Edinburgh International Book Festival: Stuart McHardy and Gary West

When two authors are billed together there is, generally speaking, an obvious common factor in their work. Stuart McHardy's The Pagan Symbols of the Picts and Gary West's Voicing Scotland: Folk, Culture, Nation are two very different books but the common theme of oral tradition provided a tenuous link. Stuart McHardy is an independent scholar specialising in Pictish history. As his latest work interprets Pictish symbols its tempting to draw a parallel with Dan Brown's fictional symbologist Robert Langdon - and McHardy has also written a book about the Holy Grail. In this text he argues we have been looking at prehistory through a borrowed perspective. Agreeing that history is written by the winners, McHardy claims that we will find the history of the losers in oral culture.

To illustrate his point he told the audience that Aborginial folk lore spoke of how Australia had once been populated by giant animals, a notion that was dismissed by the colonisers until giant bones were excavated. This legend had never been written down but instead survived orally over 40,000 years. McHardy used this principle for his own research, looking at the oral culture of Scotland and the folklore of the Picts and their neighbours in an attempt to find an underlying corpus of ideas. One discovery he revealed is that there was a goddess-centred spirituality in pre-Christian Scotland, again not helping himself with the Langdon comparison.

West wanted to write a book that combined his academic work - he's a professor of Celtic and Scottish studies at Edinburgh University - and his passion for music (he's an accomplished piper and founder of the ceilidh band Hugh MacDiarmid's Haircut). West stated that there is a theory that we live in a post-traditional world and are heading for an inevitable sameness in Western society; this is known as “negative globalisation.” His book argues that instead of resulting in sameness, globalisation instead creates a platform where we might celebrate difference.

West feels Scotland has a great deal to say to positive globalisation, as we have such a rich tradition of oral culture in the form of songs, poems, music and stories, both as a nation and locally. “Voicing Scotland” is not an overview of oral traditions, but about the people and music that have inspired West directly. It is easy to see the appeal of this book to those with an interest in folk music, as West doesn't simply explain the history of the folk songs but also includes the lyrics and details of how they were performed musically. Not content to simply talk about the power and importance of oral tradition, the two authors ended the talk by performing a rendition of Banks of Sicily with West on small pipes and McHardy on guitar. As several members of the audience began to whistle and sing along it was a great example of the presence of the oral traditions they had been talking about. [Rowena McIntosh]