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Silver Bough
Archaeologist Simon Grant arrives in the Scottish Highlands to excavate a local burial cairn, hires a local simpleton to assist, and puzzles over the disappearance of the gold he discovers in the course of the dig
328 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1948
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34 people want to read
About the author
Neil M. Gunn
63 books49 followersNeil Gunn, one of Scotland's most prolific and distinguished novelists, wrote over a period that spanned the Recession, the political crises of the 1920's and 1930's, and the Second World War and its aftermath. Although nearly all his 20 novels are set in the Highlands of Scotland, he is not a regional author in the narrow sense of that description; his novels reflect a search for meaning in troubled times, both past and present, a search that leads him into the realms of philosophy, archaeology, folk tradition and metaphysical speculation.
Born in the coastal village of Dunbeath, Caithness, the son of a successful fishing boat skipper, Gunn was educated at the local village primary school and privately in Galloway. In 1911 he entered the Civil Service and spent some time in both London and Edinburgh before returning to the North as a customs and excise officer based (after a short spell in Caithness) in Inverness. Before voluntary retirement from Government service in 1937 to become a full-time writer, he had embarked on a literary career with considerable success.
His first novel, The Grey Coast (1926), a novel in the realist tradition and set in Caithness in the 1920's, occupied an important position in the literary movement known as the Scottish Renaissance. His second novel, Morning Tide (1931), an idyll of a Highland childhood, won a Book Society award and the praise of the well known literary and public figure, John Buchan. The turning point in Gunn's career, however, came in 1937, when he won the prestigious James Tait Black Memorial prize for his deeply thought-provoking Highland River, a quasi autobiographical novel written in the third person, in which the main protagonist's life is made analogous to a Highland river and the search for its source.
In 1941 Gunn's epic novel about the fishing boom of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, The Silver Darlings, was widely acclaimed as a modern classic and considered the finest balance between concrete action and metaphysical speculation achieved by any British writer in the 20th century. It was also the final novel of a trilogy of the history of the Northlands, the other novels being Sun Circle (1933) on the Viking invasions of the 9th century and Butcher's Broom (1934) on the Clearances. In 1944 Gunn wrote his anti-Utopian novel, The Green Isle of the Great Deep, a book that preceded George Orwell's novel on the same theme, Nineteen Eighty-Four, by five years. The novel, using an old man and a young boy from a rural background as characters in a struggle against the pressures of totalitarian state, evoked an enthusiastic response from the famous Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung.
Some of Gunn's later books, whilst not ignoring the uglier aspects of the modern world, touch more on metaphysical speculation in a vein that is not without humour. The Well at the Worlds End (1951), in particular, lays emphasis on the more positive aspects of living and the value of that approach in finding meaning and purpose in life. Gunn's spiritual autobiography, The Atom of Delight (1956), which, although similar in many ways to Highland River, incorporates a vein of thought derived from Gunn's interest in Zen Buddhism. The autobiography was Gunn's last major work.
In 1948 Gunn's contribution to literature was recognised by Edinburgh University with an honorary doctorate to the author; in 1972 the Scottish Arts Council created the Neil Gunn Fellowship in his honour, a fellowship that was to include such famous writers as Henrich Boll, Saul Bellow, Ruth Prawar Jhabvala, Nadine Gordimer and Mario Vargas Llosa.
Born in the coastal village of Dunbeath, Caithness, the son of a successful fishing boat skipper, Gunn was educated at the local village primary school and privately in Galloway. In 1911 he entered the Civil Service and spent some time in both London and Edinburgh before returning to the North as a customs and excise officer based (after a short spell in Caithness) in Inverness. Before voluntary retirement from Government service in 1937 to become a full-time writer, he had embarked on a literary career with considerable success.
His first novel, The Grey Coast (1926), a novel in the realist tradition and set in Caithness in the 1920's, occupied an important position in the literary movement known as the Scottish Renaissance. His second novel, Morning Tide (1931), an idyll of a Highland childhood, won a Book Society award and the praise of the well known literary and public figure, John Buchan. The turning point in Gunn's career, however, came in 1937, when he won the prestigious James Tait Black Memorial prize for his deeply thought-provoking Highland River, a quasi autobiographical novel written in the third person, in which the main protagonist's life is made analogous to a Highland river and the search for its source.
