A View from St Kilda – February 2025

It was with mixed emotions that I raised a glass, or smashed a bottle, to celebrate that the Glen Sannox eventually took to the water not that long ago.

Without being political, the ferry fiasco had been marred by delays and increasing costs. Originally intended to come into service in 2018, the ferry is seven years delayed and costs have more than quadrupled, but as she sailed, she looked stunning, with the passengers happy to be not just on her maiden voyage but on an important link to the islands around our shores.

It brought to mind of the ballad of Thomas Campbell who wrote:

“A chieftain to the Highlands bound

Cries ‘Boatman, do not tarry!

And I’ll give thee a silver pound

To row us o’er the ferry.’ “

Lord Ullin’s Daughter is a ballad set in the Northwest isles of Scotland.

The heroine of the poem only speaks once, and yet the entire poem is focused on her. The boatman agrees to row across a stormy passage after seeing innocence in Lord Ullin’s daughter’s face.

Crucial to the poem is Lord Ullin’s conversation with this ferryman. The lord’s daughter is at the door of death. She is the most important thing in a father’s life. Yet his possessiveness of her is encouraging the young woman to rebel.

I’ll not spoil the tale for you, as it is better that you read the ballad for yourself. You’ll find that there are several morals and patterns of behaviour which arise from Campbell’s evocative narrative.

But to me, the ferryman, the boatman of the poem, is the key metaphor.

His task, of course, in physical terms, is to row his passengers ‘o’er the ferry’, from one place to another, to carry his charges safely from here to there, and to set them on their way for the remainder of their journey. But his conversations with Lord Ullin take the metaphor from the physical to the metaphysical. For what is a father, lord or commoner, but a ferryman himself for his children, seeing them across the divide, doing his best for them, and letting them go forward to whatever journey awaits them.

I have the joy of having three children: one a parent himself, a teacher and a father of two, making his own way in life. And closer to home, one leaving the teenage years behind now 20 and the other, in his final year at Jordanhill. However frightening that might be of how they have grown, when I talk with them, and watch them make decisions of their own, and hear of their values and standards, passions and abilities, interests and dreams, I am proud of them.

They won’t get everything right, none of us do but it is a pleasure seeing them taking on new tasks, sharing opinions in an adult way – sometimes!!

We both, in the manse, often rejoice in them, assured that their life journeys will continue with courage, faith and cheerfulness. Can I choose their journeys for them? No, I can’t. Will I be with them forever? No, I won’t, but the question that matters most is, ‘Have I been a good ferryman?’

As we begin a new year, we could also ask that question.

Are we good ferry folk with our children in the Kirk? Have we helped others set sail well, and pointed them to the waters they might travel? To all who travel with us in life, for a part of our journey or for a lengthy time, how good have we been at ferrying each other through both troubled and calmer waters?

Jesus stilled the storms. Jesus encouraged others to fish in deeper waters – but was always there. Can we do that this year?

Your friend and minister,

George C Mackay