Aunt Julia Quotes

• "Aunt Julia spoke Gaelic very loud and very fast"


  Repetition - "very" - highlights the speaker's impression of his aunt. The adjective intensifies the way in which Aunt Julia is highly vocal and strident. The barrier to his understanding is that she speaks too quickly. In addition to speaking a language he didn't understand.
• "I could not answer her/ - I could not understand her."


  Repetition - in "I could not" - highlights his frustration at not being able to communicate. He is unable to answer her questions because she spoke Gaelic, which also indicates to the reader the isolation of the setting.
• "She wore men's boots"


  Her wearing 'men's boots' reflects her lifestyle, her hard existence, her self-sufficiency, as well as, perhaps, her masculinity.
• "paddling with the treadle of the spinningwheel"


  Contrast - the 'paddling' of her 'spinning wheel' is a contrasting inane, suggesting her more feminine, domestic side, as well as indicating traditional island crafts.
• "marvellously"


  Word Choice - 'marvellously' indicates the boy's fascination with what appears magic to him.
• "Here was the only house/Where I've lain at night/in the absolute darkness/of a box bed, listening to/ crickets being friendly"


  Enjambment - and the continuation of thought and speech through the entire stanza conveys a sense of comfort that MacCaig feels when he is with Aunt Julia, sleeping at her house.

  
  

  Setting - the whole verse evokes the remoteness in time and place of the setting. The expression 'only house' suggests that his aunt's house was unique, and that he felt completely safe there, while 'absolute darkness' is the physical, but temporary, darkness of a place with no street lights, and 'box bed' - an old-fashioned bed boxed into the living room - suggests the lack of modern comfortable furniture.

  
  

  Anthropomorphism - (ascribing human characteristics to animals) - 'crickets being friendly' - suggests that it is the speaker who is happy, enjoying the closeness with nature.
• "She was buckets/and water flouncing into them."


  Synecdoche - 'buckets' and 'water flouting into them' - represents her hard life: there is no running water, she has to collect it.
• "She was winds pouring wetly/round house-ends"


  Synecdoche - the expressions 'winds pouring wetly/round house-ends' represent the harsh conditions created by the weather and how she is part of the force of nature
• "She was brown eggs, black skirts/and a keeper of threepenny bits"


  Synecdoche - the 'brown eggs', 'black skirts' and the 'keeper of threepenny bits' - represents her routine, traditional and frugal existence.
• "She was" (repeated)


  Anaphora - the whole verse uses anaphora - repetition of "she was" - which heads a list cumulatively showing the intensity of her harsh life, and at the same time showing how she represents a culture, a heritage, and a way of life now gone.
• "Aunt Julia spoke Gaelic/very loud and very fast" (repeated)


  Repetition - the repetition of the first two lines of the poem - reinforcing the speaker's impression of Aunt Julia's strong, vibrant voice in a language he doesn't understand - further intensifies his frustration at not being able to communicate with her. The reference is structural, suggesting the circular nature of the experience - he has gone full circle, from child to adult.
• "A little she lay silenced in the absolute black of a sandy grave"


  The perspective changes to the speaker as an adult. He knows 'a little' Gaelic, but now Aunt Julia is dead.

  
  

  Enjambment - the use of enjambment causes the word 'silenced' to be highlighted by its position at the beginning go line 28, reinforcing the contrast with her 'loud and very last' voice when she was alive. Further contrast is found in the 'absolute black/of a sandy grave' with the quite different ' absolute darkness' of his box bed. The word 'black' connotes the finality of death - the darkness of death isn't temporary, unlike the darkness of his box bed.
• "But I hear her still, welcoming me/with a seagull's voice"


  Tense - the tense switches to the present, showing how the speaker is almost defying her death - "I hear her still".

  
  

  Metaphor - her loudness is accentuated by the metaphor "seagull's voice" - suggests her links to rural Scotland and its seas.
• "getting angry, getting angry/with so many questions unanswered."


  Repetition - 'getting angry' suggests that the frustration is both hers and his: as a boy he couldn't answer her questions because of the language barrier, now those unanswered questions will remain 'unanswered' (note the word is the final line of the poem) because of the barrier of death.

  
  

  Perhaps there is more to it: the younger generation often fails to ask the older generation (grandparents who are still alive) significant questions about their experiences of the past and also fails to ask about the wider, enduring questions about the nature of life. Is his anger about his recognition that an entire way of life may disappear permanently, like Aunt Julia herself? The ending is a particular comment but has universal significance.
• Themes

  Obviously, the poem is about the loss and death of his aunt as well as a lack of communication. The poem also deals with relationships and the place of nature in life. But as with all MacCaig's poetry, think beyond the simplicity of his language - the poem explores the gap between modern Scotland and the culture and heritage of island life in a previous era.