On this day I am reading the Gaelic poem ‘Hallaig’ by Sorley MacLean. In this strange, dreamlike piece the poet takes us to a village emptied during the Highland Clearances and filled now with dead people glimpsed in the form of native trees. MacLean is thinking of the ghostly girls of Hallaig when he says

’s am boidche ’na sgleo air mo chridhe
and their beauty a film on my heart

I’m wondering about that word: ‘sgleo.’ Definitions in Dwelly’s dictionary include ‘mist’, ‘misapprehension’ and ‘romancing of one who sees imperfectly and consequently misrepresents facts’. MacLean translates it as film. What can that mean? I imagine a glistening membrane stretched across the living heart; a blurry coating that obscures our view; a cinematic projection of moving images. Seamus Heaney translates ‘sgleo’ as ‘glaze’ suggesting a layer that protects and enhances, but also recalling eyes that glaze over, becoming misty or going blank. And in the Gaelic Bible, it is ‘sgleo’ that was chosen to translate the kind of scale that fell from St Paul’s eyes when his sight was restored. All of a sudden I am reminded of Dickens’ character, Mrs. Chick when she realises that her friend Lucretia has betrayed her trust:

“Lucretia Tox, my eyes are opened to you all at once. The scales” here Mrs Chick cast down an imaginary pair, such as are commonly used in grocers’ shops: “have fallen from my sight.”

Like poor Mrs. Chick, some of my interpretations of ‘sgleo’ and of the whole poem may be hilariously inappropriate. So much gets in the way of understanding for an English-speaking reader of Gaelic: not only the lack of vocabulary, grammar and cultural context, but also an awareness of the painful history of the two languages. Entering the wood of Hallaig, I find myself in a time and a place where something has happened that I cannot fully grasp. Like the unlovely pines, I am not a graceful native of this place. Like the croaking pine-cocks, my commentaries on this lovely poem may be rough and jarring. It is inevitable that I will misunderstand, mistake and misrepresent; but being an outsider I don’t come empty-handed. I bring with me other readings: the Bible, Dickens, Heaney. I carry other landscapes in my bumping heart.

It has been said that the grammar of Gaelic encourages a distinctive way of perceiving the world. I am struck by one such idiosyncrasy: we say we ‘speak’ English, but the Gaels tell us that they ‘have’ Gaelic. Just as Gaelic can give us a particular perspective, so I bring my own way of seeing and sensemaking to this poem. Now I realise why that word ‘sgleo’ with its multiple meanings called out to me. My otherness is a lens through which to see the beauty of Gaelic: a blurry lens, a hopeless romancing from an imperfect view, but also a glaze, another layer of loveliness. A film upon my heart.

Daphne Loads