A Fine Finish, Indeed

And if that photograph lacks a perfectly even, perfectly angled horizon, the boat was rather tippy.  Kiltered, as I like to say, in the best of ways.

Slant-rhymed.

The last day of the year.

Wishful Thinking?

An odd emblem there for a very tippy craft.

Paddling Towards Dusk

Old Notebook: Was I Talking To Myself?

"Be more careful about what you offer to other people. I know you mean well in the moment, but you tend to set up expectations that you don't follow through on. People get frustrated and confused when that happens."

--entry in an old notebook--

Question: Was I talking to myself or to someone else?

Arnold: "The Forsaken Merman"

THE FORSAKEN MERMAN

Come, dear children, let us away;
Down and away below!
Now my brothers call from the bay,
Now the great winds shoreward blow,
Now the salt tides seaward flow;
Now the wild white horses play,
Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.
Children dear, let us away!
This way, this way!

Call her once before you go—
Call once yet!
In a voice that she will know:
"Margaret! Margaret!"
Children's voices should be dear
(Call once more) to a mother's ear;

Children's voices, wild with pain—
Surely she will come again!
Call her once and come away;
This way, this way!
"Mother dear, we cannot stay!
The wild white horses foam and fret."
Margaret! Margaret!

Come, dear children, come away down;
Call no more!
One last look at the white-wall'd town
And the little grey church on the windy shore,
Then come down!
She will not come though you call all day;
Come away, come away!

Children dear, was it yesterday
We heard the sweet bells over the bay?
In the caverns where we lay,
Through the surf and through the swell,
The far-off sound of a silver bell?
Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep,
Where the winds are all asleep;
Where the spent lights quiver and gleam,
Where the salt weed sways in the stream,
Where the sea-beasts, ranged all round,
Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground;
Where the sea-snakes coil and twine,
Dry their mail and bask in the brine;
Where great whales come sailing by,
Sail and sail, with unshut eye,
Round the world for ever and aye?
When did music come this way?
Children dear, was it yesterday?

Children dear, was it yesterday
(Call yet once) that she went away?
Once she sate with you and me,
On a red gold throne in the heart of the sea,
And the youngest sate on her knee.
She comb'd its bright hair, and she tended it well,
When down swung the sound of a far-off bell.
She sigh'd, she look'd up through the clear green sea;
She said: "I must go, to my kinsfolk pray
In the little grey church on the shore to-day.
'T will be Easter-time in the world—ah me!
And I lose my poor soul, Merman! here with thee."
I said: "Go up, dear heart, through the waves;
Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea-caves!"
She smiled, she went up through the surf in the bay.
Children dear, was it yesterday?

       Children dear, were we long alone?
"The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan;
Long prayers," I said, "in the world they say;
Come!" I said; and we rose through the surf in the bay.
We went up the beach, by the sandy down
Where the sea-stocks bloom, to the white-wall'd town;
Through the narrow paved streets, where all was still,
To the little grey church on the windy hill.
From the church came a murmur of folk at their prayers,
But we stood without in the cold blowing airs.
We climb'd on the graves, on the stones worn with rains,
And we gazed up the aisle through the small leaded panes.
She sate by the pillar; we saw her clear:
"Margaret, hist! come quick, we are here!
Dear heart," I said, "we are long alone;
The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan."
But, ah, she gave me never a look,
For her eyes were seal'd to the holy book!
Loud prays the priest; shut stands the door.
Come away, children, call no more!
Come away, come down, call no more!

       Down, down, down!
Down to the depths of the sea!
She sits at her wheel in the humming town,
Singing most joyfully.
Hark what she sings: "O joy, O joy,
For the humming street, and the child with its toy!
For the priest, and the bell, and the holy well;
For the wheel where I spun,
And the blessed light of the sun!"
And so she sings her fill,
Singing most joyfully,
Till the spindle drops from her hand,
And the whizzing wheel stands still.
She steals to the window, and looks at the sand,
And over the sand at the sea;
And her eyes are set in a stare;
And anon there breaks a sigh,
And anon there drops a tear,
From a sorrow-clouded eye,
And a heart sorrow-laden,
A long, long sigh;
For the cold strange eyes of a little Mermaiden
And the gleam of her golden hair.

