I’m reading a thick pack of lies. It’s called a novel. This one is thicker than most so it might contain more lies. More people who are not real. It’s called “A Suitable Boy” and Vikram Seth is taking me back to India even though I’ve never been there. Well you can’t just work a few tides and get there, when you clear The Sound.

There’s a reason why I say I’m back in India. A year last boxing-day I received a phone-call from my oldest son. He and his girlfriend traveled together, through India for a period of several months. He had been there before but with a kayak. The purpose of that first journey, as I understand it, was to cope with the challenge of interesting rivers. It’s what they call an extreme sport. The purpose of his second visit, as I understand it, was to look and experience what they met, as a couple travelling and colliding with cultures very different to those of the Outer Hebrides or of Devon.

I was held, rooted to my chair by Sean’s commentary. He simply described what he saw and felt, from a public phone which had no screen around it. How children were coming up close and gazing into his eyes. There is no culture of privacy, no taboo at that intent staring. Fingers would reach out and pull at the twisted strands of ginger hair we call dreadlocks. Sean said he was seeing some people resting. A woman was lying in her sari. This would also be her blanket, her shelter. It was probably the only thing she possessed. The observations were relayed immediately to the Outer Hebrides. The father was learning through the son’s eyes.

But Seth’s characters matter to me a lot, even if they’re not real people. I can’t enter the minds of the real children or the woman described by Sean, nor those of the people studying him and the people he was studying. But Vikram Seth has allowed me to be intimate with a steady stream of minds. Some live in a fictional city and some in the non-fictional city of Calcutta. And some live in villages. I’ve just realized that the traveller’s narrative and the fiction have something in common. I’m completely dependent on the consciousness of the person who is reporting what they perceive or imagine or both. Both are aiming for nothing less than truth.

It’s only this morning I was telling lies to the innocent. Storytelling to the first three Secondary years in Tobermory High School, one class after another. I asked a few questions, in between the yarns. I asked what books they were reading. A futuristic trilogy was described by many. “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins has been top of the Amazon children’s best seller list for some time now. People have to play daring mind-games to obtain food. So it was not too big a leap to build pictures of imagined islands – to help the pupils map them, their personal map from their own imaginations.

There were the bronze cliffs, high and deep as the basalt cliffs of Fingals Cave, but on the floating island where Aeolus lives in peace and plenty in the bosom of his extended family. I explained how The Odyssey came to life for me in the rugged translation of Robert Fagles. It could well be that episodes began as spoken stories before they were formed into the ringing language of Homer. So we were simply returning to that.

Then we imagined the bronze pillars which support the island of the women somewhere out to the west of Ireland. The line of thought reminds me of another island you can only find sometimes, the one in Orkney which appears out of haar. It hosts the summer home of a daughter, lost to the sea but who has made a good living for herself and her child, with her tall Finman. Even though he’s a bit short of words and his fingers are nearly joined in a web.

We looked under the water, the way the widespan sonar equipment does, aboard the research-vessel the class had visited just before coming back for the stories. I told the North Uist version of the selkie story. It’s inevitable that the seal-wife will find her skin again and that her nature will make it impossible to stay on land afterwards. So she leaves her children and dives down out of our normal sight.

Departing Oban (© Ian Stephen)

Then I had a request. The girl-guides in the class had been along to an Tobar the night before. They had heard me tell the strange Irish story of the hook, the knife and the axe. It shares the imagery of three huge waves, with many other stories, from Brittany to Iceland. But it’s not only meteorological conditions meeting geological ones. Water forced, under pressure to swell its way through gaps or over bulges in the sea-bed.

If this story is also a lie – and it is seriously weird in places – then it had enough resonance for these young people to want to hear it again.

I think now there’s a lot of truth in this tale and in the selkie story and in the geography of floating or lost islands. The reason we’re drawn into these impossible stories is because the characters in them ring true – the way they behave – even if they are half seal and half human. You wouldn’t be moved by the ending if you didn’t recognize something in the seal-wife who has to return to her home environment. Her first home. And she does leave the best of fish on the rocks for her children.

