Inshriach library, photograph Luke Allan, Jan 2013

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One of the aims of Bothan Suibhne is to broadcast new knowledge and ideas, as well as host residencies. Each of the contributors has their own mind-map of bothys, huts and the tradition of the simple dwelling; sharing books, we learn from one another. Some of Bobby’s and my first conversations sketched an ideal library for the bothy and together we started work on a booklist – books on Sweeney himself, the worldwide ancient hut tradition, philosophy, a Gaelic dictionary, and so on.

Now we have commissioned Dee Heddon and Misha Myers to continue their Walking Library project, sharing books by taking them on a walk.

Dee and Misha will lead a public walk, over two days, June 14-15. You are welcome to do the entire walk with them or join for only part of the way.

The walk will set out from Carbeth, heading South into Glasgow and ending at the Walled Garden for tea, library browsing, and book-reading.
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(AF)

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Bothan Shuibhne: Walking library: Dee Heddon & Misha Myers

In 1794, John Hucks and Coleridge walked to North Wales. Hucks carried with him the poems of Thomas Churchyard.

In 1802, Coleridge walked through Cumberland, carrying with him ‘a shirt, a cravat, two pairs of stockings, tea, sugar, pens and paper, his night-cap, and a book of German poetry wrapped in green oilskin.’ He apparently read the Book of Revelations in Buttermere.

In 1818, Keats travelled the Lake District and up to Scotland with his friend Charles Brown. Keats’ carried Dante’s Divine Comedy, Brown the works of Milton.

In 2012, Walking Librarians walked an imaginary journey to Bothan Suibhne, carrying with them….

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Books and walking have a long history. The Walking Library is an ongoing art project that seeks to bring together walking and books – walking, reading, reflecting, and writing.

The Walking Library took its first walk as part of the Sideways Festival, a peripatetic arts festival that walked 333km from the West to the East of Belgium. For that journey, we asked a general question: ‘what book would you take on a walk?’

The walk for Bothan Shuibhne – a dwelling that is still largely undefined – prompts different questions:

What book would you carry to Bothan Shuibhne – however you imagine it – for both the journey and your arrival?

What book would provide you with shelter? Of solitude or companionship?

What book is a guide or a book to get lost with?

With spines upturned books too shelter worlds. Books as bricks, sometimes as heavy. Leaves that shade. Windows, hearths and thresholds to other times and places.

Though this walk won’t actually take us to Bothan Shuibhne, it will be made with it in mind. We will gather and carry a hand-picked selection of books that will be donated to the Bothy.

We invite you to bring a book for the Walking Library rucksack and join us on the walk that will take place over two days (14-15 June). On Day 1 we will walk from Carbeth to Milngavie; on Day 2 from Milngavie to the Walled Garden. You are welcome to join us for the entire walk or only part.

Dee Heddon & Misha Myers, Sideways Festival, 2012

As with all good libraries, the Walking Library will facilitate a peripatetic reading
group as it journeys, allowing engagement with and reflection on the Walking
Library’s content, and maybe even some sketching with words or images – to be
gathered together into another for the blog, and into a small book for the Bothy.

For anyone not able to make the walk, we will be ending our journey with a tea
party, and invite you to join us in the Walled Garden, bringing a book with you.
A library is always more than a collection of books…

You can read Dee & Misha’s account of the day on their Walking Library blog here.

Dee Heddon & Misha Myers, Sideways Festival, 2012

(DH & MM)

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The Poems of Sweeny Peregrine, Trevor Joyce

 

A Bookshelf for Sweeney’s Bothy

Sweeney Astray: A Version from the Irish – a version of the Irish poem Buile Shuibhne, Seamus Heaney (1983)

Courts of Air and Earth, Trevor Joyce (2008)

The Poems of Sweeny Peregrine: A Working of the Corrupt Irish Text, Trevor Joyce (1976)

Sweeney Agonistes: Fragments of an Aristophanic Melodrama, T.S. Eliot (1932)

At Swim-Two-Birds, Flann O’Brien (1939)

Four Huts: Asian Writings on the Simple Life (‘Record of the Thatched Hall on Mount Lu,’ by the T’ang poet, Po Chu-i; ‘Record of the Pond Pavilion’ by Yoshishige no Yasutane; ‘Record of the Ten-Foot-Square-Hut’ by Kamo no Chomei; and ‘Record of the Hut of the Phantom’ by Matsuo Basho), translated by Burton Watson (1994)

Han Shan: Cold Mountain Poems, trans. Gary Snyder (1969)

Walden, H. D. Thoreau (1854)

the deer path to my door, Gerry Loose (2009)

‘building, dwelling, thinking’, in Poetry, Language, Thought, Martin Heidegger, trans. Albert Hofstadter (1971)

Home Work: Handbuilt Shelter, Lloyd Kahn (2004)

Gaelic Dictionary

Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character, Jonathan Shay (1995)

Birdy, William Wharton, (1978)
(AF, LA, TBP)

 

You can read Dee & Misha’s account of the day on their Walking Library blog here.

