> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.david-de-gernier.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Old James - URL: https://www.david-de-gernier.com/old-james/ - Published: 2026-05-21T12:35:16.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-13T11:35:36.000Z - Author: David de Gernier - Tags: Writing, Newsletter, #Migrated-1791891281430, #Import 2026-10-13 11:35 **Old James** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/39/5a/395acc27-7b29-461b-bade-143cbe2b1c03/content/images/2026/10/53d91f40-d66d-4017-81ed-ea875d6f92d9_1448x1086-heic-1.jpg) Old James stands at the bottom of his garden, leaning his tall, stooped body against the gate. The beam from the lighthouse intermittently reveals his face. His hair, white and fine, reaches down to his collar. His soft blue eyes, hooded by bushy eyebrows, look over the western sea to where the sun has set, leaving a faint pink afterglow. In his gnarled hand he holds a pipe, its aromatic tobacco smoke giving some relief from the incessant attention of biting midges. He listens to the sounds of the night. The tide is on the turn, and the oystercatchers pipe noisily as they feed before the sea reclaims the mudflats. Overhead, a curlew whistles its plaintive call, which echoes over the moor as the bird heads inland. The river flowing from the mountain behind his house is in full spate. The dark, peaty water rushes and roars as it spills over the falls into the sea-pool, where the tang of fresh water drives the waiting fish to a frenzy in their attempt to head up to the spawning grounds high in the headwaters. He hears the whistle of the dog-otter and knows that some of those fish will not make the journey tonight. While his eyes and ears absorb the sights and sounds, the nostrils of his long, aquiline nose quiver as he savors the smells. The rich, cloying scent of bog myrtle; the salty tang of the sea, with a hint of rotten seaweed left above the high-water mark by last night’s storm; and the antiseptic smell of peat smoke coming from the chimney of his whitewashed cottage. He looks up at the dark sky, a tapestry of stars unblemished by the intrusion of city lights, a new moon just rising, queen of the night, and his lips move in a blessing, as his mother and her mother before her had taught. *Hail to thee, thou new moon,* *Guiding jewel of gentleness!* *I am bending to thee my knee,* *I am offering thee my love.* *I am bending to thee my knee,* *I am giving thee my hand,* *I am lifting to thee mine eye,* *O new moon of the seasons...* James’s life is full of ritual; every task has its own mysterious, otherworldly aspect. His nature imbues even the mundane with sacredness. He stands erect; his arthritic fingers fumble with the buttons of his flies. He turns his back to the wind and starts to water the gatepost, the flow of urine bifurcated and hesitant. It is not so much an old dog marking his territory as a libation to the old gods of his people. James looks down the bay towards the empty houses. The peninsula was once home to 1,700 people; now his is the only house lived in all year round. The others are dark and lifeless where once they were bright and full of life. Sometimes too full. More than 250 years of famine, war, land clearances and forced emigration have failed to quench the flame of life that kept a tenuous hold on the land. Now, the people’s need to find work elsewhere, the sale of houses as holiday homes, and the lack of children being born to replace the aging population have pushed the area into an irreversible decline. He trudges back towards his cottage, the lamp in his window drawing him home, as it has on many nights, even when thousands of miles and an ocean away. He bends his head to enter the low doorway, and as he steps over the threshold the cottage envelops him in its embrace. The warmth does not come from the fire in the hearth; it is inherent in the fabric of the building. It is the warmth that is generated in the memory and combusted in the heart. The warmth that is as old as the land itself. It is the warmth of blood and ancestry. James rakes the fire, causing sparks to dance up the chimney to be borne away on the sea breeze. He is drawn by a faint scratching at the window and sees a moth fluttering against the pane, helplessly enthralled by its Icarus-like quest to reach the light. James turns off the light and opens the window to let in the night. He eases his weary frame into the old horsehair chair by the fire and looks around the room. There is the large, oblong table, where generations of womenfolk had worked their cloth. They would sit around the table, waulking the urine-soaked weave: thumping it, pulling it, passing it around. And all the time, chanting the eerie waulking song. The metre of the words, the beat of the rhythm and the thumps of their hands all synchronized. A woman’s ritual. Like so many women’s rituals, as old as time and alien to men. Childbirth, death, pain and sorrow. Joy and breast milk. Female things. Like the moth and the light. Attractive, yet with a destructive element. The weaver’s loom, its treadles and wires broken, is now silent. Yet the memory of the rattling as his father and grandfather worked it is still strong in his ears. As a child he fell asleep to the noise and woke to it. It was as sure as the rising of the sun and as crucial to their survival. The warp and weft of life’s tapestry. The spinning wheel over by the south-facing window. The only things it spins now are cobwebs and memories. The violin on the wall is now silent. His arthritic fingers are no match for the memories of once-youthful dexterity. Oh, the dances that fiddle has seen. The laments it has cried. It was once full of airs and graces. It is a reminder to James of decay: the decay of the land and his people, their mores and art, their language and lore, and his own failing body. He looks at the photographs on the mantel. There is Hugh, his son, in the uniform of a soldier. Like so many ancestors, he is now buried on a foreign field, having died fighting for a country that was not his. Then there is Mary. His darling Mary, sixty years by his side. First at school, with her hair the color of corn and skin burnished brown. His nut-brown maiden. Then as his wife, mother to his children, confessor to his soul and bringer of light, his *anam cara*. The light of her soul and the exuberance of her spirit have shone through James’s darkest nights, guiding him onto the right path. He gets up and, taking the photo of Mary in his hand, holds it up and compares the likeness with Mary’s face as it now is. She still has beauty, he sees. Her hair has lost its color, but the white adds to her dignity. She still has the high brow, and her cheekbones, though sharper, still give her face distinction. Her nose is perfectly shaped, and her lips have lost their fullness but are still kissable for all that. He places a gentle kiss on her lips. James settles back in front of the fire, staring at the blue-green flames dancing in the hearth. Like the fairy dancers in the northern sky, first one color, then another, as if they are daring him to chase them, to follow them up the chimney and away across the sea. He is so very weary and falls asleep. One hour before dawn, the birds start to sing. The sun is sending tentacles of light over the eastern horizon, as if testing the air, undecided whether to rise this morning. A tall, handsome man and a beautiful young woman with golden tresses walk arm in arm from the cottage and down towards the western shore. There is a lightness to their step and something ephemeral about them. In the cottage, the fire has gone out, and the coffin, resting on trestles, is now empty, Mary having gone with James. Only the house is left. Empty, except for memories. Waiting. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/39/5a/395acc27-7b29-461b-bade-143cbe2b1c03/content/images/2026/10/929eb553-e774-4c10-9390-ef9787eb315a_1448x1086-heic.jpg) For context here is a ''Waulking Song'' being performed. This video was filmed in 1941 by the English cinematographer Jack Cardiff, probably on the island of Lewis and Harris. It was preserved by the British Council. [Subscribe](#/portal/signup)