the sea, the street and the story
Morag MacInnes explores George Mackay Brown's enduring love for the islands he celebrated, a love which left Orcadians with a remarkable poetic legacy. Morag examines the way his earliest experiences shape all the major themes in the mature work, and asks (as some critics have) whether the view from the window of Mayburn Court looked over the harbour - or the whole world.
Morag MacInnes was born
and educated in Stromness. She has lived in Shetland, Germany, and Lincoln
and returned to Orkney in 2004 to continue writing and to complete research into
Mackay Brown's creative influences in the 40s and 50s. The poet was a
close family friend, and Morag's father Ian illustrated several of the
early works.
Morag took her audience on a journey through GMB's life, with anecdotes both touching and amusing. George was a regular visitor to the MacInnes family home, Thistlebank, telling stories for the MacInnes sisters. He had a regular pipe-lighting ritual, using as many matches as needed to get up a good fug, lining up each used match on the chair arm. When he was puffing satisfactorily, he began the story, using the matches as characters - often beginning with Grandpa Match. Matches is an old Orkney name.
There was often singing in the MacInnes household. George's party piece was 'I love a Cookie' sung to the tune of 'I Love a Lassie'. These tantalising glimpses brought George to life for people who hadn't known him, and were happy reminiscences for those who had.
Morag spoke of the traits of the family which had been called the Duckie Broons [to distinguish them from all the other Broon lines in Stromness, the Broons who lived near the duck pond] - the family traits were a bit fey, a bit sarcastic, a good mimic and a talent for telling stories. George certainly seemed to have most of these, eg his early journalistic attempts were far from the gentle portrayal of Orkney life in his later years, once getting into trouble for making up stories about townsfolk when he didn't have any real news, and writing angry columns against any 'progress' not deemed [by him] to be positive.
George was notoriously unwilling to travel far from Stromness, though of course he spent several years in Edinburgh at University. Morag illuminated what might have amounted to a fear of travel by setting it in context. Stromness is divided into the North and South Ends, with Middletoon somewhere between. When she was a girl, it was considered an adventure to go from one end to the other for work. Mainland Scotland must have seemed very far away.
George's work inspired many young writers in Orkney and elsewhere, with his lyrical use of words, his ability to infuse the ordinary with the miraculous, his compassion for toil and poverty. Honing his work to the very essence allowed him to get to the eternal verities. Critics say you can't write about the eternal verities if you live in Mayburn Court. Morag contended that it's maybe because he lived in Mayburn Court and had quiet time to think about things, that he could do just that.
Morag brought George's own story to life with humour and fondness. She ended with a reading of Gray's Pier, a poem encompassing the passing of a man's life in 8 couplets.
Gray's Pier
I lay on Gray’s pier, a boy
And I caught a score of sillocks one morning
I laboured there, all one summer
And we built the Swan
A June day I brought to my door
Jessie-Anne, she in white
I sang the Barleycorn ballad
Between a Hogmanay star and New Year snow
The Swan haddock-heavy from the west -
Women, cats, gulls!
I saw from the sea window
The March fires on Orphir
I followed, me in black
Jessie-Ann to the kirkyard
I smoke my pipe on Gray’s pier now
And listen to the
George Mackay Brown
published in 'Following a Lark' 1996
and 'The Collected Poems' 2005