       Come away, away children
Come children, come down!
The hoarse wind blows coldly;
Lights shine in the town.
She will start from her slumber
When gusts shake the door;
She will hear the winds howling,
Will hear the waves roar.
We shall see, while above us
The waves roar and whirl,
A ceiling of amber,
A pavement of pearl.
Singing: "Here came a mortal,
But faithless was she!
And alone dwell for ever
The kings of the sea."

But, children, at midnight,
When soft the winds blow,
When clear falls the moonlight,
When spring-tides are low;
When sweet airs come seaward
From heaths starr'd with broom,
And high rocks throw mildly
On the blanch'd sands a gloom;
Up the still, glistening beaches,
Up the creeks we will hie,
Over banks of bright seaweed
The ebb-tide leaves dry.
We will gaze, from the sand-hills,
At the white, sleeping town;
At the church on the hill-side—
And then come back down.
Singing: "There dwells a loved one,
But cruel is she!
She left lonely for ever
The kings of the sea."

--Matthew Arnold

Crossley-Holland's 'Leaf-Girl'

LEAF-GIRL

'Round and round the trampled 
ground between the flaming
maple and the black walnut,
and out across the nickel rink 
to the winter warming-hut,
round, round with bounds and 
yells, skips and little rushes 
you chased October leaves.

Curtsy, shout, leap and spin, 
your pale face thin and hair 
haywire, the best red-gold:
so you became the leaves 
you caught. And watching you 
I think I thought there's 
some movement, some pursuit 
best expressing each of us.'

--Kevin Crossley-Holland

Heaney: Beowulf Takes His Trophy

from Seamus Heaney's translation of the Old English Beowulf, a favorite passage of mine.  But then most of the poem qualifies as such.


A light appeared and the place brightened
the way the sky does when heaven's candle
is shining clearly.  He inspected the vault:
with sword held high, its hilt raised
to guard and threaten, Hygelac's thane
scouted along the wall in Grendel's wake.
Now the weapon was to prove its worth.
The warrior determined to take revenge
for every gross act Grendel had committed --
and not only for that one occasion
when he'd come to slaughter the sleeping troops,
fifteen of Hrothgar's house-guards
surprised on their benches and ruthlessly devoured,
and as many again carried away,
a brutal plunder.  Beowulf in his fury
now settled that score: he saw the monster
in his resting-place, war-weary and wrecked,
a lifeless corpse, a casualty
of the battle in Heorot.  The body gaped
at the stroke dealt to it after death:
Beowulf cut the corpse's head off.

Immediately the counsellors keeping a lookout
with Hrothgar, watching the lake water,
saw a heave-up and surge of waves
and blood in the backwash.  They bowed grey heads,
spoke in their sage, experienced way
about the good warrior, how they never again
expected to see that prince returning
in triumph to their king.  It was clear to many
that the wolf of the deep had destroyed him forever.

The ninth hour of the day arrived.
The brave Shieldings abandoned the cliff-top
and the king went home; but sick at heart,
staring at the mere, the strangers held on.
They wished, without hope, to behold their lord,
Beowulf himself.

                     Meanwhile, the sword
began to wilt into gory icicles,
to slather and thaw.  It was a wonderful thing,
the way it melted as ice melts
when the Father eases the fetters off the frost
and unravels the water-ropes, He who wields power
over time and tide: he is the true lord.

The Geat captain saw treasure in abundance
But carried no spoils from those quarters
except for the head and the inlaid sword-hilt
embossed with jewels; its blade had melted
and the scrollwork on it burnt, so scalding was the blood
of the poisonous fiend who had perished there.
Then away he swam, the one who had survived
the fall of his enemies, flailing to the surface.
The wide water, the waves and pools,
were no longer infested once the wandering fiend
let go of her life and this unreliable world.
The seafarers' leader made for land,
resolutely swimming, delighted with his prize,
the mighty load he was lugging to the surface.
His thanes advanced in a troop to meet him,
thanking God and taking great delight
in seeing their prince back safe and sound.
Quickly the hero's helmet and mail-shirt
were loosed and unlaced.  The lake settled,
clouds darkened above the bloodshot depths.


Seamus Heaney, translator:
Beowulf: A New Translation,
Faber and Faber, Ltd: London, 1999:
pages 51-53.

