1915. James Halket à Sir William Bruce, Londres, 14 juillet 1683. 20. GD29/1915. James Halket à Sir William Bruce, Anvers, 27 avril 1683. 21. GD29/1915. James Halket à Sir William Bruce, Paris, 19 novembre 1681 : « In that of October 29th I gave you advice of a bill I drew upon you of 636 pound Scots of the same date; of this bill I have yet remaining onlie 400 lib., and yet unpaid cloaths and what I have stood in need of for myself come to about 840 lib. so I desire you’d be pleased to send a bill as soon as possible for I will draw none till I hear from you. » 22. GD29/1915. James Halket à Sir William Bruce, Paris, 27 janvier 1682 : « Your son’s second quarter in the Academie begins the 23 instant […] I shall draw a bill upon you of 1050 pounds Scots, for which I am to receive 1000 libres, wherefore there goes 550 lib. to the Academie. » 23. Le droguet est une étoffe de laine. La redingote de Lord Bruce est doublée d’un satin écarlate richement brodé de motifs et de passementerie en fil d’or au col. 24. GD29/1915. James Halket à Sir William Bruce, Paris, 23 décembre 1681. 25. Le dictionnaire de Furetière illustre la définition du terme par le nom de Pluvinel, le premier à établir une académie en France. L’académie dont il s’agit dans notre contexte est le lieu d’instruction générale destinée aux gentilshommes d’épée. 26. Créées à l’origine pour compenser les carences du pays en matière éducative, les académies (celle de Pluvinel était installée dans la grande galerie du Louvre) étaient censées offrir une formation honorable à la noblesse en épargnant à ses enfants un séjour coûteux en Italie où l’enseignement de l’art de l’équitation et du maniement des armes était reconnu. 27. « Dans ce faux-bourg sont plusieurs Academies où la Noblesse apprend à monter à cheval, la plus fréquentée est celle de Monsieur de Mesmond, où il y a un Prince de Dannemarch & un des Princes Palatins du Rhin, & quantité d’autres Seigneurs étrangers. » (Malingre, 1640, p. 403) 28. National Library of Scotland, Acc. 4151. 29. Alexander Edward se rend en particulier à Versailles, Clagny, Meudon, Saint-Germain, Chantilly, au Val-de-Grâce et aux Tuileries, comme le montre la description du lot 571 du catalogue de la vente des ouvrages de la bibliothèque de Hopetoun organisée par Sotheby’s en 1889 : « 571: Engravings of foreign views, plans and ornaments, including Vatican, Tuilleries, Versailles, Clagny, St. Germain […] » (Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge, 1889, n. pag.). Entre avril et juin 1702, Alexander Edward achète 885 gravures représentant châteaux et jardins qu’il fait expédier par malle en Écosse à l’attention de ses mécènes. 30. Les académies équestres les plus célèbres sont celles de Benjamin, Potrincourt et Nesmond. 31. L’idée d’instaurer des académies apparaît aussi en Angleterre. Les académies de Sir Balthazar Gerbier et de Faubert sont fondées à Londres en 1649 et en 1682. 32. « The most important point, in my mind, to be secured in the education of a young man of rank of our country, is to make him an Englishman; and this can be done only in England. » (Brauer, 1959, p. 189) 33. GD29/1915. James Halket à Sir William Bruce, Paris, 8 avril 1682. « Account of money disbursed from Dec 23 1681 to May 13 1682 ». Lord Bruce arrive à l’académie autour du 23 décembre. Le second trimestre commence le 23 janvier et le paiement de celui-ci est effectué par Halket le 28 janvier 1682. Le troisième trimestre s’achève le 23 juillet 1682. Halket à Bruce, Paris, 26 juillet 1682. Trois semaines de pension à l’académie de Lord Bruce s’élèvent à 139 livres françaises en août 1682. Halket à Bruce, Paris, 12 août 1682. 34. GD29/1915. James Halket à Sir William Bruce, Paris, 11 février 1682. 35. GD29/1915. James Halket à Sir William Bruce, Paris, 3 janvier 1682. 36. GD29/1915. James Halket à Sir William Bruce, Paris, 11 février 1682.

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37. « It is true they have men there who teach Arithmetick, which they call Philosophy, and the Art of Fortification, which they call the Mathematicks. » (« A Dialogue Concerning Education », dans Hyde [Earl of Clarendon], 1727, p. 297) 38. GD29/1915. James Halket à Sir William Bruce, Paris, 26 juillet 1682. 39. GD29/1914. John Bruce à Sir William Bruce, Paris, 28 mars 1682 : « I have sent you a piece of design such as it is […]. » 40. GD29/1914. John Bruce à Sir William Bruce, 19 novembre 1681. 41. Sur ce dernier point, les conseils édictés par Peacham rejoignent mot pour mot ceux d’Alexander Edward. Voir Peacham (1634b, p. 39) ; National Library of Scotland, Acc. 4151, p. 33. L’œuvre de Peacham vise avant tout à sensibiliser les jeunes nobles à leurs devoirs envers Dieu, l’Église et le roi (Charles I). 42. GD29/1914. John Bruce à Sir William Bruce, 19 novembre 1681. 43. GD29/1915. James Halket à Sir William Bruce, Paris, 26 septembre et 24 octobre 1682. « Accompt of money disbursed from Aug 12 to Dec 18 1682 ». 44. GD29/1915. James Halket à Sir William Bruce, Paris, 11 février 1682. « Accompt of money disbursed from Dec 23 1681 to May 13 1682 ». 45. GD29/1915. James Halket à Sir William Bruce, Paris, 3 et 10 janvier, 24 octobre, 9 novembre, 10 juin et 15 juillet 1682. 46. GD29/1915. James Halket à Sir William Bruce, Paris, 11 février, 8 avril, 13 et 23 mai 1682. 47. GD242/28/1, GD29/263/12. Contrats entre Sir William Bruce et Alexander McRackin, jardinier, James Anderson et Thomas Baak, 9 septembre 1680, 17 novembre 1681. 48. Sir William Bruce s’installe à « Old House » ou « Newhouse » en 1675. Il procède à des travaux dans cette bâtisse médiévale, ayant appartenu à la dynastie Douglas, en même temps qu’il construit Kinross. 49. GD29/1915. Halket à Sir William Bruce, Paris, 25 novembre 1682. 50. GD29/1915. John Bruce à Sir William Bruce, Paris, 16 novembre 1682. 51. GD29/263/12. James Shanks reçoit 15 livres écossaises le 1 er août 1680 correspondant à une demi-année de travail à Kinross, de la Saint-Martin 1679 à la Pentecôte 1680. 52. « In the box there are firs two bundles of ane evergreen shrub the roots bound up in two pieces of cloath with earth about them, each bundle contains 3 plants which so soon as they come to your hand you must separate neatly ane from another […] and set them in six earthen pots with good earth about them, when it is very cold cause take them into the house, they will begin to flower as soon as they are planted, there must be nothing also done to them till next harvest. The Latin name of the shrub is Laurus Sylvestris Folio Minore. The French name is Laurier Fin: it is very much esteemed in France because when it has once taken well with the earth […] it flowers all the year. » (Note de James Halket intitulée « Names of the plants contained in the box ». GD29/1915.) 53. Note de James Halket intitulée « Names of the plants contained in the box ». GD29/1915. 54. « The horse chestnut trees you wrote for (besides that they are verie dear) cannot be transported, for when they come to a man’s height they spread immediatelie and grow bushier at the top; the nuts are verie scarce this year, but I shall endeavour to get what quantitie you desire. » (GD29/1915. Halket à Bruce, Paris, 6 décembre 1681) 55. GD29/1915. Halket à Bruce, Paris, 8 août 1682. Halket explique ainsi comment conserver les bulbes des anémones pour pouvoir les transplanter à l’automne. 56. Sibbald avait séjourné à Blois auprès du duc d’Orléans. Voir Emerson (1988, p. 41-72). 57. Sir William Bruce finance la publication de l’ouvrage de James Sutherland, Hortus Medicus Edinburgensis (1683). GD29/263/15. 58. GD29/263/10. « Account and discharge, George Leslie to Bruce, 11 April 1679 ». 59. GD29/1915. « Accompt of money disbursed from Dec 23 1681 to May 13 1682, Account of money disbursed from May 13 to Aug 12 1682, Accompt of money disbursed from Aug 12 to Dec 18 1682 ».

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60. GD29/263/10, « Account and discharge by George Leslie to Bruce, 13 July 1675 ». 61. GD29/1915. James Halket à Sir William Bruce, Paris, 10 juin 1682. Cette controverse, à laquelle Bossuet prit part, opposa deux conceptions des relations entre Rome et l’Église de France : la doctrine ultramontaine par laquelle le pape devait exercer directement son autorité sur les évêques et la doctrine gallicane par laquelle l’Église de France, sous l’autorité du roi, disposait d’une large autonomie à l’égard de Rome. 62. GD29/1915. James Halket à Sir William Bruce, Paris, 8 août 1682. 63. R. Feenstra, « Scottish-Dutch Legal Relations in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries », dans Smout (1986, p. 130-133). 64. Voir Gray (1892). Sir John Clerk séjourne sur le continent de 1694 à 1699 (Underwood, 1977). 65. John Bruce à Sir William Bruce, Amsterdam, 28 May 1683. Lord Bruce démontre sa fidélité et loyauté aux princes d’Orange : « [He] kissed the Prince and Princess’s hands ». Une telle entrevue n’est aucunement polémique en 1683. 66. Lord Ailesbury assiste aux festivités du couronnement de Jacques II et Marie de Modène à Londres en 1685 (GD29/1924/1. Lord Ailesbury, Londres, à Sir William Bruce, Édimbourg, 25 avril 1685). 67. GD29/1915. James Halket à Sir William Bruce, Londres, 16 juin 1683. 68. GD29/1918/3. Lord John Bruce, Glasgow, à Sir William Bruce, Édimbourg, 14 juin 1685. 69. À titre d’exemple, John Bruce fait acheminer une pompe (probablement de cale) du port de Kirkcaldy pour l’installer dans le puits de Kinross (GD29/2024/26. Lord John Bruce à James Kennewie, n. d.). 70. Toute la mesure des relations, devenues tendues, entre père et fils transparaît dans le document qui fait figure d’acte notarié : « Scroll of factorie of Sir William Bruce to his son » (1699). GD29/1695. 71. Sir William Bruce achète le domaine de Kinross au descendant de la dynastie des Douglas, William Douglas, neuvième comte de Morton, le 4 mars 1675. L’ancien propriétaire doit se séparer de ce domaine pour faire face aux dettes contractées par le septième comte de Morton pendant la guerre civile. Ce dernier a alors apporté son soutien à la cause royaliste (GD29/1131). Cette transaction demeure cependant contestée par la famille Morton et les comtes de Strathmore au cours des années 1690 (GD29/1946). 72. Sir William Bruce refuse de prêter allégeance aux princes d’Orange et s’oppose, dans sa paroisse de Kinross, à l’arrivée d’un nouveau ministre presbytérien. Cela lui vaut de multiples arrestations et emprisonnements au cours des années 1690. 73. Sir William Bruce épouse en secondes noces Magdalen Scott, la veuve de George Clerk, un marchand et bourgeois d’Édimbourg. Le contrat de mariage est daté Édimbourg, 9 septembre 1700. Ce mariage sera sans descendance. Magdalen Scott survit à Bruce pendant quarante- deux ans. Dans son entourage, Lord John Bruce accuse Sir Patrick and Lady Pitfirane « of having formed a design to get Sir William married to [his] prejudice » (NLS Pitfirrane Papers, MS6409, no 78. Sir Peter Halkett of Pitfirane à Sir John Bruce, n. d., post-1699). 74. GD29/432. Correspondance entre Sir William Bruce et Alexander Brand, marchand à Édimbourg, 1692. 75. GD29/1948/16. John Bruce, Kinross, à Sir William Bruce, 9 septembre 1700. GD29/1948/19. Sir William Bruce à Lady Montrose, Édimbourg, 9 octobre 1700. GD29/1948/21. Lady Montrose, Kinross, à Sir William Bruce, 13 octobre 1700. 76. GD29/1948/16. John Bruce, Kinross, à Sir William Bruce, 9 septembre 1700. 77. GD29/1948/16. John Bruce, Kinross, à Sir William Bruce, 9 septembre 1700. Sir William Bruce accuse ses enfants de jalousie et de méprise (GD29/1948/7. Sir William Bruce à Lady Montrose, 13 novembre 1699).

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RÉSUMÉS

Fils et héritier de Sir William Bruce (c. 1630-1710), le surintendant des bâtiments du roi en Écosse entre 1671 et 1678, Lord John Bruce (c. 1671-1711) effectue un voyage d’étude ou « petit tour » du continent d’octobre 1681 à juillet 1683. Cet article entend replacer le périple de Lord Bruce dans le contexte de l’éducation du gentilhomme au XVIIe siècle et en souligner toute l’importance pour les travaux de construction effectués à Kinross, un domaine acheté par Sir William Bruce en 1675 et situé dans le comté du même nom en Écosse. La correspondance de jeunesse de Lord Bruce témoigne de relations apaisées entre père et fils œuvrant de concert pour la construction d’un domaine prestigieux. Pourtant, ces rapports familiaux se compliquent en raison des difficultés politiques et financières rencontrées par Sir William Bruce au cours des années 1690-1700.

Lord John Bruce (c. 1671–1711) was the son and heir of Sir William Bruce (c. 1630–1710), Surveyor- General and Overseer of the King’s Works in Scotland between 1671 and 1678. Lord Bruce travelled on a “petit tour” of the continent from October 1681 to July 1683. This article situates his education travel within the context of gentleman education in the 17th century and highlights the significance of such a tour as regards the building works at Kinross, an estate purchased by Sir William Bruce in 1675 and situated in Kinross-shire, Scotland. The correspondence of Lord Bruce as a young man with Sir William Bruce shows an easy relationship between father and son, both contributing to the construction of a prestigious estate. This special relationship deteriorated in the 1690s and 1700s, however, with Sir William Bruce’s growing political and financial difficulties.

INDEX

Keywords : Lord John Bruce, gentleman, 17th century, travel on the continent, Kinross House Mots-clés : Lord John Bruce, gentilhomme, xviie siècle, voyage sur le continent, Kinross House

AUTEUR

CLARISSE GODARD DESMAREST Université de Picardie Jules Verne, Institut universitaire de France. Clarisse Godard Desmarest est agrégée d’anglais, diplômée de Sciences Po Paris et docteur de l’université Paris-Sorbonne. Maître de conférences en civilisation britannique à l’université de Picardie Jules Verne (Amiens) et membre de l’Institut universitaire de France, ses travaux de recherche portent sur l’Écosse aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles : l'architecture, les collections, les parcs et jardins.

