The Eoropievision Song Contest

In a previous article we saw how, back in 1974, 2 blones and 2 coves from Stornoway went off and won the Eurovision Song Contest for Sweden. (http://stornowayhistory.wordpress.com/tag/abba/)

But with all the fuss over in Malmo next weekend, it’s easy to forget that it’s not just continental Europe that can stage ridiculous overblown tackfests characterised by abysmal music, constant cultural and linguistic misunderstandings, and a voting system that serves to highlight rather than conceal the old enmities that have driven most of the participants to war against each other for centuries.

Oh no – indeed, many years before Johnny Foreigner came along and pinched the idea, the warring villages of Ness had set up a similar event in an effort to distract their citizens from knocking lumps out of each other in disputes about sheep’s earmarks, bothans, fences and the finer points of the Doctrine of Predestination. This was, of course, the Eoropievision Song Contest.

The village of Eoropie has long been known as “The Switzerland of Ness” due to its tendency to remain neutral during disputes between other townships in the area (and kindly offer to look after their money while they fight each other). It doesn’t have a chocolate industry to speak of, but it is well known for the manufacture of Guga Clocks.

Marcel Beistealachd, head of the Eoropie Broadcasting Union, conceived the idea of the Eoropievision Song contest in 1948. Beistealachd decided that –since one of the causes of intervillage warfare was the unending argument about whose Gaelic was ‘right’, the whole contest would be organised and run in French. Unfortunately none of the original judging panel knew any French numbers, and so in the first contest in 1949, everybody was awarded ‘Nul Point’ and came last.

Beistealachd was not deterred by this, nor by the complete absence in these days of electricity or televisions in the district. Over the next few years, several villages from outside Ness began to compete, and by the mid 60s, Eoropievision was a large scale affair involving most of the villages from the Butt to Barra. The exception was Point, whose hardline communist rulers refused to have anything to do with such decadent capitalist frivolity until the fall of the Braigh Wall in 1989. From 1989 onwards the Contest saw an increase in entries, as previously unheard of former ‘Rubhach Pact’ villages (such as Broker and Portvoller) submitted entries. As most of the Point villages had been cut off from modern culture for so long, these entries tended to be at least 40 years behind the rest of Lewis and Harris in terms of songwriting, and most entries tended to be all about the dream of catching a really big fish.

The Contest also had it fair share of controversy. In 1974 the Port Nis entry was a signal to the village’s populace to rise up in the ‘Damnation Revolution’ that overthrew their insufficiently hard-line minister, the Rev Marcelo Mackayetano. Uig cove Clibhe Richards still claims to this day that his song ‘Congregations’ was kept off the winning position by the revolutionaries.

In the late 1990’s the Inaclete entry from Dana Interdenominational caused consternation when it was discovered that she was not all she appeared to be, and was not really a Free Churcher but a Seceder!

Voting patterns are often dominated by politics. Castlebay, Arnol, Lochboisdale and Bragar always vote tactically against each other. Grimshader and Tolsta always give each other maximum points and nobody else gives ever them any. And despite the breakup of the old communist regime in Point, Garrabost sends its tanks out on “exercises” each year a week or so before the contest and then routinely receives “Douze Points” from all its former Rubhach Pact client villages in the area.

But the most common occurrence is the maws all ganging up and giving ‘Nul Point’ to the Stornoway entries. This was certainly the case when Engebret Fillingstation got fleek all votes last year (2012).

Winners and Notable Entries

• ·Few Europievision winners went on to achieve lasting success, but H*bba, who won the 1974 contest, was a notable exception, topping the charts for years afterwards with hits such as  “Psalma Mia”, “Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Plank And a Hammer”) and “Knowing Me, I Know Who It Was, Was it You?”.
• ·In 1967, Sandie Shaw  – a supergroup composed of hard-gigging Plasterfield rawk chick  Sandie Mackinnon and quiet acoustic Newton thrash metal axeman Iain Shaw – won with “(Collie) Puppy on a String”
• ·Bugsy Fizz – a supergroup composed of Bugsy and Cally Fizzags  – nearly won the 1981 contest with “Making Your Mind Up” (song about deciding on which Free Church splinter group to join). But the bit where they pulled off their skirts caused so much outrage that they were disqualified and exiled. This is how it went:

 

Making Your Mind Up (which breakaway church to join)

You gotta Secede it up

And then you gotta schism it down

Cos if you believe that a church can hit the top

You gotta pray around

And soon you will find at Communion Time

You’re making your mind up.

