• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • About Jura
    • Tour over the island
    • Isle of Jura Distillery
    • Jura House Garden
    • The Paps of Jura
    • Isle of Jura Map
    • Isle of Jura Wildlife
    • Isle of Jura Books
    • Isle of Jura Video
  • Accommodation
  • Images
    • Jura Prints & Canvas
    • Image Gallery
    • Isle of Jura Back in Time
    • Jura Wallpapers
    • Jura Wallpaper II
    • Panorama Pictures
    • Jura House Garden
    • Paps in Winter
  • History
    • Isle of Jura History
    • Martin Martin on Jura
    • Alfred Barnard on Jura
  • Travel
  • Site Menu
    • Isle of Jura Links
    • Jura Info Archive
    • Legal and Contact
  • Isle of Jura Blog
  • Islay

Isle of Jura Scotland

The Scottish Isle of Jura off the west coast of Scotland

  • Accommodation
  • Isle of Jura Tour
  • Genealogy
  • The Paps of Jura
  • Blog Archives

John Burnside’s Month on the Isle of Jura

November 23, 2008 by Ron Leave a Comment

A Lonely Tree on the Isle of JuraEarlier I wrote about the Jura Malt Whisky Writer Retreat. The Scottish Book Trust and Isle of Jura malt whisky are working together to offer writers the opportunity to spend a month living and writing on the Isle of Jura. Each selected writer receives a month’s exclusive use of the luxurious distillery lodge, a bursary and travel expenses. In the first article I quoted an article of John Burnside for the Scotsman and a couple of weeks ago I found another article from his hand in the Times Online. John has a way of writing about the island which makes you think you see if happen before your eyes and I loved reading his second article, from which I quoted a good part:

Donald Ewan Darroch looks up at me from the haunch of venison he’s in the process of quartering. I’m a slow butcher, he says, with a wry smile and, though I have no way of knowing if he is slow or not, I agree, mostly because it’s such a pleasure to watch him work – as I have done all morning,

ever since I left my car by the ferry and walked half a mile along the shore to his house, passing the big, wind-thrawn rowan tree on the beach by the

sailors’ graves and stopping now and then to pick a citrus-coloured shell from the white sand, the solitary, elm-green deer larder always in view as I

negotiated a path through the rocks and the dark, brown trickles of water and peat spilling on to the sand from the slopes above.

I am on the Isle of Jura. I came here to write poems and stories, beneficiary of one of those invaluable retreats that contemporary writers, like the

monks and mystics of old, can hardly do without. Here, I can sit all night over a paragraph and not worry about the morning. Here, I can walk all day, crossing the fairy-haunted hills, with the place-names ringing in my head – Cróm Dhoire, Beinn Shiantaidh, Leac Fhola – and waiting for the image that will capture the local and specific now, of which, according to Emily Dickinson, forever

is composed.

That different time is everywhere on Jura. In the walled garden of Jura House, where one of the gardeners wraps a slice of elm wood in a sack and fastens

it to the sluice for a month, so the water will flow through and season the wood. In the way people here think about the dead, not letting them slip

forgotten into the past, but talking about them, always, as if they were still present. People here characterise the mainland as a buzz of noise and

impatience, a place they visit reluctantly, and from which they are glad to return…..

John ends his article with a nice poem:

The old days were better for mourning;

better for tongue-tacked girls in ruined plaid

climbing a hillside to gather the rainwashed bones

of what they had lost that winter to the cold;

and men in the prime of their lives, with dwindled sight,

gathering rowans to lay on an empty grave

and thinking of the dead, away at sea,

who dream of nothing more than Leac Fhola

Filed Under: Travel Reports Tagged With: report, retreat, travel, writing

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

About Jura Info

This website, formerly known as Jura Info, is run by Ron, former resident on the Isle of Islay. I frequently visit Jura and post my pictures, news and other info here. Thanks for visiting.


Search our Site

Recommended Reading

Landranger Jura Map This map is part of the Landranger (Pink) series and is designed for people who really want to get to know an area. This map makes your Jura Discovery a lot easier and is a must for every visitor of Jura.
More info...

Walking Jura A guide to the best walking on Scotland's remote Southern Hebrides - Jura, Islay, Colonsay and Oronsay. Jura, Islay and Colonsay offer some of wildest scenery in the British Isles. More info...

Featured Accommodation

Images and Text Copyright Jura Info · Built and hosted by Braveheart Web Design