Chris Guthrie Blawearie farm, Kinraddie
The Song
On the croft of Blawearie, Chris Guthrie is raised under a harsh, land-broken father, and comes to feel herself split between two Chrisses, the one who loves books and the one bound body and soul to the soil. The farm, its labour and its seasons, is the ground of the whole book and of Chris's fierce attachment to the land.
The Song (main narrative)
inspired by The Guthrie farm of Blawearie in the parish of Kinraddie is invented but drawn from the real Howe of the Mearns around Arbuthnott, where Grassic Gibbon grew up; sited there in the north-east Scottish farmland.
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Chris Guthrie The standing stones
The Song
By the old stones on the hill, older than any of the quarrels and losses below, Chris finds the one place she can be wholly herself and take the long view of her life and her land. The stones frame the novel, standing witness to the passing of the crofting world and, at the end, bearing the names of the war dead.
The Song (main narrative)
explicit Chris returns again and again to the ancient standing stones above the farm; such prehistoric stones are real features of the Mearns landscape and are the book's recurring emblem of endurance and deep time.
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Chae Strachan Stonehaven (the market town)
The Song
In Stonehaven the parish meets the wider world of markets, ministers and, soon, recruiting sergeants, and the crofter-socialist Chae Strachan argues his politics against the coming war. The town is where the slow rhythms of the land brush up against the century that is about to sweep them away.
The Song (main narrative)
explicit The nearest market town is Stonehaven on the coast, a real burgh of Kincardineshire, where the folk of Kinraddie go for the mart, the shops and the law.
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Long Rob of the Mill The parish kirk
The Song
At the kirk the parish gathers, gossips and buries its dead, and the sceptical miller Long Rob refuses its pieties even as the war closes in on the young men. Grassic Gibbon renders the whole community in its Scots speech, a chorus of voices around Chris's story, doomed and vivid.
The Song (main narrative)
inferred The parish kirk is the social centre of Kinraddie, drawn from Arbuthnott church; the specific building is sited in the real parish, its congregation the whole community.
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