Canadian Short Stories: Alistair MacLeod's "As Birds Bring Forth the Sun"
I dug out my brick of a Canadian Literature Anthology from university and picked a few short stories that I could talk about. The book has many of the greats, including Margaret Atwood, Susanna Moodie and Leonard Cohen, to name a few. The book has a total of 1,290 pages, so there are tons more of excellent writers to read about. This anthology contains a page or two on each writer and has poems and short stories, as well as narratives from people during the time of Canada's exploration.
Side Note about "Eskimo:" A Derogatory Word
I remember that one of the stories, a narrative, was about a British man living amongst a tribe in Canada and the tribe referred to a second tribe as "Eskimo," or "Esquimaux" as it was originally spelt in the narrative. It means "eaters of raw meat" and was used because it was believed that they were savages. It was a barbaric term that has remained attributed to natives of the upper part of Canada and Alaska. But thankfully, people are finally moving away from it, such as when President Obama removed the word and various other racial terms from the federal laws in 2016.
I didn't know this: According to the Alaska Native Language Center, "Linguists believe that "Eskimo" is derived from a Montagnais (Innu) word ayas̆kimew meaning "netter of snowshoes."
However, the word is on its way out. "The people of Canada and Greenland have long preferred other names. "Inuit," meaning "people," is used in Canada, and the language is called "Inuktitut" in eastern Canada although other local designations are used also."
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"As Birds Bring Forth the Sun" Short Story
If anyone wishes to read the story, here is a trigger warning: blood, animal attack, description of body parts.
Here is my summary with spoilers but no gory details:
"As Birds Bring Forth the Sun" by Alistair MacLeod focuses on oral tradition and the Celtic inheritance of a curse. It is told by a descendant of the curse.
A Celtic fisherman and farmer accidentally runs over a pup who was abandoned in the street. He brings the pup home and over time, she heals, becoming a big grey dog and was named thusly in Gaelic cù mòr glas. The dog becomes pregnant and is cared for by the man and his family, but one day, she disappears.
Just over a year later, the man and two of his sons are offshore, tending to their herring nets and because a storm is coming, they head to a nearby island to wait it out. On the island, the man is pulling in the boat that has his two sons and they see the cù mòr glas. The dog recognizes her old owner and as any dog does, leaps onto him, pushing him over. But the pups misinterpret the scene, having never met the man, and so, they viciously attack him. The dog angrily chases her pups away and the sons go to their father as he dies. From there is born the myth because as much as they searched, there was never any sign of the dog and her pups again on the island, but they were supposedly sighted in other regions. Because the cù mòr glas mysteriously showed up on the road and later disappeared, people speculated that it was an evil spirit. The two brothers who had witnessed the attack were traumatized for life and met their deaths early, which were blamed on the cù mòr glas. The youngest child of the family grew up never knowing of his father and he is the narrator's great-great-grandfather.
The narrator explains that the spectre of the cù mòr glas was said to plague every generation where they and their middle-aged brothers currently sit around their father who is dying in the Torontonian hospital.
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Title Significance
The title is said by the narrator as they and the family sit by their father's deathbed: "Sitting here, taking turns holding the hands of the man who gave us life, we are afraid for him and for ourselves. We are afraid of what he may see and we are afraid to hear the phrase born of the vision. We are aware that it may become confused with what the doctors call 'the will to live' and we are aware that some beliefs are what others would dismiss as 'garbage'. We are aware that there are men who believe the earth is flat and that the birds bring forth the sun."
The short story brings up the idea of "It is hard to not know what you do know." I first heard this idea from the TV show Sherlock. Once an idea has been planted in someone's mind, they cannot unknow it. And so, the idea of the cù mòr glas being an evil spirit or being some sort of harbinger of death infiltrated the family, becoming an ever-present myth and supposed curse rather than a single tragic event. Everyone believes in different things and may not always believe in science or logic, such as the sun rising every morning because of the Earth's rotation on its axis and having nothing to do with the birds.
My Reading Experience
It's been a long time since I've read Canadian literature, specifically from this book. In school, whether it's elementary or university, the books that teachers make us read are often boring and/or bad. But that is just based off of my experience. I'd always go into the book with the expectation of not being interested or having illogical things happen. From Waterland to Julius Caesar to Hard Times to Catcher in the Rye, I'd know about halfway through (or earlier) that the book was NOT staying on my shelf long (the ones I had to buy, at least). A few were surprisingly good, such as Bridge to Terabithia, Alias Grace and Hamlet.
Anyways, I went back to my anthology after several years and had forgotten to arm myself with that expectation, so I was startled by the gruesomeness of the story. The title also threw me off because I was expecting there to be birds, although I was a little suspicious about the title being a metaphor, which it was.
Nonetheless, it is the type of story I enjoy for its blend of myth and reality and the questions it brings about because maybe, just maybe, the cù mòr glas was some sort of spirit.
The Hound of the Baskervilles
I was reminded of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles because MacLeod's short story has a hound attack and the hound is a myth connected to one family. The first line of the short story says that the family had "a Highland name" and I remember Inspector Brakenreid from Murdock Mysteries telling Sir Arthur Conan Doyle about a hound from where he grew up in the Highlands and I wondered if MacLeod wasn't inspired by Conan Doyle. I cannot find any correlation, but another writer, William Giraldi, does compare MacLeod's work to Conan Doyle, as well as Jack London.
The Art of Storytelling
The story is written as a narrative, making it a great story for reading aloud, which can transform it into a myth in itself if it were read in the right atmosphere, such as around the campfire. The right atmosphere can add magic to a story, like when the teachers would turn the lights out and read to us in grade school.
Every family has their stories and myths, often from immigration and the hardships of their home countries, that are passed down through the generations. Stories make remembering easier, although it's not always easy to discern fact from fiction (or embellishments), but remembering is the important part.
Which reminds me of a story about storytelling. Take a look at Strange Gods by Alison Kimble.
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Finding Your Next Great Story
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