SIMPLE, SILENT, SOLEMN

The Tourist Office guy failed to mention that the ‘western circular’ bus doesn’t actually look like a bus. So, when a minibus pulled into Stornoway bus station, I assumed that ‘Hebridean Travel’ was just the name of some private taxi service, and I didn’t get on it.

The lady in the bus station was sympathetic after that. She gave me the details.

“Aye, the next one’s at erm…” she shuffled her papers, “Five past one.”

I smiled weakly underneath my mask and then checked my watch. It was 9:55am. To be honest, it would have been much worse if I’d been stuck somewhere else on the island and couldn’t get back; the Information Guy had at least been right about that! Plus, this morning I was thankful that the sun was shining.

So what to do instead? I decided I would hike my way round the coast in the other direction for an hour and a half, then come back.

The sea was calm, the sky blue-and-white like the saltire. I picked up the path beyond Lews Castle and strode around the bay, listening to music and podcasts as I went.

I’ve taken to listening to Gaelic Psalm-Singing. They don’t really do hymns up here, and they value the simplicity of worship without instruments. In the revival, that’s all they had had. That first night in Barvas, when hundreds of young people flocked to the church instead of the dance hall, they sang a psalm outside on the steps - just the voices under the stars of a December night.

There’s a lot of power in the simplicity of it, not to mention the silence between the singing. I wonder sometimes whether our modern instruments fill in far too many of the gaps.

The tunes are all in the pentatonic mode, which makes them easier to sing - think Amazing Grace: the melody happily sits on just five notes of a scale. It means that, like a piper’s drone, you can hang your voice on the tonic and it will always fit.

Simple, silent, solemn. Perhaps there are some keys there, to a deeper thing.

There’s a river that runs inland from that headland, so I followed the trail. Water gushed over rocks and formed mini waterfalls as I headed upstream. Green trees hung with bare branches tickling the torrent, and the woods grew thicker and greener as I went further in and further up.

Eventually I reached a drinking fountain, just as the my phone buzzed to tell me it was time to get back for the 13:05 bus.

Back in Stornoway then. No mistake this time. I clambered on to the Hebridean Travel minibus.

For some reason I said,

“Do I need a ticket?” to the driver, who took one look at me, nodded slowly and said, “Aye.”

I bought a return.

I was planning on going to the Callanish Stones, probably the island’s most well-known attraction. 

Older than Stonehenge, they stand mysteriously wedged into the earth - ancient monoliths in a stone circle with four rows of smaller stones expanding out like the points of a compass. As with a lot of these Neolithic wonders, the stones are of course… in the middle of nowhere.

Dramatic though. The rain flecked from the deep grey clouds, and the sun lit the silver lochs below. The wind blew the long grass and the shadows fell from the rough-hewn edges of the jagged stones, just the same way as has been happening season by season, year by year, for millennia.

They don’t know why the stones were put there, four thousand years ago. Perhaps a temple, perhaps a burial site? One legend is that they’re the souls of those who refused to convert to Christianity - stone pariahs for all the pagans out there who don’t toe the line. Tosh comes in all sorts of forms through the ages.

The bus doesn’t come so frequently though. I had to wait for hours for the Hebridean Transport minibus back to Stornoway! I read a bit more revival story, listened to the waves of the nearest loch lapping quietly on the stones, worked out when a poster had been sellotaped to the bus shelter, and then listened to some more psalm singing in the ethereal Scots Gaelic of Back Free Church. Finally the bus swung into the Callanish Stones Visitor Centre Car Park and I got excitedly on board with my return ticket.

In the 1949 revival, the presbyters and officers of the church put out a statement asking for prayer for young people to avoid the ‘devil’s man traps’, by which they really did mean the pub, the ‘picture house’ and the dance hall. One lady refused to let her teenage daughter stay at home with the record player because she couldn’t have her house become a ‘synagogue of Satan’ while they were at a revival meeting. ‘Satan’s music’ at that time was apparently the Jimmy Shand band playing Scots reels on the bagpipes and accordion, still a favourite it turned out, of our bus driver, here in 2021.

Tamer music you’d struggle to find. The bus flew round corners and bounced by misty hills and lakes. 48-bar jigs happily breezed through the bus as though we were on our way to a ceilidh. I thought about that a lot.

We’ve overcomplicated a lot of things that we’re always meant to be simple.