IT’s not uncommon for a character to overshadow their creator, but it happens often, and even if it seems a bit awkward, I present to you Para Handy, created by Neil Munro.
But let’s pay that last due first. An Inveraray-born journalist and bonafide writer, Munro, whose other works included The Daft Days and The Lost Pibroch (short stories), was often seen as the successor to Robert Louis Stevenson. At his memorial service in Glasgow Cathedral, critic Lauchlan MacLean Watt described him as “the greatest Scottish novelist since Sir Walter Scott”.
Yet his hero was neither a boy battling pirates nor a larger-than-life Highland outlaw. Para Handy was the savvy Gaelic skipper of the Vital Spark, a Clyde puffer delivering coal, timber, gravel, furniture or livestock from Glasgow to Loch Fyne, the west coast of the Highlands and the Hebrides.
He first appeared in the Glasgow Evening News’ “Looker On” column between 1905 and 1923, Munro using the pseudonym Hugh Foulis.
The first story, Para Handy – Master Mariner, describes “a short, stocky man, with a red beard, a hard round felt hat, ridiculously out of tune with a blue pilot’s jacket and pants, and a sailor’s singlet.”
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Conversing with the journalist narrator, he observes: “Cot bless me! and are you telling me that you can make a living out of it? I’m not asking you, be careful, hoo mich you will, don’t tell me; not a beep! not a beep! But I guess it’s more than Maclean the munister.
He explains that he is, at that moment, “out of a shot”, and speaks lyrically about how he misses the Vital Spark, a “chust sublime” ship, admittedly with a troublesome boiler, but consisting essentially of “four men and a derrick, and a watter-butt and a pan loaf in the fo’c’sle”.
Alas, he had temporarily lost his command when, delivering coals to Tarbert, he and his crew arrived at Greenock for “marmalade”, a stop which ended up taking three days, because of the drams.
According to him, it was the fault of Dougie the Mate, who had suggested the stoppage, knowing full well how it would end. Luckily, Para Handy got his job back and was once again able to sail the high seas with Dougie and Dan Macphail, the overworked and somewhat valuable engineer (but “a fireman” in Para Handy’s eyes; he had a thing for penny novelettes and bodices), and The Tar, the lazy deckhand and cook “who was usually as tired when he got up in the morning as when he went to bed”.
The Tar was replaced by young accordionist sailor Sunny Jim, but not before Para Handy, much to his distress, thought he had fallen overboard. However, on entering a pub in Ardrishaig – “No drink, chust wan gless of beer” – he found it at the counter and was moved to ask, “What are you doing here with your eye in a sling? ” Long story.
Another character that appears is Hurricane Jack, whom Para Handy considers a romantic buccaneer, “a kind of demigod…the most experienced sailor of modern times”, who “never wore anything but boots with elastic sides”.
Para Handy himself was unmarried, despite being “the kind of man, in many ways, who would fall easy prey for the first wife looking for a good home”. However, it was so out at sea that he was out of their grasp. That was the thing with sea captains: they weren’t “always hanging on the hoose with their sluppers.”
Among his many eccentricities, he called swearing an “Abyssinian tongue”, and he always dreaded being called to see the shipowner: “It’s either a raise or he heard about the night we spent in Campbeltown”.
The name Para Handy is an anglicization of “Para Shandaidh”, meaning “Peter (Paraig) son of Sandy”, and his Sunday name is Peter Macfarlane. Whatever the handful, he will describe himself with excruciating false modesty as “Chust wan of the hardy sons of Brutain”.
He shows no such modesty about the Vital Spark, “the smartest boat in the world”, on a class with the Clyde steamers and certainly more than a cut above the Clutha ferries which carried passengers to across the river.
Dougie the Mate is superstitious, which doesn’t help when the Vital Spark is hired to transport ministers or Kirk’s tombstones, both considered bad luck on a ship. The Kirk and his various schisms often feature in histories, with skillfully misquoted scripture.
I suspect Para Handy may appeal to older Scots. Although a ready-made audience was provided by Glasgow residents of Highland lineage or who went “watering” in Rothesay, Millport or Dunoon, when the stories were made into television series, even the people of Edinburgh liked them.
There were three BBC adaptations. The one your correspondent remembers as a child was The Vital Spark, which aired in black and white in 1965-66, then in color in 1973-74, with Roddy McMillan as Para Handy, John Grieve as Macphail, Walter Carr as Dougie and Alex McAvoy as Sunny Jim. A fantastic cast.
Indeed, TV stories have always been blessed with wonderful Scottish actors. Duncan Macrae starred as Para Handy in the first series, Para Handy – Master Mariner (1959), Angus Lennie as Macphail, the aforementioned McMillan as Dougie, and the also aforementioned Grieve as Sunny Jim.
The Tales of Para Handy (1994-95) starred Gregor Fisher as nibs, Rikki Fulton as Macphail, Sean Scanlan as Dougie, and Andrew Fairlie as Sunny Jim.
Literally, various collections have been published and Dunoon-based Stuart Donald has faithfully recreated the originals in Para Handy Sails Again (1995) and Para Handy All at Sea (1996).
So he is a man, our Para. As well as coal, timber and barnyard beasts, it carries the soul of the western highlands of Scotland. Hear him sing once more as he returns from another trip: “Rolling home to bonnie Scotland/Rolling home, dear land, to thee/Rolling home to bonnie Scotland/Rolling home across the sea.”
