This is a small story about Scotland, and a small experience there that I will never forget. Kilmartin Valley, in Argyll Scotland, is called the Valley of Ghosts. Not because of haunted castles or misty lochs, there are plenty of those. It’s because the land is ancient, a prehistory grander and deeper then the history of record. There are ghosts, but they won’t speak to us. There’s precious little to even suggest that they are there, small signs, small cairns of stones, bones and time.

David Clough is the director of Kilmartin House. Kilmartin House is a museum, but little of it is housed within the walls of the roadside buildings near Loch Fyne. It stretches the length of the valley, crossing from one burial cairn to another, standing stones, rocks strewn with ancient markings, its history generally unknown. It’s David's life work to uncover the story of Kilmartin, David’s and a small staff of dedicated archeologists, biologists, artists and researchers from so many divergent fields. It’s their belief that history is more then a museum. It’s the life of a people, a place and the significance of their time.

I met David last April in a small town near Venice, Italy called Asolo where my Congolese partner, Titos Sompa and I were performing. It was during the worst of the war in Kosovo and refugees were filling that area of Europe. We played a piece called "The Trail of Tears" which, though centered around the plight of the Cherokee in the US, was a statement about the history of struggle for all people in the world.

Festivals like "Fantadia" in Asolo often represent the condensed efforts of many artists, attempting to convey their message within the context of a five minute presentation. David and his production partners created an evocative introduction to "The Valley of Ghosts" to prepare visitors to the museum in Scotland for what they were about to see. The soundtrack was made from recordings of stone age and bronze age tools and instruments that were discovered in the valley.

Imagine: deep ringing tones from a bronze bell thought to be used by St. Adomnan, the ninth Abbot of Iona. "He rang it to enforce the law. He rang it against kings who refused to protect women, and as a result these kings were childless, their homes laid waste."

Imagine: thin wisps of air from flutes made from the bones of birds and from flint whistles. "We can try to imagine their prayers and music by conjuring up the sense of the ancient forest and ocean, and the dangers and riches which both contained." Amazing. The sound of these instruments echoed a time long before the bagpipes that we usually associate with Scotland.

After the evening's shows, the artists would gather in restaurants to eat and tell the stories behind their work. During one of these, Titos and I were playing our kalimbas and African tunes while the French sang Edith Pilaf, an Irishman sang rhymes, and the Italians sang opera. When David was asked to give us a song from Scotland, he chose to read poems instead. He began to talk to me about composing a new work using only the pure sounds from the instruments in his collection. Can you imagine the slightest hesitation?

My wife Sharon and I made the trip to Kilmartin in July. After taking the train to Glasgow, we rented a car and practiced the Great Britain style of driving around beautiful Loch Lomond, through Inveraray and on to Argyll. It was raining, as it often does, but that seemed to lend a perfect atmosphere to our transition from modern Glasgow to the secluded Kilmartin Valley. When we passed the waterfront village of Lochgilphead, the road dwindled to two lanes that often merged into single lane bridges with no warnings or hesitation, from oncoming traffic.

A few more rolling hills and hairpin turns, and the sparse buildings of Kilmartin appeared. The museum is just off the road and is conspicuously lacking road signs to point it out. There’s a ruin of a handmade boat just outside, more on this later. With his traditional long stride, David appears. The best picture that I can relate to describe him is a combination of Abraham Lincoln and William Wallace, although David would be embarrassed to be compared to Mel Gibson in Bravehart. Thin, tall with long black hair, his concentrated expression focuses all attention onto the train of thought and away from himself.

There was no tour of the museum for the moment, it was getting on in the day and we needed to get provisions for the night and to drive twenty or so miles to his home. We stopped at a tiny fishing village and entered the general store that supplied everything from groceries to the irreplaceable "wellies" or Wellington rubber boots that are essential for walking anywhere in the rain soaked terrain. When shopping for food, Sharon and I just knew that the inevitable subject of haggis must be confronted. It was.

