A piece of home

I love to read Scots and can give a fair recital of a few Burns’ poems but, bar a few words, I don’t speak it in my daily life and I’ve never tried to write in it or with it before.

My son has a book that tells the creation myth of the Giant’s Causeway that stretches out from the Antrim coast in Northern Ireland. Legend has it that it was built by Irish Giant and leader of the Fianna, Finn McCool (or, Fionn ma Cumhaill), as a crossing to the west of Scotland, which is just visible on the horizon on a clear day. A larger, but less famous, Scottish Giant, called Benandonner, took the opportunity to cross over to challenge Finn to a fight. In our book’s version of the story Benandonner is bested by the wit and wisdom of Finn’s wife, Oonagh, and sent packing. Finn himself does practically nothing except behave, literally, like a big baby. This might not have prompted me to write except that the title of our book has always particularly annoyed me: ‘The legend of Finn McCool and his wise wife’. So Oonagh does all the work but doesn’t even deserve a title credit!

Angela Carter and Carol Ann Duffy, amongst others, have written stories and poems that tell familiar tales from a woman’s or sometimes specifically a wife’s perspective. I am a huge admirer of their work. So, frustration with the framing of the book about the causeway and in homage to some literary heroes – as well as a desire to have a go at some written work using the Scots language – led to my wee telling from the perspective of Benandonner’s imagined wife, Ailsa. It’s a practice piece so I’ve just published it directly on my writing page.

You can read the piece here and I’d love to know what people think.