Garsecg: Or, The Merman, Holding A Fish

Merman: stoneware; glazes in green,blue, and gray. Note the blotchy chest. I dripped glaze on top of glaze in hopes of gaining the texture and color of kelp, and it worked.

I've posted shots of this piece many times now, but Merman remains one of my favorite pieces and one of my first successes.

Reindeer, Cooling Off After The Big Night

Lucky: swimming in the rain.

Rein . . . Moose?

Sculpture mix; shiny black and shino glazing, layered.

Reprise: Aegir, Sea-God

Aegir: sculpture mix; blue, green,and white glazes; copper wire; fishhooks. 20-minute exercise with model.  

I've posted shots of this piece first here and collectively here.

Reprise: Diving Like A Duck II

(I love my Rocket Fins -- and have since 1978.)

Practice Session: "A Hazy Vision"

A HAZY VISION

Foot, bare; hand, inked;
Tongue, Latin and Greek;
Books, piled; treasure, child;
Fountain, Irish; wishes, so fair;
Song, sublime; wildness, rhymed --

Her measure, untapped;
And the course, unmapped.

--MD


An exercise in verse; an exercise in vision.
Composed/posted 12/23/12;
Revised 1/10/13.

Yuletide Charms

I've kept the elves busy making charms: deer (design from an ornament by Jen Delyth) and ship (design from an ornament copied from an ancient Norse memorial stone).

The Thinker(s): Orkney-Style?

My Pict (pit-fired clay; hammered copper) --

with someone else's Thor in the background.

I must say that my own sense of the Orkneys comes, chiefly, from Dorothy Dunnett's treatment of those fabulous northern islands in her King Hereafter, that wonderful historical novel of Thorfinn of Orkney, of Macbeth, and of the Celtic/Pictish/Norse mixture that infused those islands.  Seamus Heaney's brief references in his North, the poetry of Orkney poet George Mackay Brown, Henry Treece's historical novel Splintered Sword, the classic Orkneyinga Saga, and R. E. Howard's Bran Mak Morn have also informed my imagination here.   

Unfortunately, I've yet to experience Orkney for myself, though I expect to visit in the next decade or so.

Thor as thinker?  More than you might think, surely.  Check the Eddas.

Reprise: Wizardry For The Tree

Radagast the Brown: ornament; unglazed clay.

Byron: "Many Are Poets Who Have Never Penned"

Many are Poets who have never penned
Their inspiration, and perchance the best:
They felt, and loved, and died, but would not lend
Their thoughts to meaner beings; they compressed
The God within them, and rejoined the stars
Unlaurelled upon earth, but far more blessed
Than those who are degraded by the jars
Of Passion, and their frailties linked to fame,
Conquerors of high renown, but full of scars.
Many are Poets but without the name;
For what is Poesy but to create
From overfeeling Good or Ill; and aim
At an external life beyond our fate,
And be the new Prometheus of new men,
Bestowing fire from Heaven, and then, too late,
Finding the pleasure given repaid with pain,
And vultures to the heart of the bestower,
Who, having lavished his high gift in vain,
Lies to his lone rock by the sea-shore?
So be it: we can bear.—

--Lord Byron, the opening lines to Canto IV
of The Prophecy of Dante

GRAB-BAG: What Resonates

"Nights, I made fires from the wood you did not chop."
          --old poem

"What is the most beautiful music in the world?  The music of what happens."
           --Finn mac Cumhail, ancient Irish hero and king

"The body contains the life story just as much as the brain."
          --Edna O'Brien

"There's life on the page. You read it, and it's not your experience, but it expands your experience."
          --Nancy Packer

"The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage."
          --Thucydides

The spiral:
my favorite shape,
my favorite motion,
my favorite plot-line.
           --

"The head understands what the heart won't. Which is wiser?"
          --old poem

"The truth is born as lightning strikes."
          --Archilochos

"The cure for anything is salt water -- sweat, tears, or the sea."
          ~ Isak Dinesen

"The law of gravity becomes complex under water, but it is not beyond our comprehension."
          --Honor Frost, Under the Mediterranean

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
          --Mark Twain

"Whole sight; or all the rest is desolaton."
          --John Fowles, Daniel Martin

"Mr. Jones wishes he was a little more funky.
When everybody loves you,
that's about as funky as you can be."
          --Counting Crows

"He suffered the most intense pang of the most terrible of all human deprivations; which is not of possession, but of knowledge. What she said; what she felt; what she thought."
          --John Fowles, "The Ebony Tower"

"Verde que te quiero verde."
          --Lorca

"I've looked on Ida With a Trojan's eye."
          --Lord Byron

"Up the slopes and at them!"
          Howard? de Camp and Carter?  Conan the Wanderer?

"I was born with luck as a twin," roared Fafhrd jovially, leaping up so swiftly that the cranky sloop rocked a little in spite of its outriggers. "I catch a fish in the middle of the ocean. I rip up its belly. And look, little man, what I find!"
          --Fritz Leiber, in "The Sunken Land"

"Stay thirsty, my friends."
            --The Most Interesting Man in the World (Silly commercials, but worthy attitude)


"Was there any comfort, he wondered, in seeing the outlines of life?"
          --Martin Cruz Smith, of his investigator Arkady Renko, from one of his novels . . . Havana Bay or Red Square?


In Anglo-Saxon, garsecg is a kenning for the sea. It means "the spear-man."

Papyrus Comes From Egypt

Motley: a few shots from last April.

Prepping for that talk on Lord Byron.

Moya Cannon: "The Hidden Rhythms of the Wood"

SYMPATHETIC VIBRATION

          for Kathleen

'You never strike a note,
you always take the note.'

Did it take her many
of her eighty quiet passionate years
to earn that knowledge,
or was it given.

Music, the dark tender secret of it,
is locked into the wood of every tree.
Yearly, it betrays its presence
in minute fistfuls of uncrumpling green.

No stroke or blade can release the music
which is salve to ease the world's wounds,
which tells and, modulating, retells
the story of our own groping roots,
of the deep sky from which they retreat
and, in retreating, reach -- 
the tree's great symphony of leaf.

No stroke or blade can bring us that release
but sometimes, where wildness has not been stilled,
hands, informed by years of patient love, 
can come to know the hidden rhythms of the wood,
can touch bow to gut
and take the note,
as the heart yields and yields
and sings.

--Moya Cannon
from Oar

"On The Light Fantastic Toe"

Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee
Jest, and youthful Jollity,
Quips and cranks and wanton wiles,
Nods and becks and wreathed smiles
Such as hang on Hebe’s cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek;
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Come, and trip it, as you go,
On the light fantastic toe;
And in thy right hand lead with thee
The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty;
And, if I give thee honour due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew,
To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreproved pleasures free.

--John Milton, from his "L’Allegro" (1645)


Running Pig: sculpture mix; jade green glazing.

Sofia's Gallery: Wizards, Mermaid, and Reindeer

Sofia's upturned hull, slightly grubby-- 

ornaments: wizards (from my hands)

and mermaid (via CL).

3-Legged, Half-Antlered Reindeer.  Still flies.

Last Look: Moon and Monster

Masks in progress.
Slow drying clay; coldest corner of the upper shelf, unfortunately.

Boat-Charm and Minotaur (In Progress)

Middle English Lyric: "Foweles in the Frith"

Foweles in the frith,
The fisses in the flod,
And I mon waxe wod.
Mulch sorw I walke with
For beste of bon and blod.

--anonymous

from Middle English Lyrics:
A Norton Critical Edition,
selected and edited by M.S. Luria and R. L. Hoffman,
W.W. Norton: New York,
1974.

Hold Fast

The Drowned Man: Mask.

Raymond Oliver: Five Poems

DISCOURSE ON METHOD

Not to write poems, but to state, 
Like truth, the figures of my thought,
The icons that illuminate
My book of hours; to define, 
With candid artifice, each line,
Each tangent, till what I have wrought
Stands clear; to fix in words my essence,
Which is the gist of all I know,
Against the subtle deliquescence
Of  time -- I have no more to show.
There are the motives of my soul,
The parts, to which conforms the whole.


METER AS DECORUM

Gone is the tact
Of former time.
Not 'strong' but slack,
The poet's line
No longer holds
Experience,
Which -- subtle, old,
Of power immense --
Now bends his forms
At its own pleasure.
We have no norm;
The pulse that measures
Civilization
Is wild, erratic --
As a heart-patient
Might seem ecstatic.


LATE AFTERNOON TEA

This tea, neither too weak, nor strong with leaves
To etch my teeth, not hot like licking thorns,
Recalls the attentive calm that one achieves
When purged of such desires as Plato scorns.

Chaste, it preserves an elemental poise,
Skirting extremes of water, earth, and fire
As music moves between silence and noise.
I drink.  My dissonant thoughts become a choir.


SKIPPING STONES ON A LAKE

The penny-slim
stone that spins
from his arched in-
dex finger skips
lightly in lit-
tle bumps, dip-
ping elastically
as far as we
think we can see --
then comes to rest,
sinking at last.



THE LAST JUDGMENT

Medieval sculptors knew,
Better than marxists, what to do
With the exploiting upper classes:
You carve them naked into stone,
With fiends that strip them to the bone
While shoving skewers up their asses.
Torture them richly and with skill.
And let them pay the bill.



--Raymond Oliver,
from Entries,
David R. Godine: Boston,
1982.

Prof. Raymond Oliver was one of the formative influences of my academic life.  He taught me how to read poetry, frankly.  He caught me up when I was wandering beside that particular path, set me on my way with maps and tools, and wherever I have wandered since that time, I still depend on those maps and those tools.

I still treasure "The English Lyric" (or "The Short Poem in English," I misremember the title, but not the content), back in 1980, I believe, in which you assigned and the students read as many "short" poems as humanly possible from the medieval period to Eliot and Auden in ten weeks.  That was a crash course in the British tradition, and I put "short" thus, for "The Rape of the Lock" and "Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard", among others, would not normally be considered less than long.   I'm not complaining now, and I didn't then; I'm happy you put so much before us and expected us to read and read and think and read some more.  Tools and maps, as I say.

I'm grateful for the Beowulf course, and others beyond those two I've named.

Thank you, sir.

Six and A Half Arms To Hold You

Octopus, which in the old tongue means "eight arms to hold you".

Sculpture mix; brown, blue, and shino glazing, layered (I believe).

An old piece; an old favorite.

Bottom Time

"Divers Do It Deeper!"; "Get Wet!"; "Kiss My Abalone!": rallying cries of my well-spent youth.

(We are the grit that makes the pearl or mars the paint job.  A more mature reflection?)

Humble shots, certainly, but they pull me deeper into memory's well.

One breath-hold; a handful of shots; the surge moving me forward and back as it likes.

There may be no real drama available here for anyone else, but I like the bottom of white sand and crushed rock as well as the translucent green blades in motion.

Mostly, these shots make me want to dive down again and again, to see what's there, and to do any of that, well, I need to begin training again, to get in shape, to swim and swim and swim, which is all good.  I walked today, and that's a fine start.  Laps now . . . .

Bluefish: Two Views

Clayfish, Blue: stoneware; blue glazing.

Nicolson's "Sea Room" -- Gaelic and Norse

Adam Nicolson's Sea Room is a memoir concerning the Shiant Islands in the Hebrides.  Nicolson inherited the islands from his father, and he pays tribute to the islands, their life and history, his own life and history as intertwined with his father's gift.  Here is a longish passage in which Nicolson reflects on the Gaelic/Norse heritage, and though I don't always (or quite) agree with his interpretation of the intrinsic relationships or the causal links between borrowings, I will say Nicolson's delivery takes me into this mixed-lineage, mixed-linguistic world.

(Freyja is Nicolson's trusty boat.)

Freyja does at least belong to that world.  I hold her tiller and she is my link to a chain that stretches over five hundred miles and a thousand years to the coast of Norway.  Because there is no timber on the Outer Hebrides, the commercial connection with the Baltic has remained alive.  Until no more than a generation ago, Baltic traders brought Finnish tar, timber and pitch directly to Stornoway and Tarbert in Harris.  Although Freyja's own timber comes from the mainland of Scotland, her waterproofing below the water-line is known as 'Stockholm tar': a wood tar, distilled from pine and imported from the Baltic at least since the Middle Ages.  Until well into the nineteenth century, kit boats in marked parts came imported fro Norway to the Hebrides, travelling in the hold of merchant ships, and assembled by boat builders in any notch or loch along the Harris or Lewis coast.  In 1828, Lord Teignmouth, the ex-Governor-General of India, friend of Wilberforce, came out to the Shiants in the company of Alexander Stewart, the farmer at Valamus on Pairc, who had tenancy of the islands.  They launched forth in this gentleman's boat, a small skiff or yawl built in Norway, long, narrow, peaked at both ends, extremely light, floating like a feather upon the water, and when properly managed, with the buoyancy and almost the security of a sea-bird on its native wave.

The British Imperialist, the liberal evangelical, member of the Clapham Sect, travels in a Viking boat on a Viking sea.  I nearly called Freyja 'Fulmar' because of that phrase of Teignmouth's.  No bird is more different on the wing than on the nest and in flight the fulmar is the most effortless of all sea birds.  It was that untroubled buoyancy in wind and water that I was after.  But Freyja's  fatness was what settled it.

Almost everything in her and the world now around her, if described in modern Gaelic, would be understood by a Viking.  The words used here for boats and sea all come from Old Norse and the same descriptions have been on people's lips for a millennium.  If I say, in Gaelic, 'windward of the sunken rock', 'the seaweed in the narrow creek', 'fasten the buoy', 'steer with the helm towards the shingle beach', 'prop the boat on an even keel', 'put the cod, the ling, the saithe and the coaley in the wicker basket', 'use the oar as a roller to launch the boat', 'put a wedge in the joint between the planking in the stern', 'set the sea chest on the frames amidships', 'the tide is running around the skerry', 'the cormorant and the gannet are above the surf', 'haul in the sheet', 'tighten the back stay', 'use the oar as a steerboard', or say of a man, 'that man is a hero, a stout man, the man who belongs at the stem of a boat', every single one of those terms has been transmitted directly from the language which the Norse spoke into modern Gaelic.  It is a kind of linguistic DNA, persistent across thirty or forty generations.

Sometimes the words have survived unchanged.  Oatmeal mixed with cold water, ocean food, is stappa in NOrse, stapag in Gaelic, although stapag is now made with sugar and cream.  With many, there has been a little rubbing down of the forms in the millennium that they have been used.  A tear in a sail is riab in Gaelic, rifa in Old Norse.  The smock worn by fisherman is sguird in Gaelic, skirta in Old Norse.  Sgaireag is the Gaelic for 'seaman', skari the Norse word.  And occasionally, there is a strange and suggestive transformation.  The Gaelic for a hen roost is the Norse word for hammock.  Norse for 'strong' becomes Gaelic for 'fat'.  The Norse word for rough ground becomes peat moss in Gaelic.  A hook or a barb turns into an antler.  To creep -- that mobile, subtle movement -- translates into Gaelic as 'to crouch': more still, more rooted to the place.  A water meadow in Norway, fit, becomes fidean: grass covered at high tide.  'To drip' becomes 'to melt'.  A Norse framework, whether of a house, a boat or a basket, becomes a Gaelic creel.

But it is the human qualities for which Gaelic borrowed the Viking words that are most intriguingly and intimately suggestive of the life lived around these seas a thousand years ago.  There is a cluster of borrowings around the ideas of oddity and suspicion.  Gaelic itself, if it had not taken from the invaders, would have no word for a quirk (for which it borrowed the Old Norse word meaning 'a trap'), nor for 'strife', nor 'a faint resemblance' -- the word it took was svip, the Norse for 'glimpse'.  The  Gaelic from 'lullaby' is taladh, from the Norse tal, meaning 'allurement', 'seduction'.

The vocabulary for contempt and wariness suddenly vivifies that ancient moment.  Gaelic borrowed Norse revulsion wholesale.  Noisy boasting, to blether, a coward, cowardice, surliness, an insult, mockery, a servant, disgust, anything shrivelled or shrunken (sgrogag from the Old Norse skrukka, an old shrimp,) a bald head, a slouch, a good-for-nothing, a dandy, a fop, a short, fat, stumpy woman (staga from stakka, the stump of a tree), a sneak (stig/stygg), a wanderer -- all this was something new, and had arrived with the longships.  Fear and ridicule, the uncomfortable presence of the distrusted other, the ugly cross-currents of two worlds, the broken and disturbing sea where those tides met: all this could only be expressed in the odd new language the strangers brought with them.

--Adam Nicolson

Adam Nicolson,
Sea Room: An Island Life in the Hebrides,
North Point Press: New York,
2001

I've quoted from pages 30-33.

Ferry Point

Blue And Green

Clayfish, Blue at Ferry Point, Richmond, CA.