John Buchan – Section 8.
8. The pre-Columbian Founding of America.
Past the Island of Apple Trees.
And the little Island of Sheep.
John Buchan amongst his varied interests shared a belief that centuries before Christopher Columbus’s epic voyage of 1492 that expeditions of “Norseman” had landed on the continent of North America and that there had been a Scottish involvement in some of these enterprises. This interest appears in the pages of some of Buchan’s writings.
The discovery of a Norse settlement in 1960 at L’anse aux Meadows at the northern end of Newfoundland dated to approximately 1000AD would have captivated Buchan. He would also have approved of the site being adjudged a UNESCO World Heritage Site. A second site at the southern end of Newfoundland has recently been discovered by "Space Archaelogy" - this event is the centrepeice of a BBC documentary aired on BBC1 on 04-04-2016 hosted by Dan Snow titled The Vikings Uncovered. An added interest to this is the ongoing discussions as to who were the leaders of these expeditions and other later expeditions to Newfoundland. One side of the debate suggests that Henry Sinclair (c1345-c1400) who was the Scottish Earl of Orkney and Caithness and who was also the Norwegian Jarl of Orkney and a Norwegian Admiral who was involved in such expeditions in the late fourteenth century. Connected with this story are the Venetian Navigators Nicolo and Antonio Zen who visited the remote archipelago known by the Vikings as Faeroisland - the islands of the sheep. This is the present day Faroe Islands.
The epigraph at the head of this page is taken from Buchan’s poem The Blessed Isles which appears in his book of children’s stories The Long Traverse1 published posthumously in 1941. The reference to the Blessed Isles and the island of apple trees in the poem are from Arthurian legend - see below. (The complete poem appears at the end of this narrative.) In The Long Traverse poems are interspersed between each story as an epigraph and this poem follows the story titled The Man who Dreamed of Islands. This story is about one Allan Macdonnell who reached the Pacific Ocean from Canada four years before the date of 1793 which is the date recorded by, his fellow Scot, Alexander Mackenzie of the first crossing of the Americas north of Mexico. This story compares with the pre-Columbian voyages to Newfoundland.
The Long Traverse is Buchan’s last book and we have to go back more than forty years to find Buchan’s first reference to his interest in Lands to the West and his preoccupation with islands and also with apples. This is in the short story titled The Far Islands which was first published in the November 1899 issue of Blackwood’s Magazine and collected into The Watcher by the Threshold and Other Tales2 in 1902.
The Far Islands introduces readers to the Raden family “who away up in that north-west corner of Scotland they have ruled since the days of Noah.”3 The story outlines the doings of the various Radens through the ages up to the most recent holder of the name – Colin Raden. Many of the Radens were adventurers particularly one Colin the Red “who carried his flag of three stars against the easterly Vikings --- a master-mind by all accounts but cursed with a habit of fantasy; for hearing in his old age of a land to the westward, he forthwith sailed into the sunset, and three days later was washed up, a twisted body, on one of the outer isles.”4 The reference to three stars is to the emblem of one of the seven ancient Mormaers (Earls) of the North - the Mormaer of Moray indicating that the Radens were associated with the Province of Moray. Included in the ancient seven Earldoms are those of Buchan and Caithness. " Being cursed with the habit of fantasy came down to our Colin Raden who had also had visions of islands but also of lands beyond. These visions appeared to Colin in day-dreams, also dreams when in his sickbed at school and finally when mortally wounded by a sniper while on patrol in the desert with his battalion. In his earlier dreams Colin has flashes of Latin phrases that intrigue him and he jots them down. He finally confides in an acquaintance named Medway who is reading for the bar and shows him the scraps of Latin. At first Medway cannot make sense of any of the words until he consults a battered little calf-bound duodecimo “Hullo, by George! Here’s something better – Insula pomorum insula vitæ. That’s Geoffrey of Monmouth. --- Here’s all about your Isle of Apple-trees, situated far out in the Western ocean, beyond the Utmost islands, beyond even the little Isle of Sheep --- lies the Island of Apple-trees --- it is the old ancient story, the Greek Esperides --- and the Apple-tree island is the northern equivalent. -- Colin was entranced --- Could he distinguish the scent of apple trees among the perfumes of the Rim of the Mist. For the moment he thought he could”5
The garden of the Hesperides of Greek Mythology was located in a group of islands situated at the western edge of the then known world and was where Hercules in his Eleventh Labour stole the golden apples. Buchan in his story moved Hesperides with the scent of apples to Raden Country in North-West Scotland where Colin Raden dreamed of fertile lands in the West beyond the isles of the blest.
Buchan's reference to Geoffrey of Monmouth is to Monmouth's writings on the Arthurian Legends and the reference to a little book would be to his Vita Merlini -The Life of Merlin.
