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Title: The Orkney book
Readings for young Orcadians
Editor: John Gunn
Release date: August 28, 2025 [eBook #76756]
Language: English
Credits: Steven desJardins and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ORKNEY BOOK ***
_SONS OF THE ISLES._
_There is a spell woven by restless seas,_
_A secret charm that haunts our Island air,_
_Holding our hearts and following everywhere_
_The wandering children of the Orcades;_
_And still, when sleep the prisoned spirit frees,_
_What dim void wastes, what strange dark seas we dare,_
_Till where the dear green Isles shine low and fair_
_We moor in dreams beside familiar quays._
_Sons of the Isles! though ye may roam afar,_
_Still on your lips the salt sea spray is stinging,_
_Still in your hearts the winds of youth are singing;_
_Though in heavens grown familiar to your eyes_
_The Southern Cross is gleaming, for old skies_
_Your hearts are fain and for the Northern Star._
DUNCAN J. ROBERTSON
(_“Chambers’s Journal.” By permission._)
[Illustration: _“The wonder and the glory of all the North” (p. 69)._]
[Illustration]
The
Orkney Book
Readings for Young Orcadians
Compiled and Edited by
John Gunn, M.A., D.Sc.
Author of “Sons of the Vikings,” “The Boys of
Hamnavoe,” etc.
Thomas Nelson & Sons, Ltd.
London, Edinburgh, and
New York
PREFACE.
This is a book about Orkney, for use in Orkney, designed and for the most
part written by natives of Orkney. It owes its origin to the Edinburgh
University Orcadian Association, the members of which realized the
desirability of preparing for use in the schools of Orkney a book adapted
to the special conditions of the Islands.
Educationists now recognize that Knowledge ought, like Charity, to “begin
at home:” this is true of every branch of knowledge—history, geography,
literature, and the rest. They might even adopt with an educational
reference the saying of the wise man, “Wisdom is before him that hath
understanding; but the eyes of a fool are in the ends of the earth.” An
attempt has accordingly been made in this book to present to the young
folks of Orkney a general view of their homeland, some description of
its past and its present, and some knowledge of its naturalistic and its
humanistic aspects, with the object of awakening their interest in their
own Islands, in order that from this centre their knowledge may advance
the more surely to the sweep of a wider horizon. For, like Charity again,
while Knowledge must begin at home, it must not remain at home.
While the scope of the book is wide, the treatment of each class of
subjects is necessarily suggestive rather than exhaustive. All that
is possible within the limits of a single small volume is to present
illustrative specimens rather than a complete collection of studies.
Hence there is abundant opportunity for the teacher to supplement
the book by specializing in one direction or in another according to
individual preference. The aim has been rather to supply the irreducible
minimum, suitable to all, in the hope that the book may find its way into
every school in the county, and be read by every Orkney boy and girl
before their schooldays are over.
The Committee of the Edinburgh University Orcadian Association who have
superintended the issue of the book acknowledge gratefully the courtesy
with which copyright material has been placed at their disposal. They
wish to record their obligations to the Controller of His Majesty’s
Stationery Office, to Messrs. J. M. Dent and Co., Messrs. Longmans,
Green, and Co., Messrs. Macmillan and Co., Messrs. W. and R. Chambers,
and the Walter Scott Publishing Company, for the use of the extracts to
which their names are respectively appended, and to Messrs. Thomas Nelson
and Sons for much copyright material, including numerous illustrations.
They also desire to express their thanks to the Honourable Mrs. John
Dundas of Papdale, and to Messrs. Duncan J. Robertson, J. Storer
Clouston, and Edmund Selous for literary contributions which are in
themselves sufficient to give a high value to the collection, as well as
to place on record their indebtedness to the late Mr. James Tomison for
the article on “The Birds of Sule Skerry.”
The matter contained in the unsigned articles has been contributed by
many Orcadians, specialists in their several departments, whose names are
sufficient guarantee for accuracy—Messrs. James W. Cursiter, F.S.A.Scot.,
for Archæology, including illustrations; James Drever, M.A., for Norse
history and language; John Tait, M.D., D.Sc., for Zoology; John S. Flett,
M.A., D.Sc., for Geology; Magnus Spence, F.E.I.S., for Meteorology and
Botany; John Garrioch, M.A., for Seaweeds; John W. Bews, M.A., B.Sc., and
George W. Scarth, M.A., for botanical and descriptive material; Robert C.
Wallace, M.A., B.Sc., for descriptive material; and John Gunn (Kirkwall)
for the list of Orkney birds in the Appendix.
As regards the artistic features of the book, special acknowledgment is
due to Messrs. Thomas Kent, for his generosity in placing at the disposal
of the Editor the whole of his unique collection of Orkney views, all
the photographs reproduced being from his studio, with three or four
exceptions; T. Marjoribanks Hay, R.S.W., for his drawing of St. Magnus
Church, Egilsay; Stanley Cursiter, for the decorative initial letters,
the title-page, and the cover design; and Miss Rose Leith, for the border
designs of the grouped photographs; and to J. G. Bartholomew, LL.D., for
the two-page map of the county.
Finally, the thanks of the Committee are due to the generous and
patriotic friends, among whom special mention ought to be made of the
Glasgow Orkney and Shetland Literary and Scientific Association, whose
donations of money have enabled them to produce this book, for a volume
whose circulation must necessarily be limited to a small area could
be issued at so low a price only on condition of the initial cost of
manufacture being met by those interested in its production.
The Editor, who must accept responsibility for the general scope and plan
of the book, as well as for the actual form and part of the contents of
the unsigned articles, desires personally to acknowledge the valuable
assistance he has received from the members of the Committee, especially
Dr. John Tait and Mr. James Drever, and from the other friends who have
helped by their sympathetic criticism and advice, to all of whom, as well
as to himself, the work has been in every sense a labour of love; and
he ventures to express the hope that the results of that work, as here
visible, may find favour in the sight of all young Orcadians, and of many
who are no longer young.
J. GUNN.
EDINBURGH, 1909.
CONTENTS.
Page
Part I.—The Story of the Past.
Prehistoric Orkney, 9
The Beginnings of our History, 18
The Norsemen and their Sagas, 23
The Beginning of the Earldom, 32
The Dark Century, 40
Earl Thorfinn and Earl Rognvald, 54
The Slaying of Earl Magnus, 59
The Founding of St. Magnus Cathedral, 67
The Jorsalafarers, 74
Sweyn Asleifson, the Last of the Vikings, 90
The Decay of the Earldom and the End of the Western Kingdom, 97
The Annexation to Scotland, 105
Udal and Feudal, 110
The Stewart Earls, 115
The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, 120
Part II.—The Isles and the Folk.
A Survey of the Islands:
On Wideford Hill, 129
Among the North Isles, 134
Among the South Isles, 146
Round the Mainland:
First Day, 154
Second Day, 158
Third Day, 166
Fourth Day, 172
Sketches by Hugh Miller:
The Dwarfie Stone, 179
The Standing Stones, 184
The Cathedral of St. Magnus, 190
A Road in Orcady, 206
A Loch in Orcady, 219
Among the Kelpers, 227
A Whale-hunt in Orkney, 242
Articles made of Straw, 248
The Weather of Orkney, 255
The Place-Names of Orkney, 263
Part III.—Nature Lore.
The Story of the Rocks:
“Sermons in Stones,” 271
“Books in the Running Brooks,” 276
Cliffs and Beaches, 284
The Age of Ice, 289
Orkney Fossils, 292
A Peat-Moss, 296
Some Common Weeds, 305
Home Life on the Rocks:
Guillemots, 312
Seals, 317
Shags, 320
The Birds of Sule Skerry, 328
The Residenters, 330
The Regular Visitors, 334
Occasional Visitors, 346
Common Seaweeds, 352
Crabs, 361
Hoppers and Sholties, 372
Sea-Anemones, 378
Part IV.—Legend and Lay.
The Old Gods, 383
A Vanishing Island, 391
Helen Waters: a Legend of Sule Skerry, 396
A Legend of Boray Island, 403
Songs of the Gods:
The Challenge of Thor, 408
Tegner’s Drapa, 409
The Song of Harold Harfager, 412
King Hacon’s Last Battle, 414
The Death of Haco, 416
The Old Man of Hoy, 420
Orkney, 422
Scenes from “The Buccaneer”:
Night; Morning, 430
To Orkney, 432
The Temple of Nature, 433
Appendices.
Appendix I.—Chronology of Orcadian History to the End of the
Earldom, with Related Contemporary Events, 435
Appendix II.—Norse Words in Orkney Place-Names, 439
Appendix III.—List of Birds found in Orkney, 441
Appendix IV.—Books for Further Study, 443
THE ORKNEY BOOK.
Part I.—The Story of the Past.
PREHISTORIC ORKNEY.
At what period of the world’s history were our islands first inhabited,
and who were their first inhabitants? These are questions which we cannot
now answer. History is always made before it is written, and long ages
must have passed in the history of these islands before any written
records began to be kept.
Yet there are some records of that dim, forgotten past, which patient
research has gathered together, and which can be made to tell us a few
fragments of our Island story. If we look into one of the museums where
relics of the past are preserved, we may find such things as flint
arrow-heads and knives, stone axes and hammers, bronze spear-heads, and
other tools and weapons of the early inhabitants of our islands. These
silent witnesses tell us a little about what manner of men they were, and
how they lived their long-forgotten lives.
The use of stone implements marks a very primitive stage of life, yet
one which may not be entirely savage. There are tribes now living which
are still in their Stone Age. A recent traveller tells of having seen
an inhabitant of the South American Andes skin a hare very neatly with
a small flint knife. This knife is now in Kirkwall, and is precisely
similar to many which have been dug up in Orkney.
[Illustration: _Flint Arrow-heads and Knives._]
Flint is not a common stone in the Orkney Islands. It is found in
occasional lumps and pebbles among the clay which has been carried from
other places by the glaciers and icebergs of the Ice Age. Flint is common
in the southern parts of Great Britain, however, and the arrows and
knives found in our islands may have been brought from the south, or the
art of making them may have been learned from tribes among whom flint was
a more common material. This kind of stone, the fine steel of the Stone
Age, was used for small implements over a wide area of the world.
[Illustration: _Stone Hammers and Axes._]
Orkney must have had a large population in those early days. The
number of ancient graves which have been found seems to indicate this,
especially if we suppose that most of those graves with their heaped-up
mounds are the resting-places of chiefs and great men rather than of the
common people. The graves which remain are of varied types, from the
simple cist of upright stones roofed with horizontal slabs and covered
with earth, to the large mound with its carefully built chambers.
The variety of the objects found in those graves, from the rudest flint
and bone implements to those which are carefully finished, and finally
to objects made of metal, shows that the burials belong to different
periods. They tell us of long ages of increasing though now forgotten
civilization. Some of the mounds, indeed, show by their contents that
they cover the remains, not of the original and unknown inhabitants,
but of the Norse conquerors, and thus really belong to the period whose
history has come down to us in writing. But in the very mound where the
Norse warrior was laid to rest, there are sometimes also found the relics
of burials of a much ruder age. Such mingling of the materials of our
unwritten history makes the story which they tell a very difficult one to
read.
There are few remains in our islands more striking than the chambered
mounds, or Picts’ houses, as they are called. The most complete and
probably the most recent of them is that known as Maeshowe. They consist
of a mound of earth heaped over a rude building, sometimes of one
apartment, but frequently of several, the entrance being a long, low,
narrow passage, through which it is necessary to stoop or crawl in order
to gain an entrance.
Possibly those Picts’ houses were built at first as houses to dwell in,
though later used as tombs. It is not uncommon to-day to find buildings
used for burial which were designed for other purposes. If ever our
race and all its records were to vanish as completely as the primitive
inhabitants of the Orkney Islands have done, we can imagine some future
explorer of the ruins of St. Magnus Cathedral writing a learned treatise
to prove that the largest building in our islands was erected as a
burial-place for our dead.
Those mound dwellings, or Picts’ houses, may seem to us a very strange
form of house to live in. Where can we find to-day houses of such a
type, and with so very inconvenient a form of entrance? The Eskimos, as
travellers tell us, are in the habit of building just such houses with
blocks of snow, and they find this the best type in the extreme cold of
their Arctic climate. Possibly the Picts’ house type of dwelling was used
in Orkney and in other places for similar reasons.
[Illustration: _Polished Stone Celts._]
The brochs, or Pictish towers, as they are also called, are buildings
of a different kind, which are also fairly common in Orkney. They are
probably of later date than the Picts’ houses. Considerable skill,
as well as co-operation in labour, must have been required for their
erection.
The most complete broch in existence is that of Mousa in Shetland. Of
those which are found in Orkney, only the lower portions now remain. Over
seventy such ruins have been examined, the best specimens being in Evie
(Burgar), Birsay (Oxtro), Harray, Firth (Ingashowe and Stirlinghowe),
St. Ola (Birstane and Lingro), St. Andrews (Dingishowe and Langskaill),
Burray (East and West Brough), South Ronaldsay (Hoxa), Shapinsay
(Borrowston), and Stronsay (Lamb Head).
[Illustration: _Plan of Chambered Mound, Wideford Hill._
_b_, Entrance. _c_, Blind Passage.]
[Illustration: _Chambered Mound, Wideford Hill._
Section on line _a, a_ of plan.]
The typical broch is a large round tower, fifty or sixty feet in
diameter, and probably as much in height. The wall is about fifteen feet
thick, and solid at the base, except for some vaulted chambers which are
made in it. Higher, the wall is hollow, or rather consists of an outer
and an inner wall, with a space of four or five feet between them. This
space is divided into a number of stories or galleries by horizontal
courses of long slabs of stone, which form the roof of one story and the
floor of that above it, and at the same time bind the two walls firmly
together. A stairway gives access to the various stories, and light is
admitted by small windows opening into the interior space of the tower,
no windows being made in the outer wall. A single door in the lower wall
forms the only entrance to the inner court of the broch.
These towers were probably constructed for the purpose of defence, and
against a primitive enemy they would serve as well as did the castles of
a later age before the invention of gunpowder. Indeed, we read of the
broch of Mousa being actually used as a fort in the time of the Norsemen.
Who the builders of these towers were we cannot discover. They are
undoubtedly very ancient; yet their builders and occupiers were by no
means savages. From the remains which have been found in them we learn
that they were used by a people who kept domestic animals, who cultivated
the ground, and who could spin and weave the wool of their flocks into
cloth. No weapons of the Stone Age are found in the brochs.
[Illustration: _Broch of Mousa, Shetland._
1. Exterior. 2. Section. 3. Section with inner wall removed.]
It is certain that they were built, and that most of them may have fallen
into ruins, long before the Norsemen came. Many of the places where
they stand were named by those settlers from the broch which was found
standing there. The words _borg_, as in Burgar, and _howe_ (haug), as in
Hoxa (Haug’s aith, or isthmus), are found in many place-names. It is
certain, too, that the brochs were not then occupied, or we should have
found some account of their siege and capture in the Sagas which tell of
Norse prowess by land and sea.
Another type of ancient remains which is common in our islands is the
standing stones. These are found in many places, either singly or in
groups or circles. Regarding these relics of a distant past much has been
written, but little is known.
[Illustration: _The Stone Circle of Stenness as now Restored._]
An upright stone is the simplest and most effective form of monument, and
is that which we most commonly use to this day to mark the resting-places
of our dead. To the ancient Orcadian it was a matter of more difficulty
to quarry and to transport and erect such monuments, and doubtless they
would be set up only in memory of some great event, such as a notable
victory, or the fall of a great chieftain.
The great stone circles, such as those of Stenness and of Brogar, are
supposed to have served a different purpose. They are believed by many
to have been the temples of some primitive people, who met there to
worship their gods. It has also been supposed that the people who erected
those circles were sun-worshippers, as the situation of certain prominent
stones seems to have been determined by the position of the rising sun at
midsummer.
[Illustration: _Fallen Cromlech or Table Stone, Sandwick._]
But in these matters we cannot be certain of our conclusions. Most of
our great churches and cathedrals are placed east and west, with the
high altar towards the east, and even the graves in our churchyards
are usually similarly oriented; but this does not prove that we are
sun-worshippers, whatever our forefathers may have been before they
accepted Christianity. We may indulge in much speculation about them, and
form our own opinions as to what they originally meant, but those hoary
monoliths remain a mystery, and the purpose of their erection we can only
guess.
THE BEGINNINGS OF OUR HISTORY.
In the history of the ancient world some vague and fragmentary references
are made to our islands, but from these little real knowledge of them can
be gathered. As early as the time of Alexander the Great we come upon
some notices of certain northern islands, which must be either Orkney,
or the Hebrides, or Shetland, or the Faroes, but we cannot determine
which. The Phœnicians, who were the great sea-traders and explorers of
the early world, seem to have had a little knowledge of these northern
archipelagoes.
In the time of the Roman occupation of Britain we have definite mention
of the Orcades, but nothing which shows any real knowledge of them. They
were visited by the fleet of Agricola after his invasion of Scotland,
as recorded by Tacitus. About three centuries later, the poet Claudian
sings of a victory by the Emperor Theodosius, who, we are told, sprinkled
Orcadian soil with Saxon blood. We are not told, however, who the people
called Saxons really were, or whether they were the inhabitants of the
islands or not. They may have been early Viking raiders who had fled
hither and been brought to bay among the group.
Early Church history has also some references to Orkney. After
St. Columba had left the shores of Ireland to carry the message
of Christianity to the Picts and Scots in Scotland, another Irish
missionary, Cormac, went on a similar voyage among the Orkney Isles. Him,
therefore, we may regard as the apostle to the northern heathen. St.
Adamnan, the biographer of St. Columba, tells the story, and the name of
Adamnan himself is still commemorated in the name of the Isle of Damsay.
After the visit of Cormac, the Culdee missionaries established themselves
in various parts of Orkney, as the place-names given by the Norsemen
show. In several of these names we find the word _pápa_, a form of
_pope_, which was the name applied to the monks or clergy of the Culdee
Church. Like Columba himself, who made the little island of Iona his
headquarters, his followers seem to have preferred the seclusion of the
smaller islands. To this habit are due such names as _Papa Westray_ and
_Papa Stronsay_. Other Church settlements have left their traces in names
such as _Paplay_ and _Papdale_.
Another place-name which records an old-world mission station is that
of _Deerness_. At first sight this name seems rather to indicate that
abundance of deer were found there; and some writers tell us, by way of
proving this, that deer’s horns have been found in that parish. But as
deer’s horns have also been found in many other places in the county,
the proof is not convincing. We must remember that the Norse invaders
were likely to name the place on account of its appearance from the
sea. They may, of course, have noticed a chance herd of deer near the
cliffs; but one thing is certain to have caught their eye—the unusual
sight of a building of stone on the Brough of Deerness. Some remains of
this building, and of a later one on the same site, still exist; and it
was long regarded as in some way a sacred place, to which pilgrimages
were made. This building was in fact one of those outposts of early
Christianity—a Culdee monastery. When the Norse invaders came, they
doubtless found it occupied by some of the Culdee clergy—_diar_, as
they would be called by the strangers—and so the headland was named the
Priests’ Cape, or Deerness.
It is quite possible that deer existed in Orkney down to the Norse
period, but they were much more likely to be found in the hilly regions
of the west Mainland, which was the earls’ hunting-ground. We read of an
Earl of Orkney going over to Caithness for the chase of the deer, which
seems to suggest that they were then scarce, if not extinct, in Orkney.
Among the remains of the Culdee settlements which are still found are
monumental stones with Christian emblems inscribed on them, or with Irish
Ogham writing, and ancient bells, probably used in the churches. The
curious round tower which forms part of the old church of St. Magnus in
Egilsay is of a type common only in Ireland. The name of that island is
probably derived from an earlier church which the Norsemen found there,
and heard called by its Celtic name, _ecclais_. It has been supposed by
some that the name _Egilsay_ means Egil’s Island, so called after some
man named Egil; but the probability is that it meant the Church Island.
All that we can learn, then, from the ancient relics of its first
inhabitants, and from the brief references to the islands by old
historians, amounts to very little. We know that Orkney was thickly
inhabited by some ancient people, living at first the primitive life
which is indicated by the use of stone implements. We may suppose that
they had at one time a religion in some way connected with sun-worship.
We know that they built earth-houses somewhat like the snow-houses of
the Eskimos, many of which still remain, and that, in some cases at
least, these have been used as places of burial by later inhabitants.
We know that at one period strong circular towers were built, probably
as fortresses, by a people of some degree of civilization. We know that
in the time of St. Columba Christian missionaries or monks visited the
islands, whose inhabitants were then probably of the race known as Picts,
and whose chiefs are said to have been subject to the Pictish king of
Northern Scotland. Some at least of those Culdees we may suppose to have
been hermits rather than missionaries, although they may have combined
the two characters. How many centuries of time are covered by these facts
and suppositions we do not know, but they sum up all that can be said
with certainty regarding Orkney before the coming of the Norsemen.
There is one very curious fact about the beginnings of the Norse
records: they make no mention whatever of any inhabitants being found in
the islands. The place-names afford evidence, as we have seen, of the
presence of Culdee monks, but of other population there is no trace. The
new-comers seem to have settled as in an uninhabited land, each Viking
selecting and occupying his land without let or hindrance.
If there had been a native population, and if these had been either
expelled or exterminated by the invaders, we should surely have been
told of it by the Saga writers, who would have delighted in telling such
a tale. It has accordingly been supposed that at the time of the Norse
settlement the islands were uninhabited save by the hermits of the Culdee
Church. When or how the former Pictish inhabitants disappeared it is
impossible to say. Possibly some early Viking raids, of which no history
remains, had resulted in the slaughter of many and the flight of the
rest to the less exposed lands south of the Pictland or Pentland Firth.
Whatever the reason may be, the chapter of our Island history which opens
with the Norse settlement is in no way a continuation of anything which
goes before, but begins a new story.
[Illustration: _Carved Stone Balls._]
THE NORSEMEN AND THEIR SAGAS.
It is late in the eighth century before the Northman or Norseman appears
on the stage of history. From the day when Cæsar’s victorious legions
brought the Gauls, the Germans, and the Britons under the sway of the
imperial city, these nations of Western Europe are never again entirely
lost to history. But Scandinavia and the countries round the Baltic
remained unknown to Rome and to the world for long centuries afterwards.
“There nature ends,” one of the Roman writers has said, when speaking of
these northern lands. This brief yet expressive sentence well indicates
how completely outside the Roman world lay the countries which were the
cradle of our race.
There is another side to all this, which we find it difficult to picture
clearly in our minds. To the inhabitants of Scandinavia and the lands
round the Baltic, the southern parts of Europe were equally unknown. We
find in a Scandinavian writer of the ninth century a description of an
expedition which was made by one of the Viking chiefs to this unknown
world. In the course of his travels he came upon a city which to the
Norseman seemed mysterious and dread—a city of Niflheim, the under-world.
This city, as we learn from contemporary Western writers, must have been
Paris. Paris, now the gay capital of Europe, and even then a city of
importance and of fame, was so unknown to the Norsemen of the early ninth
century that it was deemed a part of Niflheim, the under-world!
During the period when the northern nations were hidden from the eye of
history, many changes must have been going on among them. The building
and management of ships could not have been learned in a day, and even
when we first catch sight of the Norsemen they were the finest and
most daring seamen in the world, and their ships probably the most
perfect hitherto seen. Many voyages among their own islands and in the
Baltic must have preceded the longer voyages to Britain, to Iceland, to
Greenland, and to America. Numerous wars there must have been, quite
unknown to history, before the northern warrior became the terrible
fighter of the Viking Age.
We can imagine the delighted wonder with which the northern warriors
first gazed upon the rich and fertile shores of South-Western Europe.
We can imagine how they contrasted the fair fields and great cities of
the south with the bleak and sterile shores of the north from which they
came. What motives first led to their leaving their native shores it is
difficult to say. Thirst for adventure, the pinch of poverty at home, the
desire of possessing gold and treasure, all conspired to make them seek
their fortunes in the wide and unknown lands which lay beyond the sea.
When the first adventurers brought home accounts of the lands which they
had seen—the fruitful fields, the great cities, the rich merchandise,
and the yellow gold—great numbers of their fellow-countrymen would be
seized with a longing to visit those wonderful shores where wealth was
to be had for the taking. The roving spirit once roused spread rapidly
over the northern lands. The storm of Viking fury burst on the lands of
Western Europe almost without warning.
In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, under the date A.D. 787, we read: “In this
year King Beorhtric took Eadburh, King Offa’s daughter, to wife. And in
his days first came three ships of Northmen from Haerethaland, and the
reeve rode down to them and would drive them to the king’s _vill_, for
he knew not what men they were, and they there slew him. These were the
first ships of Danish men that sought the land of the English.” Thus we
read of the first mutterings of the storm which was so soon to burst on
the coasts of Western Europe. During the succeeding two centuries and a
half the English learned to know well what men these were who came out of
the wild north-east. The monks’ litany, “From the fury of the Northmen
deliver us, O Lord!” tells us what _they_ thought of them.
[Illustration: EXPEDITIONS AND SETTLEMENTS OF THE NORSEMEN]
We can trace two distinct roads which the Viking raids followed. One,
traversed chiefly by the Danes, led along the shores of Northern Europe
to England, the English Channel, France, Spain, and the Mediterranean;
the other, traversed chiefly by the Norsemen, led straight across the
North Sea to the Orkneys, thence along the west coast of Scotland, to
Ireland and the west of England. The islands lying off the coasts of
Scotland, England, Ireland, and France were seized by the invaders, and
from these as bases their raids extended far and wide. Monasteries
felt the utmost fury of their attacks, for there they knew they would
find abundance of spoil. At first the invaders confined themselves to
plundering expeditions. The Norsemen early turned their attention to
settlement and commerce; the Danes, on the other hand, remained for a
longer period intent on plunder alone.
Civil wars in Western Europe had rendered the nations there incapable
of effective resistance to the ruthless invaders. The Vikings descended
now at one point, now at another. When they met with a more stubborn
resistance than usual, they merely retired to their ships with whatever
plunder they had seized, and sailed away to make an attack somewhere
else. They wintered on the islands which they had seized, and as soon as
spring was come they descended once more on the devoted lands. Ireland
suffered severely at their hands. The Orkneys and the Hebrides became
nests of Vikings; in fact, colonies of them must have been established
there at a very early date. In these islands they were safe from all
interference—a law to themselves; for as yet there was no arm in Europe
long enough and strong enough to reach them. Nowhere could a more
convenient base have been found for Viking raids on the British and Irish
shores.
The first half-century of the Viking Age saw the Danes settled merely in
outlying parts of the east coast of England. The Norsemen, on the other
hand, had already seized on Orkney, Shetland, the Hebrides, and large
tracts of Eastern Ireland. The first fifty years of the Viking Age may be
called the first period of Norse colonization in the west.
It would be a great mistake, however, to suppose that the Norsemen were
merely turbulent sea-robbers, or that the only result of their migrations
was to hinder the progress of civilization in Western Europe. As settlers
in other countries, they brought new strength and vitality to the land
of their adoption; but instead of remaining separate colonies, they were
soon absorbed into the native population, and had no further history of
their own.
Yet there were two great settlements abroad which left a deep mark on
European history. The one was the colonization of the north of France,
afterwards called Normandy. There the Norsemen soon adopted the language
and the religion of the country, but retained so much of their native
characteristics that the subsequent Norman Conquest of England may be
regarded as really a Norse inroad of a specially successful type. The
other settlement was that in the south of Italy and Sicily, later known
as the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which occupied an important place in
history during the Middle Ages.
Even the British settlements for the most part had only a brief period
of separate history, and soon became merged into the general stream of
national life. In Orkney and Shetland, however, where there was probably
no native population at the time of the Norse invasion, the colony
developed along its own special lines, and has left behind it a history
which for centuries remained distinct from that of the rest of Great
Britain.
The history of the Orkney Islands during the period of the Norse
occupation is preserved for us in the Icelandic _Sagas_. Iceland was one
of the earliest and most important Norse colonies, and there the old
Northern language was preserved better than anywhere else. The Sagas are
stories which, in the times of long ago, were told around the fires in
Iceland and other Norse colonies to while away the long winter evenings.
At festivals and merry-makings, during long voyages, or by the winter
fireside, the Norseman listened eagerly to the recital of deeds done by
his kinsmen in other times and in other lands. Storytelling was a popular
pastime, and the man who knew many Sagas was ever a welcome guest.
