Life and Death in Assynt's Past

A drift of peat smoke. A posse of people hunched over a heap of fleece, carding it into rolags, muttering in Gaelic. A spindle twirling and a great wheel turning. The click of knitting needles. Wool tugging between the threads on a loom. Willow being woven into a basket.A fish net forming on the back of a chair.

A burst of Gaelic song.

Happy chatter over a bowl of tattie soup with a dunking of soda bread, hot from the oven.

The past was present in Assynt yesterday. In one corner, Gordon built a model of the building we excavated in Glenleraig, while all around him we were busy doing the things that people would have done in that small house.Convivial doesn’t come close to the atmosphere. (There are some nice pictures on Helen Lockhart’s blog.)

Then in the evening we adjourned to Drumbeg, and ceilidhed the night away. James Graham gave an intimate performance of songs from Assynt. Does anyone have a finer singing voice? It was mesmerising – the old tunes, the perfectly annunciated Gaelic, so exciting for a learner to be able to pick out the words, and even for those with no Gaelic at all, to recognise the names of the places in the songs – Quinag, Culkein, Rhue Stoer… What made it even more special was the care James took to talk about the bards – these local men who wrote these beautiful songs from croft houses just like the one where we found the wine bottles and cups in the remains of the old mud floor.

More than 60 people came during the day, a different 60 at night. And what a day. What a special community we belong to. What a brilliant project this Life and Death in Assynt’s Past has turned out to be.