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A Scots Hairst: Essays and Short Stories
Essays and short stories of Scottish Writer Lewis Grassic Gibbon
- GenresShort Stories
272 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 1967
About the author
Lewis Grassic Gibbon
80 books56 followersLewis Grassic Gibbon was the pen name of the Scottish author James Leslie Mitchell.
Born in Auchterless and raised in Arbuthnott, then in Kincardineshire, Mitchell started working as a journalist for the Aberdeen Journal and the Scottish Farmer at age 16. In 1919 he joined the Royal Army Service Corps and served in Iran, India and Egypt before enlisting in the Royal Air Force in 1920. In the RAF he worked as a clerk and spent some time in the Middle East. He married Rebecca Middleton in 1925, with whom he settled in Welwyn Garden City. He began writing full-time in 1929. Mitchell wrote numerous books and shorter works under both his real name and nom de plume before his early death in 1935 of peritonitis brought on by a perforated ulcer.
Born in Auchterless and raised in Arbuthnott, then in Kincardineshire, Mitchell started working as a journalist for the Aberdeen Journal and the Scottish Farmer at age 16. In 1919 he joined the Royal Army Service Corps and served in Iran, India and Egypt before enlisting in the Royal Air Force in 1920. In the RAF he worked as a clerk and spent some time in the Middle East. He married Rebecca Middleton in 1925, with whom he settled in Welwyn Garden City. He began writing full-time in 1929. Mitchell wrote numerous books and shorter works under both his real name and nom de plume before his early death in 1935 of peritonitis brought on by a perforated ulcer.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 3, 2022
I was over on the east coast of Scotland a few weeks ago and took the opportunity to visit the Grassic Gibbon Centre near his home village in a farming area known as The Mearns. I wouldn’t recommend going out of your way to visit the Centre, but it did give me a prompt to look out more of his material. The author lived from 1901-1935. Incidentally the word “hairst” means “harvest”.
This collection opens with 5 of the author’s short stories, two of which I’d read before. All 5 are set in the NE of Scotland with the first four amongst the farms of The Mearns. The opening story, Smeddum, is one of my favourites, a brilliant portrayal of a formidable matriarch, Meg Menzies (the surname is pronounced “Mingis”) and quite light in mood when compared with much of this author’s material. It’s followed by the excellent story, Clay, which features and is very well written. Next up is Greenden, in which a young couple from Glasgow take the lease of the eponymous farm. It’s possibly an early example of people moving from an urban area for a “change in life”, and how difficult it is to make such a transition. Sim takes its title from the name of the lead character, Sim Wilson. It’s perhaps a story about how hope can make us blind to things that others can see. The last story, Forsaken, is one I have reviewed elsewhere on this site.
The stories are followed by a series of essays of which the best regarded, and deservedly so, is The Land. LGG muses early on that “I like to remember that I am of peasant rearing and peasant stock”, but he sets out to demolish any romantic notions of that life, describing it as one of unending, backbreaking toil, and only to be followed where there is no other option.
For this life is for no modern man or woman – even the finest of these. It belongs to a different, an alien generation…[It] is a thing for most to be stared at, tourist-wise, endured for a day or a week…For you or I or young Simon who is taking his girl to the pictures it is as alien and unendurable in permanence as the life of the Kamchatkan.”
We then get two “portraits” of the cities of Glasgow and Aberdeen. These essays have their moments but generally have little to recommend them. We move on to The Wrecker – James Ramsay MacDonald. He was a British Prime Minister regarded by British socialists, even today, as the arch-traitor to their movement. LGG’s essay is embittered, condescending in tone, and generally hasn’t aged well. The nadir of this collection is reached with The Antique Scene, a ridiculous and almost unreadable summary of Scotland’s history. I didn’t agree with the argument LGG advanced in the next piece, Literary Lights, but I thought it was a better essay, in that he at least put forward a coherent case. He argues that most of the well-known Scottish authors of his time, such as A.J. Cronin, John Buchan, Neil Gunn, and Naomi Mitchison, were “culturally English” and that the only two genuinely “Scottish” writers (apart from himself presumably) were the poets Hugh Macdiarmid and Lewis Spence. There’s also an essay where LGG sets out his views on religion.