Many of the Sagas have now been translated into English, and all of
these are well worth reading. The greatest of all the Sagas is generally
thought to be the Saga of Burnt Njal. It is one of the noblest stories
to be found in any language, and it is besides nobly told. In this Saga
we find the best account of the great battle of Clontarf. Among the
other great Sagas are the Saga of the Settlers on the Ayre, the Saga of
Laxdale, the Saga of Egil the son of Skallagrim, the Saga of Grettir the
Strong, and the Saga of the Volsungs. The two last are mythical Sagas;
they do not tell of real historical personages, but are paraphrases of
old songs and legends which have come down from a more distant past. The
Anglo-Saxon Saga of Beowulf tells some of the same stories, and is not a
real Saga in the sense of a true story told by the fireside.
The stories of the earls and chiefs of Orkney form part of the great
store of Saga literature, and these have come down to us in the form
of the “Orkneyinga Saga.” It must be remembered, however, that this is
merely the summary of a great number of stories which had been told long
before by men who had no doubt taken part in the events related. It was
a Saga-man’s pride to tell the truth—at least as it was told to him—and
so we may in the main rely on the Orkney Saga as a true account of events
which happened, although sometimes it may be exceedingly difficult to
assign the correct dates. The Orkney Saga is not usually reckoned among
the great Sagas. It partakes more of the nature of a general history than
of a single and complete story. This Saga is the chief source of our
knowledge of the history of our islands during Norse times.
The Orkney Saga consists of several parts, each of which might be
called a separate Saga—the Earls’ Saga, Magnus’s Saga, and Rognvald’s
Saga. The first relates the history of Orkney from its conquest by King
Harald Fairhair of Norway down to the death of Earl Thorfinn, about the
time of the Norman Conquest of England. The second relates the lives
of Thorfinn’s sons, Paul and Erlend, but more especially of the holy
Earl Magnus, of his murder, and of the wonderful things that happened
afterwards through his holiness. The third part tells of the earls after
St. Magnus, chiefly Earl Rognvald the Second, and the great Viking, Sweyn
Asleifson of Gairsay, generally known as “the last of the Vikings.” The
whole history given in the Orkney Saga includes the events of the three
centuries from 900 to 1200.
In addition to what we learn from the Orkney Saga, we glean a few facts
about the history of our islands from other Sagas, such as the Sagas of
the Kings of Norway, usually called the “Heimskringla.” There are also
many Norse poems which scholars say must have been written in Orkney, or
in some other of the western Norse colonies, and from these we can learn
much about the life of the people, their thoughts, and their beliefs,
though very little about the actual history of the islands. We do not
know who were the authors of these poems, but some of them were really
great poets, greater, perhaps, than any then living in any other part of
Europe.
Finally, there are occasional glimpses of our Norse ancestors to be
caught in the pages of the chronicles and histories of the nations.
Unfortunately, these references are so often distorted by fear or
hatred, or so confused through scanty and imperfect knowledge, that they
add very little to what we already know from Norse records. One good
purpose, indeed, they serve: they show that the Saga-men were in the main
truth-tellers, so that we can place reliance on their stories, even where
these are not found in the records of other nations. The Saga-men also
fill up many gaps in the history of those countries which the Norsemen
visited, and thus they render our knowledge of the Viking Age more
complete, more detailed, and more accurate, even as regards countries
which were to them foreign lands.
[Illustration: _Ancient Bronze Spear-head; Horn Mounting still
preserved._]
THE BEGINNING OF THE EARLDOM.
Before our story begins, Norway was divided into a number of small
kingdoms. About the year 890 A.D. a king called Harald, who ruled
over one of these small kingdoms, resolved to make himself master of
all Norway. He made a vow that he would not cut his hair until he was
acknowledged king throughout the whole country. This ambitious aim took
some time to accomplish, and as the years passed his thick locks grew
long and shaggy. Thus he got the name of Harald Shockhead.
One after another, however, he subdued the smaller kingdoms, compelling
the earls and chiefs to acknowledge him as their king, or to leave
the country. Then began what may be called the second period of Norse
colonization in the west. Many of the proudest and boldest of the
Norsemen, deeming it a disgrace to serve a king who was at best only
their equal, preferred to trust themselves and all their belongings to
the ocean, and take whatever fortune might await them.
Those nobles who fled from Norway, regarding Harald as their enemy, soon
began to spread terror along the shores of Norway itself, returning to
plunder, and slay, and burn, as their fellow-countrymen had so often done
in the west. Their chief haunts were among the Orkneys and the Hebrides.
Thither they betook themselves with their booty when winter came on.
There they lived and feasted all through the winter, and when spring
came they descended once more on the coasts of Norway. Ireland and the
west coast of England also suffered from these raiders, and in France a
determined effort to conquer the country was at this time made by the
Norsemen. Hrolf or Rollo, the Norseman, became master of the north of
France, and gave to it a new name—Normandy, the land of the Normans or
Norsemen.
The last great effort made by these Norse nobles to break the power of
King Harald was foiled by their defeat at Hafursfrith. A great league had
been formed against Harald. Vikings from over the sea crowded back to
Norway to avenge their own injuries and to help their kinsmen. The two
fleets met at Hafursfrith in the south of Norway, and a long and stubborn
battle ended in victory for Harald. This battle had far-reaching results.
It was the end of the struggle for independence in Norway. Harald was
then left free to turn his attention to the chastisement of the Vikings
in the west. The result was the foundation of the Norse Empire in the
west, and the colonization of Iceland and Greenland by those Norsemen who
still scorned to own the sway of the Norwegian king.
With a large and splendidly equipped fleet, Harald swooped down on the
Vikings in Orkney and the Hebrides. Their resistance was feeble enough.
Some yielded themselves to the king; others fled before him. Nowhere
was there anything like a pitched battle. As far south as the Isle of
Man, Harald pursued his career of conquest. Turning north once more, he
established Norse jarldoms or earldoms in Orkney and the Hebrides, to be
subject henceforth to the Norwegian crown. Then, considering that his vow
was fulfilled, Harald at last had his long hair cut, and was afterwards
known as Harald Fairhair.
One of Harald’s chief friends and supporters was Rognvald, Earl of Moeri
and Romsdal, who was called by the men of his time, “The mighty and wise
in council.” This Rognvald was the father of Rollo of Normandy. He had
other sons named Ivar, Thorir, Rollaug, Hallad, and Einar, and he had
a brother called Sigurd. The family makes a very large figure in the
history of those times. In one of Harald’s battles in the west fell Ivar,
Rognvald’s son. Harald assigned to Rognvald the newly created Jarldom of
Orkney in order to compensate him in some measure for the loss of his
son. But Rognvald had already large estates in Norway. He thought that
these were quite enough for one man to govern. Accordingly he handed over
the Orkneys to his brother Sigurd, who thus became the first Jarl or Earl.
Sigurd, the first Earl of Orkney, sometimes called Sigurd the Mighty,
was a strong and energetic ruler. When King Harald departed for Norway,
the earl at once began to strengthen himself in his new dominions. He
first allied himself with Thorstein the Red, son of the Norse king of
Dublin, and with the Norsemen in the Hebrides, and then invaded Scotland
in an attempt to add to his earldom Caithness and Sutherland. The Scots
naturally offered a determined resistance. Their leader was Maelbride
or Melbrigda—called Melbrigda Tusk because he had a large projecting
tooth—Earl or Maormor of Ross.
After the war had lasted for some time, the two earls agreed to meet and
settle their quarrel, each taking forty men with him. On the day fixed
for the meeting, Sigurd, suspecting, as he said, the good faith of the
Scots, mounted two men on each of his forty horses, and came thus to the
place appointed. As soon as the Norsemen appeared in sight, Melbrigda saw
that he had been trapped, and turning to his men, said, “We have been
betrayed by Sigurd, for I see two feet on each horse’s side. The men must
therefore be twice as numerous as the horses that bear them. Nevertheless
let us harden our hearts and sell our lives as dearly as we can.”
Seeing the Scots prepared to die hard in the place where they were,
Sigurd divided his force and attacked them at once in front and in flank.
The battle was fierce and bloody, but it ended in the total extermination
of the small band of Scots. Sigurd, exulting over his fallen foe, cut
off Melbrigda’s head and fixed it to his saddle. On his way home, in
spurring his horse his leg struck against the great projecting tooth
which had given Melbrigda his nickname, and the tooth pierced his leg.
Blood-poisoning followed, and a few days later Earl Sigurd died in great
pain on the banks of the Dornoch Firth. He was buried at a place now
called Cyder Hall (Sigurd’s Howe), near Skibo Castle.
Sigurd was succeeded in the earldom by his son Guttorm. Guttorm ruled the
islands for one short and uneventful winter, and then died childless.
For some time the earldom was without a ruler. Vikings once more began
to make the Orkneys their headquarters, and to harass the more peaceful
inhabitants of the islands. When King Harald heard that the Orkneys
were without a ruler, he asked Earl Rognvald to make haste to send them
another earl. Rognvald then had the title of Earl of Orkney conferred on
his son Hallad, who sailed for the west as the third earl. But Hallad was
weak and indolent. The western earldom was too turbulent and difficult
to govern. He soon wearied of his dignity, and at last, deserting his
earldom, went back to Norway. After his ignominious withdrawal from the
earldom, the islands came under the rule of two Danish Vikings.
Although Hallad preferred a simple farmer’s life to an earl’s dignity,
there were others of Rognvald’s sons who were more ambitious. Einar
especially was eager to redeem the family honour by the expulsion of the
Vikings from the islands. Accordingly Einar was chosen as Earl of Orkney,
and after King Harald had conferred on him the title, he set out for his
earldom. The old Earl of Moeri had never regarded his youngest son with
much favour, and, to tell the truth, neither desired to see the other’s
face again.
Einar was the best and greatest of the early Norse earls. In appearance
he was tall and manly; his face was somewhat disfigured by the loss of an
eye, but in spite of this he was reputed to be very sharp-sighted. His
father had prophesied that Einar would never become a great chief; yet he
became the most famous of all Earl Rognvald’s sons, with the exception
of Rollo of Normandy.
The earldom was in a state of great disorder when Einar arrived. The
Vikings had to be expelled, the government had to be settled and
established, and the people had to learn to trust and obey their new
earl. All these things were accomplished in a marvellously short space
of time. The new earl also taught his people many useful arts. Wood was
scarce: Einar knew that the people of Scotland used peat for fuel, and he
taught the Norsemen in the islands to do the same. From this he got the
name of Torf-Einar.
Soon a serious trouble arose. King Harald’s sons had now grown up to be
very turbulent and overbearing men. They quarrelled with their father’s
chiefs and earls. Two of them, Halfdan Highleg and Gudrod Bright,
attacked and slew Rognvald, Earl of Moeri. Harald was enraged that his
sons should thus murder his best and most faithful counsellor and friend.
He marched against them with an army, and ordered them to be seized and
brought before him. Gudrod gave himself up to his father, but Halfdan
seized a ship and sailed west to the Orkneys.
Halfdan’s sudden arrival in the earldom caused panic for a time. Einar
was quite unprepared for an invasion. He accordingly thought it wiser
to escape to Caithness until he had time to collect his forces. In the
meantime Halfdan seized the government of the isles, taking the title
of King of Orkney and Shetland. The same summer saw Einar back in the
Orkneys with a fleet and an army to regain his earldom. The two fleets
met somewhere off the island of Sanday. A fierce battle took place, and
Halfdan’s force was practically annihilated. In the dusk of the evening
he himself leaped overboard and escaped.
Next morning the shores were searched for fugitives. All who were found
were slain, but Halfdan himself had disappeared. While the search was
still proceeding, Einar was observed to stop suddenly and gaze across the
sea towards the island of North Ronaldsay, or Rinansey, as it was then
called.
“What see’st thou, jarl?” asked one of his companions. “I know not what
it is,” was the reply. “Sometimes it appears to rise up, and sometimes
to lie down. It is either a bird in the air or a man on the rocks, and I
will find out.”
This object which the earl saw was Halfdan, who had probably just dragged
his weary limbs from the water, and was now struggling up over the rocks
to the land. The earl’s men pursued and captured him. He was at once
brought before the earl, who ordered him to be slain, to avenge his
father’s murder, and as a sacrifice to Odin for the victory.
Angry as King Harald had been because of the murder of Earl Rognvald, the
death of his son at the hands of Rognvald’s son was not likely to be very
agreeable to him. Harald therefore determined to make a second expedition
to the west.
When Einar heard of Harald’s intended visit to the Orkneys, he thought
that he would be safer out of the king’s way, and accordingly he crossed
the Pentland Firth. Messengers went backwards and forwards between the
king and the earl for a while, arranging terms of settlement. At length
the king demanded that the earldom should pay a fine of sixty marks. To
that Einar agreed, and King Harald Fairhair bade farewell to his western
dominions for ever.
It was no easy matter for the Orkneymen to raise the sixty marks, and the
earl called a Thing or council to discuss the matter. At length the earl
offered to pay the whole fine himself, on condition that all the freehold
or udal lands of the Orkneymen were handed over to him in pledge for the
amount that each had to pay, and to this the islanders agreed.
In this way the earl came into possession of all the udal lands in the
Orkneys; and it was not till the time of Earl Sigurd the Stout, a century
later, that the udal rights were restored to the Orkneymen. Earl Einar
spent the rest of his days in peace. The earldom was well ruled. Vikings
were afraid to plunder the dominions of so powerful a chief; and after
a long and honourable reign the good earl died on a sickbed—what the
Vikings called a “straw death”—about the year 933.
[Illustration: _Remains of a Viking Ship found in Sweden._]
THE DARK CENTURY.
The tenth century may fittingly be called the dark century of Orcadian
history. We know very little of it except occasional glimpses afforded
by obscure references in the Sagas; and the little that we do know tells
of treachery and bloodshed and murder to an extent unusual even in the
troubled annals of Orkney.
After the death of Torf-Einar the earldom came into the hands of his
three sons, Thorfinn—usually called Thorfinn Skull-splitter—Arnkell, and
Erlend. The disturbed state of Norway, consequent on the death of Harald
Fairhair about the year 945, caused turmoil and confusion throughout all
those lands which had been conquered and settled by the Norsemen. Harald
left behind him a brood of wild, reckless sons, each of whom thought he
had a right to a share of his father’s dominions. They filled the whole
land with turbulence and bloodshed.
Eric Bloody-axe had been Harald’s favourite son, and he at first took
over the chief rule in Norway. He was a brave and skilful warrior,
but passionate, avaricious, and treacherous in his disposition. The
same qualities were possessed in an even greater degree by his queen,
Gunnhilda. Their deeds of violence soon estranged the hearts of their
subjects.
Hakon, Harald’s youngest son, who had been brought up in England under
the care of King Athelstan, came to Norway to claim his share of his
father’s dominions. Hakon was at this time only in his fifteenth year,
but he was daring and ambitious, and was the darling of the Norsemen both
at home and abroad. Eric Bloody-axe and Gunnhilda were, on the other
hand, regarded everywhere with hatred and detestation. When, therefore,
Hakon invaded Norway and attempted to wrest the sovereignty from the
hands of his elder brother, the latter was deserted by his people and was
forced to flee from the country.
Eric crossed first to Orkney, where he gathered a band of followers as
reckless as himself, and then held on to England and began to ravage
the land in the usual Viking fashion. Close friendship had long existed
between Athelstan and Harald Fairhair. Athelstan professed similar
friendship for Harald’s sons, and now offered Eric the lordship of
Northumbria. Eric was not so foolish as to reject this offer. Gunnhilda
and he with their family abode in peace in Northumbria for about a year.
With the death of Athelstan fortune began once more to frown upon the
exiled king. King Edmund thought it by no means desirable that the
Norsemen should hold so large a portion of his kingdom. Knowing the
insecurity of his tenure, Eric’s reckless spirit flashed at once into
open rebellion. He left Northumbria, sailed to Orkney, seized the Earls
Arnkell and Erlend, forced many other Orcadian chiefs to join him, and
made a Viking raid on the west coast of England. The raiders met with
resistance and a battle was fought; in this battle fell Eric himself,
both the Orkney earls, and most of the other leaders.
When news of this disastrous expedition reached Gunnhilda, who had
remained with her family in Northumbria, she in turn embarked for Orkney.
She and her sons claimed the earldom, seized the taxes, and spread wrong
and oppression over all the western colonies. For a short time the
islands suffered the same misgovernment as Norway had already suffered at
her hands. But war now broke out between Norway and Denmark. This seemed
to afford her a chance of regaining the Norwegian crown, and Gunnhilda
and her family sailed eastwards once more. Ragnhilda, her daughter,
was left behind in Orkney to continue for a time her mother’s acts of
treachery and bloodshed.
There are few worse characters in history than Ragnhilda as depicted
by the Saga. She seemed to have a mania for plots and murders. Married
first to Arnfinn, one of the sons of Earl Thorfinn, she caused him to be
murdered at Murkle in Caithness, for no reason that we can find out, and
then married his brother Havard. On the death of his father Thorfinn,
shortly afterwards, Havard became earl. He is known in history as Havard
the Harvest-happy, because during his time the islands were blessed
with good harvests. Havard also met his death at the instigation of
his wife. Ragnhilda persuaded Einar Oily-tongue, his nephew, to murder
the earl, promising to marry him and secure for him the earldom when
the deed was done. Einar set on Havard in Stenness, and slew him after
a hard struggle. But it was apparently no part of Ragnhilda’s plan to
marry Einar Oily-tongue. She now professed the greatest indignation and
grief at the murder of Earl Havard, and called for vengeance on his
murderer. Einar Oily-tongue had a cousin, also called Einar. He in turn
fell a victim to the wiles of Ragnhilda. By promising or at least hinting
that she would marry the man who avenged the murder of Earl Havard, she
succeeded in getting the second Einar to murder the first, and ended by
marrying Ljot, the third son of Earl Thorfinn, who was the real heir to
the earldom.
This was by no means the end of Ragnhilda’s wickedness. Ljot had a
brother, Skuli, who was not at all satisfied that the former should have
the whole earldom. It was an easy matter to make trouble between the two
brothers. In the end Skuli left the islands for Scotland, and became Earl
of Caithness and a vassal of the Scottish king. Bad feeling continued
between the brothers, and was carefully fostered by Ragnhilda. Ultimately
they met in arms in Caithness, Skuli with a Scottish army, and Ljot with
the forces of the earldom. The Scots were defeated and Skuli slain.
Ljot now added Caithness to his earldom, but the Scots again and again
strove to reconquer it. Finally a great battle was fought at Skidmire in
Caithness. The Norsemen gained the day, but the earl was fatally wounded.
There remained one son of Thorfinn Skull-splitter, named Hlodver, who now
became earl over an earldom exhausted and impoverished by twenty years
of misgovernment and bloodshed, and embroiled in an arduous struggle with
Scotland for the possession of Caithness.
The Orkney earldom, however, was now on the eve of a great expansion.
Under the son and grandson of Hlodver, Sigurd the Stout and Thorfinn
the Mighty, the Norse dominion in the west attained its widest bounds,
and the earldom of Orkney its greatest importance. For more than half a
century, with little or no interference from Norway, the Orkney earls
helped to mould the history of Ireland and of Scotland; and until the
union of England and Denmark took place under Canute, the Norse Earls of
Orkney were probably the most powerful chieftains in the British Isles.
It was in the time of Earl Sigurd that Christianity was first introduced
among the Norse inhabitants of Orkney. Olaf, Tryggvi’s son, King of
Norway, had embraced the new faith, and his methods of promoting the
religion which he professed were characteristic of his time and race. The
story of the conversion of Earl Sigurd and his followers is thus given in
the Saga:—
“Olaf, Tryggvi’s son, sailed from the west to the Orkneys; but because
the Pentland Firth was not passable, he laid his ship up under the lee in
Osmund’s Voe, off Rognvald’s Isle. But there in the voe lay already Earl
Sigurd, Hlodver’s son, with three ships, and then meant to go a-roving.
But as soon as King Olaf knew that the earl was there, he made them
call him to come and speak with him. But when the earl came on board
the king’s ship, King Olaf began his speech.” (We pass over his long
historical review of the establishment of the Orkney earldom and its
dependence upon the kings of Norway, and give only his closing sentences.)
“‘Now, as so it is, Earl Sigurd, that thou hast come into my power, now
thou hast two choices before thee, very uneven. One is that thou shalt
take the right faith and become my man, and allow thyself to be baptized
and all thy undermen; then shalt thou have a sure hope of honour from me,
and to have and to hold as my underman this realm, with earl’s title and
full freedom as thou hast erewhile had it; and this over and above, which
is much more worth, to rule in everlasting bliss with all-ruling God—that
is sure to thee if thou keepest all His commandments. This is the other
choice, which is very doleful and unlike the first—that now on the spot
thou shalt die, and after thy death I shall let fire and sword ruthlessly
rage over all the Orkneys, burn and brand homesteads and men, unless this
folk will have salvation and believe on the true God....’
“But when Earl Sigurd had heard so long and clever a speech of King Olaf,
he hardened his heart against him, and spoke thus: ‘It must be told thee,
King Olaf, that I have firmly made up my mind that I will not and may
not and shall not forego that faith which my kinsmen and forefathers had
before me: for I know no better counsel than they, and I know not that
that faith is better which thou preachest than this which we have now had
and held all our lives.’
“And with that the king saw the earl so stiffnecked in his error, he
seized his young son, whom the earl had with him, and who had grown up
there in the isles. This son of the earl the king bore forward on the
prow and drew his sword, and made ready to cut off the lad’s head, with
these words, ‘Now mayst thou see, Earl Sigurd, that I will spare no man
who will not serve Almighty God, or listen to my exhortations and hearken
to this blessed message; and for that I will now on this very spot slay
this thy son before thine eyes, with this same sword which I grasp,
unless thou and thy men serve my God; for hence out of the isles will I
not go before I have forwarded and fulfilled this His glorious errand,
and thou and thy son, whom I now hold, have taken on you baptism.’
“And in the strait to which the earl was now come, he chose the choice
which the king would have, and which was better for him, to take the
right faith. Then the earl was baptized, and all the folk in the Orkneys.
After that Earl Sigurd was made after this world’s honour King Olaf’s
earl, and held under him lands and fiefs, and gave him for an hostage
that same son of his of whom it was spoken before; he was called Whelp
or Hound. Olaf made them christen the lad by the name of Hlodver, and
carried him away with him to Norway. Earl Sigurd bound with oaths all
their agreement, and next after that Olaf sailed away from the Orkneys,
but set up there behind him priests to mend the folk’s ways and teach
them holy wisdom; so they, King Olaf and Sigurd, parted with friendship.
Hlodver lived but a scanty time; but after that he was dead Earl Sigurd
showed King Olaf no service. He took to wife then the daughter of Malcolm
the Scot King, and Thorfinn was their son.”
So does the Saga tell this dramatic tale; and we may notice that the
earl’s allegiance to the new faith was as fickle as his fidelity to the
king, for a few years later we find him fighting in the ranks of the
heathen against the Christian king, Brian of Ireland, under the shadow of
his raven banner, a flag endowed by his mother’s spells with the twofold
magical power of ensuring victory to those who followed it, but death to
him who bore it.
The story of “King Brian’s battle,” or the battle of Clontarf, is one of
the most stirring in the old records, and we give it here as told by the
Saga-man:—
“Then King Sigtrygg [of Ireland] stirred in his business with Earl
Sigurd, and egged him on to go to the war with King Brian. The earl
was long steadfast, but the end of it was that he said it might come
about. He said he must have his mother’s hand for his help, and be king
in Ireland if they slew Brian. But all his men besought Earl Sigurd
not to go into the war, but it was all no good. So they parted on the
understanding that Earl Sigurd gave his word to go; but King Sigtrygg
promised him his mother and the kingdom. It was so settled that Earl
Sigurd was to come with all his host to Dublin by Palm Sunday.
“Then King Sigtrygg fared south to Ireland, and told his mother,
Kormlada, that the earl had undertaken to come, and also what he had
pledged himself to grant him. She showed herself well pleased at that,
but said they must gather greater force still. Sigtrygg asked whence this
was to be looked for. She said that there were two Vikings lying off
the west of Man; and they had thirty ships, and ‘they are men of such
hardihood that nothing can withstand them. The one’s name is Ospak, and
the other’s Brodir. Thou shalt fare to find them, and spare nothing to
get them into thy quarrel, whatever price they ask.’
“Now King Sigtrygg fares and seeks the Vikings, and found them lying
outside off Man. King Sigtrygg brings forward his errand at once; but
Brodir shrank from helping him until he, King Sigtrygg, promised him the
kingdom and his mother, and they were to keep this such a secret that
Earl Sigurd should know nothing about it. Brodir, too, was to come to
Dublin on Palm Sunday. King Sigtrygg fared home to his mother and told
her how things stood. After that those brothers, Ospak and Brodir, talked
together; and then Brodir told Ospak all that he and Sigtrygg had spoken
of, and bade him fare to battle with him against King Brian, and said
he set much store on his going. Ospak said he would not fight against
so good a king. Then they were both wrath, and sundered their band at
once. Ospak had ten ships and Brodir twenty. Ospak was a heathen, and
the wisest of all men. He laid his ships inside in a sound, but Brodir
lay outside him. Brodir had been a Christian man and a mass-deacon by
consecration; but he had thrown off his faith and become God’s dastard,
and now worshipped heathen fiends, and he was of all men most skilled in
sorcery. He had that coat of mail on which no steel would bite. He was
both tall and strong, and had such long locks that he tucked them under
his belt. His hair was black.
“It so happened one night that a great din passed over Brodir and his
men, so that they all woke, and sprang up and put on their clothes. Along
with that came a shower of boiling blood. Then they covered themselves
with their shields, but for all that many were scalded. This wonder
lasted all till day, and a man had died on board every ship. Then they
slept during the day. The second night there was again a din, and again
they all sprang up. Then swords leapt out of their sheaths, and axes and
spears flew about in the air and fought. The weapons pressed them so
hard that they had to shield themselves; but still many were wounded,
and again a man died out of every ship. This wonder lasted all till day.
Then they slept again the day after. The third night there was a din of
the same kind. Then ravens flew at them, and it seemed to them as though
their beaks and claws were of iron. The ravens pressed them so hard that
they had to keep them off with their swords, and covered themselves with
their shields. This went on again till day, and then another man had died
in every ship.
“Then they went to sleep first of all; but when Brodir woke up, he drew
his breath painfully, and bade them put off the boat, ‘For,’ said he, ‘I
will go to see Ospak.’ Then he got into the boat and some men with him.
But when he found Ospak he told him of the wonders which had befallen
them, and bade him say what he thought they boded. Ospak would not tell
him before he pledged him peace, and Brodir promised him peace; but Ospak
still shrank from telling him till night fell, for Brodir never slew a
man by night.
“Then Ospak spoke, and said, ‘When blood rained on you, therefore shall
ye shed many men’s blood, both of your own and others. But when ye heard
a great din, then ye must have been shown the crack of doom, and ye
shall all die speedily. But when weapons fought against you, that must
forebode a battle. But when ravens pressed you, that marks the devils
which ye put faith in, and who will drag you all down to the pains of
hell.’
“Then Brodir was so wrath that he could answer never a word. But he went
at once to his men, and made them lay his ships in a line across the
sound, and moor them by bearing cables on shore, and meant to slay them
all next morning. Ospak saw all their plan. Then he vowed to take the
true faith, and to go to King Brian and follow him till his death-day.
Then he took that counsel to lay his ships in a line, and punt them along
the shore with poles, and cut the cables of Brodir’s ships. Then the
ships of Brodir’s men began to fall aboard of one another. But they were
all fast asleep; and then Ospak and his men got out of the firth, and so
west to Ireland, and came to Kincora. Then Ospak told King Brian all that
he had learnt, and took baptism, and gave himself over into the king’s
hand. After that King Brian made them gather force over all his realm,
and the whole host was to come to Dublin in the week before Palm Sunday.
“Earl Sigurd, Hlodver’s son, busked him from the Orkneys, and Flosi
offered to go with him. The earl would not have that, since he had his
pilgrimage to fulfil. Flosi offered fifteen men of his band to go on the
voyage, and the earl accepted them; but Flosi fared with Earl Gilli to
the Southern Isles. Thorstein, the son of Hall of the Side, went along
with Earl Sigurd, and Hrafn the Red, and Erling of Straumey. He would not
that Hareck should go, but said he would be sure to tell him first the
tidings of his voyage. The earl came with all his host on Palm Sunday to
Dublin, and there, too, was come Brodir with all his host. Brodir tried
by sorcery how the fight would go. But the answer ran thus, that if the
fight were on Good Friday, King Brian would fall but win the day; but if
they fought before, they would all fall who were against him. Then Brodir
said that they must not fight before the Friday....
“King Brian came with all his host to the burg; and on the Friday the
host fared out of the burg, and both armies were drawn up in array.
Brodir was on one wing of the battle, but King Sigtrygg on the other.
