Where the bee sucks

Bloomsday, the sixteenth of June passed with little celebration this year in our house. In the past we have gone to Dublin follow Leopold Bloom and Simon Daedalus as they make their way through the streets and places in the novel, to mimic Bloom and feed the seagulls and enjoy the celebration of James Joyce's works, in particular, his masterpiece, Ulysses. The action of this, one of the greatest novels of the twentieth or any other century, takes place over the course of one day - 16th June 1904.  This was Joyce's recognition of his partner and muse, Nora Barnacle, for it was the day they first went out together.

Finns Hotel where Nora worked as a chambermaid

So, no trip to Dublin, no visit to Davy Byrne's pub, no Martello tower, just a viewing of John Huston's film of Joyce’s short story from Dubliners, "The Dead" and a dip into A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

The weather has improved and sitting, reading, in the garden, I became increasingly aware of the hum of bees. The warm weather has brought them all out to feast on the cotoneaster flowers, the foxgloves and the Iceland poppies. Watching them and trying to identify the different bees, I was delighted to see the bumble bees disappearing up the trumpets of the foxgloves like cars entering a garage.  The honey bees seemed to spend most of their time on the tiny flowers of the cotoneaster.

A bee-keeping friend explained that they have shorter tongues so prefer open or small flowers while the white- or red-tailed bumble bees are better adapted for the bell shaped blooms.

Bees on Thyme

I found a black bee among the flowers. Apparently, the native black honey bee was thought to be heading for extinction but is now making a comeback.  Hurray

In Joyce's unfinished, autobiographical first novel, Stephen Hero that provided the basis for Portrait, Stephen (Joyce) discusses with his friend, Cranley, how, in order to devote himself to writing, the best way to live with the minimum of labour.

 Cranley suggests keeping bees.

Stephen quotes Shelley.* Cranley scoffs at him.

In December 1903, Joyce offered to translate Maeterlinck’s study La Vie Des Abeille (The Life of the Bee) for the Irish Bee-Keeper, and the journal is mentioned again on a book-cart in Ulysses.  Joyce obviously had an interest in bees which is hardly surprising as he was the great explorer of communication, verbal and otherwise and bees are the great communicators.

The hum of the bees on a warm summer day, bees on the blooms on Bloomsday. Perfect.

*
The lake-reflected sun illume
The yellow bees in the ivy bloom

The Enchanted Isles

The road to Tarbert

For some time a trip to the Shiants  has seemed like good way to enhance our annual pilgrimage to the Outer Hebrides. but we never quite got round to it. This time we did.
A car drive down to Tarbert in Harris and then aboard the twin-hulled motor cruiser and off we went, bound for these elusive islands that seem to change shape according to the weather conditions.

www.isleofharrisseatours.co.uk

The Shiants, Na h-Eileanan Seunta, lie off the east coast of Harris.The name translates as "holy", "enchanted" or "charmed".

 They comprise of three islands, Eilean an Taighe ( The Island of the House), Garbh Eilean ( Rough Island), Eilean Mhuire ( the Island of the Virgin Mary) and a line of rocky islets, the Galtachans, with equally evocative names Galta Beag, Bodach (old man), Stacan Laidir, Galta Mòr, Sgeir Mhic a' Ghobha and Damhag (bullock)

Approaching the Shiants

                                     

The Galtachans 

Eilean Muirhe

Once owned by Compton Mackenzie, though he never stayed there, they have been occupied since at least the Iron Age and supported five families in the eighteenth century.

Old "tigh dubh" or black house in ruins on Garbh Eilean

Uninhabited for many years, they had become over-run with black rats, probably from a shipwreck.

A successful programme of eradication removed the invaders and allowed the seabird colonies, particularly the puffins with their nesting burrows, to flourish. It is hoped the shearwaters and petrels will also return. The re-introduced white-tailed sea eagles are ruling the skies. We saw five in the course of the trip. Watching a raven harassing a circling eagle, we later discovered the reason when we noted a pair of them guarding their nest in the rocky outcrops on Garbh Eilean.

Sailing round to the eastern side, we passed rafts of guillemots. razorbills and puffins as well as shags, cormorants and eider duck.

 Porpoises and seals investigated our boat and bonxies, great skuas, wheeled overhead chasing the kittiwakes for their catch.

The landing was a bit tricky as we scrambled ashore from an inflatable on to the shingly isthmus between Eilean an Taighe and Garbh Eilean then clambered up the rocky "path" from the shore.

There are no longer any sheep on the islands so the wild flowers flourish with lousewort, milkweed, tormentil and hebridean orchids between the rocky outcrops and yellow irises in the marshy spots along with the insectiverous butterwort.

Tormentil, Hebridean Orchid, Yellow Iris, Butterwort, Lousewort

The islands are geologically much younger than the rest of the Outer Hebrides and the dolerite columns of their cliffs, similar to those on Staffa and the Giants Causeway, provide nesting for tens of thousands of sea-birds.

