By

Ian Prattis 
 
 

Glossary of Terms 
 

ben: mountain

burn: creek, stream

ceilidh: informal social gathering

chippie: carpenter crack: conversation 

cran: measure of herring creel: lobster trap

croft: tenanted small holding

fank: fenced area for sheep dipping

fell: valley

fey: mystical

fleet: a series of creels attached to one main rope

gillie: guide for hunting and fishing

gralloched: gutted

lazybed: small cultivated plot of land

lythe: fish species found in North Atlantic

maram: coarse grass

Minch: stretch of water between the Hebrides and the Scottish mainland 

peat: black turf, used for fuel

quadrille: dance

ringnetters: fishing boats

saythe: fish species found in North Atlantic

sloc: inlet

stob: wooden fence post 

wether: sheep 
 
 

Chapter One 
 

"Lobster", "No Lobster", "No Lobster", "Crabs", "Lobster", "Crabs", "No Lobster". Like a medieval incantation old Angus sang out as the Lobster creels came over the gunwale one by one.  "Lobster", "No Lobster", "Crab"; uttered with exact same pitch and feeling he intoned a greeting to the creature trapped within. His huge hands deftly unlaced the latticed side of the creel and with a slow rhythm he methodically passed the lobsters to a boy standing on the deck of the boat. The youngster watched in silence, transferring the lobsters from the gnarled hands of Angus to a large wooden box covered with a wet sack. He watched in fascination as Angus tore claws, shell and legs from the living crab to place the breast meat in the creel as bait along with half a salt mackerel.

When the whole fleet of twenty creels were stacked on the deck, the skipper of the boat, Michael Martin, shouted above the noise of the engine to Angus that they were moving. If the old man heard he did not acknowledge but peered bemusedly at the sea as the Atlantic swell rocked the boat in its turning. He looked at the sky noticing the flight of gulls, then to the Atlantic sweeping unremittingly from Labrador to break on his own Hebridean shores. He looked to the water for signs that would tell him if the currents would be stronger or weaker than he anticipated. With a short slow movement of his hand he bade the skipper move closer in to a reef white spumed from the breakers. Then once the spot was chosen he again motioned to Michael to describe a large semicircle as he cast the baited creels one by one back into the sea.

This was the fourth fleet of twenty creels to be serviced that September morning. Michael took the boat out to sea then cut the engine. The craft moved up and down with the swell of the sea. The remaining fleets could await their leisurely lunch. Michael glanced fondly at the boy, his nephew. The boy's day had started early, just after dawn. He had risen while his parents slept, drawn by something intangible about the quietness of the morning. Leaving his snoring brother whose bed he shared, he tip-toed past the back room where his elder sister muttered and turned in her sleep. He shivered as he pulled on his sweater and trousers in the cold kitchen. He took a cup of milk from the pitcher by the scullery and left the cup on the table. His mother would notice and know that he had gone. He made up the fire and put a match to it to take the chill from the kitchen for the rest of his family. Then he was drawn to the day.

Closing the croft house door behind him, he stood and marvelled at the beauty of it, The slow aftermath of dawn could be traced in a sky streaked with reds and grays as though a child had smeared pastels on the horizon. He walked from his father's croft house, skirting the bay and climbing the hill that led to a sight of the pier. Here and there a light showed from a croft house but no one was about. This hour of the morning belonged to him and to the sheep. Sheep sleeping in the middle of the road, belching and coughing in the sparse pasture opposite the post office. Their dominance uninterrupted by merchants opening up shop, too early for children to run to school shouting and laughing, too early for the first drunk to take up his station by the lifeboat shed. The sheep commanded this hour of the day and stared diffidently as the boy walked amongst them.

Two ringnetter boats with their crew asleep below, lay at anchor in the lee of the breakwater. The clamour of gulls around them gave vocal testimony to the remains of last night's catch. The boy counted the small boats clustered by the slipway then made his way to the pier. The sea here was calm and flat as glass, scarcely responding to the whisper-like breeze that brushed it. The boy spat into the water and watched the ever increasing number of rings on the calm surface. He spat again, this time to the left so the two sets of rings would collide, fuse, then break on the pier's pilings. Small patches of oil drifted past like multi-coloured jellyfish. In his waiting, he scanned the pier and took in the fishing nets hung on rails and piled in disarray amongst discarded warp lines and fuel drums. Large red containers with "MacAlpines Shipping" as their scutcheon, sat dully amidst the reminders of the island's fishing fleet.

