Sunset Song

Lewis Grassic Gibbon

• Publisher: Canongate Canons
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9781838851972
• eBook ISBN: 9781847673596
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Classics
• Index: Literature

Twice Voted Scotland's Favourite Book

'Left me scorched' Ali Smith
'Unforgettable' Guardian

Faced with a choice between a harsh farming life and the world of books and learning, Chris Guthrie chooses to remain in her rural community, bound by her intense love of the land. But everything changes with the arrival of the First World War and Chris finds her land altered beyond recognition.

One of the greatest and most heartbreaking love stories ever told,, Sunset Song offers a powerful portrait of a land and people in turmoil.

THREE

Seed-time

SHE’D THOUGHT, running, stumbling up through the moor, with that livid flush on her cheek, up through the green of the April day with the bushes misted with cobwebs, I’ll never go back, I’ll never go back, I’ll drown myself in the loch! Then she stopped, her heart it seemed near to bursting and terribly below it moved something, heavy and slow it had been when she ran out from Blawearie but now it seemed to move and uncoil. Slow, dreadfully, it moved and changed, like a snake she had once seen up on this hill, and the sweat broke out on her forehead. Had anything happened with it? Oh God, there couldn’t be anything! If only she hadn’t run so, had kept herself quiet, not struck as she’d done, deaved and angry and mad she had been!

Sobbing, she fell to a slow walk then, her hand at her side, and through the gate into the moorland went with slow steps, the livid flush burning still on her cheek, she felt it was branded there. Tears had come in her eyes at last, but she wouldn’t have them, shook them off, wouldn’t think; and a pheasant flew up beneath her feet, whirroo! as she came to the mere of the loch. She bent over there through the rushes, raising her hands to her hair that had come all undone, and parted it from her face and looked down at her face in the water. It rippled a moment, it was brown with detritus, at first she could see nothing of herself but a tremulous amorphousness in the shadow of the rushes; and then the water cleared, she saw the flush below her cheek-bone, her own face, strange to her this last month and stranger now. Below in Kinraddie the carts were rattling up every farm-road, driving out dung to the turnip-planting, somewhere there was a driller on the go, maybe it was Upperhill’s, the clank was a deafening thing. Nine o’clock in the morning and here up on the hill she was, she didn’t know where to go or where to turn.

There were the Standing Stones, so seldom she’d seen them this last nine months. Cobwebbed and waiting they stood, she went and leant her cheek against the meikle one, the monster that stood and seemed to peer over the water and blue distances that went up to the Grampians. She leant against it, the bruised cheek she leaned and it was strange and comforting—stranger still when you thought that this old stone circle, more and more as the years went on at Kinraddie, was the only place where ever she could come and stand back a little from the clamour of the days. It seemed to her now that she’d had feint the minute at all to stand and think since that last September day she’d spent up here, caught and clamped and turning she’d been in the wheel and grind of the days since father died.

BUT AT THE TIME a thing fine and shining it had been, she hadn’t cared if folk deemed her heartless and godless—fine she thought it, a prayer prayed and answered, him dead at last with his glooming and glaring, his whistlings and whisperings. Chris, do this, and Chris, do that it went on from morn till night till but hardly she could drag herself to the foot of the stairs to heed him.

But a worse thing came as that slow September dragged to its end, a thing she would never tell to a soul, festering away in a closet of her mind the memory lay, it would die sometime, everything died, love and hate; fainter and fainter it had grown this year till but half she believed it a fancy, those evening fancies when father lay with the red in his face and his eye on her, whispering and whispering at her, the harvest in his blood, whispering her to come to him, they’d done it in Old Testament times, whispering You’re my flesh and blood, I can do with you what I will, come to me, Chris, do you hear?

And she would hear him and stare at him, whispering also, I won’t, they never spoke but in whispers those evenings. And then she’d slip down from his room, frightened and frightened, quivering below-stairs while her fancies raced, starting at every creak that went through the harvest stillness of Blawearie house, seeing father somehow struggling from his bed, like a great frog struggling, squattering across the floor, thump, thump on the stairs, coming down on her while she slept, that madness and tenderness there in his eyes.

She took to locking her door because of that wild fear. The morning of the day she woke to find him dead she leaned out from her bedroom window and heard Long Rob of the Mill, far ayont the parks of Peesie’s Knapp, out even so early, hard at work with his chaving and singing, singing Ladies of Spain with a throat as young and clear as a boy’s. She had slept but little that night, because of the fear upon her and the tiredness, but that singing was sweet to hear, sweet and heart-breaking, as though the world outside Blawearie were singing to her, telling her this thing in the dark, still house could never go on, no more than a chance and an accident it was in the wind-loved world of men.

