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The Corncrake and the Lysander
The unhurried pattern of life in the 30's on a remote island in the Outer Hebrides, with rich and warm characterisation of people long gone. It mixes joys, sadness, and nostalgia. Mr. Macdonald must have been a remarkable man to move from such a basic lifestyle of almost peasantry on Harris, to a successful career in journalism. Although English was a second language he uses it with simple mastery.
- GenresScotlandNonfiction
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1985
About the author
Finlay J. Macdonald
9 books5 followersFinlay John MacDonald - Fionnlagh Iain MacDhòmhnaill - was born on Harris in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. He spoke Gaelic at home, and started English when he went to primary school. His three books, Crowdie and Cream, Crotal and White, and The Corncrake and the Lysander detail his childhood growing up. Crowdie and Cream was also a series of talks on BBC Radio. He also had a long and successful career as a radio drama and talks producer, a television director, and also a writer and editor.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 21, 2021
This final instalment of the author’s childhood memoirs sees him, having at the second attempt passed the bursary exam, finally off to the “big” school in what he perceives as the metropolis of Tarbert though by wider standards it is little more than a village. In his new school the headmaster “didn’t really expect boys to behave themselves - he had seen too many boys for that – but he did expect them not to get caught.”
Before that, though, the author had time to aid Old Hector, debilitated by malaria contracted in his sole journey away from the village as a seaman, with milking his cow daily - which has the side advantage of providing the opportunity to have a sly smoke without the knowlegde of his parents. Hector wasn’t really old but his infirmity meant he depended on others, a dependency made worse by the death of his sister who had dedicated her life to looking after him. Macdonald, in considering how Hector would have to sell his cow when he leaves for school, conceived of the idea of advertising for a household companion ‘with a view to matrumony’ for Hector, a plan kept secret between the two of them. (Later, however, Macdonald’s father surprises him with his knowledge of Finlay’s part in the scheme. How did he know? “You never could spell matrimony.”) The first replies were unsuitable in various ways but in Macdonald’s absence at school someone did come to fulfil both aspects of the design. These machinations give the opportunity for some light humour as does the visit of the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, that particular incumbent being a Gaelic speaker.
There is a more reflective aspect to the text when the author mentions the melancholy of being present when a language goes into its death throes. (Though nearly ninety years on from the times described here the Gaelic language still manages to survive.) The assumption in the village and more widely on Harris and elsewhere in the Hebrides was that to get on a child had to get out, that not to do so would be a failure, a factor which would inevitably lead to a hollowing out of life on the islands. Macdonald’s going to the big school was a first step on that journey. This quality of Macdonald’s memoir is of a piece with one of the perennial considerations of the Scottish novel; the sense of nostalgia, of things lost, of a strange incompleteness. I suspect that is one of the hangovers of the Union of the Parliaments and the formation of the United Kingdom in 1707. MacdDonald also has the Scottish novelist’s eye for landscape description.
Macdonald’s growing to adulthood lay under the shadow of the looming Second World War. There is a grand set piece when the lads who have signed up are piped on to the ferry to the mainland to join their regiment, the ill-fated 51st Highland Division. (https://51hd.co.uk/history/valery_1940) This was before the actual formal commencement of hostilities when, “Nobody heard Chamberlain’s declaration of war on the Sunday because, in the Hebrides in those days, radio sets were never switched on on a Sunday – not even for the news.” The “wireless” in those days had vagaries of its own which is illustrated by the author with a comparison that is now itself outdated, “the sudden demise of the accumulator tended to have the sort of explosive effect that the telephone bill has nowadays on a house with daughters.” Macdonald’s thoughts on the whole matter are expressed by the sentiment that, “Nobody ever had a ‘good’ war and I can’t imagine how anyody could coin the phrase in cynicism or in jest.” He had a near escape himself when he and his brother unscrewed the spikes from a mine that had floated onto the shore and then hammered them onto their door as a makeshift knocker. His father was appalled when he discovered this.
He himself had been a sniper in the Great War (a conflict to which he never referred) and would not touch a gun since. So its is that on one of Macdonald’s returns home for the holidays he is surprised to find his father kitted out in khaki and with a rifle. He had joined the Home Guard. He allows Macdonald one shot of the rifle (wildly inaccurate of course) but on practice with his platoon merely jerks the rifle instead of firing it.
The drawbacks of progress are illustrated by the demise of the corncrake whose cry is Macdonald’s abiding memory of his childhood and whose habitat was destroyed by the improvement of the soil’s richness by the application of fertiliser reducing their scrub ground cover. Also the local oysters and wolf mussels die out because the run-off from the new internal toilets was being directed straight into the sea. The Lysander in the title refers to an RAF spotter plane which patrolled the waters round the islands in search of U-boats.
