Song Book of the Pillagers - Poem

near Cromgleann nan Clach Crooked Glen of the Stones commonplace book of the perishing

pity the men whom you may spoil

Duncan MacDougall
Dougall MacGille
MacGillandak, man of songs
   topography authentic, disarranged
   exempted by no stream so swift
   as leaves in windy weather

Stand at a window set in a wall that now connects to nothing: a quarto volume, seven inches square: the reliquary. Gaelic poems in a Roman hand. Gaelic sounds in a Scots spelling. Metrical form and difficult. Oral and vernacular. All leaves perished at edges. Fair copy, but in secretary script, the every-day hand of a notary: one Duncan MacGregor, servitor.

   capitals used indiscriminately
   C & T tend to be interchangable how droll
   the incerthanging strophic forms of hero on a bloody bier

   knife set with gold the one woman who thus weeps
   in dei nomine amen counted as a pen-test
   scene of a hunting fresh point and ink
   with one illuminated P
   widening tear like a sea-loch
   in aerial photograph
   edge-stained, water-stained

   lady's name encoded in the names of trees
   young man with beautiful hair
   copying error slash marks
   dark-stained and mountainous pages

A poet of some skill, this Duncan, as was his brother James, the Dean of Lismore and Vicar of Fortingall at Glen Lyon's foot. From 1512 to 1551, they collected all that survives of what was vanishing: three hundred eleven pages of poems, an Duanaire, a song-book. Ossianic chants, religious tracts, praises and obituaries; with pieces more or less indecent, satires, laments, and aphorisms. Imported paper, expensive ink, beautiful columns of matching words, all taken down from memory, or the recitation of poets: chief's bards, well-kept, and strolling bards--mere packmen--who, in the custom of strollers, were apt to arrive at evening, followed close by their hounds. A greedy, lying, foul-mouthed race, we're told. Apt to praise the lord of a castle, apt to grow wordy over ale--drunken, songful, light-headed. Viper-tongued and jealous. Of the slim hawk, the dark eyelash, their craft.

   mouth with mouth at the daybreak
   jewel, who hast roused my grief, jewel
   wine, wax, honey, song
   Finlay, the red-haired bard, said this

   [badly written in fresh ink
   beautifully stained, like a pinto horse
   blank save for And at upper left
   Aut(or) illegible
   failing to interpret, writes

twenty lines of praise, one word crossed out, replaced a different hand has jotted its disapproval

   hands mingle and alternate
   blank space with a descending line
   beautifully
   legible

   calendar notes, the weeks of the year
   subscribed Invent (?) in bibliam
   sometimes complete lines are altered

   shopping list delivery of meal
   scribbled above, below & left
   B ornamented, misread begins apparently

   part of a rite of exorcism
   upside-down at torn lower edge
   deaths at Flodden, local events
   prowess, freebooting, and cruelty
   the measurements of Noah's rak
   lost in the perished edge of the leaf
   a semi-legible quatrain

   two hands for the pipe and one for the sword
   written on but much rubbed
   brass fittings for a portable shrine
   formerly part of the binding
   rubricated in red, it may be part of a commentary
   the text, which are illegible in Latin

   (apology for my treachery
   in margin, very indistinct
   Isabel of Argyll on her priest's virility

   read it out to the bard you got it from
   endure his jokes, correct it

poems bear no trace of life except for language

   cup of healing far from clear
   this x between two stanzas
   and other stray marks once meaningful

   now yawning over the manuscript
   chemical stained in the last century
   taste its fruit when it was red
   I have made only trifling changes

   by other names recklessness
   cattle & treasure the same word
   mounted female in a hunting scene
   not historical, but history-like
   who tasted the salmon of knowledge

And o what a country is that page. Peopled by heavy, white-haired cows, swift otters, wild cats; by fish and flesh, wild boar and badger; by stag, hart, roe, fox, hare. No swifter is a cataract than Clan Gregor with its hounds. When hunting was theirs in all the forests: not even Fionn, the warrior, made hunting without their leave. No mention of whom was hunted now: signed bands to bring their heads in. No mention of king's charters or of lands conquessit.

Never a man more lacking sense than he whose back on this world is turned

High its herbs and fair its boughs, beautiful its woods at rising. Wave-like horses and bloody hounds in the house of he without stain. He with red hand and reddened edge. He the king at lifting cattle. Gregor of Blows, Gregor of Mirth, Gregor whose palms are rosy-tipped, whose horse outshines the swallows. Man by women thought so fair. He well-loved by poets and the poor. Warrior under heavy locks, wine-blooded, heavy-hearted. He whose music is leaping in the tumult of his dogs.

   (no wonder though bards should fill thy court
   court of thatch and stone in the clachan of will

   Then praised be this Gregorach,
   praised in ancient forms for a straight tongue!

   (unlikely, sir, it's a delicacy
   or blade, not meant for children