Christmas Greetings from George Mackay Brown
This sculpture of George Mackay Brown, which comes from Stromness Public Library, encapsulates the rooted nature of the great Orcadian author as well as his international appeal. Yet GMB is not nearly as well known as he should be. I am trying to do something about this in a little way by writing about his wonderful novel, Magnus, for my PhD, but given the fact that a) I haven’t finished my research; b) the final thesis will only be read by my supervisor and, if I’m lucky, by a few members of my family, I thought I’d also offer Christmas greetings from GMB here too, focussing mainly on The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown (though his short stories, especially those collected in Winter Tales, are also satisfyingly seasonable).
GMB wrote lots of poems about Christmas, so I’ll pick out just a few here, starting with the section on December from ‘A Stone Calendar’:
Silver key, snowflake, star-wrought.
Three sea kings
seek the House-of-Bread.
The House-of-Bread, of course, is Bethlehem. That is what the place name means.
A similar approach to Christmas can be found in ‘Dance of the Months’ (whose subtitle is ‘A Christmas Card’). The poem begins:
January comes with his ice-crown.
February spilling thaw and snowdrops.
And ends with
November, host to shades and hallows.
December with snowflake and star.
In the inn of December, a fire,
A loaf, a bottle of wine.
Travellers, rich and poor, are on the roads.
GMB often transferred the nativity story to his beloved Orkneys, as in ‘Epiphany: The Shepherd’ which begins:
‘No,’ said Jock and Howie and Jimmag in ‘The Selkie’,
‘There’ll be no snow.’
The two fishermen said nothing. There will be snow.
And ends:
A tinker
Supped a bowl of porridge at the table.
A man came by with a map.
I didn’t know the ruin he was looking for.
A sailor, I think.
There was another stranger. He thanked me
Under the first star.
Those three came just before the big snow.
More haunting is ‘The Silent Girl from Shetland’ which brings together two of GMB’s major themes: silence and St Magnus. Like many of his Christmas poems, this prose poem takes us month by month through the year until we reach the miracle of Christmas, signalled here by a miracle at the tomb of St Magnus, the healing of the “poor dumb girl” whose journey we have followed through the poem:
Darkness when we sailed from Shetland, in a still darkling sea.
Then the brief flame of noon.
Darkness when we came to Birsay, and were set ashore by the light of one lantern.
A feast of candles inside the kirk, seven red candles round the tomb of the martyr.
‘It’s good,’ said the monk, ‘that you have come this winter. Soon the bones of Saint Magnus are to be carried to Kirkwall.’
The dumb lass stayed by the tomb all night.
The monks sang, low and grave, in the choir.
Christus natus est, cried the girl at midnight. Christ is born.
Christus natus est, sang the joyful monks.
The understatement here is very typical of GMB’s Christmas poems (and, indeed, of his novels, for there is a similar miracle in Magnus). The miracle does not draw attention to itself. The focus is on Christ, not the girl.
But I want to finish this brief survey with a poem which (like Magnus in a way) takes us away from Orkney to make the familiar strange (in order to remind us how special the familiar is). Conventionally enough, the poem is called ‘King of Kings’ but the approach it takes is far from conventional, as the heading indicates:
The inn-keeper at Bethlehem writes letters to the Third Secretary (Security) at the door marked with dolphins in the fifth street north from Temple and Dove-market.
GMB presents a shadowy world in this prose poem that is more reminiscent of a Le Carré novel than a typical nativity play. I won’t give all the seedy details here but I do want to quote the wonderful response from one of the magi to the inn-keeper’s questioning. When asked to state “the nature of your business. You understand, the imperial government requires this”, he replies:
Blessings given to men in the beginning … that have been wrongly spent, on pomp, wars, usury, whoredoms, vainglory: ill-used heavenly gifts. We no longer know what to do with these mysteries. Our thrones are broken. We have brought the old treasures here by difficult ways. We are looking for the hands that first gave them, in the ancient original kingdom. We will offer them back again. Let them shine now in the ceremonies of the poor.
That, I suppose, is what we are doing this Christmas: giving back to God what already belongs to him, offering him what he has already given us.
Merry Christmas, everyone.