Earl Sigurd was in the mid-battle. Now, it must be told of King Brian
that he would not fight on the fast-day, and so a shieldburg was thrown
round him, and his host was drawn up in array in front of it. Wolf the
Quarrelsome was on that wing of the battle against which Brodir stood.
But on the other wing, where Sigtrygg stood against them, were Ospak
and his sons. But in mid-battle was Kerthialfad, and before him the
banners were borne. Now the wings fall on one another, and there was a
very hard fight. Brodir went through the host of the foe, and felled all
the foremost that stood there, but no steel would bite on him. Wolf the
Quarrelsome turned then to meet him, and thrust at him twice so hard that
Brodir fell before him at each thrust, and was well-nigh not getting on
his feet again. But as soon as ever he found his feet, he fled away into
the wood at once.
“Earl Sigurd had a hard battle against Kerthialfad, and Kerthialfad
came on so fast that he laid low all who were in the front rank, and
he broke the array of Earl Sigurd right up to his banner, and slew the
banner-bearer. Then he got another man to bear the banner, and there
was again a hard fight. Kerthialfad smote this man too his death-blow
at once, and so on one after the other all who stood near him. Then
Earl Sigurd called on Thorstein, the son of Hall of the Side, to bear
the banner, and Thorstein was just about to lift the banner. But then
Amundi the White said, ‘Don’t bear the banner! for all they who bear it
get their death.’ ‘Hrafn the Red!’ called out Earl Sigurd, ‘bear thou
the banner.’ ‘Bear thine own devil thyself,’ answered Hrafn. Then the
earl said, ‘’Tis fittest that the beggar should bear the bag;’ and with
that he took the banner from the staff and put it under his cloak. A
little after, Amundi the White was slain, and then the earl was pierced
through with a spear. Ospak had gone through all the battle on his wing.
He had been sore wounded, and lost both his sons ere King Sigtrygg fled
before him. Then flight broke out throughout all the host. Thorstein,
Hall of the Side’s son, stood still while all the others fled, and tied
his shoestring. Then Kerthialfad asked why he ran not as the others.
‘Because,’ said Thorstein, ‘I can’t get home to-night, since I am at home
out in Iceland.’ Kerthialfad gave him peace....
“Now Brodir saw that King Brian’s men were chasing the fleers, and that
there were few men by the shieldburg. Then he rushed out of the wood, and
broke through the shieldburg, and hewed at the king. The lad Takt threw
his arm in the way, and the stroke took it off and the king’s head too;
but the king’s blood came on the lad’s stump, and the stump was healed
by it on the spot. Then Brodir called out with a loud voice, ‘Now man can
tell that Brodir felled Brian.’ Then men ran after those who were chasing
the fleers, and they were told that King Brian had fallen; and then they
turned back straightway, both Wolf the Quarrelsome and Kerthialfad. Then
they threw a ring round Brodir and his men, and threw branches of trees
upon them, and so Brodir was taken alive.... After that they took King
Brian’s body and laid it out. The king’s head had grown to the trunk....
“This event happened in the Orkneys, that Hareck thought he saw Earl
Sigurd, and some men with him. Then Hareck took his horse and rode to
meet the earl. Men say that they met and rode under a brae; but they were
never seen again, and not a scrap was ever found of Hareck.”
_From the “Njala Saga,” translated by Sir G. W. Dasent, D.C.L.
(By permission of the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office.)_
[Illustration: _Ancient Bronze Weapons and Ornaments._]
EARL THORFINN AND EARL ROGNVALD.
Earl Sigurd, as has been mentioned, took as his second wife the daughter
of Malcolm the Second, King of Scots. They had but one son, Thorfinn,
called the Mighty, the greatest of his race, who became the most powerful
of all the Orkney earls. When he was but five winters old Thorfinn was
sent to his grandfather Malcolm to be brought up at the Scottish Court,
and on his father’s death he was made Earl of Caithness and Sutherland.
Einar and Brusi, sons of Sigurd by his first wife, then ruled over the
islands. Einar was ambitious and warlike, Brusi mild and peaceful. When
they shared the earldom between them, Brusi was content with a third
part, while Einar took over the remainder; and so matters stood for a
time.
When Thorfinn grew up to manhood, he was not content with his large
domains in Scotland. He put forward a claim to one-third of the Orkneys
as his rightful share. Einar would have disputed the claim; but Brusi
resigned his share to Thorfinn, and an agreement was made that when Einar
died his share should be handed over to Brusi. So peace was kept for the
time. But when Einar died, Thorfinn seized half of the whole earldom.
Brusi was unable to resist the great power of Thorfinn, so he resolved to
go east to Norway, and ask Olaf the king to do justice between him and
his brother. Thorfinn also went to Norway to plead his own cause. King
Olaf, unwilling to increase the power of a subject already too powerful,
decided in favour of Brusi. But when the two earls returned to the
islands, Brusi found the task of ruling his dominions and defending them
against the Vikings too heavy for him, and Thorfinn no doubt took care
that there should always be plenty of trouble for him to face.
At last Brusi was glad to hand over two-thirds of the earldom to
Thorfinn, on condition of his undertaking to defend the islands; and this
arrangement lasted till Brusi’s death.
In the meantime, Rognvald, Brusi’s son, had been growing up at the Court
of Olaf, King of Norway, and he was a close friend of Magnus, Olaf’s
son, who afterwards became king. When Rognvald heard that Brusi, his
father, was dead, and that Earl Thorfinn had seized the whole earldom,
he prepared to fare westward and claim his share of the land. Thorfinn
was now the most powerful ruler in all the western lands. He had defeated
the Scots in a great sea-fight off Deerness; he had subdued the Western
Isles; he had conquered great realms in Scotland; and he had made himself
master of the half of Ireland.
At the time when Rognvald came to the Orkneys, however, Thorfinn had wars
on his hands in the Western Isles and in Ireland, and he was glad to
offer Rognvald two-thirds of the islands in return for his friendship
and his help. So for a time the two earls lived in friendship with each
other.
Then evil men made mischief between them, and Thorfinn demanded back the
third of the land which had belonged to Earl Einar. Rognvald refused,
and sailed away to Norway to ask help from King Magnus. With a fleet
of Norwegian ships he came back to Orkney, and was met in the Pentland
Firth by the ships of Earl Thorfinn. Earl Rognvald’s ships were fewer
in number, but their larger size at first gave him the advantage. Earl
Thorfinn was hard pressed; but at last he persuaded his brother-in-law,
Kalf Arnesson, whose ships were lying by watching the fight, to come to
his aid and row against Rognvald. Then the tide of battle turned against
Earl Rognvald, and only by the darkness of the night was he enabled to
escape, and once more to find his way to Norway.
Again King Magnus came to his help; but this time Earl Rognvald tried
to take Thorfinn by surprise, so he sailed away to Orkney in the dead
of winter with only one ship. Before there was any news of his coming,
he surrounded the house where Earl Thorfinn was feasting, and set it on
fire. Only the women and children were allowed to go free; but while the
warriors were in confusion, seeking some way of escape, the great earl
broke a hole through the side of the house where the smoke was thickest,
and, carrying his wife, Ingibiorg, in his arms, he escaped in the
darkness to the seashore, took a boat, and rowed across to Caithness.
Now it seemed that Rognvald’s success was complete, for he thought
that Earl Thorfinn was surely dead. When Christmas-time was at hand, he
prepared to hold a great feast at Kirkwall, and with some of his men
he took a ship to Papa Stronsay to bring over a cargo of malt for the
brewing. They stayed there for the night, and sat long over the fire
telling of all their adventures. Meanwhile, however, Earl Thorfinn had
come back from Caithness to seek revenge. In the darkness he and his men
surrounded the house where Earl Rognvald sat, and set it on fire. All
except the earl’s men were allowed to come out, being drawn over the pile
of wood which Thorfinn’s men had placed before the door.
While this was being done, a man suddenly leaped over the pile, and over
the armed men beside it, and disappeared in the darkness.
“That must be Earl Rognvald,” cried Thorfinn, “for no one else could
do such a feat.” Then they all ran to search for Earl Rognvald in the
darkness. The barking of his dog betrayed the earl’s hiding-place to his
enemies, and soon he was found and slain among the rocks upon the shore.
Next morning Thorfinn and his men took Earl Rognvald’s ship and sailed
to Kirkwall. And when Rognvald’s men who were in the town came, unarmed,
expecting to meet the earl, they were set upon by Earl Thorfinn’s men,
and thirty of them were slain. These men were of the bodyguard of King
Magnus, and only one of them was allowed to go back to Norway to tell the
tidings to the king.
Then for eighteen years Thorfinn ruled the earldom, till the day of his
death. He was by far the greatest of the Orkney earls. He built Christ’s
Kirk in Birsay, and in his time the Bishopric of Orkney was founded.
During his later years the islands enjoyed peace, and many wise laws were
made; and when the great earl died there was much sorrow in the Orkneys.
So the poet sings in his honour:—
“Swarthy shall become the bright sun,
In the dark sea shall the earth sink,
Finished shall be Austri’s labour,
And the wild sea hide the mountains,
Ere there be in these fair islands
Born a chief to rule the people—
May our God both keep and help them—
Greater than the lost Earl Thorfinn.”
Paul and Erlend, the two sons of Thorfinn, succeeded to the earldom,
and for some time they ruled in harmony together. They fought for King
Harald Hardradi against Harold, Godwin’s son, at the battle of Stamford
Bridge in Yorkshire in 1066, but were allowed to return in peace to
their earldom. Trouble arose between the brothers when their sons grew
to manhood, and Magnus Barefoot, King of Norway, made a descent upon the
islands. He carried the two brothers into exile, appointing his own son
Sigurd as “King” of Orkney, which post he held until his father’s death
made him King of Norway. Hakon, Paul’s son, and Magnus, Erlend’s son,
afterwards called St. Magnus, then became joint earls.
Their joint rule had the usual result, quarrels and misunderstandings,
and was brought to an end by the murder of Earl Magnus in Egilsay in
1115. The story is told in the Saga of Earl Magnus, from which the next
chapter is taken.
THE SLAYING OF EARL MAGNUS.
“St. Magnus, the isle earl, was the most peerless of men, tall of
growth, manly, and lively of look, virtuous in his ways, fortunate in
fight, a sage in wit, ready-tongued and lordly-minded, lavish of money
and high-spirited, quick of counsel, and more beloved of his friends
than any man. Blithe and of kind speech to wise and good men, but hard
and unsparing against robbers and sea-rovers, he let many men be slain
who harried the freemen and landfolk. He made murderers and thieves be
taken, and visited as well on the powerful as on the weak robberies and
thieveries and all ill deeds. He was no favourer of his friends in his
judgments, for he valued more godly justice than the distinctions of
rank. He was open-handed to chiefs and powerful men, but still he ever
showed most care for poor men....
“Those kinsmen, Magnus and Hakon, held the wardship of the land for some
while, so that they were well agreed.... But when those kinsmen had
ruled the land some time, then again happened, what often and always can
happen, that many ill-willing men set about spoiling their kinship. Then
unlucky men gathered more about Hakon, for that he was very envious of
the friendships and lordliness of his kinsman Magnus.
“Two men are they who are named, who were with Earl Hakon, and who were
the worst of all the tale-bearers between those kinsmen, Sigurd and
Sighvat Sock. This slander came so far with the gossip of wicked men,
that those kinsmen again gathered forces together, and each earl faced
against the other with a great company. Then both of them held on to
Hrossey [the Mainland], where the place of meeting of those Orkneyingers
was. But when they came there, then each drew up his men in array,
and they made them ready to battle. There were then the earls and all
the great men, and there, too, were many friends of both who did all
they could to set them at one again. Many then came between them with
manliness and good-will. This meeting was in Lent, a little before Palm
Sunday. But because many men of their well-wishers took a share in
clearing up these difficulties between them, but would stand by neither
to do harm to the other, then they bound their agreement with oaths and
handsels. And when some time had gone by after that, then Earl Hakon,
with falsehood and fair words, settled with the blessed Earl Magnus to
meet him on a certain day, so that their kinship and steadfast new-made
peace should not be turned aside or set at naught. This meeting for a
steadfast peace and a thorough atonement between them was to be in Easter
week that spring on Egil’s Isle [Egilsay]. This pleased Earl Magnus well,
being, as he was, a thoroughly whole-hearted man, far from all doubt,
guile, or greed; and each of them was to have two ships, and each just as
many men: this both swore, to hold and keep those terms of peace which
the wisest men made up their minds to declare between them.
“But when Eastertide was gone by, each made him ready for this
meeting. Earl Magnus summoned to him all those men whom he knew to be
kindest-hearted and likeliest to do a good turn to both those kinsmen.
He had two long-ships and just as many men as was said. And when he was
ready he held on his course to Egil’s Isle. And as they were rowing in
calm over the smooth sea, there rose a billow against the ship which the
earl steered, and fell on the ship just where the earl sat. The earl’s
men wondered much at this token, that the billow fell on them in a calm
where no man had ever known it to fall before, and where the water under
was deep. Then the earl said, ‘It is not strange that ye wonder at this;
but my thought is, that this is a foreboding of my life’s end, may be
that may happen which was before spoken about Earl Hakon. We should so
make up our minds about our undertaking, that I guess my kinsman Hakon
must not mean to deal fairly by us at this meeting.’ The earl’s men were
afraid at these words, when he said he had so short hope as to his life’s
end, and bade him take heed for his life, and not fare further trusting
in Earl Hakon. Earl Magnus answers, ‘We shall fare on still, and may all
God’s will be done as to our voyage.’
“Now it must be told about Earl Hakon, that he summoned to him a great
company, and had many war-ships, and all manned and trimmed as though
they were to run out to battle. And when the force came together, the
earl makes it clear to the men that he meant at that meeting so to settle
matters between himself and Earl Magnus that they should not both of them
be over the Orkneys. Many of his men showed themselves well pleased at
this purpose, and added many fearful words; and they, Sigurd and Sighvat
Sock, were among the worst in their utterance. Then men began to row
hard, and they fared furiously. Havard, Gunni’s son, was on board the
earl’s ship, a friend and counsellor of the earl’s, and a fast friend
to both alike. Hakon had hidden from him this bad counsel, which Havard
would surely not join in. And when he knew the earl was so steadfast
in this bad counsel, then he jumped from the earl’s ship and took to
swimming, and swam to an isle where no man dwelt.
“Earl Magnus came first to Egil’s Isle with his company, and when they
saw Hakon coming they saw that he had eight war-ships; he thought he knew
then that treachery must be meant. Earl Magnus then betook himself up on
the isle with his men, and went to the church to pray, and was there that
night; but his men offered to defend him. The earl answers, ‘I will not
lay your life in risk for me, and if peace is not to be made between us
two kinsmen, then be it as God wills.’ Then his men thought that what he
had said when the billow fell on them was coming true. Now for that he
felt sure as to the hours of his life beforehand, whether it was rather
from his shrewdness or of godly foreshowing, then he would not fly nor
fare far from the meeting of his foes. He prayed earnestly, and let a
mass be sung to him.
“Hakon and his men jumped up in the morning, and ran first to the church
and ransacked it, and did not find the earl. He had gone another way on
the isle with two men into a certain hiding-place. And when the saint
Earl Magnus saw that they sought for him, then he calls out to them and
says where he was; he bade them look nowhere else for him. And when Hakon
saw him, they ran thither with shouts and crash of arms. Earl Magnus was
then at his prayers when they came to him, and when he had ended his
prayers then he signed himself [with the cross], and said to Earl Hakon,
with steadfast heart, ‘Thou didst not well, kinsman, when thou wentest
back on thy oaths, and it is much to be hoped that thou doest this more
from others’ badness than thine own. Now will I offer thee three choices,
that thou do one of these rather than break thine oaths and let me be
slain guiltless.’
“Hakon’s men asked what offer he made. ‘That is the first, that I will
go south to Rome, or out as far as Jerusalem, and visit holy places, and
have two ships with me out of the land with what we need to have, and so
make atonement for both of our souls. This I will swear, never to come
back to the Orkneys.’ To this they said ‘Nay’ at once. Then Earl Magnus
spoke: ‘Now seeing that my life is in your power, and that I have in many
things made myself an outlaw before Almighty God, then send thou me up
into Scotland to some of both our friends, and let me be there kept in
ward, and two men with me as a pastime. Take thou care then that I may
never be able to get out of that wardship.’ To this they said ‘Nay’ at
once. Magnus spoke: ‘One choice is still behind which I will offer thee,
and God knows that I look more to your soul than to my life; but still
it better beseems thee than to take my life away. Let me be maimed in
my limbs as thou pleasest, or pluck out my eyes, and set me in a dark
dungeon.’ Then Earl Hakon spoke: ‘This settlement I am ready to take,
nor do I ask anything further.’ Then the chiefs sprang up and said to
Earl Hakon, ‘We will slay now either of you twain, and ye two shall not
both from this day forth rule the lands.’ Then answers Earl Hakon: ‘Slay
ye him rather, for I will rather rule the realm and lands than die so
suddenly.’ So says Holdbodi, a truthful freeman from the Southern Isles,
of the parley they had. He was then with Magnus, and another man with
him, when they took him captive.
“So glad was the worthy Earl Magnus as though he were bidden to a feast;
he neither spoke with hate nor words of wrath. And after this talk he
fell to prayer, and hid his face in the palms of his hands, and shed
out many tears before God’s eyesight. When Earl Magnus, the saint, was
done to death, Hakon bade Ofeig his banner-bearer to slay the earl, but
he said ‘Nay’ with the greatest wrath. Then he forced Lifolf his cook
to kill Earl Magnus, but he began to weep aloud. ‘Thou shalt not weep
for this,’ said the earl, ‘for that there is fame in doing such deeds.
Be steadfast in thine heart, for thou shalt have my clothes, as is the
wont and law of men of old, and thou shalt not be afraid, for thou doest
this against thy will, and he who forces thee misdoes more than thou.’
But when the earl had said this he threw off his kirtle and gave it to
Lifolf. After that he begged leave to say his prayers, and that was
granted him.
[Illustration: _Church of St. Magnus, Egilsay._
_(From a painting by T. Marjoribanks Hay, R.S.W.)_]
“He fell to earth, and gave himself over to God, and brought himself as
an offering to Him. He not only prayed for himself or his friends, but
rather there and then for his foes and banemen, and forgave them with
all his heart what they had misdone towards him, and confessed his own
misdeeds to God, and prayed that they might be washed off him by the
outshedding of his blood, and commended his soul into God’s hand, and
prayed that God’s angels would come to meet his soul and bear it into
the rest of Paradise. When the friend of God was led out to slaughter he
spoke to Lifolf: ‘Stand thou before me, and hew me on my head a great
wound, for it beseems not to chop off chiefs’ heads like thieves’.
Strengthen thyself, wretched man, for I have prayed to God that he may
have mercy upon thee.’ After that he signed himself [with the cross], and
bowed himself to the stroke. And his spirit passed to heaven.
“That spot was before mossy and stony. But a little after, the worthiness
of Earl Magnus before God was so bright that there sprung up a green
sward where he was slain, and God showed that, that he was slain for
righteousness’ sake, and inherited the fairness and greenness of
Paradise, which is called the earth of living men.... There had then
passed since the birth of Christ one thousand and ninety and one winters.”
_From the “Orkneyinga Saga,” translated by Sir G. W. Dasent, D.C.L.
(By permission of the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office.)_
THE FOUNDING OF ST. MAGNUS CATHEDRAL.
After the death of Hakon, the slayer of Earl Magnus, the earldom was
divided between his two sons, Harald the Smooth-talker, and Paul the
Speechless. There were many bitter quarrels between the brothers, until
the death of the former left Paul as sole ruler. That happened in this
wise.
When they had been reconciled after one of their quarrels, Harald invited
Paul to a feast in his house at Orphir. On the morning before the feast,
Earl Harald found his mother and his aunt working at a very beautiful
shirt, which, they said, was a present for his brother Paul.
“Why should such a splendid garment be given to Paul and not to me?”
asked the earl, taking it up in his hand to look at it. Then before the
women could prevent him, he threw off the light cloak he was wearing and
put on the gorgeous shirt. No sooner had it touched his skin than he was
seized with violent pains, and with a sickness of which he died a few
days later. The shirt had been poisoned in order to cause Earl Paul’s
death, but it was Earl Harald who fell a victim to his mother’s cunning
and treacherous design.
Earl Paul did not long reign in peace. A new claimant soon appeared for
part of the lands. This was Kali, the son of Kol and of Gunhild, the
sister of the murdered St. Magnus, who had been brought up at the court
of King Harald of Norway. He was a man of noble appearance, bold and
skilful in war, and a born leader of men. He was in addition a noted
skald or poet, and many of the songs which he made have come down to us
in the Sagas.
He now changed his name to Rognvald, which had been a popular name in the
isles since the days of Rognvald, Brusi’s son, and he is known in history
as Rognvald Kali, or Rognvald the Second.
Having the promise of help from Harald, the Norwegian king, Rognvald
sent a message to Earl Paul, demanding that share of the islands which
Earl Magnus had held. Earl Paul, who was a good ruler, and had many
friends among the Orkneymen, replied that he would guard his inheritance
while God gave him life. Rognvald then gathered ships and set sail for
Shetland, but his fleet was destroyed in Yell Sound by the ships of Earl
Paul, and he had to escape to Norway in a merchant vessel.
Earl Paul thereupon placed beacons on some of the highest hills in the
islands, in order that he might have warning of any attempt by Rognvald
to make a descent by way of Shetland, and the most important of these
beacons was on the Fair Isle.
When Rognvald, angry and disappointed, arrived in Norway, he took counsel
with his father Kol and with an old man named Uni, who was reckoned a
very wise man; and as he had many friends among the men of Shetland,
it was decided to make a new attempt in the spring. By the aid of King
Harald and of his friends a new fleet was then got ready.
When the ships were assembled, Rognvald stood up on the deck of his
war-dragon to address his men. “Earl Paul and the Orkneyingers,” he said,
“have taken my inheritance, and refuse to give it up. My grandfather, the
holy Earl Magnus, was treacherously slain by Paul’s father Hakon, and
instead of giving compensation for the wicked deed, Earl Paul would wrong
me still more in the matter of my inheritance. However, if it be the will
of God, I intend to fare to the Orkneys, and there win what is mine by
right, or die with honour.”
All the men cheered this speech, and when they were silent Kol rose to
speak. He advised his son not to trust in his own strength for success.
“I advise thee, Rognvald,” he said, “to make a vow that if St. Magnus
secures to thee thine inheritance, thou wilt build and dedicate to him in
Kirkwall a minster of such size and splendour that it shall be the wonder
and the glory of all the North.”
Rognvald thought this the best of advice. Rising once more, he vowed
to build in Kirkwall a splendid cathedral in honour of St. Magnus, and
to remove thither with all reverence the remains of the sainted earl.
No sooner had this solemn vow been taken than the wind became fair for
sailing. The fleet at once put to sea, and reached Shetland in a few days.
Now Rognvald’s real difficulties began. How could he take Earl Paul by
surprise, as he wished to do, with the beacon on the Fair Isle ready to
give the alarm as soon as his ships came in sight? The wisdom of Kol and
of Uni came to his aid. The former had a plan to cause the beacon to be
lit on a false alarm, and the latter to prevent its being lit when it was
needed.
Kol set sail from Shetland towards evening with a fleet of small boats.
When they came in sight of the Fair Isle, they hoisted their sails half
way up the masts, and with the oars the men kept back the boats so as
to make them sail very slowly. At the same time they gradually hoisted
their sails higher and higher, so that to those in charge of the beacon
it might seem that a fleet was rapidly approaching When it was dark the
boats returned to the land.
The trick was successful. The Fair Isle beacon flared up to the sky,
those on North Ronaldsay and on Westray followed, and soon every hilltop
in the islands showed its warning light. The Orkneymen took their weapons
and hurried to Kirkwall, where Earl Paul had appointed them to gather in
such a case, and all was ready to meet the enemy; but no enemy appeared.
Those who had charge of the beacons came with the news of a fleet
approaching; and after long waiting other men were sent to look for its
coming, but they looked in vain. Quarrels soon began to arise as to who
was to blame for the false alarm, for the men were angry at having been
taken from their farm work to no purpose; so the earl had to make peace
among them, and set other men to build up the beacons again and to watch
them.
Now came Uni’s turn. He sailed to the Fair Isle with three companions,
and pretended to be an enemy of Rognvald, saying many hard things
against him and his men. His three companions went out every day to
fish, but Uni himself stayed on shore. He gradually made friends with
the people of the isle, and especially with those who had charge of the
beacon. At last he offered to watch it for them, saying that he had
nothing else to do, and his offer was accepted. Uni then poured water on
the beacon, and kept it in such a state of dampness that it should be
impossible to light it when it was needed.
Thus by the time that Rognvald was to set out from Shetland, Uni had
everything prepared. As soon as his ships were seen from the Fair Isle,
the men who had charge of the beacon tried to light it, but in vain.
There was no time to warn Earl Paul, and Rognvald landed in Westray
without any alarm being given. The bishop now interfered between the
rivals, and a truce was agreed to in order that terms of peace might be
arranged.
And now things took a strange and unexpected turn, so that Rognvald won
the islands without any fighting. While Earl Paul was on a visit to his
friend Sigurd of Westness, in Rousay, he went out before breakfast one
morning and mysteriously disappeared. Sigurd sought him everywhere in
vain. At last they discovered that he had been seized and carried off
to Scotland by Sweyn Asleifson, and he never returned. Earl Paul’s men
gradually came over to Earl Rognvald, and he became ruler over the whole
earldom.
Earl Rognvald now set about fulfilling his vow and raising a great
cathedral in Kirkwall in honour of St. Magnus. In 1137 the work was begun
under the superintendence of Kol, but many a long year was to pass ere
it should be finished. As the work went on it soon became very costly
to the earl. In his difficulty he once more went to his father Kol for
advice. Kol said that Rognvald should declare himself the heir of all
landholders who died, and that their sons should have to redeem their
lands from him. A Thing was called, and this law was passed; but the
freemen also had the choice given them of buying their lands outright,
so that the earl might not inherit them in the future. Most of the
landholders took that plan, and now there was once more plenty of money
for the cathedral.
When the work was so far advanced that part of the cathedral could be
roofed in, the remains of St. Magnus, which had already been removed from
Christ Church in Birsay, were laid to rest in the new minster. Many great
men have been laid in the same place since then. Earl Rognvald himself
was buried there, and there too the remains of King Hakon rested for a
time before their removal to Bergen.
While on a visit to Norway, Earl Rognvald made the acquaintance of a
Crusader who had returned from the Holy Land, and he determined that he
also would become a “Jorsalafarer,” or pilgrim to Jerusalem. The story of
this strange voyage, in company with the Bishop of Orkney and many of his
countrymen—half Vikings, half Crusaders—is well told in the “Saga of Earl
Rognvald,” and in our next chapter we give part of the narrative.
[Illustration: _On the “Viking Path.”_]
THE JORSALAFARERS.
“Earl Rongvald busked him that summer to leave the Orkneys, and he was
rather late boun; for they had a long while to wait for Eindrid, as his
ship did not come from Norway which he had let be made there the winter
before. But when they were boun, they held on their course away from the
Orkneys in fifteen big ships.
“They sailed away from the Orkneys and south to Scotland, and so on to
England, and as they sailed by Northumberland, off Humbermouth, Armod
sang a song,—
‘The sea was high off Humbermouth
When our ships were beating out,
Bends the mast and sinks the land
’Neath our lee off Vesla-sand;
Wave with veil of foam that rises
Drives not in the eyes of him
Who now sits at home; the stripling
From the meeting rideth dry.’
“They sailed thence south round England and to France. Nothing is said of
their voyage before that they came to that seaburg which is named Nerbon
There these tidings had happened, that the earl who before had ruled
the town was dead. His name was Germanus; he left behind him a daughter
young and fair, whose name was Ermingerd. She kept watch and ward over
her father’s inheritance, with the counsel of the most noble men of her
kinsfolk. They gave that counsel to the queen that she should bid the
earl to a worthy feast, and said that by that she would be famous if she
welcomed heartily such men of rank who had come so far to see her, and
who would bear her fame still further. The queen bade them see to that.
And when this counsel had been agreed on by them, men were sent to the
earl, and he was told that the queen bade him to a feast with as many of
his men as he chose to bring with him. The earl took this bidding with
thanks; he chose out all his best men for this journey with him. And when
they came to the feast, there was the best cheer, and nothing was spared
which could do the earl more honour than he had ever met before.
“One day it happened as the earl sat at the feast that the queen came
into the hall and many women with her; she held a beaker of gold in her
hand. She was dressed in the best clothes, had her hair loose as maidens
wont to have, and had put a golden band round her brow. She poured the
wine into the earl’s cup, but her maidens danced before them. The earl
took her hand and the beaker too and set her on his knee, and they talked
much that day.