He picked up the noise of a diesel engine and stared out to sea, straining his attention to catch the shape of the boat. He knew the sound of the boat, yet still peered anxiously until the familiar outlines of his uncle's fishing boat could be picked out to the south. His uncle lived on a neighbouring island, yet came to this pier for fuel and stores. The boy willed the boat to come faster, before the village stirred, before his sister Moira with her quiet insistence took him along with herself to school. He had been promised a trip on the boat and today he wanted to go. He looked anxiously to the village, at the first stirrings of life there, at the church clock that showed that he would not be spared Moira's insistence.

The wash at the bow of the boat grew bigger as his figure stood on the pier drawing it closer to him. Then the postmaster, idling by the railings, filling his pipe before his day of commerce began, saw him and waved. The boy reluctantly acknowledged the salute. The merchant's children in a rush descended the pier road and took the shortcut to the school. They laughed and waved good naturedly at the boy's strange figure on the pier. His own brother shouted from the hill to get along to school, and still the boat was far off. Then Moira was before him, an amused quietness in her eyes, and he allowed himself to be pulled into the way of things and reluctantly followed her to school.

He felt his uncle's gaze on him and turned to him with an uncertain smile. Michael looked bemusedly at the boy and then laughed "You're a wee bugger, Callum Mor, jumping school the day. What will your teacher do when she gets hold of you, eh?" 

"Why but she saw me and she smiled at me as I took the short-cut to the pier." His teacher had smiled. Callum Mor’s attention had been riveted on his uncle's boat at the pier that he could see from the schoolroom window. He had moved cautiously from desk to desk until he was close to the schoolroom door, an advancement that Miss MacDougall had not been unaware of. Then she gave him his chance by turning to the blackboard, and out of the class slipped Callum Mor, down the brae, through the cut to the pier where Michael and Angus were standing smoking. His classmates giggled quietly, stifling their mirth behind fists over their mouths until silenced by a frown from Miss MacDougall. She walked to the back of the class and looked out of the window that commanded the bay and the pier. The morning sun cast a sheen on the water that was scarcely rippled by the wind coming from the west. Several trawlers had tied up at the pier and their crews were busy taking on ice and sorting their catch. 

Miss MacDougall smiled to herself. It was a day for freedom if anyone would take it. Callum Mor's slight figure had paused at the school gate and as he cast a glance back at the school he caught Miss MacDougall's smile on him. He stood stock still, unsure of retreat or flight. He was no stranger to her ruler across his knuckles and switch on his backside, yet she was there looking at him and smiling. She turned from the window tugging at the chignon at the back of her hair, an unnecessary severity to her features. She was happy for Callum Mor, just as Michael and Angus were happy for him once he presented himself to them at the pier. 

Callum Mor did not understand his teacher. He exulted in his release, knowing of the punishment awaiting him the next day at school. He did not know of the happiness he gave to others, could never know. Michael and Angus stopped in their smoking at the pier and looked at the boy as he shyly stood by them. A small slip of nothing, elf-like and ephemeral, eyes that were too knowing and too vulnerable. There was too much in that small frame and everyone who knew him sensed it and rejoiced in it, yet feared for him. This was why he was called Callum Mor, Callum the Large One. While Michael wondered, old Angus nodded to the boy to get aboard. This was his first time on the boat and as it pulled away from the pier he felt like a bird.

Michael's gaze on the boy was fond. Lunch over, Angus and Michael talked about their catch and where the remaining fleets of creels would be placed. Callum Mor sat quietly looking at them. He had shared their sandwiches, supped from Angus's large mug and listened to their talk of the sea. They did not explain anything to him. He learnt by listening and watching and then doing. His left hand was ugly and red with two large welts suffered from lobster nips. He had borne the pain in silence but his tears had been noticed by the two men. They had said nothing but at their lunch made room for him and treated him with a gentle courtesy that he did not understand but which he shyly treasured. Angus sat on a fish box filling his pipe, his pale blue eyes rarely away from the sea that sustained him. His weathered features and great broad shoulders and hands a contrast to the slight eager faced boy beside him. Michael started the engine and the boat swung south to the islands at the tip of the Hebridean tail. He slowed the vessel as they approached an inlet close to Mieray Island. In the shadow of the soaring cliffs Angus's incantations, sung softly under his breath, seemed almost a prayer. A prayer and a thanks. A thanks and a prayer. 

