Читать книгу The Life and Death of St. Kilda: The moving story of a vanished island community - Tom Steel - Страница 10

Feudal society existed in Scotland centuries after it had disappeared elsewhere in Britain. The Celtic people who inhabited the most northerly remote parts of the British Isles were thought to be of little consequence by the Anglo-Saxons who dominated British society. The Celts were therefore allowed to carry on living the way they had always done. In most of northern Scotland the social system was ruthlessly destroyed after the 1745 Jacobite Rising, but in the more remote parts of the Highlands and in the Western Isles the old order lived on.

Enlightened paternalism was the basis of the society of the Gael. The Chief who owned the land also ruled over the people who lived upon it. As long as the Chief acted as a good and wise father and the crofters settled on his estate were respectful children, feudalism proved itself to be a successful as well as convenient way of managing society. If the critics of the more ‘civilized’ South thought the feudal system of the Celt was primitive, it could at least be seen to be a social organization that worked and worked well for hundreds of years. In the words of Dr Fraser Darling in West Highland Survey, Gaeldom is ‘an example of a culture finely adjusted to an environment which placed severe limitations on human existence’.

The people on the lone isle of Hirta were throughout their history part of the old order. Until the evacuation in 1930, the proprietor of the island group, MacLeod of MacLeod, not only owned St Kilda but held sway over its inhabitants. He was father as well as landlord, and as such received for himself and his house the greatest of respect and affection. ‘Their Chief is their God, their everything especially when a man of address and resolution,’ wrote Lord Murray of Broughton in a report on the Highlands he drew up in 1746 for the London government. The duty of the Chief was to protect his clan, administer good and impartial justice when settling disputes that might arise among his people, and above all hold his land so that his people might live and prosper upon it. In return the crofters would offer their services to fight for any cause deemed just by the Chief, and give him absolute claim over any produce deriving from the croft.

Although the Gaelic word clann means ‘children’, the system did not depend upon the people working the land being of the same family or even the same name as the owner. On St Kilda no inhabitant was related to MacLeod of MacLeod by ties of blood near or remote. The few families whose surname was MacLeod were like all the other families – they were descendants of the poor from other parts of the Chief’s estates who were encouraged to take up crofts on St Kilda. The concept of kinship played little or no part in the clan in the wider sense. What bound the people together was a shared feeling of loyalty to the Chief whose land they held, and mutual understanding between him and his people.

MacLeod of MacLeod, Chief of Clan MacLeod, owned St Kilda throughout most of its inhabited history. When and how the family gained possession are questions the answers to which are lost in time. Legend has it that at one time both Harris and Uist disputed ownership of St Kilda. Even in ancient times the island group was regarded as a jewel in the Atlantic that any laird would be proud to own.

A race was planned to settle the question of ownership. Two boats representing the contending interests were rowed out to the island by crews of equal size. It was agreed before the start that the first crew to lay a hand on Hirta would claim it for his Chief. The race was extremely close, and as the two boats neared the island the stout men of Uist were ahead. Colla MacLeod, head man of the Harris boat, cut off his left hand and threw it ashore in a last desperate attempt to win the island for his master. The loss of a hand was not in vain, and St Kilda was won for MacLeod of MacLeod. This noble deed, some would have it, is recorded for posterity by the red hand on the clan coat of arms.

The MacLeod of MacLeod was an island Chief with an island empire. As such he tended to be too remote to become involved with the politics of the mainland to the same extent as the Campbells or MacDonalds did. Although many MacLeods, for instance, fought at the battle of Culloden, they did so against the wishes of their Chief who had little heart for the Jacobite cause.

After Culloden, the policy adopted by the Hanoverians was aimed at obliterating the Celtic way of life. ‘In Scotland more than elsewhere,’ wrote Grant, ‘into the purely feudal relationship had crept something of the greater warmth and fervour of the ancient bond of union of the clan (or family)’, and the government was determined to put an end to such dangerous feudalism. The Disarming Act was revived and important additions made to it. The wearing of Highland dress and the use of tartan were prohibited, and the playing and even carrying of bagpipes was forbidden. The bans were to last thirty-six years and dealt a damaging blow to a people’s culture. In 1747, Parliament passed an Act for the Abolition of Heritable Jurisdictions which took away from the Chiefs their legal powers. After Culloden many Highland estates were forfeited.