You gotta stand for prayers

And for psalms sit down

You gotta be sure that it’s something

Every elders gonna talk about

On Sunday Night

Before you decide the tithe is right

For making your mind up.

Don’t let your inner schism

Take you from behind

Trust your sinner vision

Don’t let FPs change your mind

 

• ·Second rate Hearach H*bba wannabees the Brotherhood of Manish  won in 1976 with “Save All Your Fishes For Me”
• ·In 1980 Johnny ‘Local’ – A white settler pretending to be a maw – sang the Lemreway entry and won. ‘Local’ was to become a fixture of the contest as a performer, writer and arranger for many years to come. But he’s still fleekeen ruppish.
• ·Ciorstaidh-Anna and the Wakes won in 1997 with “Mamma Weer Al-Crae-zee Now”. Oh no it wasn’t – it was “A Hearse With No Name”. Or maybe “Going Down To Ullapool”. Or something.
• ·And of course who can forget Finsbay’s unexpected 2006 winner : Grotesque cuireamach metal merchants Lord-i with “Hard Rock Thighearnabheannaichte”?

 

This year’s final takes place on Saturday night in Marvig.

Fleek knows who’s going to win  Probably not Bonnie Tyler – She was going to come and sing the Marybank entry “Total Eclipse of the Ceard” – but it turns out she’s got an other job on that night.

Our money’s on a Rubhach – probably thon Murdina Garrabostova. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll vote for her as well.

 

Maggie Thatcher: The Portvoller Years.

In all the publicity surrounding the demise of Margaret Thatcher (as she was officially known), little has been said about the true beginnings of her political career, right here on the Isle of Lewis.

This isn’t surprising; Her rise up the ranks of the Conservative party in the 1970s, fuelled by a potent cocktail of free market economics and little Englanderism, would have stalled instantly if it had been revealed that she was no grocer’s daughter from Grantham at all – but was born a Rubhach and served throughout the 30s and 40s as the Portvoller councillor for the Point Socialist Liberation Front, a hard-left Trosgyist party.

Margaret Thatcher was born Magaidh Macsween in a leaky black house on the road to Tiumpan Head lighthouse. The custom in these days was to remove the sooty straw from the roof every year for compost and replace it anew, but Magaidh’s old man was a lazy bleigeard who never bothered. The house was usually several inches deep in rainwater, and the family and livestock were permanently stained black by sooty water running through what was left of the roof.

Thus did Magaidh’s father acquire the ironic nickname “Thatcher”, which was duly passed on to the rest of the family, along with a deep-seated hatred of all things wet.

Magaidh’s interest in politics began at an early age, and after studying chemistry at the window of Kenny Froggan’s she got elected to Ross & Cromarty County Council’s Portvoller seat in 1929. At that time the Point Socialist Liberation Front was led by music-loving bachelor sailor and non-churchgoer Tormod Heathen. Thatcher despised Heathen’s centrist politics and his decision to take Point into the Communion Market – a trans-village agreement that allowed the free movement of scones and caorans between districts during the orduighean, but gave all Portvoller’s fishing rights away to the Scalpachs.

Thatcher soon engineered Heathen’s overthrow and took over as Chairman of the Central Committee of the PSLF. Almost immediately she began to privatise Portvoller’s ailing state-run industries and make massive cuts in government spending. Inflation and interest rates rocketed, the economy nosedived, and she looked certain to lose the 1933 elections.

But then came the invasion of Bayble Island by forces from Achmore. The Achmoreteenians had always wanted a coastline like other villages, and had been making claims on various islets and bits of shore for years, which nobody ever took seriously. But now their economy was on the verge of collapse due to the failure of their fishing fleet and their shipbuilding industry, and the populace were discontented. The Achmoreteenian dictator General Leodhaspoldo Garynahinetieri decided to distract the people with an invasion, certain that the Rubhachs would back down and leave him looking tough as fleek.