 

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Bothan Shuibhne | Sweeney’s Bothy
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Alec Finlay & The Bothy Project
commissioned as part of Creative Scotland’s ‘Year of Natural Scotland 2013

sketch for Bothan Shuibhne, AF, 2013
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the thorn //memory of Suibhne’s spear
and the harsh brang of battle
is the riddle for our design// to resolve
circle poem, Alec Finlay, 2005
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how shall we bring//the thorn
///into translation
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how shall the sharpness//& aggression
of the thorn thicket//come
into a settled configuration
that will flower//as dwelling
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///WARD & WELCOME
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/////////blackthorn
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sketch for Bothan Shuibhne, AF, 2013
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sketch a spicule//its sharpness
will give severe offense
to health & safety regulations
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the thorn marks//Suibhne’s aloneness
which inspires us
///////////////////////& challenges us
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sharing the bothy//creatively
heals this sense//of isolation
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despite what thorns represent
it was never our intention
to make a hedgehog hut
a form of schiltron
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///HAWTHORN
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//////schiltron
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the feisty folk of the thistle
borrowed from nature
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the schiltron//which the Scots armies
were famed for//stretching back to the Picts
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a compact bristling mass of spears
and sharpened stakes//schiltrons
epitomize the grim resilience
of folk who had less//heavy horse
knights//the tanks of their day
////////////than their foes
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an eye-witness at Bannockburn
describes a rectangular schiltron
armed with pikes & axes
advancing
/////////////like a thick-set hedge
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such a hostile prickily bothy
wasn’t our aspiration//nevertheless military
themes endure//in contemporary survivalism
outcasts of the cabin
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////(a theme discussed by the American poet Susan Tichy
////in her post on the mountain huts of Colorado)
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the thorn trees morphology
is torn with intensity
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a form of wildness//characterized
by a seemingly chaotic//dense
////patterned structure
//////an arrow shower
//////a needled bower
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the thorn
has it’s reason
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it grows
through a series
of internalized//rejections
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//////////the thorn proceeds
//////////by throwing itself
//////////out of symmetry
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/poem-label, Alec Finlay, 2013
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we began our design
looking at the thorn
considering the trees form
getting lost
in the thicket
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///////T
/////H//H
////O////O
///R//////R
//N////////N
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an early sketch shows
thorns as arches
like crossed spears
or a pair of whale tusks
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a cruciform to cradle
the shelter capsule
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suspended above the ground
the floating hut would
recall Suibhne’s levitation
at the battle of Magh Rath
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//when the giddiness
//came over Shuibhne
//intoxicated with horror,
//panic, dismay, fear,
//flightiness, giddiness, & terror
//his joints a shaking mass
//& he rose into the air
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////R
///O/O
//N///N
//A///A
//N///N
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Suibhne’s thorn-filled glen
recalls the scene of battle
so the suspended hut
could also echo//Ronan’s bell
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sketch of thorn-pilotis for Bothan Shuibhne, AF
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drawing the thorn
over and over again
the blackthorn’s profusion
reduced to a single articulation
/a figure
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/a thorn motif
that Iain could translate
into architecture
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//////////////////////////////////////////////////////T//////T
/////////////////////////////////////////////T/////H//H
////////////////////////////////////////////////H//O
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////R
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////N
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the working design
raised the simplified thorn
turning its points skywards
away from delicate flesh
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the thorn column//embedded in
the slope of the roof
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in some sketches//thorns stuck
through the building’s fabric
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thorn-pilotis, architectural rendering, 2013
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the thorn had found a purpose
as pillar, or pilotis
which Iain described
in his first computer drawing
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/////////LOOSE SKY
/////////TAUT STEEL
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//////////////stele
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we discussed how//our thorn supports
might have a bearing on//the hut’s
final built form
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the thorn column//suggested
extending the angled roof//outward
beyond the bothy walls?
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a space began to open
//a verandah
within which the thorn-pilotis
//would hover
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I thought back to visits
a0t the hostel on Berneray
where on sunny days
people would laze
in the generous stone mantles
of the blackhouse windows
sheltered from the breeze
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/////////AS FAR AS
//THE MOMENT SEES
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/////////////view
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/////////AS FAR AS
//THE MOMENT SEAS
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/////////////blue
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in a small hut like Sweeney’s
a verandah deepens
the sense of being//in the wilds
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the platform//creates a zone
that is part-interior//being sheltered
& at the same time
part-of-the-surroundings
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when the sun shines
people can use
the verandah as a workplace
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we began to consider
the threeness//of the interior
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///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////work
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/////////////////////////////////////////////////////live/////////sleep
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other ideas began to crystallize
as poems & sketches
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three thorns
are decided on
each one
defined by its
purpose
/
/
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threeness//of the//thorn
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///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////roof
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////////////////////////////////////////////////////bed///////shower
/
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Bothan Shuibhne, Iain MacLeod, 2013
the shower thorn is visible
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Bothan Shuibhne, Iain MacLeod, 2013
showing the original thorn pilotis
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the canopy floats
a hands-width
from the walls
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Bothan Shuibhne, Iain MacLeod, 2013
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/
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/////////FLOATING BED
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/////////////thorn-tree
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text: AF
images: AF & IM
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Bothan Shuibhne | Sweeney’s Bothy
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Alec Finlay & The Bothy Project
commissioned as part of Creative Scotland’s ‘Year of Natural Scotland 2013’
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Sweeney’s Bothy: Introduction
Some Huts

