This is the story I heard from a distant cousin of mine. A Siarach. Westsider. This was my last year in the Coastguard Service. You’re not going to hear about any incident we co-ordinated. But I’ll tell you a story I heard on watch. Courtesy of the master-mariner who became a trainee. I’ve got one for you. I’m passing it on, he said. This is it.
There was a blind woman in the village of Barvas. She had sons. The eldest was on the village boat. The Barvas men never went to sea until they heard that the fish were running. The risks were too high because the surf comes in strong on a steep beach. There’s nowhere to run for miles and miles, north or south.
They went for the biorach, the piked dogfish. Fish everyone else thought were a menace, tearing herring nets. But, on the west sides of North Lewis, and off North Uist too, they went out with longlines to take the biorach. They dried and salted them. Sometimes they’d be smoked. Sometimes they’d be buried deep into the frame of a coil of hay so when the wind blew through the haystack, the grey sharkskin wrinkled and dried too. So the fish was preserved.
The word came from Bragar and from Ballantrushall that the biorach were running. So the Barvas boat was out with the rest of them. But they were all caught in a sudden squall. They didn’t manage home in daylight. So the whole village was out there on the beach. Lanterns held up to help the boys find their way in. Everyone was scanning the white line of the surf, hoping to catch a glimpse of red sail.
But the mother of the skipper was searching with her hearing. Remember she was blind. She was noting the fall of the stones, great round boulders being shifted and running back down the slope. She heard a sound that was different to the rest. She knew it was him.
So she was the first to perceive that her son had come back. The shock brought her sight to her. So she saw him. She saw her son for the first time when his body was returned to her on the Barvas shore.