The Godfather: Peter Corris on his Celtic twilight
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree … ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ by WB Yeats
It started a while back when I listened, as recommended by Jean, to five audio books in a row written by Peter May. Each of them was set, wholly or in part, on islands in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. They are crime stories but with a difference. May is a master at rendering the sights, sounds, smells and oddities of his locations – similar to, say, Ian Rankin with Edinburgh and Adrian McKinty with Belfast. I believe that a word count would show May to have described the weather and topography of the islands in much greater detail than usual. Dull, you might think, but not so. The weather and topography mesh with the story in a compelling way. At times May’s characters speak Gaelic and May catches the flavour of this and his reader, Peter Forbes, does him proud – accents, gender and age present no problems to him. I found myself doing a Scots accent until forced to stop with a feeling that I was becoming a bore.
The more I listened, the more I wished I’d visited these windswept places with their foul weather in winter and sparkling summers on my only trip to Scotland, when I only got as far as Oban and Mull in the Inner Hebrides. With my Manx, Irish and Scots heritage (with a touch of Scandinavian way back), my Celtic roots are firmly implanted, so it’s not surprising that, after this rich literary diet, I should feel an atavistic pull to Scotland and Ireland.
I got on a Celtic musical kick, playing CDs by Fairport Convention and the Chieftains – the soaring voices of Sandy Denny and Sinead O’Connor with the lush backing of traditional strains and folk rock.
Not that my immediate Scots forbears were islanders; they were from the south, from Ayrshire and Dundee, but who knows? Perhaps further back there were some from the isles of Lewis and Harris – crofters, fisher folk, peat cutters. And across the water, might the Kellys and Higginses in my genetic mix have sung of Roddy McCorley and faithless Molly-O, the Lily of the West? I like to think so. At least I did once, nearly 50 years ago, sitting with a pint of Guinness in a Galway pub listening to an Irish balladeer.
Romanticising? But at this time of life, why not? As I listen to the music and hear Yeats read his verses I can, in my imagination, arise and go to Innisfree — or Harris and Lewis in their storm-tossed seas.