But Thatcher wasn’t so easily intimidated. A task force of three fleekeen hard coves from Seaview Knock and an angry ram was assembled and dispatched from Bayble pier in a rowing boat, After several minutes of heavy fighting the Achmoreteenians surrendered and the Point flag was raised once more over the island. The war boosted Thatcher’s popularity immensely and the Point Socialist Liberation Front won the 1933 election against a divided and ineffectual Liberation Socialist Front of Point (Continuing) and its ageing duffel-coated leader D*nny Foot.

Thatcher’s next target was Portvoller’s powerful National Union of Peatcutters and their demagogic leader Arthur Suardail. In the face of Thatcher’s plans to close a large number of the village’s peat banks, Suardail called the union out on a strike that lasted for fleekin ages. Suardail hoped to bring Point to its knees and overthrow Magaidh by cutting off the supply of peat, the main source of power for the Lewisian economy (and in some parts of Point, the main currency).

Suardail organised gangs of peatcutters to stand in a line at the end of every peat-track to stop tractors taking the peats home. This strategy proved to be an effective tool, as many tractor drivers took one look at the line and thought ‘Fleek it’ it and went off to the Macs. This ‘Fleek it line’ eventually became a common sight in industrial disputes across the land.

Unfortunately for Suardail, Magaidh had arranged for cheap peats to be rowed across Broadbay from Tolsta, so the anticipated peat shortage never materialised. The strike slowly fizzled out and the Peatcutters returned to work. Sadly the Point peat industry never regained its share of the market and the union movement lost its best darts players.

Magaidh was also renowned for her strong opposition to a broader union of Maws. For many years, the various villages and districts of Lewis had been trying to co-operate more closely in order to produce better football players to compete against the Stornoway teams. Magaidh felt that Point had no need of closer links, especially with Lochs, and so always stated that she would never sign the Mawstrict Treaty. This stubborn position led to confrontation with many of her party colleagues and ultimately led to her downfall, as a whispering campaign started in the Crit.

Even her formerly staunch allies in the Common Grazings committee began to turn against her, especially after she vetoed their plans for an extension to the fank. The Committee had spent months coming up with a proposed a new layout that would save money on gates by routing the dipped sheep back out the way they’d come in. But Thatcher dismissed their idea out of hand. Ars ise : “There will be no ewe turns”.

The final nail in the coffin was seen to be Thatcher’s insistence on introducing a wildly unpopular system of local income tax. She set her sights on raising badly needed spondoolacs by introducing a tax on electricity. The ‘electric’ was just arriving in many of the rural parts of Lewis, carried from the Power Station on Ropework Rd in Stornoway, by hundreds of ‘hydro’ poles dotted across the countryside. Magaidh saw an opportunity to charge homeowners for getting power depending on how many hydro poles it took to reach their houses. This ‘Pole Tax’ resulted in riots, refusals to pay and widespread discontent.

Taking advantage of Magaidh’s low ratings in a Stornoway Gazette poll (Who had the nicest Church Hat), her Cabinet members contrived a Vote of No Confidence. Two prominent local teachers of the day – T*rz*n and M*j*r – stood for the leadership and eventually M*j*r won. Thatcher’s political career (on Lewis at any rate) was over.

Once out of elected office, everyone expected Thatcher to take the well-worn path trodden by many ex-councillors before and since – get the cuiream and take up a seat in the House of (the) Lord.

But Magaidh had other plans. Walking home from the party meeting where she’d been fired, she was passed by local slaughterer Domhnall as a’ Chiall in his bloodstained tractor, towing a trailer full of recently terminated livestock. Taking his attention off the road to point at Magaidh and laugh at her misfortune, Domnhall failed to spot a massive pothole (the result of cuts in the roads budget) and crashed. The contents of the trailer were catapulted in all directions, and Magaidh was knocked into a ditch by the flying carcass of a freshly slaughtered molt.

This was the last straw. “Savaged by a dead sheep!”, she said to herself, as she sat in the peaty ditchwater and brushed fragments of mutton off her beannag and overall. “Well, fleek the Party, fleek the Rubhachs, and fleek this island. I’m going somewhere civilised. Somewhere people will appreciate me. Somewhere where this kind of sh*te will neffer happen to me again!”

