Apple Tree

 

Craobh nan Ubhal

It’s a well-established cliché: country people are ignorant, dull and uncultured and maybe thuggish. Culture comes from the city where there is opportunity to cultivate the finer things in life. There used to be lots of stories and films about a noble man or woman gone out into the countryside, struggling to overcome the people's stupidity and inability to appreciate culture and goodness.

There aren’t that many stories like that today, probably because country people are an insignificant part of the population now.

There used to be, in the United States, a counter genre. In it, country people are kind and true, and slick immorality comes from the city. There’s not much of that either, these days, for the same reason.

As a matter of fact, though, it used to be that country people did have their own often very old culture, often pretty invisible to authorities and other city people. When outsiders did notice that culture, they usually didn’t think much of it and didn’t care because how could some bundle of ignorant superstitions and clumsy folk songs matter to anybody? Sooner they were abolished, demolished and swept aside, the better for everyone involved.

Ordinary country people in Europe had no power and over the last century or so, the structural bases of European rural communities have been demolished, leaving only a bunch of, yes, ignorant hicks and people who would prefer to live in the city if they could. 

Most people now assume it was always that way, really.

It wasn’t.

Barra is an island in the Outer Hebrides with about 1,000 people today. In the later 1970s, what with television, closer economic integration into British life, a hundred years of English-only schooling and the collapse of community’s self-confidence,  parents stopped speaking Gaelic to their children and often to each other. Today it’s a remote place dependent on exchanging money with Outside for all the necessities of life: dependent on the Outside for culture and meaning. If it wasn’t for subsidies and an influx of city people very aware of the down side of city life, it would be in trouble

Up to the 1970s or so, it had an incredibly rich culture of song, story and music. It was a very civilized community and not because people knew Proust and Dutch painting.

Craobh nan Ubhal is a song that was written down several times. Here are a few verses from a version written down in 1938.

The “sweetheart” of Mackay (McGee) of Islay speaks, praising him as an apple tree:

Chraobh nan ubhal, gheug nan abhal,     (Craobh is “tree” in Scots Gaelic)

Chraobh nan ubhal, gu robh Dia leat,

Go robh Moire ‘S gu robh Criosda,

Gu robh ‘ghealach, gu robh ‘ ghrian leat,

Gu robh gaoth an ear 's an iar leat,

Gu robh m’athair fhín ‘s a thriall leat       (all that he has)

 

Ach ma théid thu dha’n choill iúbhraich  (yew forest)

Aithnich fhéin a’ Chraobh as liúmsa          (know the tree that is mine)

Chrobh as mílse ‘s buig’ úbhlan                 (sweetest: softest apples)
Chraobh mheanganach pheurach úbhlach (branching, precious)

Bun a’ fás, ‘s a bárr a’ lúbadh,                    (roots growing, top bending)

‘S a meangannan air gach túbh dhí           (Branches on each side of her)

Ubhlan toma donna dlúthmhor                 (heavy, dark, thickly-growing apples)

 

(Text from Hebridean Folksongs, Volume Three, John Lorne Campbell, Oxford, 1981., p146 and 148)

I suspect not many heroes today would appreciate being compared to an apple tree.

This was recorded from Ruairi Iain Bháin (Roderick MacKinnon), on the Isle of Barra in March 1938, and was known at that point mostly only in Barra and then only to a few singers. It also appears, in two versions, in Carmina Gadelica, Volume V,  Alexander Carmichael, Scottish Academic Press, 1987 (originally published in 1900). Both versions there are also from Barra.

Here is a link to take you to Tobar a Dualchis site to listen to Flora Macneil, a great old Barra singer who brought the great old songs to our attention (as Joe Heaney did for Carna, Conamara) just before night came down.

