`Scotch or Scots?" asked the Irish poet. "Depends," replied Norman McCaig. He relented and added: "On the hour of the day". It was 11.15 a.m., the place was Stewart's Bar, Tollcross, March 1973. The Irishman was Michael O h'Uanachain who was brandishing his Radio Eireann tape recorder in an attempt to rescue culture from confusion. This was another morning after another night attending the once-annual Gaelic exchange visits between poets and musicians of Ireland and Scotland. In aim and method-madness these visits encapsulated for over two decades the interlocking literary and historically devolving nature of the two nations.
They were instigated in 1971 by the then literary director of The Scottish Arts Council, Trevor Royle, and a retired Irish military officer, Colonel Eoghan O'Neill. In March, a Scottish quartet would visit Dublin and then Irish speaking areas around Ireland. In the jaded cultural mayhem that is post-festival Edinburgh in September the Irish foursome would arrive to strut their stuff before staggering off to the Isles and other hidden covens of the Scottish Gael.
Sorley MacLean was one of the first three visitors to Ireland (the others were Derick Thomson and Donald MacAuley). In the packed audience that greeted them in the Common Room, Trinity College, Dublin, were three former IRA activists. As MacLean finished his poem about the Easter Rising of 1916, and specifically the part played in it by Edinburgh-born James Connolly, one of them rattled out audibly "Fear Uasal" (Noble Man).
MacLean was never to get the Nobel Laureate-ship but his leading nominator on several occasions was in the chair that evening. That was Terence MacCaughey, a Church of Ireland minister from the North. Beyond ecuminism, literary reverberations also rippled out from that and subsequent occasions. A new confidence in Gaelic writing related to a new willingness to explore, rediscover and reinterpret a common literary past. Most eloquently this was articulated in Thomas Kinsella's "essay on poetry and politics" The Dual Tradition, (1995). Specifically it concentrated on matters Irish but it has also informed a Palimpsest of common interests, artistic and intellectual, for many Scottish commentators.
These literary occasions also led to social shifts in community perspectives. The deliberate policy of the organisers was to introduce their performers into strange and maybe even hostile areas. So Gaelic speaking places in the Isles who normally frowned on "entertainments" found themselves becoming benign hosts to their Irish peers. Years later in the Benedictine Glenstal Abbey the recently deceased poet Michael Hartnett introduced the Scots to the Abbot. The result was a mesmerising harmony between a Presbyterian Precentor and Plain chanting monks.
Much of the success of these visits came from positive coverage of the events by The Scotsman arts editor Allen Wright and, in Dublin, Fergus Lenihan in The Irish Times. In fact the latter invented an "Arts In Scotland" column for this writer after publishing an early report on the proceedings in the Seventies. This welcome remit coincided with my first period of living in Scotland. Literature was the common language of introduction. Apart from Trevor Royle, other early friends from that time were the poets Hamish Henderson, Walter Perrie and Tom Leonard.
There was a further dimension to my friendship with the latter. The writer James Thompson (BV 1834-82) had fascinated me from the mid-sixties when I had first read his long poem The City of Dreadful Night, (1874). Born in Port Glasgow, he had been billeted and had fallen in love in Ireland. He became the subject of a radio play and several essays. Then came elected silence. Enter Tom Leonard. He too was enthralled by this "Prophet of Pessimism". Conversations between us became liquid with shared enthusiasms. With great tenacity, the Scot researched national records and overgrown graveyards in Ireland. The result was one of the most imaginative of contemporary biographies: Places of the mind: The Life and work of James Thompson, (1993).
During these times of delegated research and enjoyable journalism, this commentator also discovered Wick. He read his own poems to an audience gathered by David Morrison and including a memorably genial clergyman who answered to "Rev Roy". More significantly it led to a meeting with the teacher, book-collector and now Scottish Book Fair manager Larry Hutchison from Dunfermline. He was to introduce me not only to the National Library but also to the Writers in Schools scheme. This was another innovation by Royle. Employment within this scheme gave me valued insights into an emerging Scotland. A year in an Edinburgh school was followed by shorter periods in Falkirk and Dumfries. First hand, I was hearing new voices. There was a confidence within the "creative classes" that was both encouraging and challenging.
The setting up of the Edinburgh Book Festival in the mid-eighties coincided with a return to Edinburgh. Old friends introduced me to new places and new voices.
Improbable places and original voices. In a slim street on the fringes of Edinburgh's New Town lies The Oxford Bar. Hutchison and his librarian friend Max Bell had introduced me to it. Now it had become a local. Soon its back room became an unofficial office and during Festival a convivial meeting place. Here a Nobel Prize winner supped contentedly. One night four Booker Prize nominees tried to out drink each other. In the shadow of Ian Rankin's John Rebus, words flew and plots were critically undone for overdue reviews and articles. A literary circle was enjoined. For it was from an equivalent place in Dublin, Grogan's of South William Street, that I had set out for Trinity on that March evening in 1971.