In 1941 Gunn's epic novel about the fishing boom of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, The Silver Darlings, was widely acclaimed as a modern classic and considered the finest balance between concrete action and metaphysical speculation achieved by any British writer in the 20th century. It was also the final novel of a trilogy of the history of the Northlands, the other novels being Sun Circle (1933) on the Viking invasions of the 9th century and Butcher's Broom (1934) on the Clearances. In 1944 Gunn wrote his anti-Utopian novel, The Green Isle of the Great Deep, a book that preceded George Orwell's novel on the same theme, Nineteen Eighty-Four, by five years. The novel, using an old man and a young boy from a rural background as characters in a struggle against the pressures of totalitarian state, evoked an enthusiastic response from the famous Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung.
Some of Gunn's later books, whilst not ignoring the uglier aspects of the modern world, touch more on metaphysical speculation in a vein that is not without humour. The Well at the Worlds End (1951), in particular, lays emphasis on the more positive aspects of living and the value of that approach in finding meaning and purpose in life. Gunn's spiritual autobiography, The Atom of Delight (1956), which, although similar in many ways to Highland River, incorporates a vein of thought derived from Gunn's interest in Zen Buddhism. The autobiography was Gunn's last major work.
In 1948 Gunn's contribution to literature was recognised by Edinburgh University with an honorary doctorate to the author; in 1972 the Scottish Arts Council created the Neil Gunn Fellowship in his honour, a fellowship that was to include such famous writers as Henrich Boll, Saul Bellow, Ruth Prawar Jhabvala, Nadine Gordimer and Mario Vargas Llosa.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
September 21, 2013
Neil Gunn was an excellent and prolific 20th century Scottish writer, who wrote historical and contemporary novels almost all of which are set in the Highlands. This one, from 1948, is a late novel about a middle-aged archaeologist who arrives in a Highland village just after the Second World War, to excavate a prehistoric burial mound. It is part social comedy, part serious reflection on change and continuity in human societies. A little dated in some of its attitudes, it is nevertheless full of interest, with some profound philosophical insights and fine descriptions of village life, Scottish landscape and fierce weather.
August 28, 2017
This is the second book by Neil M. Gunn which I have read. Again he interweaves the mystical with the mundanities of Scottish Highland life. Although the book is beautifully written I am afraid it was just too mystical for me in some parts so I can only rate it as three stars. Gunn can certainly create an atmosphere and some believable characters and I did enjoy the story despite skimming through some of the more fantastical passages!
November 23, 2020
With every book I am more convinced Gunn can't write, or rather couldn't write, a bad one. What's not to love about this? Oddball characters, Scottish highland setting, ancient rocks....just too marvellous. It's about a middle aged archaeologist in the 1940s (just after the second world war) travelling up to the highlands to work solo on a cairn that hasn't been excavated before. It's a big one, with a low stone circle around it, and in the cairn itself, beneath all the rocks are various burial cysts and passages.
Our archaeologist is Simon Grant, in his fifties with some vaguely mentioned health conditions from the first world war (breathing seems to be an issue sometimes - mustard gas?). He is a confirmed batcheolor, a bit of a stress head and very particular and he doesn't like it when people don't agree with him or say he is wrong. He also likes to feel fatherly, benevolant and liked. He turns up with a letter of introduction to the land owner from a fellow archaeologist, Colonel MacKintosh, who seems to be literally a massive fellow in all senses when he turns up later in the book. The landowner, Donald Martin, is another oddball, as he is uncommunitive, utterly disengaged and dead to life and seems to like bimbling about in the hills or in his boat at sea taking greater risks and not caring if he dies. He was out in the East during the second world war and witnessed attrocities - some of which are mentioned, although not in bloody graphic detail.