Magaidh Macsween was never seen in Portvoller from that day to this. But not long afterwards, much further South, an unknown “grocer’s daughter from Grantham” appeared as if from nowhere at a meeting of the Colchester Conservative Association.

The rest (unlike all this ruppish) is history.

The Hebridaneans

The forthcoming Independence Referendum in 2014 won’t be the first time the Outer Hebrides has had to decide what country it pretends to belongs to.

In late 1955, a similar Referendum (now sadly long forgotten) was held to decide if the people of the Outer Hebrides wished to become a Protectorate of Denmark. This situation came about due to the neglect shown to the islands by Westminster over many years, and the post war economic downturn, but mainly from a chance encounter with the crew of a passing Faroese trawler.

There had always been strong cultural and economic connections between the Hebrides and Denmark, going back as far as Viking Times. The herring industry helped strengthen these connections in the late 19th and early 20th century, and up until the 1950′s, the weekly ‘mailboat’ to the Faroes used to call in at Stornoway to pick up the Gazette.

During a darts match in the Legion (the Stornoway and District Church Elders Annual Darts Competition), the Faroese crew happened to mention how good life was as part of Denmark. This caught the attention of those watching the darts and someone jokingly suggested that the Danes should come back and take charge of the islands.  Very soon this piece of gossip had travelled from pub to pub, and then from church to church, until it eventually reached the Council Chamber via Charlie Barleys. However, by the time the gossip reached the Chamber it was a fully fledged proposal and a motion was passed to make representations to Denmark.

A delegation from the Stornoway Town Council visited the Danish capital Copenhagen the next day. The delegates brought all sorts of presents – exotic foodstuffs like guga & marags, and indigenous crafts like Arnish Boots & church hats – to show the Danes what they could be getting their hands on. However, it was the promise of getting a go of the Callanish Stones that really swung the deal.

After intense bargaining, the Danes agreed to take on the Outer Hebrides, if the majority of inhabitants voted in favour of the proposal. After a short campaign the ‘Heng Aye’ side emerged victorious with 92% of the vote. The ‘Fleek Off’ campaign were suitably disappointed, but gracious in defeat.

Much of the success of the campaign was due to the strong cultural links which already existed between Denmark and Stornoway. As previously mentioned, the Viking influence had set the scene and various cultural exchanges over the years helped strengthen the bonds.
Hans Christian Anderson, the famous Danish writer, used to come on his holidays to Stornoway in the 1840’s. Back then, he was just known as Hans Anderson, but after prolonged exposure to Free Church services, he took Communion and became a fervent member of the faith. He was so staunch a church-goer that he campaigned widely to get not only the swings padlocked on Sundays, but the whole town. In Stornoway, due to this fervor, he was known as Hans ‘Curam’ Anderson. This translated into Hans ‘Christian’ Anderson when he moved back to Denmark.

Hans Christian Anderson was best known for his story The Little Maw Maid. This story has touched the hearts of millions and has been turned into film adaptations on many occasions.

A short synopsis is provided below.

The Little Maw Maid is the daughter of the King of the Maws.  She lives ‘beyond the cattle grid’ with her family in Ranish and dreams of becoming a townie. She loves to visit the hills over looking Stornoway and watching the townies, with their posh and refined accents. She ignores the concerns of her father King Tractor and spends all her time watching the town with her friend Sgudal the Seagull.

One day she notices a handsome townie Prince, called Prince Derek, on a bike going through Marybank. The bike bursts a tyre and the Prince is thrown to the ground & knocked unconscious. The Little Maw Maid runs to help and drags him to the cattle grid at the County Hospital. A passing nurse finds the Prince and takes him in to the hospital.

The Little Maw Maid watches the Prince as he recovers and falls in love with him. She visits a witch in Tolsta and asked how she could become a Townie. The witch gave her a magic potion that would transform her accent into a posh townie one, but there was a catch- her new accent would only work in Church.

The Little Maw Maid drank the potion and walked into town the next Sunday, being careful not to speak to anyone until she reached the Church.

There she met the handsome townie prince and fascinated him with the way she pronounced ‘j’ as ‘ch’ and ended every sentence with ‘fleekin’ right man’.