The victors, however, did not take vengeance upon the laird of Dunvegan. He had played a passive part in the rebellion and, besides, his estate was remote and fragmented. MacLeod of MacLeod held on to his lands and the patriarchal rule of Dunvegan was allowed to continue well into the nineteenth century.

The economic buttress of the Chief’s hold over his people was the system of trading by barter. Every year a representative of the Chief would visit St Kilda to claim the rents in kind. Often the ‘tacksman’, as he was called, was related if only distantly to the Chief. He leased the island from the proprietor for a sum of money or was given the revenue of the island as a reward for performing some special service.

When Martin Martin visited St Kilda in 1697, he did so in the company of MacLeod of MacLeod’s representative. While on the island the steward and his retinue, which often numbered forty or fifty people, were housed and fed at the expense of the islanders. He would go once a year to the island in the summer and stay for anything up to two or three weeks. The ancient Gaelic due of free hospitality to the Chief or any of his household was known as cuddiche and was exacted in St Kilda when it had long disappeared elsewhere. Cuddiche was similar to the right to hospitality demanded by medieval and Tudor monarchs in England when they made their royal progresses.

At the end of his stay on St Kilda, the steward or ‘tacksman’ would take back to Skye the oils and feathers of the sea birds and the surplus produce of the islanders’ scant crofts. The goods would either be sold to tenants who lived on other parts of the Chief’s estates or else sent south to the commercial markets. Part of the proceeds of their sale would go towards the St Kildans’ rent, and part would be retained by the tacksman as profit. But he had to fulfil his obligation to the islanders. A good part of the money obtained by the sale of the island produce was used to purchase commodities such as salt and seed corn which the St Kildans had need of. Supplies of essentials that the island could not provide were normally transported to St Kilda the following summer, or else delivered later the same year should the people be in dire need of them.

For centuries the system worked admirably. Hirta’s exports were in much demand on the mainland, and the island was a source of profit for the tacksman and proprietor alike. According to Lord Brougham in 1799, the tacksman paid £20 a year to MacLeod of MacLeod and reckoned to make twice as much himself. The barter system, however, benefited the people of Hirta. No one would have claimed that the islanders received a true market price for their goods, but on the other hand they did not need to bother themselves with finding outlets. In bad years they never went without essential supplies. It was in no one’s interest that the St Kildans starve. A loss to the tacksman one year would no doubt be turned into profit the next.

An islander, called the ground officer, was appointed by the Chief to speak for the community should differences of opinion arise with the steward. If the difference was serious, it was the ground officer’s duty to make a personal appearance before MacLeod of MacLeod himself to air the complaint. ‘He makes his entry very submissively,’ wrote Martin Martin, ‘taking off his bonnet at a great distance when he appears in MacLeod’s presence, bowing his head and hand low near the ground, his retinue (usually the crew that had rowed him over from St Kilda) doing the like behind him.’ MacLeod of MacLeod would then listen solemnly to the evidence and pass judgement. Few disputes, however, came about regarding the management of St Kilda. The tacksmen for the most part were ‘Gentlemen of benevolent dispositions, of liberal education and much observation’ (John Knox).

The Chief rarely failed to exercise what was seen as a moral responsibility towards his people. During the last quarter of the eighteenth century, MacLeod of MacLeod ceased to receive any money from his estates for a while. ‘This estate’, wrote Knox in his Tour Through the Highlands of Scotland and the Hebride Isles, which was published in 1787, ‘has been greatly diminished of late years on account of debts, and much remains to be discharged. Notwithstanding this circumstance, the proprietor raised no rents, turned out no tenants, used no man with severity, and in all respects maintained the character of a liberal and humane friend of mankind.’ In 1780 the proprietor supplied the St Kildans with a new boat, and although salt was heavily taxed at that time and was virtually unobtainable in many districts of the Highlands, the people of St Kilda still received their more than adequate supplies.

Life on the mainland, however, was changing, and MacLeod of MacLeod suffered drastically from the changes, being forced to sell much of his estate. Tacksmen became people of the past, and what remained of the estate of the Chief of Clan MacLeod was henceforth managed by his factor at Dunvegan. St Kilda forever held an affectionate place in the history of the MacLeod family and was not sold.