She got into her clothes then, clearer-headed, and slipped down to the kitchen and put on the kettle and milked the kye and then made breakfast. Below the windows the parks stood cut and stooked and trim, Ellison and Chae and Long Rob had done that, good neighbours John Guthrie had, had he never aught else. There came no movement from father’s room, he was sleeping long, and setting the tray with porridge and milk she hoped he’d have nothing to say, just glower and eat, she’d slip away then.

So she went up the stair and into his room without knocking, he hated knocking and all such gentry-like notions, she put down the tray and saw he was dead. For a moment she looked and then turned to the curtains and drew them, and took the tray in her hand again, no sense in leaving it there, and went down and ate a good breakfast, slowly and enjoyingly she ate and felt quiet and happy, even though she fell fast asleep in her chair and awoke to find it gone nine. She lay and looked at her outspread arms a while, dimpled and brown, soft-skinned with the play of muscles below them. Sleep? She could sleep as she chose now, often and long.

Then she tidied the kitchen and found a spare sheet and went out to the hedge above the road and spread the sheet there, the sign she’d arranged with Chae should she need him. In an hour or so, out in his parks he saw it and came hurrying up to Blawearie, crying to her half-way Chris, lass, what’s wrong? Then only she realised she hadn’t yet spoken that day to a soul, wondered if her voice would shake and break, it didn’t, was ringing and clear as a bell crying down to Chae, My father’s dead.

IT WAS FAIR a speak in Kinraddie, her coolness, she knew that well but she didn’t care, she was free at last. And when Mistress Munro, her that came to wash down the corpse, poked out her futret face and said, A body would hardly think to look at you that your father was new dead, Chris looked at the dark, coarse creature and saw her so clearly as she’d never done before, she’d never had time to look at a soul through her own eyes before, Chris-come-here and Chris-go-there. Not a pringle of anger she felt, just smiled and said Wouldn’t you, now, Mistress Munro? and watched her at work and watched her go, not caring a fig what she thought and did. Then she roused herself for a while, free yet she could hardly be for a day or so, and got ready the big room for Auntie Janet and her man to sleep in, medals and all, when they came down to the funeral.

Down the next day they came, the two of them, Auntie as cheery as ever, Uncle as fat, he’d another bit medal stuck on his chain; and when they saw she wasn’t sniftering or weeping they put off the long decent faces they’d set for her sight, and told her the news, Dod and Alec did fine and had sent their love. And Auntie said they must sell up the things at Blawearie and Chris come and bide with them in the North, some brave bit farmer would soon marry her there.

And Chris said neither yea nor nay, but smiled at them, biding her time, waiting till she found if a will had been left by father. Chae Strachan and old Sinclair of Netherhill saw to the funeral, old Sinclair moving so slow up the road, you’d half think he’d stop and take root, clean agony it was to watch him, and his face so pitted and old, father had been young by the like of him. And Mr Gibbon came over to see her, he’d been drinking a fell lot of late, folk said, maybe that accounted for the fact that as he crossed the twilit brae he was singing out loud to himself, Auntie heard the singing and ran up and out and hid in the lithe of a stack to try and make out what he sang. But he left off then and left her fair vexed, she said later she could have sworn it was a song they sang in the bothies about the bedding of a lad and a lass.

But Chris didn’t care, keeping that secret resolve she’d made warm and clean and unsoiled in her heart, taking it out only alone to look at it, that old-time dream of hers. She’d never looked at herself so often or so long as now she did, the secret shining deep in her eyes, she saw her face thinner and finer than of yore, no yokel face it seemed. So she cared nothing for Mr Gibbon and his singing, the great curly brute and his breath that smelt so bad, he went up with her to father’s room where father lay in his coffin, in a fine white shirt and a tie, his beard combed out and decent and jutting up, you’d say in a minute he’d raise those dead eyelids and whisper at you. Down on his knees the minister went, the great curly bull, and began to pray, Chris hesitated a minute and looked at the floor, and then, canny-like, when he wasn’t seeing her, dusted a patch and herself knelt down. But she didn’t heed a word he was saying, honeysuckle smell was drifting in on the air from the night, up on the hills the dog of some ploughman out poaching was barking and barking itself to a fair hysteria following the white blink of some rabbit’s tail, in the closing dark she could see across the brae’s shoulder the red light of Kinraddie House shine like a quiet star. So the curly bull prayed and boomed beside her, it was what he was paid for, she neither listened nor cared.