However, it turned out the handsome townie prince was only Church of Scotland & was just there for a christening, so the Little Maw Maid ran off with a Free Church Elder instead.

A famous musical about Anderson’s life was also made in the 1950’s staring Danny Cromwell-St-Quay. This film featured musical adaptations of many of his fairy tales including The Ugly Guga.

The Ugly Guga
There once was an ugly guga
With feathers all singed and a mess
And the other birds said in so many words
Haoidh! Get out of Ness!

The famous statue of the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen Harbour is also a lasting symbol of.the links between Denmark and Stornoway, in particular the herring industry. Originally the sculptor was told to make a statue of a ‘herring girl’, but he thought that meant a girl who was half herring/half blone. By the time the mistake was noticed it was too late -the statue was in place and had become one of the cities most popular landmarks.

The Danish control of the Hebrides ended in 1959 when Copenhagen decided that the Stornoway Gazette wasn’t covering Danish events in enough detail, or indeed in any detail. A passing Faroese trawler dropped off the Title Deeds and so ended the era of the Hebridaneans.

(Thanks to Ange for her research into Hebridanea).

Stornoway Nuclear Power Station

In this age of rogue windmills springing up on our moors causing havoc in their wake, it’s reassuring to see a tether to our environmentally sensitive past in the form of the Battery Point power station. Capable of churning out a respectable 23.5 megawatts of electrical power by harnessing the natural energy of carbon, this scientific marvel doesn’t even require the wind to be blowing in order to generate the juice you need to power your hi-tech Nissan Leaf, and even generates thick clouds of black diesel smoke to shield us all from the ravaging effects of potentially damaging solar rays.

The station began its active life in 1950 but few are aware that a few years prior to this, the station was tightly wrapped in fuigheags of wartime tension and subterfuge.

On the 10th May 1940 at the Université de Toulouse’s Science department, eminent physics professor Dr Karcsi DeTerisse made an astonishing breakthrough. While attempting to find a way to prevent his morning croissant from disintegrating and festooning his beard with crumbs, Dr DeTerisse accidentally discovered a completely safe and clean way of splitting the atom and creating vast amounts of power, only with no harmful byproducts. Upon running into the street stark naked (save for his croissant) in celebration, his joy was tempered as he spotted newspaper headlines declaring that the Germans had crossed the border and were advancing across the nation. Realising that his monumental discovery (and his croissant) were likely to fall into Nazi hands, he immediately fled for England.

Upon his arrival in England and after drying himself off, he made his way to Cambridge where he met up with his old friend and fellow ex-pat Frenchman Dr Olivier Auguste Spreille, with whom he had previously worked after both had received their doctorates. Over the following weeks, the two friends studied the war situation with alarm as the German army pushed ever further West until they were threatening to cross the Channel. (There was only one Channel in those days, as ITV hadn’t started broadcasting yet.)

By this time, the Allied Forces were in dire need of ready access to electrical power for the manufacture of munitions as the transport of coal by land and sea was becoming increasingly difficult due to German bombing raids. DeTerisse had a brainwave. He and Dr Spreille would decamp to the furthest area of land from the Germans that they could manage and, there, would set up the world’s first ever Nuclear Power Station, and thus would revolutionise the war effort. A cursory glance at the map led the two physicists to the Isle of Lewis.

An uncomfortable week in a fishing boat later, the pair set foot in Stornoway where they set about finding a suitable location, as well as some clothing for Dr DeTerisse who had been stark naked since the day he left France. Now with his modesty concealed by a blue boiler suit and Arnish boots, DeTerisse chose Battery Point as the location for his endeavour. His reasoning was two-fold. a) It was accessible by sea, and b) it was handy for the bus stop and Cathy Ghall’s shop was just round the corner. At this time, he also began to go by the name “Kenny” partly in honour of his favourite local chain-smoking guitar player and partly because nobody in Lewis could pronounce “Karcsi” properly anyway. Olivier followed suit and dropped the pretentious and unnecessary second ‘i’ from his name. Now fully integrated into Lewis society, the project began to take shape.