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“One Person, Two Names”: Confluence in Jackie Kay’s Writing Une personne, deux noms : la notion de confluence dans les écrits de Jackie Kay

Marie-Odile Pittin-Hédon

1 When Jackie Kay was twelve, she wrote an eighty–page story entitled One Person, Two Names, about an African-American girl who pretends to be white, a story which already focused on the complex issue of identity which would come to dominate her writing. And indeed, Kay’s writing is about confluence in many ways: as a Scottish writer with a Nigerian father, who often gets asked where she is from by people who “look at her face rather than listening to her voice”, as a lesbian poet challenging heteronormative standards on sexuality, as an adopted child who, like the girl in her story, bears two names,1 she is situated at the crossroads of our cultural, societal and racial landmarks. In her literary output, Kay, who was made Scottish Makar earlier this year taking over from Liz Lochhead, also works across boundaries by being a writer of poetry, short stories, a novel (to date, with a second novel in preparation), several plays and a memoir. This paper examines how her later writing reflects this position as a racial, cultural and social hybrid. Looking more precisely at her latest collection of short stories Reality, Reality (2012), in connection with her memoir Red Dust Road (2010) and the poetry book Fiere (2011), this article will look at the way Kay reflects on how we define ourselves, but also at the way she transforms the tools that we use to define ourselves. Caryl Phillips, the English writer of Carribean descent, emphasises the primacy of storytelling when it comes to understanding who we are as individuals, but also as a society: There is a directness about storytelling, involving as it does human beings as the central players, which means that we often look first to our writers for news of who and what we are. Words cohering into language form the bedrock of our identity, and to explain our human condition, our first port of call is generally words. (2011, p. 57)

2 Like Phillips, Kay enrols the power of words, of storytelling to go over her own dual, confluent identity, but also to render the complexity, the fluidity of our notion of

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ourselves. She also makes use of the reverse to confluence, dislocation, and uses literary genres in order to create her own territory and language of hybridity.

One name, two people: the fluidity of identity

3 “I think I will always be interested in identity, how fluid it is, how people can invent themselves, how it can never be fixed or frozen.” (Astley, 1999, p. 73) This certainty expressed by Kay that one person can indeed bear even more than two names, is illustrated in her story “The First Lady of Song” from Reality, Reality, which covers the life story of a woman who lives through two hundred years, assuming many different identities over this period of time, with different names, different families and different lives. This story shows how Kay reaches beyond the obvious duality in her own identity, as is expressed in the early poem “So You Think I’m a Mule?” (1988). In the poem, which focuses on this narrow definition of identity that Kay keeps coming up against, the narrator is a black Scottish woman whose Scottishness is questioned on account of her blackness: ‘Where do you come from?’ ‘I’m from Glasgow.’ ‘Glasgow?’ ‘Uh huh, Glasgow.’ The white face hesitates the eyebrows raise the mouth opens then snaps shut incredulous

4 When the white woman insists “But you’re not pure”, the poem concludes, in a bracketed sentence that graphically indicates the placing under erasure that this line of questioning entails, “(‘So You Think I’m a Mule?’)” (Kay, 1991, p. 121). This much- quoted poem sets the foundation of Kay’s ethics of identity. As Susanne Hagemann indicates, “[t]o the questioner’s either/or logic, the woman opposes her both/and” (1997, p. 325).2

5 The story entitled “These are not my clothes” revives the idea of a duality of selves in a different context by focusing on the elderly, and turning duality into a weapon to fight the oppression of a system which, in a manner very similar to the patronizing attitude of the white woman in “So You Think I’m a Mule?”, tries to suppress the narrator’s sense of who she is on account of her age: She [the nurse] comes again and she says, having a peaceful rest are we? She seems to think there’s two of me. It’s the only thing I’d agree with her about because there are two of me. There’s the one that’s sat on this chair and there’s the one that’s planning the Cardigan. (Kay, 2012, p. 26)

6 The “planning”—trying to get a helper to buy a cardigan for her, so that she can at last wear her own clothes—is comically likened to an act of heroic resistance which as and of itself seems to contain the possible overthrow of the oppressive system which so often renders older people invisible and deprives them of any vestigial sense of self. In the poem “Between the Dee and the Don”, Kay goes back to the either/or logic in a different context and reflects on this question of personal identity in terms that, as is indicated by the title which is repeated throughout the poem, foreground the notion of confluence:

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I was conceived between the Dee and the Don. I was born in the city of crag and stone. I am not a daughter to one father. I am not a sister to one brother. I am light and dark. I am father and mother. (Kay, 2011, p. 23)

7 The anaphoric repetition of the first person pronoun, which insists on the poem as a means to reflect on personal identity, the insistence on defining herself first by negating the standard model of identity, the adoption of the cumulative rather than either/or logic that Hagemann notices about her early poetry, all lead Kay to resolve the dual presentation into a more complex portrayal of identity in the last line,3 which, in a manner reminiscent of her novel Trumpet, slips from identity in terms of race to identity in terms of gender.4 The poem delineates its own territory for the realisation of this complex image of the self, which Kay borrows from the African tradition, in the shape of an Igbo saying placed before the poem like an epigraph—“The middle ground is the best place to be”. This privileged vantage point for a safe overview of who we are is confirmed in the poem’s first stanza: I will stand not in the past or the future not in the foreground or the background; not as the first child or the last child. I will stand alone in the middle ground. (Kay, 2011, p. 23)

8 The middle ground is this place which, alone, can grant her individuality, the ability to “stand alone”, and to construct this individuality by relying on time, place and ancestry, all those facts which, in Kay’s case are ambiguous. The middle ground is a capacity to make opposites meet, or, on the contrary, to shun them. Matthew Brown argues that Kay appeals to what Homi Bhabha has called “the ethics of coexistence”, emerging from a “social space which has to be communally shared with others, and from which solidarity is not simply based on similarity but on the recognition of difference” (Bhabha in Brown, 2007, p. 226). Carole Jones also writes about this particular place that Kay finds herself in, the place of being both, and as Kay emphatically reminds us in the poem by starting with a series of negative characterisations, the place of refusal to conform to pigeonholing. Jones sees this as a middle space: The cross-dresser, like the biracial individual, confounds dominant binary thinking by occupying two categories simultaneously, a middle space which undermines the exclusivity of the categories. (2009, p. 99)

9 So this is the challenge for Kay: what kind of voice can articulate the double bind of the middle ground? And indeed, as the adopted daughter of (white) Scottish parents, Kay has to struggle with a voice that knows no precedent, no language that she can build on; she has, to paraphrase Chinua Achebe who inspired her memoir’s title, no “red earth with which to build walls”5 to help her along, as she recounts in an interview: When I started writing—unless I was writing about black people—I couldn’t find a way of expressing my colour on the page because my voice is very Scottish, so I used a lot of blues forms and mixed them up with Scottish forms to create a blues- black voice or a Scottish-blues voice. I still haven’t done that to the extent I’d really like to. I’m struggling to find a voice that is unifying. There has to be a way linguistically of finding a voice that captures your own complexities. I envy writers that are half-Jamaican and half-English and who grew up with parents who already have that syntax and language to use, [but] I didn’t have any black people growing up around me—no Nigerian blethers, no Jamaican patois. (SRB Interview, 2016)

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10 This dilemma appears on the epigraph page to Fiere which features quotes from both Robert Burns and Chinua Achebe, and again, with Red Dust Road which summons Cixous, Falkner and Achebe, the epigraphs being used as a way to pre-empt the writing by suggesting the duality of the voice of the text or the poems. It is also present in poems that reflect on the necessity for the voice to keep several languages alive, such as “time” for instance, quoted here in its entirety: The day they forced her to speak their tongue, she lost the black-eyed susan. She went back in time They say her voice is very strange. They tie her hands behind her back. They say repeat after me until she has no language at all.6 (Kay, 2008, p. 80)

11 The concluding line to the poem is a warning against depriving people of their own language, coming as it does after three lines which rely on the anaphoric repetition of the oppressive other represented by the pronoun “they”, an oppression that is reinforced visually by the capitalisation of the alienating pronoun. The line is also a reflection on the dilemma of having to rely on a dual voice that does not exist. There seems to be a suggestion that the voice is not available to the woman not just for reasons of personal circumstances, but also because the either/or logic—or, to take up Kay’s own words, the one person one name logic—leads to the suppression of one voice by another, more powerful one which aims to take over and in the process forecloses the possibility for true expression. In Reality, Reality, Kay offers a fictional solution to this dilemma in a way consistent with her love of music in her attempt to create what she calls a Scottish blues form. In the magic realist story “The first Lady of Song” she enrols both music and time to synthesise the hypothetical voice she is striving for. What characterises the protagonist therefore, is not the usual markers of identity, such as name or age, but music, in a way that literalises Kay’s comment that she has “always been interested in the way music tells the story of identity” (Astley, 1999, p. 73). Emilia Marty who, at some point in her life, was also Ella, as well as Elina, Eugenia, or Ekatarina exists, explains and understands life through music; over the years she sings Moravian Folk song, classical arias in the 19th century through to jazz in the 20th, and back to classical music,7 until the moment when, as her last self Emilia says, “my voice is deeper now” (Kay, 2012, p. 42). It is a voice that has absorbed and synthesised the music of the past, a voice that can confidently account for the fluidity of the various identities she has had over the years. Crucially it is an artistic voice, most suited to capturing complexities, which Kay calls for in her poem “Imagine”: seeing languages in shapes before your eyes – dynamic and metrical – forcing you to focus; your conversation a spatial relation- ship between mouth, eyes and hands. The space between the planets. And somebody telling you, that’s miming that’s pantomime. Somebody who cannot separate a word

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from a thought. All this (Kay, 2008, p. 80)

12 This “imagined” voice is performative, it can fulfil the metaphorical task of covering the space between planets, a task that requires effort, as is indicated by the breaking up of the lines into asyntactic or asemantic units. The effort thus required of the reader to recompose, reconstitute the meaning of the verse evokes the effort required to break open the singular, restrictive connection between one word and one thought, one name and one girl. This alone can convey the fluidity of identity which the magic realist postulate in the short story makes possible,8 along with a very physical mark of this fluidity, the gradual darkening of Emilia’s skin, which she reflects upon at the end of her fifth life: Now, my skin is dark black. Emilia Marty has dark black skin. I’m rather in awe of it. It is not transparent, it is not translucent, but it is shimmering. I wear a great dark skin now, like a dark blue lake, like a lake at night with a full moon in the sky. (Kay, 2012, p. 43)

13 The incantatory rhythm which successfully turns language into “shapes” foregrounds the injunction made in the poem to “imagine”. The story therefore goes against the grain of the racist attitude Kay meets with in such early poems as “So You Think I’m a Mule?” and “In my country”, with the counter-suggestion that blackness can only be achieved after years of evolution, an ironical reinterpretation of Oscar Wilde’s portrait which obviously serves as a backdrop to the story. It is a quiet statement of resistance to the forces of colonisation,9 even though Kay is only mildly optimistic about this issue, as is indicated by the use of the verb “to wear” to refer to the character’s black skin, as if it were put on rather than an intrinsic characteristic of the subject. But in spite of this restriction, the point is made that the “deeper” voice allows her to finally be black.

14 And indeed, the voice of synthesis that Kay calls for in the above-quoted interview is a voice that can incorporate Scottish vernacular, the Scottish tradition, and African culture and language, but it is a voice that is also the voice of fiction which, as such, can enrol some formal and narrative characteristics that will also foreground the principle of confluence. In the story “Mind Away”, the protagonist Claire is with her mother Nora who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, and who complains that words have “run off with somebody else” (Kay, 2012, p. 134). Claire, a writer who simultaneously with having a conversation with her mother, is working on a story, or rather, letting a story flow to her as she admits that “Sometimes, I’d find myself typing a sentence that would surprise me” (ibid., p. 136), finds herself transferring her mother’s illness, and even her very words, onto a character who, in real life, is Nora’s doctor. The middle ground in this case is a sort of metaleptic in-between zone in which theoretically real-life characters are transferred onto ambiguously fictional ones, and the voice is the voice of fiction. This middle ground becomes a confluent space in the sense that it brings together ontological spheres that can’t interact. As a trace of the profound disturbance stirred by the mingling of the two ontologies, the characters who trample the middle ground sometimes do it at the expense of the coherence of their own world: Dr Mahmud was sitting in his surgery with a patient, Peter Henderson, when Doctor Mahmud suddenly said, ‘I’m finding I don’t like wearing tights anymore. It’s a hassle pulling them up and over my ankles, my knees. I’m that exhausted when I’ve hoisted them over my knickers that I’ve lost the will to live. Time Sheer and I parted company.” (Kay, 2012, p. 136)

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15 What is underlined in this extract is precisely the discrete characteristic of the worlds thus brought into contact, both fiction and reality rather than either fiction or reality. If we add to that the fact that yet another ontological level comes into contact with this dualist world, the real world of Jackie Kay’s biography, in which her birth mother suffered from the illness depicted in the story,10 the middle ground becomes a point of confluence, not just in the sense of two stories and two worlds brought together, but of a territory that all ontologies can occupy.

16 Jackie Kay writes in Red Dust Road that the imagination is the faculty that enables us to make sense of our lives (2010, p. 49), which is very much what Vadnie in “Mrs Vadnie Marlene Sevlon” does by making up an entire family for herself. In “Mind Away” imagination becomes the virtual but very valid place of encounter, where worlds as disparate as the author’s life, her story’s primary and secondary diegetic levels can, between them, recreate the truth of who one is, and what one is made of. In the same way that the reader is made to realise in “Mind Away” that the good doctor is indeed a creature of the writer’s imagination, we equally come to realise that our “reality, reality” needs to be displaced to a place where we can actually understand it, even if it does not make any immediate sense. And the words slipping away from the mother convey the urgency of the task undertaken in the story: if one is to make sense of the “gobbled gook” (Kay, 2012, p. 142) our lives are made of, we need to cross borders, be they ontological, and use the power of our imagination to inject meaning into them. So when Kay quotes Flaubert’s famous statement that “We writers may think that we invent too much – / but reality is worse / every time”11 it is in fact to reassess it, to adapt it to her purpose, which is to challenge the limits of our notion of “reality”, which was a fairly unambiguous—or at least unquestioned—concept when Flaubert was writing, and to show that this challenging is vital, not to measure fiction up against reality as in the quote, but to underline the depth, the hidden dimension that comes into our sense of what is, as Ali Smith writes, “really real life”.12 The epizeuxis of the title to the collection therefore works as a way to suggest a second, vertical dimension which adds depth to our sense of “the real”, one that may be added, paradoxically, with the input of imagination, which alone can connect and supply the missing links. In that case, the title “one person, two names” sheds any potentially negative connotation and, rather than suggesting a hankering after unity, becomes an indication that this very duality can be a factor of a heightened, better delineated sense of one’s own self. When at the end of “Mind Away”, Claire contemplates the snowy landscape and claims that “[i]t was like a fresh sheet of paper, no footprints yet, nothing” (Kay, 2012, p. 158), she lays down the foundations for the artistic, imaginative representation of the middle ground she, and many others, have carved for themselves.