On to David’s home. The pavement gave way to dirt roads. The dirt roads turned to mud and the remnants of these ended in the middle of nowhere. David suggested that we carry only the necessaries and, without so much as a sideways glance from Sharon, we began to hike. As it turns out, David has built his own home, by hand, by carrying every board. It stands at the top of a hill, overlooking the Sound of Jura, Islay, and faraway Ireland to the south. It is an incredibly beautiful outpost, crowded with books, surrounded by windows and isolation. Quite modern, however, he builds his web site and tends to his business without the need for power lines, water utilities, or gas lines. The computers, stereo, cell phone and lights are powered by a wind generator the size of a toaster. Water comes pure from the hillside and propane is transported infrequently in a tank, on his back.

David boiled water on a wood stove, the kitchen and living room lit by candles and the fireplace. A turnip the size of my son’s head went in the water and the haggis was simply wrapped in foil and placed in the oven. When all was prepared, he slit the steaming haggis, scooped a spoonful on top of each plate of mashed turnip, dashed the combination with equal portions of Bowmoor Scotch and heavy cream and invoked Robert Burns ("Robbie Burns" to the initiated). Here I quote:

Fair Fa’ your honest, sonsie face, Great Chieftan o’ the Puddin-race!
Aboon them a’ ye tak your place, Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy of a grace, As lang’s my arm...
... His knife see Rustic-labour dight, An’ cut you up wi’ ready slight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright, Like onie ditch;
And then, O what a glorious sight, Warm-reekin, rich!

Excerpts from Address to a Haggis - Robert Burns

Hey, listen, it was really good! I’m not kidding. I can sense the groans but I’m serious! It was a bit tough to approach the first bite but it was like a good corn beef hash and the scotch and cream set it off perfectly.

The rest of the evening, until 2AM actually, was spent in long quiet stories with only the sound of the rain out on the roof. One story concerned the ragged boat outside the museum. It seems that David set out to retrace the crossing of St. Columba from the Antrim coast of Ireland to Iona on the Argyll coast 1,400 years ago. He, and crafts people from Scotland and Ireland built the 22 foot hazel, willow and skin currach, using only the tools that would have been available at the time. David captained the boat and they landed in front of the Bowmoor factory in Islay. They felt that to preserve the boat artificially would be archaeologically uncouth and so it remains to decay naturally in front of the museum. Appropriately, a fair amount of the Bowmoor Islay single malt was consumed in the telling.

I woke momentarily at 3AM with the sun dawning outside, a very short night at that latitude. The next day was spent exploring the vicinity of David’s home, the rock strewn beach that overlooks uninhabited islands, meadows dotted with lumps of wool from the grazing sheep and trails through the dense forest. We still had leftover haggis so it was not necessary to leave our private Scottish retreat.

Sunday was a national archeology day and I had been asked to participate at the museum by playing a bit and speaking on the subject of music and the significant place it has in cultures both modern and prehistoric. David then took us to see the indoor museum and finally the valley itself.

We walked through fields of standing stones. Their perfect alignment and improbable size rivaling Stonehenge. There were huge stones in the hills where thousands of carvings, in the shape of cups, rings and interconnecting lines seemed to map either the stars, the valley, the continent or perhaps the cycle of life. These same markings appear throughout the British Isles, and as far away as Spain. We stood in burial cairns and looked out over immense bogs where innumerable artifacts wait to be discovered.

At the end of the day (one of David’s favorite sayings when he refers to the truth) we climbed a lone hill at the base of the valley. We sat quietly as David explained that we were on the remains of Castle Dunadd, that I, in fact, was sitting where St. Columba crowned the first King of all the northern isles. We could see the entire valley stretched out around us.

David explained the challenges of archeology, especially when current politics, landowners and short sightedness obscure the view. In fact, what could prove to be the central and most significant site in the valley is being quarried for gravel. They approach their valley in a unique way. Instead of claiming a dogmatic certainty of historical facts, they choose to remain open. What do the standing stones represent; who were these people 10,000 years ago, why did they play music? These are the questions that they would ask you. They use the internet to gather opinions from, not just archeologists, but biologists, builders, planners, artists, astronomers and people like us.

Stones, bones and time in the Valley of Ghosts.

Christopher Hedge is a composer at The Magic Shop in San Francisco...
He can be reached at www.themagicshop.com
Listen to a sample demo inspired by Christopher's trip to Kilmartin House on the Online Demos page.

David Clough is the director of Kilmartin House. Visit the virtual museum at:
www.kilmartin.org

email to: museum@khouse.demon.co.uk

A CD recording of the ancient instruments mentioned is available at the Kilmartin House web site.