1. Aunt Julia
Norman MacCaig

2. Isle of Harris – Famous for its Harris Tweed!

3. Aunt Julia
Norman MacCaig was influenced by visits to his mother’s family in the Highlands of Scotland, even though he was brought up in Edinburgh.

4. Stanza 1
Aunt Julia spoke Gaelic very loud and very fast. I could not answer her — I could not understand her.

5. Stanza 2
She wore men's boots when she wore any. — I can see her strong foot, stained with peat, paddling with the treadle of the spinning wheel while her right hand drew yarn marvellously out of the air.
adverb

6. Hers was the only house where I've lain at night
Stanza 3
Hers was the only house where I've lain at night
in absolute darkness in a box bed, listening to crickets being friendly.

7. Stanza 4
Personification to suggest something about her character
She was buckets and water flouncing into them. She was winds pouring wetly round house-ends. She was brown eggs, black skirts and a keeper of threepennybits in a teapot.
Metaphors to define her hard life

8. Stanza 5
Alliteration
Aunt Julia spoke Gaelic very loud and very fast. By the time I had learned a little, she lay silenced in the absolute black of a sandy grave at Luskentyre.

9. Stanza 5 continued
But I hear her still, welcoming me with a seagull's voice across a hundred yards of peatscrapes and lazybeds and getting angry, getting angry with so many questions unanswered.

10. Key points
The poet pays tribute to his aunt who lived a hard life on the island of Harris in the Western Isles of Scotland
She had a spinning wheel for producing the famous Harris Tweed
The poet uses power of observation to describe her and the settings
She spoke Gaelic which he could not understand

11. Content – 1st stanza A child’s memory of his aunt– Aunt Julia
Main recollection is her language – Gaelic –which he could not understand

12. Content – 2nd stanza
Describes his aunt and how she seemed strange to him – barefoot, or wearing ‘men’s boots
His description gives an insight into her way of life

13. Content 3rd stanza
He recalls the strange experience of sleeping in a box bed but he feels safe there

14. Content 4th stanza
Vivid images and metaphor capture aspects of her life: carrying buckets of water as there is no running water

15. Content 5th stanza
By the time he learned some Gaelic, it was too late to communicate with his Aunt: she had died
He feels frustrated and ‘angry’ that he was too late to get the chance to chat with her and really get to know her
She could be angry because she didn’t ever experience a life other than her own and didn’t get to know him either.

16. Tone and language Some language is plain and factual
The two opening lines
Metaphors define her hard life
‘She was buckets’
Personification is used to suggest something about Aunt Julia’s character
‘flouncing’

17. Tone and language
Her ‘seagull’s voice’ is a metaphor to describe her loud, incomprehensible voice!
Scottish dialect is used in the poem
‘lazybeds’

18. Tone and language
The repetition of ‘getting angry’ emphasises his frustration at never having talked to her
Dark images are used throughout the poem to illustrate how basic and bleak things were on the remote island – ‘stained with peat’ ‘absolute darkness’ ‘black skirts’ ‘absolute black
Her loud, fast Gaelic voice is the most memorable thing about her; when she is dead she is ‘silenced’

19. Other culture
Most obviously the Gaelic language – it seems alien as it could not be understood
Description of features of the landscape
The spinning wheel used for generations to make Harris tweed
The traditional box bed
The use of an actual place name: Luskentyre

20. WRITTEN TASKS
Try your best to work through the eight questions about, ‘Aunt Julia’. Make your answers and detailed and as mature as possible. Use your notes and use the words metaphors and personification!
Imagine that you are the young narrator laying in your box bed listening to the friendly crickets, writing a diary entry about your visit to see Aunt Julia.

21. Extension Task
If you have time, why don’t you try to draw Aunt Julia, and illustrate some of the metaphors around her to show your understanding.