MacDIARMID, Hugh. Signed holograph manuscript of “Island Funeral”. [Sodom, Shetland (?), c. 1935-1938, not after 1939.]
11 loose quarto sheets, 255 x 205 mm, neatly written on one side in MacDiarmid’s customary blue ink; each page numbered on recto only, p. 11 misnumbered “12”; paper slightly toned, creased where folded; ff. 1 and 11 with rust traces of a paper clip, else very good.
A unique manuscript of “Island Funeral”, one of MacDiarmid’s finest long poems, written and signed by the author, with several minor differences from the printed edition.
Hugh MacDiarmid, the pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve (1892-1978), was a poet, writer, and cultural activist from Langholm, Dumfriesshire, Scotland. A notable figure of the Scottish Renaissance, MacDiarmid developed a deep connection to rural Scotland, particularly to the rugged stone landscapes and resilient communities of the Scottish islands. These influences are evident in many of his poems, including “Island Funeral”. His feelings about island life are captured in the Scots Gaelic proverb he translates as “every force evolves a form,” portraying the island as the embodiment of geological and human forces.
Between 1933 and 1942, MacDiarmid lived in Sodom on the island of Whalsay, Shetland; during this time, he composed “Island Funeral”. The island described in the poem is likely Barra, a Hebridean island with a Catholic tradition that he found profoundly “different” and imbued with its own “spiritual climate”, especially given his own Presbyterian background (MacDiarmid 1939: 134).
The poem was published in 1939 as part of the collection The Islands of Scotland: Hebrides, Orkneys, and Shetlands. Our manuscript contains as many as seventeen variations, including minor corrections and crossings-out, compared to the printed version, suggesting that it was penned by MacDiarmid while he was still refining the poem. Some differences are subtle, such as the use of indefinite rather than definite articles (f. 3, line 8), while others are more significant. For instance, the poet wrote in the manuscript “in Edinburgh or Glasgow or London”, rather than “in any great city” (f. 8, line 1); further down, “Gaelic sound” replaces the “island sound” of the printed version (f. 8, line 9).
We compared this manuscript of “Island Funeral” with the poem as it appeared in The Hudson Review, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Winter, 1958-1959).
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