Writing from chaos

17 The middle ground is a flexible, multi-dimensional space, one that can accommodate ontologies, voices and words from different spheres because they all share some formal or thematic characteristic. In his famous essay in the short story as a literary genre, the Irish writer Frank O’Connor stresses what he considers to be its main characteristic: “ There is in the short story at its most characteristic something we do not often find in the novel—an intense awareness of human loneliness.” (O’Connor, 1976, p. 87)

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18 Kay, maybe because she is a writer of short stories, but also of poetry and novels, stresses the formal reason for such thematic specificity,13 and portrays characters whose isolation in their social environment is emphasised. “Mind Away” and “Mrs Vadnie” are cases in point, like “The White Cot”, which is a narrative of loneliness and incommunicability, of the rift that can separate two individuals, as Dionne cannot find a bridge to her partner anymore, owing to her obsession with the child they never had who comes to visit her in hallucinations that take over the whole reality of her life and sever all connections with other humans. Yet the story that best captures this feeling because it contains no pathos is the title story, in which a young woman takes a staycation in order to be a contestant in her own imaginary cooking TV show. The supposedly televised event acts as a reminder to the reader that in this age of communication through social media, reality TV and electronic devices, people end up paradoxically marooned in their own separate understandings of a reality that it is increasingly difficult to tell apart from a shared, common experience. A sort of heightened reality, a “Reality, Reality”. The story projects a world where human beings are dehumanised, deprived of names, and where the character is happy to talk to a pretend TV camera. At the end of the story, after being evicted from the pretend show, her words sever any meaningful connection with any sense of her individuality. They are empty words, a parody, or maybe just a repetition of the bad lines that the would- be TV stars we are now familiar with repeat like a mantra in front of the (unfortunately) all too real cameras that capture their speech: There’s no way I’m stopping cooking, I say to the little light in my kitchen that is really the eye of the burglar alarm but could just as easily be the eye of the watching world. No way. I’ve got my dreams. I could still turn up trumps and deliver the goods. (Kay, 2012, p. 13)

19 Loneliness therefore breeds chaos for characters whose sense of themselves is lost in a distorted sense of what sphere, what world they occupy. They are no longer able to “Imagine – time – distance” to take up the titles of the three poems on language and identity gathered on the same page of the Darling collection.

20 Red Dust Road also tackles the issue of loneliness, albeit in a more personal way. In the context of discussing her reasons for looking for her birth parents, she explains that in spite of all the love bestowed on her by her adoptive parents: […] there is still a windy place right at the core of my heart. The windy place is like Wuthering Heights, out on open moors, rugged and wild and free and lonely. The wind rages and batters at the trees. I struggle against the windy place. I sometimes even forget it. But there it is. I am partly defeated by it. (Kay, 2010, pp. 45–6)

21 In an interview, Kay again expresses this idea of the windy place at the core of her heart, and crucially links it with the impulse to write: What is interesting is creating a form, and working with it, and through that you make sense of chaos. That’s the challenge for me as a writer, confronting emotional and difficult things that have happened to you, and turning them into a sonnet, a memoir or a monologue. (Beyer, 2010)

22 What is conveyed in Red Dust Road is this idea of writing as, to quote Janice Galloway, an act of “weaving a route through chaos” (Galloway, 1994, p. 5). By going over the constantly changing story of her life, Kay writes to turn her messy, chaotic life into a stable story, a personal myth, if only temporarily so, because as she explains, “[y]ou think adoption is a story that has an end. But the point about it is that it has no end. It keeps changing its ending” (Kay, 2010, p. 46). But because of the windy place that fills

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her heart, the movement works both ways for Kay, and she also has to turn to myth, the static image she has of her birth father, and breathe life into it. On a visit to Aberdeen where he met her birth mother, she starts from myth in order to reconfigure chaos: Slowly, it seems the statuelike figure I had in my head emerges from the stone, and he is part flesh. He’s not a person that has been turned into mythical stone, but a mythical stone statue that is turning into a person before my eyes. (Kay, 2010, p. 138)

23 The stakes are high on a personal level, as writing this particular tale into being, as she explains in Red Dust Road, is a case of obtaining her birth father’s recognition which, alone, can finally solve the “One person, two names” puzzle: I close my eyes and make a wish. I wish that everything will go well in Nigeria. I wish that my father will like me. I wish that I’ll return whole. (Kay, 2010, p. 166)

24 So weaving a route though chaos for Kay is a question of tracing a way from dislocation to recognition and wholeness, with her writing a back and forth movement between the two poles, in effect configuring the middle ground, creatively imagining it into existence.

The space of writing

25 In order to create the middle ground, Kay uses form, and as a poet and short story writer, she uses the particular confluence that she sees in the short story as a genre: The short-story is the hybrid form: it’s a cross between the novel and the poem. It shares poetry’s love of metaphor and the image, with the novel’s love of the camera wide-angle-lens. (O’Malley, 2004)

26 And indeed, one major characteristic of the genre results from the double nature of the short story, its lyricism combined with its narrativity, which makes Pierre Tibi describe it as a hybrid genre. Tibi concludes, “the short story therefore seems to be the place where the rivalry between the poetic and the narrative, the spatial and the processive aspects, plays itself out”.14 The rivalry or, if one reverses the perspective, the confluence manifests itself in Kay’s short stories as well as poems, to reveal human loneliness and underline Kay’s particular territory, but also to fulfil a function often noted about the short story, which O’Connor describes as that of depicting the life not of a hero, but of what he calls “a submerged population group” (1976, p. 86). Kay herself makes a very similar point in the Scottish Review of Books interview: I think what writers often do is give voice to the voiceless. The voice might be a piece of land, or it could be an island or a kind of person who has been ignored, or whose story has not been properly told. I do feel like I’m drawn to creating characters whose stories are not familiar. Toni Morrison said she wrote the books she wanted to read. I feel like that. (SRB Interview, 2016)

27 The story “Hassadah” is the most emblematic of this enterprise. It is a story of immigration and exploitation filtered through Hassadah’s consciousness, the story of “eight of us […] hidden first as cargo on the boat, and then in a lorry, inside boxes, where we can’t breathe, where we think we are going to die, no air, no water, just the dark” (Kay, 2012, p. 105). Hassadah, who ends up a prostitute, locked up in the Western version of a harem by someone she calls “the King”, reacts by cooking a great meal for all the other girls. The meal serves as an act of rebellion for the whole group, in which

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Hassadah, because of the biblical connotations of her action, as well as her appropriation of language, comes across as the prophet of freedom: Nell say because she like words like me, not the kind of words the King teach, but other words, a whole world of other words. Yes, I say, smiling to Nell with some elegance (another word I learn and like, elegance) my head held high. Today I break my fast. I am Hassadah. My name mean morning star. (Kay, 2012, p. 112)

28 Armed with the renewed language of poetry and narrativity, the various narrators of Reality, Reality, together with Hassadah, can delineate the middle ground, not only by following horizontal and vertical dimensions but also by exploiting fiction’s (and poetry’s) potential to the full. Our lives, our “reality” consists in a series of choices and trajectories. Kay’s work raises the question of other potential lines and trajectories; it is concerned not only with what is, but with what Kay, borrowing a line from the famous poem by Robert Frost, calls the road not taken: When I look in the mirror I don’t see a foreign face, no Heart of Darkness but you, who were with me all along, walking the road not taken, […] (Kay, 2011, p. 2)

29 Red Dust Road, with its title that focuses on this parallel path, explores the third dimension, the road not taken, trying to map the missing parts of Kay’s life. With its particular structure, which breaks the narrative into snippets of time, it reconstructs the road, by making the gaps, the forks obvious, in a literary genre that is more often characterised by its linearity and chronology. Reality, Reality also asks the questions of the roads not taken: Vadni does not get the “lucky” story, the road to New York, which was taken by her cousin. Most poignantly, in “the White Cot”, Dionne tries to the road not taken, but she loses her sanity in the process, showing that this road, once missed, is irretrievable. But as Kay’s poem indicates, the other, the “you”, “were with me all along”, showing that the road not taken can, somewhere in the background of the road taken, like a shadow road also guide the traveller. Kay, like the figure of the poet in Frost’s own poem, who famously concludes that “I took the one less travelled by, / And that has made all the difference”, can claim to successfully represent, or at least sketch the shadow road of our lives,15 for such is the poet’s power. It is a crucial task, for, as Carol Ann Duffy says, “poetry is who we are in verse” (Clark, 2016). It is however even more than our lives, as it formulates a territory of encounter, the place that enables us to express our own irreducible humanity. As Caryl Phillips explains: I believe passionately in the moral capacity of fiction to wrench us out of our ideological burrows and force us to engage with a world that is clumsily transforming itself, a world that is peopled with individuals we might otherwise never meet in our daily lives. As long as we have literature as a bulwark against intolerance, and as a force for change, then we have a chance. Europe needs writers to explicate this transition, for literature is plurality in action; it embraces and celebrates a place of no truths, it relishes ambiguity, and it deeply respects the place where everybody has the right to be understood. (Phillips, 2011, p. 16)

30 Like all of Kay’s poems, both Reality, Reality and The Red Dust Road chart the place of no truth that we can all meet in.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

ASTLEY Neil (ed.), 1999, “Jackie Kay”, in New Blood, Newcastle Upon Tyne, Bloodaxe, pp. 73–80.

BEYER Charlotte, 2010, “Imagining Mother: Representations of Contested Maternal Identities and Loss in Jackie Kay’s The Adoption Papers and Isha McKenzie-Mavinga’s ‘Yearning To Belong’”, MP: An online Feminist Journal, vol. 2, no. 6, pp. 72–83. Available on (consulted April 2016).

BROWN Matthew, 2007, “In/outside Scotland: Race and Citizenship in the Work of Jackie Kay”, in B. Schoene (ed.), The Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Scottish Literature, Edinburgh, Edinburgh UP, pp. 219–26.

BURFORD Barbara, PEARSE Gabriela, NICHOLS Grace & KAY Jackie, 1984, A Dangerous Knowing: Four Black Women Poets, London, Sheba Feminist publishers.

CHRISTIANSON Aileen & LUMSDEN Alison (eds), 2000, Contemporary Scottish Women Writers, Edinburgh, Edinburgh UP.

CLARK Alex, 2016, “‘No Drugs on the Bus’: Carol Ann Duffy Takes a Road Trip”, The Guardian, 21 May. Available on (consulted May 2016).

GALLOWAY Janice, 1994, Foreign Parts, London, Vintage.

GIFFORD Douglas & MCMILLAN Dorothy (eds), 1997, A History of Scottish Women’s Writing, Edinburgh, Edinburgh UP.

GISH Nancy, 2001, “Adoption, Identity, and Voice: Jackie Kay’s Invention of Self”, in M. Novy (ed.), Imagining Adoption: Essays on Literature and Culture, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, pp. 171–91.

GRAY Jane, 2010, “The Woman with the Ibo Nose and the Scottish Tongue: Expressions of Belonging and Return in Jackie Kay’s Writing”, Études écossaises, no 13, pp. 155–68.

HAGEMANN Susanne, 1997, “Women and Nation”, in D. Gifford and D. McMillan (eds), A History of Scottish Women’s Writing, Edinburgh, Edinburgh UP, pp. 316–28.

JONES Carole, 2009, “Chapter Three – Being Between: Passing and the Limits of Subverting Masculinity in Jackie Kay’s Trumpet”, Scottish Cultural Review of Language and Literature, vol. 12, pp. 95–119.

KAY Jackie, 1991, The Adoption Papers, Newcastle, Bloodaxe.

KAY Jackie, 2007, “Missing Faces”, The Guardian, 24 March. Available on (consulted April 2016).

KAY Jackie, 2008, Darling, Highgreen, Bloodaxe.

KAY Jackie, 2010, Red Dust Road, London, Picador.

KAY Jackie, 2011, Fiere, London, Picador.

KAY Jackie, 2012, Reality, Reality, London, Picador.

LUMSDEN Alison, 2000, “Jackie Kay’s Poetry and Prose: Constructing Identity”, in A. Christianson and A. Lumsden (eds), Contemporary Scottish Women Writers, Edinburgh, Edinburgh UP, pp. 79–91.

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MCMILLAN Dorothy, 1997, “Twentieth-Century Poetry II”, in D. Gifford and D. McMillan (eds), A History of Scottish Women’s Writing, Edinburgh, Edinburgh UP, pp. 549–78.

O’CONNOR Frank, 1976, “The Lonely Voice”, in C. E. May (ed.), Short Story Theories, Athens, Ohio, Ohio University Press, pp. 83–93.

O’MALLEY J. P., 2014, “An Interview with Jackie Kay”, The Bottle Imp, no. 15. Available on (consulted April 2016).

PHILLIPS Caryl, 2011, Colour Me English, London, Harvill Secker.

POPP Valerie L., 2012, “Improper Identification Required: Passports, Papers, and Identity Formation in Jackie Kay’s The Adoption Papers”, Contemporary Literature, vol. 53, no. 2, pp. 292–318.

RODRIGUEZ GONZÁLEZ Carla, 2015, “Re-charting the Black Atlantic: Jackie Kay’s Cartographies of the Self”, Études écossaises, no. 17, pp. 103–19.

SASSI Carla (ed.), 2016, The International Companion to Scottish Poetry, Glasgow, Association for Scottish Literary Studies.

SEVERIN Laura, 2002, “An Interview with Jackie Kay”, Free Verse. Available on (consulted 19 April 2016).

The SRB Interview: Jackie Kay, 2016, Scottish Review of Books, vol. 11, no. 3. Available on (consulted 19 April 2016).

TIBI Pierre, 1988, “La nouvelle : essai de définition d’un genre”, Cahiers de l’Université de Perpignan, no. 4, pp. 7–62.

NOTES

1. The name Jackie was given to her by her adoptive parents; Joy was the name chosen by her birth mother. 2. Hageman concludes that “The woman thus claims the right to a multiplicity of identities, but only in so far as she can live them out to the full.” (1997, p. 325) 3. Alison Lumsden suggests that “repeatedly Kay resolves the questions of identity raised in her work via such imagined possibilities, hypothetical constructions which are both open-ended and provisional, suggesting that subjectivity is not fixed into any one position, but is, rather, multiplistic, elusive and flexible” (Lumsden, 2000, p. 81), even though, as she reminds us, the main ontological negotiation in Kay’s poetry is the interrogation of her own blackness. 4. There have also been studies of how Kay articulates an inclusive sense of citizenship in a devolutionary context. See Matthew Brown (2007, p. 220) on how Kay’s work dramatizes the challenges surrounding issue of citizenship in Scotland today by inserting question of race into the contemporary debate. 5. She uses this quote from Achebe as an epigraph to Red Dust Road. 6. Significantly, in the book Darling which was published in 2008 and gathers poems from previous collections, the three poems about language printed on that same page are entitled “Imagine”, “Distance” and “time”, making up a sort of summary of Kay’s ingredients to identity. 7. The story is of course connected to the way Joss Moody in Trumpet successfully creates an identity for himself with his music.

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8. It is quite similar to the postulate on which Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude is based—the protagonist who lives through several generations. Unlike what happens in Marquez’s novel however, there is in Kay’s story an attempt to rationalise the events depicted by having the character explain that she is her father’s experiment—ironically an equally improbable justification. 9. Kay often refers to Franz Fanon and to Fanon’s theories on the adoption of white culture in interviews as well as, more obliquely, in her writing. In Red Dust Road, when she encounters her birth father to discover that he is a born again Christian who greets her as his sin being visited upon him, and prays over her for two hours by way of catching up on all the years they have spent apart, she comments on the scene by saying that she has lost him to white culture: “Christianity has taken away his African culture and given him this. I’m thinking about colonialism and missionaries and not properly listening.” (Kay, 2010, p. 6) 10. The similarities go of course much further than just giving a character in a book her mother’s illness. Many anecdotes about her birth mother, which Kay shares in Red Dust Road find their way into the story, such as when the mother and daughter set off to have a bowl of soup at the mother’s church café, which they first have to find because the mother cannot remember where it is, or feeling hungry while her mother talks about the chocolates she was given especially for her visit. 11. Epigraph to Reality, Reality. 12. Epigraph to Reality, Reality. 13. For Kay too, loneliness suits the short story as a form. 14. “Ainsi la nouvelle semble être le lieu et l’enjeu d’une rivalité entre le poétique et le narratif, l’ordre spatial et l’ordre processif.” (Tibi, 1988, p. 15) 15. In the SRB Interview, Kay expresses her fascination for what she calls “the shadow life, the shadow road”, adding that “There is something disquieting and at the same time exhilarating about that, the breath-taking road you might have missed.” (SRB interview, 2016)

ABSTRACTS

This article examines the many ways in which Jackie Kay’s writing is about confluence: as a Scottish writer with a Nigerian father, as a lesbian poet, as an adopted child, she is situated at the crossroads of our cultural, societal, racial landmarks. Looking more precisely at her latest collection of short stories Reality, Reality, as well as to her memoir Red Dust Road and some of her poetry, this article looks at the way Kay, by starting from duality, delineates a territory for the definition of the self which she calls the “middle ground” and which, as she explains in her memoir, has to be constructed with a voice that knows no precedent; it is also a voice that fuses together reality and fiction. Kay’s fiction and her poetry probe the depth of our notion of reality, and of “the windy place” our identity sometimes stems from. Finally, the space of confluence for Kay is also a space of writing, which helps her explore what she calls “the road not taken”.

Cet article examine les différentes formes de confluence qui constituent l’écriture de Jackie Kay. Auteur écossais dont le père est nigérian, poète lesbienne, enfant adoptée, Kay se situe aux confins de nos repères culturels, sociétaux et raciaux. En partant de son dernier recueil de nouvelles Reality, Reality, de ses mémoires Red Dust Road et de certains poèmes, cet article se penche sur la façon dont Kay, en partant de la notion de dualité, trace un territoire identitaire

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qu’elle nomme « the middle ground ». Ce territoire, ainsi qu’elle le déclare dans ses mémoires, postule une voix qui ne connaît aucun précédent ; c’est également une voix qui mêle réel et fiction. Les œuvres de Kay sondent les profondeurs de la notion identitaire, de ce qu’elle nomme « the windy place » dont elle procède. L’espace d’écriture qu’elle bâtit l’aide ultimement à explorer ce qu’elle décrit comme « the road not taken ».

INDEX

Mots-clés: Jackie Kay, identité, confluence, dislocation, poésie, nouvelle, mémoires Keywords: Jackie Kay, identity, middle ground, confluence, dislocation, poetry, short stories, memoir

AUTHOR

MARIE-ODILE PITTIN-HÉDON Aix-Marseille Université (AMU)

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Confluences et renaissance dans Highland River (1937) ? Chronotope, allégorie et idéologie Confluence and Rebirth in Highland River (1937)? Chronotope, Allegory, and Ideology

Philippe Laplace

1 La confluence, que l’on peut définir comme la convergence vers un même lieu de plusieurs forces, soient-elles physiques ou intellectuelles, ou de plusieurs courants, est un concept qu’illustre à merveille le roman que Gunn publia en 1937 et qui lui donna assez d’assurance et de prestige pour se lancer comme écrivain professionnel. Célébré pour sa puissance évocatrice, Highland River n’en demeure pas moins un roman complexe par sa forme et à cause de la trame et des éléments narratifs choisis par Gunn. Un des facteurs de complexité et de confusion de l’œuvre réside aussi dans le fait que le roman appartient à plusieurs genres littéraires. On peut d’abord le considérer comme un Bildungsroman, c’est-à-dire un roman d’apprentissage, avec un protagoniste que l’on suit depuis sa tendre enfance dans son village des Hautes-Terres, puis durant la Première Guerre mondiale qu’il passe sur le front en France et jusqu’à la remontée qu’il entreprend vers la source de sa rivière des Hautes-Terres, un véritable pèlerinage. On peut aussi considérer ce roman comme un roman initiatique, avec des phases, des épreuves et des archétypes qui rappellent la structure classique des contes de fées (Laplace, 2004). Le chemin du protagoniste est en effet parsemé d’adjuvants et d’opposants qui l’orientent et le guident vers son but ultime, la source (Greimas, 1970). Il ne faut certes pas non plus écarter la perspective régionaliste : ce roman, comme presque tous ceux de Gunn, est localisé dans un cadre spécifique bien particulier, celui de son Caithness natal. Malgré quelques scènes à Glasgow ou sur le Front de la Somme, par exemple, il est difficile de ne pas catégoriser Highland River autrement qu’avec l’adjectif régionaliste, un terme qui n’est d’ailleurs pas nécessairement péjoratif et que Gunn n’était de toute façon pas sans revendiquer pour son œuvre : « If my work could be regarded as in any way a tribute to the Highlands and its people, I should be pleased » avait-il

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par exemple déclaré (1961). Mais ces genres littéraires peuvent être combinés, pour reprendre la thématique de la confluence, en ce que Bakhtine nomma chronotope, c’est-à-dire une structure qui regroupe les caractéristiques spatio-temporelles d’un récit. Nous verrons comment Gunn a eu recours à ce procédé littéraire dans Highland River pour formuler ses réflexions sur la politique écossaise et ses points de vue idéologiques.

2 Cet article va d’abord étudier ce roman sous un angle bakhtinien avant d’examiner les ambitions idéologiques que Gunn tenait à exprimer grâce à ces éléments spatio- temporels. L’objectif est en effet montrer que le romancier était parvenu à échafauder un projet allégorique avec Highland River, dessein qui a jusque-là été totalement passé sous silence par la critique gunnienne, trop occupée à démontrer comment ce roman marque le début de sa réflexion philosophique et les premiers éléments d’une pensée tournée vers l’Orient.

3 Les théories littéraires bakhtinienne apparaissent pertinentes pour les romans de Gunn, comme par exemple les principes d’hétéroglossie — c’est-à-dire les différentes voix, y compris celle de l’auteur, qui composent un roman — et par extension de monoglossie, un trait dont on peut parfois accuser Gunn. Le sont également les analyses de Bakhtine sur les Bildungsroman et les romans régionalistes qu’il considérait comme le prolongement de ce qu’il nommait des « romans idylles ». Selon Bakhtine, il ne fallait par exemple pas négliger les romans régionalistes, car ils sont fondamentaux à l’expression de toute une palette idéologique (1978, p. 371), et c’est justement un point pertinent à la lecture de Highland River proposée dans cet article. C’est cependant au niveau des chronotopes que ce roman est le plus représentatif de la pensée du critique russe : ce concept livre des clés permettant d’expliciter les rapports étroits que Gunn envisageait entre les personnages, les Hautes-Terres et l’histoire, des liens intrinsèques qui sous-tendent la plupart ses romans. Le terme de chronotope doit être entendu comme « la corrélation essentielle des rapports spatio-temporels, telle qu’elle a été assimilée par la littérature. […] Ce qui compte pour nous c’est qu’il exprime l’indissolubilité de l’espace et du temps (celui-ci comme quatrième dimension de l’espace) » (ibid., p. 237). Il ne s’agit donc pas d’un genre particulier mais d’un cadre qui régit les caractéristiques narratives d’un récit, dans lequel les premières s’expriment. Pour Bakhtine, le chronotope doit d’abord être envisagé comme force créatrice et pas comme simple unité géographique et temporelle d’un récit. Le chronotope est un moteur : c’est l’interaction entre topos et chronos, dans laquelle se trouve le protagoniste, qui donne le point de départ et lance l’intrigue, par exemple dans des romans historiques, ou qui permet à l’intrigue de se développer, comme pour des romans d’aventure (1986, p. 49).

4 L’intrigue de Highland River s’inscrit parfaitement dans cette optique. Au fur et à mesure de ses pérégrinations le long de la rivière, qui commencent comme des expéditions de braconnage avant de se transformer en une quête personnelle, Kenn, le protagoniste que Gunn hisse déjà à un statut très symbolique grâce à son prénom, découvre les ruines des civilisations passées. Depuis les Pictes jusqu’aux vestiges de maisons abandonnées lors des évictions, chaque communauté — Gunn emploie le terme polémique et maladroit de « race » — a laissé des traces de son passage sur les berges de la rivière. Mais cette exploration révèle surtout aussi à Kenn des éléments de sa personnalité, de sa culture et de son identité. Espace et temps sont donc intimement liés dans la trame narrative du roman et fournissent le cadre dans lequel protagoniste

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et récit évoluent. Pour le jeune Kenn, l’histoire qu’il apprend sur les bancs de l’école, celle qui se passe dans les capitales européennes et qui concerne des gens et des lieux qu’il ne connaît pas, n’est que dénaturée et stérile puisque coupée des réalités pragmatiques de son monde, de son habitat. Ses ancêtres pictes ou vikings ne sont pas reconnus comme pertinents au grand récit de l’histoire tel qu’il lui est conté, ils ne sont que : « […] sounds in the empty spaces of history » (Gunn, 1937, p. 53) alors que le maître insiste sur la nécessité de bien connaître les principales villes anglaises et leurs industries. Mais pour Kenn, seules les connaissances liées à l’histoire de sa région et de sa communauté peuvent combler ce vide et donner un sens à son existence.

5 La confluence des données spatiales et temporelles pour un protagoniste est bien sûr omniprésente dans les romans de Gunn : son territoire, les Hautes-Terres, est intimement associé à des événements qui ont un ancrage précis dans le temps, que ce soit les invasions pictes, les évictions ou le renouveau économique des régions côtières des Hautes-Terres. Mais cette confluence est aussi présente dans des romans dont l’intrigue n’est pas à proprement parler liée à l’histoire, tout comme Highland River, mais où celle-ci apparaît en filigrane.

6 Bakhtine avait de plus insisté sur le fait que le lieu est inséparable des personnages qui y évoluent, élément essentiel pour la caractérisation des personnages de Gunn. Espace et temps s’inscrivent donc dans un cadre ontologique, d’abord celui de l’identité puis celui du devenir du protagoniste. Cette dimension et ce cadre sont bien sûr eux aussi intrinsèques aux romans de Gunn où, à de rares exceptions, les protagonistes ne font qu’un avec leur communauté, leurs traditions, l’espace et le temps : « This immemorial heritage has become part of our unconscious self », déclara Gunn dans un article critique (1929, p. 335) et dans Highland River la rivière acquiert une dimension mnésique ; Kenn, en remontant jusqu’à la source, retrouve les traces du passé de sa civilisation. Mais les romans de Gunn reflètent aussi sa vision, parfois naïve, de la politique, de l’économie et de la société. Gunn se servait de ses récits comme d’une plateforme à partir de laquelle il exprimait ses espoirs nationalistes. En 1952, dans un article inédit destiné à une agence de tourisme, il écrivit par exemple, utilisant la première personne du pluriel afin de se faire la voix des habitants des Hautes-Terres : « We like to contemplate a kind of community where the ancient values of Highland culture (including our attitude to time) may be perpetrated amid an economy which will give a good life for all. We think it can be done. » (1952, p. 28)

7 Si le chronotope est une dimension fondamentale de ses récits, il faut quand même admettre que Gunn reste très souvent figé dans un cadre nostalgique, mis à part bien entendu lors de ses récits sur les évictions, même si son écriture est fortement empreinte de mélancolie. Dans beaucoup de ses écrits, c’est le fabuleux âge d’or des communautés gaéliques qui est mis en avant et les narrateurs ne peuvent que se lamenter de sa disparition. Gunn reconnaissait après tout, bon gré mal gré, la fascination naturelle qu’exerçait le Crépuscule celtique pour un écrivain des Hautes- Terres ainsi que l’attrait de la notion d’un âge d’or gaélique (1987, p. 102 ; voir aussi Hart & Pick, 1985, p. 96-97). En dépit des prises de position du protagoniste de Highland River qui se défend de toute conception nostalgique du passé, il est difficile de ne pas considérer ainsi ses réflexions sur les populations qui ont habité les berges de sa rivière. À un collègue de travail qui l’accuse précisément de faire montre de trop de nostalgie, Kenn répond que le terme Crépuscule celtique émane d’un jugement et d’une vision extérieurs à la communauté :

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I never had any experience of this Twilight. An old woman in the old days in my country knew the nature of what grew around her quite precisely. She gathered her roots and her lichens and out of them made the vivid dyes you see in tartans. That was what happened in fact. It is clear too, that they achieved in their way a very tolerable communal life, and worked to the rhythm of their own music and that sort of thing. (1937, p. 215)

8 Cette tentative de réfutation correspond clairement aux généralisations que Gunn avait à maintes fois utilisées contre ceux qui l’accusaient de propager une vision nostalgique des Hautes-Terres. Seuls ceux qui appartiennent à ces communautés peuvent les comprendre ; les autres, comme le collègue de Kenn originaire de Pologne, ne peuvent pas concevoir la vie et la culture des Hautes-Terres. Ils en sont réduits à utiliser des clichés et affublent dédaigneusement de l’étiquette « Crépuscule celtique » toutes ces conceptions. Gunn avait aussi à cœur de se défendre en détournant la raison d’être de ce qui était selon lui trop aisément appelé « Crépuscule » : au lieu d’être considéré dans sa dimension mélancolique, le passé devait être envisagé comme un vivier à partir duquel les individus et communautés pouvaient se ressourcer, pouvaient retrouver leur identité, exactement comme Kenn qui, dans son roman, exprime cette nécessité et ce frisson qui le font remonter jusqu’à la source de sa rivière des Hautes-Terres : « This journey, tentative at first, […] became in the end a thrilling exploration into the source of the river and the source of himself. » (1937, p. 52)

9 Gunn investit donc le chronotope bakhtinien d’une dimension rhizomatique : ce temps et ce lieu ont à plusieurs reprises, tout au long du roman, des prolongements et des répercussions sur les sensations qu’éprouvent Kenn ou ses parents, qu’elles soient psychologiques ou physiologiques. Le chronotope, ce syncrétisme entre le lieu et le temps historique, joue un rôle primordial chez Gunn sur l’état mental ou physique des personnages. Au fur et à mesure de sa remontée, Kenn perçoit des sensations qu’il ne peut exprimer autrement qu’avec des concepts métaphysiques : son environnement, et la connaissance qu’il acquiert de ce monde, ont des répercussions sur son bien-être et sa réactivité. Gunn déploie ici des concepts qu’il avait déjà exposés dans des articles à propos du rôle de l’environnement historico-social et de l’identité telle que l’appréhende le protagoniste (1929, 1932, 1956). C’est aussi à partir de ces notions que l’on peut élever ce roman à une dimension métaphorique. Le symbolisme idéologique de Highland River prend alors toute sa signification, une interprétation jusque-là passée sous silence par la critique. Parmi la dizaine d’articles consacrés spécifiquement à Highland River aucun n’étudie en effet les remous qui agitaient les courants nationalistes et qui étaient contemporains à l’écriture du roman. Gunn avait pourtant confié que le climat politique de cette époque avait pesé sur son travail d’écrivain. Interrogé en octobre 1935 par Frank Morley, un des administrateurs de Faber & Faber qui s’inquiétait de la progression de ce nouveau roman, Gunn avait imputé son retard à cette atmosphère pesante : « About your River letter. I’m doing nothing now but politics. Haven’t even time to think of a place called the literary world. » (Hart & Pick, 1985, p. 138)

10 Choisir un cours d’eau pour exprimer des conceptions symboliques et idéologiques n’était certes pas un procédé littéraire nouveau. Le symbolisme de la rivière est prégnant dans toutes les littératures et à toutes les époques. Prenons par exemple un des romans les plus célèbres à propos de la remontée d’une rivière, Heart of Darkness. Conrad utilise le fleuve et son symbolisme dans un contexte archétypal supposé, beaucoup plus large que les divagations de Kenn qui ne touchent qu’à sa communauté. Les origines du monde sont évoquées par Conrad pour qui les berges du cours d’eau renferment des vestiges primitifs :

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Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of overshadowed distances. […] There were moments when one’s past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have not a moment to spare for yourself; but it came in the shape of unrestful and noisy dream, remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming realities of this strange world of plants, and water and silence. And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an impalpable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect. (1899, p. 182-183)

11 Si le symbolisme de la rivière est menaçant chez Conrad et si la remontée du fleuve est une expérience angoissante pour Marlow, cette pérégrination est au contraire source de paix et de révélation mystique chez Gunn. La vision primitiviste de Conrad n’a pas sa place dans le discours traditionnaliste et idéologiquement marqué du romancier écossais. La palette symbolique que Gunn développe est limitée à un espace-temps celtique et préceltique et est empreint de concepts culturels et politiques écossais. Difficile en effet de ne pas considérer le chronotope dans Highland River comme une réflexion sur les espoirs littéraires et nationalistes caressés par Gunn. La rivière est le fil conducteur, le fil d’Ariane, qui permet au protagoniste de remonter le temps et de suivre, sans carte ni boussole, un chemin qui le mène, loin de tout parcours connu et balisé, droit vers le centre de son pays et de son identité, « […] a stream running through time in a distant place » (Gunn, 1937, p. 185).

