Scottish Islands Explorer 40: Nov / Dec 2016

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harrowwhiskyfestival.com Friday / Saturday 13 / 14 January 2017 Small-group expeditions to Arctic Norway, the Solovetski Islands of Arctic Russia, Greenland and Kamchatka. • Arctic and Antarctic voyages by ship • Dog sledding, cross country skiing, boating, kayaking, hiking and wildlife trips • Tailor-made Iceland and the Faroes - flights from Scotland • Greenland - East and West coast: Wildlife and natural history • Wildlife of Russian Far East - by ship • Wild Scotland: Oban - Aberdeen 13 - 23 June 2017 • Aberdeen, Fair Isle, Jan Mayen and Spitsbergen 22 - 31 May 2017 • Across the Artic Circle: Aberdeen to Longyearbyen 23 June - 6 July 2017 Have a 2016 or 2017 edition of Scottish Islands Explorer ready to show for a discount. Please call for a full colour brochure ARCTURUS The polar arm of Far Frontiers Travel Ltd Ninestone South Zeal Devon EX20 2PZ Tel/Fax (44) 01837840640 arcturusexpeditions.co.uk Outstanding Self-Catering for Six in South Harris Corncrake and Otter Cottages Luxurious, five-star awarded accommodation - Almost on fabulous Scarista beach The distinctive Harris golf course close by - A pass for all six guests included Underfloor heating - Oil and electricity included - Large television with DVD - Broadband internet Linen and towels included - Two dogs welcomed www.LHHScotland.com 01381 01361 610496 14 SCOTTISH ISLANDS EXPLORER NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2016
ISLANDS BEYOND Hew Prendergast finds coincidences in Bronte, Sicily In a small cypress-darkened Sicilian graveyard is a strange tomb. On its face are two names - one male, the other female. ey share a date of birth -12 September 1855 - as though they were twins. But they also share a very much later date of death - 12 December 1905 -by all appearances more then a remarkable coincidence. e two names are ‘William Sharp’ and ‘Fiona Macleod’ and below them are inscribed, respectively, fitting lines of verse they each wrote: Farewell then to the known and exhausted Welcome to the unknown and unfathomed Love is more great than we conceive And death is the keeper of unknown redemptions William and Fiona were in fact one and the same, but not from the very beginning. Born in Paisley, and educated briefly at Glasgow University, William settled in London where he associated with many of the leading artists and literati of the time. He published volumes of poetry, wrote biographies of Shelley, Heine and Browning, and was commissioned for articles and essays for periodicals. He was also a keen traveller. The Key to Everything For anyone of sensibility from Europe’s north, a journey to Italy could have an enormous impact. Perhaps the most famously recorded of all was the Italienische Reise of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. For six weeks in 1787 he visited Sicily. ‘Without Sicily,’ he wrote, ‘Italy creates no image in the soul: here is the key to everything.’ Just over a century later, in 1893, came William Sharp’s own Sicily by Hew Prendergast. Pastel drawing by Charles Ross 1891. first visit to the island and it was later that year that (coincidentally?) he first mentioned to his publisher that ‘I wish to adhere rigidly to the Fiona Macleod authorship.’ What spurred him to adopt such a nom de plume must have been psychologically complicated, but this did appear to allow the expression of a feminine side to his character. Indeed he was supposed to have written to a friend that ‘in some things I am more a woman than a man.’ e poetry ‘she’ wrote conferred on him a degree of anonymity and eventually attracted greater praise than ‘his’. A life of two halves and identities took hold. How did Sharp (and Macleod) end up 25 miles inland from Sicily’s east coast? A clue lies on a sign for the graveyard, the Cimitiro Inglese dei Nelson, although this in turn begs other questions. Never Visited In 1799, Horatio Nelson assisted the King of Naples in his resistance to the French and, in gratitude, was conferred a title and a fine Sicilian mansion opposite the graveyard. He never visited it, but his descendants retained possession of the Castello Nelson until the 1970s and they still, apparently, own the graveyard where Sharp/Macleod is its most famous internee. Whatever literary heights he/she managed to achieve, they are far outshone by the daughters of a Yorkshire vicar who, in awe and honour of Nelson, changed his surname, and theirs, to that of the town where the graveyard in Sicily is located - Brontë. Perhaps Sharp too had gone there to pay his respects? NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2016 SCOTTISH ISLANDS EXPLORER 15
Page 1 and 2: SCOTTISH ISLANDS THE UK’S ONLY MA
Page 3 and 4: Morvern - page 35 Lerwick - page 8
Page 5 and 6: VISION FOR 2020 Here we are with th
Page 7 and 8: INSIGHTS Page Index Header A Gift f
Page 9 and 10: Lerwick ‘Lerwick may have seen it
Page 11 and 12: Lerwick The Inconvenience e Shetlan
Page 13: From the Static to the Dynamic Jack
Page 17 and 18: ‘is huge granite structure oen pu
Page 19 and 20: Oban a golf course, extensive garde
Page 21 and 22: The Cladh Hallan Mummies NOVEMBER /
Page 23 and 24: The Cladh Hallan Mummies different
Page 25 and 26: READERS’ OPPORTUNITIES Page Index
Page 27 and 28: NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2016 SCOTTISH I
Page 29 and 30: ‘Wherever you go on the island, b
Page 31 and 32: e fire was fuelled by coal and work
Page 33 and 34: Ages of Man and Tomb of Eagles Ages
Page 35 and 36: Morvern James Petre sees it more as
Page 37 and 38: Morvern Remoteness and Emptiness e
Page 39 and 40: The Corryvreckan ‘Local fishermen
Page 41 and 42: The Corryvreckan topography. e word
Page 43 and 44: The Beehive Cells A Pastoral Site I
Page 45 and 46: Inchcolm ‘ ... a hermit who serve
Page 47 and 48: Inchcolm Page 44 Top: Inchcolm by F
Page 49 and 50: CROSSWORD Page Index 25 Header by T
Page 51: Scottish Explorer 20% EXPLORER RHEN

Scottish Islands Explorer 40: Nov / Dec 2016

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