Yearning for the hills of home

I WAS thinking about Scottish soldiers as I motorcycled up the Strath of Kildonan last week. The surrounding hills had a hint of purple; soon the heather will be in full bloom. It put me in mind of that phrase from Housman, the classical scholar and poet, who wrote, wistfully, about "blue remembered hills".

Next thing I was singing Andy Stewart’s "Scottish Solider". It talks about a soldier, a Scottish soldier, who wanders far away and had "fought in many a fray" but yearns for the hills of home, not the foreign land he finds himself in.

My Dad, bless him, was a great fan of Scottish music, so we grew up on a staple diet of Callum Kennedy, Jimmy Shand, Kenneth McKellar et al.

Andy Stewart, I well remember (who was Dad’s favourite), hosted the White Heather Club and we always took in Hogmanay watching him on telly.

Latterly he was not a well man but he soldiered on, even when recurrent ill-health took its toll. He persevered, often looking gaunt, his performances lacking that vital sparkle he was renowned for. But in our house he was a legend.

It was Monday, August 15. Suddenly I remembered it was Dad’s birthday and, had he still been alive, he would be celebrating his 91st birthday – doubtless with a dram and an Andy Stewart song! Believe me, all sorts of thoughts go through your mind on the open roads...

Before I know it I’m transported back to my childhood days in the Louisburgh Street flats and the family home in Willowbank.

I remembered the ceildh gatherings, a houseful of characters and the drams. Part of me was ambivalent about them at the time but now, feeling slightly maudlin, I realise just how much I miss them.

FURTHER up Kildonan, as the strath opens out and later merges into Strath Halladale, I can see the hills have changed again, this time assuming a bleached look; laid bare as the result of recent woodland harvesting.

I’m not sure what to make of this route. It is certainly beautiful and it is good to escape on to comparatively empty roads. Every roadside lay-by, though, has fancy 4x4s pulled over in them and along the river banks I can see the salmon anglers out in numbers.

Resplendent in their wide-checked tweeds it seems the rivers Helmsdale and Halladale are cashing in on their seasonal lure. It was a lure that diverted the North rail line to loop far inland to service the former Victorian shooting estates.

The route of the rail line had nothing to do with the needs of local communities.

So all these public school toff-types get my gander up. Ever notice how they speak in such a heroic manner, like they are shouting into the teeth of a gale? "Excuse me Old Chap, do you mind awfully if I park my vehicle in this lay-by"?

Yes sir. No sir. Three bags full sir. Why don’t they all just go away and leave us in peace! Of course we are told we need them. Think how much inward investment they bring to Highland communities. Aye right!

I pull over near Kinbrace to take more photographs. Here the landscape to the west is wide open and empty; at times austere it seems to stretch out forever. It is also breathtakingly stunning.

It’s not easy to dismiss notions of primordial spirits lurking, lost, in these forlorn wastelands. On the saddle of my Yamaha Drag Star 650cc motorcycle I could just as easily be a frontiersman looking out over the Badlands – the Great Plains – of North Dakota.

Out there, I imagine the spirit of hedonistic General George Armstrong Custer making his "Last Stand" at the Battle of Little Bighorn. The Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho were victors that day but, ultimately, First Nation Americans are history’s real losers.

Maybe, it’s the spirits of all those Native Americans who suffered and died along the Trail of Tears – an act modern historians regard as genocide – that have somehow permeated into my subconscious as I scan Sutherland’s own great plains.

Does history provide us with any winners, I wonder?

WE Scots know about trails and clearances. Our own history has sordid chapters of diaspora – forced eviction and yearning for the homelands.

As Andy Stewart reminds us:

"Because those green hills are not Highland hills

or the island hills

they’re not my land’s hills

and fair as these green foreign hills may be

they are not the hills of home."

What are we, in this day and age, to make of this empty Highland landscape? Especially when poets like Edwin Muir remind us that once upon a time: "We were a tribe, a family, a people." Then "a simple sky roofed in that rustic day".

Previous generations of landed gentry had found it increasingly difficult to recruit Highlanders to fight in foreign campaigns. Hardly surprising. It was they who had emptied the straths and glens, clearing indigenous crofting families to make way fro large-scale sheep farms. And, in time, turned it into a happy hunting ground for a privileged elite. The remnants of whom still abound, as I can see today.

"You robbed us of our country and gave it to the sheep. Therefore, since you have preferred sheep to men, let sheep defend you," the Strathnaver laird, the Duke of Sutherland, was once telt.

I’m cruising parallel to the north line on my motorcycle. An old snow fence made from once sturdy railway sleepers has fallen into disrepair; the timbers looked bleached and broken, propped like fallen sentinels they harken back to a golden age of rail.

I stop at a roadside war memorial near Trantlemore, just a few miles south of Melvich near the head of Strath Halladale. Here I had previously penned a poem called "Old Scotia Died With Them".

It was, at times, bitter.

"The sons of Strath Halladale no more

Their blood long since spilt

There is no passion in Passchendaele

Just the seed of a lost generation

Sown amidst the barren wastelands of Flanders."

Now we had a grey granite cross, I reflected, where Old Scotia and Gaul accord entente cordiale. The inter-mingled place names – battlefield and home – were very poignant: Neuve Chapelle, Colval, Armentiers, Achumore..

"Private Ross son of Colval no more

To Neuville Vitasse with Black Watch dispatched

A soldier brave and decorated

Military Medal, Croix de Guerre and Star

And there he lies a foreign field. 1918

Old Scotia died with them."

Where once the "ceildh and the craic" I noted instead "no more the beat of the drum at eventide".

"Instead their names, a memorial, rest by the riverside

The sons of Strath Halladale no more

Old Scotia died with them."

Like I say I was thinking about Scottish soldiers as I motorcycled up the empty straths. All sorts of thoughts go through your mind on the open roads.

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