CAILEAN MACLEAN reports on the celebrations of a 200 year old link between Skye and Prince Edward Island.

IN 1803 Calum Bàn MacMhannain sailed on the “Polly” to Prince Edward Island (PEI) in Canada. He was one of several hundred emigrants who participated in a scheme masterminded by Lord Selkirk to help beleaguered Gaelic-speaking communities settle in Canada. There, Selkirk hoped, they would be provided with land free from the excesses of landlords. Furthermore by settling together the relocated communities would retain their social and cultural characteristics.

In the case of Prince Edward Island, Selkirk’s scheme proved particularly successful and for the next 60 years or so it was the preferred destination for would-be migrants from Skye and Raasay. Projects he established to settle other parts of Canada proved more troublesome and ultimately, for Selkirk, ruinous.

The Polly sailed around midsummer 1803 and arrived in Orwell Bay in Prince Edward Island on the 7th August. Descendants of the Polly and others from Skye and Raasay are currently preparing to celebrate the 200th anniversary of her arrival with a full and varied programme of events, exhibitions and gatherings. In Skye & Raasay we chose to mark the anniversary of the Polly’s departure – and in the community drama, concerts, music commissions and exhibitions arranged, Calum Bàn’s name was very much to the fore.

Calum Bàn MacMhannainn was from Sartle in Staffin. He was involved in cattle rearing and shoemaking in the years prior to leaving for PEI and it was the failure of either to provide him with a basic living that prompted his decision to emigrate. Calum Bàn was also a poet and perhaps his most celebrated poetic legacy is a 120-line song he wrote about this emigration.

In it he gives an eye-witness account of the Polly’s departure from Portree and describes the conditions in Skye which gave him little choice but to leave. In the song he also extols the virtues of his new home. Among them he cites the availability of land which he could call his own and not be beholden to landlords.

He was also impressed with Prince Edward Islands’s natural fertility and the ease of growing crops there compared with the marginal slopes in Skye on which he had tried unsuccessfully to eke out an existence. Calum Bàn was also delighted with the fact that maple syrup, or as he put it “sugar from trees”, could be had there free and in great quantities.

It seemed entirely appropriate therefore that Angus Peter Campbell’s community play specially commissioned for the occasion was called “Siùcar nan Craobh” or Sugar From Trees. In fact, “Siùcar nan Craobh” was the centrepiece of the Skye end of celebrations.

Using different locations in Portree village as the ‘stage’ for the drama, it told the story of the emigrants’ departure in 1803. It featured many of the characters, such as Lord Selkirk, his agent Angus MacAulay and Calum Bàn himself, who would have figured strongly in the actual events 200 years ago.

Around 80 actors, singers, dancers and sundry extras, all costumed as they might have been in the early 19th century, took part, and it proved to be an exciting and moving spectacle. And to the strains of Psalm 23, sung by cast and the substantial audience alike, ‘emigrants’ were rowed out from the quay to an awaiting ship bringing the curtain down on “Siùcar nan Craobh”. It appears that we might not have to wait another 100 years for an excuse to stage “Siùcar nan Craobh” again – there are moves afoot to repeat the exercise later this summer.

The name “Sugar From Trees” was to reappear in music newly commissioned for the anniversary. The commission involved musicians from Skye and Prince Edward Island and one of the latter, Steve Sharratt, composed a powerful song to which he gave this title.

This and the other commissioned pieces where performed in a series of four concerts held in Raasay and Skye. They featured some of Skye’s best-known musicians, such as Blair Douglas, Neil Campbell, Donnie Munro and Anne Martin. With Cliar and the Peat Bog Faeries also performing concerts as part of the anniversary celebrations much of the island’s musical talent was on show during the ten-day festival.

Once again recourse was made to Calum Bàn’s poem for a name for the series of concerts. Given that they involved musicians from both Skye and Prince Edward Island and celebrated the Polly’s historic voyage, the words “Thairis air Sàil” (Across the Ocean) seemed appropriate.

Elsewhere in his poem, Calum Bàn described Prince Edward Island as the “Isle of Contentment” – this was the title given to another concert which formed part of the anniversary celebrations. This was organised by Skye & Lochalsh Young Music Makers and featured music relating to emigration. Coincidentally, the same title is being used for an exhibition of Prince Edward Island history and literature being staged in Portree library later this summer.

Meanwhile, An Tuireann Art gallery in conjunction with the local Museums’ Service, have organised three exhibitions to run sequentially over the summer to mark the anniversary. The first “Where I Belong” featured the work of Duncan Macpherson, a Kyle-based photographer, M.E.M Donaldson, and five photographers from Prince Edward Island.

This fine exhibition is now on it way to Prince Edward Island and will be on show during their August celebrations. Currently showing in Portree is “Describing a Line”, an artist film project based on the movement of ocean and symbolising the journey across the Atlantic. Finally, “The Kist” will feature a series of craft commissions by both Skye & Lochalsh and Scotland-based practitioners. The commissions will be inspired by a silver button of the Skye Volunteers from 1790 found in recent years in Prince Edward Island and returned to Skye.

Emigration in general is the theme of an exhibition being shown at the Museum of the Isles at Armadale castle.  This is due to run throughout the summer.

A group of 20 Prince Edward Islanders visited Skye & Raasay during the main celebrations at the end of June. Among other things they were invited by Forest Enterprise to officially launch a project to re-structure a woodland in the Kinloch area of Sleat. The visitors planted an oak near the deserted settlement of Leitir Fura, a village which was cleared of its people in the 19th century. This oak is the first of half a million native species to be planted in the woodland over the coming years. A plaque made of local elm was also unveiled. It bears the simple Gaelic inscription:

’S ann a theid mi thar sàil,
’S ann a leanas mi càch,
Feuch a faigheamaid àite còmhnaidh.*
Calum Bàn MacMhannain, 1758-1829

.
*I will go across the ocean
I will follow others
In search of a new place to settle

Cailean Maclean is the coordinator of An Tarsainn / The Crossing

© Cailean Maclean, 2003