Stuhlabahl, Isle of Harris, A painting by Rob Miller

Stulhabahl

Isle Of Harris
60 cm x 90 cm
mixed media on canvas



Stulabahl is a low lying mountain in the middle of the Isle of Harris. Its composed of the oldest rocks in Europe which have been scraped by ice and worn by the relentless Atlantic winds; this makes a great subject to paint. The sheets of rocks survive as do the occasional pile of stones which are all that appears to be left in the spaces where the remnants of the villages and towns folk failed to make a living, of woodland little is left though once the birch was a proud specimen, as told in the "wood of Hallaig" in the great poem by the Gaelic poet Sorley Maclean. This were unbelievable hard times for the islanders, a failure to make a living means a failure to live, and how this relates to the emotions and endeavours of man then to secure enough food I know not, I can only guess at the  abject feeling of the consequence of failure, so much so that it is inconceivable today in 2010 when people with little intellect and great access to education get by illiterately with 11 kids all fed by a welfare state, to even consider the same things and know  sufferings.
For this reason I've also added a "you tube"  Russian balled, it seems to me that here in Europe peoples have suffered similar fates and adventures with society as we know it, serviced by the collaboration a thin veneer of the pain that lies beneath

‘Time, the deer, is in the Wood of Hallaig.’


The window is nailed and boarded
through which I saw the West
and my love is at the Burn of Hallaig,
a birch tree, and she has always been
between Inver and Milk Hollow,
here and there about Baile-chuirn:
she is a birch, a hazel,
a straight slender young rowan.

In Screapadal of my people,
where Norman and Big Hector were,
their daughters and their sons are a wood
going up beside the stream.


Proud tonight the pine cocks
crowing on the top of Cnoc an Ra,
straight their backs in the moonlight –
they are not the wood I love.
I will wait for the birch wood
until it comes up by the Cairn,
until the whole ridge from Beinn na Lice
will be under its shade.
If it does not, I will go down to Hallaig,
to the sabbath of the dead,
where the people are frequenting,
every single generation gone.


They are still in Hallaig,
MacLeans and MacLeods,
all who were there in the time of Mac Gille Chaluim:
the dead have been seen alive



‘Tha tìm, am fiadh, an Coille Hallaig.’