This visit to Mull had the purpose of linking with the visit of the research ship as part of Oban’s Festival of the Sea. Dr John Howe gave a passionate talk on seabed mapping accompanied by a spectacular 3d imaging show. I hope the stories took us to equally scientific scrutiny of our relationship with the sea. But the science is human psychology.

For more information about Ian visit his website at www.ianstephen.co.uk

© Ian Stephen, 2012

Baltic traders in Stornoway

Bookmarks

Dinny Smith comes home

Among the Bushrangers


The Gorilla Hunters

Two Years before the Mast


The Coral Sea


The Sea of Adventure

Kidnapped

Northern Diver

From Russia with Love

And then there was John Sandwick

who steered you to the Baltic

(the books department, not the shoes).


You browsed, he smiled.

You’d read everything in the house


but you’d reached the age for tickets.


You read the books at the shelves

till they said you could take them home.

The lady librarian explained spines,

how they could snap

if you folded and squeezed down,

how dog-ears spoiled it for everyone,

how bookmarks were best.

For more information about Ian visit his website at www.ianstephen.co.uk

© Ian Stephen, 2012

On Wednesday 15th February this Residency ranged a fair distance from the Western Isles. From a waypoint at the School of Scottish Studies, George Square, Edinburgh, I rode shotgun on a road movie to the outskirts of Swansea. We were on the edge of a Celtic sea-route where stories were traded along with produce. This was a family visit and we arrived to news of a sudden death. The sad news led in turn, a few days later, to an inland setting.

Storytellers at Calanais

The Thomas Helwys Baptist Church in Lenton, Nottingham is a strong example of 1960s architecture – exposed brickwork is set with great curving laminated timber beams. There is a feeling of space and calm inside. Across the road are contrasting icons of centuries. There is cluster of high-rise flats, of the same period as the church but now due for demolition. A much older fine brick warehouse with arching windows has been converted to student flats and looks set to be fit for a further century.

The death we had come to mark occurred in one of the bleak towers. The minister knew the man who died and had been a main link to tight circles of a limited world outside. We dealt with the necessary business together and, in the course of our exchange Jenny (the Baptist minister) asked me about my own work. I told her I was now a Reader in Residence in the Hebrides. She told me the church had its own reading group and it met the next day. Could I come and tell a story?

So that is how the stories gleaned from Western Isles Libraries and the School of Scottish Studies archives were told in a district of Nottingham.

Two research students began the discussion. They are writing a joint dissertation, comparing different reading groups. One read a descriptive poem but omitted the title. So it was a riddle. This suggested the story of the wise grieve at Calanais farm (collected and transcribed by Donald Morrison, cooper, Stornoway) . As readers of this blog, listeners to Isles FM and members of a reading group in Stornoway and another in Lenton know, this is one of many stories with a pattern of three. Each element is really a sort of riddle. Now those who have heard it can share that story further.

But I’m going to continue the journey with one more story suggested by the last. Angus Cameron, recorded in Skye in 1958, provided a fine version of another witty tale included in the Morrison manuscript but he also offered another group of three riddles.

George Buchanan was a historical figure but his name has become a timeless byname for the one who wins by wit. But he outstretched himself at least once. He was in the jail, in England and things were not looking great. His reputation was to be tested by the king who made him an offer. Answer three questions correctly and be granted freedom.

But Buchanan did a bit of fancy footwork first. His own brother, known to be a simple fellow, was smuggled in to take the learned man’s place.
So the brother heard the questions and provided his own answers.

How many ladders do you need, to reach the moon?


One – if it’s long enough.

How long will it take a man to go round the world?


Twenty-four hours, if he goes in step with the sun.

The King’s examiner must have been getting anxious then but his last card would have been the ace.
What am I thinking?

I know what you’re thinking all right. You’re thinking I’m George Buchanan. But you’re wrong – I’m his brother, the fool.