It is odd to see words such as ‘carry-out’ and ‘screwtops’ given quotation marks but English was Macdonald’s second language.
Before that, though, the author had time to aid Old Hector, debilitated by malaria contracted in his sole journey away from the village as a seaman, with milking his cow daily - which has the side advantage of providing the opportunity to have a sly smoke without the knowlegde of his parents. Hector wasn’t really old but his infirmity meant he depended on others, a dependency made worse by the death of his sister who had dedicated her life to looking after him. Macdonald, in considering how Hector would have to sell his cow when he leaves for school, conceived of the idea of advertising for a household companion ‘with a view to matrumony’ for Hector, a plan kept secret between the two of them. (Later, however, Macdonald’s father surprises him with his knowledge of Finlay’s part in the scheme. How did he know? “You never could spell matrimony.”) The first replies were unsuitable in various ways but in Macdonald’s absence at school someone did come to fulfil both aspects of the design. These machinations give the opportunity for some light humour as does the visit of the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, that particular incumbent being a Gaelic speaker.
There is a more reflective aspect to the text when the author mentions the melancholy of being present when a language goes into its death throes. (Though nearly ninety years on from the times described here the Gaelic language still manages to survive.) The assumption in the village and more widely on Harris and elsewhere in the Hebrides was that to get on a child had to get out, that not to do so would be a failure, a factor which would inevitably lead to a hollowing out of life on the islands. Macdonald’s going to the big school was a first step on that journey. This quality of Macdonald’s memoir is of a piece with one of the perennial considerations of the Scottish novel; the sense of nostalgia, of things lost, of a strange incompleteness. I suspect that is one of the hangovers of the Union of the Parliaments and the formation of the United Kingdom in 1707. MacdDonald also has the Scottish novelist’s eye for landscape description.
Macdonald’s growing to adulthood lay under the shadow of the looming Second World War. There is a grand set piece when the lads who have signed up are piped on to the ferry to the mainland to join their regiment, the ill-fated 51st Highland Division. (https://51hd.co.uk/history/valery_1940) This was before the actual formal commencement of hostilities when, “Nobody heard Chamberlain’s declaration of war on the Sunday because, in the Hebrides in those days, radio sets were never switched on on a Sunday – not even for the news.” The “wireless” in those days had vagaries of its own which is illustrated by the author with a comparison that is now itself outdated, “the sudden demise of the accumulator tended to have the sort of explosive effect that the telephone bill has nowadays on a house with daughters.” Macdonald’s thoughts on the whole matter are expressed by the sentiment that, “Nobody ever had a ‘good’ war and I can’t imagine how anyody could coin the phrase in cynicism or in jest.” He had a near escape himself when he and his brother unscrewed the spikes from a mine that had floated onto the shore and then hammered them onto their door as a makeshift knocker. His father was appalled when he discovered this.
He himself had been a sniper in the Great War (a conflict to which he never referred) and would not touch a gun since. So its is that on one of Macdonald’s returns home for the holidays he is surprised to find his father kitted out in khaki and with a rifle. He had joined the Home Guard. He allows Macdonald one shot of the rifle (wildly inaccurate of course) but on practice with his platoon merely jerks the rifle instead of firing it.
The drawbacks of progress are illustrated by the demise of the corncrake whose cry is Macdonald’s abiding memory of his childhood and whose habitat was destroyed by the improvement of the soil’s richness by the application of fertiliser reducing their scrub ground cover. Also the local oysters and wolf mussels die out because the run-off from the new internal toilets was being directed straight into the sea. The Lysander in the title refers to an RAF spotter plane which patrolled the waters round the islands in search of U-boats.
It is odd to see words such as ‘carry-out’ and ‘screwtops’ given quotation marks but English was Macdonald’s second language.
April 3, 2021
Having finished this, MacDonald's third installment in his biography, I wonder if he meant to do more. It feels that a lot of stories have been left unfinished. What happened to the twins who went off to war? How did it go with the school in Tarbet, did he get away to the next school in Portree? This book was published in 1985, and MacDonald died in 87, so perhaps life, and more likely all those cigarettes he keeps mentioning, caught up with him before he expected.