It's an interesting mix of reality and folk tales as well as the modern scientific community coming down on the more rural, living way of life for the villagers. Although it is an archaeological study being made, you feel the Scottish folk tales creeping in and that this cairn has a supernatural quality. When Grant is inside working he often loses time (he'll come out and can't believe so many hours have gone) which is something you see in folk tales when people follow the little folk, or go in to a mountain, and come out and find years have gone by. Which is how it must have felt for the servicemen returning home after all those years away at war. In fact, the two only proper conversations Grant manages to have with Martin happen underground, as if in another realm - a man made underground cavern up in the Robber's Glen, and also a coastal cave. Then there's the Silver Bough, a fairy story Mrs Cameron (and Grant's landlady) tells her granddaughter, about a silver branch with nine golden apples that play music. Grant actually writes to a craftsman in Edinburgh and gets him to make such a thing which he then gives to the granddaughter, Sheena, as a gift. And then I've not even gotten to the croc of gold!
Grant is kind of pushed into hiring "Simple Andie" (this is the 1940s, we're not all that politically correct, and so a man with severe learning diffecults and no real speech, is essentially considered the village idiot) along with his mother to supervise him, as a labourer on the project to move the rocks and boulders. When they uncover the long passage, Grant is shocked and delighted to find an urn in there full of golden jewelry - such a find has never been made. However, before he can study all the findings, write a report or anything, the urn disappears. It turns out that Andie loves shiny things and is in the habit of running off with them and burying them in random places rather like a dog. You can just feel Grant's head throbbing with fury at this point. What makes his frustration and humiliation worse is that the story gets out and to the press, then suddenly he has journalists all over taking photos, getting quotes, and tourists running about trying to find this buried croc of gold. Fairytales of hidden stashes of gold also exist, although I remember them being more in the mountains and very hard to find. And should anyone take them, they find either their soul is taken and turned into a very nasty, greedy type, or they come to a sticky end. And well... the cairn will have it's revenge sooner or later.
Our archaeologist is Simon Grant, in his fifties with some vaguely mentioned health conditions from the first world war (breathing seems to be an issue sometimes - mustard gas?). He is a confirmed batcheolor, a bit of a stress head and very particular and he doesn't like it when people don't agree with him or say he is wrong. He also likes to feel fatherly, benevolant and liked. He turns up with a letter of introduction to the land owner from a fellow archaeologist, Colonel MacKintosh, who seems to be literally a massive fellow in all senses when he turns up later in the book. The landowner, Donald Martin, is another oddball, as he is uncommunitive, utterly disengaged and dead to life and seems to like bimbling about in the hills or in his boat at sea taking greater risks and not caring if he dies. He was out in the East during the second world war and witnessed attrocities - some of which are mentioned, although not in bloody graphic detail.
It's an interesting mix of reality and folk tales as well as the modern scientific community coming down on the more rural, living way of life for the villagers. Although it is an archaeological study being made, you feel the Scottish folk tales creeping in and that this cairn has a supernatural quality. When Grant is inside working he often loses time (he'll come out and can't believe so many hours have gone) which is something you see in folk tales when people follow the little folk, or go in to a mountain, and come out and find years have gone by. Which is how it must have felt for the servicemen returning home after all those years away at war. In fact, the two only proper conversations Grant manages to have with Martin happen underground, as if in another realm - a man made underground cavern up in the Robber's Glen, and also a coastal cave. Then there's the Silver Bough, a fairy story Mrs Cameron (and Grant's landlady) tells her granddaughter, about a silver branch with nine golden apples that play music. Grant actually writes to a craftsman in Edinburgh and gets him to make such a thing which he then gives to the granddaughter, Sheena, as a gift. And then I've not even gotten to the croc of gold!
Grant is kind of pushed into hiring "Simple Andie" (this is the 1940s, we're not all that politically correct, and so a man with severe learning diffecults and no real speech, is essentially considered the village idiot) along with his mother to supervise him, as a labourer on the project to move the rocks and boulders. When they uncover the long passage, Grant is shocked and delighted to find an urn in there full of golden jewelry - such a find has never been made. However, before he can study all the findings, write a report or anything, the urn disappears. It turns out that Andie loves shiny things and is in the habit of running off with them and burying them in random places rather like a dog. You can just feel Grant's head throbbing with fury at this point. What makes his frustration and humiliation worse is that the story gets out and to the press, then suddenly he has journalists all over taking photos, getting quotes, and tourists running about trying to find this buried croc of gold. Fairytales of hidden stashes of gold also exist, although I remember them being more in the mountains and very hard to find. And should anyone take them, they find either their soul is taken and turned into a very nasty, greedy type, or they come to a sticky end. And well... the cairn will have it's revenge sooner or later.
