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Good Morning Gàidhealtachd! I Like That Word Dùthchas
I woke today in a semi-conscious state with the sound of Duncan Chisholm's burning violine on Runrig's Proterra. It's a sound deeply embedded and has made a firm pathway in consciousness and it sends the shivers up my spine. It takes me to a place, but I do not know where.
I was raised up in a shipyard town of Govan, Glasgow to the sound of pop-rivets, angry hammers and shifting steel that made vessels that sailed the seven seas. It was the sixties, and it was a place of dark corners where ungroomed dogs salvaged scraps from the bins, and rats scurried in the dark, incognito, but leaving their footprints. It was a place where there were better places to be raised.
It never felt like home. In fact, nowhere felt like home. Perhaps it was the fact that my mother had us moving around and I subsequently attended five primary schools before entering secondary school.
At 15 years old I left school and got a job in the Co-op. But my friend started with Caledonian Mac Brayne on a supply vessel called The Dunvegan (I think) that sailed from Glasgow to Stornoway. Apart from him earning more money than me, I envied the lifestyle. The places he travelled to like Stornoway, and the stories he related to me, made the places feel like home.
I lost contact with Tom in the course of time and have never heard of him since.
Some years later, an older man gave me a cassette tape of Na h-Òganaich. I never understood Gaelic, but there was something drawing me to the Hebrides. Then came Play Gaelic by Runrig. Malcom’s guitar on "Sunndach” created that island and isolated feel that brought a sense of Joy in me. I played the cassette repeatedly. The Islands felt like home. Runrig has played a part in my life that is so difficult to internalise. I am not alone. The Runrig concerts were filled with Germans, Scandinavians, Americans, and travellers from all over the globe. I guess something runs deeper Perhaps it is summed up with the German word Fernweh: homesick for a place one has never been to.
Are we Destined For Another World?
C.S. Lewis had much to say about sunndach, or Joy,
"Joy is distinct not only from pleasure in general but even from aesthetic pleasure. It must have the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing.”
Perhaps this inconsolable longing in me and others is a small glimpse of what could be. Some of us will never be Gaels, but one day we will be a united family.
Jesus answered him, "Truly I tell you today, you will be with me in paradise." Luke 23:43
Dùthchas: This word reflects a person's hereditary connection to a place, community, or culture. It includes notions of heritage, belonging, and the responsibilities that come with it.