Flannan Isle

“Flannan Isle” is a ballad by the English poet Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (1878–1962), first published in 1912. It refers to an incident that occurred on Eilean Mòr, one of the Flannan Isles of the Outer Hebrides, in 1900, when three lighthouse-keepers disappeared without traceUnexplained disappearance of three lighthouse keepers in December 1900.. It employs much poetic licence,^[1] so much that it has been described by the folklorists Sophia Kingshill and Jennifer Westwood as a “sexed-up verse account” of events.^[2]

The poem is written as if from the view point of one of the relief party.

Poem

The text of the poem as reproduced here is taken from An Anthology of Modern Verse (1921).

Though three men dwell on Flannan Isle
To keep the lamp alight,
As we steer’d under the lee, we caught
No glimmer through the night!

The three lighthouse keepers – Thomas Marshall, James Ducat and Donald MacArthur – were discovered to have vanished without trace in December 1900.

A passing ship at dawn had brought
The news; and quickly we set sail,
To find out what strange thing might all
The keepers of the deep-sea light.

The winter day broke blue and bright,
With glancing sun and glancing spray,
As o’er the swell our boat made way,
As gallant as a gull in flight.

But, as we near’d the lonely Isle;
And look’d up at the naked height;
And saw the lighthouse towering white,
With blinded lantern, that all night
Had never shot a spark
Of comfort through the dark,
So ghastly in the cold sunlight
It seem’d, that we were struck the while
With wonder all too dread for words.

And, as into the tiny creek
We stole beneath the hanging crag,
We saw three queer, black, ugly birds–
Too big, by far, in my belief,
For guillemot or shag–
Like seamen sitting bold upright
Upon a half-tide reef:
But, as we near’d, they plunged from sight,
Without a sound, or spurt of white.

Among the more implausible explanations for the men’s disappearance was that they had been carried away by a giant seabird.^[3]^[4]

And still too mazed to speak,
We landed; and made fast the boat;
And climb’d the track in single file,
Each wishing he was safe afloat,
On any sea, however far,
So it be far from Flannan Isle:
And still we seem’d to climb, and climb,
As though we’d lost all count of time,
And so must climb for evermore.
Yet, all too soon, we reached the door–
The black, sun-blister’d lighthouse door,
That gaped for us ajar.

As, on the threshold, for a spell,
We paused, we seem’d to breathe the smell
Of limewash and of tar,
Familiar as our daily breath,
As though ’twere some strange scent of death:
And so, yet wondering, side by side,
We stood a moment, still tongue-tied:
And each with black foreboding eyed
The door, ere we should fling it wide,
To leave the sunlight for the gloom:
Till, plucking courage up, at last,
Hard on each other’s heels we pass’d
Into the living-room.

Yet, as we crowded through the door,
We only saw a table, spread
For dinner, meat and cheese and bread;
But all untouch’d; and no one there:
As though, when they sat down to eat,
Ere they could even taste,
Alarm had come; and they in haste
Had risen and left the bread and meat:
For on the table-head a chair
Lay tumbled on the floor.
We listen’d; but we only heard
The feeble cheeping of a bird
That starved upon its perch:
And, listening still, without a word,
We set about our hopeless search.

This is complete fiction. The official investigation report by the Northern Lighthouse Board states that the kitchen utensils were all very clean, suggesting that the men left after dinner.^[3]

We hunted high, we hunted low,
And soon ransack’d the empty house;
Then o’er the Island, to and fro,
We ranged, to listen and to look
In every cranny, cleft or nook
That might have hid a bird or mouse:
But, though we searched from shore to shore,
We found no sign in any place:
And soon again stood face to face
Before the gaping door:
And stole into the room once more
As frighten’d children steal.

Aye: though we hunted high and low,
And hunted everywhere,
Of the three men’s fate we found no trace
Of any kind in any place,
But a door ajar, and an untouch’d meal,
And an overtoppled chair.

And, as we listen’d in the gloom
Of that forsaken living-room–
O chill clutch on our breath–
We thought how ill-chance came to all
Who kept the Flannan Light:
And how the rock had been the death
Of many a likely lad:
How six had come to a sudden end
And three had gone stark mad:
And one whom we’d all known as friend
Had leapt from the lantern one still night,
And fallen dead by the lighthouse wall:
And long we thought
On the three we sought,
And of what might yet befall.

The lighthouse was only completed in 1899, and there had certainly not been ten deaths in the months before the men’s disappearance. But “Gibson did not allow fact to stand in the way of his drama”.^[5]

Like curs a glance has brought to heel,
We listen’d, flinching there:
And look’d, and look’d, on the untouch’d meal
And the overtoppled chair.

We seem’d to stand for an endless while,
Though still no word was said,
Three men alive on Flannan Isle,
Who thought on three men dead.