December 31, 2020
Intriguing tale. Not my usual fare, so it took a bit of time to dig into, but it had its own pace of mystery, heartfelt characters likeable and dislikeable in their own ways. A glimpse into a time since gone. Digging up the past, can dig up other things too. A well crafted story.
December 27, 2024
Archaeologist Simon Grant has been sent north to excavate a previously unexplored chambered cairn surrounded by a ring of stones on the land of Donald Martin. On the way to the site he comes across a mother and daughter sleeping curled up in the heather. These are Anna and Sheena, respectively daughter and granddaughter of Mrs Cameron with whom he takes lodging. At night Mrs Cameron tells Sheena traditional stories of the Silver Bough, a branch with nine golden apples on which music can be played. The Silver Bough “was the passport in those distant days to the land of the gods.” This is one of a few local tales, another is of an urisk which supposedly haunts the stone circle. The text mentions in passing that attempt to define the key to all religions, James Frazer’s The Golden Bough, to which Gunn’s book’s title surely alludes.
Taken by Sheena (whose mother Grant quickly divines is not married, having come back early from service in London in the Second World War as a result of her pregnancy) Grant later has made for her a silver bough made as an item of jewellery “two feet long with nine golden apples pendent.” Sheena’s father is not unknown, though. He is that same landowner, Donald Martin, but his war experiences in the Far East, where he witnessed various atrocities, have left him taciturn and unengaging, prone to wandering the hills or out on his boat, and Anna, in her pride, is content to leave things as they are. There are, in any case, questions of their differing stations in life intervening.
The main plot, though, revolves around the uncovering of the cairn, for which Grant employs for the heavy work the only local help available, a not-fully-there young man dubbed Foolish Andie, who speaks only in grunts. Their first discovery, beside the cairn’s entrance, of a burial cist containing the bodies of a mother and daughter spooned together, reminds Grant of Anna and Sheena as he first encountered them. Inside the cairn itself they find collections of bones and an urn with a hoard of golden objects.
Throughout, Gunn displays a knowledge of archaeological terms and practices which is convincing to the otherwise unversed. Grant’s mistake, though, in returning to the cairn at night unaccompanied seems one a proper professional would not have made. Without it, however, there would have been no remaining plot to unfurl.
On that night visit, Grant is surprised by the appearance of Foolish Andie and knocked unconscious, while the urn disappears, presumably taken by Andie to some hiding place of his. Grant’s discomfiture at this is not helped by the presence nearby of some journalists who quickly latch on to the story and sensationalise it.
There is a lot more to The Silver Bough than this short account might suggest. Each of the characters is finely drawn, even down to Foolish Andie’s mother Mrs McKenzie, Martin’s sister Mrs Sidbury, both protective of their respective close relatives, Grant’s ultimate boss, Colonel Mackintosh, come up from London to verify the hoard.
This is another fine example of Gunn’s œuvre.
Taken by Sheena (whose mother Grant quickly divines is not married, having come back early from service in London in the Second World War as a result of her pregnancy) Grant later has made for her a silver bough made as an item of jewellery “two feet long with nine golden apples pendent.” Sheena’s father is not unknown, though. He is that same landowner, Donald Martin, but his war experiences in the Far East, where he witnessed various atrocities, have left him taciturn and unengaging, prone to wandering the hills or out on his boat, and Anna, in her pride, is content to leave things as they are. There are, in any case, questions of their differing stations in life intervening.