The last factor was John Mackenzie of Dunvegan, an amiable man fond of St Kilda and its people. Once a year it was Mackenzie’s duty to go to Hirta and collect the Chief’s rents. Dressed in a long tweed trenchcoat and rarely seen without a gamekeeper’s deer-stalker hat, Mackenzie was much liked by the islanders. He would spend most of his time on St Kilda having long conversations with them, listening to their problems and attempting to solve them while on the island. If that was not possible, he would see what could be done after he had returned to Dunvegan. To the St Kildans, the factor was the go-between. He was their real link with the outside world.

One of the major tasks of his visit would be the landing of the stores he brought with him on board the Robert Hadden. Such work was normally done by the women, supervised by the men of the island. One of the most important things he took with him was a cask of paraffin, which was invariably given to the islanders as a gift.

The ceremony attached to the annual payment of rent always remained the same. The St Kildans would gather outside the old storehouse down by the shore, and once their produce had been inspected by the factor the bartering would begin. As fair a price as possible would be bargained by both sides – in later years it proved less and less favourable to the islanders. During the twentieth century the payment of rent was less a reality and more a symbolic act. During the thirteen years prior to the evacuation, the islanders failed to raise enough produce to pay rent due on their crofts. In John Mackenzie’s day, the only produce of any real value was tweed, a few stones of dried ling, and perhaps a sheep or two. The end of the annual rent ceremony was marked by the factor presenting sweets to the St Kildans, instead of the traditional presentation of Highland whisky with the receipts. The St Kildans never kept account of what they handed over to the factor: there was trust on both sides.

The introduction of money, however, did more than all the vengeance exacted after Culloden to destroy traditional Gaelic society. Crofting, the most prominent feature of the Highlanders’ way of life, was proving to be extremely uneconomic. The coming of the Industrial Revolution and the payment of money in exchange for labour was drawing people away from the country. It was no longer possible to think in terms of payment in kind. The barter system was no longer relevant or tenable. Money was required for the purchase of foodstuffs and materials essential to the maintenance of life upon the island and the cost involved in the transportation of those goods; both factors conspired to render a fatal blow to the old social order. The St Kildans, like other Celts, were forced to accept modern society and its values or else be condemned to oblivion.

From time immemorial the men and women of Hirta governed their lives as best suited their lonely predicament. ‘Their government is strictly a republic,’ wrote George Atkinson in 1831, ‘for though subject to Great Britain, they have no official person among them; and as they are only visited twice a year for a few days by the Tacksman, who is referred to as a sort of umpire or settler of disputes, their knowledge of our laws must be very trifling and of little use or importance in their system of economy.’

The community as a whole shared the responsibility for the two major tasks: to ensure that every islander was fed, clothed, and housed as was thought proper, and to provide sufficient wares to pay the proprietor his rent. All possessions, such as boats and ropes, upon which the safety and prosperity of the community depended, were therefore held in common. Authority over the actions of every islander was vested in what tourists were later to call ‘Parliament’.

Every morning after prayers and breakfast all the adult men on the island met in the open air to discuss what work was to be done. In latter years, the men met outside the post office, every day except the Sabbath. In so small a community, where the normal pursuits of its members were so fraught with danger, it was important that all knew what was planned, and a meeting was a sensible way of letting everyone know where members of the community could be found during the rest of the day. ‘It wouldn’t do to go away on your own,’ recalls Lachlan Macdonald, ‘and the other fellows didn’t know where you were going. So they always decided where they were going and what they were going to do that day.’

It was a simple way in which a people who thought and acted in terms of each other could communicate as a group. The St Kildan Parliament, however, came in for criticism from outsiders. ‘The daily morning meeting’, wrote John Ross, the schoolmaster, ‘very much resembles our Honourable British Parliament in being able to waste any amount of precious time over a very small matter while on the other hand they can pass a Bill before it is well introduced.’ But the islanders themselves would have been the last to think of their assembly as capable of great, philosophical thought. As far as they were concerned, the morning meeting was the only way, in a land that lacked telephones and newspapers, of letting others know what was planned, what was believed, and what was to be done.

If it was a ‘Parliament’, it was one that perhaps met the needs of those it served better than any other. There were no ‘headmen’ in parliament. Every islander had an equal right to speak, and to cast an equal vote. It was an assembly that had no government. There was always a total lack of distinction upon St Kilda. No islander held sway over his fellow islanders. Equally, no rules governed the conduct of the morning meeting. The men arrived in their own time, and at the meeting, according to observers, everyone appeared to talk at once.

If the proceedings of the day were important, the morning meeting would waste little time. If a visit to one of the neighbouring islands or stacs to tend the sheep or kill the sea birds was in order, the men would be quick to get to the work at hand. If, however, there was little of urgency that required to be done, the meeting could and would often sit all day in discussion. A break for lunch would be taken as and when the proceedings allowed, but otherwise talk would be the work of the day. ‘Upon the whole,’ wrote John Ross, ‘the St Kildans are just as much engaged as their crofter neighbours in the Outer Hebrides and although they do at times spend much more time than is necessary over “parliamentary” affairs, they often derive benefit from it inasmuch as any stray piece of useful information picked up by a single individual is imparted to the whole.’ The adventures of those who had had the opportunity to visit the mainland were related in great detail to the assembled throng. Information such as the cost of buckets and spades in the great metropolis of Glasgow and what wonderful shops were to be found there were not the only subjects of great interest. The most important function of the morning meeting was the exchange of views and the sharing of experiences.

The St Kildans never regarded themselves as individuals. Each and every one was a component of a community. The daily meeting was that which held them together, even though ‘Parliament’ was often the market place of gossip. ‘Very often,’ said Ross, ‘“my neighbour” and anything he has done out of the way, whether it is right or wrong’, were matters to be examined by the assembled islanders. Discussion frequently spread discord, but never in recorded history were feuds so bitter as to bring about any permanent division within the community. Perhaps the fact that criticism was aired so readily ensured that gossip was never allowed to get out of hand.

The laws that governed the island were equally of the people’s own making. Although formally subject to the law of the rest of Scotland, there was never an instance when those laws were either enforced or needed to be. ‘Murder, of course, from the impossibility of escape and the absence of the usual causes of incitement is unknown in their traditions,’ wrote George Atkinson, ‘and dishonesty from similar causes very nearly so; a case of adultery has never been known among them, and as no fermented or spirituous liquor is made on the island, and they only receive a trifling half-yearly supply from the Tacksman, they are of necessity sober.’

The St Kildans looked to the Bible for their laws. In most respects they abided by the laws laid down by Moses in the Old Testament. How such a corpus of law became embodied in the community is unknown, but Macaulay in 1758 probably correctly believed that missionaries must, at an early date, have converted the St Kildans to accept such a code of behaviour.

Only the elders of the Church had authority over the rest of the community. They were responsible for sharing out the produce of the islanders’ labours equally. Should there be any difficulty, the distribution would be settled by lot. The division of native labour was always carried out to the satisfaction of all concerned. After the harvesting of the sea birds, the catch of each day was placed in one great heap, usually on the foreshore, and was then divided out according to the number of households on the island. ‘At the end of the day’s fowling,’ wrote Christina MacQueen at the time of the evacuation, ‘the sharing began. Grouped around the large heap of slain fulmars stood the representatives of every family. In the rear the women and juveniles waited; waited to carry their portion to the cottage, where the plucking would immediately begin. The larger the family, the bigger the share. There was no such thing as payment by results. Such a practice is only necessary where the thing, miscalled “civilization” has blunted the natures of men, and made them selfish and callous, and brutal to their fellows.’

The sick, the young and those who were old and lived alone were always cared for. ‘The St Kilda community’, remarked Wilson in 1841, ‘may in many respects be regarded as a small republic in which the individual members share most of their worldly goods in common, and with the exception of the minister, no one seems to differ from his neighbour in rank, fortune, or condition.’ The St Kildans throughout their history never included either ministers, missionaries, nurses, or schoolmasters in the sharing out of their food, be it the carcass of fulmar, gannet, or sheep. They were always regarded as outside the community. All received a part of the community’s produce as a gift; none of them ever received a share as a right.

Like every system of sharing, there were exceptions to the general rule. Any St Kildan, for instance, who killed a young fulmar or gannet ‘out of its nest’ was allowed to keep the bird for himself. The justification for such an exception was that if he had not taken the bird, it would either have died a natural death or have been swallowed up by a raven or a crow. By 1880, the fulmar and the puffin were the only birds subject to equal division. By that time, apart from homespun tweed, their feathers and oil were the only staples used to pay the rent, a concern always regarded as the responsibility of the community as a whole.

