Dunbeath, Caithness, 7-9 November 2003

NEIL MILLER GUNN was born in Dunbeath, Caithness, on 8 November, 1891 (he died in 1973). The events of this celebratory weekend were centred on the Dunbeath Heritage Centre, which once served as the only school Gunn ever formally attended.

Friday evening featured a launch of a reprint of Gunn’s The Silver Bough, published by the local publishing company, Whittles Publishing, in Latheronwheel. The launch was followed by a talk entitled “A Song of Life” by Professor Maria Luisa Vega of Madrid, who is translating The Silver Darlings into Spanish. She concentrated on features of Gunn’s language which gave insight into the novel as a whole.

Saturday saw two further launches: that of a Neil Gunn Reading Group and the 2004 Neil Gunn writing competition, long a feature of the Highland writing landscape. John Pick, friend and biographer of Gunn, added his insights on another talk on the subject “What is story for?”

Local poet and playwright George Gunn considered the dramatic impact of Gunn’s work. A dreich November afternoon took some of the more intrepid outdoors to look at strath and harbour, both central to Gunn’s fiction.

That evening in the cosy Dunbeath Hotel, the film The Silver Darlings was shown to a packed house, rounded off with music by locals Gordon Gunn on fiddle and Alastair Macdonald on keyboards. Gordon Gunn premiered his composition “Morning Tide”, inspired by another of Neil Gunn’s novels, which was demanded again to end the evening.

Sunday gave us a poetry reading by George Gunn, which may be a candidate for the first-ever poetry reading on a Sunday at 10a.m. in Scotland?! [not sure about that, but it may well be a first for the Highlands, unless the participants were still on their way to bed – ed]

The reading was followed by a general discussion about where the event itself might go in the future. Finally, the Highland Festival showcased the Oratorio “Dunbeath Water”, inspired by the works of Neil Gunn, with a libretto by poet Robert Davidson and music by William Gilmour.

That’s what happened, but more than that was going on. Scholarship, poetry, drama, film, music, heritage and much more. Tightropes were walked between scholarly and grassroots, the esoteric and the accessible, international and local. The most popular item in terms of numbers was the 1948 film of The Silver Darlings, which prompted one comment that the “boats weren’t as wooden and creaking as the acting”, and featured such polished BBC accents have never been heard north of The Ord, but the film provided much local interest for its extras, camera shots, etc.

Gunn himself was at the centre of the weekend, while his reputation as a writer ebbs and flows like the Caithness tide. All those who dropped in to the weekend at any stage would be aware that this event will run and run, and might one day serve as a festival in itself, not necessarily in this shape or format, but inspired by it.

It was a unique event, maybe eccentric but not the least apologetic or self-conscious, like Caithness itself. It promises much for the future.  It sent people away to look at Gunn’s work again with fresh eyes, in a new light, and that was one of the stated goals of A Light in The North.

Tom Bryan is the Arts Development Officer for Caithness

© Tom Bryan, 2003