The main plot, though, revolves around the uncovering of the cairn, for which Grant employs for the heavy work the only local help available, a not-fully-there young man dubbed Foolish Andie, who speaks only in grunts. Their first discovery, beside the cairn’s entrance, of a burial cist containing the bodies of a mother and daughter spooned together, reminds Grant of Anna and Sheena as he first encountered them. Inside the cairn itself they find collections of bones and an urn with a hoard of golden objects.
Throughout, Gunn displays a knowledge of archaeological terms and practices which is convincing to the otherwise unversed. Grant’s mistake, though, in returning to the cairn at night unaccompanied seems one a proper professional would not have made. Without it, however, there would have been no remaining plot to unfurl.
On that night visit, Grant is surprised by the appearance of Foolish Andie and knocked unconscious, while the urn disappears, presumably taken by Andie to some hiding place of his. Grant’s discomfiture at this is not helped by the presence nearby of some journalists who quickly latch on to the story and sensationalise it.
There is a lot more to The Silver Bough than this short account might suggest. Each of the characters is finely drawn, even down to Foolish Andie’s mother Mrs McKenzie, Martin’s sister Mrs Sidbury, both protective of their respective close relatives, Grant’s ultimate boss, Colonel Mackintosh, come up from London to verify the hoard.
This is another fine example of Gunn’s œuvre.
May 11, 2025
I think The Silver Bough is something of a minor classic. It’s an odd book because it grapples repeatedly with several genres - romance, adventure, mystery, historical drama, psychological tragedy - and just when you think you have the measure of it, Gunn suddenly strikes a surprising turn into something truly unexpected. It’s got a mystical thread that it plays incredibly lightly but when it turns up it’s absolutely extraordinary. The only slightly sour note is that Gunn can’t quite work out how to make Andie work as a character, and the book occasionally seems to actively flail when trying to describe him and his actions. But the rest of it is quite wonderful, and I strongly suspect JL Carr knew it because there’s a great deal of similar ideas to A Month In The Country buzzing around in this
February 27, 2025
Im Zentrum der Erzählung steht ein Hügelgrab, das von einem Steinkreis umgeben ist. Es bringt den Archäologen Simon Grant nach Caithness, um es zu öffnen und zu untersuchen. Er interessiert sich für die Menschen in der Gegend: diejenigen, die das Grab errichtet haben und diejenigen, die jetzt in der Gegend leben. Besonders interessieren in der Besitzer des Landes, auf dem das Grab errichtet wurde und der geistig behinderte junge Mann, der ihm bei der Öffnung des Grabes hilft. In dessen Innern entdeckt Simon nicht nur zwei Skelette, sondern auch Grabbeigaben aus Gold, einen richtigen Schatz. Doch dieser verschwindet und Suche fordert bald ein Opfer.
Eine fesslende Geschichte. Es geht um viel mehr als nur das Grab und den verschwundenen Schatz. Neil M. Gunn beschreibt mit den Personen der Geschichte auch die Menschen seiner Heimat. Besonders interessant ist das Bild, das er von Frauen zeichnet und das sich durch alle seine Erzählungen zieht: Frauen sind für ihn die Basis der Familie, sie arbeiten hart, aber er stellt sie auch gleichzeitig als einfache Geschöpfe (simple creature) dar und schwankt so zwischen Hochachtung und Arroganz ihnen gegenüber. Insgesamt ist das Buch spannend geschrieben. Was genau mit dem Gold passiert ist wird nicht aufgelöst und so der Phantasie des Lesers überlassen.
Eine fesslende Geschichte. Es geht um viel mehr als nur das Grab und den verschwundenen Schatz. Neil M. Gunn beschreibt mit den Personen der Geschichte auch die Menschen seiner Heimat. Besonders interessant ist das Bild, das er von Frauen zeichnet und das sich durch alle seine Erzählungen zieht: Frauen sind für ihn die Basis der Familie, sie arbeiten hart, aber er stellt sie auch gleichzeitig als einfache Geschöpfe (simple creature) dar und schwankt so zwischen Hochachtung und Arroganz ihnen gegenüber. Insgesamt ist das Buch spannend geschrieben. Was genau mit dem Gold passiert ist wird nicht aufgelöst und so der Phantasie des Lesers überlassen.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews