THE SILVER DARLINGS (Review)

 Neil M. Gunn, The Silver Darlings, Faber & Faber, London, (First published 1941), reprinted 1989, 584 pages.

“What are you reading?” asked the nurse as I was recovering from the anesthetic. “The Silver Darlings”, I said as I held up the book’s cover. “That’s what these fish are. It was written in 1941 but is set in the early 1800s, during the Highland Clearances.” “Is it good?” “Yes, it’s brilliant!” She wanted to copy down the book’s details.

Hearing my Scottish accent, another inquisitive nurse joined our company. I told them that, though it was written in English, it uses a Gaelic idiom, and therefore may be difficult for the uninitiated to understand. “Do you speak Gaelic?” I hit them with a line or two but confessed that I had forgotten more than I ever learned.

Idiom? E.g., “Why on earth was Roddie smooring the fire if he was expecting company?” p. 216. (Lallans, smooring; Gaelic, smaladh.) “There’s a dirty bit of sea running, and it’s worse it’ll be before it’s better.” p. 532.

The heart of the book is about a woman and her son, Catrine and Finn. Hardship. Heartache. Happiness. It is written in beautiful prose, in which even the mundane becomes intriguing, amidst the mores and scruples of a culture baptized with the burn water of biblical truth. It is full of emotion as deep as the ocean from which the silver darlings are drawn.  

There is tension and resolution throughout. Catrine has to adjust to the reality of her boy becoming a man. And will the man in her life remain missing or reappear in a different form? “For some unaccountable reason she had actually looked forward to being alone, to being all by herself, as if the essence of some long-forgotten pleasure might arise and surround her, like the scent of honeysuckle in the air.” p. 465.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism is chiseled into stony and fleshy hearts alike. Revival. Indeed, Scripture and Gaelicisms hang in the air like sweet-smelling peat smoke. It is highly descriptive without the tedium, recording life full measure in the crofts and on the sea. Joy and sorrow, romance, and adventure, the story, like a road, wends its way from highlands to islands. There are premonitions, prayer meetings, and pub brawls in which death and the dead, life and the living intertwine in an endless Celtic knot, without beginning or end. So the story goes.

The Highland Clearances (Fuadaichean nan Gàidheal) filled boats to the Americas and the antipodes with desperate refugees. However, the same also filled towns and boats on the coasts in search of the lucrative herring, the silver darlings. The names of some of the boats are: White Heather, Seafoam, Iolaire, (no, a different one!), Sulaire, and, Gannet, (likewise, a different one, not the Sulaire). “The sound their oars made travelled a long distance, they heard the silence going farther and farther away.” p. 529. 

The characters remain in character throughout, rugged manly men and strong feminine women.

(As an aside, having lived for ten years in East Kildonan, Winnipeg in the 80s, I am sure I would have come in contact with descendants of some of those Gaels who lost their homes and sailed to Canada. Kildonan, in Winnipeg, got its name from the Strath of Kildonan in Sutherland, Scotland where many of the early settlers came from.)