Castlebay, Isle of Barra

There is a funeral on at present here so the cycle hire man is not in his big brown shed. Two ladies walking up the path were speaking Gaelic on their way to the church. I understood “tha mi gu math”. Thought of saying “tha I brèagha an-diugh”: very appropriate on this beautiful day – it must be mid-20s °C. The accent of the Gaels is not usually Scottish when speaking English – it is very soft, so soft as to be indistinguishable from the Gaels of the west coast of Ireland.

I love this place (the sun is shining!). “Quiet found no more within” rules here. You can make as much noise as you like, it will be swallowed, annihilated by this place. I think the whole adult population of the island is in the church at the moment! The pipes have begun – singing a son or daughter home on his or her last journey. Clear and proud in the August sunlight – sailing the final time to the place of the ever-living, Tìr nan Òg.

Death is something these places have plenty of, the old ones taking the old ways with them. It is the stories of the Sons of the Gael that survive here – of Fionn mac Caoul, Cuchulainn and the Tuatha de Danaan: the Norse came and ruled and faded again, leaving only a few placenames. So too is the future for the Sasannach perhaps.