The Crofter and the Laird

Before I arrived in Edinburgh, I read The Crofter and the Laird by John McPhee, as a look at Scotland and the writing of Scotland in preparation, I suppose, for the five months I would be spending there.  The book follows the narrator as he returns to his ancestor’s home on the Scottish island of Colonsay.  I do not know much about the island itself, but the book presents it as the typical “rolling hills, sheep everywhere, people living in small villages” image of Scotland that I’ve seen in the States.  McPhee goes into detail about the clan history of the island, and the overbearing, generally disliked presence of the laird over the island that he basically owns.  It was an interesting perspective, as the points of view slip seamlessly between McPhee and the villagers.  The way he presents the island lends me an image of a generally beautiful, but entirely melancholic place to live.  I do not mean that the people he describes living there are necessarily depressed because of their residence, but rather that the history of the island and its clans is full of melancholy and grief.  He ends the book with the story of his ancestor escaping an invading army while a companion runs back to save the wife of McPhee’s ancestor, which left me feeling very confused and sad myself.  My feelings reflect my understanding of the book – there was so much description of this person’s ancestry and this person’s ancestry that I often got lost as to who was who.

                The book did reflect what I’ve been studying in my first week of classes at Edinburgh.  My Scottish Literature class has been going over the confused nationality of Scotland, how its history and lack of solid kingship has created an inability to have a national image of itself.  To the Scottish, I’m sure that is ridiculous, but I myself can’t think of anything other than kilts and sheep and haggis when I think of Scotland.  Is this because of my own ignorance living in America, or is it because of Scotland’s own confused and complicated history?  In McPhee’s book, the people seem to know very well who they are and what they are, but I was not as sure.  I had little sense of the characters and who they were; if that was because of McPhee’s tendency to leap from story to story with little in between, or because of my own inability to understand the characters, I still do not know.

                In any case, while McPhee’s book was an interesting read and certainly a different perspective of a Scottish lifestyle, my own arrival in Edinburgh was nothing like McPhee’s arrival in Colonsay.  Edinburgh is a city, and there was not a rolling hill to be seen while I rode the bus from the airport to pick up the keys to my accommodations.  I’m sure that as I explore the country more (this being my first week in Edinburgh, I had little chance to explore outside of the city), I will see more of the majesty that McPhee describes.  I certainly hope so, because while Edinburgh is a wonderful city with an innumerable amount of things to see, it is still a city, and I will forever be a open country kind of person.