The Raden family appear again in John McNab. This book is well known for its poaching story where three bored friends based at Crask in Wester Ross challenge, as a wager, that they could poach stag and salmon from three neighbouring estates. The estates being Castle Raden (stag), Strathlarrig (salmon) and Haripol (stag). The Laird of Castle Raden is “Colonel Alastair Raden --- Family as old as the flood --- he is the last Raden that will live there.”6 However there is an important sub-plot in John McNab which can be considered as a sequel to the Far Islands. This involves the Piper’s Ring on the Raden estate where the Bandicoots the American tenants of Haripol are excavating what they believe is for the coffin of Harold Blacktooth an ancient Viking and ancestor of the Radens. Mr Bandicoot’s quest is successful and he discovers the coffin along with gold torques and other valuable items. But it is not the gold that excites the American but bracelets and a shell necklace. As Bandicoot explained to Colonel Raden “I have found such objects in graves as far apart as Labrador and Rhode island, and as far inland as the Ohio basin --- they are peculiar to the North American continent --- In you, sir, I salute, most reverently salute, the representative of a family to whom belongs the credit hitherto given to Columbus.”7 Buchan has neatly brought together the combined Nordic and Scottish connection for pre Columbian voyages to North America – the land beyond the islands.
JB included in John McNab several clues as to the location of Crask and the adjoining estates. These clues including railway lines/stations etc point to Wester Ross and to the Applecross Peninsula and the Torridon area in particular. As Buchan puts the Raden fastness of John McNab here one can safely presume that the story of the Far Islands is also based here. JB must have known the area very well and enjoyed its spectacular scenery as some of his other stories have episodes in this region such as Fountainblue, and the two Hannay novels Mr. Standfast and the Three Hostages. The word apple in Applecross here is a distraction as Applecross is an anglicised ancient word Aber Crossan (Mouth of the Crossan). A Chistian settlement being founded here in 673 by St. Maelrubha. This lasted for two centuries but was then destroyed by the Vikings. In the Far islands Buchan mentions a Christian monk “ the holy man living on the seagirt isle of Cuna, who was found dead in extreme old age, kneeling on the beach, with his arms, contrary to the fashion of the Church, stretched to the westward.”8
JB continued the use of apple trees to signify something special in the Richard Hannay novel Mr Standfast. Here at the very end of the novel Peter Pienaar V.C. is laid to rest “in the lee of an apple orchard --- the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.”9
Buchan in his novel The Path of the King charts a story commencing with a Nordic Prince whose various descendants are involved in a succession of historic events, such as the Norman Conquest, Joan of Arc etc. to Abraham Lincoln in the USA - The King. This is a journey from Scandanavia to America replicating the story of the founding of North America. Buchan using his knowledge of heraldry cleverly brings in the Scottish Connection during the travels. The Nordic Prince starts off with a golden torque on his arm which by several centuries later is reduced to a gold ring. The ring has three very worn heraldic emblems on it and one Talbot examining it notes “ Lovel bears barry nebuly or chevronelles. This coat has three plain charges --- maybe lions’ heads for Buchan --- Nay, I think that they are Cummin garbs.”10 The Cummin garbs are the emblem of the Earls of Buchan – the ancient Mormaer as distinct from the lions’ heads of the Buchan Clan as on John Buchan’s own armorial.
The Blessed isles.
The air is quiet as a grave,
With never a wandering breeze
Or the fall of a breaking wave
In the hollow shell of the seas.
Ocean and heavens are a maze
Of hues like a peacock’s breast,
And far in the rainbow haze
Lie the isles of the West.
Uist and Barra and Lews---
Honey-sweet are the words---
They set my heart in a muse
And give me wings like a bird’s
Darlings, soon will fly
To the home of the tern and the bee,
And deep in the heather lie
Of the isles of the Sea.
But they say there are other lands,
For him who has heart and will,
Whiter than Barra’s sands,
Greener than Icolmkill,
Where the cool sweet waters flow,
And the White Bird sings in the skies
Such songs are immortals know
In the fields of Paradise.
So I’ll launch my boat on the seas
And sail o’er the shadowy deep,
Past the Island of Apple Trees
And the little island of Sheep,
And follow St. Brandan’s way
Far into the golden West,
Till I harbour at close of day
In the isles of the Blest.
References.
Note. The Edinburgh, Nelson editions. The second publication date and page numbers listed below are from the Unified Editions.
1. Buchan, J, 1941, The Long Traverse, London, Hodder and Stoughton, p 156.
2. Buchan, J, 1902, 1938, The Far Islands, Edinburgh, Nelson.
3. Ibid,p 112.
4. Ibid,p 90.
5. Ibid,p 110-111.
6. Buchan, J, 1925,1933, John McNab, Edinburgh, Nelson, p 24.
7. Ibid, p 127-128.
8. Buchan, J, 1902,1938, The Far Islands, Edinburgh, Nelson, p 90-91
9. Buchan, J, 1919,1936, Mr Standfast, Edinburgh, Nelson, p 503.
10. Buchan, J, 1921, 1923, The Path of the King, Edinburgh, Nelson, p 261.
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