Construction of the Stornoway Nuclear Station began in 1943. Construction was restarted again in 1944 when it was discovered that the Irish building firm that had been subcontracted by the town council had got their orders mixed up and thought they were meant to be knocking it down. (Meanwhile, the rest of the Irish crew had rebuilt the Nicolson Institute). The work progressed well and a huge stockpile of old herring barrels were collected on site since, as the interconnector had not been invented yet, they needed some sort of way to ship the electricity out to the waiting world.

However, just as the project was nearing completion, disaster struck. The War ended. Well, alright, that wasn’t such a bad thing, but for DeTerisse and Spreille’s Nuclear Power Station it was a catastrophe. Without the Nazi threat, the need for vast amounts of energy had dwindled and aside from this, government officials were wary of a bearded physicist
smothered in croissant flakes who wore Arnish boots on his hands. The project was mothballed before a single atom was split, or even dented. The glory of having the world’s first functional Nuclear Power Station fell instead to the Russkies, albeit a few years later and using a more primitive and dangerous system than DeTerisse’s., which never did see the light of day.

DeTerisse and Spreille left the island in 1950, just as their former building was fitted with diesel generators and chugged into service providing the town and its environs with electricity of a more low-tech sort. Prior to their departure, the Town Council decided to honour the French professors for their heroic and visionary work and, to this day, the legacies of Kenny DeTerisse and Oliver Spreille live on in the Stornoway streets which bear their names.

Cove Fawkes and the Fifth of November

At this time of year when tyre wars, delinquent bangers and out-of-control Plasterfield gellies rage around us, people often wonder at the enthusiasm with which November the 5th is celebrated in the Stornoway area. After all, the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 took place in faraway London. What’s it got to do with us up here?

The answer is of course, fleek all. The conflagrations that take place in Stornoway each year commemorate a completely different set of events that happened a year earlier, and much closer to home.

Stornoway in 1604 was a turbulent place. The citizens of the metropolis were not pleased that their new monarch, who had inherited the throne through a dynastic mischance – was an outsider; the ruler of a neighbouring kingdom which had for centuries been their bitter enemy.

Seumas Stewart VIth, King of Marybank, had succeeded to the throne of Stornoway in 1603, on the demise of his elderly cousin Good Queen Beassag Ist. Like his mother Mairi Queen of Sgorps before him, Seumas had never been satisfied with his backwater of a kingdom and had always coveted the Stornowegian Crown (and the Crit and the Lewis as well) .

To consolidate his grip he brought to Stornoway many of his courtiers from beyond the cattle grid and appointed them to positions of power in the city. Within days of Seumas’s arrival in Stornoway, the key roles of Warden of ye Trafficke, Manager of ye Fishermannes Co-oppe and Keeper of ye Quartere Bottles in ye Tradinge Poste were all given to Marybank men.

Seumas’s nobles made free with the town’s copper, lead and fuidheags, so that – as Shakespeare wrote while up visiting his Granny Parkend in 1604; “Stornewaye floodeth from above when it raineth, from below when ye closetes be flushed, and errr … they’re right out of fuidheags an’ all”.

But what made Seumas really unpopular with the Stornowegians were his views on religion. Seumas was a big pal of firebrand Rubhach preacher John Knock, and between them they decided to make all the Townies convert to Free Presbyterianism. The Stornowegians were Free Church, and were less than thrilled to hear Seumas and Knock denounce them all as adherents of a backsliding and corrupt denomination in the pay of Rome. When Seumas banned the church buses, closed down Ye Salon Nan Eilean so that blones couldn’t get their hair cut, and instructed Murdo Maclean’s to stop selling ladies’ trousers, the townsfolk became even more irate.

Meanwhile over in Spain, King Philip III saw the discontent in Stornoway as an ideal opportunity to press his claim to Goat Island and its prawn factory (See “The Spanish Discovery of Goat Island”). He instructed his agents to go out and stir up the Townies as much as possible.

Cove Fawkes came from an old Goathill noble family, and like many of the town’s aristocracy he believed that Stornoway would be a much better place without the upstart Marybank King and his heretical religion.