This is more of a childhood growing up on Harris between the wars - only just between the wars, because the outbreak of the second world war is included in this book. MacDonald also starts off at what must be the junior part of secondary school in Tarbet, and has to go stay with big Grandfather. He feels the changes, both of growing up and growing away from village life and looking towards what may be in his adult life. It's very sad, that being a success means leaving and never coming back, and the next generation of crofters are seen as those who failed. The world of his childhood is disappearing as well. The corncrakes he heard you might not hear now, looms are getting modernised for the Harris tweed, and new fangled things like toilets are coming into existence. And how tragic that unknowingly, that brings about the end of the local oysters and muscles they used to eat. Mind you, the thought of everyone peeing outside the house, it must have stank there.
There's some funny anecdotes as only MacDonald can do, about old Hector, the confirmed batchelor, now alone that his nagging, grumpy sister has died. Finlay persuades him to advertise for a wife, which he goes along with to interesting results. The moderator (I don't know religion, but some high up head dude in the Scottish church) comes to visit, except the car sent to fetch him picks up a random man on the street instead (who turns out to have been from the war department).
At one point he has to go to the doctor to get a certificate of health before he can start at the school and the doctor has some interesting reflections on education:
"You don't need education to be a crofter."
"And what bloody fool told you that? Not your father, that's for sure. Education isn't for being something, boy: education is for enjoying whatever you are. The only thing you have to be in life is yourself. There are only two ways to enjoy yourself - one is to have a good education so that you can understand how much worse off you could be; the other way is to have no education at all, and not be discontented with your lot in the first place."
This is more of a childhood growing up on Harris between the wars - only just between the wars, because the outbreak of the second world war is included in this book. MacDonald also starts off at what must be the junior part of secondary school in Tarbet, and has to go stay with big Grandfather. He feels the changes, both of growing up and growing away from village life and looking towards what may be in his adult life. It's very sad, that being a success means leaving and never coming back, and the next generation of crofters are seen as those who failed. The world of his childhood is disappearing as well. The corncrakes he heard you might not hear now, looms are getting modernised for the Harris tweed, and new fangled things like toilets are coming into existence. And how tragic that unknowingly, that brings about the end of the local oysters and muscles they used to eat. Mind you, the thought of everyone peeing outside the house, it must have stank there.
There's some funny anecdotes as only MacDonald can do, about old Hector, the confirmed batchelor, now alone that his nagging, grumpy sister has died. Finlay persuades him to advertise for a wife, which he goes along with to interesting results. The moderator (I don't know religion, but some high up head dude in the Scottish church) comes to visit, except the car sent to fetch him picks up a random man on the street instead (who turns out to have been from the war department).
At one point he has to go to the doctor to get a certificate of health before he can start at the school and the doctor has some interesting reflections on education:
"You don't need education to be a crofter."
"And what bloody fool told you that? Not your father, that's for sure. Education isn't for being something, boy: education is for enjoying whatever you are. The only thing you have to be in life is yourself. There are only two ways to enjoy yourself - one is to have a good education so that you can understand how much worse off you could be; the other way is to have no education at all, and not be discontented with your lot in the first place."
November 4, 2019
"As Finlay Macdonald set out from his tiny village for high school in Tarbert, Hitler's growing military strength had begun to menace the people of Europe. But to Finlay the coming fray was just one more exciting prospect along with living in Big Grandfather's house, making new friends and meeting the beautiful girls of his adolescent dreams.
"And as the rasping croak of the elusive corncrake was drowned out by the moan of the protecti8ve Lysander plane, Finlay's adventures brought him much laughter -- but there were also tears as the pride of the island's young men sailed off to battle, many never to return."
~~back cover
This was a nice book, very descriptive of the town of Tarbert and the gathering winds of war. But I like the two preceding books better -- the ones about life in his small village and the characters there, and the rhythm of daily life and the seasonal round.
"And as the rasping croak of the elusive corncrake was drowned out by the moan of the protecti8ve Lysander plane, Finlay's adventures brought him much laughter -- but there were also tears as the pride of the island's young men sailed off to battle, many never to return."
~~back cover
This was a nice book, very descriptive of the town of Tarbert and the gathering winds of war. But I like the two preceding books better -- the ones about life in his small village and the characters there, and the rhythm of daily life and the seasonal round.
May 16, 2020
I enjoyed this book the most out of the three in the trilogy! The story and premise continued through the book with thought and reflections from the author tying it nicely together throughout. Writing that evokes laughter, tears and thought throughout. A very interesting read right now when there are so much political comparisons made to this time
August 14, 2014
A nice light entertaining read, historical setting in an beguiling landscape undergoing changes.
January 2, 2015
Hilarious account of growing up on Harris.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews