FOLIOCollections • Research • Events at the National Library of Scotland ISSUE 3 AUTUMN 2001

IN THIS ISSUE

RANKIN AND REBUSHands on at the Library

UNRAVELLING SPEKEAn African Exploration Classic

‘BITS AND PIECES’A Typographer at Work and Play

‘WIRRIED TO DEATH’On Trial for Witchcraft

LOST AND FOUNDThe George Campbell Hay Archive

43130SC_G4_FOLIO_3 7/11/01 10:37 pm Page 1

F O L I O2

If you look in Christina Larner’sSourcebook of Scottish Witchcraft,you won’t find any mention ofAnna Tait. She was one of many

accused witches whose names wereunknown to the compilers of theSourcebook. The details of Anna andalmost a hundred others recorded in aNational Library of Scotland manuscriptare not present in the published recordsof Scotland’s Privy Council. In theclosing years of the nineteenth century,the editors of the Privy Council volumeshad carefully combed the holdings of theNational Archives of Scotland for theirmaterial. What they didn’t realise wasthat a single volume of the Register ofCommissions, for the years 1630–42, hadescaped them. In it were hundreds ofrecords of Privy Council commissions totry criminal trials. In it was Anna Tait.

I first came across Anna andAdv.Ms.31.3.10 when my friend andfellow researcher Dr Michael Wasser ofMcGill University, Montreal, showed itto me in the Library’s North ReadingRoom. A historian of crimes of violencein sixteenth- and seventeenth-centuryScotland, Michael was instantly aware ofthe significance of the manuscript. Out ofhundreds of records, almost the firstthing he pointed out to me was theaccount of Anna Tait’s trial. Usually acommission is a bare record of who isaccused of what crime and who is to trythem, but the commission to try Annastood out because of the amount ofdetail it contained. It was a remarkablymoving document. I undertook totranscribe it and prepare an editedversion for the Scottish History Society.

In Haddington in 1634 Anna Taitwas, in the original Scots of thecommission, ‘thrie several timesdeprehendit putting violent hands toherself at her awne hous’. In otherwords, she was caught trying to killherself. Suicide, like witchcraft, wasconsidered to be a particularly heinouscrime against God’s law, punishable byforfeiture of the entire goods of thevictim and dishonourable burial inunconsecrated ground.

When Anna was apprehended forattempted suicide, the commissionrecords that she told a tale of adultery,poisoning, domestic murder, unwantedpregnancy, botched home-abortion anddeath. Here is this part of the

commission, slightly adapted and withthe spelling modernised:

She was for that cause, upon the 18th ofDecember, taken and committed to wardwithin the tolbooth of the said burgh wherebeing demanded and examined why sheput hands to herself, she answered that theintolerable trouble of her mind, which sheconceived for the murder of her firsthusband called John Coltart, nolt driver[cattle drover], and for the murder of herdaughter, moved her thereto.

Confessing plainly that about twenty-eight years ago, she being married to thesaid John, ane aged man, before themarriage she had sundry times committedfornication with William Johnston, herpresent husband, and that within the timeof the marriage she had likewise committedadultery with him. To be quit of her first

husband, she consulted with the Devil forhis destruction, and that the Devil havingdirected her to make a drink of foxtrieleaves [foxglove leaves], she did the same,and gave it to her husband to drink whowithin three hours departed this life.

Concerning her daughter, she confessedthat the daughter being with child, and she[Anna] having a purpose to murder theinfant in the mother’s belly, at last sheconsulted with the Devil. He gave herdirection to buy wine and to mix it withsalt and give it to her daughter to drink,which she having drunken, she shortlythereafter departed this life.

The commission further states that:‘upon the 8th of December instant; shehad carnal copulation with the Devil inher own bed, and that upon the 11th ofDecember the Devil came to her bedside,gripped her by the hair of her head anddid nip her cheek’. Anna was to be triednot as an adulteress or murderer, but as awitch. The commission was the licence tothe magistrates of Haddington to try her– but where were the records of her trial?

As a curator, a key aspect of my workin the Manuscripts Division is helpingresearchers who come to the NationalLibrary of Scotland. While I was workingon the commissions, it happened that DrJohn McGavin came to me with anenquiry relating to early modern Scottishdrama. When John mentioned he wasgoing to search through the HaddingtonBurgh records in the National Register ofArchives, I asked him to keep an eye outfor witchcraft trials, especially for AnnaTait’s trial in case it survived. To mydelight, not long after out conversationhe e-mailed that he had found her trial records in the Haddington BurghCourt book.

In my experience, researchingwitchcraft cases can provoke an intensemixture of conflicting emotions. To castunexpected light on a unique case is amatter for rejoicing; but the details Ifound in the court book were evengrimmer than those of her commission.On several occasions Anna had tried tohang herself using her own head-dress(her ‘curch’). When she was taken intocustody she attempted suicide again, bytrying to cut her own throat. And then,in the direct address of the charge againsther, ‘when your hands were bound andyour feet maid fast in the stocks, no

‘Wirried to death’

LOUISE YEOMAN

Historian Louise Yeomanis an expert on Scottish

witchcraft. Here shedescribes an extraordinarydiscovery in the holdings of

the National Library ofScotland: a Register of

Commissions volume forthe years 1630–42 thatbrings to light over a

hundred cases of witchcraftmost of which were

previously unknown tomodern scholarship. Onein particular stands out.The case against Anna

Tait provides anexceptional insight intoone woman’s tragic lifeamid a maelstrom ofreligious and social

tensions.

Anna Tait’s Trial for Witchcraft

43130SC_G4_FOLIO_3 7/11/01 10:37 pm Page 2

F O L I O 3

other meanes being left to accomplishyour devilishe designes, ye knocked yourheid to the wall and stocks, wherbythinking to dispatch your self.’ The courtbook claimed that Anna had made acovenant with the Devil and had sex withhim in the form of a black man and inthe form of the wind. Shape-shifting, a

not uncommon piece of Scottish popularbelief about Auld Nick, is here overlaidby the sinister assumptions of Europeandemonologists that any woman enteringa demonic pact had sex with the Devil,took his mark and swore her soul away tohim. Anna was explicitly accused of allthree actions.

The trial provided further personalinformation about Anna to add to thatfrom the commission. Taking bothsources together, we can muster a

The first printed picture of witches in flight is fromUlrich de Constantia Molitor’s Tractatus de Lamiiset Pythonicis Mulieribus, which was first published in1489. The National Library of Scotland has a copypublished in Paris, 1561 (K.205.d).

fragmentary mosaic of her life. It seemsthat in 1606 she married her firsthusband John Coltart, a cattle drover, ata place called ‘Furd Kirk’ in England.Cattle drovers often travelled far afield inthe course of their work, and so too hadAnna. Interestingly enough, she wasaccused of having made an appointmentto meet the Devil at ‘Ellerslie’. The onlyplaces of this name are to be found in thewest of Scotland, and not near her homein Lothian. Taking into account thevagaries of seventeenth-century spelling,the ‘Ellerslie’ in question may have beenthe little Lanarkshire village of Elderslie,famed as the birthplace of WilliamWallace. Whichever it was, Anna’s worldclearly stretched well beyond the confinesof Haddington.

Bearing in mind that age of marriagewas often quite late in seventeenth-century Scotland, Anna was probablyabout fifty years old at the time of hertrial. Her second husband WilliamJohnston was a miller who had lived atWinram, near Anna and her firsthusband. Proximity no doubt assistedtheir illicit affair.

Given that millers and cattle droverswere often relatively prosperous, it islikely that Anna had some standing in hercommunity to keep up – very far fromthe stereotype of an accused witch as apoor begging woman going door to doorlooking for alms.

It is mentioned in the commissionthat Anna had acquired the alias‘Hononni’, a Scottish variant of theEnglish ‘Hey nonny no!’ a popularrefrain in songs – an ironically jollynickname. The commission also namesher beloved daughter Elizabeth Johnstonand chillingly records the circumstancesof her death:

The said Elizabeth, being as ye confessedwith child (to whom, few but yourselfknows and neither will ye reveal the truthof it), and apparently being loath to let itbe known to whom the child belonged, sheand ye sought all means to kill, to murtherthe child in her belly, that it might notcome to light who was the father thereof, orhow it was gotten, whether in adultery orincest, or what other unlawful way.

To that effect ye consulted with diverseof your confederates fra whom, ye gotsundry feall [evil] counsel and by theiradvice, administered feall drinks to yourdaughter. But these not doing your turnand all other means failing you, ye went toyour old maister the devil … who gave youadvise to buy ane mutchkin of white wine,and mix a pint thereof with salt andminister the same unto your daughter,and it would do your turn. The which

The witches of Northamptonshire riding ‘all upon asowes back’, from A Brief History of Witchcraft …collected by John Taylor, Northampton, 1866(Klr.170(1)).

A witches’ sabbath engraved by Jan Ziarnko, fromPierre de Lancre’s Tableau de l’Inconstance desMauuais Anges et Demons, Paris, 1613 (Klr.207).

43130SC_G4_FOLIO_3 7/11/01 10:37 pm Page 3

F O L I O4

Note on sources

The commission for Anna’s trial is editedfrom Adv.Ms.31.3.10, f.102v. Her trialrecords may be found in National Archivesof Scotland, Haddington Burgh CourtRegister B30/10/13, fos.24r-26v. Acalendar of the witchcraft commissions inAdv.Ms.31.3.10 (including transcriptions ofAnna Tait’s commission and her trialrecords) has been prepared by the authorfor Julian Goodare (ed.), Miscellany XIII,Scottish History Society, forthcoming.

Dr Julian Goodare and the author areco-directors of the ‘Survey of ScottishWitchcraft 1563–1736’, a new projectfunded by the ESRC to produce an on-linedatabase of the Scottish witch-hunt. Thetoll of the hunt is conservatively estimatedat around 3,000 cases. The survey will be a replacement for the current mainreference work on the subject: C. Larner,C.H. Lee, H.V. MacLauchlan, ASourcebook of Scottish Witchcraft, Glasgow,1977 (Hist.S.60.W.L2). Those wanting aquick and fairly reliable introduction to theScottish witch-hunt are advised to consultChristina Larner’s seminal work Enemies ofGod, 1981 (HP2.201.01744). Whilst insome respects this admirable book has beensuperseded by more recent scholarship, it isstill the best available summary of theScottish witchcraft to date. The ScottishWitch-Hunt in Context edited by Dr JulianGoodare will be published by ManchesterUniversity Press in early 2002.

cruel and devilish counsel ye willinglyobeyed and fetched the wine, mixtwith the same with salt and gave it toyour daughter to drink. By which shepresently swelled and shortlythereafter both she and the child died.

In token wherof, you haveconfessed that the devil gave you asmuch money in true and real turners[small copper coins] as would buy thesaid mutchkin of wine and salt. Andthis deed only of all the devilish andabominable actions has most troubledyou, and been the greatest cause ofyour desire to murder yourself.

It would seem that, in trying to cover upher daughter’s unwanted pregnancy,Anna ended up killing her own child.Blaming herself for Elizabeth’s death, sheno longer wanted to live and repeatedlytried to kill herself. When it was put toher that the Devil had advised her do allthis and that she had become a witch, itseems she barely bothered to defendherself. Facing the shameful death ofbeing strangled and burned at the stake,and asked in court whether she wantedanyone to speak in her defence, sheanswered, ‘none but God in heaven’. Anna Tait – adulteress, murderer,abortionist – was regarded as such aparagon of evil, that in seventeenth-century Scotland the Devil had to beinvoked to explain her conduct – anexplanation supported by her ownconfession of witchcraft. It is interestingto speculate whether the legal freedomsavailable to women in twenty-first-century Scotland might have averted ormodified the tragedy and violence thatovertook her life.

There is also the question of howissues of mental disturbance and suicidalurges were dealt with in her society ascompared with today’s. In a modern casesuch a suicidal defendant might be foundunfit to plead. How very differentlyAnna’s contemporaries viewed her mentaldistress. That she was described as ‘trublitin conscience’ points to the context ofprevailing beliefs which sealed her fate. Diaries, books, letters and sermons ofradical Presbyterians and Covenanters ofthe seventeenth century often allude tothe tortured doubt experienced by peopleas to whether they were part of theCalvinist ‘Elect’ or were predestined togo to hell. Demonic temptations andsuicidal impulses were acknowledged aspossible complications on the earthlypassage to whatever after-life lay in store.To despair that one might have falleninto transgressions worthy of hell-fire wasseen as signalling deep piety, not mentalinstability. In fact, Anna’s despair may

An exorcist at work: an illustration from A Strangeand Wonderful Relation of Margaret Gurr ofTunbridge in Kent by John Skinner, published inLondon, c. 1681 (Klr.2).

An illustration from The Wonderful Discoverie of theWitchcrafts of Margaret and Philip Flower,Greenwich, 1838 (originally published 1619)(Klr.160(1)).

have made her seem more, rather thanless, culpable to her interrogators. Shewas on the right road but had somehowperversely, to their minds, turned aside.Scorning the ‘right’ remedies of prayerand repentance, she seemed to havedeliberately chosen the harmful means ofdemonic pact and suicide. Perhaps thereason society found it necessary topunish despairing people was toencourage others, in the face of suchcommon but terrible states of mind, tointensify their piety.

Faced with the reality of burninglarge numbers of accused witches,amongst whom were many suicidal andmentally disturbed people, latergenerations of Scottish Privy Councillorsbegan to doubt the wisdom of thisapproach. In 1662, in the midst of anation-wide witch panic, the councilissued commissions under strict ordersthat, to proceed with executing aconvicted witch, it must be found that‘At the tyme of their confessions theywere of right judgement, nowayesdistracted or under any earnest desyre todie’. Almost thirty years after Anna’sdeath, Scotland’s judicial elite wasshowing the first glimmer of sensitivity tothe issue of attempted suicide by witch-

confession. This Privy Councildirective to consider the mentalstate of the accused shows howthings had moved on in arelatively short time frame, buttoo late for Anna Tait. At anyrate, because of her murderconfession this modificationwould have made no difference tothe outcome of her trial. For her,there could be one only ending –execution. Because she hadconfessed guilt on all counts, shewas not burnt alive (which tendedto be reserved for those who died

‘impenitent’, refusing to confess).However, her sentence was as follows:

It was given for doom [sentence] by themouth of William Sinclair dempster[pronouncer of sentence] that the saidAnna Tait should be taken, her handsbound behind her back and conveyed byWilliam Allot, lockman [executioner] ofHaddington to the ordinary place ofexecution, and there wirried [strangled] tothe death at ane post and thereafter herbody to be burnt in ashes, desuper act.

43130SC_G4_FOLIO_3 7/11/01 10:37 pm Page 4

F O L I O 5

Between 1983 and 1986, when Iwas doing my Ph.D on MurielSpark, I was in the NationalLibrary of Scotland almost every

day. At that time the Library didn’t yethave the Muriel Spark Archive and therewere no autobiographical books by her –and so I scoured newspapers at theLibrary for reviews of her work, hopingto find useful nuggets of information. Iremember trying to track down a poemwritten by Muriel Spark while she was atJames Gillespie’s school. I’d found areference to this poem being published inan Edinburgh paper and so I wentthrough every single page of the localpapers for the relevant period, I evenchecked out the Glasgow Herald. But Inever found that poem. If it exists, it’sprobably sitting somewhere in her archiveright now.

In 1984 I went on a tour of theLibrary led by Ian Campbell, who is aProfessor of English Literature at theUniversity of Edinburgh. He took us tothe vaults. It was a maze of cavernoustunnels. Somebody said that the cells fordefendants facing trial at the Edinburghcourts had once been down there, andthat there was still a connectingpassageway that led up into the court.This gave me an idea for Knots andCrosses (N3.87.497), the first Rebusbook, which I’d already started writing:the chase scene through undergroundtunnels was inspired by that visit to thebowels of the National Library, but inthe book they’re relocated beneath theCentral Lending Library.