12 Il s’agit bien sûr d’une image très symbolique, associant temps et lieu à l’individualité, puisque Kenn est en fait sur le chemin de la découverte de soi, de la renaissance. Mais Gunn, en tissant cet écheveau, parvient échafauder une allégorie, c’est-à-dire un autre discours éloigné de son sens littéral et lui permettant d’exprimer ses préoccupations à propos de la situation des partis nationalistes et du climat agité sur les plans culturel et politique, comme en témoigne la grave crise de confiance que traversait le SNP à l’époque.

13 D’un point de vue politique, le SNP, créé depuis 1934, semblait être au plus bas en 1936 et 1937. Deux ans auparavant, lors de sa première présentation aux élections législatives en 1935, le SNP avait essuyé une très lourde défaite avec un résultat de 1,1 %. La fusion du National Party of Scotland et du Scottish Party avait, contrairement à ce qui avait été envisagé, émoussé la dynamique nationaliste. Gunn qui, bien que resté en coulisse, avait été un des architectes de la fusion du Scottish Party et du National Party of Scotland (Finlay, 1994, p. 128), c’est-à-dire de cette confluence et de l’éclosion du nouveau parti politique, ne pouvait que se lamenter de cette situation. Celle-ci avait d’ailleurs mené le SNP à une crise idéologique majeure en 1937 : son secrétaire national, John MacCormick, s’était en effet résolu à chercher le soutien d’autres partis politiques favorables à une politique d’auto-détermination écossaise, faisant ainsi renaître de ces cendres le principe de la Scottish Home Rule Association et condamnant ainsi sans doute le parti politique à la disparition (Lynch, 2002, p. 51). C’est ce dessein, auquel Gunn était fermement opposé, que MacCormick avait commencé à échafauder et qui était au centre de son projet d’organisation d’une Scottish National Convention prévue pour 1939. Gunn, dans une lettre datée juillet 1936, avait ainsi réagi à MacCormick : « The inherent danger of your plan is a subtle dissipation of Nationalist energies and a transference of personal loyalty to another Party. […] what is now before the Party challenges in a fundamental way the past tactics of the Party. » (1987, p. 44)

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14 L’objectif manifeste de MacCormick était de regrouper les partisans nationalistes en une force commune. De nombreuses dissensions internes menaçaient en effet le futur même du SNP, tiraillé entre des membres qui s’identifiaient plus volontiers avec d’autres formations politiques sur l’échiquier politique britannique et européen, certains n’hésitant par exemple pas à se proclamer travaillistes, libéraux ou conservateurs, et d’autres affichant même une attirance non voilée pour les fascistes continentaux. Le manque de cohésion mais aussi l’absence de programme politique cohérent, par exemple sur le plan économique ou sur celui des réponses à donner à la question de l’Empire britannique face à l’auto-détermination écossaise, faisaient perdre toute crédibilité au SNP. À la veille des élections législatives de 1935, le SNP semblait à deux doigts de disparaître en tant que formation politique. Comme le précise Richard Finlay, « […] the SNP had become more of a movement, rather than a political party. An irreversible decline had begun » (Finlay, 1994, p. 183). Les élections furent par conséquent un désastre et le parti n’en sortit que plus affaibli encore. Un an après, c’est l’extrémiste Andrew Dewar Gibb avec lequel Gunn avait beaucoup échangé de courriers à propos de la fusion des partis nationalistes et la création du SNP, qui confiait ainsi son désarroi dans une lettre à Elma Gibson : « The party seems to be slowly disintegrating » (ibid., p. 189). Toutes les élections partielles qui suivirent furent calamiteuses pour les caciques du parti qui s’y étaient présentés.

15 Highland River, publié deux ans après ces élections, devenait une allégorie sur la nécessité de redéfinir une ligne politique claire. Tous les efforts de médiation que le romancier avait consentis à faire pour la fusion du NPS et du SP avaient été réduits à néant. C’est un retour aux origines de la mouvance nationaliste qui devait se faire. Le nationalisme écossais devait, selon Gunn, se montrer exigeant, sans concession et sans compromis. Dans une lettre inédite adressée à Gibb en septembre 1936, le romancier déclarait : « I can see, for example, a National Party more closely knit than the present body, less tolerant of anything but the pure doctrine, the head and fount of Nationalism, and devoted to propaganda of an undeviating and, if necessary, extreme type1. » Ce n’est donc pas en tolérant une dispersion des membres vers d’autres partis politiques que l’on pouvait réussir. Il fallait au contraire les rassembler, redéfinir le but du parti et travailler dans un esprit de cohésion. C’est par exemple dans cette même lettre que Gunn explique que le poète Hugh MacDiarmid et ses doctrines marxistes sont une présence incongrue dans tout débat et dans le mouvement politique nationaliste écossais.

16 La symbolique de la remontée jusqu’à la source de la rivière se révèle aussi féconde d’un point de vue littéraire écossais. MacDiarmid et Gunn étaient maintenant clairement en porte-à-faux, non seulement en ce qui concerne la dynamique nationaliste mais aussi à propos du mouvement de la Renaissance. Les conceptions très traditionalistes et nostalgiques de Gunn lui avaient par exemple valu l’opprobre de MacDiarmid. Le poète, sans doute ébranlé par son exclusion du SNP et qui ne pouvait pas ignorer le rôle que Gunn y avait joué, avait accusé ce dernier de colporter le sentimentalisme et le mysticisme celtes. Il était même allé plus loin, et avait dénoncé Gunn comme un mercenaire à la fois de la cause écossaise et de la Renaissance (Gunn, 1987, p. 53-55 et MacDiarmid, 1984, p. 260-261). Là aussi, la remontée de la rivière et le chronotope gunnien prennent une dimension allégorique : les auteurs de la Renaissance devaient, d’après Gunn, revenir aux sources et redécouvrir les fondements mêmes du mouvement, c’est-à-dire donner à l’Écosse une voix spécifique et oublier les différentes écoles littéraires auxquelles ils appartenaient ou prétendaient appartenir,

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et mettre de côté leurs querelles personnelles pour revenir aux fondamentaux de la Renaissance, soit l’expression d’une voix nationale. L’objectif nationaliste, d’abord l’auto-détermination puis l’indépendance, ne devait pas être perdu de vue et c’est autour de lui qu’il fallait se rassembler.

17 On peut donc dire que Highland River fut un roman clé pour Gunn : l’ouvrage résume bien évidemment la pensée de l’auteur concernant les communautés et les Hautes- Terres, mais Highland River lui permit en outre de clarifier et de structurer ses figures chronotopiques. Le roman lui offrit également l’occasion d’envisager la politique nationaliste et culturelle de l’Écosse et d’en faire part à ses lecteurs par un biais purement littéraire, celui d’une allégorie.

18 On ne peut pas ne pas évoquer les chronotopes gunniens et cette allégorie sans les rapprocher de ce que Lewis Grassic Gibbon avait esquissé cinq ans auparavant dans Sunset Song : la persistance de cette terre et le souvenir qu’elle garde des civilisations ou des communautés qui s’y sont succédé. Chris Guthrie, la protagoniste de Gibbon, trouve le réconfort dans le cromlech qui surplombe Kinraddie ; celui-ci lui permet d’échapper à l’oppression patriarcale et au fardeau du travail de la ferme. Gunn fait d’ailleurs une référence très claire à Sunset Song et à ce thème dans la conclusion de son roman, où il parle de « the abiding land » (1937, p. 241), se faisant ainsi l’écho de ce qui devint le célèbre leitmotiv du Quair « the enduring land » (Gibbon, 1932, p. 120).

19 Des travaux de comparaison entre ces deux romans se révèleraient d’ailleurs fructueux et viendraient compléter ceux qui sont consacrés à Sunset Song et The Silver Darlings (Gifford, 1983). Parmi les pistes qu’il serait possible d’explorer autour de Highland River, on peut dégager des perspectives écologiques et une analyse écocritique des romans de Gunn que l’on pourrait bien sûr lire en parallèle avec la trilogie du Quair de Gibbon. Cela permettrait une analyse de la représentation littéraire de leur paysage où l’homme, et bien évidemment la femme puisque l’on peut parler d’écoféminisme chez Gibbon, apparaissent en complément de leur environnement et y sont perçus en relation symbiotique. Ils investissent ainsi le chronotope bakhtinien de leurs principes idéologiques et de leurs concepts politiques et sociaux.

BIBLIOGRAPHIE

BAKHTIN Mikhail, 1978, Esthétique et théorie du roman, traduit du russe par Daria Olivier, préface de Michel Aucouturier, Paris, Gallimard.

BAKHTIN Mikhail, 1986, Speech Genres & Other Late Essays, traduit par Vern W. McGee, Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (éds), Austin, University of Texas Press.

CONRAD Joseph, 1990, Heart of Darkness and Other Tales [1899], Introduction de Cedric Watts, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

FINLAY Richard, 1994, Independent and Free. Scottish Politics and the Origins of the Scottish National Party 1918–1945, Édimbourg, John Donald.

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GIBBON Lewis Grassic, 1999, Sunset Song [1932], Introduction de Tom Crawford, Édimbourg, Canongate Classics.

GIFFORD Douglas, 1983, Neil M. Gunn and Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Édimboug, Oliver & Boyd.

GREIMAS Algirdas Julien, 1986, Sémantique structurale. Recherche de méthode [1970], Paris, Presses universitaires de France.

GUNN Neil Miller, 1929, « The Hidden Heart » [publié sous le pseudonyme de Dane MacNeil], The Scots Magazine, vol. 9, no 5, p. 331-335.

GUNN Neil Miller, 1932, « The Circle », The Scots Magazine, vol. 16, no 4, p. 241-255.

GUNN Neil Miller, 1944, « Exciting Horizons », The Daily Record, 15 août, p. 2.

GUNN Neil Miller, 1952, « Above the Highland Line », National Library of Scotland, DEP 209, box 8.

GUNN Neil Miller, 1956, « Caithness », Country Fair, vol. 2, no 6, p. I-VIII.

GUNN Neil Miller, 1961, « Conversation with a Novelist: Maurice Lindsay-Neil Gunn », Scottish Field, no 701, p. 38-39, p. 111.

GUNN Neil Miller, 1987, Selected Letters, J.B. Pick (ed.), Édimbourg, Polygon.

GUNN Neil Miller, 1991, Highland River [1937], Introduction de Dairmid Gunn, Édimbourg, Canongate Classics.

HART Francis Russell & PICK J. B., 1985, Neil M. Gunn: A Highland Life, Édimbourg, Polygon.

LAPLACE Philippe, 2004, « Rites de passage et initiations dans Highland River & The Silver Darlings de Neil M. Gunn », Études écossaises, no 9, p. 397-410.

LAPLACE Philippe, 2006, Les Hautes-Terres, l’histoire et la mémoire dans les romans de Neil M. Gunn, Besançon, Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté.

LYNCH Peter, 2002, The History of the Scottish National Party, Cardiff, Welsh Academic Press.

MACDIARMID Hugh, 1984, The Letters of Hugh MacDiarmid, Introduction de Alan Bold, Londres, Hamish Hamilton.

STOKOE C. J. L., 1987, A Bibliography of the Works of Neil M. Gunn, Aberdeen, Aberdeen University Press.

Pour une bibliographie de Gunn mise à jour, voir .

NOTES

1. Pour les échanges de courriers entre Gunn et Gibb et, plus spécifiquement, la dynamique nationaliste, voir : National Library of Scotland, DEP 209, box 15 « Correspondence and printed items concerning the Scottish National Party ».

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RÉSUMÉS

Cet article examine Highland River, le roman de Neil Gunn publié en 1937 sous un angle bakhtinien en tâchant de reconnaître l’importance que jouent les chronotopes dans le récit. Cet angle de recherche permet en effet d’approcher thématiquement un roman souvent considéré comme de nature difficile à cause de sa structure et des différents genres auxquels il peut être rattaché. Nous verrons ensuite l’utilisation symbolique de la rivière et comment le récit de Highland River s’inscrivent dans une démarche idéologique nationaliste de l’auteur écossais à un moment charnière pour le SNP : le nombre d’adhérents diminuait, d’importants membres exprimaient leurs doutes quant à la ligne politique du parti et il convenait de donner un nouvel élan à la dynamique nationaliste.

The point of this article is to study Neil Gunn’s Highland River (1937) under a Bakhtinian light. This allows us to consider the significance of the concept of chronotopes in a novel which has often been regarded as complicated because of its very structure and the various genres it belongs to. We will also examine the symbolic use of the river and how this novel can be considered as being part of Gunn’s nationalist ideological discourse at a crucial moment for the future of the SNP: the party’s membership was plummeting, key figures were voicing concerns over its political principles, and the nationalist dynamic needed a new boost.

INDEX

Keywords : Neil Gunn, Highland River, Bakhtin, SNP, Hugh MacDiarmid, Scotland Mots-clés : Neil Gunn, Highland River, Bakhtine, SNP, Hugh MacDiarmid, Écosse

AUTEUR

PHILIPPE LAPLACE Université de Franche-Comté, laboratoire CRIT. Philippe Laplace lectures at the Université de Franche-Comté, Besançon. He is the author of a monograph on Gunn, Les Hautes-Terres, l’histoire et la mémoire dans les romans de Neil Gunn (2006) and has edited various books: Cities on the Margins, On the Margins of Cities (2003), Marges et périphéries dans les pays de langue anglaise (2004) and Environmental and Ecological Readings: Nature, Human and Posthuman Dimensions in Scottish Literature and Art (18th–21st c.).

