Excerpts from issue 53/01 18 October 2025
Testing, testing
CalMac sent the recently completed Arran ferry, the MV Glen Sannox, seen here at Port Ellen, to Islay to check whether or not it fits the three piers: Port Askaig, Port Ellen and Kennacraig
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The Finlaggan Dig
In the 1990s David Caldwell, who then worked for the National Museum of Scotland, directed archaeological excavations at Finlaggan. The results of this work have now been released by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and give a fascinating insight into Islay in earlier times.
The main reason why it has taken so long to publish this book is because there was so much data to process, artefacts and samples, plans and photographs as well as detailed descriptions of what was being uncovered as the work progressed. The volume that has resulted from all this, does include a lot of information that is primarily of interest to specialists, but there is much that is readable and thought provoking, especially chapter 14 which provides an overview of Finlaggan from earliest times to the present day and chapter 15, which explains why Dr Caldwell thinks Finlaggan really was the centre of the Isles.
A handful of early documents suggested that in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Finlaggan was not just a residence of the MacDonald Lords of the Isles, but was the place where there were annual assemblies, new lords were made and meetings of the Council of the Isles took place. The excavations have helped confirm all this. The point is also made that Finlaggan was not just the home of important people in the past but also the ancestors of present day Ilich. The book explains who they were and provides plans and illustrations of their houses and fields along with the lead mines where some of them laboured.
Dr Caldwell is pleased to admit to friends and helpers in Islay, two major things he got wrong in his early days, but which they got right. The first concerns a stone with a footprint in which a new lord was required to put his foot during inauguration ceremonies. Such a stone was well known to many locals and is now laid out in the ruins of the chapel at Finlaggan. There is also a cast of it, showing the footprint, displayed in the Finlaggan Visitor Centre.
Dr Caldwell was originally very dismissive of it. He pointed out that the carving of the foot was very rough and in any case, it was in the back of a grave slab that could only be dated to the fourteenth century at earliest. This hardly seemed appropriate to him, but now that more research has been completed on the making of kings and lords in the Celtic World, the genuineness of the Finlaggan slab is believable. It is exactly the sort of thing that the MacDonalds would have come up with in inauguration ceremonies to bolster their credentials as would-be kings.
The other thing that Dr Caldwell admits was wrong, was his insistence that Finlaggan was not a castle, a fact he patiently explained on several occasions. It does not look like a castle, was not described in early documents as a castle and its lack of fortifications could best be explained by the fact that the MacDonald Lords were so powerful that they did not need to hide behind castle walls. Yet, in the course of the excavations it became apparent that Finlaggan had been an important fortress in the thirteenth century with a massive masonry tower on Eilean na Comhairle. The midden material that was thrown from it showed that it was occupied by a high status household which enjoyed a luxurious diet. We do not know what the castle was called or who built it. Dr Caldwell believes it was probably erected about 1200 for Ranald, son of Somerled, who was described as a king. Remarkably, it was built over an important thing site (an assembly place in the Scandinavian World). Perhaps it was the predecessor of Tynwald in the Isle of Man, the origin of the Manx Parliament.
Dr Caldwell clearly thinks that Finlaggan was an important place over hundreds of years, but has he exaggerated its significance? His answer to that is twofold.
First, kings and later lords of the Isles maintained a force of several thousand professional warriors and could send them to fight on the mainland and Ireland. That was real power in the Medieval Period. Secondly, so much of what we recognise as being quintessentially Scottish, including tartan, whisky and bagpipe music, was developed under the patronage of the men who controlled Finlaggan. Finlaggan represented an alternative form of society and culture to that promoted in the rest of Europe. The Ilich have every reason to be proud of it.
The Archaeology of Finlaggan, Islay is available from the Celtic House in Bowmore and also the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland's online shop, with a 20% discount for Fellows of the Society. Dr Caldwell will also be delivering a free public lecture on Finlaggan on Saturday 29 November in Edinburgh and online.
The Finlaggan Visitor Centre is open seasonally, but tours can be arranged outwith normal hours by emailing finlaggan@outlook.com
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Music review
Eternal Light, Tommy Smith and Gwilym Simcock.
The Queen's Hall, situated in Edinburgh's Southside, opened in 1824 as Hope Park Chapel. Ten years later, it was re-named Newington Parish Church, subsequently becoming Newington and St Leonard's Parish Church in 1932. The church was dissolved in 1972, purchased by the Scottish Philharmonic Society and reopened, by Queen Elizabeth II (after whom it is named) as the Queen’s Hall in 1979.
For Edinburgh-based jazz saxophonist, Tommy Smith, it has been home since he was a teenager, sitting in the front row to watch and listen to the likes of Branford and Wynton Marsalis, George Coleman, McCoy Tyner, John McLaughlin and many other stars of the jazz universe.
