Quercus, 2011, 324 p, including i p Reading and ii p Acknowledgements.

This non-fiction book is Grieg’s tribute to Norman MacCaig, one of that generation of Scottish poets which included Christopher Murray Grieve (Hugh McDiarmid,) Sidney Goodsir Smith, Sorley MacLean and Edwin Morgan, to whom Greig as an aspiring poet himself looked up. Not long before MacCaig’s death he laid on Greig a request that he catch for him a fish at the loch of the green corrie (which isn’t the loch’s real name) in MacCaig’s beloved Assynt in the western Highlands. But it is much more than a mere tribute. It is an appreciation of MacCaig’s poetry, a voyage into Greig’s past and present relationhips, and into the Deep Time which geologist James Hutton divined must be the case from his studies of the native rocks of that area and the changes which had been wrought on them, a threnody to the landscape of Assynt (and Scotland as whole,) a paean to friendship, a meditation on the usefulness – or otherwise – of literature, a celebration of what it means to be human. Anyone familiar with Greig’s fiction will recognise the affinities with it that this book displays, the same sympathetic observation of people and customs, the same sense of a writer exposing the human soul.

That disposition makes itself felt from time to time, “Most team games have their roots in warfare or fertility rituals – shinty dispenses with the fertility part,” a consideration of Deep Time with the present moment leads to a comparison with bifocal lenses, “the close-up and the long distance are true, while the middle distance is fuzzy and befuddled. Unfortunately that is where we live most of the time,” a reference to “the curious indifference of our English friends and partners to being English” indicates the vagaries of nationality. The culture of the western Highlands is illuminated via the thought that drinking is sacramental as long as it’s done in company, “what possible pleasure could there be in drinking alone?” Grieg touches on the importance of scale and size in making the Scottish landscape so alluring. The hills of Wales and the Lake and Peak districts of England are somewhat tame in comparison, “domestic,” while the Himalayas are too austere and grand. (As well as fishing, composing poetry and writing fiction Greig has mountaineering as one of his pastimes. How does he find the time to write?)

But it is literature that is a continual spur – and disappointment, a poetical apprehension of failure. “The word is an arrow that will always miss its mark. ‘The curse of literacy’.”

Pedant’s corner:- “A phantom pantheon of poets come trooping up these winding stairs” (a phantom pantheon comes,) “the short, direct terms that Low Dutch imported into English to such forceful effect” (surely Low Dutch exported these and English imported them?) missing commas before pieces of direct speech, “two core principals” (principles makes more sense,) sprung (sprang,) “born off downstream” (borne off,) “ropey weed” (weed like rope, used, I suppose, to distinguish from ‘ropy’ weed, weed that’s not good at being weed,) “Johnson‘s Baby Powder” (Johnson’s.)

Canongate Classics, 2005, 178 p plus vi pages introduction by Edwin Morgan. First published 1933.

Another from the list of 100 best Scottish Books. It is best to avoid Edwin Morgan’s introduction, as I did, till after reading the main text.

Despite its first appearance being in the 1930s there is a Victorian quality to this novel; not so much Dickensian as Hardy-like, or, given the author’s interest in those sisters (among other non-fiction works she wrote Haworth Harvest: The Lives of The Brontës) perhaps Brontëesque.

The narrator, Lisbet Lockhart, is one of three sisters, daughters of the manse in a rural parish. Their father is withdrawn and mother unobservant but there is a Nannie who is full of old Scots sayings. It is she who provides the meaning of gowk storm – strictly an unseasonal fall of snow in spring, an occurrence which actually is not too rare in Scotland even now – as, “Something o’ ill chance that micht fa’ to ony o’ us and that willna bide.”

To complete her education Lisbet’s father arranges for her to have Latin lessons with the local dominie, Mr MacDonald, after his normal schoolday is finished. Her eldest sister, Julia, makes excuses to come along with her. The attraction between Julia and MacDonald is kept secret but Mr Lockhart comes across them while they are sheltering from a storm. It is revealed the dominie is a Roman Catholic and the girls’ father hastens to ensure he is removed from his post. Julia is distraught, especially when MacDonald departs the village without a word to her and leaving all his possessions behind. Suddenly he is said to have been doing all manner of uncanny things though nobody had said ill of him till they discovered he was a Catholic. He is later rumoured to have joined a monastery. This part of the book highlights the sectarian prejudices which have blighted Scotland for centuries and have still not died out. For Julia this turns out to be only a passing disappointment as she accepts the proposal of (the much older and widowed) Mr Strathern just over a year later. As Nannie says, if in a later context, “It a’ passes, if ye only bide lang enow.” The focus then shifts to Emily Lockhart and her embroilment with Stephen Wingate, who is already engaged to Emily’s best friend, Christine. This entanglement is not a passing storm and provides the novel’s emotional impact.

The tight viewpoint employed by Morrison means that some of the characters – Wingate, Nicholas Strathern (who almost out of the blue professes a liking for Lisbet and is kissing her a short walk to the gate later,) even Mrs Lockhart – are less fleshed-out than would be ideal. The same cannot be said for the egregious Mr Boyd, the locum for Mr Lockhart when he is taken ill.

Before I read this I also read a prescription for good beginnings of stories one of which was to avoid exposition. “Nothing makes readers close a book faster than a long opening paragraph describing a mountain range.” Both the Prologue of The Gowk Storm and Chapter One of Book One begin with descriptions of landscape. Neither is particularly detrimental to reader engagement. In “classic” books written by Scots and set in Scotland it is rather a feature that a feeling for the landscape, as well as for its inhabitants, pervades them. Here Morrison has Lisbet muse that “Perhaps the shadows of things were like the lives of people…. The changeless thing of which we go so unaware from cradle to grave.” In the novel’s elegiac Epilogue a curlew’s call has “All the world’s sorrow, and all the world’s pain, and none of its regret.”

Not every ill chance fails to bide.

Pedant’s corner:- liteary (literary: this was in the biographical info prior to the title page,) span, Scotch for Scots (this must have been okay in 1933,) a vivid green fungi (did this mean fungi of a vivid green?) before he axed her (the only other time I’ve ever seen “axed” for “asked” is in “urban” speak,) over and river (over the river?) And in the introduction: observent (observant,) unsuitableness (unsuitability surely?)