The Rocks Remain –
But Rarely Unmoved
A’Chraobh Ogam
Each letter of the Gaelic alphabet is represented by a tree. This is called A’Chraobh Ogam and can be dated back to at least the 4th century AD in Ireland.[1] In Borgie Forest a spiral woodland walk was created for the Millennium by local children, members of the community and Forest Enterprise. This walk winds around all eighteen letters of the Gaelic alphabet. At each stopping place there is the tree to represent the appropriate letter and along the way are stones etched with a picture of each tree and its name in Gaelic and in English. The etchings were created from drawings of the trees made by local children. As Mary Beith explains:
“Whether as forests, groves or as single examples, trees were of great significance in Celtic culture. Indeed there was a special word for a sacred tree, bile (pron: bee-ley). The most important sacred trees were oak, ash and yew, closely followed by hazel. All of these are represented in the Ogam Chraobh, and, given the ‘sanctity’ of trees, it is not perhaps surprising that they became associated with the phenomenon of the alphabet – the symbols representing sounds of the human voice and immeasurably capable of variation in depicting the ideas of the human mind.”[2]
Life and Land; Trees and Treasures
As we write the North Sutherland Community Forest Trust has managed to negotiate a management agreement with the Forestry Commission to take control of Borgie Forest on behalf of the local communities. Any engagement with the natural environment is never just about natural resources, environment and economy but is also culturally significant. Any culture and society is shaped and influenced by the natural environment in which it flourishes – by the rocks, lochs, winds, waves, plants and animals which shape daily life - and over centuries these in turn are sometimes shaped in small but significant ways by local cultures and communities.
In Praise of Ben Loyal
Ben Loyal your beauty
Has made you the bride
And pride of the hills and the glens
As you stand out aloof
On the moorlands so wide
You’re Queen of all Scotia’s bens
You face the Atlantic
A bastion of peace
Where nature forbade you to arm
And made you the idol
Of friend and of foe
Who prides in your beauty and charm
Through the dull morning mist
As stately you loom
Attired in your garment of heather
And arrayed in your splendour
Of sweet autumn bloom
That soon loses colour and withers
And then in defiance
You’re ready to bear
The brunt of each howling gale
That sweeps the Atlantic
With hurricane force
When you’re smothered in snow and in hail
Then like a ghost
In the shade of the moon
All dressed in your mantle of snow
No shelter or food
For the beasts of the wild
You’re shunned by the deer and the roe
Who flee from your heights
With hunger and cold
To wander and graze on the moor
And return in their season
A wild angry herd
All poised for to battle and roar
You stand as a sentinel
Guarding the Kyle
Where the beautiful village of Tongue
Lies in the shade
Of your gigantic form
That wonders of nature have done
Where the work of creation
Has never been spoiled
By no interference of man
Who found that his brains
Could not at this stage
Have altered what nature began
When spring comes again
To your slopes and your braes
And the eagle will nest in your crags
The rays of the sun
As summer draws nigh
Will dry all your corries and hags
Where the wee birds sing
As they nestle their young
In the clefts that your surface adorn
You’re open to praise
By those who have charm
And those who are never yet born.
By Hugh MacIntosh – The Portskerra Bard.[3]
Designating Our Land
Chorus:
Oh cruel are the folk
And it’s no joke
We should have taken a stand
Oh cruel are the folk
Who at one stroke
Designated our Land
Verse 1
They came from the city
Looking so sleek
In their Barbour jackets
Green wellies on feet
And they told us that our land
It was unique
And they made it an SSSI
Verse 2
They gave us a list of things not to do now
Like planting a tree
Or using a plough
Or taking your motorbike across the Flow
On their precious SSSI
Verse 3
Now from this list I could go on forever
Like feeding your sheep
Or burning their heather
And if they could
They’d control the weather
On their precious SSSI
Verse 4
Compensation’s a word
I don’t think they’ve heard
Unless you’re a Lord
Or even a Laird
But we are the crofters
Working so hard
Trying to live on their SSSI
By Sandy Murray, Strath Halladale – late 1980s
[1] P21 M. Beith 2000 A’Chraobh Dornoch
[2] p23 ditto.
[3] Pp 30 – 31 H. MacIntosh The Best of the Bard: Poems by Hugh Macintosh of Portskerra Published by Melvich and Portskerra Senior Citizens Committee and Friends of Sinclair Court