A Son of the Rock

House of Lochar, 2000, 174 p. First published 1987.

This is Mitchison’s imagination of what life in pre-historical Orkney might have been like for its human inhabitants. It is not much differet from her tales of the times when Vikings were the dominant force in the islands.

The characters she shows us, however, have names which are more descriptive than abstract (Metoo, Barebum, Hands, Thinlegs, Keeper, Good Woman, Big Woman,) as they cope with their world and seek to understand and exploit it. Hands is fascinated by what he calls the shining edge, glimmering out beyond the sea horizon, and builds a rudimentary boat to get to it, taking some of the others with him. What they find there is more of the same but the new land contains less than a handful of fellow humans, some of whom had disappeared from their settlement years before. Along the story’s way these ancient indigenes learn to spin wool and weave yarn.

This may not have been exactly how Orkney’s earliest humans lived but seems plausible enough.

Pedant’s corner:- “this had to been seen to” (to be seen to,) “in Hands’ mind” (in Hands’s mind.) “There was also children old enough” (There were also children,) “as the cows names came up” (cows’ names,) “like their Aunties names” (Aunties’ names,) a missing opening quote mark at the beginning of a piece of direct speech.)