Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

These SWALK letters joke about the possible misattributed paternity of my brother Sandy. The only basis at that time was his fair hair when both our parents had black hair. To read the full version of the letters, check out SWALK (Interactive version).

Greenock 1 Letter: Misattributed Paternity

The writing is difficult to read, but my father says “the ship is going to Greenock for a boiler clean, which will last about 7 days.I may be able to get through for the weekend.” He writes, “I’ll need to get some whisky to take to Eigg.”

My mother mentions in one of her letters that they will visit Eigg or the East of Scotland. I’m not sure if my father ever went there. My mother also mentioned this in one of our conversations, but I forget the details. There is no written or photographic evidence that he ever visited Eigg.

He only mentions Sandy, so he wrote this letter before the birth of Stuart (1944).

He also mentions ‘Knights’, joking that Knights doesn’t want to visit them because “Sandy has fair hair”. This seems to suggest that the letter was written not long after the birth of Sandy in June 1942. Both my parents had black hair. Perhaps, Knights had fair hair. Of course, children often have fair hair even if their parents have dark hair! 

On the other hand, there may be a ‘family skeleton’ buried here. My parents married in October 1940, but my mother didn’t give birth to her first son until more than 18 months later—a fair-haired boy that didn’t resemble my father at all. But we can be cynical. One might suggest that despite his exclamations that he was a ‘brute’, in reality, their intimate relations at the beginning of their marriage were limited. My father seems to hint at this in one of his letters; he talks indirectly about his failings on the wedding night (in the George Hotel, Glasgow). 

To continue along this ‘cynical’ vein, it seems my mother more or less lived ‘alone’ in Dunoon for many months. It is not unlikely that she could have been visited by my father’s naval friends, or by her old Eigg boyfriends. 

To double up on this cynicism, perhaps my mother was worried that she was ‘losing her husband’ and needed to become pregnant to give her husband some ‘responsibility’. After all, this would hardly be the first time in history that this has occurred—that women use pregnancy to tie a man down. 

Her first two children had protruding front teeth (like my mother), a ‘MacGillivray/Campbell’ genetic feature. The only children that resembled my father were myself and my younger brother Gavin. 

Unfaithfulness in the Family

The women in the Campbell family were not known for their ‘faithfulness.’ My great-grandmother, Morag Campbell (nee MacKinnon), was illegitimate. My mother’s mother had ‘fancy men’ – not least the lodger, Abram Brown, who probably fathered at least one of her children. In other words, my mother could have been carrying on a ‘family tradition’. Of course, this is just ’surmise’ and unproven without DNA testing. Nevertheless, it is not so unlikely either. But as I am not investigating a murder case, I will deem this a ‘cold case’ and let it rest here. 

On the basis of the doubts on Sandy’s possibly misattributed paternity, the poet and a friend, Ruth Joy, composed this poem: Black Hair, Fair Hair.