Twelve false men
Anyone who has been following this blog will know already about my involvement with the Glasgow-based arts and justice organisation, Vox Liminis. However, I’m not sure I’ve written anything about our ‘Unbound’ community. We’re basically a group of people who share an interest in and some experience of both criminal justice and creative practices. Many of us first met through songwriting workshops (called ‘Vox sessions’).
I love Unbound. I’ve made many good friends there and shared many good times with them. We meet every Tuesday night to share food, to enjoy one another’s company, to catch up on what’s been going on for all of us, and to be creative in one way or another. Our creativity is often stimulated by themes that we chose; over the course of weeks or months, we’ll take a theme apart and put it back together in a whole myriad of different ways, and we’ll see what we learn in the process.
Our current theme is ‘signs and counter-signs’.
Sometimes, it takes a few weeks for me to find my way into a theme. This time, the entry point presented itself when I was away for a few days in Kintyre. There’s a standing stone that I always look for when I’m driving south on the A83 near the village a Muasdale. If you look left to the low hill-tops, you’ll find that single stone pointing to the sky. It stands on a farm called ‘Beacharr’ which is where my great-great-great-great grandparents lived.
Me and my brother at the Callanish stones, circa 1972
This time, when I saw the stone, it got me thinking about what these stones signify. Why did our Bronze Age ancestors go to all the trouble of raising them? A single stone maybe isn’t all that impressive, but I was also reminded of the stones of Callanish on the Isle of Lewis in the outer Hebrides. Those are the stones in the photo above (and there are many more of them than are in this picture — you’ll also find me and my brother in there, as we were back in the early 1970s). They are seriously impressive; indeed, when I first saw them (on the day that photo was taken), I remember being awestruck, both by their majesty and by their mystery.
To inspire some lyrics, I had a look at the Wikipedia page for the stones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callanish_Stones
There’s some intriguing information there, including a lyrically irresistible line about the stones in the circle being known locally as the ‘twelve false men’, and the suggestion that legend has it that the stones might be giants who were turned to stone when they refused to convert to Christianity. But the bottom line is that, despite the hard work of the architects and builders of the stones, no-one knows what they signify. No-one knows why they raised them. From my point of view, that’s a bit sad, but it is also a gift, because it leaves it open to us to make them meaningful, if we want to, any way we like. The lyrics below are my attempt at doing that, though the second part of the song moves away from the standing stones and onto a Kintyre beach.
You’ll find a live demo of the song below. I really enjoyed playing and singing it at Unbound last Tuesday; we even managed to get a bit of a choir going. :)
Hope you enjoy it too.
Fx
Lyrics
Still and silent on a heather moor, I’ve seen standing stones before
And wondered who they raised them for
And wondered what they mean
Maybe they were worshipping the Earth, or pointing to the stars above
Believing that some holy love
Could shield them from the rain
Or maybe they were giants petrified as a warning to the rest of us
We better make the best of us
Be generous and plain
Twelve of those false men, circling a monolith
To send a message that’s long-forgotten now
I suppose they were trying to offer up the best they had
Or find forgiveness through a sacred art
That buried wrongs somehow:
To bury wrongs somehow
I watched the water crashing on the shore; shaping sea-glass and pottery
All the craftwork of a lottery
Of moon-rocked tides
When soundwaves crash inside my skull, I ask: could they have that effect on me -
A kind of sonic remedy
Where memories collide?
Tell the truth, I don’t know, if a cure is possible
But I’ve felt a jagged edge grow smooth through time
I suppose we can only hope to find it meaningful
Or at the very least ethereal
Look through the veil sometime
Tune into that sometimes
(c) Fergus McNeill 2022.