I left Edinburgh in 1986. Over thenext ten years I came back about three orfour times a year to do research, pursuingall sorts of things. I would often trawlthrough newspapers at the Library. It’sreally hard when you’re looking at oldnewspapers not to get sidetracked byfootball results, crosswords and adverts.By the time I came to research Black andBlue (N3.97.310) everything I wanted tolook at was on microfilm. I read theoriginal newspaper reports on the BibleJohn case in the Scotsman and theGlasgow Herald for October ’68 toMarch ’69; the newspapers also gave meall sorts of useful backgroundinformation on Scotland in the lateSixties. There’s a scene in Black and Bluewhere Rebus is doing exactly that sort of

Ian Rankin is the author of theinternationally acclaimed

Inspector Rebus crime novels. Hestarted writing Knots and

Crosses, the first book in theRebus series, while he was a

Ph.D student at the University of Edinburgh. His novels are

underpinned by thoroughresearch, some of which has takenhim (and Rebus) to the NationalLibrary of Scotland. Here he tellsof a relationship with the Library

that began when he was astudent. (This article was edited

from an interview).

Rankin and RebusHands on at the Library

Note on sources

The National Library of Scotland hasextensive holdings of national and localScottish newspapers. A proportion of thesehave been copied onto microfilm, but manyare still to be filmed and are available at theLibrary as hard copy. Readers accessnewspaper files by title through the maincatalogue, which lists the holdings ofparticular newspapers and indicates whetherthese are on microfilm or not. Thenewspaper files are heavily used, partlybecause full runs of newspapers are hard, ifnot impossible to access elsewhere. TheLibrary has copies of Newsplan books for allparts of the UK, among them Newsplan:Report of the Newsplan Project in Scotland(Issue Hall.Publ.6.2.4S), to be found on theopen shelves in the Issue Hall, which listslocal newspapers in Scotland, detailing thelocation of those which are available to thepublic, and provides a starting point forthose wishing to research Scottishnewspapers.

research in the Library, only he’s lookingat actual newspaper clippings; the modelfor his approach came from my ownexperience.

In the recent South Bank Showdocumentary about me, an actorportrayed me as a student in my earlytwenties. He was filmed at the Librarywith a big pile of books – Muriel Sparktitles and crime fiction, to get over whatI was spending most of my time on. Allthe filming had to be done early in the

IAN RANKIN

Left: Ian Rankinphotographed by Gordon Wright.

Cover: Ian Rankinphotographed by Allan Forbes.

morning before the Library opened sothat readers weren’t disturbed.

In Black and Blue the serial killerbribes one of the Library staff to compilea list of the people who have beensearching for material about Bible John,and John Rebus’s name comes up. Idon’t really think any of the staff at theNational Library would be susceptible tobeing bribed by anyone, let alone a serialkiller! Rebus is absolutely fascinated byhis subject and wants to do all the workhimself. He’s very much a loner. Heploughs through all the newspaperreports, anything to get the best possiblefix on the case.

I’ve heard that some other crimewriters have researchers working forthem. But that means you’re gettingsomeone else’s sense of the material, notyour own, and it’s just not the way Iwork. Like Rebus, I want to get the bestpossible feel for what’s involved.

43130SC_G4_FOLIO_3 7/11/01 10:37 pm Page 5

F O L I O6

In late 1990 I found myself in theManuscripts Division at the NationalLibrary of Scotland working onwhat was supposed to be a short-

term project. The aim was to create alisting of uncatalogued archival materialrelating to the eminent Edinburghpublishers William Blackwood & Sons.Famous for publishing George Eliot,Joseph Conrad, John Buchan andAnthony Trollope, as well as for theirmonthly Blackwood’s Magazine, the firmwas a major presence in Edinburgh from1805 to 1980. Over the years, most oftheir papers have accumulated in theLibrary, making the Blackwood Papersone of the most complete archives ofpublishing activity to be found anywherein Britain.

I spent nine months trying to tacklethis mountain of correspondence, financialrecords, ledgers and ephemera. Just atemporary job, I told myself, while Ithought about how to get full-timeemployment in academia. But somethingodd happened. Instead of being just ashort-term interest, the Blackwood Papersproved an overwhelming force in my life,steering and taking control of my careerand research work. In the vaults of theNational Library, I uncovered untoldstories of publishing intrigue, battles overbooks and money, moments of largesseand generosity, incidents of political andsocial significance. Over a decade andseveral academic posts later, I am still inEdinburgh, and still uncovering unknownnarratives of cultural and historicalrelevance.

One of the most intriguing of theseuntold tales is to be found scatteredthroughout the correspondence files ofthe firm and centres round three itemsinnocuously labelled in the Librarycatalogue as ‘MS.4872-4. John HanningSpeke. Manuscript and proofs of Journalof the Discovery of the Source of theNile.’ Concealed behind this short entry isa tale of intrigue and revision concerningthe British explorer John Hanning Speke’sbattle to trace the original source of theNile, the resulting difficulties encounteredby the Blackwood directors in turning anexplorer into an author, and thepreviously unknown ghost-writer whomade Speke’s book a reality.

Unravelling SpekeThe Unknown Revision of an African Exploration Classic

DAVID FINKELSTEIN

The fact that the National Library of Scotland has in its possessionJohn Hanning Speke’s original Journal of the Discovery of the

Source of the Nile as well as the succession of proofs of the book makesit possible to analyse the editorial approach of its editor.

Publishers John Blackwood commissioned John Hill Burton to editSpeke’s Journal. David Finkelstein here analyses just how neutral thisediting process was, and identifies ways in which the published Journal

departs from Speke’s apparent perspective.

The first edition of Journal of the Discovery of theSource of the Nile, 1863 (R.125.c) contains thisportrait frontispiece of John Hanning Speke.

43130SC_G4_FOLIO_3 7/11/01 10:37 pm Page 6

F O L I O 7

On 22 June 1863, John HanningSpeke stood in front of RoyalGeographical Society members inLondon and declared, ‘The Nile issettled’. He was referring, of course, tothe mystery of the source of the NileRiver, which had exercised explorers (andgovernments) for over 2,000 years.Herodotus had attempted (and failed) toascend the length of the Nile in 460 BC,going only as far as the first cataract atAswan in Egypt. The Emperor Nero senttwo legions into the Sudan sometimeafter 54 BC who equally failed to findthe source. Other expeditions in othercenturies by other imperial powers allreturned defeated. While China, NorthAmerica, Australia and the lands andlakes of other continents were mappedover time, this particular geographicalquestion remained unsolved through tothe late-nineteenth century.

Speke’s controversial journeys insearch of the Nile source occurred at thestart of a period of intensive activity inAfrica. Between the 1850s and 1890s,European governments and institutionsbegan to increase their involvement in‘the Dark Continent’, leaving theirpolitical and physical imprints on theAfrican interior. Missionaries andexplorers such as Richard Burton, DavidLivingstone, Henry Baker, the Welsh-American Henry Stanley, and theFrenchman Paul du Chaillu, were theones who filled in details of the Africanspaces that were subsequently divided upby colonial powers, Britain in particular.Their published accounts of explorationand discovery were extremely influentialin shaping Victorian attitudes to Africaand its indigenous people, as well as inproviding political rationales for colonialexpansion into the African sub-continent. John Hanning Speke, born in 1827, wasa British military officer who became

fascinated with Africa while in histwenties. In 1854 he was invited toaccompany the explorer and polymathRichard Burton in an expedition throughwhat is now modern day Somalia. Thetwo subsequently teamed up againbetween 1857 and 1859 to exploreunknown territory in what is nowTanzania and Uganda. During thisexpedition, Speke struck out on his ownand came upon Lake Victoria Nyanza.Based partly on instinct, and partly on hisperception of its immensity, Spekeconcluded that it was the source of theNile River. The claim was disputed byBurton, and on their return to Britain in1859 Speke, who had arrived ahead ofBurton, announced his discovery to theRoyal Geographic Society and securedfunds for a second expedition.

With a new travelling companion,James Augustus Grant, Speke set sail forAfrica in late April 1860, with the hopeof proving his theory about the lake andtracing its course down to Egypt. Theexpedition lasted three years, and itssuccess led to a triumphant welcome inLondon and announcement to the RoyalGeographical Society in June 1863.Doubts soon began to emerge aboutSpeke’s claim, however, as it seemed tocontradict received geographical notionsof African topography. The result wasfurious (and partisan) debate betweenthose who supported Speke’s claims andthose, like Richard Burton, whodiscounted them.