While on an all-inclusive fortnight in Benidorm, Cove was approached by a Spanish agent who (after failing to flog him a timeshare) outlined a plan to rid Stornoway of Seumas. The Spaniard suggested that Cove Fawkes was chust the man to do the necessary deed and promised him a big job in the prawn factory if he went through with it.

Cove Fawkes assembled a crack team of conspirators, including Thomas Percevalsquaretoilets, and plotted to strike a blow at the very heart of the Marybank establishment.

Fawkes knew that the King would be at the State Opening of Parliament on 5th November. At that time, the Stornoway Parliament met in Smith’s Shoe Shop on Cromwell St (as it did up until recently), and the King would usually open it (as he had the only key) in a state after a few drams in Ye Olde Clachan.

Fawkes decided to sneak into the under-cellars of the Parliament/Shoe Shop with a pile of gunpowder. Once he heard the King and his cronies enter, he would light the fuse and run like fleek. The upstart King and his lackeys would be blown to smithereens and justice would prevail.

Under cover of darkness Fawkes nicked 20 old herring barrels (complete with left over rotting sgadan) from the pier and stashed them in a secret location. He then wrote out a shopping list for all the equipment he would need and nipped down to Ye Crofters Store with it. He left the list with a shopkeeper and nipped out to Ye Rangeres Clubbe for a swift one. Unfortunately, due to Fawkes’ dodgy handwriting, 20 barrels worth of bun-powder (flour) were ordered instead of gunpowder.

Unaware of this, that night Cove Fawkes filled the herring barrels up with the bun-powder, and stuck the fuses into them. His gang loaded the smelly barrels onto carts and trundled them off to the Parliament.

Once the fish-reeking barrels were in place, Fawkes hid himself behind them and waited. After a short while, he heard the King stagger into the Parliament and take to the throne. Fawkes lit the fuse and ran. However, instead of a scene of devastation, the flour and herring created a giant fish pie in the ensuing explosion.

(This, incidentally led to the creation of the well known playground verse, ‘Remember, remember the fish offal November’).

Fawkes and his conspirators were soon arrested and deported to Scalpay. Cove eventually moved to London where his name became translated from townie to English as ‘Guy’, took handwriting lessons and the rest is history.

Ever since the failed attempt to blow up the Stornoway Parliament, the 5th of November was commemorated as Bunfire Night where an effigy of Cove Fawkes would be burnt to remind everyone that fish pie is fleekin’ horrible.

The Cuiream Missile Crisis

It’s 50 years this month since the Cuban Missile Crisis famously brought the world to the brink of nuclear Armageddon. In 1962 the eyes of the world were focussed on the Caribbean, where the Soviet Union and the USA faced each other down, and the fate of civilization and of life itself hung in the balance.

However, the Eye Peninsulas of the world were focused on a much more serious situation in the Minch, where a confrontation between Free Church congregations threated to split apart the fragile interdenominational peace that existed between the various churches on Lewis and Harris.

Old SYs in the know will tell you that this stand-off – The Cuiream Missile Crisis – came much closer to triggering a global nuclear conflagration than thon wee spat between Kruschev and Kennedy.

In the early 1960’s, the many and varied Presbyterian denominations of Lewis were engaged in a Cold War of ideology and holiness, as to which Church had the best sermons, the blackest elder hats and the biggest list of things that weren’t allowed. The Point and South Lochs Free Churches were on particularly bad terms after a falling-out involving a Minister’s wife putting too much salt in the Communion Soup, with counter-allegations being made that low grade Bachelor Buttons were being used in Rubhach services.

On the unlikely pretext of preventing Hearach Seceders from sneaking up to Point to invade their Communions, Knock Free Church announced plans to base nuclear missile batteries on the Shiant Islands, a mere stone’s throw from the South Lochs coast.

Finlay Castrator, the local Shepherd on the Shiants, was a hardline communist whose 1-man regime (governing a population consisting of himself and 400 sheep) was entirely dependent on the Rubhachs for support. As far as he was concerned, villages like Orinsay and Lemreway were hotbeds of exiled Shiant sheep intent on re-taking the islands and overthrowing him at the first opportunity, as they’d already tried to do in the abortive Bay Of Mehhhags invasion of 1961. Consequently he was only too happy to site the missiles on top of a cliff which meant that every Free Church, mission house and fank in South Lochs was in range.