For more information about Ian visit his website at www.ianstephen.co.uk

© Ian Stephen, 2012

But of course Hamish had parallel careers as a translator and collector of folklore as well as a poet and writer of a small number of songs which can range from the scurrilous exercise of wit to the enormous scale of the Freedom Come All Ye. I was guided through the archival systems by Cathlin Macaulay and before long there was a reference in my hand which related to a recording made by said Mr Henderson. It related perfectly to a play I’ve got under construction – but not the direct subject of last week’s research.

A shoal of stories. Sir E Scott School.

It’s very like fishing. I was soon into a shoal. Most of the stories held in the archive are summarized in short paragraphs which themselves are fine examples of storytelling. You can then access the oral recording, originally on reel-to-reel machines and now also available as digital files on computer. And who should I meet at the fishing but Deirdre not of the sorrows – the MacMahone woman who organized a wonderful recreation of Gaelic psalm singing over the waters of Loch Erisort, last May.

Deirdre was looking to the north coast of Scotland for authentic links to recorded material. I was seeking versions of key stories in the Morrison manuscript – transcriptions of oral tales made in the 1800s.

Here are some findings:

I have already retold, in these columns, Morrison’s version of the story of the wise factor from Skye and the loss of a cow and boat. In 1958 Angus Cameron from Skye recorded exactly that story for the School of Scottish Studies. It is astonishing how similar even the sketched detail is. But even the English synopsis of this Gaelic recording provides a name for the wise factor.

Morrison records a strong version of the sinking of the galleon at Tobermory, linked to a tale of intrigue and the legend of Lady’s Rock, off Lismore. In 1953, Calum Maclean recorded one Captain D MacCormick describe a tradition which contains a detail of this gunpowder plot.

The story of the three knots which can control the wind ranges around the coasts of Scotland, east, north and west. Morrison lists one which describes the visit of a crew from Heisker, off North Uist to Lewis. In 1962 D A Macdonald recorded Donald Maclellan from Tigharry tell a version which runs very close. Now the Morrison manuscript was not republished until 1975 so the evidence points to an unbroken telling of seminal stories over several centuries. More of these stories later.

For more information about Ian visit his website at www.ianstephen.co.uk

© Ian Stephen, 2012

The plan was to use a seminal traditional story (transcribed by one Donald Morrison, cooper by trade) as a starting point. Then explore how the theme of crossing open water is echoed in other books. I borrowed two titles from a themed display, on stands you meet as you enter the library. Kevin Patterson’s The Water In Between and Richard Deakin’s Waterlog. Patterson’s book took a hold of me and other correspondence and accounts which had seemed so important were set aside.

It’s an account of a voyage in open ocean – the Pacific in this case – undertaken for traditional reasons. The author had been unlucky in love. So has his companion who happily does know how to sail and navigate. By the end of the adventure so does Patterson. But his urgent impulse to sail his small ship home to Western Canada is at least equal to the restless desire that made him leave it.

At another level, this gripping read is also an analysis of travel writing, not only journeys by sea. He writes well on Theroux and Chatwin. But he can turn the same wry and sharp wit on his own quests.

Deakin’s book is a different type of journey. It follows a concept – suggested by a John Cheever story which also resulted in the movie The Swimmer (starring Burt Lancaster). But this is a swimmer’s journey through Britain rather than the 8 miles home from a party on Long Island. (That’s the other Long Island, the one across the pond.)

Of course he can’t swim from one length of the joined-up countries to the other. It’s more an investigation into the localized places where there is swimming without chlorine. There’s a fair bit of wit and Deakin approaches swimming the way some would poaching. He has a war of words with the gamekeepers who would keep exclusive chalk stream waters for the trout and their pursuers. He finds eccentric clubs of people who hold to traditions of leaping into cold or partly-heated waters but all in the outdoors, in salt or fresh water. He even attempts to find a fabled pool in underground caverns. And there is a build-up towards the goal of swimming the Corrievreckan gulf. That’s where Orwell nearly drowned, almost carried into the dangerous area in a small boat. That would have left 1984 unfinished.