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The Uncanny in Writing the Picture (2010) by John Fuller and David Hurn De l’inquiétante étrangeté dans Writing the Picture (2010) de John Fuller et David Hurn

Aurélien Saby

So many photographs produce a sense of strangeness in the minds of the viewers that it almost rises to the level of a characteristic common to fine photographs. Certainly, in so many pictures, it is an important, even crucial, element in their success. (Hurn & Jay, 2000, p. 53)

1 David Hurn (b. 1934) has always been drawn to unusual landscapes, especially unexpected scenes captured in the Welsh daily life of his fellow citizens, whether in his village, Tintern, in the streets of Cardiff, or at a seaside resort. And so has John Fuller (b. 1937), a keen observer of uncanny littorals: So we stare down the littoral, Just as we calculate the night, For stalactite or meteorite, Behaviour of stone or light Departing from the ususal.1 (“Star-Gazing”, in Fuller, 2012, p. 90)

2 From the late 1980s onwards, the two artists started a collaboration which gave rise to the publication of a book entitled Writing the Picture2 (2010) where Hurn’s photography sparks a poetry in which Fuller draws out meaning and launches into thought- provoking verse. Here is how they relate the origin of their Welsh adventure in the introduction to their common work: DH: We should explain how the book came about. JF: Yes, we met in 1989, didn’t we?

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DH: I was living in Wales then, having returned from London in 1973. My purpose was to discover through photography what ‘Welsh Culture’ means. I was attempting the gathering of evidence for history. I was asked by Colin Jacobson, picture editor of the Independent, if he could use some of the pictures I was working on in Wales. […] I had just read and enormously enjoyed your novel Flying to Nowhere, so I agreed to supply Welsh pictures on condition that the magazine could get you to do the text. (WP, pp. 8–9)

3 My contention in this article is that the uncanny is one of the points of confluence between Hurn’s and Fuller’s aesthetics. Not only shall we explore the strangeness, oddness or weirdness characterizing the photos and how they are harnessed by the poet, but we shall also examine Freud’s “unheimlich” as a way to better grasp the complex interactions between the pictures and the poems. And for this purpose, Julia Kristeva’s concise definition of Freud’s concept could serve as a starting point for our study: Freud wanted to demonstrate at the outset, on the basis of a semantic study of the German adjective heimlich and its antonym unheimlich that a negative meaning close to that of the antonym is already tied to the positive term heimlich, “friendly comfortable,” which would also signify “concealed, kept from sight,” “deceitful and malicious,” “behind someone’s back.” Thus, in the very word heimlich, the familiar and intimate are reversed into their opposites, brought together with the contrary meaning of “uncanny strangeness” harbored in unheimlich. Such an immanence of the strange within the familiar is considered as an etymological proof of the psychoanalytic hypothesis according to which the uncanny is that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar, which, as far as Freud was concerned, was confirmed by Schelling who said that “everything is unheimlich that ought to have remained secret but has come to light”. (1991, pp. 182–3)

4 When captured by Hurn, Welsh ordinary life often becomes extra-ordinary, sometimes on the brink of the sur-real or super-natural, thus disarming the viewers whose stable bearings are shattered. According to Hurn, “the best photography not only reproduces the visible but also makes visible the unseen” (WP, p. 8). This is particularly true of his own work, further delved into by a poet already prone to throwing light on the invisible. Writing the Picture is peopled with uncanny revenants—half human half automaton, or living dead—caught in unsuspected plots involving doubles of themselves, and ourselves, while undeniably testifying to the photographer’s and poet’s skills in renewing the genius of Welsh art.

“Departing from the usual”

Blurred time and space

5 Spatiotemporal bearings are more often than not bewildering in Writing the Picture insofar as quite a few snapshots are both deep-rooted in Welsh history and atemporal. For example, some photos are very easy to date given their reportage-like quality, as is illustrated by the beach scene in summer time featuring fathers and their children enjoying the sea at low tide (WP, p. 16).3 We may not guess that it was taken in the resort of Barry Island, but the striped swimming suits, together with the bell-bottom trousers of the character on the left as well as the men’s haircuts reflect the fashion of the early 1970s, in accordance with the notes on the Magnum Photos website: “the picture is during the ‘miners’week,’ the holiday period of the miners of South Wales.

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[…] Due to the closing of the pits, this cultural happening no longer takes place.” Yet, the generic present of Fuller’s lines endows this scene with a kind of unexpected universal timelessness: From Colwyn to Barry, From Dee to the Wye, Water’s a carpet To let me lie. (WP, p. 16)

6 By adopting a young child’s viewpoint, the poet takes us out of history, back to timeless happy memories of holidays in childhood—back to our own first encounter with the sea. Furthermore, these lines echo his own poetry for children, notably “Waves” in You’re Having Me On where the speaker makes one with the sea: Underneath the waves I lie That climb their stairs to split and die Over and over and over and Then dizzy on the draining sand, The water tugging at my feet, I crawl where beach and ocean meet. (Fuller, 2014, p. 35)

7 But then comes a twist in the poem which suddenly interrelates pleasure and suffering in the rhyme, before making a frightful statement on the devastating power of time, thus wrecking the wonder of the nursery rhyme-like incipit: The sea taught us our lonely pleasures. The sea that bore us taught us to suffer. […] Sixty years into our oblivion we are locked into pity.

8 All in all, one may conclude that in this case the poem adds an uncanny dimension to a picture that was originally devoid of it, thereby highlighting its artistry beyond its documentary aspect.

9 Conversely, other pictures are almost impossible to date, as is exemplified by the obscure forest taken by Hurn in winter (WP, p. 41). The dead branches, coupled with subtle light and shadow nuances, imbue the undergrowth with an eerie, almost supernatural mood, whereas there are no special effects in the silver print. Because the references are only mentioned at the very end of Writing the Picture (in the “List of Images”, p. 112), it is almost impossible to guess that this photo actually represents Tintern Forest in 1976. Moreover, the poem does give it a temporal frame; but it sets it in the Middle Ages, somehow bringing us back to ageless Arthurian legends: Our course, over across river North to Tintern in that night-run Went, towards winter woods, The climb behind, the calm beyond. (WP, p. 40)

10 In order to illustrate this picture, Fuller chose the complex Old Welsh form of the cynghanedd,4 which has manifold contrasted effects. First, it contributes to strengthening the mysteriousness of Hurn’s picture as the plot involves some ungraspable uncanny revenants in defeat after a battle entirely made up by Fuller, as though the text had been translated—or exhumed—from an Old English tale: Thorns made thin smoke. And so we all sat, uneasily lost, Fellowship’s false hopes, Betrayal by trial That failed the field. (WP, p. 40)

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11 Second, Fuller’s cynghanedd also enhances the Welshness of Hurn’s art (which is far from obvious in this picture), while opening up the horizons of the photo in an anachronistic blur shattering all stable spatiotemporal bearings.

“Here the sun has been excluded”

12 What is more, in a few other photos, Hurn’s perfect mastery of light makes it difficult to know whether they were taken during the day or at night. For instance, Llanwern steel works (WP, pp. 38–9), which was obviously photographed during the working hours of the day, is plunged in utter darkness. And Fuller’s poem spotlights the dramatic quality of the scene in a description erasing the boundaries between drama and real life, natural and supernatural laws: “Here is the locked night of the actor’s agony”. The adverb “here” is caught in an anaphoric system aiming at isolating two entirely distinct worlds: the steel works, here, and the viewers’ world, there: Here the sun has been excluded for his revolutionary idea That life might be as simple as growing and dying, Treading the sky in a lifetime of daytimes, Raising the sweet textures of hills to the unpausing teeth of sheep. Here the sky itself has been reprimanded for its idle behavior […]. (WP, p. 38)

13 Some alien forces appear all the more threatening as they are ungraspable and only alluded to in passive forms, without any further explanation: “the sun has been excluded”; “the sky itself has been reprimanded”. Helpless, we are presented with a gloomy parallel world which is nonetheless not entirely fictional since it was inspired by Shotton steel works during its last day before closing in 1977. The sense of doom is reinforced by the dreadful dehumanizing process at work in the conclusive lines: Here is the purposive concentration of the worm-in-the-brain Who conceived the hard straight lines that rule the world of men And who poured out men’s hearts in a thousand boiling suns. Now they are dispossessed and The crucible is cursed. (WP, p. 38)

14 Fuller’s hypallages contain a variety of implications. On the one hand, they allow the satirist to denounce the mining authorities’ mismanagement and weaknesses. Besides, they underline their callousness (“the hard straight lines that rule the world of men”) as well as their powerlessness faced with the almighty evil force of the “worm-in- [their]-brain”. On the other hand, they pay tribute to the workers by associating their hearts to “a thousand boiling suns” instilling new beats and life in this dark world, thus reigniting beauty at the heart of chaos. And of course, both the photographer and the poet remind us that some miners live in the shadow of our world and in the shadow of themselves: “they are dispossessed”. Those doomed souls nevertheless also enable us to follow “the hard straight lines that rule the world of men”, that is to say our own world, with its steel bridges and railways and armament…

15 Likewise, in another picture featuring a swan gone astray in a flooded field (WP, p. 37), the ambiguity between night and day creates an uncanny atmosphere harboured by the poet who adds a moon to the scenery in the last stanza: The moon shines coldly on unusual waters As though the night called for a looking glass. Sins of mothers fall upon the daughters.

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Parting’s an ache that had to come to pass. Whose fault the flood? Whose loss the grass? Forget-me-late, forget-me-never, Until the street becomes a river. (WP, p. 36)

16 The speaker is a young woman who falls in love and is soon abandoned by her lover- boy. Wondering to what extent the “moon” here associated to “unusual waters” might be related to menstrual cycles and the fertility of art that would counterbalance the young woman’s unhappy love affair, I asked John Fuller himself about the symbolism of this stanza, and I am grateful to him for his clarifying answer dated 26 April 2016: I wasn’t thinking of menstruation at all, but merely the cycle of succumbing to the charm of feckless and betraying men (and of course bearing children as a result: the daughter repeats the process). Not intended to be cynical, merely a very traditional sort of lyrical complaint about the excitement of love and the inevitable parting.

17 The very last line of this poem (“Until the street becomes a river”) is quite ambiguous and inauspicious: an uncanny harbinger of death? Will the river flooding the street wash the forsaken lover’s tears away? Or will the flood spread to the entire city? Should it be interpreted as a reminder that everything fades in time, including love, as in those famous lines by W. H. Auden whose shadow hovers over Fuller’s poem?5 And down by the brimming river I heard a lover sing Under an arch of the railway: ‘Love has no ending. […] But the clocks in the city Began to whirr and chime: ‘O let not time deceive you, You cannot conquer Time. […] ‘O look, look in the mirror, O look in your distress: Life remains a blessing Although you cannot bless. ‘O stand, stand at the window As the tears scald and start; You shall love your crooked neighbor With your crooked heart.’ (“As I Walked Out One Evening” [1937], in Auden, 1994, pp. 133–5)

“Threshold—The Disturbing Image”

18 Like the drifting swan whose beauty proceeds from the debris of a polluted flooded field, other scenes from Writing the Picture verge on surrealism. As Bill Jay notices, “in these cases the effort to capture the real has slipped into the surreal. Photography is particularly and peculiarly prone to producing these slippages in which a prosaic document of something, extracted from its original context, acts as a trigger to unexpected and even disconnected emotions” (Hurn & Jay, 2000, p. 53). For example, the sense of humour in the photo portraying two sheep finding shelter in a shed (WP, p. 13)—an unintended parody of 18th century portrait painting, with a beautiful tree on the left and a couple in the foreground?6—stems from the unsuspected anthropomorphism of such a sight on the side of a Welsh road. This dimension is

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explored further by the poet who visualizes the sheep in a lift, not unlike miners, about to descend to some unknown territory: While over Mynedd Eppynt drift Exhausted particles of rain, And sheep are waiting in a lift As though they might descend again. (WP, p. 12)

19 The uncanniness underlying such scenes originates precisely in the fact that they are not regarded as abnormal by the poet who even seems eager to adopt the supernatural logic of fairy tales or children’s literature to describe the Welsh reality captured by Hurn. So much so that it eventually sounds perfectly natural that at some point “The fields have turned to cushions / And the hay has faces” (WP, p. 50); or that birds should be holding a meeting in Llanelli at the National Wetlands Centre: At the Annual General Meeting of Waterbirds, plc, It was declared that the Bay of Caernarfon had been overfished. The Treasurer, defensive as only a Bridled Guillemot could be, Said: “I am very sorry. Things are not as I would have wished. But there is nothing to be done, and no dividend declared. However, I assure the meeting that it’s nothing I can’t handle.” (WP, p. 100)

20 Freud claims that the supernaturalism of the fairy tale does not inspire a sense of the uncanny because there is no conflict of judgement, no clash of different models of the real in it. The same, he argues, is true of the supernatural in Dante, Homer or Shakespeare: The imaginative writer may have invented a world that, while less fantastic than that of the fairy tale, differs from the real world in that it involves supernatural entities such as demons or spirits of the dead. Within the limits set by the presuppositions of this literary reality, such figures forfeit any uncanny quality that might otherwise attach to them. The souls in Dante’s Inferno or the ghostly apparitions in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Macbeth or Julius Caesar may be dark and terrifying, but at the bottom they are no more uncanny than, say, the serene world of Homer’s gods. We adapt our judgment to the conditions of the writer’s fictional reality and treat souls, spirits and ghosts as if they were fully entitled to exist, just as we are in our material reality. Here too there is no place for the uncanny. (Freud, 2003, p. 156)

21 However, Writing the Picture is not a fairy tale, and nor is it a children’s book. Besides, Hurn never resorts to photomontage, and he photographs real settings. As a consequence, the discrepancy between what viewers or readers expect and the works they are offered does create uncanny effects. Hurn produces images that do not pander to audience expectations; and Fuller is more than willing to venture down this track. In this respect, the photos and poems in Writing the Picture have reached what Billy Jay calls a “Threshold—The Disturbing Image”: The image disturbs in the sense that it rocks the status quo and tends to break up the settled order of things. […] Photographers, like all other specialists, cherish the traditions of their field of expertise. New departures create cracks in the shell and signal a period of vulnerability and anxiety. […] The point is this: all the innovative image-makers have this tendency to rock the boat in which we feel so comfortable, huddled together with our peers. (Jay, 1995, pp. 33–42)

22 In fact, the photo of the meeting room in Llanelli (WP, p. 101) soon turns out to be troubling because the place is deserted (whereas one might have expected a true meeting with staff members); but also because the mural background of birds reflecting itself on the desks becomes almost three dimensional, the paper décor overwhelming

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men’s world in general confusion: “The Chairman, a Black-Tailed Godwit, declared the meeting closed, / And in the general confusion no dividend was declared” (WP, p. 100).

23 Similarly, another photo shows a portrait of Dylan Thomas isolated in an extremely clean, almost aseptic environment (WP, p. 31). The café is empty, and the frameless picture of the poet almost vanishes in the geometric pattern of the wall paper; and once again human life seems to be absorbed by the material context. Instead of a lingering presence that would be celebrated on the occasion of a poetry reading with a crowd of admirers, Fuller’s verse emphasizes the absence of a major poet whose chaotic life contrasts with the neatness of the coffee shop in Laugharne. The looming spectre of death therefore becomes all too invasive: Missing: one poet in an ill-fitting suit and a smile Who walked out one morning into his damaged life And never returned for tea. (WP, p. 30)

Uncanny plots

“Quietly, now. Pretend you don’t see.”

24 Quite naturally, Hurn’s distressing and anxiety-provoking images spawn uncanny plots in Fuller’s verse. In the second part of his essay on the Uncanny, Freud dwells on the impressions apparently animate objects make on us, and he starts off quoting Jentsch: “One of the surest devices for producing slightly uncanny effects through story- telling is to leave the reader wondering whether a particular figure is a real person or an automaton, and to do so in such a way that his attention is not focused directly on the uncertainty.” (Quoted in Freud, 2003, p. 135)

25 This is particularly true of a photo showing male shoppers waiting in front of the window of a clothes store in Cardiff during Christmas 2004 (WP, p. 21). The shop window is a topos in the history of photography, and Hurn’s is both humorous and eerie because the world of plastic mannequins seems to overbear the characters. The poem adds another uncanny dimension to the picture by voicing out the thoughts of the man on the left, who is now nothing but a photographic reproduction of the actual passer-by, a photographic object—hence the weird ventriloquism effects: Don’t look now, but we’re outnumbered. Somebody tugged those patchy jeans Clean over the coy plastic nub of the groin, Joined hand to jointed arm as if to say: “Hey! You! What’s on your mind? Just you try it!” Quietly, now. Pretend you don’t see. (WP, p. 20)

26 A tension arises from a latent competition between the mannequins and the men whose virility and strength is challenged by the perfect shapes of the plastic figures. The living are, disturbingly enough, in a position of inferiority, appearing lower than the mannequins safely protected behind the window.

27 In other pictures, the living themselves are comparable to mannequins, as though they were inanimate—or already dead—, as is evidenced by the young drug addict shooting up in the toilet (Brynmill, 1972, in WP, p. 67). No matter how much the girl may look like a model—she is Marilyn Monroe-like indeed—, the spotlight and high-angle shot tend to change her into a shadow of herself similar to a wax reproduction about to be swallowed into the pitch-black background. This photo is “both a pseudo-presence and

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a token of absence” in the literal sense of Susan Sontag’s statement (Sontag, 2008, p. 16). It actually almost represents a living dead whose interior monologue stages a terrifying splitting of personality ensuing from heroin addiction, epitomized by the striking paradox of the final couplet of Fuller’s sonnet: I came here for some privacy, not out of fear. Don’t any of you look at me. I am not here. (WP, p. 66) The antinomy (“I came here” / “I am not here”) adds to the sense of impending doom while wiping out the limits between life and death, reality and fiction. This monologue may even sound like a prosopopoeia expressing the thoughts of a deceased character from beyond the grave. The real character in front of the camera has been entirely depersonalized, stripped of her identity, both by drug and by photography, “[she is] not here”: Linked to anguish, the uncanny strangeness does not, however, merge with it. Initially it is a shock, something unusual, astonishment; and even if anguish comes close, uncanniness maintains that share of unease that leads the self, beyond anguish, toward depersonalization. “The sense of strangeness belongs in the same category as depersonalization,” Freud noted. (Kristeva, 1991, p. 188)

28 Yet, once robbed of their personality, the characters caught by the camera-eye nonetheless remain haunting presences. In consonance with Susan Sontag, Diane Arbus says that photographs “are the proof that something was there and no longer is. Like a stain. And the stillness of them is boggling. You can turn away but when you come back they’ll still be there looking at you” (2003, p. 226).

Striptease

29 In a number of photos in Writing the Picture, not only do the characters look embarrassed, but the scenes themselves also make the viewers very uncomfortable—as though they were forced into voyeurism, forced to open up their eyes to a reality they do not want to see, coerced to probe the uncanny about themselves. Let us now focus on “Hen Night” taken in Usk in 1994 (WP, p. 45). The strength of this picture lies in a precarious balance between a festive mood and a sense of overrated hilarity, contrived joy, coupled with ambient malaise perfectly rendered by the opening stanzas of Fuller’s poem: The laughter starts in our dreams And flowers like a tree. You can kneel in irreverence, But not if you’re me. We claim to be excited Just by being there. I could go boss-eyed Pretending not to stare. (WP, p. 44)

30 The laughter and applause sound overly loud, as if to hide embarrassment—not to mention disgust. Some of the women are even averting their eyes while others look obliquely, just like the viewers, both drawn to this perfect body and somehow intrigued, or repelled by blunt nakedness.

31 One may contend that the uncanniness about this scene is to be connected to a dis- eroticizing dynamic, which is all too disconcerting in this context. Indeed, the stripper is doing his job so thoroughly that it almost leaves no room for desire and fantasy, as is testified by Fuller’s neutral detailed description:

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That little gymnast swings To and fro on its bar Or completes a circuit. It’s an utter star! (WP, p. 44) In this stanza, Fuller alludes to both the stripper and his penis as diligent performers. “It” (contrary to “He”) points out the objectification of the stripper turned into an automaton while also obviously referring to the male organ. But the sexual innuendo fails to express either lewdness or bawdiness. The Chippendale dancer is just completing his routine very professionally; and this is enhanced by the perfect regularity of the rhythm, notably the iambic sequence in “That little gymnast swings”. Roland Barthes’s remarks about striptease, whether the stripper be male or female, could perfectly apply to this scene: Striptease is based on a contradiction: Woman is desexualized at the very moment when she is stripped naked. We may therefore say that we are dealing in a sense with a spectacle based on fear, or rather on the pretence of fear, as if eroticism here went no further than a sort of delicious terror, whose ritual signs have only to be announced to evoke at once the idea of sex and its conjuration. (2009, p. 97)

32 But then, after the conjuration of sex, Fuller’s poem raises a very unsettling question: When will the shrieks of laughter Turn to disgust in the dark, The little boy at bath-time Become the threat in the park? (WP, p. 44) Where does “The little boy at bath-time” come from? This sudden apparition is quite outlandish. Such a change in the tone of the poem is all the more forceful since it gets us to reconsider the picture: what is the link between the “little gymnast” and the “little boy”?

33 Because there is foam on the stripper’s thighs and buttocks, one may think that the poet visualizes him when he was a little boy; or, possibly, the bride-to-be’s future baby boy. But why should this boy become a “threat in the park”—i.e. an exhibitionist, a potential rapist? The invasion of doubles of the central character is both puzzling and scaring, in keeping with Freud’s own remarks on the motif of the double: The motif of the double has been treated in detail in a study by O. Rank. This work explores the connections that link the double with mirror-images, shadows, guardian spirits, the doctrine of the soul and the fear of death. It also throws a good deal of light on the surprising evolution of the motif itself. The double was originally an insurance against the extinction of the self or, as Rank puts it, ‘an energetic denial of the power of death’, and it seems likely that the ‘immortal’ soul was the first double of the body. The invention of such doubling as a defense against annihilation has a counterpart in the language of dreams, which is fond of expressing the idea of castration by duplicating or multiplying the genital symbol. […] But these ideas arose on the soil of boundless self-love, the primordial narcissism that dominates the mental life of both the child and primitive man, and when this phase is surmounted, the meaning of the ‘double’ changes: having once been an assurance of immortality, it becomes the uncanny harbinger of death. (2003, p. 142)

34 Hurn’s photo may first be viewed as “an energetic denial of the power of death” insofar as it will remain in time as a token of the stripper’s vitality and beauty—an artistic double of his. Moreover, the vision of “The little boy at bath-time” goes counter to the unfolding of time by announcing renewal and regeneration. And yet, “this phase is [soon] surmounted” in Fuller’s lines: “the meaning of ‘double’ changes” as soon as it becomes a dark shadow of the protagonist associated to crime (“the threat in the

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park”). Because the speaking “I” is deliberately ambiguous in the poem—being related by turns to the stripper, one of the women in the room, an omniscient speaker or even us, viewers and readers—, one may interpret the introduction of this menace as a projection of self-contained danger out of the self. “The Other Is My (Own and Proper) Unconscious”, says Kristeva, before developing further: Freud noted that the archaic, narcissistic self, not yet demarcated by the outside world, projects out of itself what it experiences as dangerous or unpleasant in itself, making of it an alien double, uncanny and demoniacal. In this instance the strange appears as a defense put up by a distraught self: it protects itself by substituting for the image of a benevolent double, that used to be enough to shelter it, the image of a malevolent double into which it expels the share of destruction it cannot contain. (1991, pp. 183–4)

35 Should the apparition of “the threat” in Fuller’s poem be considered as a “defense”, a verbal shield allowing the speaker to expel a share of destruction that cannot be contained?

36 Then, without any transition after this unforeseen experience, Fuller brings us back to a more reassuring frame corresponding to the ekphrasis proper: “My hand raised to applaud / Touches my cheek in wonder” (WP, p. 44). The readers are thus left flabbergasted, and on their own to deal with the uncanniness of the poem. The opening line of the conclusive stanza even seems to act as a foil to our own position in front of such artwork: “What does it say about me?” (WP, p. 44) As a matter of fact, any uncanny encounter is bound to question our own certainties: Also strange is the experience of the abyss separating me from the other who shocks me—I do not even perceive him, perhaps he crushes me because I negate him. Confronting the foreigner whom I reject and with whom at the same time I identify, I lose my boundaries. […] I feel “lost,” “indistinct,” “hazy.” The uncanny strangeness allows for many variations: they all repeat the difficulty I have in situating myself with respect to the other. (Kristeva, 1991, p. 187) Ironically enough, in the last three lines the menace now comes from the women themselves, testifying to the male character’s “difficulty in situating [himself] with respect to the [female] other” that may get too close… and threaten his manly limbs: I’m not quite happy yet. What do they know that I don’t? How close can they get? (WP, p. 44)

“Where is Happy Lion? Mr Toad?”

37 It is important to remember that Freud traces the uncanny back to infantile terrors and desires. When analyzing Hoffmann’s “Sandman”, he notes that the sense of the uncanny attaches directly to the main character’s fear of being robbed of his limbs, more precisely his eyes (see Freud, 2003, p. 138). Such childhood dread underpins Writing the Picture and characterizes more specifically a sonnet inspired by the picture of the refuse transfer site of Penpac taken in 1999 (WP, p. 71). Surprisingly, we can see a large collection of discarded teddy bears hanging along the fence of a dump. Hurn’s personal recollected reaction to this sight is quite telling: You are driving along, minding your own business, looking at the pretty trees. Then you come round the corner and suddenly you see something like this. It was what you would call a rubbish tip, near Cardigan in west Wales, although I later discovered that it was actually called a “refuse transfer site”. The guy who ran it obviously had some interest in the arts, and he discovered early on that there were

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a lot of discarded toys in the rubbish, so he gradually started taking them out and hanging them on the fence. My first impression on coming across it was just: “Isn’t life wonderful?” […] After talking to the guy who had done it, I walked along the fence with my 35 mm Leica, and probably a 35 mm lens, trying to find the most unusual grouping of toys. Then it was a matter of trying to get the right position. My guess is that the fence was about three times as long as you can see in the picture. But the problem with being a long way away from it, in order to see it all, is that you would have a lot of sky and a lot of foreground. So I tried to get close enough to fill the frame, but far enough away to get as many toys in as possible, and give the feeling that there were a lot of them. Really, it was a case of trying to make every little corner of the frame important. The idea of another human being thinking that it’s worth his while to go through the rubbish on his tip and pull out the little dolls and put them on a fence—it’s miraculous. I’m still startled that people have the inventiveness to do something like that. It makes me have a little more faith in human beings.7

38 Fuller’s response to what Hurns deems a miracle is more nuanced. His sonnet starts off with a quest involving the reader: Where is Happy Lion? Mr Toad? Where is drunk dolly of the knitted legs? (WP, p. 70) The choice of a series of questions is all the shrewder because it implies various levels of reading. As in children’s poetry, riddles invite readers to go back and forth across the picture in order to find each toy mentioned in the text, thereby prolonging the wonder that had enthralled Hurn. Yet, as Auden famously claimed, “poetry is not magic. In so far as poetry, or any other of the arts, can be said to have an ulterior purpose, it is, by telling the truth, to disenchant and disintoxicate” (1989, p. 27). Given the context of the picture, we may soon understand that Fuller’s verse is no nursery rhyme. The teddy bears are nowhere to be found except in a dump, as we are inexorably reminded in the conclusive line changing the scene into an eerie contemporary Welsh Vanitas: “And the winds are blowing rubbish down the hill”.

39 In addition, the forsaken dolls relate to all children’s fear of losing their cherished cuddly toys which are like an extension of themselves. They consequently also embody the terror of amputation: “Threadbare, stitched-up, hang-dog, button-blind” (WP, p. 70). On the other hand, their fate may express a primitive anxiety already experienced by each and every one of us as early as infancy, namely, the fear of abandonment: Banished for ever, or else left behind, And no one comes for them, nor ever will. (WP, p. 70)

40 “As for solitude, silence and darkness, all we can say is that these are factors connected with infantile anxiety, something that most of us never wholly overcome” (Freud, 2003, p. 159). However, in both Hurn’s and Fuller’s works, aren’t the discarded toys once again reunited in a family of sorts? Aren’t the worn out ordinary objects also uncannily elevated to the status of art and revered by artists who consider their apparition “miraculous”, in line with Hurn’s own approach to beauty? The photographer’s aim is to create beautiful pictures, of any and all subject matter. […] For many people the word beauty is associated with the predictable– pictures previously seen and already in their memory banks […]. For me, most great photographs displaying beauty reveal a sensation of strangeness, not predictability, a kind of shock non-recognition inside the familiar. (Hurn & Jay, 2009, p. 70)

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Conclusion: “A smile, seraphic, / And one long- stemmed rose”

41 Though their works might seem unrelated in many respects, one can sense that, like Diane Arbus, David Hurn is prone to marveling at the beauty and wonders of small things. And this quote by Arbus dating from November 1939 could serve as a caption to more than one photo in Writing the Picture: Everything that has been on earth has been different from any other thing. That is what I love: the differentness, the uniqueness of all things and the importance of life… I see something that seems wonderful; I see the divineness in ordinary things. (2003, p. 70)

42 Hurn has a knack for capturing the sacredness of daily life, be it the descent of seagulls fed by an old woman on a pier (“Sixty years from our wonder we expect a miraculous descent”, WP, p. 16); a primitive outdoor sculpture made by a farmer out of cement, broken crockery and the head of an old baby doll (“But to greet you at the farm / Is this still Sibyl, answering / Everything and nothing”, WP, p. 15); or an ordinary middle-aged woman about to cross a street in Cardiff with a rose in her left hand: Late though it is and Though the way be hard Through evening traffic On life’s boulevard My pace will quicken Bringing to—who knows?— A smile, seraphic, And one long-stemmed rose. (WP, p. 76)

43 Although there is no religious dimension about Writing the Picture, the photos and poems testify to a quest for—or a return of—the sacred as it is defined by the French philosopher Jean-Claude Pinson: Quelque chose, phénoménologiquement, prend l’allure du sacré lorsqu’il est appréhendé comme mysterium tremendum et fascinans, comme ce que Rudolf Otto appelle le « numineux ». En tant que mystère, il se donne en se voilant, en se réservant, à la manière du secret de l’Etre heideggerien. D’autre part, il est appréhendé à travers une tonalité affective (Stimmung) ambivalente : il y a en même temps saisissement, effroi, mouvement de recul et attirance, « sentiment de la merveille », pour reprendre une expression de Julien Gracq. (1995, p. 113)8

44 What singularizes Writing the Picture, though, is that the advent of the sacred is almost always preceded by a stage of uncanniness. Hurn and Fuller are surely more fascinated by what the photographer calls “miraculous” sights than in awe, but there is no denying that their art emanates from a mysterium tremendum et fascinans witnessed in ordinary life. This is epitomized by the curious procession of wild goats seized by Hurn in Llanaelhaearn in 2008 (WP, p. 93), and by the unpredictable imagery in Fuller’s verse: Dignitary, chieftain, concubine, They shift the clattering scree in stately line Like someone’s weariness in washing up Cup after cup after cup after cup after cup. Then turn the mountain-top into a shrine. (WP, p. 92) Startlingly enough, the ascent of those dignified goats coming out of the blue on the edge of a deserted, almost ruined cliff is compared to the domestic task of washing up the dishes. However much the odd compulsive repetition (“Cup after cup…”) may be

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interpreted as an attempt to render the slowness of the scene as well as its acoustics (the sounds of crockery in the sink echo like the clattering steps of the goats on the schist ground), it fails to anticipate the final sacred vision. This leaves the readers speechless… and beguiled by the restored order of a “mountain-top [turned] into a shrine”. The camera has this power to pinpoint the extra-ordinary (“unheimlich”) held within the ordinary (“heimlich”), while sometimes glimpsing sacredness on the horizon of our daily life. Altogether, aren’t some photos comparable to sealed receptacles of the light of creation—tremendum et fascinans? The earliest photographs of Vega captured Light sent before photography’s invention. Out of the dark we come. Into the dark we go. Your shutter greedily gulps its share of light, And the distinctive absences of light. (Fuller, 2015, p. 74)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ARBUS Diane, 2003, Revelations, London, Random House.