Sweeney’s Bothy mid-build, December 2013, photograph BN
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Welcome to Bothan Shuibhne (Sweeney’s Bothy). The project is a collaboration between The Bothy Project (Bobby Niven and Iain Macleod), and artist-poet Alec Finlay. We are also working closely with Alex Webb Allen and Luke Allan, as well as a host of contributors.
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Together we are going to design and construct a modest zero-carbon dwelling, a bothy, on the Isle of Eigg, off the West coast of Scotland. Once it is complete, towards the end of the summer, Bothan Shuibhne will host creative residencies, with a focus on wilderness ecology.
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Over the course of 2013 a host of collaborators will add to the project, and each of them will publish a post on this blog.
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Before we finalize the plans for the building – and before we start ordering materials and taking the handles of the wheelbarrow in our hands – we will share some reflections on what such a bothy might be, or become, drawing on hut traditions, the thoughts of fellow poets, artists, and architects, as well as the words and images of residents at the first bothy that Bobby and Iain completed, at Inshriach, in the Cairngorms.
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Simple dwellings enact a vision; they may, over time, gather a significance that extends beyond their walls. Bothan Shuibhne is one suggestion of what a hut-bothy-residency can be, in Scotland, today.
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The original sketch that I submitted to Creative Scotland, to encapsulate the proposal, is nothing more than a rubber stamp defining a walled form, with a suggestion of surrounding thorns. The bothy begins as a frame in and for the wilderness, as every hut is. The sketch catches the gist of Sweeney’s bed in the thorn trees.
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Over the past few months Iain and I have worked from that initial poetic image:

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The phrase distils the fragmentary narrative of Suibhne. I drew on Trevor Joyce’s adventurous, untethered versions of the poems, with reference also to Heaney’s and O’Brien’s.
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Glen Bolcain
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abode of saints; with many hazel groves
and nuts in cluster; quick icy brooks
that sprinkle down its walls: there are green cords
of ivy, a rich mast of acorns
and the apple-trees,
heavy with good fruit they arc
their boughs
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//– Trevor Joyce, Sweeny, Peregrine
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We have worked the image of thorn and shelter toward a constructive form, making sketches and sharing conversation, asking ourselves how the bothy might appear and, just as importantly, what it is for.
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Reading Suibhne, asking ourselves where the bothy may belong, we have learnt to look within earshot of ‘the hammer of the distant surf’, with the ‘shelter of a single tree’, within sight of ‘mountain blossom, mountain ash’ (Trevor Joyce, Sweeny, Peregrine). We have been glad that we are the lucky ones, with a roof and stove, fortunate to avoid ‘the pain of his bed there on the top of a tall ivy-grown hawthorn in the glen, every twist that he would turn sending showers of hawy thorns into his flesh‘ (Flann O’Brien, At Swim, Two Birds).
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Gradually the plans will project a suitable protection for this gentle interior: a welcome desk, fire, and bunks for two.
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Future posts will detail the bothy’s final location and the evolution of the architecture, as we attempt to remain true to Lu Chi’s motto:
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only when revisions are precise
may the bothy stand
square and plumb
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Other posts will consider this bothy within the wider context of a nascent contemporary movement – one I term ‘hutopian’ – in which artists and architects create huts and viewing platforms in the Scottish wilderness, proposing them as innovative ecological, technological, and social models.
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Outlandia, London Fieldworks and Malcolm Fraser architects, 2010
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Suibhne, the mad king, inflected our thinking, pointing us toward the mountain hut, which ‘finds its congruity on the frozen peak’, where the air is ‘thorned with frost’. Arne Naess’ hut on Tvergastein came to mind, and Wittgenstein’s hut at Skjolden.
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At other times we are told Suibhne hid away in the woods, where the aspen leaves ‘sing like a distant war’. This reminded me of the felt-roofed hut that belongs to my friends Gerry Loose and Morven Gregor, at Carbeth, where a deer path leads by their door and the yaffle’s laughter is straight out of Basho.
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And the echoes of war: would they be the huts and tree-top look-outs at Faslane and Coulport, nearby Scotland’s leading artist residency host, the pods and cubes of Cove Park?
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Sweeney can’t escape his memory of spears; remembrance sticks in his side each night, in his bed amid the blackthorn tines.
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Prunus spinosa
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the blackthorn drinks my blood again
my face bleeds on the sodden wood
thorns lace my sores
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//– Trevor Joyce, Sweeny, Peregrine
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These internalized memories of conflict became another problem to prompt our thinking while designing the hut; it could not simply be a ‘retreat’. Suibhne’s ‘ice and wood palisades’ are tinged with a survivor’s wariness. I invited the poet Susan Tichy to tackle the associations of the mountain huts with war veterans and the dark aspect of survivalism in her native Colorado, issues hutting in these islands prefers to avoid.
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Susan Tichy’s cabin
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Our shared aim is to make a small contribution, through Bothan Shuibhne, to the common task of bringing renewed awareness to the relation between human dwelling and wild nature. We have been thankful to have received a friendly response from the John Muir Trust, who weigh the issues of stewardship and human use of wilderness with care.

The work that myself and other collaborators will post here belongs alongside existing and unfulfilled projects by artists, architects, and progressive hutters – all those who have attempted to create ‘hutopian’ dwellings, viewing platforms and shelters.
Contributors to the project will include Kathleen Jamie, Gerry Loose, Morven Gregor, Ken Cockburn, Malcolm Fraser, Dee Heddon, Misha Myers, Susan Tichy, Trevor Joyce, Heather Yeung, Thomas A. Clark, Kevin Langan, and Hanna Tuulikki.
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These sketches are our first vision of what Bothan Shuibhne could be.
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(AF)

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Bobby’s vision
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Iain’s vision
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Alec’s vision
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I began from the blackthorn thicket that Sweeney locked himself away in, taking the form and projecting it into a formal pilotis style support, so that it could assume a useful function, while still representing the blackthorn’s sharp warning.
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Bothan Shuibhne | Sweeney’s Bothy
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Alec Finlay & The Bothy Project
commissioned as part of Creative Scotland’s ‘Year of Natural Scotland 2013’

