ABSTRACT
In the summer of 19861 I took with me to Whalsay, Shetland, the first draft of a book I was writing about the community, intending to show it to some of the people about whom I had written. One man who looms large in part of the book is a controversial figure locally, well known for the single-mindedness and vigour with which he pursues his campaigns. Notwithstanding the regard and affection I have for him, I had tried to write about him ‘warts and all’, reporting his somewhat ambivalent standing in the estimations of the islanders. I also made reference to several anecdotes which are frequently offered by Whalsay people as evidence of his idiosyncratic behaviour. He did not object to any of this, nor to my account of the extremely contentious manner in which he had campaigned thirty years ago for a harbour development, an argument which caused considerable strife within the community and which still evokes painful memories. He made only one objection: to my description of his brief fishing career as ‘inglorious’, the judgement of it which was certainly made by the many people who had commented about it to me. Far from being ‘inglorious’, he said, it had been ‘da maist glorious’ time of his life. He also explained away in rather prosaic terms the stories which I had proffered as indicating his absent-mindedness and iconoclasm.