This concert, recorded live on 11 September this year and almost immediately released on Bandcamp, is a musical celebration of both Smith and the Queens Hall, but also, apparently, a farewell, marking as it does, Smith's final concert in not only his home town, but home country.
Recreating his favoured format of piano and saxophone duo, Smith was joined in the concert by Welsh pianist, Gwilym Simcock, a musician who first came to note with Bill Bruford's Earthworks in the early 2000s and has sinced played with many of the modern greats, including the late Chick Corea, Germany's NDR Big Band, and influential American guitarist, Pat Metheny.
Tommy Smith has collaborated with pianists on several previous occasions, having performed at the Islay Jazz Festival with Scots pianists, Fergus McCreadie and Brian Kellock (who suggested the partnership with Simcock), but rather than feature a repertoire of well-known standards, the partnership with Simcock has focused entirely on original material.
Their concerts have sought to bring something fresh to the table at each performance; sometimes a brand-new piece placed on the music stand moments before playing.
The empathy between the two musicians is immediately apparent on the opening track,'Land Between the Rivers' and, if anything, becomes stronger as the performance proceeds.
The title track, 'Eternal Light', opening with Simcock's classical style piano, previews Smith's familarly haunting and, dare I say it, ethereal saxophone, enhanced by the marvellous acoustic of the Queens Hall.
The album features seven of eleven tunes played that evening, raw and undiluted by the recording process, allowing those of us who were unfortunately not present, to enjoy a stunning performance by two of the world's leading musicians.
This is not one musician accompanied by the other, but two musicians performing as one.
The great American vibraphone player, Gary Burton, remarked of the concert, "I could hear and follow your thoughts as your solos developed, not a single noticeable standard 'lick', just pure melody."
Quite what the future holds for Smith is open to conjecture, but 'Eternal Light' demonstrates that he is still a vibrant component of the contemporary jazz world. Sheer brilliance from both.
bp
Eternal Light is available on Bandcamp now.
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In this week's issue:
CalMac's cunning plans, Councillors take the council to task, Shopfront grant, Liam's Mòd success, Council asks for support with funding request, Islay RNLI book request, The Finlaggan digs finally published, Islay Transport Volunteers, Amy Want's foraging column, Letters, John Miller's gardening column, The Battery Project restarted, Decline and fall - the population crisis, Charlène Busalli's book column, Music review: Tommy Smith and Gwilym Simcock, Book review - the Little Book of Christmas and Hogmanay, A song for the lighthouse.
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Book review
The Little Book of Christmas and Hogmanay. Scotland's Festive Traditions. Anna Marshall. Birlinn hardback 144pp illus. £9.99
You will perhaps forgive my introducing Christmas before we've even celebrated Hallowe'en, but based on personal experience, there are mums, dads, grannies and grandpas all across the nation working themselves into a froth over just what to buy someone for Christmas.
This excellent little book might well fill the corner of a stocking on Christmas Eve. Not only that, but included along with the many arcane ways in which the Scots celebrate the Festive Season, is a chapter featuring a tale reputedly originating from Islay.
The book begins, however, with a 'Scottish Festive Timeline' which immediately points out that the Presbyterian Church originally banned the celebration of Christmas in 1583, a decree reinforced by Parliament in 1640, making any Festive celebrations illegal.
These decrees persisted until 1958, when Christmas became a public holiday, almost twenty years after the first 'Broons' annual was published.
In her introduction, the author points out that the Scots eventual celebration of Christmas is the result of "...a melting pot of influences and beliefs", which began over 5,000 years ago when our ancient ancestors built a monument in Orkney to "track the setting sun during the winter solstice."
The miscellany of short tales ("a ceilidh in book form") is frequently interspersed with jokes, old proverbs and aphorisms. But there is a practical nature to the book's contents too, where the author has included recipes that might brighten a Christmas lunch or dinner.
New Year's Day Steak Pie, Yule Log, Black Bun are only some of the recipes that might occupy the cooks and bakers amongst us.
But, as the book's title suggests, it's not solely about Christmas.
"...for several centuries the focus of our winter celebrations shifted to New Year." Or as it is more frequently referred to, Hogmanay.
"...thought to have emerged from the combined legacies of the Roman feast of Saturnalia, and the Norse festival of Yule." The chapter goes on to discuss the possible origins of the word, Hogmanay.
Anna Marshall has compiled a fascinating trove of lesser-known tales, poems and jokes, (many of the latter would have been immediately adopted by the late Calum Murray), to provide a delightful book encouraging the reader to dip in and out between now and Hogmanay.
By this time next year, you'll have forgotten half of what you read, and be more than happy to start all over again. I'd hesitate to say it's essential, but if you receive this as a present, there's no doubt it'll substantially brighten the week between Christmas and New Year.
bp
The Little Book of Christmas and Hogmanay is available from the Celtic House, Bowmore
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