82 The Economist May 28th 2022
Obituary Lawrence MacEwen
As soonasspringarrived,theyoungLawrenceMacEwenshed
his shoes. Barefoot, he ran to school down the only road on
Muck, a mile and a half of gravel mixed with grass. Barefoot, he
jumped among the fallen basalt stones of the dykes built long ago
by kelpers, who had made a living gathering seaweed from the
rocks. Barefoot he climbed the craggy western cliffs, hanging on to
heather for dear life, and scampered to the top of Beinn Airein, the
highest hill, to look out past Eigg and Rum to Knoydart and the
Cuillin Hills. Barefoot he would stand for hours on the beach be
low his house, so mesmerised by the rolling tide that he could not
stir until his mother called him in for tea. His feet would sink a lit
tle into the white sand, embedding him in the place.
It was a tiny place at that, not quite a mile long and two and a
half miles broad, the smallest of the Small Isles off Scotland’s west
coast. His family had bought it in 1896 and made a decent living
from it, for its deep volcanic soil could provide fine hay, corn and
vegetables, as well as grazing. Yet it was also left behind by the
world and benighted by the weather, sometimes cut off entirely by
autumn storms. Most residents had been evicted in the 19th centu
ry, or had moved away to softer places. By the late 1960s the Mac
Ewens, too, were wondering whether or not to stay. Lawrence’s el
der brother Alasdair, now the owner, was set on going to the main
land and making Muck a summeronly place, with holiday lets.
But Lawrence knew he could never leave, being rooted there.
So he took Muck on, at 27, and for the next 50 years directed its
future. He liked a challenge. On Muck, they came from all direc
tions: from the driving wind that bent him forward, to the sea that
drowned several of the island’s scarce fishermen, to the vexing lo
gistics of driving skittish sheep and cattle into a listing wooden
boat to get them to market in Glenuig or Arisaig, over the water. He
took all this in his tall, loping stride. A dozen mishaps attended ev
ery scheme he fixed on; every Muck task entailed blood, sweat andturmoil; but his devotion to the island transcended everything.
This being so, he did not want to change it much. He worried
about television, cars, crowds of nosing tourists and shuttered
second homes. On the other hand, visitors meant income. He
struggled with this dilemma. Under his aegis there was only one
tiny hotel, built by his younger brother, in the single settlement at
Port Mor, along with a tearoom selling his wife Jenny’s wonderful
cakes. Those would be baked at dawn, while the fitful generator
was on; reliable electricity did not come until 2013. There was still
no pub, post office, general shop or even post box. No church ei
ther, though in the tiny graveyard lay the ruins of a chapel. Nor,
still, was there an easy harbour, because to build one on the best
site would have spoiled the glorious view of Rum and Eigg. And
the population, as for decades, still hovered around 40 souls.
But the laird was sure that 40 souls could keep Muck going, if
they worked hard enough and pulled together. What the island
needed was nothing sudden, but a spirit of community and self
sufficiency. He encouraged the islanders to plant trees, having
tried as a teenager to plant 1,000 beech and spruce saplings in a
day. He took over neglected gardens and set up polytunnels, so
that everyone could grow vegetables. For a while his herd of Ayr
shires produced free milk for the whole island, until the health
andsafety ghouls came down on him. (They moaned about the
water, too, though he knew Muck’s springs were pure as any bot
tled kind.) He also held an annual Open Day, with tours of his farm
and displays of produce, to show what little Muck could do.
The hub of his philosophy was the island’s nurseryandprim
ary school. Attendance sometimes sank to one pupil, but it was vi
tal to keep it going. Children were the future, even though at 12
they were bound to leave for schooling on the mainland. Those
earlier years were a precious training in the love of nature and
simplicity that he had; when people applied to him to settle on
Muck, those with infants came first. For a time, before the resi
dents built a community centre with Lottery money, the new
schoolhouse he also insisted on was where they held their meet
ings, parties and dances, the beating heart of the island.
At these their laird would almost always appear, with his shag
gy redblond beard and seablue eyes, often barefoot. Though his
voice had been honed and anglicised at Gordonstoun, there was
not a jot of arrogance in him. Barefoot again, he would joyfully
hand out Jenny’s tea and scones. Equally, he would take a shovel to
concrete and gravel whenever it was required, and topics such as
the new pier would be put to a democratic vote.
In fact he did not see himself as a laird at all, but as a steward
and a farmer. His usual dress was a dungsmelling boiler suit and
wellies, his normal conveyance an ancient red Massey Ferguson
tractor, and his chief friends and companions his 40 red Luing cat
tle. He kept 600 sheep too, mostly darkfleeced JacobCheviots of
which he was very fond. But the cows were his passion. He would
stand for long moments scratching and enchanting them, while
he recited one of the scores of poems he had learned as a boy: “She
neither smiled nor kissed him/because she knew not how/for he
was only a farmer’s lad/And she was a fine Luing cow.”
That scene appeared in a documentary, “The Prince of Muck”,
made by Cindy Jansen, a Dutch filmmaker, over four years from2014. Her film caught the laird at a time when his son Colin had
taken over the farm and Lawrence, still determined to look after
his island, could not bear to let go. He was left in a niche with his
favourite cows, stubbornly milking them by hand in the byre. Un
der Colin Muck had acquired a fish farm, wind turbines, WiFi, a
luxury hotel and holiday lets. The island had let the world in.
Gradually he came to accept these things. Yet his favourite vi
sion of the future was a different one. In it he lay in the little un
fenced graveyard, under the good Muck earth, while his cows wan
dered over him, gossiping to him as he had to them. He would
surely hear their whispering and munching as he lay there, bare
foot, embedded in the place. n
The barefoot lairdLawrence MacEwen, owner and steward of the isle of Muck,
died on May 16th, aged 80