All the grazing for the sheep that each St Kildan kept was held in common. The island of Dun was the only grazing that was subject to conditions. The lush clover grass that covered the island was strictly reserved for wintering the young lambs, and because of the island’s size, only a certain number of sheep could be accommodated. An islander was able to keep as many sheep and cattle as he was able to pay rent for, and the number of lambs that could be transferred from Hirta to Dun every year was decided equitably by the morning meeting.

A mutual insurance scheme operated in St Kilda. Any islander who had the misfortune to lose sheep during the winter or during the time when they were rounded up for shearing was reimbursed by his fellow St Kildans in proportion to the number of sheep the latter possessed.

The island’s boats were throughout history owned and maintained by the community at large. Boats were essential to the island’s way of life: it was only right, therefore, that everyone be concerned with their condition. Each islander was made responsible for the upkeep of a section of the boat, and its use was determined by the morning meeting. No islander or group of islanders was able to make use of the craft unless everyone had given his permission. Should foolhardiness mean the community lost its boat, then life would be impossible. It was only right, therefore, that its employment be decided by consensus.

The St Kildans carried equality into every aspect of their lives. When the Highland and Agricultural Society sent out meal and flour to the people every year, the distribution of the supplies was always strictly regulated. Each male and female over eleven years of age on the island was entitled to a full share; islanders between the ages of nine years and eleven were entitled to three parts of a share, and from cradle age to under nine every St Kildan was entitled to a half share.

A man’s share equalled one boll, which was the equivalent of 140 pounds of flour or oatmeal. After the supplies were distributed, anything left was given out to each household in shares applicable to smaller quantities.

The supplies of tea and other commodities brought to the island by the factor were distributed in a similar way. Potatoes, for instance, were shared on the same basis as meal and flour. Only sugar was an exception. An equal share was given to both young and old, and if preference was ever exercised it was in favour of the younger members of the community.

In later years, the division was calculated more simply. One share was allotted to each adult islander and a half share was given to children of sixteen years and under.

The islanders were equally equitable when it came to sharing gifts donated by tourists and well-wishers. All that arrived on the island was divided, just as every St Kildan was prepared to distribute domestic wealth. If the St Kildan sought anything in life, he sought to be fair.

‘The mental constitution or social polity of the St Kildans’, wrote Wilson, ‘consists in their tenacious adherence to uniformity – no man being allowed, or at least encouraged, to outstrip his neighbours in any thing leading rather to his own advantage than the public weal.’ In some respects, the communal system stifled initiative. ‘I myself’, wrote John Ross the schoolmaster in 1889, ‘heard one man expressing a desire to have one end of his house floored with wood so as to make it more comfortable, but he had to give up the idea, some of the others coming down on him with most peculiar arguments leading him to understand the folly of his plan.’ The wife of the last missionary sent to St Kilda recalls: ‘When the St Kildans started doing something, they all did it on the same day. If they killed a sheep, it wasn’t enough for them to kill one sheep for maybe the whole community. No, every house had to kill a sheep. So there was a piece of mutton landed from each house at the manse. You had mutton till you were fed up with the sight of it.’

The socialist system, whatever its faults, was the direct result of the condition in which the St Kildans found themselves. Common survival was the prime concern and although many from the mainland saw fit to criticize the islanders in latter years because, they claimed, the St Kildans lacked initiative, such a human quality was alien to a people who always thought in terms of the whole rather than the part. It was not that the people of Hirta were ignorant, it was simply that the concept of individualism was not applicable, as far as they were concerned, to the set of circumstances they faced.

In the careful ownership of the MacLeods the social and economic structure changed little for over six centuries. But people may have lived on Hirta for possibly two thousand years. The beehive-shaped stone and turf structures in Glean Mor suggest that in prehistoric times a pastoral people may have lived there. Possibly as a result of changes in climate and the lie and content of the soil, they found it necessary to abandon the settlement. Perhaps those early St Kildans were wiped out by disease or forced off the island by those who at the same time or at a later date chose to live in Village Bay. Whatever happened in those early times is unknown, and it is unlikely that the thin, stony soil has many secrets to give up when archaeologists ultimately dig.

In the eighth century the Norsemen invaded Scotland. For four centuries they ruled the islands of Scotland, and lone St Kilda may well have been part of their empire. In 1886, Richard Kearton and his brother Cherry found earthenware pots similar to those used for cooking purposes in Viking times. Many St Kildan place-names, moreover, have their origins in Norse. Oiseval is derived from the Norse austr fell, meaning ‘east hill’; Soay gets its name from Saud-ey, Norse for ‘sheep isle’. In practically all cases, however, the Viking names apply only to landmarks that can be clearly seen from the sea.