The controversy and interestsurrounding Speke’s claims ensured abestseller for whoever could strike anagreement to publish his work.Newspaper owners and publishers viedfor the rights to his story. The IllustratedLondon News was the first off the mark,tracking down Speke and Grant to gainexclusive rights to produce a five-page,

illustrated account of his revelations tothe Royal Geographical Society. TheLondon-based publisher John Murray,whose lists had featured important travelaccounts by David Livingstone, MungoPark, Charles Darwin and the FrenchmanPaul du Chaillu, bid an extraordinary2,000 guineas for Speke’s journalaccount of his expedition. Speke choseinstead to go with the Edinburgh-basedpublishers William Blackwood & Sons,who had supported him in the past andpublished his articles in their monthlyBlackwood’s Magazine.

However, when in 1863 the head ofthe firm, John Blackwood, scrutinisedsamples typeset from Speke’s diaryentries, he was appalled and shaken.Speke, the successful explorer, was afailure as a writer. ‘He writes in such anabominable, childish, unintelligible way,’John Blackwood noted incredulously,‘that it is impossible to say what anybodycould make of them, and yet he is full ofmatter & when he talks and explains all isright.’ (22 July 1863, MS.4177, f.73.)Although Speke was eager and willing todo anything to get the job done,‘working away like a galley slave,’ asBlackwood put it, he was incapable, itseemed, of producing the bestsellingbook everyone was hoping for.

The more Speke’s jumbled notes werescrutinised, the clearer it became thatsomething had to be done. Even thetypesetters were becoming alarmed, asJohn’s co-partner and nephew WilliamBlackwood III noted in an effort toamuse, with copyboys falling over in fitsof laughter at the slips in sentenceconstruction, spelling mistakes, slack useof punctuation, and serious lapses ingrammatical and syntactical coherence.Faced with a flawed text of this type,John and William Blackwood realisedthat in order to safeguard their

‘My men killing a cow, with magician, dwarf andKing Kamra’s officers looking on’: an illustration bySpeke’s travelling companion, Captain Grant: Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile(R.125.c).

43130SC_G4_FOLIO_3 7/11/01 10:37 pm Page 7

F O L I O8

investment, and Speke’s reputation, theyneeded to call in someone to ‘edit’ orconstruct the book, someone who couldlisten to Speke and fashion what he said,and what he had written, into acommercially viable narrative.

Several journalists and editors wereconsidered for the job, but the personeventually chosen was John Hill Burton(1809–81), an Edinburgh lawyer,bibliophile and eminent historian, who in1867 was appointed the Queen’sHistoriographer for Scotland. On 4August 1863, Burton agreed toundertake the ‘task of unravelling Speke’.He quickly set out his views regardingthe correct approach to the book; whatwas wanted here was ‘to make Spekearticulate & not in any way adorn it.’ (4August 1863, MS.4178, f.146.) Speke,the inarticulate traveller, was likened byBurton to a small farmer in need of agood lawyer to sort out an argument, butwho was unable to express his grievancesproperly. Only by endless questioningcould all the information come out.

More significantly, the matter toBurton appeared ‘like an endless threadand required no end of breaking.’Unravelling Speke was now a matter ofbreaking up the old narrative andconstructing a new one, and within aweek Burton had no doubts as to whathe considered the end result would be:

Speke’s original African journalinterspersed with manuscript written byhim on his return to Britain, as well asmaterial ‘rewritten’ by Burton. Thismaterial was subsequently typeset in itsentirety, and the first proofs wereextensively revised and written over byBurton, forming the basis for a secondproof which underwent furthercorrections and deletions before the finalprinting.

Speke’s original journal presented ajourney frustrated not only by Africancupidity and hostility to foreignintruders, but also by Speke’s naïveté indealing with Arab traders and Africanporters and villagers. It demonstrated hisoverwhelming ambition and drive tobecome the first white explorer to reachLake Victoria at all costs, an ambitionwhich precipitated the abandonment ofthe temporarily incapacitated Grant atcrucial moments in his push forward. Italso detailed quite frank discussions ofsexual matters between Speke and hisAfrican hosts, and hinted at sexualliaisons with African women during histravels. Burton’s additions to andrevisions of the journal not only changedits spelling, punctuation and grammar,but also recast and suppressed passagespotentially damaging to the imageenvisaged for Speke.

Speke was to be viewed as a standard-

‘the most complete characteristic pictureof savage life that ever was.’ (13 August1863, MS.4177, f.88.) This is thedefining moment in the reconstruction ofSpeke, illustrating exactly when theideological framework of the text beganto be reshaped into a preconceived socialmodel, the original ‘scientific’ purpose ofthe work, and the detailing of theevidence for Speke’s claims regardingLake Victoria, being submerged under anarrative portraying the triumph of Spekeover nature and inferior races. Speke, andnot the Nile River, was to be the heroand centre of this tale.

Speke was installed in Craighouse,Burton’s home in the Morningside areaof Edinburgh, and work was immediatelybegun on unravelling and remakingSpeke’s text. Burton’s initial view of thecentral theme of Speke’s book, theexplicit portrayal of ‘savage’ life and theimplicit triumph of Speke over it, beganto dominate. By the beginning ofOctober 1863, the textual and illustrativework had been completed.

The process of change from originalmanuscript to final product can berecovered due to the existence in theNational Library of Scotland of theoriginal manuscript and proofs coveringall three stages of revision (the alreadymentioned MS.4872-4). The initialmanuscript source contains sections from

Speke describes the aim of his third expedition inAfrica, avowedly for the purpose of establishingthe true source of the Nile (MS.4872).

John Hill Burton made numerous changes toSpeke’s introduction to his Journal of the Discoveryof the Source of the Nile, as these proofs show(MS.4873).

43130SC_G4_FOLIO_3 7/11/01 10:37 pm Page 8

F O L I O 9

bearer for British values, the sternimperialist, paternal, patient yet firm incoping with adverse circumstances andunruly porters. The presentation of Africaand its people was accordinglymanipulated to further highlight Speke’squalities and achievements. Thus Burtoneliminated passages dealing with Speke’streatment of King Mutesa and hiscourtiers for venereal disease, as well aslong discussions between Speke andmembers of Mutesa’s royal familyregarding pregnancy and sexual practices. More importantly, the ideologicalcontext of the work was changed andmanipulated to suit the defined purposeof the work. Speke’s originalintroduction began as follows:

Our motto being ‘Evil to him who evilthinks,’ the reader of these pages must beprepared to see and understand the negroesof Africa in their natural, primitive ornaked state; a state in which ourforefathers lived before the forced state ofcivilisation subvented it. (MS.4873, p.1)

What is notable regarding thisintroduction is the link it establishesbetween Africa and Europe. The link isinevitably one designed to illustrate thesuperiority of European civilisation, acivilisation which has ‘progressed’beyond the ‘primitive’ state of Africancivilisation. Also implicit in thisbeginning, however, is an invitation tothe reader to view the African people inlight of an almost Rousseauian notion ofthe ‘Noble Savage’ existing in a state ofnature once common to all mankind. This view of Africa and its peoples wasrejected during the revision process. Inthe revised first proofs, the passage wasstruck out and substituted with thefollowing statement in John HillBurton’s handwriting:

In the following pages I have endeavouredto describe all that appeared to me mostimportant and interesting among theevents and the scenes that came under mynotice during my sojourn in the interior ofAfrica. If my account should not entirelyharmonise with preconceived notions as toprimitive races, I cannot help it. I professaccurately to describe naked Africa –Africa in those places where it has notreceived the slightest impulse, whether forgood or for evil, from Europeancivilisation. (MS.4873, p.1; also Journalof the Discovery of the Source of the Nile,xiii.)

As can be seen, the revision is moreovertly hostile and categorical in itsdefinition of Africa. The narration is

more authoritarian: it is no longer thereader but Speke who is allowed to‘understand’ Africa, presenting only whathe thinks important about the sub-continent. Even more crucially, all linksbetween Europe and Africa have beenerased. This is a naked, dark Africadisconnected from and untouched byEuropean impulses and civilisation. The end result was a depiction of anAfrican society dominated bysuperstitious beliefs (encouragingpolygamy and self-interest), its people ofnomadic nature, lacking an effectivegovernment and a structured agriculturalbase, and gripped by inter-tribal rivalriesexacerbated by the slave trade. Theinevitable conclusion, the revised textunequivocally stated, was an African manwho ‘works his wife, sells his children,enslaves all he can lay hands upon, and,unless when fighting for the property ofothers, contents himself with drinking,singing, and dancing like a baboon, todrive dull care away.’ (Journal of theDiscovery of the Source of the Nile, xxii.) Such rhetoric, as Christine Bolt haspointed out in Victorian Attitudes toRace, reflected the increasing anddominant use of religious and politicalgeneralisations to justify nineteenth-century colonial activity in Africa.‘Opening’ Africa, to use a phrase oftenquoted in Speke’s journal, was deemednecessary on the grounds that acontinent without a proper religion andcivilisation needed enlightening andrigorous management. Speke’s triumphover the inhospitable ‘Dark Continent’thus conformed to a British imperial viewthat success in Africa called for a type of‘muscular Christianity’, coupled with avigorous ‘management’ of the indigenouspopulation.