“The earl stayed there very long in the best of cheer. The townsmen
pressed the earl to settle down there, and spoke out loudly about how
they would give him the lady to wife. The earl said he would fare on
that voyage which he had purposed, but said that he would come thither
as he fared back, and then they could carry out their plan or not as
they pleased. After that the earl busked him away thence with his fellow
voyagers. And as they sailed west of Thrasness they had a good wind; then
they sat and drank and were very merry.
“They fared till they came to Galicialand in the winter before Yule, and
meant to sit there Yule over. They dealt with the landsmen, and begged
them to set them a market to buy food; for the land was barren and bad
for food, and the landsmen thought it hard to feed that host of men.
Now these tidings had happened there, that in that land sat a chief who
was a stranger, in a castle, and he had laid on the landsmen very heavy
burdens. He harried them on the spot if they did not agree at once to all
that he asked, and he offered them the greatest tyranny and oppression.
And when the earl spoke to the landsmen about bringing him food to
buy, they made him that offer, that they would set them up a market
thenceforth on till Lent, but they must rid them in some way or other of
the men in the castle; but Earl Rognvald was to bear the brunt in return
for the right of having all the goods that were gotten from them.
“The earl laid this bare before his men, and sought counsel from them as
to which choice he should take; but most of them were eager to fall on
the castlemen, and thought it bid fair for spoil. And so Earl Rognvald
and his host went into that agreement with the landsmen. But when it drew
near to Yule, Earl Rognvald called his men to a talk, and said,—
“‘Now have we sat here awhile, and yet we have had nothing to do with
the castlemen, but the landsmen are getting rather slack in their
dealings with us. Methinks they think that what we promised them will
have no fulfilment; but still that is not manly not to turn our hands to
what we have promised. Now, kinsman Erling, will I take counsel from you
in what way we shall win the castle, for I know that ye are here some of
you the greatest men for good counsel; but still I will beg all those men
who are here that each will throw in what he thinks is likeliest to be
worth trying.’
“Erling answered the earl’s speech: ‘I will not be silent at your
bidding. But I am not a man for counsel, and it would be better rather
to call on those men for that who have seen more, and are more wont to
such exploits, as is Eindrid the Young. But here it will be as the saying
goes, “You must shoot at a bird before you get him.” And so we will try
to give some counsel, whatever comes of it. We shall to-day, if it seems
to you not bad counsel or to the other shipmasters, go all of us to the
wood, and bear each of us three shoulder-bundles of fagots on our backs
under the castle; for it seems to me as though the lime will not be
trusty if a great fire is brought to it. We shall let this go on for the
three next days and see what turn things take.’
“They did as Erling bade; and when that toil was over, it was come right
on to Yule. The bishop would not let them make their onslaught while the
Yule high feast stood over them.
“That chief’s name was Godfrey who dwelt in the castle; he was a wise
man, and somewhat stricken in years. He was a good clerk, and had
fared far and wide, and knew many tongues. He was a grasping man and
a very unfair man. He called together his men when he saw Rognvald’s
undertakings, and said to them,—
“‘This scheme seems to me clever and harmful to us which the Northmen
have taken in hand. It will befall us thus if fire is borne against us,
that the stone wall round the castle will be untrustworthy. But the
Northmen are strong and brave; we shall have to look for a sharp fight
from them if they get a chance. I will now take counsel with you what
shall be done in this strait which has befallen us.’ But his men all bade
him see to that for them. Then he began to speak, and said, ‘My first
counsel is that ye shall bind a cord round me and let me slide down from
the castle wall to-night. I shall have on bad clothes, and fare into the
camp of the Northmen, and know what I can find out.’
“This counsel was taken as he had laid it down. And when Godfrey came to
Earl Rognvald he said he was an old beggar carle, and spoke in Spanish;
they understood that tongue best. He fared about among all the booths and
begged for food. He found out that there was great envy and splitting
into parties amongst the Northmen. Eindrid was the head of one side,
but the earl of the other. Godfrey came to Eindrid and got to talk with
him, and brought that before him that the chief who held the castle had
sent him thither. ‘He will have fellowship with thee, and he hopes that
thou wilt give him peace if the castle be won. He would rather that thou
shouldst have his treasures, if thou wilt do so much in return for them,
than those who would rather see him a dead man.’ Of such things they
talked and much besides. But the earl was kept in the dark; all this went
on by stealth at first. And when Godfrey had stayed a while with the
earl’s men, then he turned back to his men. But this was why they did
not flit what they owned out of the castle, because they did not know
whether the storm would take place at all; besides they could not trust
the landfolk.
“It was the tenth day of Yule that Earl Rognvald rose up. The weather
was good. Then he bade his men put on their arms, and let the host be
called up to the castle with the trumpet. Then they drew the wood towards
it, and piled a bale round about the wall. The earl drew up his men for
the onslaught where each of them should go. The earl goes against it
from the south with the Orkneyingers, Erling and Aslag from the west,
John and Gudorm from the east, Eindrid the Young from the north with his
followers. And when they were boun for the storm they cast fire into the
bale.
“Now they began to press on fast both with fire and weapons. Then they
shot hard into the work for they could not reach them by any other
attack. The castlemen stood loosely here and there on the wall, for they
had to guard themselves against the shots. They poured out too burning
pitch and brimstone, and the earl’s men took little harm by that. Now it
turned out as Erling had guessed, that the castle wall crumbled before
the fire when the lime would not stand it, and there were great breaches
in it.
“Sigmund Angle was the name of a man in the earl’s bodyguard; he was
Sweyn Asliefson’s step-son. He pressed on faster than any man to the
castle, and ever went on before the earl; he was then scarcely grown up.
And when the storm had lasted awhile, then all men fled from the castle
wall. The wind was on from the south, and the reek of the smoke lay
towards Eindrid and his men. And when the fire began to spread very fast,
then the earl made them bring water and cool the rubble that was burned.
And then there was a lull in the assault.
“After that the earl made ready to storm, and Sigmund Angle with him.
There was then but a little struggle, and they got into the castle. There
many men were slain, but those who would take life gave themselves up
to the earl’s power. There they took much goods, but they did not find
the chief, and scarcely any precious things. Then there was forthwith
much talk how Godfrey could have got away; and then at once they had the
greatest doubt of Eindrid the Young, that he must have passed him away
somehow, and that he (Godfrey) must have gone away under the smoke to the
wood.
“After that Earl Rognvald and his host stayed there a short time in
Galicialand, and held on west off Spain. They harried wide in that part
of Spain which belonged to the heathen, and got there much goods. After
that they sailed west off Spain, and got there a great storm, and lay
three days at anchor, so that they shipped very much water, and it lay
near that they had lost their ships. After that they hoisted their sails
and beat out to Njorfa Sound [the Strait of Gibraltar] with a very cross
wind. They sailed through Njorfa Sound, and then the weather began to
get better. And then, as they bore out of the sound, Eindrid the Young
parted company from the earl with six ships. He sailed over the sea to
Marseilles, but Rognvald and his ships lay behind at the sound; and men
talked much about it, how Eindrid had now himself given proof whether or
not he had helped Godfrey away.
“Nothing is told of the voyage of the earl and his men before they came
south off Sarkland, and lay in the neighbourhood of Sardinia, and knew
not what land they were near. The weather had turned out in this wise,
that a great calm set in and mists and smooth seas—though the nights
were light—and they saw scarcely at all from their ships, and so they
made little way. One morning it happened that the mist lifted. Men stood
up and looked about them. Then the earl asked if men saw anything new.
They said they saw nought but two islets, little and steep, and when
they looked for the islets the second time, then one of the islets was
gone. They told this to the earl. He began to say, ‘That can have been no
islets. That must be ships which men have out here in this part of the
world, which they call dromonds; those are ships big as holms to look on.
But there, where the other dromond lay, a breeze must have come down on
the sea, and they must have sailed away; but these must be wayfaring men,
either chapmen or faring in some other way on their business.’
“After that the earl lets them call to him the bishop and all the
shipmasters; then he began to say: ‘I call you together for this, lord
bishop and Erling, my kinsman: see ye any scheme or chance of ours that
we may win victory in some way over those who are on the dromond.’ The
bishop answers: ‘Hard, I guess, will it be for you to run your long-ships
under the dromond, for ye will have no better way of boarding than by
grappling the bulwarks with a broad-axe; but they will have brimstone and
boiling pitch to throw under your feet and over your heads. Ye may see,
earl, so wise as you are, that it is the greatest rashness to lay one’s
self and one’s men in such risk.’
“Then Erling began to speak: ‘Lord bishop,’ he says, ‘likely it is that
ye are best able to see this, that there will be little hope of victory
in rowing against them. But somehow it seems to me that though we try to
run under the dromond, so methinks it will be that the greatest weight
of weapons will fall beyond our ships, if we hug her close, broadside to
broadside. But if it be not so, then we can put off from them quickly,
for they will not chase us in the dromond.’
“The earl began to say: ‘That is spoken like a man and quite to my mind.
I will now make that clear to the shipmasters and all the crews, that
each man shall busk him in his room, and arm himself as he best can.
After that we will row up to them. But if they are Christian chapmen,
then it will be in our power to make peace with them; but if they are
heathen, as I feel sure they are, then Almighty God will yield us that
mercy that we shall win the victory over them. But of the war spoil which
we get there, we shall give the fiftieth penny to poor men.’ After that,
men got out their arms and heightened the bulwarks of their ships, and
made themselves ready according to the means which they had at hand. The
earl settles where each of his ships should run in. Then they made an
onslaught on her by rowing, and pulled up to her as briskly as they could.
“But when those who were aboard the dromond saw that ships were rowing
up to them, they took silken stuffs and costly goods and hung them out
on the bulwarks, and then made great shoutings and hailings; and it
seemed to the earl’s men as though they dared the Northmen to come on
against them. Earl Rognvald laid his ship aft alongside the dromond on
the starboard, but Erling, too, aft on the larboard. John and Aslak, they
laid their ships forward each on his own board, but the others amidships
on both boards; and all the ships hugged her close, broadside to
broadside. And when they came under the dromond, her sides were so high
out of the water that they could not reach up with their weapons. But the
foe poured down blazing brimstone and flaming pitch over them. And it was
as Erling guessed it would be, that the greatest weight of weapons fell
out beyond the ships, and they had no need to shield themselves on that
side which was next to the dromond, but those who were on the other side
held their shields over their heads and sheltered themselves in that way.
“And when they made no way with their onslaught, the bishop shoved his
ship off and two others, and they picked out and sent thither their
bowmen, and they lay within shot, and shot thence at the dromond, and
then that onslaught was the hardest that was made. Then those on board
the dromond got under cover, but thought little about what those were
doing who had laid their ships under the dromond. Earl Rognvald called
out then to his men, that they should take their axes and hew asunder the
broadside of the dromond in the parts where she was least iron-bound. But
when the men in the other ships saw what the earl’s men were about, they
also took the like counsel.
“Now, where Erling and his men had laid their ship a great anchor hung
on the dromond, and the fluke was hung by the crook over the bulwark,
but the stock pointed down to Erling’s ship. Audun the Red was the name
of Erling’s bowman; he was lifted up on the anchor-stock. But after that
he hauled up to him more men, so that they stood as thick as ever they
could on the stock, and thence hewed at the sides as they best could, and
that hewing was by far the highest up. And when they had hewn such large
doors that they could go into the dromond, they made ready to board, and
the earl and his men got into the lower hold, but Erling and his men into
the upper. And when both their bands had come up on the ship there was a
fight both great and hard. On board the dromond were Saracens, what we
call Mahomet’s unbelievers. There were many blackamoors, and they made
the hardest struggle. Erling got there a great wound on his neck near his
shoulders as he sprang up into the dromond. That healed so ill that he
bore his head on one side ever after. That was why he was called Wryneck.
“And when they met Earl Rognvald and Erling, the Saracens gave way before
them to the fore-part of the ship, but the earl’s men then boarded her
one after another. Then they were more numerous, and they pressed the
enemy hard. They saw that on board the dromond was one man who was both
taller and fairer than the others; the Northmen held it to be the truth
that that man must be their chief. Earl Rognvald said that they should
not turn their weapons against him, if they could take him in any other
way. Then they hemmed him in and bore him down with their shields, and
so he was taken and afterwards carried to the bishop’s ship, and few men
with him. They slew there much folk, and got much goods and many costly
things. When they had ended the greatest part of their toil, they sat
down and rested themselves.
“Men spoke of these tidings which had happened there. Then each spoke of
what he thought he had seen; and men talked about who had been the first
to board the dromond, and could not agree about it. Then some said that
it was foolish that they should not all have one story about these great
things; and the end of it was that they agreed that Earl Rognvald should
settle the dispute, and afterwards they should all back what he said.
“When they had stripped the dromond they put fire into her and burnt her.
And when that tall man whom they had made captive saw that, he was much
stirred, and changed colour, and could not hold himself still. But though
they tried to make him speak, he never said a word and made no manner
of sign, nor did he pay any heed to them whether they promised him good
or ill. But when the dromond began to blaze, they saw as though blazing
molten ore ran down into the sea. That moved the captive man much. They
were quite sure then that they had looked for goods carelessly, and now
the metal had melted in the heat of the fire, whether it had been gold or
silver.
“Earl Rognvald and his men sailed thence south under Sarkland, and lay
under a seaburg, and made a seven nights’ truce with the townsmen, and
had dealings with them, and sold them the men whom they had taken. No
man would buy the tall man. And after that the earl gave him leave to go
away and four men with him. He came down the next morning with a train
of men and told them that he was a prince of Sarkland, and had sailed
thence with the dromond and all the goods that were aboard her. He said,
too, he thought that worst of all that they burnt the dromond, and made
such waste of that great wealth that it was of no use to any one. ‘But
now I have great power over your affairs. Now you shall have the greatest
good from me for having spared my life and treated me with such honour
as ye could; but I would be very willing that we saw each other never
again. And so now live safe and sound and well.’ After that he rode up
the country, but Earl Rognvald sailed thence south to Crete, and they lay
there in very foul weather.
“The earl and his men lay under Crete till they got a fair wind for
Jewry-land, and came to Acreburg early on a Friday morning, and landed
then with such great pomp and state as was seldom seen there. The earl
and his men stayed in Acreburg a while. There sickness came into their
ranks, and many famous men breathed their last. There Thorbjorn the
Swarthy, a liegeman, breathed his last.
“Earl Rognvald and his men then fared from Acreburg, and sought all the
holiest places in the land of Jewry. They all fared to Jordan and bathed
there. Earl Rognvald and Sigmund Angle swam across the river and went
up on the bank there, and thither where was a thicket of brushwood, and
there they twisted great knots. After that they fared back to Jerusalem.
“Earl Rognvald and his men fared that summer from the land of Jewry, and
meant to go north to Micklegarth [Constantinople], and came about autumn
to that town which is called Imbolar. They stayed there a very long time
in the town. They had that watchword in the town, if men met one another
walking where it was throng and narrow, and the one thought it needful
that the other who met him should yield him the path, then he says thus,
‘Out of the way; out of the way.’ One evening as the earl and his men
were coming out of the town, and Erling Wryneck went out along the wharf
to his ship, some of the townsmen met him and called out, ‘Out of the
way; out of the way.’ Erling was very drunk, and made as though he heard
them not, and when they ran against one another, Erling fell off the
wharf and down into the mud which was below; and his men ran down to pick
him up, and had to strip off every stitch of his clothes and wash him.
Next morning when he and the earl met, and he was told what had happened,
he smiled at it.
“After that they fared away thence. And nothing is told of their voyage
before they come north to Engilsness [Cape St. Angelo]. There they lay
some nights and waited for a wind which would seem fair to them to sail
north along the sea to Micklegarth. They took great pains then with
their sailing, and so sailed with great pomp, just as they had heard that
Sigurd Jewry-farer had done.
“When Earl Rognvald and his men came to Micklegarth they had a hearty
welcome from the emperor and the Varangians. Menelaus was then emperor
over Micklegarth, whom we call Manuel. He gave the earl much goods, and
offered them bounty-money if they would stay there. They stayed there
awhile that winter in very good cheer. There was Eindrid the Young, and
he had very great honour from the emperor. He had little to do with Earl
Rognvald and his men, and rather tried to set other men against them.
“Earl Rognvald set out on his voyage home that winter from Micklegarth,
and fared first west to Bulgarialand, to Dyrrachburg. Thence he sailed
west across the sea to Poule. There Earl Rognvald and Bishop William and
Erling, and all the nobler men of their band, landed from their ships,
and got them horses and rode thence first to Rome, and so homewards on
the way from Rome until they come to Denmark, and thence they fared north
to Norway. There men were glad to see them, and this voyage was most
famous, and they who had gone on it were thought to be men of much more
worth after than before.”
_From the “Orkneyinga Saga,” translated by Sir G. W. Dasent, D.C.L.
(By permission of the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office.)_
[Illustration: _A Great Viking._
_(From the picture by H. W. Koekkoek.)_]
SWEYN ASLEIFSON, THE LAST OF THE VIKINGS.
The sudden disappearance of Earl Paul, by which Earl Rognvald had been
left in sole possession of the Orkneys, was, as we have said, due to a
certain Viking, Sweyn Asleifson of Gairsay. This Sweyn is one of the
most remarkable men in all Orcadian history. Among the Vikings of old he
was the greatest, and he was the last. Of him the Saga says: “He was the
greatest man in the western lands, either in old time or at the present
day.”
For the slaying of one of Earl Paul’s men Sweyn had had to escape out of
the isles. He abode for a time in the Hebrides, and afterwards sought
refuge in the dales of Scotland, where Margaret, the daughter of Earl
Hakon, was married to Maddad, Earl of Athole. He had promised to help
Harald, their son, to become Earl of the Orkneys, and it was with a view
to this that he kidnapped Earl Paul.
On that morning Earl Paul had gone out early from Westness to hunt the
otter near Scabro Head. Sweyn had sailed over from Thurso, keeping to the
west of Hoy and the Mainland, and was now rowing into Evie Sound, for
he had heard that Earl Paul was staying with Sigurd of Westness. As they
rowed near the land, Sweyn ordered all his men to lie hid except those at
the oars, that the ship might look like a peaceful merchant-vessel.
When the earl saw the ship rowing near the rocks, he called out to the
men that they should go on to Westness with their wares for Earl Paul.
Then Sweyn, who was lying hid, bade his men ask where the earl was.
“The earl is here on the rocks,” was the reply.
“Row quickly to land at a place where they will not see us,” said Sweyn
to his men; “and let us arm ourselves, for we have work to do.”
The ship was rowed to the shore, as he had said, and Sweyn and his men
armed themselves and fell upon Earl Paul and his company. These, being
unarmed, were soon disposed of. The earl was seized and taken aboard the
ship, and Sweyn immediately set sail for Scotland by the way he had come.
Sigurd marvelled when the earl did not return from his hunting, and
men were sent out to look for him. They came upon the bodies of the
slain—nineteen of the earl’s men and six strangers—but the earl himself
had disappeared. It was at first thought that Earl Rognvald had had
something to do with his disappearance, and it was many days before men
knew what had become of the vanished earl.
In the meantime Sweyn had carried Paul to Athole, and placed him in the
keeping of Maddad and Margaret. His after fate is unknown. The story
which Sweyn afterwards told is that Paul did not wish to return to
Orkney, so shameful had been the manner of his leaving it; and that he
wished it to be reported that he had been blinded or maimed, in order
that men should not seek to bring him back. Sweyn himself came back to
Orkney with this story; and he acknowledged Earl Rognvald, and became
very friendly with him.
As the great Earl of Warwick has been called “the king-maker” in England,
so Sweyn may be called the “earl-maker” in Orkney. He it was who caused
Harald, the son of Maddad, to be made earl, and he also supported Earl
Erlend in his claims while Earl Rognvald was in the Holy Land. He gained
the friendship of David, King of Scots, Viking though he was, and the
terror of the Scottish and Irish seas. Many of Sweyn’s Viking raids
are told in the Orkney Saga, one of the most famous being that known
as Sweyn’s “Broadcloth Cruise.” The following account is given of this
cruise, and of the death of Sweyn:—
“These tidings happened once on a time, that Sweyn Asleifson fared away
on his spring-cruise, and Hakon, Earl Harald’s son, fared with him; and
they had five ships with oars, and all of them large. They harried about
among the Southern Isles. Then the folk were so scared at him in the
Southern Isles that men hid all their goods and chattels in the earth or
in piles of rocks. Sweyn sailed as far south as Man, and got ill off for
spoil. Thence they sailed out under Ireland and harried there. But when
they came about south under Dublin, then two keels sailed there from off
the main, which had come from England, and meant to steer for Dublin;
they were laden with English cloths, and great store of goods was aboard
them.
“Sweyn and his men pulled up to the keels and offered them battle. Little
came of the defence of the Englishmen before Sweyn gave the word to
board. Then the Englishmen were made prisoners. And there they robbed
them of every penny which was aboard the keels, save that the Englishmen
kept the clothes they stood in and some food, and went on their way
afterwards with the keels; but Sweyn and his men fared to the Southern
Isles and shared their war-spoil.
“They sailed from the west with great pomp. They did this as a glory for
themselves when they lay in harbours, that they threw awnings of English
cloth over their ships. But when they sailed into the Orkneys, they sewed
the cloth on the fore-part of the sails, so that it looked in that wise
as though the sails were made altogether of broadcloth. This they called
the Broadcloth Cruise.
“Sweyn fared home to his house in Gairsay. He had taken from the keels
much wine and English mead. Now when Sweyn had been at home a short
while, he bade to him Earl Harald, and made a worthy feast against his
coming. When Earl Harald was at the feast, there was much talk amongst
them of Sweyn’s good cheer. The earl spoke and said: ‘This I would now,
Sweyn, that thou wouldst lay aside thy sea-rovings; ’tis good now to
drive home with a whole wain. But thou knowest this, that thou hast long
maintained thyself and thy men by sea-roving; but so it fares with most
men who live by unfair means, that they lose their lives in strife, if
they do not break themselves from it.’
“Then Sweyn answered, and looked to the earl, and spoke with a smile,
and said thus: ‘Well spoken is this, lord, and friendly spoken, and it
will be good to take a bit of good counsel from you; but some men lay
that to your door, that ye too are men of little fairness.’ The earl
answered: ‘I shall have to answer for my share, but a gossiping tongue
drives me to say what I do.’
“Sweyn said: ‘Good, no doubt, drives you to it, lord. And so it shall be,
that I will leave off sea-roving, for I find that I am growing old, and
strength lessens much in hardships and warfare. Now I will go out on my
autumn-cruise, and I would that it might be with no less glory than the
spring-cruise was; but after that my wayfaring shall be over.’ The earl
answers: ‘’Tis hard to see, messmate, whether death or lasting luck will
come first.’ After that they dropped talking about it. Earl Harald fared
away from the feast, and was led out with fitting gifts. So he and Sweyn
parted with great love-tokens.
“A little while after, Sweyn busks him for his roving cruise; he had
seven long-ships, and all great. Hakon, Earl Harald’s son, went along
with Sweyn on his voyage. They held on their course first to the Southern
Isles, and got there little war-spoil; thence they fared out under
Ireland, and harried there far and wide. They fared so far south as
Dublin, and came upon them there very suddenly, so that the townsmen were
not ware of them before they had got into the town. They took there much
goods. They made prisoners there those men who were rulers there in the
town. The upshot of their business was that they gave the town up into
Sweyn’s power, and agreed to pay as great a ransom as he chose to lay
upon them. Sweyn was also to hold the town with his men and to have rule
over it. The Dublin men sware an oath to do this. Next morning Sweyn was
to come into the town and take the ransom.
“Now it must be told of what happened in the town during the night. The
men of good counsel who were in the town held a meeting among themselves,
and talked over the straits which had befallen them; it seemed to them
hard to let their town come into the power of the Orkneyingers, and
worst of all of that man whom they knew to be the most unjust man in the
western lands. So they agreed amongst themselves that they would cheat
Sweyn if they might. They took that counsel, that they dug great trenches
before the burg-gate on the inside, and in many other places between the
houses where it was meant that Sweyn and his men should pass; but men
lay in wait there in the houses hard by with weapons. They laid planks
over the trenches, so that they should fall down as soon as ever a man’s
weight comes on them. After that they strewed straw on the planks so that
the trenches might not be seen, and so bided the morrow.
“On the morning after, Sweyn and his men arose and put on their arms;
after that they went to the town. And when they came inside beyond the
burg-gate, the Dublin men made a lane from the burg-gate right to the
trenches. Sweyn and his men saw not what they were doing, and ran into
the trenches. The townsmen then ran straightway to hold the burg-gate,
but some to the trenches, and brought their arms to bear on Sweyn and his
men. It was unhandy for them to make any defence, and Sweyn lost his
life there in the trenches, and all those who had gone into the town.
So it was said that Sweyn was the last to die of all his messmates, and
spoke these words ere he died: ‘Know this, all men, whether I lose my
life to-day or not, that I am one of the Saint Earl Rognvald’s bodyguard,
and I now mean to put my trust in being there where he is with God.’
Sweyn’s men fared at once to their ships and pulled away, and nothing is
told about their voyage before they come into the Orkneys.”
_From the “Orkneyinga Saga,” translated by Sir G. W. Dasent, D.C.I.
(By permission of the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office.)_
[Illustration]
THE DECAY OF THE EARLDOM AND THE END OF THE WESTERN KINGDOM.
After the death of Earl Rognvald, the islands were ruled for almost fifty
years by Harald Maddadson. Harald’s later days were full of troubles.
With the decay of his powers the glory of the earldom also faded away. In
1194, when Sverrir was King of Norway, a rebellion took place, with the
object of placing Sigurd Erlingson on the throne. Sigurd’s party, known
as the “Eyjarskeggjar” or “Island-beardies,” had their headquarters in
the Orkneys. There they collected their forces, and there the rebellion
was organized. The rebels were completely overthrown in a great battle
fought near Bergen. Sverrir summoned Earl Harald before him in 1196 to
answer for his share in the matter. As a punishment for permitting plots
against him to be hatched in Orkney—plots which the gray-haired old earl
had been powerless to prevent—the king compelled him to surrender the
government of Shetland. For nearly two centuries thereafter Orkney and
Shetland were separate, the former ruled by the earl, the latter by a
governor appointed by the Norwegian crown.
The result of this was twofold. In the first place it weakened the power
of the Orkney earldom; in the second place it caused the earldom to draw
nearer to Scotland, and to come more and more under Scottish influence.
But the aged earl’s cup of sorrow was not yet full. He quarrelled also
with the Scottish king. As a consequence of this quarrel he was stripped
of his Scottish possessions, and his son Thorfinn perished miserably, a
prisoner in Roxburgh Castle. When Earl Harald died in 1206, full of years
and of sorrows, the earldom was but the shadow of its former self.
After Harald’s death, his two sons, John and David, succeeded to the
earldom. David did not live long, and John was then left sole earl. This
earl, the last of the old Norse jarls, was Earl of Orkney excluding
Shetland, holding that earldom from the Norwegian king, and Earl of
Caithness, including Sutherland, holding that from the King of Scotland.
Matters continued in this state generally till the pledging of the
islands in 1468, the only change being that Shetland was again added to
the Orkney earldom in 1379, when Henry, the first of the St. Clairs,
became earl.
The days of Earl John, like those of his father, were stormy, and
disaster after disaster fell upon the isles. The burning of Bishop Adam
at Halkirk in Caithness brought down on the earl the vengeance of King
Alexander the Second of Scotland. The earl had no hand in the murder,
but he was near by, and, in the opinion of King Alexander, might have
prevented the tragedy. Then a feud arose between the earl and some of
the leaders of a Norse expedition to the Western Isles. The earl was
attacked suddenly in Thurso, and there murdered. This took place in
the year 1231. The murderers took refuge in the Castle of Weir, where
they were besieged by the earl’s friends and adherents. Ultimately both
parties agreed that the case should be submitted to the Norwegian king.
The chief men of the islands embarked for Norway to be present at the
trial of the murderers, which ended in their conviction and punishment.
But a terrible disaster for the Orkney earldom followed. All the leading
men of the islands left Norway in one ship, and set sail for Orkney late
in autumn. Stormy weather set in shortly after their departure. Fears
which were entertained for the safety of the ship proved to be only too
well founded: the ship was never heard of again. With her went down
nearly all the nobility of the earldom. This disaster, which happened in
1232, was irremediable. Well does the Saga of Hakon Hakonson say, “Many
men have had to suffer for this later.” The earldom never recovered from
the loss of its best blood, and but for this loss the after course of
events might have been very different. Henceforth the Orkney earldom
plays but a subordinate part in the history of the North.