A young man called Bill Dunn helped Orwell run the small farm on Jura. He went on to marry Orwell’s sister. He also swam the Gulf of Corrievreckan, despite losing a leg during the war. Deakin failed to find the right conditions for that swim and it’s not easy to see how it would be crucial to this book anyway. It’s really a devotee’s hymn to surviving untamed places and activities and noncomformists, in a merrier England and a small section of Wales.

When it came to the night of the event in Stornoway Library, we did indeed begin many journeys as participants described books which were suggested by Morrison’s account of a crossing to St Kilda, when a gannet’s beak pierced the hull of an open boat. We made skeletal versions of the stories as a short series of text messages. Because that’s what a story is – a clear backbone with the flesh fixed to the frame.
 Here are versions from one group:

Open boat sails from Harris to St.Kilda

Good weather with Factor’s wife onboard

Sea full of herring sky full of gannets
A huge THUMP stuns boat
Half way there

Gannet beak breaches hull
Crew leave dead bird stuck in boat
Wind picks up coming in fast
Islanders catch boat and see beak WOW!

and the story in a still shorter form:

Boat Bird Beak Bloody Hell Beach

St.Kildans welcome boat kept afloat by a gannet’s beak

Then one person made the excellent suggestion of extending our planned reading to the inner terrain of journeys in the mind. She proposed Janice Galloway’s The Trick is To Keep Breathing as our next adventure and volunteered to introduce it next meeting on.

But I’d like to end by referring to another approach to documenting adventures. Three experienced sea kayakers have gathered their experience and that of other members of a close community into a seminal guide-book. The Outer Hebrides is subtitled “Sea Kayaking around the Isles and St Kilda” and is by Mike Sullivan, Robert Emmott and Tim Pickering. It was first published in 2010 by Pesda Press. (www.pesdapress.com).

This book differs from all of the above in that has a very clear and specific purpose. It’s a pilot book for those who use the most practical and elegant small craft of all – the kayak. These slim vessels enable people to go where no other mariner could go in any other type of vessel. So the details of tested routes along the coastline of the whole span of the Outer Hebrides are shared in crisp detail. A clear outline of a chart detail is backed up with a tight explanation of the route – the gains and the dangers.

Many years of combined experience have also yielded a strong stock of sharp photographs. Some of these have a practical purpose in showing the look of the land which is symbolized on the chart. But some are like a lyrical counterpoint to the text.
There are also stories of water-breaking crossings; a description of the basking shark; a summary of practical pieces of safety advice and other well-written examples of sea-kyaking lore which make the book of interest to those who are not planning to paddle anywhere at all.

This is an exemplary publication – a well-made, well laid-out durable manual and more.

For more information about Ian visit his website at www.ianstephen.co.uk

© Ian Stephen, 2012

It depends on how you look at it. I’ve been reading from the many accounts of voyages to St Kilda. That’s a further 40 miles out from when you clear the Sound of Harris. But you do get the picture of a stable society and a viable one, by the standards of the time, until increased contact with the outside world and a dwindling population made evacuation inevitable. I also went to hear a very well-researched talk, arranged by the Islands Book Trust. Ian Parker ‘s findings can also be found summarized here and there are other links to the detailed documentation of recent excavations. http://www.ceuig.com/archives/3091

Boreray

Observation of the archaeological evidence on Boreray (about 5 miles over ocean from Hirta) implies that there was a resident population here but further back than any recorded accounts can say. The evidence is in the lie of stones. There are terraced walls which must have held the soil in place on a south-facing slope. There are well-constructed shelters, nearly undergound, under the more recent layer of bothies and stores.

I’ve come to think that this objective evidence might be at least as reliable as some travellers’ accounts. There are reports of a stranding incident on Boreray in Martin Martin and in Kenneth MacAulay. There is further evidence in a list of repaired and wrecked boats that sounds like a secular litany. The number of stranded men varies between accounts. In one version, a securing rope parted and the boat was wrecked. In another, the boat which landed them was wrecked at Village Bay. In another, the men who landed the stranded group are struck down by the cholera epidemic which decimated the population of Hirta.

In all the stories, there is the necessity of finding a way of signaling between the two islands. I’ve looked to Boreray from Oiseval and Connachair and from the deep natural tunnel at Glen Bay. Last week I saw a projection which took the perspective of the research expedition camping on Boreray, looking back over to the higher ground of Hirta. It seems to me that this is the essence of the story, whatever version, whatever details. And it seems likely that there has been more than one stranding incident over the years.

Boreray

This coming week (5th Feb) I’m visiting another archive – at the School of Scottish Studies in Edinburgh. So I took the chance to record a version of the stranding story for Isles FM. We have a regular broadcast slot now, on a Tuesday morning, while the residency runs. Up till now, discussion and stories and readings from library books have gone out live. But thanks to Donald Saunders, the regular slot can be continued.
I explained to Donald that, for me, this is a pibroch of a story. The mood and the pipes and the piper – the ambient temperature and humidity have all got to be in tune.

The narrative reminds me of another great story of survival, this one documented in scrupulous detail – Shackleton’s voyage in the converted lifeboat from Elephant Island to South Georgia. Their own survival meant that the relief ship could return for the other stranded members of the expedition. As in the Boreray story, the men endure hardships but all survive. And there’s not many West of Scotland stories with an affirmative ending like that.

• Boreray video and reading by Ian Stephen

For more information about Ian visit his website at www.ianstephen.co.uk

© Ian Stephen, 2012

He picked this up from Fladda Chuinn, one of the Islands off the near coasts of Skye. He had been on a sea-kayak expedition, making the shortest crossing of the Minch. Sean told me how I couldn’t imagine the stockpile of generations of driftwood, built up by the tides in that place.

Wreck © Ian Stephen

This piece has bent timbers, probably oak. I don’t want to scrape the weathered surface to inspect the grain. The fastenings are iron. It’s certainly older than me and probably older than the two of us put together.

If you can kayak across from our Long Island to Skye, you can see how a story could cross, given the right breeze. Donald Morrison, a cooper, born in 1787, says that this story is from Skye. When I say “says” we’re both writing but we’re trying to speak.

In the edition of the Morrison manuscript, edited by Norman Macdonald “under the direction of Alexander Morrison, District Librarian, Public Library, Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, 1975” the story is titled A Judge who Pleased Both Clients. It begins on page 105.

I’ve read it often, but I’ve gone back to it again. I’m also thinking of phrases I’ve heard when I’ve been working on Skye. Some years ago, I worked with the artist Caroline Dear, installing art in Uig woods. The school pupils of Uig told their versions of this story and others and we installed slabs of slate with their phrases engraved, in a dyke which was rebuilt.

And I’m seeing the lines of the North Skye Coast, sailing the Eilean Trodday gap to make a landfall in poor visibility at Duntulm bay.

THE WISE FACTOR

There were two crofters, neighbours, both of them happy men. Each had a great passion in his life. I’m sorry to say that we’re not talking about the crofter’s wife, in either case, though each of them was married happily enough. No but one was very fond of a particular boat and the other had a very fine cow.

We’re very fond of beam in a boat, on the west coasts and this vessel had ample. She’d looked after this man, all their lives. Many’s a thumping lythe and haddock came over her gunnels and she had always found the way home, through the reefs to the secure geo where she was always drawn up the shore.

Now the crofter did not venture out to sea as often as he used to but he’d be content to take a stroll in the evening and just stand back from the cliff, admiring her lines.

His neighbour would just pat the cow’s rump in the morning and she’d wander out and find her own grazings. He never even had to send the dog. She’d be home in good time in the evening and give a good yield of quality milk. She always found her own good grazing. She’d never kick or bump the pail. You knew what to expect and it would be the same every day, whatever the weather.

