Stick Island

       On our latest trip to Mull, we did what tourists to Mull have been doing for over 300 years - we paid locals with a boat to take us out to the island of Staffa.

      I'd heard of Staffa, of course. I was raised by a man fascinated by geology, for one thing. I knew that Mendelssohn had been so gob-smacked by it that he wrote 'Fingal's Cave' and the Hebrides Overture. I was keen to go and see it.

      But you know what they say about film and photographs never doing justice to a place? That's true of Staffa, cubed. When the boat came alongside the island, under the cliffs - well, I damn near wrote an overture.

      None of these photos, let me make it clear, even begin to do justice to this amazing, numinous place.
      It has no safe anchorage. We went ashore, but were only able to because the weather was extremely good and the sea calm. The skipper told us that if the sea is at all choppy, it's impossible to land.
     The name of the island is Norse. The 'a' at the end is common in Norse and Saxon place-names. The 'y' at the end of Ely is the same word. Barra, Ulva, Canna - the 'a' at the end of them all means 'island.'
     The 'Staff' part can be translated in various ways, but it's come down to us as the word 'staff' or 'stave' - so the boat's skipper wasn't wrong when he translated it as 'Stick Island.' Others translate it as 'pillar' and say the Vikings were reminded of the wooden pillars that supported their houses.
      Imagine being a viking, though, and passing this place, this strange concoction of stone rising straight out of the sea, unlike any other place on earth. Why did the gods create it?

There are three layers to Staffa. There's the smooth, beige-brown rock at the bottom. That's volcanic lava, or tuff. It's volcanic ash, consolidated into rock.
     The second layer, those spectacular sticks, is black basalt - a great, thick layer of black basalt - which has cooled slowly. This slow cooling caused it to contract and take on this crystalline structure of hexagonal columns.
     Above the columns is a sort of wild top-knot of solid rock. That's not turf or grass you're looking at, but basalt.

Coming in to the jetty

Presumably, this basalt cooled much faster and didn't crystallise. Instead there's this wild tangle of half-formed columns and dabs and dobs and rocks that looks as if it's been frothed up with a whisk. It bulges in places like the top of a muffin, but it's solid basalt.
      If you're reminded of the Giant's Causeway, that's not surprising. Staffa was produced by the same eruption that produced the Causeway and there are similar, but smaller, pillared cliffs all over Mull, often producing an oddly striped, humbug effect on mountainsides.

According to legend, an Irish giant built the Causeway, so he could cross the Irish Sea and beat up a Scottish giant on the other side. It turned out, thought, that the Scots giant was much bigger and fiercer than expected, and so the Irish giant tore up his own causeway in a panic, to prevent the Scots giant reaching him. Staffa is all that's left of the Scottish end.
     I can believe it. Lots of people have made that mistake when tangling with Scots. Best leave them alone and never, ever poke them sticks.

Staffa has a tiny wooden jetty against one cliff, where the boat tied up. I don't like to think about who built this jetty or how they managed it. (Where did they stand? Where did they put down their tools?)
      From the jetty a metal staircase goes straight up the cliff, almost vertically. Occasionally, it uses the flat tops of basalt columns in place of steps. I had to almost run up these steps because I was first out of the boat and had to keep ahead of everyone else. I reached the top more dead than alive - to be greeted by a massed choir of skylarks, which revived me.

A primrose on Staffa

I think that's Rhum on the horizon.

Celendine and violets - I leave you to imagine the sky-larks singing above.

I was promised puffins, but the puffins saw us coming and $%"* off into the sea. They must get fed up of tourists. There were some skuas bullying peewits.The skylarks avoided all that by staying in the upper atmosphere and carpet-bombing with song.

The island is now owned by the National Trust but people did once live on it. I can hardly believe this, but there were the remains of fields to be seen and when Sir Joseph Banks visited in 1772, he stayed at the only house on the island, and caught lice. The single family who farmed on Staffa lived on oats, potatoes and the milk and meat of their few grazing animals. By 1800, 'terrified of the winter storms,' they'd given up and I don't blame them.

Staffa's cliffs

We had an hour on the island, which is about a kilometre or half-mile long and half that wide. What must it have been like to live, perched up on top of that rock, with no company other than your immediate family? - We were lucky, we could enjoy it for an hour and then leave. We scrambled back down that dizzy staircase into the boat. As the boat turned back for Mull and Iona, we passed Am Buachaille, The Herdsman.

      If you squint at this shot, below, you may be able to see some puffins scattered about. I am told they are there. I can't see them.

I listened to Mendelssohn's 'Fingal's Cave' when I got back to civilisation. I don't think he did the place justice any more than my photos do.
     It was an exhilarating trip but saddening too, because I kept wishing my Dad had been there. He would have known about all the geology and all the birds and plants too. He would have been fit to be tied. We would have had to set traps to get him back on the boat. So, this blog's for Dad.

Recipe: Clootie or Clowtie?

