The Crofter and the Laird

Rating:
Summary: John McPhee Gave Away Secrets
Review: My family also originates on Colonsay, and we go back to visit occasionally. We were asked if we were related to John McPhee, because our name is McAfee. We were told that it was a good thing we weren't, because John had given away more secrets than the islanders thought wise. They told us that if he ever returned he would not make it off the ferry onto the dock. This is a great book and should be read and appreciated by all.

Rating:
Summary: BEEN THERE DONE THAT
Review: THE BOOK HELP INSPIRE ME, MY SON, AND BROTHER TO GO TO COLONSAY IN THE SPRING OF 1998. MOST OF THE PEOPLE YOU WROTE ABOUT ARE DEAD. HOWEVER CHARLIE MCKINNON AND HIS WIFE, GIBBIE MCNEIL, KEITH RUTHERFORD, AND A FEW MORE ARE STILL LIVING. I HAVE WRITTEN AN ACCOUNT OF MY VISIT AND WILL MAKE IT AVAILABLE TO THE AUTHOR IS HE WISHES. LAN NA LEF. JERRY D. MCAFEE

Rating:
Summary: Excellent early McPhee
Review: The finely detailed observations and vivid turn-of-words which we have come to know so well from McPhee's books on North America and its geological history, is applied here with great skill in this look at the tiny Scottish island of Colonsay and its inhabitants. The small population of under 150 people can trace ancestry to two castes or clans. Most are crofters or farmers. Some are true islanders with family roots going back hundreds of years; others are "incomers". It's not a derogatory term but simply another social distinction. Then there's THE CROFTER AND THE LAIRD. McPhee offers a distillation of this social concoction. "The usual frictions, gossip, and intense social espionage that characterize life in a small town are so grandly magnified...everyone is many things to everyone else, and is encountered daily in a dozen guises. Enmeshed together, the people of the island become one another. Friend and enemy dwell in the same skin."

McPhee deals with his usual areas of interest such as the environmental past of the island, but its the people that fascinate him. Here it's also a little closer to home as Colonsay is the home of McPhee's ancestors. The book is as much a narrative of the strife torn history of clans as it is one Americans' exploration of the "sentimental myth" that he attaches to his Scottish surname. McPhee quickly sees that, rather than myth, the clan is as real to Scots as it ever was. This is only amplified in a feudal and cloistered social setting such as on Colonsay.

The McPhee's (or Macafee, MacPhee, Macheffie, or MacDuffie, as the various septs are known) are part of the ancient clan MacFie. They're Celtic, and the Gaelic origin of the name means "son of the Dark Fairy or Elf". Such fairy-tale-like legends seem incongruous when set against the treacherous and bloody reality of clan history. The McPhee's are a "broken clan", the last chieftan was murdered by the MacDonald's in the 17th century. The MacDonald's however got their comeuppance in the way of the clans. A group of MacDonald's were butchered in their sleep by the Campbell's of Argyll in the Glencoe Massacre of 1692.

And just to show that clan history dies very hard, many Scots, even until today, when pressed just a little bit can usually find something uncharitable to say about my Campbell clan. Time and geographical distance may make the clans of only historical interest to McPhee, myself, and other North Americans with Scots ancestors. In Scotland it's a lot more real and present, and this wonderful book gives us a slice of that life.

Rating:
Summary: Middlin' McPhee
Review: Wherein our reporter returns to the Scottish island that spawned his familial clan. Kind of a collection of sketches gathered from the months he lived and wandered the isle, chatting, eating and drinking with the locals. Ah yes, and wife and family along for this one; we even get the four daughters' names. Runs out of steam after the first 120 pages. Nowhere near as good as, say, Encounters with the Archdruid or the Pine Barrens or A Sense of Where You Are. Probably worth reading only if you are a McPhee complete-ist - which of course is not a bad thing to be.