Waiting for Spring, Carl Erik Strom, 1970
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what is a hut?
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a hut is
four thin walls
nailed around a stove
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a hut is
set in the fret
of green woods
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a cabin is
spied
on the wild-hills-
///ide
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a hut is
a shed
& a bed
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a hut is
a few planks
nailed to some
peeling doors
kept out the back
in some folks’
///gardens
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a hut is
make-do-&-mend –
it grows
in an organic fashion
as a collage of accretion
///& borrowing
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a hut is
a second home
which there is
no shame
///to own
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a hut is
centred on
square windows
each of which
is taken care of
by a spider
& cobweb
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a hut is
a sounding-
board for rain
which will do you
no harm
if you remember to
spoon out
the guttering
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a hut is an
ante-garden
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a hut is
framed wilderness
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a hut is
tree high dissension
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in Norway
it seems
each field
is anchored
by a hut
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in Scotland
where we are so proud
of our welcome
huts have regrettably
///not been …
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/Carbeth, Gerry Loose & Morven Gregor
poem-label AF, photograph Morven Gregor, 2011
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Carbeth
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‘A place of solitude set among trees.
Things come to rest here.’
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///– Gerry Loose
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just a wee felt-roofed hut,
a shame to stay inside
but there is rain
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wisps of white smoke
rise straightforwardly
from the chimley,
yaffles try to laugh
their way in
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there’s lovage and angelica
too strong tasting
for deer or rabbits
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last year’s tansy
buttons that fashion
this spring’s brown
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Dumgoyach seems
a few steps away
but I’ll just sit
on this handy log
drinking smoky tea
and wait a while
for the windfalls
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composed after a visit to Gerry & Morven, for the road north; Gerry & Morven are contributing their own post on hut culture and wild food, to be published shortly on Bothan Shuibhne. Carbeth: www.carbeth.blogspot.co.uk. the road north: www.the-road-north.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/10-carbeth.html
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Prospect Cottage, courtesy of Ron Strutt
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Prospect Cottage
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Jarman’s neat hut
on the borderless
shingle jut
of Dungeness
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in the shadow
of the power station
in the knowledge
of death
Derek began
to garden
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each summer that passes
teaches which flora
will endure
biting northerlies
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sea kale & sea thistle
horned poppy, night-
shade & valerian
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lavender & santolina
nodding their colours
amid the salt-
tangle of wire, rust
bloom & flint
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Derek is gone
his garden
is growing
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hut of shadows, Chris Drury, 1997
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hut of shadows
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in the hut of shadows
one whitewashed wall
reveals the slow
flicker of the sea’s
everyday beauty
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the construction enacts
a great leap back,
circling through 6,000 years
of human consciousness
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we enter a darkness
that we recognize
from the chamber
at Bharpa Langais
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this poem was also composed, with Ken Cockburn, after a visit to North Uist, for the road north. Bharpa Langais is a Neolithic chambered cairn, similar inside to Drury’s construction. http://the-road-north.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/49-eiheiji.html

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Suibhne
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A full house couldn’t
be more lovely
than my little oratory
in Tuam Inbir
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Where the stars are
set in their order
together with the sun & moon
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A house where the rain
does not pour in
a place where spears
are no longer dreaded
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My wee hut’s
as bright as a garden
but there’s no wall
to fence me in
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after ‘The Pity of Nature’, from a version of the Suibhne Cycle by an Irish Monk of the 12^th century, published in A Golden Treasury of Irish Poetry; the oratory is Suibhne’s tree, in which he sleeps
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Harmonicabin, collage, AF, 2011
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Han Shan’s hut
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I cut some thatch
to roof my hut
dug a pool and runnel
for the spring
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now I’m an old man
alone on a dim ridge
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settled in my hut
I sigh for the tide,
today, yesterday,
all the years
///gone by
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these lines are composed after Gary Synder and Burton Watson’s translations of the famed Chinese mountain hermit, Han Shan, ‘Cold Mountain’, whose poems live with the small Bothan Shuibhne library. http://www.gatliff.org.uk/?page_id=9

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Outlandia, conceived by London Fieldworks, designed by Malcolm Fraser, built by Norman Clark, 2010

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Outlandia
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clear a stand of spruce
to make a hut of larch
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this building is a window
with surrounding walls
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this hut scrapes
carousel clouds
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for all those who
take the path
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what lies before you
is silence
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what comes after you
is silence
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Ken Cockburn and I chose Outlandia as one of our locations for the road north, pairing it with the Japanese mountain temple of Ryushakuji; it is one of the key representatives of the hutopian movement, an avant-garde version of hutting.http://the-road-north.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/34-outlandia.html
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Tigh nam Calliach, Glen Calliach, photograph Norman Shaw
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Tigh nam Calliach
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a hut may also be a rite
as each May
when the turf is laid
and the stone family
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Cailleach
///Bodach
//////Nighean
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are washed and set
before the doorway
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this little hut, in remote Glen Calliach, is re-thatched each May in an ancient ritual; the votive stone figures are from the River Lyon
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(AF)

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Inshriach Bothy, The Bothy Project, 2012
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Bothan Shuibhne | Sweeney’s Bothy
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Alec Finlay & The Bothy Project
commissioned as part of Creative Scotland’s ‘Year of Natural Scotland 2013’