‘I would,’ he said.
She tapped on the head of the bed as loudly as she could and her daughter came in.
‘Where’s Hugh?’ she asked.
‘He’s outside.’
‘Tell him to bring in the machine. John wants to hear my recording.’ She turned to John and said, ‘Hugh is very good with his hands, you know. All the young people nowadays know all about electricity and cars.’
After a while a tall, quiet, long-haired boy came in with a tape recorder. He plugged it into a socket beside the bed, his motions cool and competent and unflurried. He had the same neutral quizzical look that John had noticed in his brother’s two grandchildren. They don’t want to be deceived again, he thought. This generation is not interested in words, only in actions. Observation, exactitude, elegance. The universe of the poem or the story is not theirs, their universe is electronic. And when he thought of the phrase ‘the music of the spheres’ he seemed to see a shining bicycle moving through the heavens, or the wheels of some inexplicable machine.
Hugh switched on the tape recorder and John listened.
‘Tonight,’ the announcer began, ‘we are going to hear the voice of a lady of ninety years old. She will be telling us about her life on this far Hebridean island untouched by pollution and comparatively unchanged when it is compared with our own hectic cities. This lady has never in all her life left the island on which she grew up. She has never seen a train. She has never seen a city. She has been brought up in a completely pastoral society. But we may well ask, what will happen to this society? Will it be squeezed out of existence? How can it survive the pollution of our time, and here I am speaking not simply of physical but of moral pollution? What was it like to live on this island for so many years? I shall try to elicit some answers to that question in the course of this programme. But first I should like you to hear this lady singing a Gaelic traditional song. I may interpolate at this point that many Gaelic songs have apparently been anglicised musically, thus losing their traditional flavour. But Mrs Macdonald will sing this song in the way in which she was taught to, the way in which she picked it up from previous singers.’
There followed a rendering of Thig Tri Nithean Gun Iarraidh (‘Three things will come without seeking . . . ’). John listened to the frail voice: it seemed strange to hear it, ghostly and yet powerful in its own belief, real and yet unreal at the same time.
When the singing was over the interviewer questioned her:
INTER. And now, Mrs Macdonald, could you please tell me how old you are?
MRS M. I am ninety years old.
INTER. You will have seen a lot of changes on this island, in this village even.
MRS M. Oh yes, lots of changes. I don’t know much about the island. I know more about the village.
INTER. You mean that you hardly ever left the village itself?
MRS M. I don’t know much about the rest of the island.
INTER. What are your memories then of your youth in the village?
MRS M. Oh, people were closer together. People used to help each other at the peat gathering. They would go out with a cart and they would put the peats on the cart. And they would make tea and sing. It was very happy times especially if it was a good day.
INTER. Do they not do that any more? I mean, coal and electricity . . .
MRS M. No, they don’t do that so much, no. Nowadays. And there was more fishing then too. People would come to the door and give you a fish if they had caught one.
INTER. You mean herring?
MRS M. No, things like cod. Not herring. They would catch them in boats or off the rocks. Not herring. The herring were caught by the drifters. And the mackerel. We used to eat herring and potatoes every day. Except Sunday of course.
INTER. And what did you eat on Sunday?
MRS M. We would always have meat on Sunday. That was always the fashion. Meat on Sundays. And soup.
INTER. I see. And tell me, when did you leave school, Mrs Macdonald?
MRS M. I left school when I was fourteen years old. I was in Secondary Two.
INTER. It was a small village school, I take it.
MRS M. Oh, yes, it was small. Perhaps about fifty pupils.
Perhaps about fifty. We used to write on slates in those days and the children would bring in a peat for a fire in the winter.
Every child would bring in a peat. And we had people called pupil-teachers.
INTER. Pupil-teachers? What were pupil-teachers?
MRS M. They were young people who helped the teacher. Pupils. They were pupils themselves.
INTER. Then what happened?
MRS M. I looked after my father and mother. We had a croft too. And then I got married.
INTER. What did your husband do?
MRS M. He was a crofter. In those days we used to go to a dance at the end of the road. But the young people go to the town now. In those days we had a dance at the end of the road.
INTER. Did you not know him before, your husband I mean?
MRS M. Yes but that was where I met him, at the dance.
INTER. What did they use for the dance?
MRS M. What do you mean?
INTER. What music did they use?
MRS M. Oh, you mean the instrument. It was a melodeon.
INTER. Can you remember the tunes, any of the tunes, any of the songs?
MRS M. Oh yes, I can remember A Ribbinn Oig bbeil cuimbn’ agad?
INTER. Could you tell our listeners what that means, Mrs Macdonald?
MRS M. It’s a love song. That’s what it is, a sailors’ song. A love song.
INTER.
