Traveller's Tales
Novelist and presenter of the Writing Scotland television series, Carl MacDougall,
introduces an online learning journey about the effect of migration on Scottish
literature.
Grey recumbent tombs of the dead in desert places.
Standing stones on the vacant wine-red moor,
Hills of sheep, and the homes of silent, vanquished races,
And winds austere and pure:
Be it granted to me to behold you again in dying,
Hills of home! And to hear again the call;
Hear about the graves of the martyrs the peewees crying,
And hear no more at all.
From To SR Crockett by Robert Louis Stevenson
Something like 30 million people across the world claim Scottish descent, making
humanity one of our biggest exports. Like many others, writers have often left
for economic reasons, though many were driven by a spirit of adventure. Their
journeys have enriched our literature, allowing several writers to claim a place
on the world stage.
Though it was written early in his career, Robert Louis Stevenson's Travels
with a Donkey discloses an observant wanderer, a travel writer who shares
his surprise at what he finds and returns delighted, with new ways of seeing.
Stevenson was obviously aware travellers' tales can make great stories and many
of his later novels are structured round a journey. Kidnapped is a tale
of murder and political intrigue, mostly set against the backdrop of the Highlands
in the aftermath of the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion. It was written while Stevenson's
health left him exiled in Bournemouth. Despite ill-health, he was to spend most
of his adult life as a wanderer, travelling to Canada, America and Australia and
eventually settling as far from Edinburgh as was possible for Victorian Britain
to imagine, the island of Upolu in Samoa in the South Pacific.
By the end of the 19th century a quarter of the world was ruled by the British
Empire. Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was a doctor of medicine and adventurer,
knighted in 1902 for his loyalty to king and country and his work in Boer War
propaganda. He was a true son of Empire, and is now best remembered for his extraordinary
creation, the eccentric and brilliant Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle wasn't the
first to write detective fiction, but he provided a matrix and gave the form its
most memorable character.
The defence of decent British values lies at the heart of everything John Buchan
wrote. He is one of the most popular thriller writers of all time. The novels
he called ėshockers' are still the most popular, The Thirty-Nine Steps
and The Three Hostages, or historical novels, like Witch Wood, which
looks back to Hogg and Galt by imagining a minister combating Devil-worship in
his small Borders community.
The hero who battles against impossible odds would find its most successful
champion in the works of Alistair Maclean, a brilliant thriller writer whose books
have sold more copies than any other Scot, whose wonderfully crafted stories were
first inspired by his experiences of war.
Though most of Muriel Spark's work is set outside Scotland, she is insistent
on the influence of her Scottish upbringing. The douce, pre-War conservative world
of middle class Edinburgh is the setting for her most famous creation, the dangerously
eccentric Miss Jean Brodie. With this brilliant character, Spark created a literary
archetype.
Muriel Spark is one of a number of contemporary Scottish writers whose focus
lies outside Scotland. Not that all the movements have been one way, any more
than all the writers who have left Scotland have found exotic destinations. Joan
Lingard, JK Rowling, Anne Fine and Kate Atkinson migrated inwards and live in
Edinburgh, Belfast-born Bernard MacLaverty lives in Glasgow while London still maintains the
same pull on Scottish writers as it has exerted for the best part of three hundred
years.