The collection continues with some previously unpublished poems, where even the editor comments that “…in this field the ambition outweighed the achievement.” Lastly, there are another group of short stories written under the author’s own name of Leslie Mitchell when he was in his early twenties. They are all set in the Middle East, where he had spent time in the armed forces. The first of them, Siva Plays the Game, features a writer who has made a lot of money from romantic novels set in the region, and who is now visiting for the first time. You can tell it’s from a young author but it’s still quite amusing. The second story “For Ten’s Sake”, was OK, but I didn’t much like the other two.
Three stars overall for the mixed bag.
I think I’ve “done” Lewis Grassic Gibbon now!
This collection opens with 5 of the author’s short stories, two of which I’d read before. All 5 are set in the NE of Scotland with the first four amongst the farms of The Mearns. The opening story, Smeddum, is one of my favourites, a brilliant portrayal of a formidable matriarch, Meg Menzies (the surname is pronounced “Mingis”) and quite light in mood when compared with much of this author’s material. It’s followed by the excellent story, Clay, which features and is very well written. Next up is Greenden, in which a young couple from Glasgow take the lease of the eponymous farm. It’s possibly an early example of people moving from an urban area for a “change in life”, and how difficult it is to make such a transition. Sim takes its title from the name of the lead character, Sim Wilson. It’s perhaps a story about how hope can make us blind to things that others can see. The last story, Forsaken, is one I have reviewed elsewhere on this site.
The stories are followed by a series of essays of which the best regarded, and deservedly so, is The Land. LGG muses early on that “I like to remember that I am of peasant rearing and peasant stock”, but he sets out to demolish any romantic notions of that life, describing it as one of unending, backbreaking toil, and only to be followed where there is no other option.
For this life is for no modern man or woman – even the finest of these. It belongs to a different, an alien generation…[It] is a thing for most to be stared at, tourist-wise, endured for a day or a week…For you or I or young Simon who is taking his girl to the pictures it is as alien and unendurable in permanence as the life of the Kamchatkan.”
We then get two “portraits” of the cities of Glasgow and Aberdeen. These essays have their moments but generally have little to recommend them. We move on to The Wrecker – James Ramsay MacDonald. He was a British Prime Minister regarded by British socialists, even today, as the arch-traitor to their movement. LGG’s essay is embittered, condescending in tone, and generally hasn’t aged well. The nadir of this collection is reached with The Antique Scene, a ridiculous and almost unreadable summary of Scotland’s history. I didn’t agree with the argument LGG advanced in the next piece, Literary Lights, but I thought it was a better essay, in that he at least put forward a coherent case. He argues that most of the well-known Scottish authors of his time, such as A.J. Cronin, John Buchan, Neil Gunn, and Naomi Mitchison, were “culturally English” and that the only two genuinely “Scottish” writers (apart from himself presumably) were the poets Hugh Macdiarmid and Lewis Spence. There’s also an essay where LGG sets out his views on religion.
The collection continues with some previously unpublished poems, where even the editor comments that “…in this field the ambition outweighed the achievement.” Lastly, there are another group of short stories written under the author’s own name of Leslie Mitchell when he was in his early twenties. They are all set in the Middle East, where he had spent time in the armed forces. The first of them, Siva Plays the Game, features a writer who has made a lot of money from romantic novels set in the region, and who is now visiting for the first time. You can tell it’s from a young author but it’s still quite amusing. The second story “For Ten’s Sake”, was OK, but I didn’t much like the other two.
Three stars overall for the mixed bag.
I think I’ve “done” Lewis Grassic Gibbon now!
January 20, 2023
I picked this up in a local second-hand book store but found that most of the material contained (short stories, essays etc), I had already read having bought and read a copy of "Smeddum" some years ago. Nonetheless, I enjoyed rereading the shorts stories and this collection does contain some materials not contained in Smeddum (if I remember correctly) including some of his school writings and part of an unfinished novel. The inclusion of some of the Mitchell short stories (as opposed to the Gibbon short stories) which are set in Egypt give a contrast to the material for which he is most widely known, that is the land of the Mearns/Kincardineshire and its people. In fact, having had the opportunity to read this through in a single tome, my opinion is, that by placing both topic areas in a single book this only highlights his exceptional ability to describe the land and people in his native land. As always, his ability to write in English using phrases which are clearly translations from the Scots is brilliant, as are some of his rustic descriptions, "... she could bake oatcakes that would melt between your jaws as a thin rime of frost on the edge of a plough."
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews