Between the Echoes by Angus MacMillan

 

 A few weeks ago I attended the launch of Angus MacMillan's memoir 'Between the Echoes' which was held at the Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh. It was a very enjoyable event and I bought a copy of the book, and even spoke haltingly in Scottish Gaelic to the author who kindly signed my book, despite my lack of ability to speak the language (we did lapse into English very quickly). 

I've just now finished reading the book, which is a beautifully written evocation of growing up in Lewis, one of the Hebridean islands where Scottish Gaelic is still spoken and the Gaelic culture still hangs on, though much less so than it did even in the author's childhood. 

The book is divided into sections and looks in turn at memories associated primarily with water, earth, fire and air. The personal anecdotes are well chosen to highlight both the freedom that the author and his friends had in growing up in a rural island community and the strong sense of community where neighbours would regularly visit each other and doors were left unlocked. Also a sense of "feeling at home on the earth":

"being fastened to the world by it's colours and shapes, and the bodily feelings created by the natural world and its contours, in the form of grasses, rocks, mud, water, slopes and hollows. Inanimate things are imbued with life, or given an entirely different imagined existence: lumps of soft peat shaped into birds and planes, sticks transformed into swords; puddles become lagoons for sailing matchstick boats"

The book ends with a chapter entitled 'Of Place and Home' which outlines some of what has been lost.  Many of the Gaelic speaking islanders have left for education or work, and have been replaced by non-Gaelic speaking incomers, which has diluted the central role of the Gaelic language itself. (Tellingly, perhaps, the author himself no longer lives on Lewis.) Culture has changed too, a Gaelic 'ceilidh' used to be an informal gathering of neighbours, where there might be storytelling and music, but now, the ceilidh is a paid for, ticketed event centred on traditional Scottish dancing.

Between the Echoes by Angus MacMillan, published (2026) by Islands Book Trust.  

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My latest Substack is all about butterflies and birds along the John Muir Walkway, with more detail than in my recent post here. You can read the Substack here.