Well, it's not actually Flora. There is no recording of her singing it there or anywhere on Youtube, though she did issue it on a cd. This recording is Calum Johnston, also a great singer and maybe even better candidate for the position of "last one." I highly highly recommend the tape/booklet, and cd/booklet that the School for Scottish Studies issues of songs and stories from him and his sister: Calum and Annie Johnston: Songs, Stories and Piping from Barra. It expresses a thousand times better than I can, the essential nobility and humanity of the culture of which he was a part,

https://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/track/95720?l=en

Apples were the most common Irish and Highland fruit. Good years for apples are noted in the Annals, and the fruit features in various ways in the Old Irish Laws, but they also have Otherworld associations, and show up in many old tales:

“Then the druid sang a charm against the (Otherworld) woman’s voice, so that no one heard the voice of the woman and Conle did not see the woman at that time. As the woman went away before the overpowering song of the druid, she threw an apple to Conle. For a month after that, Conle was without food or drink, and did not care to eat any victuals but his apple. However much he ate, the apple grw no less, but was still whole.” (A bit from the 8^th century tale Echtrae Conli, translation by Kenneth Jackson, p. 144, Celtic Miscellany, Penguin, 1951.)

They were the most common fruit, but not productions of the human community like the oat crop and milk and milk products were. They carry the scent of the wild with them into ordinary life:

A ninth century hermit describes his forest hermitage:

“There is an apple tree with huge apples such as grow ion fairy dwellings (great are these blessings) and an excellent clustered crop from small-nutted branching green hazels.

(“Aball uball (mára ratha) mbruidnech mbras: barr deas dornach, collán cnòbec, cròebac nglas.”)

...A clutch of eggs, money, mast, and heath-pease (sent by God, sweet apples, red cranberries, whortleberries.

(“Líne ugae: míl, mess, mell  (Dia dod-ròid), ubla milsi, mònainn derca, dercna froích.”)

Beer containing herbs, a patch of strawberries (good to taste in their glory), haws, yew-berries, nut kernels.

(“Coirm co lubaib, loc de shubaib, somlas snò, sílbach sciach, , derca iach, dercna froích...)

These are a selection of stanzas from a thirty-three stanza dialogue between King Gúaire and the hermit Marbán. I quote from Early Irish Lyrics, ed Gerard Murphy, Oxford, 1956, because, as I said once before, his translation cannot be bettered.

Barra and Highland and Irish Gaelic culture had deep roots: enough to sustain a civilization, but by the late 18^th century, those roots were under attack and not only metaphorically.

Sir Walter Raleigh or some less notable new English landlord introduced the potato to Ireland in the 16^th century, they say, but neither the Irish nor Highlanders embraced the spud ecstatically until they discovered you could, in fact, feed yourself from a small plot of land, which was mostly all they had by then.

Still, nobody said they had to like potatoes.

An Irish peasant was called to the witness stand in one of the government surveys held to take evidence about poverty or landholding in Ireland. He had just listened to the preceding witness, a well-meaning minister or landlord, go on about how the potato is so healthful and tasty and how the Irish just love it and they are lucky they’re not poor starving potato-less foreigners.

 “Begging your Honour’s pardon,” the peasant  said, “but you might want to eat nothing but potatoes with no sauce but the rare drop of  milk  for a year, before you talk about how lucky  we are.”

I don’t have the reference handy and I paraphrase, but that is what he said and no lie. There are no lyrical songs featuring the potato.

By the way, I’m not blaming the potato for the state of things. New potatoes fresh from the garden with butter are very nice, and my wife likes potatoes almost any way they’re cooked. (I attribute the fact to her Kerry parents.)

Oats and cheese (and other dairy products) and apples and various other fruits and vegetables green or onionish were the traditional foods, but by the late 18^th century they had been crushed by a massive wave of potatoes in Ireland and increasingly so in the Highlands. I will; talk more about them next week.

Until then, here is a recipe for blackberry and apple sweet.

 4-6 apples

I pound (500 g) blackberries

Honey or sugar

 Wash, peel and core the apples. Mash the blueberries to a pulp and add sugar or honey. Stuff the cored apples with the blackberry mixture. Put in a fireproof dish and add enough water t o prevent fruit from burning. Cover and put in a moderate oven until apples are cooked., Serve with cream,

 This is from Wild and Free by Cyril and Kit O Céirín, The O’Brien Press, 1980, another good book.