                My partner is a Scot, born in Edinburgh and raised in Fife, and he sometimes reminisces about the treats of his childhood: black bun, clapshot, tablet and skirlie.

            He was particularly fond of clootie dumpling.  ‘The skin round the outside was the best bit.’

 

            I said I’d make him one for his birthday.  There were recipes for it all over the internet, of course, but most of them seemed to be about how to cook one in a basin, and to get the ‘skin’, it has to be cooked the traditional way, in a cloot.  Or, what I, coming from the Black Country, would call a ‘clowt’.  (One of the many, many things we argue about is whether it’s a clowt or a cloot you shouldn’t cast before May is out – or oot.)

In the end, I got instructions from Davy’s older sister.  And if you, too, have a wish to cook in the old-fashioned – positively medieval – way, here is how to perpetrate a clootie dumpling.

Surround yourself with the following ingredients:

125g  or four and a half ounces of suet

250g  or 9 oz plain flour
125g or four and a half ounces of oatmeal
250g or 9 ozs mixed sultanas and currants
1 tablespoon of golden syrup or treacle
75g or 3 ozs sugar

2 lightly beaten eggs
1 teaspoon of ginger 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
1 teaspoon of baking powder
4 tablespoons of milk
Flour for the cloot (or clowt)

            You can add a tablespoon of any spirit of your choice to it – whisky, brandy, rum – if you wish.

            Rub the suet into the flour as if making pastry – that is, you rub with your fingertips until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs.

            Then add the oatmeal, baking powder, sugar, dried fruit, and the ginger and cinnamon.  Mix it all up well; then add the eggs and syrup.  Mix well again, and add the alcohol, if you’re using it.  Add milk gradually and only until you have a firm mixture.  You want firm, not sloppy, or it’ll be hard to tie up in a cloot.

            Then for the interesting bit.  First scald your chosen cloot (or clowt) in boiling water, and spread it out, steaming, on a work-top.  Sprinkle plentifully with plain flour.  It’s this flour which, when it hits the water in the pan, will instantly form a seal and prevents the water getting in.  It also forms the prized ‘skin’ of the dumpling.

Plain flour spread over a hot wet tea-towel looks a right mess.

            Dump your pudding mixture into the middle of this hot, wet, flour-covered clowt (or cloot), and tie it up loosely with a string.  A pudding-string, in fact.

‘Sing, sing, what shall I sing?

The cat has stolen the pudding string!

Do, do, what shall I do?

The cat has bitten it right in two!’

            You tie the pudding up loosely to allow it a bit of space to expand.

            To cook the thing, take a large pan, and place an upside down saucer at the bottom.  Fill with hot water and bring to the boil.  When the water is roiling away, put in the pudding.  The instant sealing, regrettably, doesn’t announce itself with any kind of hiss or other sign (I was disappointed to discover).  Cover with more water if necessary, and boil it for three blessed hours.

            Keep checking on it, so it doesn’t boil dry, and add more boiling water as necessary.

            Of course, you can be unadventurous, and cook it in a bowl, in which case you’ll need to grease the bowl well, and leave an inch of space at the top for the thing to grow.  Cover it with greaseproof paper and tie firmly with any pudding-string the cat has left unchewed.  You still have to boil it for three hours.

            You can have more fun with a clootie by putting small coins into it, and your guests can try to eat without breaking their teeth or choking.  I see that, on the internet, they suggest first boiling these ‘small coins or charms’ and then wrapping them in waxed paper.  Davy sneers at such namby-pambiness.  Bung them in unwrapped and improve your family’s immune system!

            After three hours, you can fish the thing out, unveil it, and have at it with knives and other weaponry.  I accept no responsibility, should it fight back.

Some authorities say you should dry the skin of damp flour out by baking it for a few minutes  - others regard this idea with horror.  So, take your choice.

            Davy is of the non-drying school, and declared himself well pleased with his birthday Clootie, which we ate with custard – though naturally, cream or ice-cream will do just as well.

            My opinion?  It’s boiled fruit cake: fruity, spicy and sweet.  The especial deliciousness of the skin, I’m afraid, evaded me.  Baking it dry and crisp would surely improve it, but I was forbidden so to do and haven’t tried it since.

            The versatile clootie can also be spread with butter and jam, which I can’t help feeling is over-kill, or with cheese, much as rich fruit cake is eaten with Wensleydale.  Which is delicious, and so clootie and cheese probably is too, though I haven't tried it.

Left-over clootie can be sliced and fried in butter, as it was in Camelot, in the days when King Arthur was a thieving king   – 

‘And on that fruity pudding

All the knights and horses dined,

And what they couldn’t eat that night

The Queen next morning fried.’

            Though whether Guinevere served the fried pudding with bacon and beans, as I’ve seen recommended for clootie dumpling, is not recorded.  I can only imagine that raging indigestion would be the result, but I don’t speak from experience.   Perhaps someone who’s dared will let me know.

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