He had fished these waters for forty years and still was awed by Nature's stark edifice. Stretching sheer from the sea for nine hundred feet or so, the cliffs drew their eyes. It was as if to redefine their apartness, their humanness, that a fleet of creels was set in and around a channel that cut through the soaring grandeur of the cliffs. An act of impudence, almost, to snatch a morsel from the feet of the gods. The boat slowly picked its way through the dark channel, almost totally closed in from the sun. Angus deposited the baited creels into the sea, taking bearings from rocks he had brushed against countless times. All three blinked as they emerged from the grotto and the September sunlight brought them back to life. As Michael piloted the boat northwards their eyes would frequently travel back to the darkness they had with impunity dared, until the cliffs were lost from sight. Angus and Callum Mor busied themselves with securing the catch in wooden boxes that would be floated at a mooring in the bay. The boy's arms and back ached from the lifting of heavy creels and his hand throbbed painfully. Angus put him in the wheelhouse with Michael. The noise of the engine made conversation impossible yet Michael shouted volubly above the roar and Callum Mor could not hear. 

His replies were similarly incomprehensible. Words strung together had no meaning above the noise but the osmosis of the sea and the beauty of the day united them in a way that did not require words. They enjoyed their mutually unintelligible conversation all the way back to the pier. Callum Mor was dispatched home with a large bag of crab claws. Michael and Angus took on some fuel drums and the boy walked along the pier road and up the brae that eventually lead round to his father's croft. He moved the bag of crab claws from arm to arm as its weight told on his small, tired muscles. His sister met him at the rise of the brae, her bright red skirt a counterpoint to the green jersey of Callum Mor. The two colours, his sister now helping in the carrying of the bag, were soon lost to sight and Michael and Angus returned to their own island.

It was now dark and Callum Mor told the story of his day to his family while the crab claws cooked and split in the embers of the fire. He sat at the large kitchen table with small flecks of crab meat on his chin. His sister Moira demanded repeated tellings of his escape from Miss MacDougall's eyes and at each repetition she became even more convulsed with laughter. At one point she seized her brother and waltzed him around the kitchen until they collided with their mother and tumbled to the floor, all legs, arms and merriment. Annie laughed with her son and her daughter and delighted at Callum Mor's adventure. 

"If you're for dancing the pair o' ye, we'll have it done differently. Donald, fetch your accordion." Donald had watched his brother and sister whirl round the kitchen floor with admiration and not a little envy. He was not given easily to joy, too stolid for one on the verge of adulthood, but his transformation lay in music. With delicate rhythms and chords his fingers brought forth music that directed the energetic scramble of his kin to slow strathspeys, vigorous reels. And when at last the two were intoxicated by their steps they danced solo opposite one another, fiercely competitive now, turning and twisting with the grace of gulls, in a strict determined order. Callum Mor was almost as light of step as his sister Moira, but her grace was something not of this world. Then at last Donald released them from his music. He was now part of them and could join in their animation. 

Annie wove the web of riddles and conversation that tied her offspring to her, feeding them, humouring them and forcing them to grow. The door opened to admit Colin, the old widower from the next croft, who called nightly to fetch a jug of milk. He came with news that Andrew, father of the children and husband to Annie, was negotiating to borrow a bull from the north end of the island and would not return until morning. He knew of Callum Mor’s adventures and stumped into the kitchen with a mock fierceness and demanded that Callum Mor give an account of himself. With a grin the boy started on the retelling and soon the old man was chuckling and slapping his thigh. The retelling was done several times more that evening as other neighbours, drawn by the music and spirit that enveloped the croft house, called in, listened to the boy, feasted on crabs and drank from the bottle of whiskey that had appeared. The large kitchen table was pushed back to make room for the company to wend its way through a reel. Moira was called to dance and Donald's music drew forth delicate and poignant steps from her. 

Colin, the widower, cleared his throat and began to recite a poem. It was received with murmurs of approval as he gave the story of the transportation of Highlanders from their hills and crofts across oceans and ice laden waters to Canada, where a living was carved out of wilderness. He told of their heartbreak at being torn from their nurturing. His epic was received in a silence that was too eloquent. After a long pull at the bottle, old Colin struck up a ribald song about the adventures of a cockerel and the company learned to laugh again. Soon, however, the songs and Donald's music were lost to Callum Mor. He lay fast asleep by the hearth, his small body curled up to catch the warmth of the fire's dying embers. Around him conversation had turned to crops, the sea, the latest catches by the island fishermen, but he was oblivious to it all. Donald gently picked his sleeping brother up and carried him to his bed, unlacing the boy's shoes and drawing off his trousers.

"Good night to you Callum Mor, my brave wee lad". Then he returned to the company, the conversation and gossip that were a prelude to the evening's end, and Callum Mor slept. 
 

This story has no beginning or middle or end. It simply-

has its own cycle. It is the story of Callum Mor, a being

of rare beauty. The observers of his story can laugh,

rejoice and suffer with him but can do naught to change

or alter the drama that overtakes him. They can merely

witness the ultimate triumph of the human spirit. This

is Callum Mor's story.