Across the water, recently-elected President Calum F Kennedy of South Lochs was determined not to back down in the face of this provocation, and supported the local Free Church in demanding that Knock remove their missiles.

Meanwhile Knock Free Church’s case was taken up by the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Point, Knokita Khruisgean. The Rubhachs claimed that their batteries on the Shiants were a legitimate form of defence, pointing out that the Lochies had already done a deal with the Tolsta Seceders to site missiles on the cliffs above Traigh Mhor, taking most of Point into range.

A period of stalemate began, with both sides posturing and blaming the other in scathing sermons delivered from the pulpits. Neither side outgunned the other, but if one side moved first, the other would react almost instantly, resulting in devastation for the entire planet. It was this period of time where the phrase ‘MAD’ (Ministers Assuring Destruction) was first coined.

Eventually Kennedy and Khruisgean were persuaded to do a deal by Dag Hamnaway, the Secretary Cheneral of inter-church negotiating body the (Dis)United (Denomi)Nations who had recently died in a mysterious tractor crash.
In return for the Rubhachs removing their missiles from the Shiants, the Lochies agreed never to invade the islands. This didn’t go down well with the exiled anti-Castrator sheep community in South Lochs, who regarded it as a betrayal of their cause.

When Kennedy was assassinated as his motorcade passed through Dalbeg in November 1963, many conspiracy theorists suggested that the disgruntled Shiants sheep had had a hand in it. Or at least a hoof.

The Classical Instrument Makers of Lewis

It’s a widespread misconception that the Disruption of 1843 and the rise of the Free Church in Lewis led to the suppression of musical instruments in all walks of life. The common fallacy is that everything was put to the torch except the melodeons (which were permitted because the elders quite rightly saw them as an effective means of putting people off music altogether).

In fact, Lewis was and continued to be the centre of the classical instrument world well into the 20th century.

As early as the 1600s, master joiner and violin maker Angustonio Tolstradivari had a workshop on Bell’s Road, where Macleod and Buchanan’s is now. Angustonio’s main – and highly lucrative – business was boarding up broken windows in town after closing time on Friday and Saturday nights. Consequently he only ever built a few violins, and their very rarity makes them highly sought after to this day. The Tolstradivarius has been the instrument of choice for top virtuosi such as Peatztak Perlman, Msitislav Crossbostopovitch and Yo Yo Maw.

While the secrets of the Tolstradivarious violin’s manufacture died with the master himself, most experts agree that its qualities are something to do with the materials used in its construction – bits of 4 by 2 and low grade plywood reclaimed after being used to board up Woolies, the Macs or Murdo Maclean’s. And also, perhaps, with the ‘seasoning’ these materials received from rough weather, seagulls, passing dogs and incontinent Cromwell Street revellers.

But Stornoway was not famous only for violins. In 1853, the town’s famous Piano Works was established at Mossend, by Heinrich Macleod of Stornoway and Engelhard Macdonald of Steinish.
The pianos turned out by the Mossend works were judged to be the finest in the world, but Macleod and Macdonald – both fiercely proud of their respective origins – could not agree on what to call them. Macdonald demanded that they should be known as “Steinish” pianos, while Macleod insisted on “Stornoway”. After several years of argument they compromised on “Steinway”.

This got them into immediate legal difficulties, not only with their South Lochs rivals the Steimreway Piano Company, but also with a bunch of bleigeards in America who’d craftily copyrighted the “Steinway” name while Macleod and Macdonald were fighting over it.

Eventually the American upstarts got to keep the name and all the associations of quality that went with it. They went on to dominate the global posh piano market, while Macleod and Macdonald, now trading as the “Stornish Piano Company” limped on with much more limited success.

Like the rest of the island’s classical instrument manufacturers, the Stornish Piano Company finally perished during the herring boom in the early 20th century. The fishing industry’s demand for wood to make shavings, kipper boxes and barrels drove prices beyond the means of local instrument makers. Desperate experiments to develop wood-free instruments using wet peat, rylock and bobban failed. The firms’ highly skilled luthiers, cabinetmakers and other craftsmen finally fleeked off round the corner to Inaclete Road to make fishboxes for a living, and that was that.