Speke’s Journal of the Discovery of theSource of the Nile was published inDecember 1863 and immediately soldout. Debate over its geographical veracityrose sharply, while its hidden,reconstructed message calling for furtherexploration and development of Africawent unchallenged. The matterculminated in a planned debate betweenSpeke and his sharpest critic RichardBurton, which was to be held in Bath on16 September 1864. The meeting nevertook place, Speke having shot himselfaccidentally during a hunt that morning. The issues raised by Speke’s claimsregarding his discovery were notconclusively settled for another elevenyears. In 1875 Henry Stanley successfullyproved Lake Victoria’s role as the sourceof the Nile during his circumnavigationof the lake. But for John Blackwood, thescientific and geographical questions and

Note on sources

Speke’s manuscripts, revised proofs andpublishers’ correspondence regarding itsrevision are in the Blackwood Papers(MS.4872–4874, and among the seriesMS.4001–4940 and MS.30001–973).Inventories of the papers catalogued by1968 are available in the Library asCatalogue of Manuscripts acquired since1925: Volume 3, Blackwood Papers. Morerecent additions are available in a separatelisting in the Library, and are also beingmade available upon completion of fullcataloguing record online and via theLibrary website (http://www.nls.uk).

Readers interested in secondary sourceson Nile exploration should consult TheWhite Nile (Penguin Books, 1960) and TheBlue Nile (Penguin Books, 1973) by AlanMoorehead; both are still the best generalhistories on the subject of Africa and NileRiver exploration. Speke and the Discovery ofthe Source of the Nile by Alexander Maitland(Constable, 1971) is a comprehensive butinaccurate biography of Speke. The House ofBlackwood: Author–Publisher Relations in theVictorian Era by David Finkelstein (PennState Press, forthcoming in 2002) givesfurther details of Speke’s revision by JohnHill Burton and the Blackwood publishingfirm.

criticisms that had been raised by Speke’sclaims were merely side issues; whatmattered most was that Speke hadachieved what others had failed to do, tofind the true source of the Nile. As wehave seen, this had not been the solemotivation for the firm working so hardto reconstruct Speke. By emphasisingSpeke’s unique role as a successfulexplorer and imperial adventurer, ratherthan as a scientist or geographer, Spekethe inarticulate traveller was turned intoan articulate, saleable commodity.

Speke was not the only Africanexplorer to have his work rewritten to fitgeneralised British notions of Africa.There is evidence to suggest that worksby David Livingstone, Henry Stanley andPaul du Chaillu were similarly revisedduring the same period. That suchinfluential texts of African explorationwere routinely reworked in such fashiontells us a great deal about Victorianmanipulations of text and author to serveideological and commercial purposes.Speke’s story offers us a cautionary tale ofauthorial intention and textual veracity.The next time you read one of thesenineteenth-century narratives, considerwho might really be speaking to youfrom its pages.

43130SC_G4_FOLIO_3 7/11/01 10:37 pm Page 9

F O L I O10

‘£3.00 auction buy reveals Gaelictreasure’, announced the Scotsman on 14March, 1985. ‘The literary papers of oneof the leading Gaelic poets of thiscentury were sold at an Edinburghauction recently for £3.00, the price ofthe old suitcase in which they werecontained. The papers, which representthe life work of the poet GeorgeCampbell Hay, who died at his home inthe city almost a year ago, could easilyhave been lost forever, if it was not forthe presence of a local antiquarianbookseller, Mr Donald MacCormick, atthe saleroom … Being a Gaelic speaker,Mr MacCormick was quick to appreciatewhat the suitcase contained as he outbidan elderly woman looking to pick upsome cheap luggage.’

One elderly woman’s loss was thenation’s gain, as the collection ofnineteen notebooks, plus loosetypescripts, handscripts, photographs andprinted books were sold on byMacCormick to the National Library ofScotland. Delight at the acquisition wasmixed with astonishment in somequarters: back in March1984, friends of Hay hadurged his executors to searchthe flat in Maxwell Streetcarefully for just such items,but only four notebooks andsome loose sheets had beenfound. These were depositedin the Library some monthsafter the MacCormickacquisition. The Library alsopurchased further printedbooks owned by Hay andbooks and documents linkedto his father JohnMacDougall Hay (the authorof Gillespie (U.55.d)), and in1985 and 1989 AngusMartin deposited materialsrelating to his books TheRing-Net Fishermen(NE.23.d.12) and Kintyre:The Hidden Past(HP2.85.255). Theseelements formed the core ofthe Hay Archive which I wasfortunate enough tocatalogue in 1989, havingbeen offered the opportunityto prepare an annotatededition of Hay’s work for apostgraduate thesis.

Prior to undertaking this research, myknowledge of Hay’s work was thin – Iwas acquainted with a handful of hisGaelic poems and the long war poem‘Mochtàr is Dùghall’, but had no deepsense of his voice or his qualities, letalone of the breadth of his writing. Myfirst step was to familiarise myself withHay’s three published collections WindOn Loch Fyne (1948) (T.32.b), FuaranSlèibh (1948) (T.89.c) and O Na CeithirÀirdean (1952) (NE.731.b.2), all longout of print. With only a handful of thepoems dated, one might hazard thatsome of the English poems in Wind OnLoch Fyne were the efforts of a novice,and some poems clearly dating from thewar could be regarded as his best work,but there seemed little discernible traceof development in Hay’s poetic practiceand ability. Major themes emerged acrossfour languages (Gaelic, Scots, Englishand some French): the Tarbert fishingcommunity, Loch Fyne and the hills ofKintyre, the blasphemy of war, thepredicament of Scotland and the call toheroism. There was clearly a love of

tradition, and a dedication to anaesthetic of technical discipline,of highly elaborated craft. Therewas high seriousness and noirony, but literary wit andplayfulness too. There was aperplexing (because souncontemporary) absence of egoor of sexual love, but apassionate love of place. Therewas a bewildering multiplicity ofvoices, among them thepropagandist bardic voice. Muchof the ‘poster poetry’ ofnationalism was eloquent andcertainly none of it was out ofplace in the Gaelic tradition. YetI found it impenetrable in itsutter single-mindedness, itsheroic disinterest in ambiguities,tensions and inner conflicts.

The richness of Hay’s dictionin Gaelic also posed a challenge,as I struggled through his denserpoems. This poet was a highlyalert linguist, who seemed tohave at his disposal every wordhe had ever read or heard. (I wasprobably being too cerebral and

Lost and FoundThe George Campbell Hay Archive Unfolds

At first sight the George Campbell Hay Archive is a modest collection of papers,

photographs and books. It includesa handful of unremarkable,

scruffy notebooks. Butunremarkable is the last thing

they are. In these notebooks Hayjotted down ideas, first drafts,diary entries, and sometimes

transcriptions of poems by friends.In June 2001 Michel Byrne wasthrilled to be able to identify oneof these as a poem hitherto lost

from Sorley MacLean’s brilliantDàin do Eimhir love cycle.

MICHEL BYRNE

George Campbell Hay photographed byGordon Wright.

43130SC_G4_FOLIO_3 7/11/01 10:37 pm Page 10

F O L I O 11

should have allowed the auralsensuousness of the language, viva voce,to work its spell.) The musicality of somany of the texts was curious andenticing, as was the mystery of hisadventurism across linguistic boundaries– Gaelic titles given to Scots poems andparallel poems in Gaelic and English,such as ‘Tlachd is Misneach’ / ‘Pleasureand Courage’, which gave nothing awayabout their genesis. (Were these pairstwins delivered together, or was one anolder sibling – and if so, which?)

