Greek in the Heather

LAXDALE HALL (301 pp.)--Eric Linklater--Harcourt, Brace ($3.50).

Why is a Labor M.P. crouching naked in a willow tree, with 40 Scottish housewives prancing below and screeching: "Come doon, ye mangy tod, and I'll buff your beef!"? Why does a stern Presbyterian minister stand by waving a two-handed sword and bellowing: "There is a harvest still, a harvest of thistles and of tares, for the sword of Gideon!"?

Eric Linklater, in whose latest novel these uncommon scenes appear, explains with grinning relish. A Scotsman to the brisket, Linklater believes that English M.P.s have treated his native land so stingily that it is time they got a comeuppance. A onetime chancellor of the University of Aberdeen, Linklater also knows his classical drama and how to make it a vehicle for his grouch. Laxdale Hall is a modern variation on Euripides' Bacchanals, in which sobersided King Pentheus is first treed, then torn apart by furious women because he has forbidden them to join in the orgies of the wine god Dionysus.

Pettigrew v. Passion. Linklater's setting is a Scottish fishing village, his characters a cross section of classes from laird to laborers. Too somnolent to worship Dionysus, too remote to be reformed by Pentheus, the villagers of Laxdale have only one wish in life--to see Parliament vote them money for a decent road over the moors. Instead, Laxdale gets a personal visit from Mr. Pettigrew, a blue-nosed Labor M.P. who regards Highland life as the epitome of insanitary sloth. He brings a shapely wife, who admires his Penthean principles but turns to lustier men for her Dionysian pleasures. Along with the Pettigrews have come a varied bunch of visitors, including a novelist in flight from the tax collectors, a journalist, a Greek professor, a gang of salmon poachers. And it so happens that the laird's lovely daughter chooses this moment to stage a village production of Bacchanals.

Linklater soon gets his variegated cast moving, his wheels-within-wheels churning out the butter of melodrama. Reformist M.P. Pettigrew speedily rouses the fury of the village women, while his wife works havoc with the menfolk. The Greek professor (who is Author Linklater disguised in a tunic) orates at length on life, love and Labor; the poachers cast their nocturnal nets in the moorland stream. Sluggish Laxdale plunges into a 'hubbub of mingled rage, passion, skulduggery and Euripidean oratory.

Spry or Sly? In the end, Linklater's Laxdalers have hopes of getting their road. But they have already got what Linklater feels is equally important--a Dionysian respite from the austerity of modern Scottish life. The minister waving his two-handed sword at the frenzied women symbolically expresses another of the morals of Laxdale Hall: Christianity itself becomes more vigorous when sinners are spry instead of sly.

Author Linklater swings no heavy sword himself; he is much too urbane to cleave an enemy to the chin. The result is a very amiable foray, with a lot more laughter than serious bloodshed.

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