The cliffs on Garbh Eilean are pierced by a spectacular arch. Toll a Rhoime though passing through it would be a hazardous business.

Approach to Toll a Roimh - No passage through !

On the way back to Tarbet , we passed the deserted coastal village Bhalamus.

 A settlement with no road to it. A reminder of a time when the sea was the easiest way to transport people and goods.  

Finally, under the arch of the bridge to Scalpay to tie up in Tarbert and have a wee dram of Tamnavulin to finish off the day.

Ne'er cast a cloot

The May Tree

Beltane, half way between the vernal equinox and the summer solstice, has come and gone.

Now sanitised into the May Bank Holiday, it was once the time when the cattle were led out to the summer pastures, passing between two fires in symbolic purification. Youngsters would leap over the fires in celebration of the start of the growing season, a time of fun and courting when maidens would wash their faces in the first dew and dream, that night, of their husband-to-be.

The may bush, the hawthorn, was central to the rituals, the flowers being used to decorate the doorways of houses.

This year, the may bushes have hardly started to blossom.

 Geans and Scrogs

The geans and the scrogs (bird cherry and crab apple for the Anglophones) are in bloom in the garden of the Priory ruins where the old symbols still manage to find a place in the imagery.

The Green Man

The Green Man peeps from the carvings and the hawthorn still holds pride of place.

The wind from the north has a touch of Arctic ice in its veils and the may flowers stay tightly closed except for a few on the sheltered south facing hedge.

The fleece jackets are still zipped up and the old adage holds true.

"Ne'er cast a cloot 'til the may is oot"

We will have to wait.

The worth of copper

The Whitadder

Spring is most definitely here. The arctic terns have returned from their sojourn in the Antarctic and the swallows are back from wintering in Africa. We think we are travellers!

It was time for the annual memorial walk for an old friend, six years gone. Her favourite walk was from the Whitadder river, across the suspension bridge, along the blackthorn-lined path to the accompaniment of chaffinch song, the piping of great tits and, if we are lucky, the cry of the yaffle, the green woodpecker, then up the steep slope to Edin's Hall Broch.

Blackthorn path

Edin's Hall broch

The broch is an archaeological oddity, situated far south of the broch-building areas of northern Scotland and, apparently, too big in area to have had very high walls.

It seems to date from the time between the two Roman occupations of Southern Scotland after 100 A.D. when Pax Romana meant that defence was less of a necessity. It sits within the remains of an earlier prehistoric fort and settlement.

There are copper mines on the banks of the Whitadder that were worked up until the eighteenth or even nineteenth centuries. A copper ingot was found within the broch so, in the Bronze and Iron Ages, the builders of the broch would have been rich from their local monopoly of a valuable commodity. Maybe the structure was the equivalent of the mansions of the nineteenth century coal-mine owners or the private jets to the estates of oil-barons, a display of wealth. 

Mine workings to be found in the banks of the river 

Tunnels for extracting the copper

Green coppery stone

A more demanding clamber was undertaken along the steep banks above the river to find the remains of the old workings then an easier walk back along the old pack-horse path finished off a great day's outing.

Wood anemones and dog violets above the mines

Gold is for the mistress - silver for the maid

Copper for the craftsman cunning at his trade

Good said the Baron sitting in his hall

But Iron -Cold Iron - is the master of them all

R. Kipling

Dumyat

Dumyat

Dumyat or Dunmyat Dùn Mhèad in Gaelic, is a grand wee hill. Just on the edge of the Ochils, above Stirling. It is a "Marilyn", being only 1370 ft or so high but in spite of its lack of height, the views are superb.

There are two tops, Dumyat and Castle Law, the latter being the site of an old Iron Age fort that gave its name to the whole hill. Dun Meaetae, the fort of the Meatae, a Brythonic tribe or federation of tribes living just beyond the Antonine Wall in Roman Britain who caused a lot of trouble for the invaders until they were eventually bought off.

The Castle Law fort is just discernible with piles of stones that must be the remains of the ramparts, heaped into cairns. 

In its prime, it must have been difficult to attack  with near vertical slopes on three sides and a deep natural cleft on the fourth.

Castle Law- the deep cleft can be seen on the right

The defensive cleft

Dumyat itself is topped by a memorial to the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, a seat depicting a black hole in the memory of the O.U. mathematician, Michael Simpson, a beacon and a trig point.

Memorial seat

The main reason for climbing Dumyat is the views.

Looking north there is a great sweep of mountains from Ben Lomond to Ben Lawers. Ben Venue, Ben Ledi, and Ben Vorlich with Stuc a' Chroin can all be seen and Ben More glimpsed in the background.

Looking south  you see the meandering course of the Forth and Stirling with the Wallace monument.

The view also takes in the Sheriffmuir, site of the battle between Jacobite and Hanoverian forces in the 1715 rising. The pro-government forces under John Campbell, Duke of Argyll held the Highland army under the Earl of Mar and stopped it linking up with Jacobite forces in the south thus effectively ending the '15 rebellion.

Sheriffmuir

An interesting wee hill is Dumyat