The Poems: The Aye-Aye

Title: The Aye-Aye, Poems in Scots & English by Sheena Blackhall.Published by Lochlands, Maud, Aberdeenshire. Printed by Thistle Reprographics, 55 Holburn Street Aberdeen.Cover:Aye-Aye (from the www).Cost: £3.00.Copyright: S. Blackhall 2013.The first poems in this pamphlet were written in response to mysterious paper sculptures appearing in Scotland: Catriona Low, publisher of Severin Books, is constantly on their trail. This pamphlet is dedicated to her for alerting me to each new discovery. http://severinbooks.blogspot.co.uk/ Most of the poems were written during the summer of 2013, during stays on Jersey and St Malo. The Dream o the Restless Bairnickie is published in ‘Pushing Out the Boat, Issue 12’. Thank You Spring will feature in ‘Spirit of Spring’, a Forward Press Anthology due out in October. Memorial Day & Birthday are due to appear in ‘Shadows’, a Malfranteaux Concepts publication compiled by Keith Murray. A Puckle Doric Wirds I like and Fitbaa were written for inclusion in a forthcoming anthology compiled by Mark Pithie for a 2013 Doric Festival event. The Japanese tanka owersetts appeared in Southlight magazine. Thanks are due to Les Wheeler for his continued encouragement and support in agreeing to publish this little pamphlet. Re. The Cro-Magnon Poem My half brother, Charles Middleton Ritchie, died in Canada within a year or so of our first meeting. My younger brother, Ian Middleton, predeceased him. A woman can only access paternal DNA via a close male relative and I was delighted that my nephew Scott Ritchie, in Whitby, Ontario, Canada, agreed to submit a sample for analysis. The result was as follows:

The male line of our family DNA carries the mutation M343. The paternal haplotype is R1b. Haplogroup R is thought to have appeared some 30,000 years ago in Central Asia and is widely spread all over the world. The mutation M343 is linked to one of the subclades of Haplogroup R called R1b which is thought to have been part of the recolonisation of Europe following the Last Glacial Maximum. The R1b expansion was closely linked to the spreading of the Indo-European languages. This makes us direct descendants of the Cro Magnon people, the modern humans who painted the "Lascaux Cave" in Dordogne in the South of France. These paintings can be regarded both as a testimony of the artistic skills of our ancestors but also as a sketch book of their life during the last glacial age. R1b can be found in more than 80% of the population in England, France and Spain. In western Ireland, R1b is found in nearly 100% of the population.