And that brought the funeral, it was raining early in the dawn when they woke, a fine drizzle that seeped and seeped from the sky, so soft and fine you’d think it snow without whiteness; there was no sun at all at first but it came up at last, a red ball, and hung there so till ten o’clock brought up the first of the funeral folk, and that was Chae, and his father-in-law, syne Ellison and Maitland in a gig they loosed in the cornyard, setting the sholtie to graze. And Ellison cried out, but low and decent, I’ll leave him here, me dear, sure he’ll be all right, won’t he? and Chris smiled and said Fine, Mr Ellison, and he goggled his eyes, Irish as ever, you could never change Erbert Ellison, not even for the worse, folk said. Next there came a whole drove of folk, the factor, the minister, Cuddiestoun with his ill-marled face like a potato-park dug in coarse weather, but a fine white front, new-starched, to cover his working sark, and cuffs that fair chafed his meikle red hands, right decent, and he’d on fine yellow boots on his meikle feet. Rob of the Mill and Alec Mutch came next, you could hear their tongues from the foot of Blawearie brae, folk were affronted and went out and cried Wheest-wheest! down to them, and Rob called back What is’t? and faith! it would have been better if they’d been left alone, what with the wheesting and whispering that rose.

But they were real good, Rob bringing a bottle of whisky, Glenlivet it was, and Alec a half-bottle, they whisked them over to Uncle Tam when nobody looked; or anyway not a body but looked the other way and spoke, canny-like, of the weather. The kitchen was fair crowded, so was the room, like a threshing-day, folk sat and each had a dram, Mr Gibbon said Spirits? Yes, thank you, I’ll have a drop, there’d have been barely enough to go round but for Rob and Alec. Then they heard another gig come up the hill, it was Gordon’s from Upperhill, him and his foreman. Uncle Tam winked at the whisky, You’ll have a dram, Upperhill, you and your man? but Mr Gordon said, sniffy-like, I hardly think it shows respect and Ewan’s tee-tee as well.

Long Rob of the Mill sat next the door, he winked at Chris and then at Ewan Tavendale, Εwan turned fair red and said nothing. So he hadn’t a dram, he’d have liked one fine, Chris guessed, and felt mean and pleased and shy, and then gave herself a shake inside, what did it matter to her? Then the minister looked at his watch and the undertaker came in about, and then last of all, they hadn’t expected the poor old stock, there was Pooty on the doorstep, he’d on a clean collar and shirt and an old hat, green but well-brushed; and when Uncle whispered if he’d have a dram he said Och, ay, it’s the custom, isn’t it? and had two.

The undertaker had gone up by then, Uncle with him, folk followed them one by one and came down, syne Auntie beckoned Chris to the neuk of the stair and said Would you like to see him before he’s screwed down?

Uncle Tam and Long Rob of the Mill were there and as Chris went in Long Rob said Well, well, good-bye, Blawearie man, and shook father’s hand, his eyes looked queer when he turned away, he said He was a fine neighbour and went out and closed the door. Chris stood and looked at her father, seeing him so plain as never in life she’d seen him, he’d been over-restless for that and quick enough he’d have raged at you had you glowered at his face like this. Still enough now, never-moving there in the coffin, he seemed to have changed already since he died, the face sunk in, it wasn’t John Guthrie and yet it was. Uncle whispered behind her, him and the undertaker, and then Auntie was beside her, They’re to screw it down now, kiss your father, Chris. But she shook her head, she couldn’t do that, the room was still as they looked at her, for a moment she felt almost sick again as in those evening hours when that in the coffin had lain and whispered that she should lie with it. Then she just said Good-bye father, and turned from him and went down to her own room and put on her coat and hat, it wasn’t decent for a quean to go to a funeral, folk said, but in Blawearie’s case there was no son or brother to see him into the kirkyard.

Chae and Long Rob and Ellison and Gordon carried the coffin down to the stair-foot, and settled it on their shoulders there, and went slow with it out through the front door then; and the rain held off a little, wind blowing in their faces, though, as they held down the hill. Behind walked the Reverend Gibbon, bare-headed, all the folk were bareheaded but Chris, Long Rob and Chae stepping easily and cannily, Ellison as well, but Gordon quivering at his coffin corner, he’d have done better with a dram to steady him up. But Chris walked free and uncaring, soon as the burial was over she’d be free as never in her life she’d been, she lifted her face to the blow of the wet September wind and the world that was free to her. Then it was that she saw Ewan Tavendale walked beside her, he glanced down just then and straight and fair up into his eyes she looked, she nearly stumbled in the slow walk because of that lo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• About the Author
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Note on the Text
• Map of Kinraddie
• Prelude
• The Unfurrowed Field
• The Song
• I Ploughing
• II Drilling
• III Seed-Time
• IV Harvest
• Epilude
• The Unfurrowed Field
• Notes
• Promo page for other Canongate titles