Around the Peat-fire

The year was 1912; the date the twenty-ninth of May. In a little geo at the village of Shawbost on the Atlantic coast of Lewis in the Western Isles a group of crofter women were gathering seaweed. The inward surge of an ataireachd bhuan (‘the everlasting swell’) swirled up to their feet. Beneath the outward heave of the receding water the shingle grumbled. It was on this day that Calum Smith was born, and his mother was one of those who was working on the beach on that day. While his childhood was a happy one, it was one of very considerable poverty, and his story gives a unique insight into life on Lewis through the First World War and to the opening of the Second. Full of humour and life, his memoirs are a celebration of a still largely Gaelic culture and society in the throes of great change. His boyhood and education took place in and around Stornoway (at Shawbost and Laxdale) and the book is peopled with characters and families well known in Lewis to this day. It is also the story of an island and community at a time now at the edge of memory and about which little is written.On the morning of Sunday, 3 September, none of us could summon up any enthusiasm for the habitual after-breakfast walk. Instead we were hovering about the radio in the lounge, waiting for what we all knew would be shattering news, while at the same time trying to convince ourselves, rather hopelessly, that it would not be. When, at eleven, the sombre announcement was made that we were once again at war with Germany, we five looked at one another in what I can only think of now as resignation. Never again would things be the same for any of us.