Ernest Walker Marwick - Writer and Scholar

Our latest exhibition is all about local historian and writer, Ernest Marwick. This year would have been his 100th birthday, so the Orkney Science Festival decided to celebrate his life and works with some special events and we were asked to put on a small exhibition.

In the Orkney Archive we are very lucky to house his collection of research, stories, poems, photos, oral history, folklore and articles about Orkney life, people and culture. About 86 boxes worth! There is hardly ever an enquiry in the Archive that is not helped or answered by something that Ernest Marwick saved or collected.

To exhibit this collection we could have taken over the entire searchroom, so we decided to concentrate on some of his writing and scholarly pursuits.

He began school in Evie in May 1921 at the age of 5.

Archive Reference: CO5/50/8 Evie Public School Admission and Withdrawal Register

Wilhelmina Rosie, Headmistress of Evie Public School wrote in her report of 1925, "In the infant and junior classes the pupils are making satisfactory progress in the main subjects. Poetry and Reading were delivered in a clear and distinct voice, and Spelling was in most cases quite good...It is noted with approval that most of the pupils are at the stage of advancement which corresponds with their age."

Archive Reference: CO5/50/2 Evie Public School Logbook, 1910-1933

He left school soon after this at the age of 10 due to illness and never went back. After that he taught himself everything he needed to know.

In 1941 he moved to Kirkwall to work in Stevensons bookshop and in 1943 he married Janetta Park from Sanday.

After WW2 he compiled and edited An Anthology of Orkney Verse. 

It includes poems by David Vedder, David Balfour, Walter T Dennison, Duncan J Robertson, Ann Scott-Moncrieff, Edwin Muir, John Masefield and George Mackay Brown and Eric Linklater and Robert Rendall (see photos)

He was a collector of local history and folklore.

One such story was: "Rackwick (Hoy) Tradition - the landlord there at one time was a lady who lived in a house called Ootries, just above the boat noust at Rackwick. This lady's house had a floor of baked tiles. It was her custom to go down to the beach each morning as the men set off for the fishing, to choose the man who should do her work for that day. On one occasion a man refused and went to sea. When he came back in the evening he found his house burned to the ground."

This story was passed on through 3 generations before it reached Mr Marwick.





Archive references: D31/1/1/24 Rackwick Tradition and D31/1/2 One of Mr Marwick's History and Folklore folders.

He researched and wrote Sooan Sids for the Orkney Herald from 1954-1961.

He was friend and adviser to George Mackay Brown

 

Archive references: D31/30/4 Folder of correspondence between EWM and GMB; L7556/3 Ernest Marwick's photograph of George Mackay Brown

He was a poet in his own right.

Archive reference: D31/64/4 - Folder entitled Verse - typescript, manuscript of some fifty poems by E.W.M.

From the 1960s to the 1970s, he made over 800 broadcasts for the BBC, many of which are stored on reels, cassette tapes and CDs and can be listened to here in the Orkney Archive.

In 1975 he published the book The Folklore of Orkney and Shetland which was the culmination of all his research into folklore.

 

Archive reference: D31/9/2 - Folder containing reviews of 'The Folklore of Orkney and Shetland'

And in 1975 he was awarded the Freedom of the Burgh of Kirkwall!

Archive Reference: D31/65/6 - Casket containing certificate of Freedom of the Burgh of Kirkwall, presented to E.W.M.

The exhibition in the Archive Searchroom will continue until the end of October 2015.

Year Of Orkney Dialect Winners.

The Folk Festival is over and all the fiddles have been packed away, how sad. We can still enjoy the winners of the Year Of Orkney Dialect poetry competition,however, which were debuted at one of the Festival Farewell concerts. The poems were very well received and are of excellent quality.

The winners include a few of our customers and it is wonderful to see this new side to them. Personal favourites are Marlene Mainland's haiku about cattle (High Coo), Fran Flett Hollinrake's Assipattle and the Mester StoorWorm and Jane Harris' Me Laand.

Inspiration!

Pictured above is an excerpt from the dialect poem 'The New Year's Ba' of Auchty-Twa' (By the way, should I have put an apostrophe at the end of Ba? Apparently it is not necessary if you view Orcadian as a stand-alone dialect rather than an incorrect form of English. For example, Kirkwall was originally 'Kirkwa' as derived from Kirkjuvagr, but it was thought by English cartographers that this was an Orcadian way of saying Kirkwall!)

These verses appeared in the Orcadian and are sung to the tune of 'Bailie Nicol Jarvis' Dream.'

The words paint a very potent picture of the character of the ba'. I particularly like the lines:

'And faces hashed,

And noses bashed,

And legs were smashed,

And windows crashed,

And wa's were knockit doon man!'

Year of Orkney Dialect

2010, according to the Orkney Heritage Society, is to be the year of Orkney Dialect. This celebration of local voices kicked off with a poetry reading at the Lynnfield hotel and continues with an Orkney Dialect Poetry Competition.

Entry forms for the competition can be picked up in the archive and you can read about it here. Whilst in the archive, prospective poets may want to gain inspiration from the many books of Orkney literature and Orcadian dictionaries in the Orkney Room or listen to recordings of poets such as Robert Rendall reading their dialect poems. You can also read the various writings we hold that discuss the use of dialect.

Robert Rendall himself believed that the 'kailyard' could be escaped if dialect was used in a contemporary and non-sentimental manner. He was also wary of 'Lallans', a 'synthetic Scots' blend of various types of words; archaic, contemporary, lowlands, North East which he regarded as a type of Scottish Esperanto i.e. self-concious and unnatural. He felt that the magic of dialect derived from its localness.

Another great Orcadian poet, Edwin Muir, thought that to make their mark and to become 'complete' as authors then Scottish poets had to write their work in English.

The use of dialect is still going strong, however, see Morag MacInnes' 2008 poetry sequence on Orcadian sailor Isobel Gunn, 'Alias Isobel', for example.

There will also be a related exhibit of relevant documents in the archive from the start of next week.

Information taken from:
An Island Shore, selected writings of Robert Rendall edited by Neil Dickson
Edwin Muir - Poet, Critic and Novelist by Marjory McCulloch
D27/2/7 - Robert Rendall papers - 'Notes on the Use of Dialect.'