In 1232 King Alexander of Scotland granted the Earldom of Caithness to
Magnus, son of Gilbride, Earl of Angus. Magnus was at the same time
confirmed in the Earldom of Orkney by the King of Norway. But King
Alexander made Sutherland a separate earldom, William Friskyn being
created first earl. Thus within a period of forty years the earldom,
which had at one time rivalled the power of Scotland itself, and had been
at once the centre and the defence of the Norse Empire in the west, was
stripped of more than half its territories.
The Scottish king had a deep purpose to serve in thus weakening the
northern earldom. He was already casting covetous eyes on the Hebrides,
and every blow struck at the power of the Orkney earl was a step towards
the conquest of the Western Isles. In the heyday of Norse ascendency
there was danger of the western Norse colonies swallowing up Scotland
rather than of Scotland swallowing up these colonies. But Hakon of Norway
was now too busy at home repressing internal disorders to give much
thought to the ambitions of the Scottish king, and the Orkney earl was
too weak to form a serious obstacle, besides which he was more than half
Scottish himself.
For many years the chiefs of the Hebrides and the Western Isles had been
wavering in their allegiance to the Norwegian crown. King Alexander was
also doing his utmost to undermine Norse influence in the west. While he
was carrying on intrigues with the western chiefs, he at the same time
kept sending embassies to Norway to treat with Hakon for the purchase of
these islands. Hakon’s answer was brief and decided: He was not yet so
much in want of money that he needed to sell his lands for it.
The next King of Scotland, Alexander the Third, had the same ambitions as
his father, and as resolutely pursued his schemes for the subjugation of
the Hebrides. He was, moreover, a young, energetic, and warlike king. He
found the island chiefs very troublesome neighbours. His father’s policy
of intrigue was too slow for him, and he determined to take by force what
he could not obtain by treaty.
In 1262 the Scots invaded the Norse dominions in the west. Hakon, who had
now pacified his own kingdom, was at last roused to make a serious effort
to preserve his over-sea dominions. In the summer of 1263 he “let letters
of summons be sent round all Norway, and called out the levies both of
men and stores as he thought the land could bear it. He summoned all the
host to meet him early in the summer at Bergen.”
A mighty fleet assembled in obedience to the king’s command, and, under
the leadership of Hakon himself, set sail from Norway in the end of July
1263. After delaying through the summer in Shetland and Orkney, this
ill-fated expedition reached the Firth of Clyde in late autumn. Alexander
the Third, knowing well that he could not hope to meet the Norsemen at
sea, prepared to give them as warm a reception as possible wherever
they might land. In the meantime he pretended to be anxious for peace.
Negotiations were opened between the two kings. Alexander temporized:
winter was approaching.
Hakon’s patience at last gave way, and breaking off negotiations, the
Norsemen began to harry the country, receiving willing aid from the
various half-Celtic chieftains, who enjoyed nothing so much as an
opportunity of ravaging the fertile Lowlands. But that ally whose coming
Alexander had been awaiting came at length; on the first of October
a great storm from the south-west arose suddenly during the night.
Hakon’s ships began to drag their anchors. They fouled each other in
the darkness, and several were driven ashore on the Ayrshire coast. When
morning dawned, Hakon found his own ship within bowshot of the shore,
while the Scots were already plundering one which had stranded near by.
During a lull in the storm Hakon managed to land a detachment of his men
to protect the stranded galley. But the storm increased in fury once
more. The Norsemen on shore were outnumbered probably by ten to one, and
no help could be sent from the ships. The Vikings threw themselves into
a circle bristling with spear-points. Onset after onset of the Scots
forced the ring of spears slowly back towards the shore, but they could
not break it. All day long the battle raged—the Norsemen with the angry
sea behind them, and no hope of succour from their fleet; the Scots
determined to drive the invaders into the sea, or slay them where they
stood.
As evening began to fall the storm moderated, and Hakon was able to send
reinforcements on shore. The Scots were borne backwards by the onset
of the fresh warriors. But night was falling, and the Norsemen were
anxious to get back to their ships, for the storm was not yet over. They
accordingly hastened to take advantage of the breathing-space which they
had won, and retired to their ships.
Such was the famous battle of Largs, which both Scots and Norsemen claim
as a victory. In itself it was little more than a skirmish; but the
events of that night and day, the storm and the battle together, gave the
death-blow to Norse dominion in the west. The heart of King Hakon failed
him. His men also were discouraged. The shattered remains of the once
splendid fleet set sail for Orkney, and the great invasion of Scotland
was over.
Broken in spirit and shattered in health, Hakon reached Orkney only to
die. Part of his fleet was ordered to proceed to Norway, and part was
laid up for the winter in Scapa Bay and Houton Cove. Scarcely had these
matters been attended to when his fatal sickness seized the king. In the
Bishop’s Palace in Kirkwall he spent his last hours. Here at midnight, on
Saturday, December 15, 1263, in the sixtieth year of his eventful life,
died Hakon Hakonson, the last of the great sea-kings of Norway.
The remains of the king were carried to the cathedral, where they lay in
state, and were afterwards temporarily interred in the choir near the
shrine of St. Magnus. When spring came, Hakon’s body was exhumed and
taken to Bergen in Norway, where it was finally laid to rest in the choir
of Christ Church.
After the death of Hakon, his son Magnus, now King of Norway, sent
ambassadors to the Scottish king to treat for peace, and a treaty was
signed at Perth in 1266. By this treaty Norway resigned her rights in the
Hebrides, in consideration of Scotland’s paying down four thousand marks,
besides a tribute of one hundred marks to be paid annually in St. Magnus
Cathedral, Kirkwall. This tribute, called the Annual of Norway, was the
direct cause of the troubles which preceded the marriage of James the
Third of Scotland and Princess Margaret of Denmark.
A large proportion of King Hakon’s forces had to be maintained in Orkney
during the winter succeeding Largs. To provide for this, the lands of
the earldom were divided into sections, and charged with the maintenance
of the soldiers in proportion to the amount of “skatt” each section
owed the king. The Skatt Book of the earldom was prepared—a list of
the lands therein, and the amount of skatt which they paid. It was the
Domesday Book of the Orkneys. On this Skatt Book were based the Scottish
Rentals, which came into such prominence in the history of the Scottish
oppressions during the sixteenth century.
[Illustration: _Ruins of the Bishop’s Palace, Kirkwall._]
THE ANNEXATION TO SCOTLAND.
The history of Orkney during the two centuries which intervened
between the battle of Largs and the annexation to Scotland contains
little of interest. The earldom was held by Scottish families, first
the Strathernes, and then the St. Clairs. The sympathies of the earls
were with the Scots, the people were mainly Norse, and as a natural
consequence quarrels frequently arose between the earls and their
subjects. Another source of trouble was the fact that the earls generally
held possessions in Scotland, and were thus subjects of Scotland as
well as of Norway. The islands were neglected by both countries, being
of little importance to Norway as governed by foreigners, and of little
interest to Scotland as owned by a foreign country.
Several of the earls took a prominent part in the affairs of Scotland,
and were men of mark and highly esteemed by the Scottish sovereigns.
Thus Magnus, the last of the Angus line, was one of the eight Scottish
noblemen who, in 1320, subscribed the famous letter to the Pope asserting
the independence of Scotland; and Henry, the second of the St. Clairs,
was entrusted by King Robert the Third with the task of conveying the
young Prince James to a safe asylum in France, when that prince was made
prisoner by the English.
In the history of Orkney itself the only man of note among the Scottish
earls was Henry, the first of the St. Clairs, the builder of Kirkwall
Castle. Henry became earl in 1379. Under his rule Orkney and Shetland
were once more united. He is the only one of the Scottish earls who can
be at all compared with the old Norse jarls of Orkney. In everything
except name he was king of his island dominions, ruling them as he
pleased without much thought of either Norway or Scotland.
It was in the time of William, the third of the St. Clair earls, that
the transference of Orkney and Shetland to Scotland took place. The
circumstances which led to this important event must now be related.
After the battle of Largs a treaty of peace between Norway and Scotland
had been signed at Perth in 1266, Norway resigning the Hebrides in return
for an immediate payment by Scotland of four thousand marks, and in
addition a tribute of one hundred marks to be paid annually in St. Magnus
Cathedral, Kirkwall. For every failure to pay this tribute—known in
history as the Annual of Norway—Scotland was liable to a penalty of ten
thousand marks. This treaty was afterwards confirmed by Hakon the Fifth
and Robert the Bruce at Inverness in 1312.
In 1397 Norway, Sweden, and Denmark were united under one sovereign.
When, in 1448, Christian the First became king of the united realms,
payment by Scotland of the Annual of Norway had been neglected for some
forty years. According to the Treaty of Perth, Scotland was therefore
liable to a penalty of over four hundred thousand marks. Christian’s
exchequer was empty; here was an opportunity of replenishing it. About
1460 Christian made a threatening demand for payment of the whole sum due.
The sum demanded was so large that it would have been no easy matter for
Scotland to pay it, however willing she might be. Christian had concluded
an alliance with France, and France had always been the firm friend of
Scotland. When a rupture between Denmark and Scotland seemed inevitable,
the French king employed all his influence to secure a compromise. He
suggested that a marriage should be arranged between Prince James of
Scotland, afterwards James the Third, and Margaret, Christian’s daughter,
trusting that the negotiations in connection with the marriage would lead
to the friendly settlement of the matters in dispute.
Prolonged negotiations took place between the two countries. Scotland at
first demanded the remission of the Annual of Norway with arrears, the
cession of Orkney and Shetland, and a dowry of a hundred thousand crowns.
To these terms Christian refused to listen. The death of James the Second
at the siege of Roxburgh Castle suspended negotiations for a time. Some
years after the accession of James the Third they were resumed. The
final result was the Marriage Treaty of 1468, which brought about the
transference of Orkney and Shetland to Scotland.
The main provisions of the Marriage Treaty were these:—(1.) That the
Princess Margaret’s dowry should amount to fifty thousand florins; ten
thousand to be paid within the year, and the islands of Orkney to be
pledged for the remaining forty thousand.—Only two thousand florins were
paid, Shetland being pledged in the following year for the remaining
eight thousand. (2.) That the rights of Christian as King of Norway
should be exercised in the islands by the Scottish king until the forty
thousand florins were paid. (3.) That the islanders should enjoy their
own customs and laws while under Scottish rule.
Christian would not consent to the permanent cession of the islands to
Scotland under any conditions. In fact nothing but the direst financial
straits can account for his even pledging them. But he had just finished
a costly war in Sweden, his exchequer was empty, and the Scottish
marriage seemed to him very desirable.
On this Marriage Treaty of 1468, and on the agreement afterwards made
with Earl William, Scotland bases her claim to the islands of Orkney and
Shetland. It is certain that Christian intended to redeem the islands,
and even as late as 1668 the plenipotentiaries of Europe assembled at
Breda declared that Denmark—it ought to be Norway—still retained the
right to redeem them.
Scottish influence in Orkney had been increasing for many years previous
to the annexation. The needy dependants of the various Scottish noblemen
who held the earldom found the islands a happy hunting-ground for their
avarice or for their need. There was thus a strong party in Orkney in
favour of the annexation to Scotland. But the large majority of the
inhabitants could not but regard the change of masters with dismay.
Scotland was an alien power, and had usually been a hostile one. Her laws
and institutions had little in common with those of the northern earldom.
Besides this, her tenure being only temporary, she had no inducement
to promote the welfare of the islands, but on the contrary her obvious
interest was to make as much profit as possible from her opportunity.
From 1468 onwards, till long after the termination of Scottish and
the beginning of British rule, the lot of the islanders was far from
enviable. The transformation of the leading Norse earldom into a minor
Scottish county was the work of those years. The process by which this
was accomplished was a long-continued series of injuries and oppressions,
the story of which forms too long a tale to be fully told here.
[Illustration: _Knocking Stone and Mell._]
UDAL AND FEUDAL.
Orkney and Shetland were handed over to Scotland, but care was taken to
secure the rights of the inhabitants of the islands by the provision in
the treaty of 1468 that they should be governed according to their own
laws and usages. These were different from those of Scotland in several
important particulars. Unfortunately, the new Scottish rulers did not
know the laws of the earldom, and did not care to learn them.
With regard to the holding of land, the laws of Scotland were entirely
different from those of Orkney. In Scotland land was held according
to the feudal system, in Orkney according to the udal system. Under
the feudal system the king was nominally the owner of all the lands in
the kingdom. The various landlords held their lands from him as their
superior, in exchange for certain services to be rendered or payments to
be made, and by a written title, without which they had no legal claim to
the land.
The udal system has been described as “the direct negation of every
feudal principle.” The udaller held his land without any written title,
subject to no service or payment to a superior, and with full possession
and every conceivable right of ownership. The udaller was a peasant
noble; he was the king’s equal and not his vassal. He owed king or jarl
no services, duties, or payment for his udal lands, which he held as an
absolute possession, inalienable from him and his race.
It must not be supposed that all the land in Orkney was held udally, or
that all the inhabitants were udallers. There were some udallers who
held part of their land as tenants, and many of the islanders held no
udal land at all. All landholders, whether udallers or tenants, had to
pay a tax, called “skatt.” This was a tax levied to meet the expenses of
government and defence. Skatt was paid sometimes to the King of Norway,
sometimes to the Earl of Orkney, but it was legally the property of
the crown. Hakon, when he lay dying in Kirkwall, levied skatt on the
landholders of Orkney for the support of his troops during the winter.
In this he was only exercising the undoubted right of the crown of
Norway. But the skatt was never a rent, and never carried with it the
acknowledgment of king or jarl as the real landowner.
When Orkney came under Scottish rule, the King of Scotland became
entitled to the skatt. Some Scottish nobleman or churchman was usually
appointed to collect the revenues of the crown in the earldom. This
nobleman or churchman was paid a commission on what he collected,
together with any trifles he might extort “in ony manner of way.”
Sometimes the revenues of the earldom were farmed out to the collector,
an annual sum being paid by him into the royal treasury as rent. This
arrangement afforded much room for extortion, and all the more so because
the crown collector was ignorant, or could pretend to be ignorant, of
Orkney law and of the udal system.
In 1471 the Scottish crown purchased from Earl William all the lands and
revenues which he held as Earl of Orkney. In 1472 Bishop William Tulloch
was appointed to collect the revenues of the crown in Orkney. The period
of Scottish oppression at once began. The bishop was deeply imbued with
feudal prejudices. He had a rental drawn up, in which he registered the
lands of udaller and tenant indiscriminately, with a studied confusion
of their different rights. Both udal and feudal payments were exacted as
rents from all holders of land.
The udaller had no one to whom he could appeal to right his wrongs and
protect him against oppression. He had no written titles. The bishop
ruled the bishopric as bishop, and he ruled the earldom as representative
of the crown. The churches were filled with Scottish priests subservient
to his will. The struggle was hopeless from the beginning, but it took a
century to reduce the peasant nobles of Orkney to the position and rank
of tenant farmers, and in the meantime the various rulers of the islands
reaped a rich harvest.
Bishop Tulloch’s rule lasted for seven years, and was followed by six
years under Bishop Andrew. Then in 1485 Henry St. Clair was appointed
representative of the crown in Orkney. The St. Clairs had always been
popular in the islands, and the islanders rejoiced at the appointment
of Lord Henry. He redressed a number of grievances, but the fundamental
change of udal into feudal which had begun went on unchecked. It was too
profitable a confusion to be put right.
After the death of Lord Henry St. Clair at Flodden, turmoil and confusion
reigned in the earldom. His widow, Lady Margaret Hepburn, held the crown
lands in Orkney for nearly thirty years, but she was quite unable to rule
the islands. A report got abroad that the king intended to give Orkney
a feudal lord. In 1529 the trouble came to a head. James St. Clair,
the most popular of that popular family, was made Governor of Kirkwall
Castle, and put himself at the head of the discontented faction. Open
rebellion followed. Lord William St. Clair, son of Lady Margaret remained
loyal, and had to escape to Caithness.
Allied with the Earl of Caithness, Lord William invaded the islands with
a considerable force. The invaders were met at Summerdale in Stenness by
the rebels under James St. Clair, and were defeated with great slaughter.
Many old stories about this battle still exist. The Caithness force
landed in Orphir, and on their march they are said to have encountered a
witch, whom they consulted as to the omens of success. She walked before
them, unwinding together two balls of thread, one blue and the other red.
She asked them to choose one of the balls as the symbol of their fortune,
and they chose the red. The red thread was the first to come to an end.
Unwilling to accept this omen, they demanded that the witch should give
them yet another sign. She thereupon informed the Earl of Caithness that
whichever side lost the first man in the fight would lose the day. Soon
afterwards a boy was met herding cattle, and by order of the earl he was
slain. Only after the deed was done did they discover that the boy was
not an Orcadian but a native of Caithness.
Already prepared for defeat by these bad omens, the invaders came upon
the Orcadian force at Summerdale. The Orcadians assailed them with
showers of stones, and the Caithness force was quickly destroyed. Only
one Orcadian is said to have fallen. He, having dressed himself in the
clothes of one of the fallen enemy, was slain in the dusk of the evening
as he returned home. His mother mistook him for one of the invading
force, and felled him by a blow with a stone in the foot of a stocking.
Such are some of the tales tradition has woven round this fight. It
was the last stand of the udallers, and the last pitched battle fought
on Orcadian soil, if we except the siege of Kirkwall Castle during the
rebellion of the Stewarts.
After the battle of Summerdale the islands still remained in a very
unsettled condition, until in 1540 James the Fifth thought his presence
necessary to restore tranquillity. The king stayed with the bishop in
Kirkwall, though not in the ancient Bishop’s Palace, which had witnessed
the death of King Hakon. The visit of the king led to the removal of many
abuses. But his death in 1542, and the long minority of his daughter,
Mary Queen of Scots, brought back the former evils in an aggravated
form. For twenty years the records of the islands are records of murder,
violence, and oppression. The udallers were now a comparatively feeble
folk, but their worst period of oppression was still to come.
THE STEWART EARLS.
In 1565 began the most cruel oppression which the islands suffered
under Scottish rule. Lord Robert Stewart, a son of James the Fifth and
half-brother of the Earl of Moray, obtained a feu charter of Orkney and
Shetland. This grant was illegal in every way. It was not sanctioned
by Parliament, and it disposed not only of the actual property which
the crown of Scotland had acquired in the islands, but of the lands and
services of the udallers or free landowners, which had never belonged
to Norway or Denmark, and could not therefore have been acquired by
Scotland. In exchange for the revenues of the Abbey of Holyrood, the new
earl also obtained possession of the lands and revenues of the Bishopric
of Orkney.
To oppress the udallers so as to compel them to accept feus from him
was the unvarying object of Earl Robert’s policy. He aggravated the
burdens of the islanders by making them use weights and measures of his
own devising, and increased their liabilities to him by a coinage of
his own valuation. He raised the rents of the tenants to the limits of
endurance, made every occasional or special payment an annual burden,
imposed parish taxes as household taxes, and by pretended decrees of the
Thing, or council, evicted many udallers without a show of justice. Heavy
tolls and duties were laid on all fishermen and traders who came to the
islands, and secret encouragement was given to pirates, whose booty was
shared by the earl.
The more bitter the complaints of the islanders, the more grievous became
their oppression. To prevent these complaints reaching the ears of the
authorities in Edinburgh, the earl forbade any one to cross the firths or
ferries without his permission. It began also to be whispered that Earl
Robert was plotting to sever once more the connection between Orkney and
the Scottish crown. He had made additions to the old palace at Birsay,
and on a stone over the principal gate he had caused to be inscribed:
DOMINUS ROBERTUS STEWARTUS FILIUS JACOBI QUINTI REX SCOTORUM HOC OPUS
INSTRUXIT—that is, “Earl Robert Stewart, son of James the Fifth, King of
the Scots, erected this building.” Those who know a little Latin will
observe that by his using the nominative case _rex_, it is Earl Robert
himself and not James the Fifth whom he describes as “King of the Scots.”
This was probably a mere mistake in the earl’s Latin, but a much graver
meaning was attached to it by the Scottish King and Parliament when the
whisper of treason somehow reached their ears.
The complaints of the udallers might be unheeded, but the accusation
of treason was a much more serious matter. The earl was summoned to
Edinburgh to answer the charges against him. He was kept for some time
a prisoner in Linlithgow Castle, but the storm quickly blew over. No
trial ever took place. That ordeal Earl Robert escaped by the help of his
powerful friends and relatives; and not only so, but in 1581 he was once
more granted the Earldom of Orkney and Shetland, with extended powers.
When Robert Stewart died, the islands were granted to his son, Patrick
Stewart, the most cruel oppressor of all. Skilful in tyranny and
extortion as Earl Robert had been, his son showed still more ability
and ingenuity in his evil courses. The multiplication of enactments
and penalties for the most trivial offences, confiscation, torture,
and judicial murder—these were the additions Earl Patrick made to the
machinery of oppression used by his father. He had palaces built for him
at Scalloway and at Kirkwall by the same forced labour that had already
reared Earl Robert’s palace in Birsay. But Earl Patrick’s career is best
described in the words of Mackenzie:—
“Earl Patrick—still remembered in Orkney tradition as ‘Black Pate’—was
a man of kingly ideas, and had his lot been cast in Egypt instead of in
Orkney, would have done very well as one of the Pharaohs. ‘Heaven is high
and the Czar is far away,’ says a Russian proverb. Orkney is far from
Holyrood and farther from London, and the earl did his own pleasure in
his domain, without having the fear of the distant king before his eyes.
“Most astounding and extraordinary was the system of tyranny and
extortion which he carried on. He accused one and another of the gentry
of the islands of high treason, and tried them in his own court. But
it was not his object to punish these gentlemen as traitors against
the king. In that case their forfeited estates would go to the king,
which would be no profit to the earl. The earl was not so simple. The
frightened udallers were glad enough to compound with the formidable earl
by making over to him a portion of their lands to save the remainder and
their own necks.
“The Orkney potentate dealt in exactions of every description. He
extorted taxes and duties. He created ferries and levied exorbitant tolls
on them. He compelled the people to work for him all manner of work. He
forced them to row his boats and man his ships, to toil in his quarries,
to convey stones and lime for the building of his palace and park walls,
and to perform whatever other kinds of slave-labour he chose to demand,
‘without either meat or drink or hire.’
“The Czar though far away sometimes hears at last. The doings of this
tyrant of the isles attracted the attention of the law. He was seized
and put in ward in Dumbarton Castle. What schemes were in his proud,
fierce head it is difficult to guess. This is known, that, under his
instructions, his son Robert occupied the castle of Kirkwall with armed
men, fortified the cathedral, and stood ready to hold his own.
“As soon as it became known in Edinburgh that Orkney was in rebellion,
the king’s Secret Council dispatched the Earl of Caithness to bring it
under. Two great cannons were wheeled down from Edinburgh Castle and
shipped at Leith along with a strong military force. The expedition
landed safely within a mile and a half of Kirkwall. The great cannons
were pointed against the castle. They shot and got their answer in shot.
The siege continued about a month, when the rebels gave in. Caithness
returned to Edinburgh with Robert Stewart and other prisoners, and the
two great cannons passed up the High Street in triumph, to the sound
of drum and trumpet, with the keys of Kirkwall Castle hanging at their
muzzles.
“Robert Stewart was condemned to death and hanged at the Market Cross
along with five of his accomplices. The people pitied him greatly, for it
was his father’s scheming that had led him to destruction. His father’s
execution soon followed. The ministers who tried to prepare him for
death, finding him so ignorant that he could not say the Lord’s Prayer,
asked the Council to delay his execution for a few days, till he could be
better informed. The request was granted, and then he went his way into
the great darkness.”
The rebellion of Earl Patrick led to the abolition of the Thing and the
ancient laws of Orkney and Shetland, but there was little change for
the better in the government of the islands. They were assigned to one
nobleman after another, no one having any interest in their improvement.
It was, indeed, not till the eighteenth century that any very great
effort was made to give them the benefits of good government and a chance
to regain somewhat of their ancient prosperity.
[Illustration: _Pot Querns and Saddle Quern._]
THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES.
During the long period of oppression by the Scottish earls, the state of
our islands had been indeed deplorable, and recovery was slow. The spirit
was crushed out of the people. Industry was vain when plunder was sure
to follow. Agriculture could not advance when the alien landlord claimed
all the profit. An Orkney writer of the eighteenth century gives a sad
picture of the condition of the country in his day:—
“The inhabitants, in general, are very polite, hospitable, and kind to
strangers; but I am sorry to say that so little is industry encouraged
in our country that no means can be assigned by which the lower class of
people can get their bread. By reason of having no employment they must
live very wretchedly; they become indolent and lazy to the last degree,
insomuch that rather than raise cabbage for their own use they will steal
from others; and instead of being at pains to prepare the turf, which
they have for the mere trouble of cutting up and drying, yet, rather than
do so, they will steal it from those who are richer or more industrious
than themselves.... Every Saturday, which day they are privileged to
beg, a troop of miserable, ragged creatures are seen going from door to
door, almost numerous enough to plunder the whole town were they to exert
themselves against it in an hostile manner—at least, if their valour was
in proportion to their distress.”
The dawn of a brighter day came slowly, and it is difficult now to
trace the steps by which the prosperity of the islands was restored.
Agriculture remained in a very primitive state till the nineteenth
century had well begun. An Orkney “township” had a very different
appearance in those days from what we now see. The farms were not divided
from one another; each patch of cultivated ground belonged to all the
farmers in the township, who shared it on the “run-rig” system, each
“rig” being worked by a different owner.
The only pasture was the natural grass of meadow and hill, and this
also was common property. A “hill-dyke,” usually of turf, surrounded
the corn-land, and formed a somewhat indifferent protection against the
flocks of sheep, cattle, horses, and pigs which found their summer food
on the “hill.” The names “Slap” and “Grind,” borne by farmhouses in many
districts, remind us of the gateways in these old hill dykes.
With the corn-land subdivided in this way, and the pasture-land
undivided, there was no inducement for any farmer to improve his methods
of agriculture. Farm implements were of the rudest kind. The soil was
scratched rather than tilled by means of wooden ploughs with only
one stilt or handle, a model of which may be seen in the museum in
Stromness. There were no carts; loads were carried pannier-fashion on the
backs of horses, along the rough tracks or bridle-paths which served for
roads.
Of the old style of farmhouse scarcely a relic now remains. One entrance
usually served the farmer and his cattle, who lived under the same
roof, though in separate apartments. In the kitchen, or “but-end,” the
fireplace was simply a raised hearth in the centre of the room, with a
low wall or “back” against which the peat-fire was built. There was no
chimney, but a large opening in the roof allowed the smoke to escape in
a leisurely fashion. Behind the “back” there was often accommodation for
poultry, calves, and other domestic animals. The better class of houses
had beyond the kitchen a parlour, or “ben-end,” which was used only on
great occasions.
Rough and primitive as was their manner of life, yet at the beginning of
last century the Orcadians had already made a very considerable advance
in prosperity. A writer of the time tells us that the small farmers had
more money among them than could be found among people of similar station
in any other part of the British Isles.
It was not till the second quarter of the century that the land was
divided up into separate farms, and modern methods of agriculture began
to be employed, with rotation of crops and improved implements. A little
later the beginning was made of the system of roads which now spreads in
a network over the islands.
While agriculture was yet in its infancy, the islands were much benefited
by various forms of industry and occupation which have now mostly fallen
into disuse, as the need for their help has passed away. One of these
industries, introduced towards the end of the eighteenth century, was the
spinning of flax and the weaving of linen. Flax was largely grown in the
islands at one time, and the dressing, spinning, and weaving of it was a
common occupation.
About the beginning of the nineteenth century the manufacture of
straw-plait was introduced, and soon took the place of the linen
industry. It is said that over six thousand women and girls were at one
time employed in straw-plaiting. Though the workers were paid but little,
and that usually not in money but in goods, the straw-plaiting increased
considerably the wealth and the trade of the county.
The manufacture of kelp was introduced early in the eighteenth century,
and gave occupation to many of the inhabitants. Large profits were made
in this business, not so much, of course, by the actual workers as by the
landlords and other agents who exported the kelp. At one time, indeed,
it seemed as if the attention given to this industry was to prove a
hindrance to the advance of agriculture, which is the only foundation of
true prosperity in these islands; and when other substances began to take
the place of kelp, the decline of this trade was really a benefit to the
islands.
Fishing has always been an important industry in Orkney, but it was not
till near the middle of the nineteenth century that the improvements
in boats and in gear made the fisheries a really valuable asset to the
islanders. Fishing, however, cannot be called one of those temporary
industries which we mentioned. The herring fishery and the white
fishing, as well as other branches of this industry, have continued to
increase, and next to agriculture, fishing is the great natural source of
wealth for the people.