AUDEN Wystan Hugh, 1989, The Dyer’s Hand [1962], New York, Vintage Books.

AUDEN Wystan Hugh, 1994, Collected Poems [1976], London, Faber.

BARTHES Roland, 2009, Mythologies [1957], translated by Annette Lavers, London, Vintage.

FREUD Sigmund, 2003, The Uncanny [1919], translated by David McLintock, London, Penguin Books.

FULLER John, 1998, W. H. Auden: A Commentary, Princeton, Princeton University Press.

FULLER John, 2012, New Selected Poems 1983–2008, London, Chatto & Windus.

FULLER John, 2014, You’re Having Me On, Holt, Wiltshire, Laurel Books.

FULLER John, 2015, Gravel in My Shoe, London, Chatto & Windus.

FULLER John & HURN David, 2010, Writing the Picture, Bridgend, Wales, Seren.

HURN David & JAY Bill, 2000, On Looking at Photographs, Portland, LensWork Publishing.

HURN David & JAY Bill, 2009, On Being a Photographer, Anacortes, LensWork Publishing.

JAY Bill, 1995, Occam’s Razor: An Outside-In View of Contemporary Photography, Tucson, Nazraeli Press.

KRISTEVA Julia, 1991, Strangers to Ourselves [1988], translated by Leon S. Roudiez, Hemel Hempstead, Harvester Wheatsheaf.

PINSON Jean-Claude, 1995, Habiter en poète, Seyssel, Champ Vallon.

SONTAG Susan, 2008, On Photography [1977], London, Penguin Modern Classics.

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NOTES

1. In all the quotes, the italics are mine. 2. Henceforth, we shall use WP as an abbreviation of Writing the Picture (Fuller & Hurn, 2010). 3. Almost all the photos under study in this article can be found on the following website: . 4. In Welsh language poetry, the cynghanedd (literally “harmony”) is a form based on sound- arrangement within one line, using stress, alliteration and rhyme. Here, Fuller chose a specific form of cynghanedd whereby at least three consonants in the first half of the line are repeated in the same order in the second half. 5. John Fuller wrote a major work on W. H. Auden whom he regards as one of his mentors (see Fuller, 1998). 6. See, for example, Mr and Mrs Robert Andrews (1748-1750) by Thomas Gainsborough. 7. . 8. In phenomenology, things start bearing sacred overtones when they are approached as mysterium tremendum et fascinans—i.e. as what Rudolf Otto calls the “Numinous”. As mysteries, they reveal themselves to us through a veil, reservedly, not unlike the secret of Heidegger’s Being. Moreover, they are approached through an ambivalent affective tone (Stimmung), simultaneously engendering shock and dread, attraction and recoil—what Julien Gracq calls the “feeling of wonder”. (My translation)

ABSTRACTS

From the late 1980s onwards, John Fuller started writing poems intended to illustrate several pictures taken by David Hurn between 1966 and 2009. This collaboration—which is unprecedented in the history of Welsh art—gave rise to the publication of Writing the Picture in 2010. At the confluence of two aesthetics that keep on feeding each other, this collection of duotone images and poems is undeniably imbued with a sense of what Freud calls “the Uncanny”. Indeed, according to Hurn, who also is a photography theoretician, the best pictures produce forms of strangeness that are crucial to their success. And the uncanniness characterizing his art —including the weirdness of ordinary scenes of the Welsh daily life—obviously fascinated Fuller whose perfect mastery of complex forms always testifies to some unfulfilled wish to better grasp the mysteries of the real.

À partir de la fin des années 1980, John Fuller commence à illustrer de ses vers plusieurs photos de David Hurn prises entre 1966 et 2009. Le fruit de cette collaboration inédite dans l’histoire de l’art gallois donnera lieu à l’ouvrage Writing the Picture publié en 2010. Ce recueil, au confluent de deux esthétiques qui n’ont de cesse de s’enrichir mutuellement, est sans conteste baigné d’une « inquiétante étrangeté » au sens de Freud. Pour le théoricien qu’est Hurn, c’est en effet de son caractère étrange que toute grande photo tire sa force. Et c’est sans nul doute cette caractéristique de ses plus grands clichés — et l’étrangeté de scènes ordinaires du quotidien — qui fascine Fuller, dont la parfaite maîtrise des formes poétiques les plus complexes témoigne toujours en creux d’un désir à jamais inassouvi de mieux cerner les mystères du réel.

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INDEX

Mots-clés: Fuller, Hurn, poésie, photographie, inquiétante étrangeté Keywords: Fuller, Hurn, poetry, photography, uncanny

AUTHOR

AURÉLIEN SABY Aurélien Saby earned a PhD in 20th century poetry from Paris-Sorbonne University (Paris 4) in 2013. His dissertation bore on the city in W. H. Auden’s work. His research currently focuses on both W. H. Auden and the post-Auden generation. He wrote several articles on Auden, on the contemporary poet John Fuller and on the Welsh photographer David Hurn. He teaches at lycée Hélène Boucher (CPGE) in Paris. He has published articles on entitled “‘Don’t look at me, don’t look’ I’m doing wrong… to myself! A Poetic Approach to Drug Addiction by John Fuller and David Hurn” (in Wrongdoing, actes du colloque international Wrongdoing, Realities, Representations, Reactions, 23–25 juin 2015; textes réunis par Elizabeth Durot-Boucé), “W. H. Auden and the Mezzogiorno” in Literature and Geography, The Writing of Space throughout History, edited by Emmanuelle Peraldo (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016), and “Lecture de ‘Down There’ de W. H. Auden : de la cave des origines au retour de la guerre” in the online journal Polysèmes.

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Review Recension

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Hugh MacDiarmid, Un Enterrement dans l’île, traductions de Paol Keineg Brest, Les Hauts-Fonds, 2016, 122 p. – ISBN: 978-2-919171-14-9

Stéphanie Noirard

REFERENCES

Hugh MacDiarmid, Un Enterrement dans l’île, traductions de Paol Keineg, Brest, Les Hauts-Fonds, 2016, 122 p. – ISBN: 978-2-919171-14-9

1 “Any author ought to be a translator for translation enables us to learn our own language, to measure the gaps between languages and to break free from the linguistic manacles that enslave us”, Paol Keineg declares. The Breton poet, playwright and academic has translated into French several American authors and was awarded the Maurice-Edgar Coindreau prize for his 1995 translation of William Bronk’s The World, the Worldless. Keineg’s Boudica (1980) was also translated by Keith Waldrop in 1994 and was saluted by the American Book Review as a “work that moves from the specific to the universal, a work that would reclaim lost ground, both politically and poetically”. Setting on to work on Hugh MacDiarmid, and being confronted with his wide range of linguistic experiments, from Synthetic Scots to scientific poetry, from Joycean portmanteaus to terse statements or found poetry, is a new and daring step towards poetic claims. It is also a very personal challenge as Hugh MacDiarmid has been a recurrent interest for Paol Keineg, from his discovery of In Memoriam James Joyce in the early 70s to his affirmation in Préfaces au Gododdin (1987): “I am brother to all ransomed nations: Dafydd ap Gwilym, Hugh MacDiarmid, Salvador Espriu, Aimé Césaire, Jane Austen and the Brontë Sisters.”

2 Despite the indisputable brilliance of his poetry, the poet of the Scottish Renaissance remains a confidential author among French English speakers as very few of his poems were translated beforehand, among which parts of A Drunkman Looks at the Thistle, translated by Jacques Darras and Ivar Ch’vavar, respectively in French and Picard, and the few pieces published in Anthologie bilingue de la poésie anglaise—a title MacDiarmid

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would have cringed at—La Pléiade, 2005. Paol Keineg’s Un Enterrement dans l’île hence appears as the first and long-awaited collection of poems by MacDiarmid’s in French.

3 The Breton poet spent half of his life in the USA, notably teaching at Duke University where he lectured on national and linguistic minorities, nationalism and regionalism, and translation. He was an active member of the Democratic Breton Union and, in 1983, founded Poésie Bretagne with fellow poets Alain Le Beuze and Denis Rigal. The magazine aimed at publishing Breton authors and reviving and promoting a poetry disenfranchised from hackneyed Breton stereotypes. There is hence no coincidence in Paol Keineg translating one of the main figures of Scottish twentieth-century literature, a poet whose motto was “precedent, not tradition”. There is, in any case, a great comprehension of MacDiarmid’s antisyzygic love of the country and the faraway, and his need of variety, innovation and social changes, which the collection aims at showing.

4 Un Enterrement dans l’île starts with a foreword which gives a presentation of Hugh MacDiarmid’s life, focussing on his linguistic, political and literary struggles, while introducing the selection as a “personal choice” whose aim is to give an overview of his works and to “arouse the reader’s curiosity”. The book is then dedicated to a selection of forty-three poems set chronologically that speak for themselves, their author and, perhaps, their translator. Subsequent endnotes on Scottish culture are greatly helpful to French readers, whose knowledge of Scotland is often rather sparse. To some, these notes might however be looked upon as over-translations, over-explanations somewhat attenuating MacDiarmid’s modernism and the reader’s thrill at being confronted with linguistic daze and shock.

5 Apart from the longer “On a Raised Beach”, “Island funeral” and “In the Slums of Glasgow” which are fully translated, the book is mostly composed of shorter pieces, more than half of the poems being one-page or less than one-page long, and four extracts from long poems, “To Circumjack Cencrastus” (“Hokum”), “Second Hymn to Lenin”, “In Memoriam James Joyce” and “Dìreadh” (“Scotland Small”). Shorter texts appear as a good compromise especially when their density allows a full view of the author’s style and thoughts. Translated or partly translated poems are among MacDiarmid’s most famous, such as “On a Raised Beach”, “Scotland Small”, “The Caledonian Antisyzygy”, “The Little White Rose”, “Second Hymn to Lenin”, “In Memoriam James Joyce”, “Harry Semen”, “Advice to Younger Writers”. Others such as “The Fool”, “At my Father’s Grave”, “Crystals like Blood”, “Facing the Chair”, “Bracken Hills in Autumn”, “Two Memories”, “The Ross-shire Hills”, “Reflections in a Slum” are less known though they offer a clear vision of MacDiarmid’s cultural and philosophical ideas or social claims, while hinting at Paol Keineg’s preferences, hence giving the collection a more personal aspect. Some famous poems such as “The Watergaw”, “The Kind of Poetry I Want” or “Scotland my Scotland” deserved a place in a MacDiarmid Collection yet, of course, this would have required another volume—which we are actually hoping for.

6 As a title to his selection, Paol Keineg chose Un Enterrement dans l’île, from one of the poems, “Island Funeral”. Such a choice may come as a surprise to those who would have expected more nationalist hints and who are not acquainted with Paol Keineg’s first collections, Le poème du pays qui a faim ( The poem of the starving country) or Chroniques et croquis des villages verrouillés (Chronicles and sketches of locked up villages), where both men and landscape are confronted with immobility. When taken

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separately, the title may moreover refer to MacDiarmid’s long stay in Whalsay, the Shetland island where he lived almost as an exile but where he wrote much of his later work. Traditionally, the island also epitomises the Scottish culture one has to leave— possibly betray to some extent—to be open to the wider world, an echo, perhaps, of Paol Keineg’s own extended stay in America. Bearing the poem in mind, the reference is not only to the funeral yet future revival of the Gaelic language and culture, but also to a “weather-beaten people with eyes grown clear, / Like the eyes of travellers and seamen, / From always watching far horizons”, reminiscent of Paol Keineg’s own description in Le Poème du pays qui a faim: “plongez vos yeux dans mes yeux / vous franchirez les cap-horns inaccessibles” (“Look deeply into my eyes and you will round inaccessible Capes Horn”). “Island Funeral” also tells the story of “a people one of whose proverbs / Is the remarkable sentence: ‘Every force evolves a form.’”

7 MacDiarmid’s poetic force is indeed his modernist form—or forms—with texts that would challenge any translator. One should have expected a poet to rewrite rather than translate, hence be on the whole closer to the target language. However, it seems Paol Keineg chooses, whenever possible, to remain as faithful and close to MacDiarmid’s words and although readers may, as a result, sometimes be confronted with rhythmic or idiomatic slips—which anyway is the common lot of English readers delving into MacDiarmid’s texts—Keineg does justice to the Scottish author’s intricate wordings, while remaining faithful to his own later style as a poet. As for the Scottish poet’s efforts to revive Scots and develop its literary form, they are fully acknowledged by the translator as he uses French in the poems, emphasizing Scots as a language in its own right which does not require a translation in dialect. French readers will, however, miss the difference between MacDiarmid’s Scots poems and his later English texts and some may have appreciated a translation in Breton or perhaps Gallo of the former. These option were probably partly rejected as Paol Keineg, being a Breton from Finistère is not a speaker of Gallo, and as he feels uncomfortable with the synthetic Breton spoken nowadays.

8 Despite the inevitable limitation resulting from the dilemma which comes with the translation of minority languages, Keineg’s French anthology of Hugh MacDiarmid will be saluted as a first and major step towards giving French poetry readers some access to the genius and linguistic experiments of Hugh MacDiarmid, to the wide range of his themes and styles, while unveiling the translator’s personality. The selection will thus be a plus to French students who find it hard coping with MacDiarmid’s Scots or English and as an introduction to Scottish poetry, to translators for its rich, resourceful dealing with cross-references, to poetry readers for its world which is definitely other and which debunks Scottish clichés, to readers of Paol Keineg who will find in his translation parts of himself in the content, parts of his poetry in the form.

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AUTHORS

STÉPHANIE NOIRARD University of Poitiers. Stéphanie Noirard est maître de conférences en littérature britannique et traduction à l’université de Poitiers et membre du FoReLL, EA 3816. Ses recherches portent sur la poésie écossaise contemporaine et elle a publié des articles sur le sujet dans diverses revues comme Études anglaises, Scottish Literary Studies ou Civilisations. Elle a également contribué aux ouvrages Mountains Figured and Disfigured in the English-Speaking World (Cambridge Scholars 2010), Brittany/ Ireland: What Relations? (Centre de recherche bretonne et celtique, 2015) et Taking Liberties: Scottish Literature and Expressions of Freedom (Scottish Literature International, 2016). Elle s’intéresse plus particulièrement aux langues et cultures minoritaires, au rythme et à la voix, et à la poésie de guerre et du trauma.

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