Review
This is one of the books Bill on Tiree lent me to take with me down to Wales, and I must get my own copy.
In many ways Joseph Murphy's journey mirrored my own walk around Wales. He walked the Gaelic sea coast from South West Ireland to the Northern tip of the Outer Hebrides as a means to make sense of his own Gaelic heritage and issues of sustainable development on the Atlantic fringe.
He is clearly a far more experienced walker than I was when I started (and still am), and also seemed to be far better prepared in terms of both planning the logistics of his walk and reading history and literature before hand.
The book is an account of his 1500 kilometre walk (approx. 1000 miles) including his experiences as a walker and of the people he met and places he saw en route.
As a walker many of his experiences resonant with my own, three weeks in feeling "like a man forty years older", swopping sides of the road to walk a different camber (unfortunately not possible when the camber is the slope of a cliff edge, always the same direction), and finding villages with three outs and no breakfast. Some problems are far worse in Scotland tan in Wales, notably the midges!
The stories of his encounters with people are vibrant and rich including many accounts of generosity and some of ignorance … particular amongst English incomers.
He encounters multiple examples of large-scale development being foisted on fragile rural communities, many connected with energy production both renewable and non-renewable. He struggles with the difficulties and contradictions between the needs for carbon reduction and the impact some of the proposed solutions have on traditional communities.
Some of this may be truly necessary, but the high-handed and often ignorant policies of distant policy makers make it hard to trust the arguments. Just recently Lord Howell, a Tory peer and advisor to the government on energy policy said that Fracking can take place in 'desolate' north-east England. However, I think Murphy would be hearted by the Indian villagers who thwarted plans to mine their sacred mountain.
Notes
- p.8
"Celtic monks let salt water take the place of sand …"
- p.11
"I knew you had the Irish" "It's like a good dentist working with an old tooth. If you root around long enough out it comes" … metaphor for his walk
- p.37
Loch Léinn - lake of learning "The 'Dark Ages' were clearly less dark in some parts of Europe than others."
- p.50
"You need a pair of sandals" - advice from his wife - JM mutilates his shoes as second best
- p. 55
switching road sides to change camber when ankles hurt
- p.75
geographic space vs place - Relph "Place and Placelessness"
- p.82
"Am I not a man" robbed of language and culture
- p.88
Irish rain ...
- p.92
joints seizing up after 3 weeks on the road - "like a man forty years older"
- p.110
- Shell project in Mayo - "community doing development for itself or is development being down to it?"
- p.111
journalist - the 'idle' rural poor who should "grow up and start living in the third millennium"
- p.111
Irish energy policy "predict and provide" (c.f. Smart Grid)
- p.113
Irish speaking Category A regions - 67% daily speakers - critical mass
- p.114
languages disappearing, one every two weeks
- p.116
village in decline - challenge of sustainable development for Ireland
- p.118
pub with no sandwich despite shop next door
- p.121
Ballycastle - three pubs/shops … but no breakfast
- p.122
"Big Read" in Killala - "second hand books lining the walls"
- p.146
from sustainability to well being
- p.163
Galogas - (Scots Gaelic) warriors with long axes to unseat a Norman knight
- p.170
Tory Island of Donegal - easier to understand Hebridean Gaelic than southern Irish
- p.181
"You have to be rabidly post-modern to enjoy seeing a mock timber facade sandwiched between Greek columns and mediaeval turrets" (re Irish ostentation school of architecture)
- p.233
incomers' (Southern English) views of 'locals' in the Highlands and Islands
- p.237
16 words for hill/mountain in Gaelic - just like Eskimos and snow
- p.239
Celtic monks and nature poetry "an eye washed miraculously clear by continual spiritual exercises … *strange vision* of natural things in an almost unnatural purity."
- p.258
overheard mobile phone "I'M ON STAFF-FA"
- p.260
he does not like crowds!
- p.260
uncaring coach drivers
- p.268/269
Gaelic tree-name alphabet and alphabet trails
- p.286
Skye by any other name?
- p.287/288
language for self-respect and development
- p.290
Skye English incomer talking about "Typical Skye … They don't know what a hard day's work is"
- p.291
David Paterson "A Long Walk on the Isle of Skye"
- p.297/298
Skye Bridge global capital and local power
- p.314
- in North Uist - local man says he can talk to Donegal, but to Islay or Mull
- p.316
the hedgehog debacle!
- p.316
"lazy beds" (c.f. Soay on Tiree), anything but lazy!
- p.317
Prince Charles "Lord of the Isles" as well as 'Prince of Wales'
- p.325
Scalpay - coal word for Corncrake = "gràineag" = 'hedgehog' in standard Gaelic
- p.328
North Harris Trust website says the community "prizes its Gaelic language", but has no Gaelic version of the site.
- p.333
scarcity of wood - carrying roof timbers to new house from old one
- p.334
West Side Coastal Walk on Lewis
- p.336
historic links between Free Church and Gaelic language
- p.337/338
Lewis villages (like on Tiree) stretch from moor to sea, not simple nuclear model even when Houses one end of the land.
- p.339
the decision to refuse planning for Lewis turbine array was purely on ecological, not cultural/community grounds. Indeed "the decision making process had no capacity to take cultural concerns into consideration"
- p.347/358
Gaelic areas Scotland an Ireland in 19th century treated as "primitive and backward" where they should "try to be more English and less Gaelic" - a "colonial experience similar to the experience of people n Africa and elsewhere"
- p.351
climate change often used as excuse for national concerns to overrule local ones in remote areas. Murphy looks to vision of sustainable development that is locally based