During the centuries now under our notice, Orkney had a closer connection
with the seafaring life than it has to-day. When all trade was carried
on by sailing ships, and when westerly winds were quite as common as
they now are, vessels passing through the Pentland Firth for America or
elsewhere found Stromness a convenient port of call, and its harbour
was often crowded with shipping. This was especially the case during
the French wars of the eighteenth century, when the English Channel
was avoided by shipping as being too near the enemy’s shores. Fleets
of trading ships used to gather at Stromness while waiting a convoy of
men-of-war to accompany them across the Atlantic.
An interesting relic of those busy times in Stromness is the old
Warehouse and Warehouse Pier at the north end of that town. This store
was built about the middle of the eighteenth century for the convenience
of the rice ships from America, as being the safest place for them to
discharge their cargoes. Before the end of the century, however, the
Stromness Warehouse was deserted in favour of Cowes in the Isle of Wight.
A writer of the time makes out a strong case in favour of Stromness and
against the English Channel, but the fact that Cowes is nearer to London
seems to have settled the matter in favour of that port.
During these prolonged naval wars, it is said that as many as twelve
thousand Orkneymen served in the navy. Many of them went as volunteers,
but probably most of them served against their will, as the pressgang
was very active among the islands. Many a young sailor who began his
voyage on a peaceful trader was soon transferred to one of His Majesty’s
ships. Traditions of those troublous times are still preserved among many
families in the islands. Hundreds of these men were never heard of again,
for those were not the days of telegraphs and war correspondents. The
years passed, and the son or the brother did not return, but when or how
he fell his friends never knew. It was a heavy war-tax the islands paid;
the full extent of it has never been disclosed.
About 1740 the ships of the Hudson’s Bay Company began to visit the
islands, not only to wait for a wind to start them on their annual
voyage, but to engage labourers and tradesmen to carry on the fur trade
among the Indians of the west and north of Canada. The connection thus
begun is not yet quite extinct, but in the earlier part of the nineteenth
century there was a constant stream of young men flowing to the Far West.
At one time from fifty to a hundred men left Stromness for Hudson Bay
every summer. Some remained as pioneers and colonists; some returned
after a sojourn of five years or more, with a tidy sum of money to start
them as farmers or tradesmen at home. Many of them who settled in the
Great Lone Land rose to high positions in the Company’s service. The most
famous of this band of empire-builders was Dr. John Rae, the discoverer
of the fate of the ill-starred Franklin Expedition, and a noted Arctic
explorer, whose monument may be seen in the nave of St. Magnus Cathedral.
The Company then ruled over the greater portion of what is now the
Dominion of Canada. The names of Fort York, Moose Factory, and Red River
were as familiar to the Orkney boys of those days as Edinburgh, Glasgow,
and Aberdeen are to us to-day. But Canada changed even more than Orkney
during the latter part of the nineteenth century, and the great Hudson’s
Bay Company have now handed over their vast territories to the rule of
the Dominion. The fur trade still exists in the North-West, and there are
Orkneymen still in the employment of the Company; but the days have gone
by when this was one of the chief industries of the wander-loving sons of
our islands.
After the “Nor’-Wast,” as the Hudson Bay service was called, the
“Straits” had the next claim on our youth. The Davis Strait whale-fishing
fleet made an annual visit to our islands to complete their crews. This
was in the spring or “vore,” when the crops were in the ground, and many
men, both young and middle-aged, looked to the annual whaling trip to
the north as a means of gain, just as their Norse ancestors did to the
annual “vore-viking” raid on the richer shores of the South. This also
has passed away; the harpoon and whale-lance are rarely seen in the
islands; whales and whaling fleet alike have almost become extinct. But
while agriculture was still in its infancy in Orkney, the “Straits” gave
much-needed employment and modest gains to many of our hardy forefathers.
The general tendency of life in Orkney has been away from dependence
upon the sea for a living, and towards agriculture and the trade and
commerce which it brings with it. In its methods of farming and in its
general prosperity the county now compares well with any other part of
the kingdom. But most of this progress has been made during the last half
century or so.
It was in 1833 that the Aberdeen, Leith, and Clyde Shipping Company, now
the North of Scotland and Orkney and Shetland Navigation Company, first
decided to send one of their steamers—the _Velocity_—to call at Kirkwall.
The call was made once a fortnight, and only during the months of June,
July, and August. The mails were then carried across the Pentland Firth
in a small boat. The growth in traffic since that time is indicated by
the fact that the trade and commerce of the islands now requires the
weekly call of two steamers at Kirkwall and three at Stromness, with a
daily mail steamer to both towns, in addition to numerous occasional
trips of other steamers and sailing vessels, especially during the
fishing season, while four smaller steamers maintain communication
between the various islands.
The Orkney farmer still has a somewhat niggardly soil and a stormy
climate to contend with. His acres are few, and his boys will often turn
to richer lands to seek their fortune. But life in these islands to-day
is easy and comfortable compared with what it was during any of the ten
centuries whose history we have passed in brief review.
The boys and girls who aim at seeking wealth and fame in other lands,
though by other means than those of their Viking ancestors, may now set
forth on their voyage as well equipped by education and otherwise as the
youth of any country in the world. Those who remain at home will still
find a worthy task in carrying on the improvement of the homeland, as
their fathers have done; for whatever stage of progress we may attain, it
is never merely an end but also a beginning.
[Illustration: _Old-fashioned Fireplace_]
Part II.—The Isles and the Folk.
A SURVEY OF THE ISLANDS.
On Wideford Hill.
There is no better view-point from which to make a general survey of the
Orcadian Archipelago than Wideford Hill. It is less than half the height
of the Ward Hill of Hoy, but it is at once more central and more easily
accessible. The Ward Hill of Orphir exceeds it in height by nearly one
hundred and fifty feet, and affords a much finer view to the westward;
but Wideford Hill is more isolated from other hills, and from its summit
we can obtain a better general outlook over the islands.
Wideford Hill rises to a height of seven hundred and forty feet, and,
standing within two miles of Kirkwall, it may be easily approached either
from the main Stromness road over the Ayre, or from the old road above
the site of the Lammas market. If we choose the right kind of day, when a
cool northerly breeze gives us a horizon free from haze, and when thin
gray clouds veil the sun only at intervals, we shall see from Wideford a
panorama which surpasses in loveliness and in human interest that seen
from many a mountain top.
The charm of Orkney scenery lies in its colour rather than its form,
in its luminous distances rather than its immediate foreground, in its
restfulness rather than its grandeur. The landscape does not overwhelm
the beholder with a sense of his puny insignificance, as great mountains
are apt to do; it wins his love by suggestions of peace and of home.
But let us look around and note what we see. Far to the southward lies
the silvery streak of the Pentland Firth, very innocent now in its summer
calm. Beyond it stretch the low shores of Caithness; and in the blue
distance we see Morven and the mountains of Sutherland, the “southern
land” of the Norsemen. Nearer is the green expanse of South Ronaldsay,
much foreshortened to the view, with the lighthouse towers of the
Pentland Skerries showing beyond, and the island of Burray at its nearer
end. To the right, over Scapa Flow, rises the long brown ridge of Hoy,
separated by streaks of shimmering sea from Flotta, Fara, Cava, and its
other neighbours. Very stern and solemn look its heath-clad heights as
the passing shadows fall across them.
The whole of the East Mainland lies at our feet—Deerness, bright and
sunny, with the Moul Head stretching boldly out to sea; nearer is St.
Andrews, and Holm, half hidden by the ridge of high ground in the north
of that parish; and, nearer still, St. Ola, deeply cut into by the Bays
of Kirkwall and Scapa, which look as if they only awaited the next spring
tide to join hands across the narrow isthmus, the Peerie Sea lying ready
to do its part.
[Illustration: _Round about Kirkwall._]
Kirkwall, the “Kirk Voe” of the Norsemen, is more worthy of its name
to-day than when the little church of St. Olaf was the chief object in
the landscape. Approach it how we may, the great Cathedral of St. Magnus
arrests our attention. Seen from Wideford Hill the tower does not break
the skyline, as it does from the sea; yet the mass of sombre reddish
masonry asserts itself, and dominates the pearl-gray cluster of walls and
roofs that spreads around, as it has done for nearly eight hundred years.
“Tame” and “uninteresting” are the words often used to describe the
appearance of our island capital. It does not seem so to-day. As the
eye sweeps down over the purple shoulder of the hill to the green
fields below, and passes over the silver gleam of the water with broken
reflections of tower and gable beyond, it rests upon a picture filled
with many charms of line, mass, and colour, from which the deep cool
green of tree and shrub is not wholly wanting. Open to the north and
the south by the “Viking path” of the sea, and joined to the east and
the west by more modern paths, the thin white lines of curving roadway,
Kirkwall shows itself the natural focus of our island commerce and social
life, and the centre of a wide and fair landscape.
Northward and westward next we turn our view. Kirkwall Bay opens out into
the “Wide Fiord,” which doubtless gave our hill its name, and westward
into the “Aurrida Fiord,” or Sea-trout Firth, which first gave its name
to the parish of Firth, and then received in exchange its present name,
the Bay of Firth. Its shores are low and well cultivated, but to the
north rises the dark brown ridge formed by the hills of Firth and of
Rendall, which hide from our view most of the parish of Evie and parts of
Harray and Birsay.
To the left of this ridge, through the central valley of Firth and
Stenness, a charming vista opens out. A rich and fertile sweep of low
ground forms the basin of the great lochs, and on the long peninsula
between them we can distinguish the Standing Stones rising as needle
points against the blue expanse of the Loch of Stenness. The green mound
of Maeshowe, too, is clearly visible. Far away, over the cultivated
slopes of Sandwick, we see the soft shimmer of the Atlantic, and to the
northward the undulating skyline of the Birsay Hills.
Due west from where we stand the view is shut in by the long ridge of the
Keelylang Hills and the bold outline of the Ward Hill of Orphir, and the
fairest part of the West Mainland, Stromness, with its bays and islets,
is beyond our ken. To enjoy a view of these we must take our stand upon
the Ward Hill itself, but this will come into the programme of another
day.
Of the island-studded sea to the north and east we have not yet spoken.
We can hardly disentangle the maze of sounds and bays, of holms and
promontories, except by the aid of a map, and if we are wise we shall
have one in our pocket. With this before us the maze becomes clear. The
bold hills of Rousay stand clear of the Mainland to the north, with
the lower islands of Gairsay, Wyre or Veira, and Egilsay near at hand.
Westray is all but hidden, but the blue ridge of Eday stands boldly
forth, shutting out from view the greater portion of Sanday and North
Ronaldsay. The tall lighthouse pillar on the Start, however, is clearly
seen.
Close to Kirkwall Bay, and protecting it from the eastern sea, lies the
fertile island of Shapinsay, with Balfour Castle standing in clear view
among its gardens. Beyond we see the bold outline of Stronsay, and to the
south of it Auskerry and its lighthouse.
Now we let our eye rest on the horizon, a sharp and clear line where we
can trace the smoke of trawlers and other craft which are themselves
hidden by the great curve of the ocean plain. There, right over Balfour
Castle, something catches our eye. It might be the smoke of a passing
steamer, but it does not change its form as we look; it stands clear and
sharp, a tiny blue pyramid showing over the horizon. There is only one
thing it can be—the Fair Isle, distant some sixty miles from where we
stand! Only on rare occasions is this lonely sea-girt rock so free from
cloud and mist that its top is thus to be distinguished. Yet if we know
where to look for it, we may occasionally see it as we do to-day; and it
is useful to remember that from Wideford Hill its bearing is directly
over Balfour Castle.
Among the North Isles.
A glance at the map of Orkney will show that most of the important
islands lie north of the Mainland. The term “North Isles,” however, is
generally used to mean only the more distant of these—Stronsay, Eday,
Sanday, North Ronaldsay, and Westray, with the smaller islands adjacent
to them. These can be visited by steamer from Kirkwall in one day, with
the exception of North Ronaldsay; and at the same time a good view can
be obtained of the nearer islands—Shapinsay and Rousay, with the smaller
group of Egilsay, Wyre, and Gairsay. North Ronaldsay may also be seen on
the far north-eastern horizon.
Leaving Kirkwall pier in the early morning, we sail northwards out of the
bay, when the String opens on our right, and Shapinsay is close at hand.
There, sheltered by Helliar Holm, we notice the bay of Ellwick, where,
in 1263, King Haco moored his hundred ships when on that ill-starred
expedition which ended at Largs. West of the bay stands Balfour Castle,
the finest specimen of modern domestic architecture in the islands,
surrounded by its noted gardens.
The sea to the west of Shapinsay is dotted with shoals and skerries;
but as we pass Gairsay on the left and sail round Galt Ness, the
north-western point of Shapinsay, we find open water before us, and steer
north-east towards Eday, passing the Green Holms on our way.
Eday, the first island at which we call, is hilly and heath-clad, with
abundance of peat. Ever since the days of Torf Einar, no doubt, it has
yielded a supply of peat for such unprovided islands as Sanday, up to
modern times when coal has come into more general use. Even yet the peat
industry is considerable, and Eday peats have been recently seen in use
for drying malt in a distillery near Edinburgh. The most interesting part
of Eday, however, is the north end of the island, where our steamer will
call later in the day.
[Illustration: ORKNEY ISLANDS]
From Eday we cross to Stronsay, keeping to the north of that island,
and then turning southwards to the village of Whitehall in Papa Sound,
protected on the north-east by the small island of Papa Stronsay. This
sheltered roadstead so near the open eastern sea has long been an
important centre of the herring fishery. About the middle of last century
as many as four hundred Orkney boats and many from the Scottish mainland
found anchorage in Papa Sound. In modern times Stronsay has again risen
in importance as a fishing station.
Stronsay is one of the best agricultural districts in Orkney, and is
noted for the size and the excellence of its farms. Near Lamb Head, in
the extreme south-east of Stronsay, are the remains of a very extensive
pier, erected before the time of the Norsemen.
Leaving Whitehall pier, we next sail due north across Sanday Sound to
Kettletoft Bay in Sanday. This bay and that of Otterswick in the north
afford safe anchorage; but the low, flat island, with its numerous
projecting points and skerries, presents many dangers to navigation. As
early as 1529 a lighthouse was erected on the extreme eastern point of
the island, and was called the Star, from which, it is said, the headland
derived its name, Start Point. Long after that time, however, the island
was noted for the number of shipwrecks which occurred on its shores.
Sanday is emphatically the “Sand Island.” Its soil is sandy and generally
fertile, and its surface is low and flat. Only in the south-west is there
any rising ground, where the highest point in the island reaches a height
of a little over two hundred feet.
[Illustration: _Orkney Villages.—I._
1. St. Margaret’s Hope, South Ronaldsay. 2. Pierowall, Westray. 3.
Whitehall, Stronsay. 4. Finstown, Firth.]
From Kettletoft pier our course is now south-west, until we double Spur
Ness, the most southerly point of Sanday; then turning northwards, we
make for Calf Sound, at the north end of Eday. This sheltered channel,
between Eday and the Calf of Eday, is memorable as the scene of the
capture of the pirate Gow in 1725.
Gow, or Smith, was a native of Stromness, where “Gow’s Garden,” a name
given to a patch of ground on the east side of the harbour, afterwards
occupied by a shipbuilding yard, seems to mark the site of his father’s
house. The name Gow, however, which is the Gaelic equivalent of Smith,
indicates a Scottish rather than an Orcadian descent. In 1724 Gow was
sailing as second mate on board the _George_, an English vessel of two
hundred tons, mounting eighteen guns, and trading on the Barbary coast.
He and several others of the crew mutinied, murdered the captain, and
started on what proved to be a very brief career of piracy.
After a few months’ cruising, Gow carried his ship, now named the
_Revenge_, into Stromness to refit; but as he soon made the place too hot
for safety, he put to sea in February 1725. Having sailed north round
Westray, he turned south towards Eday, and in beating through Calf Sound
ran his ship aground on the Calf, opposite Carrick House, then occupied
by Mr. James Fea of Clestran. To him Gow applied for help to get his ship
off the rocks; but the opportunity was too good to be missed, and Fea by
various stratagems succeeded in making prisoners of Gow and his crew.
They were handed over to the authorities, and afterwards suffered the
penalty of their crimes in London.
Nearly a century later, in 1814, Sir Walter Scott made his memorable
visit to Orkney and Shetland, and the legends which he collected
regarding Gow formed a centre round which he wove his well-known story,
“The Pirate.”
[Illustration: _Noltland Castle._]
Carrick was at one time the site of a thriving manufacture of salt, but
that too is now a tale of the past.
On leaving Carrick our steamer passes out of Calf Sound between the Red
Head on the west and the Grey Head on the east, so named from the colour
of their sandstone cliffs. The stone of the former has been much in
favour for building purposes, as St. Magnus Cathedral can testify, and
has on occasion found its way as far south as London.
A north-westerly course now brings us to Pierowall in Westray, our last
port of call. The long, low island guarding it on the north-east, fertile
and well cultivated, is Papa Westray. Towards its south end is a small
lake, on a holm in which are the ruins of a chapel dedicated to St.
Tredwall, a place of great sanctity in former days, and a special shrine
for such pilgrims as suffered from sore eyes. Long after the Reformation,
indeed, we are told that the minister of the island had much difficulty
in preventing his flock from resorting thither to pay their devotions to
the saint before assembling in the church.
[Illustration: _Noup Head Lighthouse._]
The chief point of interest in Westray is Noltland Castle, now roofless
indeed, but scarcely yet a ruin. It was built early in the fifteenth
century by Bishop Tulloch, and afterwards passed into the hands of
Sir Gilbert Balfour, Master of the Household to Mary Queen of Scots.
After the escape of the unfortunate queen from Lochleven Castle, he was
ordered to prepare Noltland for her reception. Had the ill-fated Mary
turned northwards instead of southwards when the day went against her
at Langside, and had she sought shelter among these northern islands
instead of trusting to the tender mercies of her cousin and rival, Queen
Elizabeth, what a romantic chapter might have been added to the history
of Orkney!
[Illustration: _North Ronaldsay Lighthouse._]
Westray contains much good arable land, and supports a large population.
On the west side the scenery is bold and romantic; and from Fitty Hill,
which is over five hundred and fifty feet in height, the view extends
to Foula in Shetland and the Fair Isle. The cliffs facing the Atlantic
are lofty and picturesque. About a mile south of Noup Head, the western
extremity of the island, is the Gentlemen’s Cave, where five Orcadian
adherents of “Prince Charlie” are said to have found shelter for several
months after the “’Forty-five.”
From Fitty Hill we may obtain a distant view of North Ronaldsay, the
most northerly and perhaps the most verdant island of the group.
Separated from its nearest neighbour, Sanday, by the wild and stormy
North Ronaldsay Firth, the crossing of which in the usual open boat is
often dangerous, even when possible, this island impresses the visitor as
being very much cut off from the world. But in such matters all depends
upon comparison, and doubtless there are many who regard the whole of our
islands as similarly remote and inaccessible.
A stone dyke surrounds the island of North Ronaldsay, outside which a
number of native sheep pick up a living on the “banks” and even in the
“ebb.” On the most northerly point, near Dennis Head, stands one of the
finest of our lighthouses; for North Ronaldsay, like Sanday, has been the
scene of many a shipwreck.
Our return from Westray to Kirkwall is made direct, and we now keep to
the west of Eday, passing Faray and its Holm, and having the heath-clad
hills of Rousay clear in view to the westward. Rousay far surpasses the
other islands of the northern group in its hill and cliff scenery, its
highest elevation reaching eight hundred and twenty feet, and its western
shore presenting many romantic effects in stack and cave. Among its other
attractive features are the Loch of Wasbister, in the north; the Burn of
Westness and Westness House, overlooking the sacred isle of Eynhallow
and the tumultuous Roost of Burgar; and the modern mansion of Trumbland,
looking out on the calm sound and the green island of Veira or Wyre.
Nearer our course, however, lies the long, low stretch of Egilsay, the
“Church Island” of the Norsemen, where the saintly Earl Magnus was done
to death. The present ruined church, with its far-seen round tower,
though of later date, doubtless occupies the site of that earlier church
which was the scene of his murder.
Wyre, too, soon opens out to view, with its ruined chapel, and the mound
which marks the traditional site of “Cubbie Roo’s Castle,” the home of
the once formidable Kolbein Hruga, whose name is even yet used to terrify
into good behaviour some obstreperous youngster, in the awful threat,
“Cubbie Roo’ll get thee!”
[Illustration: _Westness, Eynhallow, and Costa Head._]
Gairsay, with its rounded hill over three hundred feet high, next claims
our attention, and the name of Sweyn Holm, lying off its eastern shore,
recalls to us Sweyn Asleifson and the great drinking-hall which he built
on the island when he made it his winter home: the summer home of the
stout old Viking was on board his long-ship. But now the tower of St.
Magnus rising ahead reminds us that our day’s sail is at an end, and we
are shortly alongside Kirkwall pier once more.
Among the South Isles.
For a visit to the South Isles of Orkney, Stromness is our best
starting-point. It is the natural centre of communication for this
group—or rather for the western division of the group, for South
Ronaldsay and Burray may be visited equally well from Kirkwall by way of
Scapa Bay. The small steamer which makes the regular round of the islands
will serve us for the beginning of our tour, but we must soon branch off
from the ordinary route if we are to see much of interest.
[Illustration: _Stromness Harbour._]
The green island of Graemsay, with its beach of gleaming white sand,
looks very attractive as we sail out of Stromness harbour. Its chief
attraction to visitors is the lofty tower of the East Lighthouse, which
serves, along with the lower West Lighthouse, to guide ships through the
swift tideway of Hoy Sound. The official name, indeed, for these lights
is not Graemsay, but Hoy.
[Illustration: _Graemsay East Lighthouse._]
Graemsay is separated from Hoy by Burra Sound, and here we shall leave
our steamer, landing at Linksness, the best starting-point for the long
walk and climb which we have before us. Hoy is next to the Mainland in
size, but little of its surface is cultivated, and roads are few and far
between. So we strike westward, and, leaving cultivation behind, make
for the Meadow of the Kame, keeping the Ward Hill and its neighbour the
Cuilags on our left. There is a famous echo here, which we may stop to
test before beginning the climb to the Kame itself—a long ridge some
twelve hundred feet high, which runs from the Cuilags to the sheer
precipice on the north.
The coast-line we now reach is one of the loftiest in the British Isles,
rising at St. John’s Head to a perpendicular height of 1,140 feet. With
due care we may approach the edge and look down this fearful and giddy
height, but it is not a place for foolhardy daring. The view of this
stupendous cliff, with the white surges breaking a thousand feet below
in a slow and strangely noiseless movement, and the seagulls flitting
like midges in their mazy dance midway between us and the blue water, is
something which cannot be described and cannot be forgotten.
Beyond St. John’s Head the ground falls to half the height or less,
and a couple of miles brings us to the far-famed Old Man of Hoy. This
wonderful pillar stands well out from the cliff, on a ledge of rock which
connects with the land near sea-level. The height of the pillar is four
hundred and fifty feet; that of the cliff on which we stand is about
fifty feet less. Tradition tells us that the Old Man of Hoy has suffered
considerably from the battering of wind and wave even within recent
times. It is said that he formerly stood on two legs, but that many years
ago part of the divided base fell before the Atlantic breakers, and
left him standing on one leg, as we now see him. Doubtless time and the
weather will one day lay him low, but in the meantime he looks fairly
solid and durable.
Another mile or more and we reach Rora Head, the most westerly point of
Orkney, and turn southeastward towards Rackwick Bay, and now one of the
finest views in all the islands meets our gaze. Beyond the deep glen
at our feet stretches the great western sea-wall, gleaming red in the
sunshine. In the bay below us the rollers are breaking in ceaseless foam
over a strip of shining sand and gravel. The little township of Rackwick
is a patchwork of green and gold, contrasting strangely with the dark
glen and the towering hills behind.
[Illustration: _The Old Man of Hoy._]
The glen itself, we find as we make the descent into it, is a bit of true
highland scenery—the only bit, indeed, which Orkney has to show. Its
rugged, lonely grandeur is unique in these islands. Heather and bracken,
wild rose and honeysuckle, juniper, dwarf birch, and willow mingle in
such luxuriance as to suggest a more favoured latitude. The glen of
Berriedale, which opens out of the main valley to the west, is sometimes
called the “Garden of Orkney,” but it is a garden of nature’s own.
Hoy is for the most part of a sterner aspect, as we shall quickly find
if we cross the valley and dare to attack the Ward Hill. The only risk
we shall run in doing so will be that of stiff limbs for several days
to come, unless, indeed, a sudden descent of cloud or mist should find
us unprovided with a guide who knows the “lay of the land.” The sturdy
luxuriance of the heather is likely to be our chief difficulty in the
climb.
Standing at last on the summit of the Ward Hill, we find ourselves at
a height of 1,564 feet above the sea, on a somewhat bare and stony
plateau, and not far from the highest point there is, curiously enough,
an excellent spring of water. A very clear day is necessary if we are
to enjoy the sight of all that this elevation commands. We shall then
see the whole archipelago spread out before us as on a map—a marvellous
panorama of sea and land. Even the Fair Isle shows its conical head above
the north-eastern horizon. The north coast of Scotland stretches out
westward to Cape Wrath, and in the blue distance to the southwards many
a peak of the Northern Highlands can be distinguished.
If we descend the hill on its southern slope, we shall find a short
though a steep way to the next point of interest in Hoy—the Dwarfie
Stone. The description of this curious relic of the industry of some
unknown workman has been well given by Hugh Miller, whose name may still
be read carved on its bare interior, while the legendary interest may
best be gathered from Sir Walter Scott in his notes to “The Pirate.”
South of the valley in which the Dwarfie Stone lies, the ground rises
to a long stretch of moorland, broken only by burns and lochs, till it
dips down to the fringe of low, cultivated ground round Longhope, in the
parish of Walls. This part of the island, however, is too distant to be
included in our day’s excursion, and may be visited direct by steamer
from Stromness some other day.
Longhope, as we shall then see, is a sheltered bay nearly four miles long
and about one mile in average width, and forms a magnificent natural
harbour. Before the days of steam as many as a hundred and fifty vessels
might be seen at anchor here, sheltered from the westerly gales which
barred their passage through the Pentland Firth. The martello towers on
either side of the entrance remind us of a time when storms were not
the only danger to our shipping. Protection of a kind more necessary
to-day is afforded by the strong revolving light on Cantick Head, and on
occasion by the Longhope lifeboat, the heroism of whose hardy crew has
often shown itself in deeds of noble daring such as no sea-roving Viking
of the ancient days could have surpassed.
At the western extremity of Longhope stands the mansion house of
Melsetter, with its extensive gardens. On the farther side of the bay is
South Walls, a peninsula which is literally “almost an island,” as the
waters of Aith Hope almost meet those of Longhope across a narrow “aith”
or isthmus.
Opposite the entrance to Longhope, whence we start on our return journey
to Stromness, we pass the island of Flotta, the “flat island” of the
Norsemen, thriving and well cultivated, especially towards the east,
where it curves round Pan Hope. To the south of it lies the green
island of Switha, to the north-east the tiny Calf of Flotta, and to the
north-west, off Mill Bay, the island of Faray. Farther north, and close
to the shore of Hoy, lies Risa, or Risa Little, a favourite nesting-place
of many of our sea-birds. The last island we notice on our homeward sail
is Cava, a couple of miles eastward of which we see the beacon which
marks a skerry known as the Barrel of Butter.
The eastern group of the South Isles is more closely connected with the
East Mainland, being divided from Holm by Holm Sound, where lie the two
green islets of Lamb Holm and Glims Holm. Immediately to the south is
Burray, the _Borgarey_ of the Norsemen, so called, doubtless, from the
two brochs or _borgs_ whose ruins still exist in the north of the island.
To the west of Burray lies the peat-covered islet of Hunda.
South of Burray, across the narrow channel of Water Sound, lies the large
and populous island of South Ronaldsay. At the head of the little bay
of the same name stands the neat and thriving village—almost a town—of
St. Margaret’s Hope, pleasantly situated among its fertile gardens and
fields, and with a substantial pier to accommodate its increasing traffic.
Westward from “The Hope” lies Hoxa, a peninsula cut off by Widewall Bay
on the south. On the narrow isthmus or “aith” stands a green mound, the
“haug,” or howe, from which the name of _Haugseith_ or Hoxa is derived.
On the shores of Widewall Bay at low water we may see the submerged
peat-moss and decaying remains of large trees which mark a bygone stage
in the climate of the islands, and likewise tell of gradual subsidence of
the land.