The names of those places the discovery of which requires a landing on Hirta are mostly Gaelic in origin. The names of streams and wells, for instance, derive from the ancient language of the Celts. It could therefore be argued that although the island group was known to the Norsemen, they did not permanently settle on St Kilda. It seems likely that the islands were known to them as a place of shelter in a storm and as a source of supplies of fresh water.

The rule regarding place-names, however, is not a hard and fast one. Many names, such as Mullach Bi and Dun, both easily visible from the sea, are Gaelic; one of Hirta’s fresh water wells, Tobar Childa, gets its name in part from Norse. All that can be deduced with certainty is that St Kilda was known to the Norsemen.

Whatever the origins of the early peoples of Hirta, by the middle ages feathers and the oils extracted from sea birds were valuable commodities. To the owner of St Kilda, therefore, the repopulation, or perhaps population of the island, was the result of economic considerations.

The inhabitants of documented times were descended from those who had been born on the adjacent isles of Lewis, Harris, Skye, and North and South Uist. They were, without doubt, Celtic in origin. Although it seems unlikely that the St Kildans were the descendants of ‘pyrates, exiles or malefactors who fled from justice’, as was thought by the Reverend Kenneth Macaulay in 1758, it is probable that MacLeod of MacLeod occasionally sent the discontented to the most remote part of his territory.

The community must have had several injections of new blood during its long history. Some were necessary, others were totally unexpected. Disease practically wiped out the population twice in the history known to us, and the proprietor, anxious to have such a profitable outpost of his estate inhabited, must have encouraged or cajoled crofters from less remote parts of his empire to populate the archipelago. Many ships were wrecked around St Kilda, more visited the islands whilst fishing the rich waters that surround the group and sailors must have taken a fancy to local girls, jumped ship and settled upon the island.

Many writers tried hard to discover physical peculiarities that would illustrate the difference between the St Kildan and the generality of mankind. ‘As a race’, wrote the Reverend Neil Mackenzie in the nineteenth century, ‘the natives now are under-sized and far from being robust or healthy. They are generally of slender form, with fair hair and a florid complexion.’ There is little real evidence, however, that the islanders differed from their neighbours on the Long Island, or that they were less strong. If the St Kildans exhibited any characteristic worthy of note it was that, from an early age, their faces were quick to show the harshness of life on the island. Towards the end of the community’s history, the people seem to have become more susceptible to cuts and grazes, colds and headaches, but their physical prowess did not appreciably decline and any physical deterioration must be attributed to the general decline of the St Kildan way of life.

The personal qualities of the people of Hirta attracted even more attention than their appearance. Apart from their ignorance, which bemused many a visitor, the St Kildans were thought by many observers to be stubborn, superstitious, lazy and greedy. ‘A total want of curiosity, a stupid gaze of wonder, an excessive eagerness for spirits and tobacco, a laziness only to be conquered by the hope of the above mentioned cordials, and a beastly degree of filth, the natural consequence of this renders the St Kildan character truly savage,’ was Lord Brougham’s conclusive description of the average islander in 1799.

The people of St Kilda, however, like those of many primitive communities, possessed remarkable qualities. They were strong of character, and the unique way of living that evolved reflected to a great extent their almost inexhaustible fund of common sense. ‘They are at heart a kindly disposed people’, wrote Nicol, ‘who mean well, and while you are with them you are one of them. They are extremely solicitous for your welfare; indeed those who have lived for some time in their midst say that it is almost embarrassing when they call each morning to ask if you are well, if you have had a good night’s sleep, and if they can do anything for you.’

Like many Celts, however, they were dreamers rather than men of action. They much preferred to talk and could, to the observer at least, always give better reasons for not doing something than they could acquiesce. Many writers took their lethargy to be laziness. ‘I fear’, wrote John MacDonald in 1822, ‘they cannot be exempted from the charge of almost habitual indolence. They are seldom wholly idle; but when they are at any work, one would think that they are more anxious to fill up than to occupy time.’ To the St Kildans, however, the pace of work was dictated by their needs. Time to them was an immaterial dimension divided more into seasons than into months and days. The men in particular saved their energies for the capture of sea birds and did little to help around the croft.

