Sunset Song

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Why on earth do we want to distinguish ourselves in kind from the people who live in England, New Zealand, or Ireland? Perhaps, we should no longer identify with being part of a nation and recognise ourselves instead as undifferentiated human beings with equal human rights.

Chris loses her men, she has to cope with rumours of cowardice and desertion, and she sees the territory around her transformed.And since peasants on the bottom rung got diddly squat out of the profits and had less security, it’s bound to have created a sullen resentfulness and harsh grasping outlook on life. The theme of the onset of modernisation and the end of old ways is explored using many symbols, for example, violent deaths of horses (supposed to represent old, traditional farming methods) and the appearance of motorised cars representing new technologies which brush the people of the land from the road. Gibbon’s description of ‘the land’ is also memorable as is his portrayal of the devastating effects of war and mechanisation on a Scottish agricultural community.

The remaining slimmed down agricultural labour supply were hired annually at the famous feeing markets. Grassic Gibbon’s prose, sometimes glorious, is stamped with individuality: he never seems to be imitating anyone else’s style, but going his own way. Consequently, anyone who still responds to the rhythms of that speech, and who knows the contours of the place, will look forward to the film by Terence Davies next month, but with a tremor of trepidation.

As she prepares for her new life with Colqhuoun “they’d the last of the light with them up there, and maybe they didn’t need it or heed it, you can do without the day if you’ve a lamp quiet-lighted and kind in your heart”. Crushing poverty, the hard toil of earning a living from the land, the sternness of religion and the oppressive reality of life for women in particular – these are the themes that provide the context and background to the lives whose stories unfold in the book. It was different in the crofting commuities, but your family story sheds much light on the life of agricultual workers and therefore, probably, of much of the east coast and central belt with the arable land. He notes that disenchantment with life is commonplace in the literature of all industrialised countries but that ‘the extreme bitterness with which it is uttered in Scottish writing is remarkable. You hated the land and the coarse speak of the folk and learning was brave and fine one day; and the next you’d waken with the peewits crying across the hills, deep and deep, crying in the heart of you and the smell of the earth in your face, almost you’d cry for that, the beauty of it and the sweetness of the Scottish land and skies.