Visit to Mike McDonnell - 12^th February 2015.

We arrived at Mike McDonnell's house in North-a-Voe near Mid Yell at one o' clock. He was busy making us a lunch – typical of Yell hospitality. In his study, which held an extensive library, he had gathered some materials which he thought might be of relevance to the research.

Items of interest.

1. A copy of a book compiled by Christine Guy in the 1980's. Christine was the highly respected music teacher in the late 70's and 80's. The book contains songs relevant to the fishing history of Shetland, such as “Da Song o Da Papa Men” - otherwise known as Rowing Foula Doon - “Flanns Frae da Haaf”, and “Gyaain to the Far Haaf”. I have copies of those songs from the book for reference purposes, but am loathe to publish them on this blog for fear of infringing copyright. The book appears to be out of print, but I will persevere in trying to obtain a copy.

2. Three fairly lengthy typed documents taken from the original hand written notes from conversations with “Johnnie Smith o' the Parks” - and I could not discover where the “o' the Parks” description comes from. The “stories” talk of the old days of the Haaf fishing and give a real insight into the work. Below is an extract which gives detail of some of the superstitions held by the fishermen, and some of the terms used.

“The old haaf men called the mast the stong, an old Norse name, the knife for cutting bait and taking off fish heads was known as the skuney against the law to say knife. The yard was known as the ray, the sail as the cloot and no land names was allowed at sea. For instance the minister was the upstander, the cat was the kissick not to be mentioned except by mistake. In the course of the conversation if pig or grice was mentioned a voice from among the crew would say with a spittle ‘twatashle twatashle’ and call out hirkie – being the sea term for pig. To sharpen the knife was to glaun the skuney and to blow the bow for setting on the end of the lines was to stau the pinnock. If the lines got in the ground and broke one could not say here’s the end, it had to be the damp. When hauling the lines one man sat by to take off or to cavel the fish, his place was to look down through the water and sing up the fish. The first fish he saw he said light in the lumb, a voice among the crew would repeat welcome to come. Next he would sing out white next fish, white under white, then wheda white under wheda, then cruda on then crudas<> when he could not count all the fish he sung out all in fire, when all the fish he saw had come in and a break came in the catch he said a hole in the ballad, till fish was in sight again, then repeat light in the lumb and so on. To reef the sail was to swift it, all sea terms used at the haaf. The bland kig or small barrel was the fiddick, the bread box was the scran bag and so on, a sea term for everything on board.”

In later research I came across the name “Johnny Smith”- a boatbuilder of old. I emailed Mike to ask if he knew of any connection – indeed could they be one and the same person? I received the following response.

“Johnny Smith o' the Parks and Johnny Smith the boatbuilder are the same person. Johnny died in the 1950's and had contributed most of the material in the Shetland section Edgar March's two volume books ' inshore Craft of Britain in the days of Sail and Oar' (volume I includes Shetland.)' The original publication was early 70s but has been republished since fairly recently, and should be available : Amazon?

 Johnny built some substantial boats including the 'Dagmar' for the local GP on Yell in the 1950s, Peter Peterson, a Shetlander. The Dagmar is still afloat and was restored by Andrew Leaper of Fetlar. Johnny was born before the Gloup disaster and collected the first hand accounts of the time.He measured the lines of one of the surviving boats - I think the 'Waterwitch' - which ended up as a boatie shed in North-a-.Voe. His stories were refined and appear in Edgar March's book.”

The stories contain a wealth of information from a (near?) contemporaneous source.

3. Mike had obtained a CD copy of a BBC shetland programme broadcast in the centenary year (1981) on BBC Scotland on Christmas Eve. Mike had been told that there were no copyright issues, but again, I am not uploading as I do not have certainty about the copyright position. The programme tells the basic story of the disaster, with words and music provided mainly by Shetlanders. The programme opens with a single fiddle tune played by a schoolgirl - none other than Margaret Robertson (now Scollay) one of the Shetland musicians at UHI who has been kind enough to assist in my endeavours.
   
   
4. There were several other audio tracks of Shetland (Yell) music, recorded at various functions and events. I took copies of these for future reference and logging as necessary.

A very successful and enjoyable visit. I gathered much useful material, which I have no doubt will inspire some of the musical and narrative content of the eventual production.