For all that biographical matter istangential, and may even be inimical, tothe appreciation of a text’s possibilities,the human personality behind the poetrywas a constant fascination through myyears of research. The varying personae ofHay’s poetry and its extroversion gave adefinite impression of courage, ofthorough commitment, of concern forhumanity, of deep sensibility to thenatural world. But who was the manbehind the plethora of voices, thischameleon poet working on the cusp oftraditions, languages and cultures?

Angus Martin’s Kintyre: The HiddenPast had provided warm human insights:into the role played by his great-auntsand by skipper Calum Johnson in theearly years, into Hay’s identification withTarbert, even into his disturbing episodeof psychosis during the Greek Civil War.But the older Hay was reticent, and amystery even to his friends. It was hisown correspondence in earlier years, aspreserved in three National Library ofScotland archives, which really broughthim alive. First and foremost, Douglas

Young’s voluminous collection(Acc.6419), which includes aroundninety letters from Hay mainly from1939 to 1946 (Box 38a, with furtherpoetry typescripts in Box 101), and helpsplace Hay firmly in the orbit ofMacDiarmid’s Renaissance – Youngprovided the link with both Grieve andSorley MacLean. Hay’s close relationshipwith ‘Dia’ (‘God’, as Young was knownto his friends!) came as no great surprise,both having been contemporaries atOxford. However, it was a revelation todiscover that Hay had initiated a briefbut warm friendship with the ReverendKenneth MacLeod: this most unlikely ofalliances, between the doyen of GaelicTwilightists and the young firebrand, wasrecorded in nineteen extant letters byHay (mostly of 1938–39), preserved inthe MacLeod Collection (Acc.9927, Box6). Thirdly, thirty-nine letters from Haywere deposited by the late Robert Rankinafter the poet’s death (Acc.10105),dating from as early as 1934, when thetwo Fettesian schoolboys had taken theirindividual paths to Cambridge andOxford.

These collections allowed floods ofsunlight into both the poet and hispoetry. The personality which emerges isan engaging one: intelligent and eruditebut not at all solemn; earnest, warm andgenerally cheerful, politically both incisiveand naïve. There are moments ofyouthful fanaticism, brief glimpses ofdepression (particularly after hiscapitulation to the British authorities),and an enduring obsession with thethreatened survival of Scotland for which

the evangelical urgency of his politicalverse seems an appropriate and naturalexpression. There are comments onScottish and British politics and history,on European literatures, reflections onhis own and other writers’ work, variantversions of poems, even moments ofinspiration caught on the page, such asthe drafting of the wonderful Scotswinter lyric ‘Fuar Fuar’ in the margins ofa letter to Young.

Hay’s letters of the late 1930s arebest read with an eye to the diary entriesfrom November 1938 to May 1941preserved in one of the MacCormicknotebooks (MS.26728). These combinebrief pointers to his literary activity(including visits to composer F.G. Scott)with accounts of his political activities(e.g. with Wendy Wood and with thenewly formed Young ScottishNationalists) and reflections on theworsening war situation. The diaryilluminates his increasingly isolated stanceon conscription, and provides aninteresting journal for the study ofnationalist activism of that period. Thestory of his arrest and trial in 1941,though cut short, is told with a gooddeal of panache and a raconteur’s flair.

Remarking on Hay’s rapid acquisitionof languages and extraordinary powers ofmemory, Ronnie Black remarked in arecent review that ‘it’s easy to see howimages multiplied frighteningly inside hishead’, and this is exactly the impressionone gets from George’s collection ofnotebooks; his wartime notebooks inparticular are a great melting-pot ofthings heard and things read, in varyingadmixtures of Arabic, French, Italian,Gaelic and English. In 1968 Hay haddeposited two small wartime notebooksin the Library (MSS.14967 and 14968),containing typed versions of all poemscomposed in his years abroad till hisreturn to Tarbert in 1946 (and includingmost of ‘Mochtàr is Dùghall’, hismagnum opus undiscovered till the1980s). But it is the more rough-and-ready wartime notebooks found byMacCormick (MSS.26729–31) whichbest illustrate the ferment in his mindfrom 1944 to 1946, the wildly eclecticreading and assimilating of Arabic,

In a diary entry for 28 September, 1940(MS.26728), Hay writes of his dream to make theliterature of Europe accessible in Gaelic: ‘I woulddo Scandinavian languages, modern Greek, Welshand maybe Spanish. Somhairle MacLean would doFrench … John MacLean classical Latin and Greek.Calum [MacLean] would do Irish. There’s alsoHector MacIver. Could they not be published in ourown time … copies could be put in a safe place, andone day they would see the light. Why not do itsince we’re able to?’

43130SC_G4_FOLIO_3 7/11/01 10:37 pm Page 11

F O L I O12

Italian, French and Croatian (via Italian)literature. In these notebooks you willfind initial sketches for his portrait ofwartime disintegration ‘Esta SelvaSelvaggia’ (an English poem), recreationsof Petrarch and Cecco Angiolieri, ofFrench Resistance songs and Croatianpoetry, examples of the floral stornellorhymes which inspired ‘Flooer o theGean’, Tunisian riddles and aphorisms(some of which were embedded in‘Mochtàr is Dùghall’, others translatedand published in O Na Ceithir Àirdean),and a variety of other inspirational sparksfor ‘Mokhtar’ (e.g. an Arabic keen and amedieval Italian call to repentance).

Of the growth of Hay’s arguablygreatest single poem ‘Bisearta’, there areonly the smallest hints (beyond a slightlyamended final draft): quotes from thefifteenth-century Italian hymn on whichHay based his swaying metre and onesole long line (‘Chunnaic mi ’n dreòs sanoidhche air fàire ag crathadh a sgiathan sa’ ruagadh nan rionnag làimh ris’ – ‘I sawthe blaze in the night on the horizonbeating its wings and scattering the starsaround it’). The genesis and germinationof that wonderful poem must remain amystery.

There were moments of revelation,however, in the earlier notebooks: it was

pleasure indeed to trace the developmentof the superb lyric ‘Na Baidealan’ (‘TheBattlements’), from a first draft (innotebook MS.26723) to a four-verseversion (sent to Kenneth MacLeod) laterdistilled to the three verses published inFuaran Slèibh. Equally exciting was thediscovery of a musical nexus of drafts for‘Siubhal a’ Choire’ (‘The Voyaging of theCorrie’, Hay’s most triumphant sea-lyric)and indeed of several musical notationnotebooks filled with airs and song-settings both traditional and original(MSS.26741–43). Here was anotherdimension to Hay’s eclecticism, alreadyso evident linguistically and stylistically:in a modern development of alongstanding Gaelic tradition, many ofhis lyrics existed in the overlappingdimensions of artsong, folksong andpoetry.

The manuscript collection (includingprinted books with marginalia) broughtto light over a hundred unpublishedpoems, a third of these from the late1930s, and the remaining two-thirdsfrom the 1960s on, particularly the1980s. None of these could be rankedbeside the work of the 1940s, but thereare interesting items nonetheless, fromthe scabrous satirical sequence ‘TheScottish Scene’, to a children’s story andsong broadcast on BBC (‘The Crew ofthe Shelister’), a recreation of adolescentexpeditions with the Tarbet fishermen

(‘An Druim-àrcan ’s an t-Ìochdar’,scribbled in book margins), or a responseto the Thatcher victory and theReferendum debacle (‘The TwaCapitals’) – not to mention small pithyquatrains damning Secretary of StateWillie Ross or the proposed ScottishAssembly.

The notebooks suggest spates of rapidcomposition, but also bear witness toHay’s tendency in later years to revisitpublished material, emending andexpanding – and creating headaches forthe critical editor! Problems of textualprimacy needed addressing at every turn.Hay’s own copy of Wind On Loch Fyne(MS.26778), for example, carried twosets of emendations, but in additionsome of the poems were expanded, ‘TheSmoky Smirr o Rain’ being given anadditional three, four or five verses invarious drafts thirty-five years aftercomposition. Editorial decisions onGaelic poems were further complicatedby the existence of a finalised typescriptfrom the 1970s (MS.26745) collectingall Hay’s published Gaelic poems, with itsown set of revisions. I was fortunateindeed in having the luxury of twoeditions (thesis, then book) on which toexercise variant editorial stances.

