Finlay J – a boy from Harris who became the voice of Gaeldom

Some of this will be recalled over the coming weeks as BBC Alba and Radio nan Gaidheal restore to life a selection of programmes he produced and the interviews he conducted. Most appropriately, the centenary of his birth will be marked on the very day, July 4th, with a showing in Tarbert of his 1966 film, “A Boy in Harris”.

That title reflected Finlay’s own origins and upbringing. Eventually these became the context for his 1980s trilogy of semi-autobiographical books – ‘Crowdie and Cream’, ‘Crotal and White’, ‘The Corncrake and the Lysander’ – which painted a deeply evocative picture of Harris in the years of Depression and war, through the prism of life in Scarista.

His writing style was lyrical but could also have a cutting edge. Scarista was “the village that my father and seven other ex-servicemen of the First World War carved out of South Harris half a century ago”. Its huge church, before the ravages of repeated Clearances by “landlords of doubtful social morality” was built for 400 but “by the time our village was established, we could barely muster a congregation of 30”.

All of this formed the backdrop to stories he turned into best-sellers. “A Boy in Harris” set the tone for these later writings and Donalda Mackinnon, formerly director of BBC Scotland, says: “These books remain classics of Scottish literature and some of the best, authentic representations of island social history, these days all too elusive”.

Finlay was celebrated for many roles and successes in broadcasting throughout his four decades with the BBC. But, says Donalda: “It was in his appreciation of his humble upbringing, in a small, corrugated home in Scarista, surrounded by characters and a way of life under threat, that his timeless contribution can best be defined”.

The diversity of Finlay’s career added to its distinction within the BBC. He entered it through Gaelic and moved on to drama and documentaries. He was behind the microphone as interviewer, voice-over and commentator on great events but also excelled as a writer, producer and director. When he retired, one profile described him as BBC Scotland’s “man of all parts”.

At Portree High School in the war years, he showed an interest in Gaelic literature as part of a team which produced an exceptional magazine, An Cabairneach, but in deference to his parents’ wishes, he proceeded to Glasgow University to study Divinity. This lasted only a year and the eerie experience which triggered the decision that this was not his calling is related by his widow, Kathleen.

“Because so many ministers were away at the war, the students were deputising for them. Finlay took a service in Maryhill and an old lady who had been sitting in the front pew came up to him and said: ‘I would like you to conduct my funeral service’. He agreed, she walked out of the church on to Maryhill Road, was knocked down by a taxi and killed. He conducted her funeral service but that was the point at which he decided, this job is not for me”.

Grants for divinity students had funded his presence at university and once he abandoned that course he decided there was nothing for it but to go home to Harris. He was packing to leave, wrapping shoes in a Stornoway Gazette, when he saw an advert for a trainee Gaelic producer at the BBC. He got the job and the rest is history.

He was taken under the wing of Hugh Macphee, who headed a very small Gaelic department, and its audience was soon familiar with Finlay’s unmistakable tones. Output was limited to music and talks but Finlay pushed out these boundaries into drama and literature, in parallel to his own interests. He was soon producing radio drama in both languages. Outside the BBC, he co-founded the magazine Gairm in 1952 with Derick Thomson and co-edited it for almost 20 years.

In 1953, he moved into “mainstream” BBC Scotland, as a drama producer. Far from leaving Gaelic behind at this point, he was also engaged in founding the Gaelic Drama Association, to promote the spoken use of the language. An article he wrote for the Scotsman in 1956 has resonance down to the present day, as Finlay noted the decline of Gaelic speakers in areas where it was the language of everyday use.

“The Gaelic language is dying and dying fast. It is dying because, for generations past, the Gaelic Movement has been moving further and further from reality and shrouding itself in a plaid of maudlin sentimentality. The reality is represented by the sixty-odd thousand people who still live in the Highlands and have Gaelic as their first and everyday tongue, and to have any effect at this late stage, any new Gaelic endeavour must embrace and involve that sixty thousand”.

It was a period when community drama was flourishing in every part of the country and Finlay believed that drama could act as a revitalising force for Gaelic instead of “a glorified sing-song as the supreme representation of Gaelic culture” with “bunnet lairds” presiding at city gatherings.

He argued: “It is not too late. The one thing the Highlander has not lost is the innate love of play-acting. At school concerts in Portree, at SCDA festivals in Lewis, at ceilidhs in Daliburgh and many other places too, the simplest little playlet – particularly if it has local or topical allusions – is hailed as a blessed relief from “horo-horo” choruses”.

Finlay wrote short stories for Gairm, one of which, recalls Donalda Mackinnon, had a great impact on her. “It bore the title 'Am Basar’. It was a fabulous prequel to his later novels and a beautifully observed essay on the weeks-long preparation for what we might describe as a 'sale of work', in Scarista. He must have likened it to a middle-eastern 'bazaar', summoning up the vibrant colour and equally colourful characters involved.

“It was infused with Finlay J's islander-rooted and understated sense of humour. There are some serious 'laugh out loud' moments. Two generations on, I chose to use the short story as a Higher Gaelic literature text. Although mostly alien to their generation, its timelessness and eloquence meant that students loved it”.

Finlay J’s BBC career flourished and he rose through the ranks as a producer of both drama and documentaries. All in the mid-1960s, his programme about the transformation of Glasgow by town planners, “Escape from the Concrete Jungle”, won him the Harry Govan Award for best depiction of Scottish life. He was a producer on a groundbreaking current affairs series, “Checkpoint”. At the same time, he was producing the first Gaelic – or at least bilingual - television programmes, like “Songs All the Way” which were breakthroughs for their time.

Much of this material has been lost from the BBC archives, as Finlay J’s son Finlay and his wife, Mhairi Brennan – a TV historian – discovered when the idea of a centenary celebration started to be discussed. She did, however, unearth seven of Finlay J’s films which have survived out of more than 30 he made for the BBC in Glasgow.

These led her to conclude that, while his significance in the Gaelic world is remembered, Finlay J’s importance as a film-maker has been greatly under-valued. Placing him alongside John Grierson in the canon of Scottish documentary film-makers, she wrote: “Macdonald would often provide the voice-over to his films, his lilting Harris accent and the ease with which he could paint a picture with words lending a warmth and lyricism to his work. But although he loved to tell a story, Macdonald was not a man unduly smitten by the sound of his own voice. He understood instinctively when to pause, to let the story breathe”.

In 1969, “A Song of Crotal and White” was the first BBC documentary made in Scotland using colour, for showing throughout the UK on BBC2.

It interwove the story of Harris Tweed with the songs of the Macdonald Sisters from the west side of Lewis, one of whom, Kathleen, Finlay J. would go on to marry. The programme has occasionally been reshown, billed as a reference point for changes which have occurred on Lewis in intervening decades.

Finlay J’s first short stories about growing up in Harris were for a series of talks commissioned by BBC Radio 4 for him to read. This was the original “Crowdie and Cream”. Finlay recalls his dad telling him: “Within a few weeks, he was offered four publishing deals and that is when his book writing career began”.

The books proved hugely popular and the trilogy continues to be in print. In 2002, as “Gruth is Uachdar” they were turned into a Gaelic drama series by the BBC, a fitting memorial to Finlay J’s work.

Donalda Mackinnon says: “His contribution to preserving and conserving a beautiful cultural expression of his native Harris and opening a window onto a language and people that was true to life, should never be forgotten or under-estimated”.

When Finlay J. died in 1987 after a period of poor health, an appreciation in the Oban Times described him as “probably the best known, and certainly the best loved, Gael of his generation. The whole of Gaeldom and much of Scotland felt they were on first name terms with him” – a relationship which these centenary events will help to revive.