But this night the cow did not appear home, back at the croft. Right away, our man knew something was wrong. He went out, along the cliffs there and then. He was stopped in his tracks, just at the edge of his own ground. There was mud and hoof marks and signs of a struggle but the cow had slithered over the edge. Now these are gradual grassy cliffs and she might have survived. But she’d gone stumbling into the very spot where his neighbour’s boat was kept. She must have panicked. There were split planks and broken timbers everywhere. The splinters of the boat had finished her off.

Now pain sometimes shown itself as anger. This man who’d never had a bad word with his neighbour goes shouting and banging at his door.
“Your boat has killed my cow.”

“What are you talking about man? You’re making no sense.”
But then, when the other fellow realized what was behind the words, he said, “And what about my boat. Is she all right?”

“Of course she’s not all right but it’s my cow we’re talking about here and your boat has done for her.”

Wreck detail © Ian Stephen

Well, first there was arguments and then silence and then a court case. Neither of these men had much money behind them but it looked as if they would ruin themselves at law. There was no legal precedence for this case and no court could decide who was responsible for the losses.
 The case was much discussed and gained the interest of Macdonald, the laird of much of Skye at the time. It was due to go to the Court of Session and we all know how long that could take.
“Gentlemen,” said Macdonald, “Do you not think there’s enough men putting claret into the mouths of the Edinburgh lawyers without us contributing more?”
He suggested putting the case to a factor on the neighbouring estate. This man was widely known for his wisdom and for his deep learning.
So they all agreed to meet.

“Now,” says the factor, “I’ve no letters after my name and no legal qualifications whatsoever.”
They all nodded their understanding.
“And I’ve no reason to say why my judgement should be better than any other man’s but there’s no point in having this discussion unless we all agree to abide by the finding.”
He looked to the man who had lost his cow. He nodded. And the one who had lost his boat. He nodded too. And then he asked Macdonald, the Laird if he would also abide by the finding.
“Well I do not see what that has directly to do with myself but yes, of course, I’ll abide by what’s decided.”

“In that case, “ says the factor, “I can clearly see both sides to the argument. The cow might well have survived her slip had the boat not been in that exact place. And clearly the boat would still be intact had the cow not fallen. But we must look a little deeper into the very cause of the accident. Now it seems to me, that a section of coast like that has inherent dangers to man and beast. Therefore a dyke should have been established to offer that protection. And so I find against the laird for the value of a replacement cow to this man and boat to that. And for the cost of instating a suitable dyke so that an accident like this may not happen again.”

To his credit, Macdonald accepted the finding and paid out the sums required. And that’s the story of the wise factor.

When I told this one, or something like it, to Seamas who was rebuilding the dyke in Uig woods, incorporating the engraved slabs, he told me he’d heard it before. His grandfather told a story very like it. Only it was a horse that went over the cliff.

For more information about Ian visit his website at www.ianstephen.co.uk

© Ian Stephen, 2012

I’ve always been interested in the relationship between spoken and written language and this is central to both these areas of work. I hope the novel has the rhythms of spoken language in it, with voices from Lewis and other areas of Scotland to the fore.

And the Morrison Manuscript is the work of a passionate collector and teller of tales. The style is very direct and so there is still a strong sense that the tales have come from an oral tradition.

Restricted Vessel (© Ian Stephen)

This is the difference. There comes a time when you have to put a stop to revisions, to a book which will be published. But you re-make a traditional story every time you tell it. So the written version is not really the definitive one, simply a recording of one telling of it. Whereas a work of literature is as complete as you can make it – though sometimes you want a rough finish rather than a shiny one.

I have also been gathering new and previously published poems and I’m still making revisions so even previously collected poems will appear in a slightly different form.

However, I hope to pass selected stories from collections in Western Isles Libraries to people who will be faithful to the rich material in one sense but make it their own in another. After the holiday, Events newspaper will publish my retelling of one of my favourite stories in the collection. And I hope to tell it on Isles FM and to share it with school pupils. The notes reckon the story took place at around 1700 but for me it’s timeless and placeless.

