A Summer in Skye, Thirty Years Hence, David Ross

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language: English
country: UK
year: 1866
form: short fiction
genre(s): fantasy, science fiction
dates read: 8.4.24

David Ross’s A Summer in Skye, Thirty Years Hence is a classic dream-vision of the future, published as a pamphlet by the Portree Mutual Improvement Association in 1866. its narrator, a fictional version of Ross, goes to sleep on Suidhe Fhinn (or Aite-Suidh Fhionn, as one of the only two instances of Gaelic in the text has it) above Portree and awakens in the year 1896, where he spends two months and change exploring the bright, prosperous future before returning to the present because medicine has advanced so far that it’s impossible for him to continue (or renew) his medical practice.

much of it is just what you’d expect from a more or less aristocratic vision of a future prosperous Skye: the island’s natural resources have been “developed”; there are daily steamers between Portree, Broadford, Raasay, and various settlements in between, as well as regular steamers to St. Kilda, Orkney, Shetland, the Faroes, and Norway; there’s a train from Portree to Dunvegan and Uig and a train from Broadford to Kyleakin, with a Portree-Broadford route nearing completion; there’s a bustling tourism industry; and while Skye continues to export people, it now does so primarily in the form of skilled labor and sailors rather than mass emigration. peace reigns, people are happy, tenants are well-treated, etc.

it does not, of course, imagine any radical changes in the distribution of land or wealth, nor can it see a better future for Portree than being able to give a stylish welcome to the visiting Prince of Wales. the antiquarian museum receives donations of “articles from India, and America, and Australia, &c., sent by Skye men living there”.

it has, strikingly, nothing whatsoever to say about Gaelic. Suidhe Fhinn is twice referred to as “Aite-Suidh Fhionn” (and once as “Fingal’s Seat”), and the second chapter has as its epigraph “Clann n’an Gael, ri guailibh a cheile”. the word “fank” is used in scare quotes. one of the invited speakers at the future iteration of the Portree Mutual Improvement Association (now the “Portree Philosophical Institute”) gives a talk on “Affinities of the Gaelic and Sanskrit—both members of the Aryan family of languages”. there is otherwise not a single mention of the language in the text of the story, and certainly no mention of any current speakers or their future state.

it scrupulously avoids taking what it perceives as political stances — no discussion of the relative strengths of various Christian denominations in the future, for example, merely the observation that churches are “well-attended”. when he attends a meeting of the borough council, we are told that

I remember nothing of the proceedings of the Meeting, except that they referred to sanitary matters, and to the question whether the number of policemen should be increased. I was more interested in the room itself, and the views got from its windows.

it then spends several hundred words describing the Town Hall, the meeting room, and the view of the town. lol.

moods: informative, reflective


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