Donald Trump: Half Lewisman Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Son of Mary Anne MacLeod
From the Hebridean Island of Lewis
His mother was born in the village of Tong,
In the parish of Stornoway

Her father was a fisherman
A native Gaelic speaker and a crofter
One of ten, who lived in a black house
Heather-thatched and sooty

There, life was hard. Bleak moors, few trees, peat bog
And a machair of sandy soil and shattered shells

The golden eagle spreads its wings on Lewis
Red deer and seal, feed on its heart and fringes.

Once it was part of the Norsemen's kingdom
This place of strict Sabbaths and crumbling peat

The Gaelic name of Leòdhas, from the Norse Ljoðahús
Great song house, Eilean an Fhraoich, the Heather Isle

This is the land of the Callanish Stones
The Sleeping Beauty, Cailleach Na Mointeach
Old woman of the moors

The Lewis chessmen lay in its sandy shore
Walrus ivory. medieval chess set

Shag, gannet, fulmar, kittiwake, and guillemot,
Share its winds with the ubiquitous gulls.
Red grouse, woodcock and the white-tailed eagle
Soar over its moors. Oyster catcher, curlew
Peregrine, merlin and buzzard swoop on its slopes
Atlantic salmon, dolphin, porpoise, shark
Swim in its offshore waters

Here you will meet with Seonaidh - a water-spirit
Who likes to be offered ale
Or one of the Blue Men of the Minch,
Storm kelpies, fear gorm looking for sailors to drown
For stricken boats to sink.

Here is the ruined home of the giant Cuithach,
Trapped by the Fians, and killed to protect the people

Still in a village ceilidh-house
You may hear the Song of the Boatman
Tell of a woman, sad and tearful
As a white, torn swan sounding her death-call
On a small grassy loch forsaken by all,
On the lonely isle of Lewis