Dear Gyps, 

Gypsy, if this horrid, cold mist-bringing East wind goes on much longer, I shall be very angry.

“Oh,”  cries the wind, “I love to blow from 
the East, I’m like the ram-horns of Genghis Khan sounding  —  I’m like the shouting 
Celtic tribes wave after wave, all war-cries”  Oh, I could blow for ever!”

That foolish wind, little does it know that it curdles the marrow in the bones of man and cat and makes us quite ill . . . Especially delicate creatures like you and me . . .

Whereas, when it blows from the West — which is after all, the airt it loves best — it brings music and magic to us, seal songs and the breath of mermaids and the merry splurge and dance of whales.  And more, it brings aromas of the magic isle in the west, that people have known was there for thousands of years.  The Gaelic-speakers called it Tir-nan-Og (which means ‘the land of the young’).  Once we’re there, believe me, Gypsy, we'll never be old and sick and weary — for pussies there’ll be a silver fish on a plate every day, and a nice stone – emerald or lapis lazuli — to sit on always in the sun, and no dogs and no bad-tempered householders who ‘shoo’ pussies off their doorsteps.

There, in Tir-nan-Og, even the East wind is gentle and full of scents and sweet sounds.  But you have to be good  to get there.

 
© George Mackay Brown 1990 

from
Letters to Gypsy
published 1990 
Balnain Books
Druim House
Lochloy Road
Nairn IV12 5LF
Scotland
e-text edited by Sue Tordoff