Mairi Campbell: Living Stone

Review by Thuranie Aruliah

Mairi Campbell is a musician, singer, storyteller and artist, born in Edinburgh, but with roots in the island of Lismore, where she spends six months a year at her cottage and studio, crafting her words and music and teaching violin to the children of the island. Living Stone is the final part of her Pendulum trilogy, exploring the intimate connection of humanity with Mother Earth, through the medium of a 400 million year old stone.

It begins with a bare stage – three wooden poles lie along the side, two violins are propped in the shadows and in the foreground, a stand holds a large, roughly shaped, flat stone with a hole through the centre, simply lit and drawing one’s gaze to contemplate its form and meaning.

Mairi emerges, dressed simply in a homespun kirtle with a rope girdle that could come from any age and culture of the northern isles and beyond, over the last thousand years and more. Mairi tells us how her family lived on a croft on the island of Lismore, her sister and brother-in-law returning to the croft that belonged to her great grandmother and introduces us to the stone - a quern stone, used for millennia by women, to grind their corn. It was found buried on land that had belonged to her family for centuries – damaged, broken and useless, yet carrying the memories and dreams of her ancestors, holding its ancient power within.

She dramatically recreates the scenario that might have led to the stone’s destruction. A woman fights fiercely, wielding a stave and shouting furiously in Gaelic at those who have come to destroy her quern, as the landlord wishes to take all the grinding of corn under his control, along with the profits. The quern stone is a symbol of the ordinary islander’s independence, and the destroyers initially retreat before the woman’s vehemence, but they return. The handle to turn the stone is broken, rendering it useless. The woman mourns, embracing the stone as if it were a dead child, her keening fills the auditorium with grief.

Mairi then explores the meaning and symbolism of the stone, how its central hole takes us to other dimensions, represents the transitions of birth and death, how the grooves and ridges suggest creatures of ancient myth and power. She is a consummate storyteller, and she enables the stone itself to move and sing as she constructs a cradle from the poles and her girdle of rope and suspends the stone, making it a pendulum and an instrument to be struck, releasing its voice. She tells of how it inspired her to take up a challenge to make 100 drawings in as many days, exploring myth and magic from many lands and cultures. She talks of teaching the children in the tiny local school to play violin, she sings, she plays – the hour of the show passes too quickly as we are woven into her spell.

There were times when the tears rose in my eyes, the hairs rose on the back of my neck – I wanted to be there, on Lismore, alone with the stone and its stories. This is a truly magical, mystical, melodic combination of words, music, art and drama. And the 100 drawings inspired by the stone are on display in the Centre, and well worth close examination, too.