How the eccentric life of master of fish flies Megan Boyd inspired Helen Humphreys's latest novel
Helen Humphreys's novel Machine Without Horses explores the real life and the imagined internal life of Megan Boyd, a famous and famously private salmon-fly dresser from Britain. Boyd was a craftswoman who worked for 60 years out of a bare-bones cottage in a small village in the north of Scotland.
The award-winning poet and novelist tells The Next Chapter how Boyd served as the inspiration for Machine Without Horses.
Go fish
"Megan Boyd was an Atlantic salmon fly dresser. The craftswoman made salmon flies in the north of Scotland for most of the 20th century. She lived a very bare bones life in a cottage — without electricity or running water. She never married or had children and yet she was one of the most famous — if not the most famous — salmon fly dressers in the world.
"What I found interesting about Megan was that she herself had never fished, caught a fish or killed a fish — and yet she was making these exquisite lures for fishers to do just that. That interested me — how someone can become the best at something that they themselves have never tested."
Fishing for recognition
"She was a very famous person and yet there was very little actually known about her. I think that's because women's history — unless they marry or have children — is often disregarded. She was catalogued under the adjective 'eccentric' and that was meant to cover a whole variety of things.
"When I develop any character I try and find points of connection between myself and the character. From there, I have a doorway into imagining them."