Belonging

(Extract from "Doctor" by George Mackay Brown)

"A curious hotch-potch, these people,
Proud of their purity of race.
Purity?....

First the aborigines
That howked Skara Brae from the sand.
Then the Picts,
Those small dark cunning men who scrawled their history in stone.
The Celtic fathers followed,
And many a Pictish lassie, no doubt,
Felt their power in the bed
As well as at the altar.

And then the tigers form east over the sea,
the blond butchering Vikings,
Whose last worry on sea or land
Was purity of race, as they staggered couchwards
After a fill of ale.
Finally, to make the mixture thick and slab,
The off-scourings of Scotland,
The lowest sleaziest pimps from Lothian and the Mearns,
Fawning in the train of  Black Pat,
And robbing and raping ad lib.

But that's not all.
For many a hundred ships have ripped their flanks
On Rora Head, or the Noup,
And Basque sailor lads and bearded skippers from Brittany
Left off their briny ways to cleave a furrow
Through Orkney crofts and lasses.

Not to speak of the two world wars
And hordes of English and Yanks and Italians and Poles
Who took up their stations here:
By day the guns, by night the ancestral box-bed.
Only this morning
At Maggie o'Corsland's I delivered a bairn
With a subtle silk-selling Krishna smile.

A fine mixter-maxter!"


A sense of belonging is fairly fundamental to most of us : it can give comfort, pride and security. But what defines "belonging"? When asked, "Where are you from?", is this tied in with accident of birth, family history, migration/emigration or a complex mix of factors? The North, in particular, has always been something of a geographical highway for those seeking trade,conquest and land, whilst economic migration (both voluntary and enforced) has been a recurring feature of the settlement of the Highlands and Islands.
I see myself as someone who has been an "economic migrant" twice in my lifetime already : my parents moved North with our family to seek a better quality of life and security by taking up employment at Dounreay Nuclear establishment, whilst I have had to make the journey back in the opposite direction as an adult in order to study and then work in my chosen field. I am not a "local" to Caithness in the sense that I have no birth or ancestral ties to Caithness, but it still feels fundamentally like "home" in my core, even although it is many years since I have been able to live there full-time. I am seen as something of an outsider in both my "home" and adopted town of Paisley, so, the question must be asked, where am I from? What defines me? If my Thurso-based family were also to move away, where would we all "come from"?
I particularly liked the extract from Mackay Brown's "Doctor", as it addresses the reality of the population and settlement of remote areas such as Caithnesss and the Northern Isles : there has always been a transitory element to the population, from raiders and traders to cleared serfs and travelling peoples; then the more recent "incomers" and "new islanders" seeking a change of life and outlook in a wilder environment. Any community needs new blood to survive, but this is even more acutely necessary in isolated areas such as Caithness and the Northern Isles.
The following poem, written in the early 1900's, take a more tongue-in-cheek approach to the issue of "locality", but will raise a knowing smile to anyone that has ever lived in Caithness!

"A Guide to Travellers"  (John Horne)

If you have got the tramper's boast,
And up to Northern part you post,
When you perceive a rocky coast
You may surmise it's Caithness. 

If you see flagstones (set on end)
By ditch and field their forms extend;
And should the trees to landward bend,
You may infer it's Caithness. 

If from their cots the natives creep,
And bid you welcome warm and deep,
Yet eye you with a quizzing peep,
You may conclude it's Caithness. 

And should they ask your parentage,
Your name, your business, hours and wage,
And what you've saved and what's your age,
You may be sure it's Caithness!

(http://caithness.org/community/arts/caithnesspoets/johnhorne/index.htm)