Under Brinkie's Brae

( I am writing this in May; and it has been a beautiful month in Orkney, a kind of pleasant love affair between mist and sun. A morning might be hung about with a grey cloud; but dove-grey, so that you knew the sun was there, somewhere, hidden. And then, when you were eating breakfast or writing a letter , the window brightened, there was a splash of sun on the floor; and another fine day was about to break . About the George Mackay Brown was born in Stromness in 1921. He was at Newbattle Abbey College when Edwin Muir was Warden. He read English at Edinburgh and did post-graduate work on Gerard Manley Hopkins. He was known for his poetry, short stories, plays and novels, and won many prizes including in 1987 the James Tait Black prize for his novel 'The Golden Bird'. He died in 1996)