Rhoda Meek: It's time to start a rammy – what is a local?

One of its key features is how it upsets everyone at once for a range of different reasons. The word is extremely hard to define in the context of inhabited places, and it is fraught with a range of tetchy undertones that no-one wants to say out loud. So like adults, we all get annoyed instead.

What, then, is a local?

You will not be surprised to hear that it depends entirely on who you ask. For simplicity’s sake, I am breaking the possibilities down into five generalised buckets – because I am hellbent on making my Sunday on social media as unpleasant as possible.

Let’s start with bucket one, the “dyed in the wool locals”. These locals get a capital “L”. Their forebears arrived just after Noah came out of the ark, and they have remained ever since. One of their key roles is to decide who does and does not reach bucket two.

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Bucket two, “Aye, they’re pretty much local”. These folks have been here long enough and assimilated well enough – managing to walk that almost impossible line in such a way that the dyed in the wool Locals complaining about incomers may state: “Oh, I don’t mean them, they are ok.” This is the pinnacle for those who move in from outside, but they will probably never know because no-one will tell them.

Bucket three, “I’m a local because I live here now”. This one is a little unfortunate because there is an unwritten rule that you shouldn’t call yourself a local unless you are in bucket one. Even bucket two doesn’t get to claim it. You have to earn it.

Bucket four, “Why am I not a local yet?” has an enormous chip on its shoulder, because they desperately want to be seen as a local. That desperation is noted by bucket one and ensures that they will never reach bucket two. Some can live in a place for 40 years and always be known as an incomer. That’s normal.

Bucket five, “Those bloody locals”, is for those who have realised that they will never get the title and decide that their best bet is to hiss about it as loudly as possible. Which helps their case no end, as you can imagine.

Identity is a fascinating thing. And nowhere more so than the Highlands and Islands. We have our “cinneadh”, or “clan”. Clans are mainly referred to as that by American TV programmes who grasp at cultural straws in an effort to reprise some sort of faux-Celtic belonging which their writers and producers long since lost.

We mainly divide into our “Mac” heritage for wedding kilts and arguments about Culloden, but we’d be lying if we didn’t admit to being attached to it. I, for example, take a strange pride in being a Skye MacDonald on my paternal grandmother’s side, and a Tiree MacDonald on my paternal Grandfather’s side despite my surname being about as lowland as you get, and my upbringing in Edinburgh. Maybe that’s why I like the lineage – it gives me that sense of belonging.

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And if we get down to brass tacks, the “who is local” debate is about belonging.

As much as people should have every right to feel like they belong in a place – regardless of their starting point – we are lying to ourselves if we don’t admit that there are levels of belonging and accept that that is ok. If it is not ok, then we have to also agree to throwing the last of our indigenous culture out with the language-infused bathwater.

Here, a person from Tiree is a Tirisdeach. A person from Harris is a Hearach, someone from Lewis a Leòdhasach and so on. Those monikers are even more charged than the word “local”. I would never dream of calling myself a Tirisdeach. We might go back hundreds of years in this corner of the island, but I was not born and bred here. For a bucket-one Local to call me that would be the highest of compliments. If I am never thought of as that, I’m ok with it. I am comfortable in my identity as the descendant of some redoubtable Tirisdich.

That line of descent has always been important in Highland and Island tradition. One tradition almost lost these days is sloinntearachd. A “sloinneadh”, or a patronymic, is a way to pinpoint people with incredible accuracy.

You would be asked “Cò leis thu?”. Literally, “From whom do you come?” or “Who do you belong to?” A typical response might be “Beathag Ceit Aonghais Beathaig”. That translates as “Rebecca, daughter of Kate who was the daughter of Angus who was the son of Rebecca”. Previous generations could recite their patronymic back an incredible distance.

If I go down the “Local” side, I’m Rhoda Dhòmhnaill Eachainn Anna Eachainn Bhàin (Rhoda, son of Donald, son of Hector, son of Anna, daughter of Blonde Hector) which takes me back to my great-great grandfather who built the house I am fortunate enough to live in.

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The Hebrides People Visitor Centre in Harris is home to an enormous archive of genealogical records from across the Western Isles. In painstaking detail, Bill Lawson – not a local – has made his life’s work cataloguing family trees and sloinntearachd.

It’s important work because the memory of these traditions is dying as fast as those who memorised them as children. The culture that surrounded them is eroding and the language in which they come alive is disappearing. It’s little wonder that some hold on to their status as Local with such feeling. They are increasingly in the minority, drowned out by the clamour of those arriving.

That sense of being drowned out is palpable at the moment in the islands. Whether it’s being unheard on fishing, crofting, peat and net zero, or whether it is literally being drowned out by the onward march of English saturation. When what’s left feels so fragile, you hold on to what you have – and if that is your sense of belonging to your land and landscape, and your right to use the word local, then that is what you will hold on to – for dear life.

It’s not to say that only one type of person belongs in a place. That should never be the case – after all, the people often not mentioned in a sloinneadh are the people who married in, without whom most of us wouldn’t be here.

In truth, I am far less interested in where people are from, and far more interested in what they bring. Do they bring respect for the community and culture in which they find themselves? Do they bring a willingness to learn and to help? Do they bring an understanding that they may not always be invited to take part in things? Do they accept that there are others there who will always “belong” more than they do?

Crucially, do they want to be a useful addition to the community and culture in which they find themselves? Because if they do, life will be exponentially easier, and richer.