The discovery of unpublished poems

1983 revisions to ‘The Smoky Smirr o Rain’ and‘Mochtàr is Dùghall’ (MS.26744, 163v).

The first draft of ‘Na Baidealan’ (‘TheBattlements’) (MS.26723, 80v).

43130SC_G4_FOLIO_3 7/11/01 10:37 pm Page 12

was satisfying, as was the untangling ofthe linguistic threads of Hay’s creativeprocesses – the confirmation, forexample, that most of Hay’s ‘paired’poems had originated in Gaelic, or thatthe poem ‘The Fences’ (published inChapman) was in fact a direct translationof a Gaelic poem now surviving only inunfinished draft form. Such satisfactionswere offset by the frustration ofuncovering titles of poems now lost.Scurrilousness (the staple of traditionalGaelic satire) is not a tone one readilyassociates with Hay, nor is anti-clericalism, and it is a pity to have notrace left of efforts such as ‘Marbhaisg airna h-Eaglaisean’ (‘A Curse on theChurches’) and ‘Na Griogalaich’ (a longpoem on the MacGregors in Hell, whichruffled the sensibilities of KennethMacLeod), or of a certain ‘Pomp andCircumstance’ removed from Wind OnLoch Fyne as ‘it might give offenceunnecessarily’. Hay’s shifting of registersin Scots could be traced too, throughDouglas Young’s copies: from theTarbert dialect of an early version of ‘TheDestruction of the Land’ to the Lallansof the published version (‘bloodrudd

light’ to ‘bluidreid licht’, for example),and a similar transposition effected onthe unpublished ‘Spring HereNorthaway’ some thirty years aftercomposition. Further material for thelinguist is to be found in notebooksMSS.26722, 26736, 26737, and in fileMS.26747: Gaelic and Scots words andexpressions heard in Tarbert speech,extracts from Hay’s projected dictionaryof Gaelic usage, Kintyre place-names.

The notebooks facilitated the tracingof scattered periodical appearances and,above all, established a definitivechronology of composition for most ofHay’s work. Thus major poems publishedin the 1970s such as ‘Walls of Balclutha’(in Chapman 21) or ‘Solan’ (Akros11/32) were shown to date in fact fromthe particularly creative period in late1947 which had produced ‘Seeker,Reaper’ (shortly before Hay’s definitivehospitalisation). There was also thesurprise of discovering that highlyembellished lyrics like ‘Siubhal a’ Choire’and ‘An Gleannan’ were the work of atwenty-one-year-old.

The collection also gathers many ofHay’s prose writings (in MS.26746),

including short stories on the Tarbertfishing published in the Scots Magazine;the poetic manifesto published in HughMacDiarmid’s Voice of Scotland; a longfeature on Gaelic poetry serialised in NewAlliance; the treatise on poetry andsociety (‘Poetry In the World or Out ofIt?’) serialised in Scottish Art and Letters;the wonderful wartime accounts ‘TheDancers at Ras el-Hamra’ and ‘Men onGamila’ (the latter published in Lallansthirty years later); a thirty-four-pagestudy of Gaelic song as a source ofScottish history; and a variety ofpedagogical/propagandist pieces inGaelic and English. An interestingaddition has been the seventy-five-pagetypescript (Acc.10651), ‘Scotland, anAnthology’, a socio-historical collectionin prose and poetry (Gaelic, Scots, Latinand English) drawn from an astonishingarray of sources.

The richness of the Hay Archive isstill unfolding. As recently as July 2001,while looking through poems by SorleyMacLean transcribed by Hay around1939 in a notebook (MS.26722, 58v,59r) I realised that one of the poems,‘Dàin do Eimhir XVI’, had never beenpublished. This was a most excitingdiscovery. I contacted ChristopherWhyte, presently working on a definitiveedition of MacLean’s classic love cycleDàin do Eimhir and he confirmed thatthis was one of the ‘lost’ poems of thesequence. Hay’s original poems have nowbeen collected, but it will be a while yetbefore we get the true measure of thewriter and a full picture of hiscontribution. The archives of theNational Library of Scotland awaitfurther gleaning.

F O L I O 13

Note on sourcesAmong the items in the George CampbellHay Archive, Acc.6419, Box 38a contains aletter of 23/4/1940 which has the Scotspoem ‘Fuar Fuar’ written in the margins;notebook MS.26728, 31r gives a lively diaryaccount of Hay’s arrest near Arrochar inMay 1941; notebook MS.26729, 15r hasnotes in French, English, Gaelic andtranscriptions of Arabic riddles, whichinclude two items used in Mochtàr isDùghall; and notebook MS.26731, 4rcontains outlines for Hay’s war poem ‘EstaSelva Selvaggia’ – the poem itself is inEnglish. Photographs (MS.26750) showHay and friends on fishing boats on thecoast near Kintyre. The Collected Poems andSongs of George Campbell Hay edited byMichel Byrne is published by EdinburghUniversity Press in association with theLorimer Trust, 2000 (HP3.200.1168).

A photograph of adrawing of GeorgeCampbell Hay bypoet and artistGerald Mangan, whosent Hay this imageof his portrait, theoriginal having beensold in London(MS.26750).

43130SC_G4_FOLIO_3 7/11/01 10:37 pm Page 13

F O L I O14

The National Library of Scotlandhas a ‘Ruari McLean Archive’,which sounds rather grand.Over the years, I have passed

on papers and books, bits and pieces thatI no longer needed or had room for. Forinstance, during my time as a Trustee ofthe Library I found it held very fewbooks illustrated by Albert Dubout, aFrench illustrator I had been collectingfor years. I therefore handed over my setof Molière’s Works – a limited edition infour volumes, illustrated with superbcolour plates by Dubout: they took uptoo much of my limited space, and I amnot particularly fond of Molière. I wasalso happy to pass on to the Libraryexamples of books which I had personallydesigned. But there are certain books I’mnot ready to part with yet – for instance,a small collection of books bought fortheir titles, such as Junior Fun in Bed,You Can Make a Stradivarius Violinand The Women in Gandhi’s Life.(Incidentally, the Gandhi book turnedout to be serious and moving).

As a typographer and book designermyself, I value highly the work ofdistinguished book designers such asDwiggins, Updike, Ehmcke and Behrens.I believe that libraries should ensure thattheir catalogues can be searched underthe names of important book designers.Boston Public Library provides anexample of this approach, and they alsokeep their Dwiggins collection on open

shelves, so that students can appreciate itas a body of work.

In choosing what should go to theNational Library of Scotland in thefuture, I face certain dilemmas. Forinstance, letters present a problem – here,I refer to my collection of three-dimensional letters of the alphabet, castin china or bronze, or cut in wood orother material. Should the Library collectthose?

More important, of course, are‘epistles’. Some, written by importantpeople, are of obvious interest. But whatabout the many letters to me from myparents? And what about the letters froman old school friend who has sent meabout thirty a year, since 1945. (Whenwe met in Cairo in 1942, he was in RAF‘erk’s’ uniform and I was in navalofficer’s uniform; we therefore had greatdifficulty in finding any restaurant wherewe could go and eat together.) Hisletters are legible, because typewritten,and always amusing: I am convinced thathe could have become a great writer but,sadly, he never did.

I also have some letters from JoyceCary, whose writing was almost illegible;

they will infuriate any librarian who takescharge of them. His wife transcribed hisnovels, all handwritten, for publication,but she could not write legibly either,which caused many misprints in hisbooks. (My wife happened to be herniece, and could not write legibly either,which was why I could not employ her asmy secretary, which she regretted.)

I have passed on to the Library aletter from John Betjeman. Before theSecond World War, he worked in thelayout department of a famous Londonadvertising agency. I went to ask for ajob. He was kind, talked to me andthough no job resulted he sent me ahilarious handwritten letter. Perhaps it,too, will end up in the National Libraryof Scotland. I have a small collection ofhandwritten letters kept primarily fortheir calligraphy, from Alfred Fairbank,Stanley Morison, Jan Tschichold, and others.

I cannot throw away any picturepostcard I think is beautiful and I havedrawers full of them. I don’t have anysigned by Picasso, but I do have onesigned by Augustus John. How will theLibrary file that, I wonder?