For a large part of 2011, I’ve been organising a linked series of exhibitions for an Lanntair Arts Centre. All of these have explored the different forms a story can take – sometimes a film and sometimes a printed text or a handwritten one or the spoken voice or music or dance made in response to that story. There have been versions on most of Scottish islands public galleries and the final exhibition is at Highland Print Studio, Inverness till 14th Jan.

I’ve come to the conclusion that a storyteller really is like a seagoing vessel that is restricted in its ability to manoeuvre, perhaps a deep-drafted ship in areas where there is shallow water.

When you are telling a story that may have been honed over generations, you have a duty to be faithful to the essential form of it and the tone of it. You can’t really go anywhere you want to, the way you can in a novel or a narrative poem. But if you don’t make the story your own, it won’t come alive.

I’ve two recommendations from the lending collections of Western Isles Libraries. 
Storytelling Scotland, A Nation in Narrative, by Donald Smith (398.09411)

Traditions of the Western Isles, Donald Morrison, edited Norman Macdonald,
(941.14)

For a taster, here’s the introductory summary from the Morrison manuscript to “MacKorr – the Clever Grieve” (p 194)

“ A near ‘fairy story’ of a clever young man whose talents consist of “sleeping long in a storm, keeping bairns from the fire and being good at gathering friends to a feast,” and who proves this to his employer at Callanish, Isle of Lewis, circa 1700.”

For more information about Ian visit his website at www.ianstephen.co.uk

© Ian Stephen, 2012

We have taken a line of approach which tries to take account of the strong oral tradition in the outer Hebrides. Since about the 1950s there has also been a very strong literary culture with writers of the international stature of Iain Crichton Smith, Derick Thompson and Donald Macaulay at the forefront. But earlier transcriptions of spoken stories indicate that the love of language, wit and narrative have been an established cultural force in this region for as far back as records can document.

My own working practice, since I began to publish and perform stories and poems in 1979, has been hugely indebted to an established tradition of oral storytelling. Part of this has come to me through my upbringing but I have also benefited from the work of those who have gathered well-developed examples of this vernacular art form. Donald Morrison, (1787 – 1834) was a cooper, working in Stornoway. No doubt his contacts with the herring-trade brought him in contact with a range of storytellers. His transcriptions of stories which range all down the western seaboard of Scotland and on across the North Sea to the Netherlands and Sweden, were gathered in a manuscript of 9 parts.

Sadly, two of these have been lost but the remainder were published in 1975 as edited by Norman Macdonald with the then District Librarian, Alexander Morrison. The collection is available in lending and reference copies at Stornoway Library. A copy is also held at the National Library of Scotland. We very much wish to draw attention to this seminal collection as a key aim of the Residency. Plans include regular slots on Isles FM and a regular feature in Events. These will include the retelling of selected stories from the collection. Look out for examples on this site.

We hope to work with existing writing groups in the Western Isles and work together to compile a reading programme which will compare work by contemporary Island writers with writing from other times and countries.

Ian Stephen was born in Stornoway and still lives there. He studied Education, Drama and Literature at Aberdeen University graduating with a B Ed (hons) with distinction.

Ian worked for the Coastguard Service for many years but has been a full time writer and artist since winning the first Robert Louis Stevenson Award in 1995. His project of navigating through the settings of traditional maritime stories was funded by a Creative Scotland Award and this has remained a key element in his work. He travels widely to tell stories.

Work in drama includes the play Seven Hunters – a touring production, directed by Gerry Mulgrew for Communicado, The Highland Festival and Tosg. His first collection of poems Malin, Hebrides, Minches was published in Aarhus Denmark, in 1983 and his new and selected poems Adrift were published in the Czech Republic in 2007. Poems and short-stories were gathered in the pocketbooks/Polygon series in Green Waters (with Graham Rich and Ian Hamilton Finlay) and Mackerel and Creamola (with Donald Urquhart).

For more information about Ian visit his website at www.ianstephen.co.uk

© Ian Stephen, 2012