From south to north, South Ronaldsay measures about seven miles. The
surface is well cultivated, and the highest point, the Ward Hill, is
only some three hundred and sixty feet high. The bay of Burwick, in the
south-west corner of the island, was formerly the landing-place for
the south mails, which were carried across the Pentland Firth in an
open boat. Some of the rock scenery in the southern part is very fine,
especially “The Gloup,” near Halcro Head, an open pit near the shore into
which the sea enters by a subterranean channel.
To the south-west we see the lonely, storm-swept island of Swona with its
half-dozen or so of houses, and to the south rise the twin lighthouse
towers on the Pentland Skerries, only one of which is now used as a
light. Here we reach the southern extremity of the county, some forty
miles in a straight line from North Ronaldsay, the extreme northern point.
ROUND THE MAINLAND.
First Day.
The best way to see the Mainland, and the only way to appreciate its
extent and the variety of its scenery, is to make use of the excellent
roads by which it is now traversed and encircled. On this tour the
bicycle will be our best conveyance; and if we can secure the company
of a congenial friend, we may spend a few days very pleasantly and
profitably on a ride round the Mainland.
We shall begin with the East Mainland. Leaving Kirkwall by the Deerness
road, we shortly afterwards find ourselves skimming down the long brae
of Wideford—not Wideford Hill, but the farm of Wideford, about two miles
south-east of the town. On our left is the wide expanse of Inganess Bay,
with its beach of sand and shingle, where we can recall seeing on one
memorable occasion a school of whales stranded after a great whale hunt:
that was in our early school days, now rapidly becoming a part of the
time known as “long ago.”
[Illustration: _Orkney Villages.—II._
1. St. Mary’s, Holm. 2. Orphir. 3. Kettletoft, Sanday. 4. Finstown. 5.
Balfour Village, Shapinsay. 6. Evie.]
We next pass the long, low peninsula of Tankerness, which lies between
Inganess Bay and Deer Sound. On its south side, between the loch and the
shore, stands the Hall of Tankerness, its position marked out by one of
those rare patches of dark green which indicate that trees may still be
made to grow in Orkney under intelligent fostering care. The cliffs near
Rerwick Head are worth a visit. There are several caves, one of which,
tradition affirms, gave refuge for weeks to one of the Covenanters who
were shipwrecked at Deerness in 1679.
After passing through the parish of St. Andrews, we reach that of
Deerness. Deerness is literally a peninsula—very nearly an island indeed.
The isthmus which joins it to the Mainland is not only narrow but low and
sandy, and in former days mariners approaching from the south sometimes
overlooked its existence when making for shelter, and came to grief
accordingly. On this narrow neck of land is found an ancient mound or
_haug_, which bears the name of Dingishowe.
Deerness is on the whole flat, the highest point in the peninsula, the
Ward, being only 285 feet above the sea. Yet the view from the road,
which crosses the centre of the parish, is very extensive. To the south
we notice the island of Copinsay, formerly much frequented for gathering
sea-birds’ eggs, and its “Horse,” a steep black rock rising high out of
the water.
If time permits, it will be worth our while to cycle to Sandside, and
thence walk along the cliffs to the Moul Head. The scenery here is fine,
and we shall find the Broch, with its ancient ruined chapel, specially
interesting. A church existed here before the Norse period, and was
doubtless the cause of the name _Deir-ness_, or the ness of the Culdee
priests, being given to the district. Not far distant we see another
object which recalls priestly memories—a gray stone pillar erected to
commemorate the shipwreck by which two hundred Covenanters lost their
lives when on their way to be sold as slaves in the American Colonies or
“Plantations.”
The story is a dark and tragic one. There is some reason to believe that
the shipwreck was not entirely an accident; it is said that the ship was
not even provisioned for so long a voyage, and that the fate designed for
the unhappy prisoners was not slavery but death by shipwreck whenever
circumstances favourable for such an “accident” should arise.
On returning to the St. Andrews road we may strike off towards the south
and make our way homewards through the parish of Holm. The most fertile
part of this parish lies in a broad valley sloping towards the south,
where the crops ripen early. As we descend into this valley, the mellow
light of an autumn afternoon reveals to us a view of rare sweetness and
charm.
Amid the river-like tidal stream of Holm Sound lie the green islets of
Glims Holm and Lamb Holm or Laman, with Burray and the darker Hunda, and
the imposing stretch of South Ronaldsay beyond. To the westward, Hoy
rises in deep-blue shadow, reflected in the still surface of Scapa Flow.
Over the gleam of the Pentland Firth we see the flat shores of Caithness,
while the more distant peaks of the Sutherland mountains rise sharp and
clear above the horizon.
But there are a few miles of road yet to cover, so we hold on our way
towards the seashore, where the steep-gabled mansion of Graemeshall
stands beside its pretty reed-fringed loch. A mile beyond lies the
village of St. Mary’s, with its pier and its line of cottages stretching
along the beach; and after taking a passing glance at this well-known
fishing-station, we turn our faces northwards. We have a long hilly ride
in front of us here, and by the time we reach the end of it our interest
in the charming views is not so keen as it was. Then comes the welcome
change of gradient; we spin down the “Distillery Brae,” and soon our
circuit of the East Mainland is completed.
Second Day.
Our second day’s circuit will take us round the central part of the
Mainland, which is divided from the East Mainland by the isthmus of
Scapa, and from the larger mass of the West Mainland by the lochs of
Stenness and Harray and the wide isthmus between the latter and the Bay
of Firth.
We leave Kirkwall by the “Head of the Town” and keep to the old Scapa
road for about a mile, when we turn sharp to the right and soon begin the
long ascent of nearly three hundred feet to Greenigo. This is followed by
a corresponding dip down to the valley of Kirbuster, whose loch lies on
our right; but as fishing is not our programme at present we keep to the
road as it ascends once more, and soon find ourselves entering upon the
broad fertile slope which forms the most thickly inhabited part of the
parish of Orphir.
Westward we see the road stretching across this well-cultivated district,
dotted with houses large and small, which gather here and there in groups
and clusters almost ranking as villages. Time does not press, and we are
out for the purpose of seeing all we can, so we decide to leave the main
road here and take a by-road to the right which skirts the east side of
the Ward Hill. It is fairly steep, and the riding cannot be called good,
but it has the advantage of bringing us within a mile of the Ward Hill
itself, the top of which we shall find a pleasant halting-place.
[Illustration: _Orphir._]
Leaving our bicycles by the roadside, we face a pretty stiff climb
through luxuriant heather and bracken, and soon find ourselves on the
highest of a group of hilltops, 880 feet above the sea. If we are
favoured with a clear atmosphere, the scene before us will amply repay
the labour of our ascent.
The view from the Ward Hill is supplementary to that from Wideford Hill.
Parts of the landscape to the east and north are shut out by Wideford
Hill itself, by the long Keelylang ridge, and by the broad-backed mass
between Harray and Evie. To the south the scene is somewhat similar to
that seen from Wideford Hill; to the westward, however, the panorama now
before us is unique.
Ireland, or _Ayre-land_, as it once was, sloping gently downwards to
its bay, lies at our feet, a patchwork of farms and fields in varying
tints of green and yellow and brown. Beyond it, the picturesque “western
capital,” Stromness, fringes its landlocked harbour, secure in the
shelter of the protecting hills behind. To the left lies Graemsay with
its lighthouses, an “emerald set in a sapphire sea,” and beyond it the
frowning cliffs and the purple ridge of Hoy dominate the scene.
Away towards the west the horizon line, more than thirty miles distant as
we now see it, cuts sharp and straight against the soft blue sky. If we
have a good glass, we may make out on this line, just above the town of
Stromness, the Stack of Suleskerry.
[Illustration: _Stromness from the east._]
But our day’s ride is yet mostly before us, so we descend from the Ward
or “watch-tower,” mount our bicycles, regain the main road, and continue
our way through the smiling landscape which lies in front of us. Orphir
was an important district in the old Norse days, and a residence of the
Orkney Earls stood on the seashore near the parish church; and adjoining
that church may still be seen part of a much earlier church, one of the
few circular temples in this country which were built in the time of the
Crusades on the model of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.
In the little cove sheltered by the Head and the Holm of Houton, some of
King Hakon’s ships found shelter during the winter after the battle of
Largs, while the king himself lay dying in the ancient palace at Kirkwall.
[Illustration: _Ruins of circular church, Orphir._]
After a particularly stiff ride over Scorriedale, we enter upon a long
and somewhat uninteresting stretch of road through Clestran and Ireland,
and at last reach the main road from Kirkwall to Stromness, close to the
Bridge of Waith, which crosses the narrow strait between the Loch of
Stenness and the sea. We can see just above this bridge the traces of
a still older one, and the name Waith probably indicates that this was
originally a “wading-place” or ford at low tide.
But we are not to cross the bridge to-day; we turn back towards Kirkwall
to complete our tour of the Central Mainland. The road runs along the
side of the loch, through the pretty district of Clouston, and past the
comfortable hotel which has been erected there for the convenience of
such summer visitors as are attracted by the trout-fishing of the loch.
The largest trout ever seen was caught in the Loch of Stenness, and if
the proverb is true that “there are as good fish in the sea as ever came
out of it,” the same may yet be proved true of this loch.
We halt only long enough to obtain a welcome cup of tea, and then
continue our ride. Less than a mile brings us to the road which leads
over the Bridge of Brogar to the Standing Stones, and we decide on making
a brief pilgrimage to this the most ancient shrine in the islands—if,
indeed, it was a shrine. But as the afternoon is wearing towards evening,
and we have been here several times before, we merely sit down on the
short heather beside the circle long enough to let the mystery and
“eeriness” of the scene sink into our minds and set us wondering silently
what it all meant in the far-off days when it was new.
We need not wait here in the hope of finding out, so we ride back past
the tall “sentinel” stone and the smaller circle of Stenness to the main
road. Another mile brings us abreast of Maeshowe, and with the spirit
of the past upon us we stop once more. We obtain the key of this famous
chambered mound from the farmhouse opposite, in order that we may spend a
few minutes more in “wondering.”
There is nothing about Maeshowe, or even about the Standing Stones, to
attract the superficial mind, but to those who “wonder,” and who can
see things which vanished from outward view many centuries ago, those
places are almost holy ground. They embody and embalm some of the deepest
thoughts of a long-vanished people; and though we can hardly guess what
these thoughts were, the monuments are sacred relics to us. They are
milestones, we may say, marking early stages in the long advance of our
race.
[Illustration: _The Sentinel Stone, Stenness._]
After leaving Maeshowe we face an incline just heavy enough to recall our
thoughts to the present, and soon we are passing through the pretty glen
which opens on the Bay of Firth. The patches of shrubbery and trees round
Binscarth on our left give a pleasing variety to the scenery, and show us
once more the possibilities and the limitations of our islands as regards
the cultivation of woods.
The village of Finstown, the half-way house between Kirkwall and
Stromness, has a beautiful situation, which can be better appreciated
from the hillside above it than from the road, and it is well placed for
attracting a share of the ordinary business of the districts around. It
has a prosperous look, and its name reminds us that it claims to be more
than a mere village.
[Illustration: _Maeshowe._]
Before us on our left lies the wide, shallow Bay of Firth, or “The
Firth,” as it might more correctly be called, which gives its name to the
surrounding district. To the Norsemen it was the “Sea-trout Firth,” and
must have been important for its fishing. In more recent times it had
a famous oyster-fishery; but that too has become a thing of the past,
though by the exercise of a little foresight and public spirit it could
easily be restored.
In the bay lie the Holm of Grimbister and the island of Damsay, or “St.
Adamnan’s Isle.” The latter, as its name indicates, was the site of a
Culdee monastery, and is mentioned in the later Saga story. Damsay has
also its share of the legendary tales which are connected with many of
the old ecclesiastical centres in the island.
On our right the old Kirkwall road branches off, passing over the
southern shoulder of Wideford Hill; and beside it, on a rising ground,
we see the manse of Firth, the home of the soldier-poet Malcolm, whose
father was minister of the parish. Soon our road bears to the left to
avoid the steep, dark mass of Wideford Hill; we cross the broad stretch
of Quanterness, and a bend to the right brings us once more in view of
Kirkwall, lying beyond the Peerie Sea, whose still waters mirror the dark
mass of St. Magnus, now gleaming with a dusky red in the glow of sunset.
Third Day.
Our third day’s tour is of a different character; we are to make our
way through Rendall and Evie to Birsay. As we shall spend the night
there, our bicycles must be loaded with a few necessary articles; but
old campaigners always march light, and our baggage is reduced to its
absolute minimum.
The first stage of our journey takes us to Finstown, along the main
Stromness road which we traversed yesterday. Then we turn sharp to
the right, and cross the bridge over the mouth of the “Oyce,” which
reminds us of the Peerie Sea and its Ayre. The district in front of us,
the “North Side” of Firth, consists of a broad slope, almost a plain,
fringing the bay, and the steep escarpment of a long range of hills on
our left. Most of this range is 500 feet in height, and parts exceed 700
feet.
There is a certain monotony about the road, due to its straightness; but
there is really no reason why it should turn either to the right hand or
to the left, so we pedal away, mile after mile. When opposite the Bay of
Isbister we pass a very pleasing valley, that of Settascarth, through
which a road crosses the long ridge into the parish of Harray. Then we
reach the parish of Rendall, and find a long ascent in front of us,
as the road runs straight up the “dale” whence the name of the parish
arises. We pass between the high, steep ridge on the left and a group
of hills on the right which lie between us and the sea, forming a broad
peninsula between the Bay of Isbister and Woodwick.
When we reach the summit of this rise, we are quite ready to halt for a
while and enjoy the new panorama which opens out to the northward. The
inner group of the North Isles—Rousay, Egilsay, Wyre, and Gairsay—lie at
our feet, as it seems; and the more distant members of the group can be
easily made out. Rousay is the dominant feature in the landscape, and its
steep brown hills, descending in step-like “hammars,” make an impressive
background to the green fringe of farmland and the liquid blue of the sea.
As we resume our way along an undulating road, we pass through a district
which, despite its northerly exposure, seems able to support a large
population, and numerous tidy cottages cluster here and there along the
roadside. By-and-by the cultivated strip becomes narrower, the sandy
beach of Aikerness gives place to the rocky shores of Burgar, and the
road turns inland with a steep incline to dip down on the other side of
the ridge towards the Loch of Swannay.
Here we shall find it well worth our while to make a somewhat longer halt
than before, and, leaving our bicycles, we turn to climb Costa Hill, and
to view the wild cliffs at Costa Head. From the hill we look down upon
the mysterious green islet of Eynhallow, the “Holy Island,” where the
ruins of an ancient monastery have been traced, and round which more than
the usual crop of legends has sprung up. A fair contrast it offers to the
bold, rocky cliffs of Rousay just beyond.
If it happens to be the time of spring tides, and the ebb is running
out, we shall see at this place one of the most impressive sights which
our coasts present. However calm be the sea, as soon as the tide begins
to gather strength, the channels on either side of Eynhallow for some
distance out to sea become a mass of heaving, foaming billows, reminding
one of the long stretch of boiling rapids below the Falls of Niagara.
And that is just what this “roost” is—rapids on the course of the tidal
river which is now sweeping westward through Eynhallow Sound. When we
look at our pocket map, we see that on each side of the islet the depth
of water is only about five fathoms. In about a quarter of a mile it
becomes ten fathoms, and within a mile of the west end of the island
twenty fathoms. Thus the tidal river first passes over a ridge on each
side of Eynhallow, where it is less than thirty feet deep, and then
plunges down a slope which dips nearly one hundred feet in a mile.
If there is a long swell rolling in from the Atlantic, as there often is
on our western shores, the turmoil is increased, and the boiling fury of
Burgar Roost, as it is called, is a sight which it is worth going far to
see. The roost which is formed in Hoy Sound with a strong ebb-tide is due
to similar causes but there the dip in the sea-bottom is not so steep.
When the tide turns, the change seems almost magical, and in a short time
there may be not a ripple on the water to mark the scene of this mad
dance of the billows.
[Illustration: _Birsay, the Barony._]
The cliffs at Costa Head are the highest on the Mainland, but we can only
see them from above, and thus we lose much of their wild grandeur. We
enjoy, however, an impressive view of the cave-pierced shores of Rousay,
and of the stern ramparts of Noup Head, in Westray, with its sentinel
lighthouse.
Sooner or later we must return to our bicycles, and now we coast rapidly
down to the Loch of Swannay, sweep round its northern shore, and,
crossing the burn, climb the opposite slope towards the part of Birsay
quaintly named, “Abune the Hill,” or “Above the Hill,” as the map-makers
have it. Instead of following the road which strikes southward through
the centre of the parish, we turn towards the west, and by means of an
older road make our way to the Barony of Birsay, where we shall find
accommodation for the night.
But we have still a long evening before us, and after due rest and
refreshment we shall find time to explore our surroundings. The place is
full of historical interest. The old name of _Birgisharad_, in which we
may trace the names of Birsay and Harray, indicates that here was the
chief hunting-ground of the Norse Jarls. The mixture of hill and loch
and stream, the valleys being then perhaps furnished with coverts of
brushwood where now there is only pasture or crops, made this northern
part of the Mainland the best hunting-ground in the county.
Birsay may be said to have been the capital of the Earldom at one
time. It was the favourite residence of the Earls, and it was also the
ecclesiastical centre, and the residence of the first bishop of the
islands. When the sainted Earl Magnus was slain, it was in Christ’s Kirk
in Birsay that his body first found burial. On the Brough we may still
see the ruins of a very ancient chapel dedicated to St. Peter.
The Stewart Earls, of dishonoured memory, found Birsay an attractive
locality. They raised on the site of its old Norse castle a palace built
after the plan of Holyrood in Edinburgh, the ruins of which still form
one of the chief features in the landscape. The whole district, in short,
is full of those remains which we have called milestones of the past,
marking stages in the history of our race.
The shore near the Barony is interesting. We may walk to the Brough at
low water, but we must take care not to be caught and imprisoned by the
returning tide. The cliffs rise to the southward, and in Marwick Head
reach a height of nearly three hundred feet.
[Illustration: _The Brough of Birsay._]
The chief attraction for tourists is the Loch of Boardhouse and its trout
fishing. This loch receives the drainage of a wide stretch of country,
its chief feeder being the Hillside Burn, which rises in the hills
between Rendall and Harray, flows north-west for some five miles to the
Loch of Hundland, and under the name of the Burn of Kirbuster reaches
the larger loch in about another mile. This drainage basin is next in
importance and area to that of the “Great Lakes” of Orkney, the Lochs of
Stenness and Harray.
If we have time and energy left to climb Ravie Hill, on the south side of
the loch, we shall get an excellent idea of the “lay of the land,” and
the relation of these two loch basins. We may notice in particular that
the Harray basin extends northward almost to the hill on which we stand,
and includes a number of small lochs near it which look as if they ought
to belong to the Boardhouse or Birsay system.
If scenery rather than geography is our study, we shall be equally well
repaid for this walk. From its isolated position, Ravie Hill commands
a very extensive view, despite its moderate elevation. The panorama of
hill and valley and plain, of land and lake and sea, which is spread
out around us, is really one of the finest in Orkney, and we can quite
understand how the picturesque Barony came to occupy so important a place
in the past. Even at the present day its rich soil and pleasant situation
give it some right to be called the “Garden of Orkney.” But meantime we
must make our way back to our inn, for the sun is dipping in the western
sea, and to-morrow will bring us fresh tasks to perform.
Fourth Day.
Our fourth and last day’s exploration will be confined to the western
shore of the Mainland, between Birsay and Stromness. As we leave the
Barony and ride along the south side of the loch we are tempted to stop
and view once more the landscape from Ravie Hill, before we finally turn
our back upon this romantic corner of the Mainland. While we watch the
people at work in the fields, and listen to the restful sounds of country
life, it is hard to picture the past whose relics stand yonder, plain in
our view.
If Birsay were to display before our eyes this morning a pageant of her
past history, the procession would be a varied one. The hunting-parties
of the Norse Earls, the coming of the first bishop to teach the new
faith, the building of the first Norse church, the burial of Earl Magnus,
the procession of pilgrims seeking miraculous healing at his tomb, the
removal of the sacred relics to the church of St. Olaf at Kirkwall to
await the building of a more magnificent shrine, the ruinous favour of
the Scottish Earls, the raising of a second Holyrood in the old Barony
whose stately splendour was the measure of the robbery and extortion
suffered by the people, the passing of this incongruous pomp and the
return of welcome obscurity and quiet—truly a long and picturesque
procession!
We resume our journey, however, and soon reach Twatt, where the road
divides. The branch to the left leads to the important district of
Dounby, on the borders of the three parishes of Birsay, Harray, and
Sandwick, and then passes through the whole length of Harray to join the
Kirkwall and Stromness road.
Harray is an interesting parish. It is the only parish in Orkney which
does not touch the sea. Its soil is on the whole fertile, the surface
being diversified by moraines brought down by glaciers from the steep
hills to the east. The farms are generally small, but the farmers are
mostly in the happy position of being owners as well as occupiers, and
the number of “lairds” in this parish has long been proverbial in Orkney.
We decide, however, on taking the road to the right, as we wish to see
something of the famous “west shore.” Three or four miles brings us
to the head of the Harray Loch; but instead of descending to the mill
of Rango we turn to the right at the cross-roads, and shortly reach
the hamlet of Aith, beside the Loch of Skaill, our charming “Loch in
Orcady.” Here we turn once more to the right, following a road which
skirts the loch and leads us almost to the shores of the Bay of Skaill, a
fine sweep of sandy beach, but exposed to the full fury of the Atlantic.
[Illustration: _Marwick Head, Birsay._]
At its southern corner we examine a large “Pict’s House,” now opened
up—the “Weem of Scarabrae.” Then we decide to climb the slope beyond and
visit the “Hole o’ Roo,” a famous cave piercing a bold headland, which
from the horizontal lie of the rock strata looks as if it had been built
of gigantic flagstones by a race of Titans.
We are now entering on the finest stretch of cliff scenery in the
islands, with the exception of Hoy, and from here to Stromness, a
distance of some eight miles, the walk is one to remember and to repeat.
But now for the first time we find our bicycles a hindrance instead of
a help, and we are at a loss what to do with them. We may decide to
turn back to the main road, ride to Stromness, and, leaving them there,
explore the coast on foot, which is the most satisfactory plan. If we
decide to take them on with us, we shall find that considerable stretches
of the ground are level enough to permit of a rough ride on the turf, and
for the last three miles of the distance there is a fair road.
[Illustration: _The Castle of Yesnaby._]
The next point of interest after leaving Row Head is the Noust of
Bigging, sheltered by its Brough, an excellent place from which to watch
the Atlantic breakers when a heavy sea is running. A little way to the
south is the Castle of Yesnaby, one of those isolated stacks of rock
which have withstood the battering of the ocean while the cliffs around
have crumbled and fallen. Its slender base, however, proclaims that its
fate is only a matter of time.
In another mile and a half, after passing Lyre Geo and Inganess Geo, two
impressive examples of how rocks decay, we reach the Castle of North
Gaulton, a singularly slender and graceful pillar of rock. Then we cross
a stretch of low ground, after which there is a steep climb up to the
summit of the Black Craig. The height of the hill is 360 feet, and that
of the cliff little less, while its sheer plunge down into the waves
makes it look higher than it really is.
As we descend towards the south we pass over a district which is sacred
in the eyes of geologists, for it was here that Hugh Miller discovered
the fossil remains of the _Asterolepis_ or “star-scale” fish, a monster
of the ancient days when the rocks of this hill were being laid down
as mud and sand on the bottom of a primeval lake. The great geologist
describes this district as “the land of fish,” and the rock strata fairly
swarm with fossils.
The shore in front is now low and tame, but the whole district from hill
to sea is fertile and well peopled. That it was so in the past also we
see sufficient proof. For there, on the shore of Breckness, stand the
ruins of a mansion built by Bishop Graeme, who knew well where to build;
and a mile beyond it, in the lonely churchyard by the lonely sea, rises
a fragment of an ancient church. There stood the church of Stromness in
former days, and there also the manse; while the names of Innertown and
Outertown doubtless refer to their relative nearness to this centre of
parish life.
[Illustration: _Round about Stromness._
1. Dundas Street. 2. Church Road. 3. Victoria Street. 4. From the South
End. 5. From the Harbour. 6. From the Hill.]
But times have changed, and it is no longer fertility of soil but
convenience for trade which draws men together in close neighbourhood,
and so the modern Stromness arose on the shore of that romantic little
bay which spreads out beneath us as we cross the ridge to the left. That
landlocked sea, and not the rocky hillside, was the source of its life
and growth; and as we note the frequent steamships and the clustered
fishing-fleet we realize that it is still the sea which brings prosperity
to the little gray town.
Here, then, our circuit of the Mainland fitly ends, for in the opinion of
many the town of Stromness, the “ness of the tide-stream,” is the fairest
spot in all the islands. However this may be, it is indeed fair, and the
Stromness boy will wander far and sail over many seas ere he will find a
fairer scene than his island home;—fair when it lies before him under the
pearl-gray light of its northern sky; fairer still, perchance, when the
golden haze of memory gilds the landscape, and the joyous vision of the
outward eye has given place to the wistful retrospect of the imagination.
[Illustration: _The Black Craig._]
SKETCHES BY HUGH MILLER.
The Dwarfie Stone.
We landed at Hoy, on a rocky stretch of shore composed of the gray
flagstones of the district. They spread out here in front of the tall
hills composed of the overlying sandstone, in a green, undulating
platform, resembling a somewhat uneven esplanade spread out in front of a
steep rampart. With the upper deposit a new style of scenery commences,
unique in these islands. The hills, bold and abrupt, rise from fourteen
to sixteen hundred feet over the sea-level; and the valleys by which they
are traversed—no mere shallow inflections of the general surface, like
most of the other valleys of Orkney—are of profound depth, precipitous,
imposing, and solitary. The sudden change from the soft, low, and
comparatively tame to the bold, stern, and high serves admirably to show
how much the character of a landscape may depend upon the formation which
composes it.
A walk of somewhat less than two miles brought me into the depths of a
brown, shaggy valley, so profoundly solitary that it does not contain a
single human habitation, nor, with one interesting exception, a single
trace of the hand of man. As the traveller approaches by a path somewhat
elevated, in order to avoid the peaty bogs of the bottom, along the
slopes of the northern side of the dell, he sees, amid the heath below,
what at first seems to be a rhomboidal piece of pavement of pale Old Red
Sandstone, bearing atop a few stunted tufts of vegetation. There are no
neighbouring objects of a known character by which to estimate its size.
The precipitous hill-front behind is more than a thousand feet in height;
the greatly taller Ward Hill of Hoy, which frowns over it on the opposite
side, is at least five hundred feet higher; and dwarfed by these giants
it seems a mere pavier’s flag, mayhap some five or six feet square by
some eighteen inches to two feet in depth. It is only on approaching it
within a few yards that we find it to be an enormous stone, nearly thirty
feet in length by almost fifteen feet in breadth, and in some places,
though it thins wedgelike towards one of the edges, more than six feet
in thickness—forming altogether such a mass as the quarrier would detach
from the solid rock to form the architrave of some vast gateway or the
pediment of some colossal statue. A cave-like excavation, nearly three
feet square, and rather more than seven feet in depth, opens on its gray
and lichened side. The excavation is widened within, along the opposite
walls, into two uncomfortably short beds, very much resembling those of
the cabin of a small coasting vessel. One of the two beds is furnished
with a protecting ledge and a pillow of stone hewn out of the solid
mass; while the other, which is some five or six inches shorter than its
neighbour, and presents altogether more the appearance of a place of
penance than of repose, lacks both cushion and ledge. An aperture, which
seems to have been originally of a circular form, and about two and a
half feet in diameter, but which some unlucky herd-boy, apparently in the
want of some better employment, has considerably mutilated and widened,
opens at the inner extremity of the excavation to the roof, as the hatch
of a vessel opens from the hold to the deck; for it is by far too wide in
proportion to the size of the apartment to be regarded as a chimney. A
gray, rudely-hewn block of sandstone, which, though greatly too ponderous
to be moved by any man of ordinary strength, seems to have served the
purpose of a door, lies prostrate beside the opening in front.
[Illustration: _The Dwarfie Stone._]
And such is the famous Dwarfie Stone of Hoy, as firmly fixed in our
literature by the genius of Sir Walter Scott as in this wide valley
by its ponderous weight and breadth of base, and regarding which—for
it shares in the general obscurity of the other ancient remains
of Orkney—the antiquary can do little more than repeat somewhat
incredulously what tradition tells him—namely, that it was the work many
ages ago of an ugly, malignant goblin, half earth, half air, the elfin
Trolld—a personage, it is said, that even within the last century used
occasionally to be seen flitting about in its neighbourhood.