‘Bits and Pieces’A Typographer at work and Play

Ruari McLean is one of the greattypographers of the twentiethcentury. He has written or

compiled over thirty books ontypography and book design, andhis Manual of Typography is aclassic. However, his archive at

the National Library of Scotlandreveals the immense diversity of

work he undertook during a longcareer. Here he reflects on the

difficulty of deciding whatmaterial is suitable

for inclusion.

43130SC_G4_FOLIO_3 7/11/01 10:37 pm Page 14

F O L I O 15

Note on sources

The papers and books donated by RuariMcLean to the National Library ofScotland illuminate the development of oneof the most eminent typographers of thetwentieth century. The archive includesnotebooks kept over many years in whichare to be found brief, telling, critiques ofthe design of hundreds of books. Cuttingsfrom magazines and newspapers abouttypography and book design, as well ashaving an intrinsic interest, show whatcaught Ruari McLean’s eye. The archivecontains a considerable number of bookjackets and publications designed by him;proofs and sketches for layouts often bear,in note form, professional interchangesbetween the designer and the publishers heworked for. Additionally, there are manycharming examples of Ruari McLean’shumorous drawings of domestic life. TheLibrary also has copies of books written byhim, including his autobiography, True toType (2000) and his war memoirs, Half Seas Under (2001). Cataloguing of theRuari McLean Archive is presentlyunderway.

Above: The office at Broomrigg on the island ofMull often contained ducks, goslings, a hen, a catand a dog.

The first issue of the classicboys’ comic Eagle appeared onFriday 14 April, 1950, priced3d. At Ruari McLean’ssuggestion the heading wasdrawn by Berthold Wolpe. Astypographical adviser to theEagle, Ruari McLean’sresponsibilities included layingout the text, marking it for thetype setter and designing thetitles for the graphic strips andstories.

Left: Victorian Book Design & Colour Printing,London, 1963 (SU.37), one of Ruari McLean’s manyworks on the book arts.

Above: From the Ruari McLean Archive. Theannouncement of an exhibition at the NationalLibrary of Scotland about designer George Mackie,who set his elegant stamp on many of the bookspublished by Edinburgh University Press during theeditorship of Archie Turnbull.

Opposite: Jan Tschichold: typographer (x.211.b),London, 1975.

Left: Ruari McLean’s humorous drawings wereoften incorporated into his own greetings cards,such as this example.

43130SC_G4_FOLIO_3 7/11/01 10:37 pm Page 15

F O L I O16

Notes on contributors

MICHEL BYRNE is a Lecturer in ScottishGaelic in the Department of Celtic at theUniversity of Glasgow. He is editor of The Collected Poems and Songs of GeorgeCampbell Hay (Edinburgh University Pressand the Lorimer Memorial Trust, 2000; apaperback edition is planned for 2002).

DAVID FINKELSTEIN is Head of the Mediaand Communication Department at QueenMargaret University College. A specialist inVictorian print culture and book history, heis author of An Index to Blackwood’sMagazine, 1901–1980 (Scolar Press, 1995)and The House of Blackwood: Author-Publisher Relations in the Victorian Era(Penn State Press, forthcoming 2002).

RUARI MCLEAN is a distinguishedtypographer who has written a number ofimportant books about the book arts,including his authoritative Manual ofTypography (Thames and Hudson, 1980).His autobiographical writings are True toType (Werner Shaw and Oak Knoll Press,2000) and Half Seas Under (Thomas ReedPublications, 2001).

IAN RANKIN is a leading writer of detectivefiction. His award-winning novels featuringDI John Rebus are set in Edinburgh. Thelatest book in the series, The Falls (Orion,2001), appears in paperback in Novemberthis year, while the next Rebus mystery,Resurrection Men, is set to appear inJanuary 2002.

LOUISE YEOMAN is curator of early modernmanuscripts in the National Library ofScotland. She co-directs the Survey ofScottish Witchcraft 1563–1736. InReportage Scotland (Luath Press inassociation with the National Library ofScotland, 2000), she assembled a collage ofScottish history based on documents andbooks held at the Library.

NLS diary dates In the next Folio(Spring 2002)ALISON LINDSAY, Publications Officer at theNational Archives of Scotland, writes aboutJane Shaw (1910–2000), a Scottish writerwhose surviving papers are soon to bedeposited in the National Library ofScotland, where they will constitute a freshresource for those interested in popularchildren’s fiction. Jane Shaw’s books weremainly published under the Collins’Children’s Press imprint and by ThomasNelson. Alison Lindsay considers the lightJane Shaw’s papers throw on the authorand on the children’s publishing field in her day.

ALAN RIACH, general editor of the sixteen-volume Collected Works of HughMacDiarmid, describes how discoveries inthe National Library of Scotland reveal ahaunted, pain-filled man, as evidenced inMacDiarmid’s New Selected Letters. ‘Alibrary at night is a sleeping monster’, asPhilip Larkin said; ‘it guards many treasuresbut it threatens violence too’. Alan Riach’smost recent book of poems is Clearances;he is Head of the Department of ScottishLiterature at the University of Glasgow.

MURRAY SIMPSON, Director of SpecialCollections at the National Library ofScotland, reflects on the story behind theHugh Sharp Collection. Hugh Sharpaccumulated about 1500 volumes beforehis tragically untimely death in 1937, at theage of forty. Using highly fastidious criteria,he confined himself to first issues in pristinecondition. His collection consists mainly ofBritish and American imprints, in the fieldsof literature, history and sport. What doesthe Hugh Sharp Collection tell us of itsoriginator’s collecting principles and vision?

CHRIS TAYLOR offers an overview of theextensive Italian collections at the NationalLibrary of Scotland, giving a conciseaccount of the range of material both in theItalian printed books and manuscriptscollections. He considers what the Italiancollections reveal of the relationship –cultural, artistic, commercial and domestic –between Scotland and Italy, and discoversan ongoing and fruitful interchange at allsorts of levels. Chris Taylor is Curator ofthe French and Italian Collections in theCollection Development Division of theNational Library of Scotland.

October 2001The Library’s popular exhibition The Write Stuff,featuring photographs of leading Scottish writersby Gordon Wright, ends on 31 October. Thosewho missed it have another chance to see it whenit tours to various venues around Scotland nextyear.

From Acheson to Paolozzi (book launch) Duncan Macmillan talks about writing onScottish art at the launch of the paperbackedition of his book Scottish Art in the 20thCentury. This event is free but ticketed.31 October at 7pm

November 2001The National Library of Scotland ElizabethSoutar Bookbinding Award 2001 is announced.All the entries to the competition are on displayat the Library during November.

Writing about Spark – problems and jokesAileen Christianson talks about the work ofMuriel Spark. This event is free but ticketed.7 November at 7pm

The Library launches Experiences of War, a newwebsite aimed at schools, on 9 November.Looking at the wartime experiences of threeindividuals using letters, diaries and photographs,the website features a programme of educationalactivities linked to the Scottish curriculum. See itat www.nls.uk/experiencesofwar.

The National Library of Scotland/Saltire SocietyScottish Research Book of the Year is announcedas part of the Saltire Society Literary Awards.

January 2002The winner of the Robert Louis StevensonAward is announced. The Award is jointlyfunded and administered by the Library and theScottish Arts Council. The prize is a two-monthvisit to the Hotel Chevillon International ArtsCentre in Grez-sur-Loing near Fontainebleau,France.

A selection of material from the Donald DewarCollection donated to the Scottish Parliamentgoes on display at the Library from 14 January tothe end of February. The collection, whichincludes books, photographs and many otheritems of personal and political memorabilia, willeventually be housed in the Donald DewarReading Room at Holyrood. Scholars andmembers of the public will then be able to accessthe collection by arrangement with the Library.

A winter series of writers’ events is also planned.For further details of this series, and for moreinformation on any of the events mentioned inthe Diary, please contact Jackie Cromarty (detailsbelow).

National Library of ScotlandGeorge IV BridgeEDINBURGHEH1 1EWTel 0131-226 4531Fax 0131-622 4803www.nls.uk

If you have any comments regarding Folio, orwould like to be added to the mailing list toreceive it, please contact Jackie Cromarty,Deputy Head of Public Programmes, bytelephone on 0131-622 4810 or via e-mail atj.cromarty@nls.uk

Folio is edited by Jennie Renton

CONTACT DETAILS

43130SC_G4_FOLIO_3 7/11/01 10:37 pm Page 16