BETTY MCNIVEN AND 'THE FLIGHT'
Angus Martin
In October of last year, in a letter to The Campbeltown Courier, I asked, among other things, for information on the author of a poem which incorporated the names of Campbeltown fishing boats - 19 in all - to tell the story of an elopement. I knew only that the author's name was McNiven and thought she had been a schoolgirl when she wrote the poem.
The response was excellent. A copy of the poem, with the author's full name, Betty McNiven, was received from Mr Jim McGeachy on the following day, and on the day after that I met Mr Harry Lavery, who was able to tell me a good deal about Betty McNiven herself. To cap it all, on 13 November I heard from the lady herself, 'amazed' at seeing the first lines of her poem quoted in the Courier.
That poem, The Flight, is well-crafted and memorable. It is also widely appreciated. I now know of three locals who are able to recite the entire poem from memory, and there are no doubt others. I also now know of several persons with copies of the poem, which have been typed from the original, photocopied and circulated. And I was asked by several others to provide a copy of the poem.
So, The Flight is something special when it has survived 60 years in the minds of Campbeltonians, even after most of the boats themselves have long gone. It is in the poetic and (in the purest sense) sentimental appeal of the boats' names, I suspect, that the magic of Miss McNiven's composition lies.
The Scottish artist and poet, Ian Hamilton Finlay, has produced 'found poems' using only fishing boats' names, and here, in Green Waters, is the best-known of them:
Green Waters
Blue Spray
Grayfish
Anna T
Karen B
Netta Croan
Constant Star
Daystar
Starwood
Starlit Waters
Moonlit Waters
Drift.
It is certainly a lovely and unusual piece, but Betty McNiven was there before him!
Bad poems are almost never remembered. Betty McNiven's poem was good enough to catch the imagination of a public - albeit local and fishing-related - and I am delighted to publish it again, and also to recognise the author, because The Flight has been heading down the road towards a fmal resting-place in the amorphousness of folklore.
Betty McNiven was not born in Campbeltown, but her paternal grandfather was a stonemason employed by Weir, the builder, she thinks as a foreman. Her father, Allan McNiven, was also a mason. Her mother, Janet Campbell, was born at Whitehouse, and after her parents' marriage they settled near Kilmamock, where Allan McNiven was stonemason on Caprington Castle Estate. It was there, in 1911, that Betty McNiven was born.
After Betty's father's early death, when she and her brother Ian were very young, the family moved back to her parents' home in Whitehouse. Betty and Ian - who later became a plumber - went to school there. After the 'Qualifying', Betty went to the Grammar School, and stayed with her mother's sister, Mrs Catherine Lavery. When Ian followed her to the Grammar, her mother moved to the old McNiven home at 5 North Shore Street, which the family had kept on. After she finished in the Grammar School, Betty went to the University of Glasgow, graduated M.A. in English and History, and then did a year's teacher training at Dundee Training College.
Able only to obtain supply teaching work in Campbeltown - at the 'Wee Grammar' and Milknowe primary schools - she eventually got a permanent teaching post at Kinlochleven. It was there that she met her late husband, Ian Campbell Cassidy, a native of the village. They were married in Campbeltown in 1943 by the Rev BB Blackwood, and lived thereafter in Inverlochy and Fort William. Betty later taught for about 10 years in Caol Primary School, near Fort William.
As to the poem itself, Mrs Cassidy writes: 'I was then Betty McNiven, a member of Angus MacVicar's journalism class at the night school in the thirties, just before the Second World War.
'I owed my interest in the fishing fleet and other boats to my uncle, the late James Lavery, who had himself once owned a sailing vessel, the William and Leigh, which traded among the Western Isles and to Norther Ireland before the "puffers" arrived.
'When Angus MacVicar decided that we must publish a magazine, I decided to write something about the fishing fleet, but did not think there, would be much interest in it. There were many more boats in the fleet, but a lot of the names didn't fit in.'
THE FLIGHT
The King Bird fled with the Fairy Queen
into the Golden Dawn.
The Maris Stella watched their flight
while the rest of the world slept on.
The Busy Bee was the first to wake
and she went to the Mystical Rose.
'They have gone,' she cried, 'What can we do?
Perhaps Ben Gullion knows.'
'Let the Frigate Bird pursue,' he cried.
'in her garb of Silver Grey.'
And swift as a Crimson Arrow sped
the beautiful ship away.
Then Blue Bird said: I am swift as light;
Nulli Secundus am I.
I will bring them back or return no more'
and the Falcon made reply:
'Nil Desperandum; I will go forth
on this Enterprise with you.'
But the Goddess Felicia shook her head
and helped the lovers through.
And they came no more to their old Sweet Home
where the Kingfisher roves at will,
but the Ave Maria's sweet notes recall
the loch they both love still.
Page 2: Eighteenth Century Church Letters from Southend Parish
Page 3: The Ralston Correspondence - Part Two
Page 4: The Lowland Church of Campbeltown from its Foundation in 1654 till the Disruption. - Part One
Page 5: Heather McFarlane's Page - Dalintober
Page 6: HMS Campbeltown // Genealogy of Peter Johnson
Page 7: Betty McNiven and 'The Flight'.
Page 8: By Hill and Shore - Part Two