‘The men I always thought might have done more work,’ wrote the missionary’s wife in 1909, ‘although once properly started they worked well. I used to find fault with them for allowing the women to do all the work they themselves ought to have done. It was no uncommon thing to see the young men helping to rope the bags on to the women’s backs. Sheep, coal, or any burden was carried from the pier by the women as a rule – very occasionally the men. I thought it very funny on one of my visits to the village to see the wife digging the ground, preparatory to planting the potatoes, but the good man of the house was seated at the door sewing a Sunday gown for his wife.’ Life on Hirta was such that women were never allowed much leisure. Apart from the routine household chores, the women were responsible for bringing water, fuel, and provisions into the house. Every summer, knitting as they went, the women used to walk over two miles twice a day to milk the cows and ewes in Glean Mor. Whilst boys were soon taught the art of talking much and doing little, the girls were accustomed to carrying heavy weights on their backs from a very early age.

The morals of the St Kildan and his spouse, however, could not be faulted. Crime was virtually unknown on the island. In a society in which each and every member had to get along with his neighbour in order to survive, crime could not be tolerated. Moreover, there was a distinct lack of motive – each islander was the same in terms of both wealth and status as his fellow St Kildan. ‘I held, along with Mr McLellan and the Gaelic teacher,’ wrote John MacDonald in 1822, ‘a meeting, something like what might pass in St Kilda for a justice of peace court, in order to settle little differences that might exist among the people; and was pleased to find, much to their credit, none of any consequence, except one relating to a marriage.’ St Kilda was totally free from the ‘bend sinister’, the morality of the men being even more unimpeachable than that of the women. There was little drunkenness. When a St Kildan had whisky to drink, it was reserved for medicinal purposes, or put away in a cupboard to celebrate a marriage. ‘Their morals’, concluded the Reverend Macaulay in 1758, ‘are and must be purer than those of great and opulent societies, however much civilised.’

The islanders were intensively religious. Their fervour was in part induced by their physical situation. A sea-girt isle, rising almost perpendicularly from the sea, with nothing save the often fierce Atlantic in sight, St Kilda presented man with almost insurmountable odds. Under such conditions of geography and climate, Man became even more infinitesimal before the Infinite. The people took for their own a harsh, puritanical religion, which gave them a peace of mind and offered them, if not a future on this earth, at least a pattern which they could follow and a promise of a more certain life in the next world.

As contact with the mainland increased during the nineteenth century, the St Kildan character developed in some respects detrimental to the reputation of the people. ‘A St Kildan woman’, wrote Kearton in 1886, ‘always regards everybody with suspicion, and does not hurry over a purchase, thinking that she is being cheated.’ The islanders were a simple, honest people: the tourists were more sophisticated and from a society in which it was the common thing to seek to take advantage. The St Kildans were incapable of adapting to a more complex set of rules of behaviour and became introverted. Nor did they distinguish between tourists and those who came to their island to do genuine good. Doctors found themselves faced with resolution and stubbornness. ‘There is no need’, wrote Norman Heathcote in 1900 of the St Kildans, ‘for them to go through the form of saying that they are conscientious objectors. They simply refuse to allow their children to be operated on, and there is no more to be said.’

To the end, the St Kildans possessed a simplicity that was at once attractive, if infuriating. When Emily MacLeod, the sister of the then proprietor, told the St Kildans in 1877 that she like Queen Victoria was a plain old woman, she was sternly rebuked by the islanders, who informed her that she must not refer to Her Majesty in such a way, as the Bible said that subjects must honour their monarch. When a supply of cement was sent to St Kilda so that a proper aisle could be laid in the Church, the ‘bags of dust’ as the islanders called them were stacked outside the Church to await a time when the men could see their way to doing the job. The following summer a friend of the proprietor arrived to ask how the work had gone. The ‘bags of dust’, said the men, had by a miracle all turned into lumps of rock before they had got round to using them.

Whatever their faults, the St Kildans led an unenviable way of life. The provision of food was their major concern year in and year out. They were forced to make good use of everything that their poor island could offer them in the struggle for survival. Moreover, they lived in the knowledge that any part of the provisioning process could be disrupted at any time by weather and illness. Isolated from the rest of humanity, only the laird of Dunvegan was there to protect them from starvation.