{"id":1719,"date":"2019-05-09T15:30:18","date_gmt":"2019-05-09T14:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/edinburghuniversityarchives\/?p=1719"},"modified":"2019-06-06T16:38:35","modified_gmt":"2019-06-06T15:38:35","slug":"fifty-years-of-an-orkney-tapestry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/edinburghuniversityarchives\/2019\/05\/09\/fifty-years-of-an-orkney-tapestry\/","title":{"rendered":"Fifty Years of ‘An Orkney Tapestry’"},"content":{"rendered":"

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of two of George Mackay Brown<\/strong>\u2019s landmark publications, An Orkney Tapestry<\/em> and A Time to Keep<\/em>. While Brown was already well established as a poet, these works made his reputation as a master of prose.<\/p>\n

Unusually, An Orkney Tapestry<\/em> was a commissioned publication. In late 1967, literary agent Giles Gordon approached Brown on behalf of Victor Gollancz publishers to inquire whether he might be interested in writing a general guide to his native Orkney. Although it was not the kind of work that appealed to Brown, Gollancz were offering a generous advance, and it presented an opportunity of visiting parts of the Orkney archipelago that he had not previously seen. The manuscript that Brown eventually submitted, however, was very far from a conventional guidebook. Instead, in An Orkney Tapestry<\/em>, Brown wove prose, poetry, and drama together to commemorate the stories and traditions that had forged the character of the islands and their inhabitants. <\/p>\n

The book consists of six sections: a polemical sketch of contemporary Orcadian life; a history of the \u2018ghost village’ of Rackwick; a retelling of crucial episodes from the Orkneyinga Saga<\/em>; an essayistic account of Orkney folklore; a short story-like evocation of a ballad singer\u2019s performance at the Renaissance court of Earl Patrick Stuart; and a play \u2018The Watcher\u2019 concerning the apparition of an angel in an everyday Orkney setting.<\/p>\n

Brown\u2019s intention was to stress the importance of stories in creating a community and holding it together. A community cuts itself off from these formative stories at its own peril (p. 23), and Brown feared that the life of contemporary Orkney was increasingly meaningless (p. 19). An Orkney Tapestry is as much a jeremiad as a celebration. Time and again, Brown rails against progress–or rather a dogmatic, utilitarian \u2018religion\u2019 of Progress–as a \u2018cancer\u2019 that \u2018drains the life\u2019 out of \u2018an elemental community\u2019 (p. 53). He laments the loss of the old Orcadian speech and the uniformity created by compulsory education and the omnipresent new media of radio and television. With An Orkney Tapestry<\/em>, he hopes to reawaken Orcadians to their history and traditions, and to inspire them to return to their life-giving roots.<\/p>\n

Edinburgh University Library hold a much-corrected MS draft of An Orkney Tapestry<\/em> (Gen 1868\/5) together with a fair copy with instructions for a typist (Gen 1868\/4). <\/p>\n\n\t\t