I was fortunate in a fine, breezy day, clear and sunshiny, save where the
shadows of a few dense, piled-up clouds swept dark athwart the landscape.
In the secluded recesses of the valley all was hot, heavy, and still;
though now and then a fitful snatch of a breeze, the mere fragment of
some broken gust that seemed to have lost its way, tossed for a moment
the white cannach of the bogs, or raised spirally into the air, for a few
yards, the light beards of some seeding thistle, and straightway let them
down again. Suddenly, however, about noon a shower broke thick and heavy
against the dark sides and gray scalp of the Ward Hill and came sweeping
down the valley. I did what Norna of the Fitful Head had, according to
the novelist, done before me in similar circumstances—crept for shelter
into the larger bed of the cell, which, though rather scant, taken fairly
lengthwise, for a man of five feet eleven, I found, by stretching myself
diagonally from corner to corner, no very uncomfortable lounging-place in
a thunder-shower. Some provident herd-boy had spread it over, apparently
months before, with a littering of heath and fern, which now formed a
dry, springy couch; and as I lay wrapped up in my plaid, listening to the
raindrops as they pattered thick and heavy atop or slanted through the
broken hatchway to the vacant bed on the opposite side of the excavation,
I called up the wild narrative of Norna and felt all its poetry.
The Dwarfie Stone has been a good deal undervalued by some writers, such
as the historian of Orkney, Mr. Barry; and, considered simply as a work
of art or labour, it certainly does not stand high. When tracing, as I
lay abed, the marks of the tool, which in the harder portions of the
stone are still distinctly visible, I just thought how that, armed with
pick and chisel, and working as I was once accustomed to work, I could
complete such another excavation to order in some three weeks or a month.
But then I could not make my excavation a thousand years old, nor envelop
its origin in the sun-gilt vapours of a poetic obscurity, nor connect it
with the supernatural through the influence of wild, ancient traditions,
nor yet encircle it with a classic halo borrowed from the undying
inventions of an exquisite literary genius.
The pillow I found littered over with the names of visitors; but the
stone—an exceedingly compact red sandstone—had resisted the imperfect
tools at the command of the traveller, usually a nail or a knife, and
so there were but two of the names decipherable—that of an “H. Ross,
1735,” and that of a “P. Folster, 1830.” The rain still pattered heavily
overhead, and with my geological chisel and hammer I did, to beguile the
time, what I very rarely do—added my name to the others, in characters
which, if both they and the Dwarfie Stone get but fair play, will be
distinctly legible two centuries hence. In what state will the world
then exist, or what sort of ideas will fill the head of the man who, when
the rock has well-nigh yielded up its charge, will decipher the name
for the last time, and inquire, mayhap, regarding the individual whom
it now designates, as I did this morning when I asked, “Who was this H.
Ross, and who this P. Folster?”? I remember when it would have saddened
me to think that there would in all probability be as little response in
the one case as in the other; but as men rise in years they become more
indifferent than in early youth to “that life which wits inherit after
death,” and are content to labour on and be obscure.
The sun broke out in great beauty after the shower, glistening on a
thousand minute runnels that came streaming down the precipices, and
revealing through the thin, vapoury haze the horizontal lines of strata
that bar the hillsides, like courses of ashlar in a building. I failed,
however, to detect, amid the general many-pointed glitter by which the
blue, gauze-like mist was bespangled, the light of the great carbuncle
for which the Ward Hill has long been famous—that wondrous gem, according
to Sir Walter, “that, though it gleams ruddy as a furnace to them that
view it from beneath, ever becomes invisible to him whose daring foot
scales the precipices whence it darts its splendour.”
The Standing Stones.
[Illustration: _The Standing Stones—The Ring of Brogar._]
The Standing Stones—second in Britain, of their kind, only to those of
Stonehenge—occur in two groups; the smaller group (composed, however,
of the taller stones) on the southern promontory, the larger on the
northern one. Rude and shapeless, and bearing no other impress of the
designing faculty than that they are stuck endwise in the earth, and
form, as a whole, regular figures on the sward, there is yet a sublime
solemnity about them, unsurpassed in effect by any ruin I have yet seen,
however grand in its design or imposing in its proportions. Their very
rudeness, associated with their ponderous bulk and weight, adds to their
impressiveness. When there is art and taste enough in a country to hew an
ornate column, no one marvels that there should be also mechanical skill
enough in it to set it up on end; but the men who tore from the quarry
these vast slabs, some of them eighteen feet in height over the soil,
and raised them where they now stand, must have been ignorant savages
unacquainted with machinery, and unfurnished, apparently, with a single
tool.
The consideration, too, that these remains—eldest of the works of man
in this country—should have so long survived all definite tradition of
the purposes which they were raised to serve, so that we now merely know
regarding them that they were religious in their uses—products of that
ineradicable instinct of man’s nature which leads him in so many various
ways to attempt conciliating the Powers of another world—serves greatly
to heighten their effect.
The appearance of the obelisks, too, harmonizes well with their great
antiquity and the obscurity of their origin. For about a man’s height
from the ground they are covered thick by the shorter lichens—chiefly
the gray-stone _parmelia_—here and there embroidered by the golden-hued
patches of the yellow _parmelia_ of the wall; but their heads and
shoulders, raised beyond the reach alike of the herd-boy and of his
herd, are covered by an extraordinary profusion of a flowing beard-like
lichen of unusual length—the lichen _calicarus_ (or, according to modern
botanists, _Ramalina scopulorum_), in which they look like an assemblage
of ancient Druids, mysteriously stern and invincibly silent and shaggy as
the Bard of Gray, when
“Loose his beard and hoary hair
Streamed like a meteor on the troubled air.”
The day was perhaps too sunny and clear for seeing the Standing Stones
to the best possible advantage. They could not be better placed than on
their flat promontories, surrounded by the broad plain of an extensive
lake, in a waste, lonely, treeless country, that presents no bold
competing features to divert attention from them as the great central
objects of the landscape; but the gray of the morning or an atmosphere of
fog and vapour would have associated better with the misty obscurity of
their history, their shaggy forms, and their livid tints than the glare
of a cloudless sun, that brought out in hard, clear relief their rude
outlines, and gave to each its sharp, dark patch of shadow. Gray-coloured
objects, when tall and imposing, but of irregular form, are seen always
to most advantage in an uncertain light—in fog or frost-rime, or under a
scowling sky, or, as Parnell well expresses it, “amid the livid gleams
of night.” They appeal, if I may so express myself, to the sentiment of
the ghostly and the spectral, and demand at least a partial envelopment
of the obscure. Burns, with the true tact of the genuine poet, develops
the sentiment almost instinctively in an exquisite stanza in one of his
less-known songs. “The Posie,”—
“The hawthorn I will pu’, wi’ its locks o’ siller gray,
Where, like an aged man, it stands at break o’ day.”
Scott, too, in describing these very stones, chooses the early morning as
the time in which to exhibit them, when they “stood in the gray light of
the dawning, like the phantom forms of antediluvian giants, who, shrouded
in the habiliments of the dead, come to revisit, by the pale light, the
earth which they had plagued with their oppression, and polluted by their
sins, till they brought down upon it the vengeance of the long-suffering
heaven.” On another occasion he introduces them as “glimmering, a grayish
white, in the rising sun, and projecting far to the westward their long,
gigantic shadows.” And Malcolm, in the exercise of a similar faculty with
that of Burns and of Scott, surrounds them, in his description, with a
somewhat similar atmosphere of partial dimness and obscurity:—
“The hoary rocks, of giant size,
That o’er the land in circles rise,
Of which tradition may not tell.
Fit circles for the wizard’s spell,
Seen far amidst the scowling storm,
Seem each a tall and phantom form,
As hurrying vapours o’er them flee,
Frowning in grim obscurity,
While, like a dread voice from the past,
Around them moans the autumnal blast.”
There exist curious analogies between the earlier stages of society and
the more immature periods of life—between the savage and the child;
and the huge circle of Stennis seems suggestive of one of these. It is
considerably more than four hundred feet in diameter; and the stones
which compose it, varying from three to fourteen feet in height, must
have been originally from thirty-five to forty in number, though only
sixteen now remain erect. A mound and fosse, still distinctly traceable,
run round the whole; and there are several mysterious-looking tumuli
outside, bulky enough to remind one of the lesser moraines of the
geologist. But the circle, notwithstanding its imposing magnitude, is
but a huge child’s house after all—one of those circles of stones which
children lay down on their village green, and then, in the exercise of
that imaginative faculty which distinguishes between the young of the
human animal and those of every other creature, convert, by a sort of
conventionalism, into a church or dwelling-house, within which they
seat themselves and enact their imitations of the employments of their
seniors, whether domestic or ecclesiastical. The circle of Stennis was a
circle, say the antiquaries, dedicated to the sun. The group of stones on
the southern promontory of the lake formed but a half-circle, and it was
a half-circle dedicated to the moon. To the circular sun the great rude
children of an immature age of the world had laid down a circle of stones
on the one promontory; to the moon, in her half-orbed state, they had
laid down a half-circle on the other; and in propitiating these material
deities they employed in their respective enclosures, in the exercise of
a wild, unregulated fancy, uncouth, irrational rites.
HUGH MILLER (_“Rambles of a Geologist.”_)
THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. MAGNUS.
You would hardly expect to find an ancient cathedral up in those Orkney
Islands that one usually sees huddled away in a spare corner of the map,
and made to look even smaller than they are by the exigencies of space.
It is curious to think of: once, long ago, strange ships with monstrous
figure-heads and painted sides, full of the northern actors of history,
crawled with their lines of oars into the sounds and bays of these
islands, till for centuries they became the stage for dramatic events
and stirring personages. Some of the players bore names that any history
book tells of. Harald Hardrada, old King Haco, Bothwell, and Montrose
have all played their parts. And there are others, earls and prelates,
and northern kings, and old sea-rovers, who were really far better worth
knowing than half the puppets with more familiar labels. Then, gradually
the lights went out and the audience turned away to look at other things,
and the Orkneymen were left to observe the Sabbath and elect a County
Council. One by one the old buildings toppled down, and the old names
changed, and the old customs faded, till the place of the islands in
history became their place upon the map; but time and men have spared one
thing—this old cathedral church of St. Magnus in Kirkwall.
[Illustration: _In Kirkwall._
1. Earl’s Palace. 2. Bridge Street. 3. Albert Street. 4. Bishop’s Palace.]
On the ancient houses of the little borough and the winding slit of a
street, the old red church still looks down benignly, and sometimes (of
a Sunday, I think, especially) a little humorously. Over the gray roofs
and the tree-tops in sheltered gardens, and the black mites of people
passing on their business, its lustreless Gothic eyes see a wide expanse
of land and a wider and brighter sweep of sea. The winding sounds and
broadening bays join and divide and join again, through and through
its island dominions. Backwards and forwards, twice a day, the flood
tide pours from the open Atlantic, and each channel becomes an eastward
flowing river; and then from the North Sea the ebb sets the races running
to the west. Everywhere is the sight or the sound of the sea—rollers on
the western cliffs, salt currents among the islands, quiet bays lapping
the feet of heathery hills. Out of the two great oceans the wind blows
like the blasts of an enormous bellows, and on the horizon the clouds are
eternally gathering.
It is over this land of moor and water and vapour that the cathedral
watches the people; and though from the difficulty of passing through
so narrow a street it has never moved from the spot where it first
arose, and has never seen, one would suppose, the greater part of its
territories, yet it knows—none better—the stories and the spirit of all
the islands. Crows and gulls cruise round the tower familiarly, and
perhaps bring gossip; but eyes so long and narrow, and of so inhuman an
anatomy, may very likely see through a hill or a heart for themselves.
The country is like a fleet at sea, and the old spirit of the people came
from the deep. At first that spirit was only restless and fierce and
free; in time it began to think, and at odd moments to be troubled, and
they called it pious. Then it looked for a fitting house where it might
live when it could no longer find a home in the people. So it built the
red cathedral, and there it silently dwells to-day.
There is something in their church that none of the respectable townsfolk
have the slightest suspicion of—something alive that vibrates to the cry
of the wind and the breaking of the sea, and the little human events that
happen in the crow-stepped houses.
On the wild autumn afternoons when the hard north-east wind is driving
rain and sleet through the town, the old church begins to remember. The
wind and the sleet coming over the sea stir the quick spirit so sharply
that every angle is full of sighing noises. As the shortened day draws
to an end, and lights begin to twinkle in the town, and the showers
become less frequent, and the clouds are rolled up and gathered off the
sky, then the people come out into the streets and see the early stars
above the gable-ends and high cathedral tower. They think it cold, and
walk quickly, but a personage of sandstone takes little note of the
temperature. The cathedral merely feels refreshed.
When the clear, windy night draws in, the people go to rest, and one by
one the lights are put out till only the stars and the lighthouses are
left. Looking over a darkened town and an empty night, with the air
moving fresh from Norway, the memories come thick upon the old church
which shelters so many bones. It is like digging up the soil of those
lands from which the sea has for centuries receded, and where the ribs of
ships and the skeletons of sailors lie deep beneath the furrows of the
plough.
Kirkwall must have been a strange little town before the cathedral’s
memory begins, when there was no red tower above the narrow street and
the little houses, in the days when Rognvald, the son of Kol, had vowed
to dedicate a splendid minster to his uncle, St. Magnus, should he come
by his own and call himself Earl of Orkney; and when the islanders waited
to see what aid the blessed saint would furnish to this enterprise.
It is one of the island tragedies—the saga of how the evil Earl Hakon
slew his cousin, Earl Magnus, outside the old church of Egilsay with that
high round tower that you can see over Kirkwall Bay from the cathedral
parapet, and how the grass grew greener where he fell, and miracles
multiplied, and they made him a saint in time.
Though all these events happened before a stone of the cathedral was
laid, they may help to give the meaning of its story, and on that account
they are worth, perhaps, a rough telling here. Earl Hakon had died, and
his son Paul ruled in his stead. He was a silent, brave, unlucky man,
upright and honourable in his dealings, but the shadow of his father’s
crime lay over the land. It brought old age and prosperity and repentance
to the doer of the deed; and on his son the punishment fell.
[Illustration: _St. Magnus Cathedral, interior._
1. South aisle. 2. North aisle. 3. Nave.]
Rognvald claimed the half of the earldom. Paul answered that there was no
need for long words, “For I will guard the Orkneys while God grants me
life so to do.” And then the contest began. Rognvald attacked from north
and south. Paul vanquished the southern fleet, and hurrying north drove
his rival back to Norway; and so the winter came on, and the peace that
in those days men kept in winter.
All had gone well with Paul, but his luck was to change with a little
thing. He was keeping Yule with his friends and kinsmen, when upon a
winter’s evening, a man, wet with the spray of the Pentland Firth, came
out of the dusk and knocked upon the door. He was hardly the instrument,
one would think, a departed saint would choose to build a cathedral
with—a Viking with his sword ever loose in its sheath, and his lucky
star obscured, coming here for refuge, from the ashes of his father and
his home. He was known as Sweyn Asleifson (a name to be famous in the
islands), and was welcomed for his family’s sake; they brought him in
to the feast, and the drinking went on. In a little while there arose
a quarrel over the cups; Sweyn killed his man, and fled into the night
again. He was a landless outlaw this time, for the dead man had been
high in favour, and the earl was stern. Meanwhile men went on drinking
over the hall fires; but Paul’s luck had departed, and St. Magnus had a
weapon in his hand. In the spring the war began again, and suddenly in
the midst of it Earl Paul disappeared—his bodyguard cut down upon the
beach, himself spirited clean away. Sweyn Asleifson had come for him, and
carried him to a fate that was never more than rumoured. So Rognvald won
the earldom, and the first stones of his church were laid. The saint had
certainly struck for him.
That is the true story of the vow and the building of the cathedral, a
tale too old for even the venerable church to remember. But all the long
history of the seven centuries since it knows; and indeed it has played
such a part in scene after scene and act after act, that a memory would
have to be of some poorer stuff than hewed sandstone to forget a past so
stirring. And who can be so far behind every scene as the house which
during men’s lives listens to their prayers, and at last upon a day takes
them in for ever?
When it first began to look down from its windows upon those men going
about their business in the sunshine or the rain, it saw among the
little creatures some that were well worth remembering, though there be
few but the cathedral to remember them now. There was Rognvald himself,
that cheerful, gallant earl who made poetry and war, and sailed to
Jerusalem with all his chiefs and friends, fighting and rhyming all the
way, and riding home across the length of Europe, and who, when he fell
by an assassin’s hand, was laid at last beneath the pavement of this
cathedral he had founded. And then, most memorable of all the great
odallers who followed him in war and sat at his Yule feasts, there was
the Viking, Sweyn Asleifson, he who kidnapped Paul, and afterwards became
the lifelong and, on the whole, faithful friend of Rognvald, and the
faithless enemy of almost every one else; the most daring, unscrupulous,
famous, and—judging by the way he always obtained forgiveness when he
needed it—the most fascinating man in all the northern countries. He was
the luckiest, too, till the day he fell in an ambush in the streets of
Dublin, exclaiming with his last breath, in most remarkable contrast to
the tenor of his life: “Know this, all men, that I am one of the Saint
Earl Rognvald’s bodyguard, and I now mean to put my trust in being where
he is, with God.” May he rest in peace wherever his bones lie, even
though his reformation came something late, the turbulent, terrible old
Viking, whom the Saga writers called the last of that profession.
The generation who built it had passed away, when on a summer’s day,
after it had weathered nearly a century of storm and shine, the cathedral
saw the greatest sight it had yet beheld. Haco of Norway had come with
his fleet to conquer the Western Isles of Scotland, the Norse kings’ old
inheritance. The pointed windows watched ship after ship sail by with
coloured sails and shining shields, bearing the Norsemen to their last
battle in southern lands; and then the islands waited for the news that
in those days was brought by the men who had made the story.
Month upon month went by; men wondered and rumours flew; the days grew
shorter, and the gales came out upon all the seas. At last, when winter
was well upon the islands, what were left of the battered ships began to
struggle home. They brought back stories that the cathedral remembers,
though six centuries have rolled them out of the memories of the
people—tales of lee-shores and westerly gales, of anchors dragging under
the Cumbraes, and Scottish knights charging down upon the beach where the
Norwegian spears were ranked on the edge of the tide; then of more gales
and whirlpools in the Pentland, until at length they carried their old
sick king ashore, to die in the bishop’s palace at Kirkwall.
[Illustration: _St. Magnus Cathedral, exterior._
1. West doorway, nave. 2. East window. 3. Doorway, south transept. 4.
Doorway, north aisle. 5. Doorway, south aisle.]
He lay for two months in that ancient building—now a roofless shell,
standing just beyond the churchyard wall—his most faithful friends beside
him, the restless Orkney wind without, and the voice of the Saga reader
by the bed. First they read to him in Latin, till he grew too sick to
follow the foreign words; and then in Norse, through the Sagas of the
saints, and after of the kings. They had come down to his own father,
Sverrir, and then, in the words of the old historian, “Near midnight
Sverrir’s Saga was read through, and just as midnight was past Almighty
God called King Hakon from this world’s life.” They buried him in the
great red church that had stood sentinel over the sick-chamber; and as
the race of Vikings died with Sweyn, so the roving, conquering kings of
Norway passed away with Haco, and never again came south to trouble the
seaboards.
The Orkneys, however, were not yet out of the current of affairs. They
cut, indeed, but a small figure compared with the Orkney of the great
Earl Thorfinn in the century before Rognvald founded his cathedral—he
who owned nine earldoms in Scotland and all the Southern Isles, besides
a great realm in Ireland. But there was still a bishop in the palace
and an earl with powers of life and death in his dominion, and an armed
following that counted for something in war; and the cathedral was still
the church of a small country rather than of a little county. The sun
cast the shadows of dignitaries in the winding street, and the bones
they were framed of were laid in time beneath the flags of St. Magnus’s
church. When one comes to think of it, the old cathedral must hold a
varied collection of these, for here lie the high and the low of two
races, and no man knows how many chance sojourners and travellers.
At last, upon a dark day for the islands, their era of semi-independence
and Vikingism and Norse romance came to a most undignified end. A needy
king of the north pledged them to Scotland for his daughter’s dowry,
as a common man might pledge his watch. East to Norway was no longer
the way to the motherland, and the open horizon meeting the clouds, the
old highroad, led now to a foreign shore. Henceforth they belonged to
the long coast with its pale mountain peaks far away over the cliffs,
which had once, so far as the eye could see, belonged to them. It was a
transaction intended for a season, but the season has never ran to its
limit yet. Now, it is to be hoped, it never will; but for centuries it
would have been better for the Orkneys if they had gone the way of some
volcanic islet and sunk quietly below the gray North Sea.
One might think that, when they had ceased to be a half-way house between
their sovereign and his neighbours of Europe, and were become instead
a geographical term applied to the least accessible portion of their
new lord’s dominions, their history and their troubles would soon have
ceased, and the islanders been left to fish and reap late crops and try
to keep out the winter weather. But there was no such good luck for many
a day to come. Alas for themselves, they were too valuable an asset in
the Scotch king’s treasury. Orkney too valuable! That collection of
windy, treeless islands, where great ponds of rain-water stand through
the fields for months together, and a strawberry that ripens is shown
to one’s friends! The plain truth is that, measured by a Scotch standard
of value in those days, it would have been hard to find a pocket not
worth the picking. The rental of Orkney was more than twice that of the
kingdom of Fife, and Fife, I suppose, was an El Dorado compared with most
provinces of its impecunious country. So north they came, Scotch earls
and bishops and younger sons, to make what they could before the pledge
was redeemed. And to the old cathedral was flung the shame of standing as
the symbol of oppression. It was not its fault, and every stone must have
silently cried to Heaven for forgiveness. But a cathedral meant a bishop,
and an Orkney bishop meant the refinement of roguery and exaction. When
these prelates in their turns came to inhabit permanently their minster,
and they could at last hear the voice of its spirit that loves the
land it watches, demanding an account of their stewardship, what could
they say? The old excuse—“We must live”? I can hardly think the church
perceived the necessity.
That monument which the old sailors and fighters of the north had built,
that they might link a better world with the rough and warring earth,
had to stand immovable for century upon century, watching the trouble
of their sons. It saw them make their stand at Summerdale in the old
fashion, with sword and halbert and a battle-cry on their lips, and
march back again to the town in a glimpse of triumph. But that quickly
faded, and the weight of new laws and evil rulers gradually broke the
high spirit entirely. It saw the proud odallers reduced to long-suffering
“peerie lairds,” and all their power and romance and circumstance of
state pass over to the foreigner, until after a time it was hard to
believe that, some pages further back, there was a closed chapter of
history which read quite differently from this.
Down below the parapet of the tower the narrow streets were full of the
most splendid-looking people, all in steel and the Stewart arms. Earls
Robert and Patrick of that royal name, each, through his scandalous life,
made the island the home of a prince’s court; and out among the moors and
the islands the old race wondered whose turn it should be for persecution
next, and how long Heaven would let these things be.
The downfall of the Stewarts’ rule came at last, violently as was fit,
but to the end they used the old church on behalf of the wrong. The tower
was wrapped in the smoke of the rebels’ musketry when old Earl Patrick
lay by the heels in Edinburgh awaiting his doom as a traitor, and his son
held Kirkwall against what might, by comparison, be termed the law, and
it was only at the point of the pike that they turned the last Stewart
out of the sepulchre of St. Magnus.
Then the long windows watched the shadows of all manner of persons, who
are well forgotten now, darken the prospect for a while, and pass away to
let other clouds gather; and in all that time there cannot have been many
whom a critical edifice can recall with pride.
The bishops were sent about their business, and the Solemn League and
Covenant was solemnly sworn. The troopers of Cromwell stalked through
the old pillars with their wide hats the firmer set on. The Covenant
was unsworn, and the bishops came back and acquired emoluments for a
little while longer, till at last they went altogether, and in good,
sober Presbyterian fashion the awakened people set about purifying their
temple. Poor old church! they did it thoroughly. Away went carving and
stained glass, and ancient tombs and bones, and everything that the
austere taste of Heaven is supposed by man to dislike. They made it clean
with a kind of yellowish whitewash, and divided it by a sanitary deal
screen impervious to draught. In this shameful guise the cathedral has
watched the advent of quiet days and the slow healing of time. To-day the
greatest clamour it hears is made by the rooks. No earl’s men or bishop’s
men quarrel in the streets; no one either fears or harries the islanders;
the history of Orkney is written and closed and laid upon the shelf.
The hands of the clock move evenly round, and the seasons change by the
almanac.
But there stands the old red church, silently remembering and arranging
in their due perspective all these things remarkable and true. The worst
of it is that it makes no comment that a mortal can understand, so that
no one can say what a seasoned, well-mortared observer of seven centuries
of affairs thinks of changing dynasties and creeds, and whether it is
disposed to take them more seriously than so many moultings of feathers,
and if one can retain any optimism through a course of whitewash and
draught-proof screens.
It is pleasant to think, for the old minster’s sake, that it heeds the
rubs of fortune very little, and regards material changes just as so
many shifts of plumage. Its people are still flesh and blood, and its
islands rock and turf and heather, and it will take more than pails
and paint-brushes, and pledges and covenants to make them otherwise.
The winter days are as bleak as ever, and the summer evenings as long
and light, and the sun rises out of the North Sea among the flat green
islands, and sinks in the Atlantic behind the western heather hills; and
it is likely enough that from the height of the cathedral tower many
other most serious events look surprisingly unimportant.
J. STORER CLOUSTON.
(_“Macmillan’s Magazine.” By permission._)
[Illustration: _Kirkwall in winter._]
A ROAD IN ORCADY.
In southern lands—and most lands are southern to us—the road runs between
fragrant hedgerows or under shady trees; but in Orcady trees and hedges
are practically unknown. Yet the road lacks not its charm, for this is
a world of compensations. If we never breathe the fragrance of the may
or hear the whisper of the wind-stirred branches, we have, on the other
hand, nothing to shut out from our eyes the wide expanse of land and sea
or to hide the blue sky over us, no fallen timber after a gale to block
our way and make of our progress an involuntary obstacle race, and no
thorns to puncture our cycle tyres. The lover of the highway may miss
here much of the bird-life that enlivens the roads of the south; but our
road has a life and traffic of its own quite apart from the trickling
stream of men and horses which flows fitfully along its white channel.
Flowers and flies, birds and beasts, the road has something for each and
all of them. Even by day they use it, but from dusk to dawn they claim it
as their very own.
[Illustration: _By the Roadside—“Peerie Hooses.”_
1. Holm. 2. Harray. 3. Birsay. 4. Tankerness. 5. Orphir.]
I do not remember that Stevenson, who so loved the road, has written
anywhere of its little life—of the birds and beasts, the shy living
things, that haunt it. In the treeless isles of Orcady, at least, the
furred and feathered creatures seem to think that man makes the road for
their especial delectation. For all creatures of beach and bog, hill
and meadow, it has its charms; and hence it is ever beat upon by soft,
soundless feet and shadowed by swiftly moving wings, and many a little
comedy or tragedy is played out upon its stage. We walk upon it in spring
and summer through an air fragrant with the perfume of innumerable small,
sweet flowers, with the music of birds and bees about us, and ever, under
and behind all song, the voice of the great sea, full of indefinable
mystery as of a half-remembered dream.
The engineer who makes the road unwittingly plans it in such fashion as
to be of service to the folk of moor and marsh, of shore and furrow. In
Orcady every road, sooner or later, leads to the sea. In former days the
sea itself was the great highway, and therefore close to its shores are
found the old kirks and kirkyards. For by sea men came to worship God,
and by sea they were carried to their long home. The kirks and kirkyards
being beside the sea, the road comes thither to them. It comes down also
to the piers, the slips, and jetties, which play so important a part in
the lives of the islanders. Thus the road passes within a few yards of
the haunts of all the divers, swimmers, and waders that frequent our
shores.
Also in making a road the aim of the man who plans it is to avoid, so far
as possible, all ascents and descents. In carrying out this aim he raises
the road on embankments where it passes through low and marshy grounds,
and makes cuttings through the higher lands. Where it runs through such a
cutting the roadside ditches catch and keep a little store of water in
a dry season, and thither plover, snipe, redshanks, and dotterel bring
their velvet-clad birdlings to drink. If the season be wet, the road
raises above the marsh a comparatively dry platform, on which the birds
may rest when not feeding, and the roadside dykes offer a shelter from
wind and sun.
But our road draws feet and wings to it in many other ways. It passes
now through cultivated fields, with dry stone dykes fencing it on either
side; now it runs unfenced through the open moorland, and again along
the very margin of the sea. Here it is bordered by marshes and there by
a long reach of black peat-bog, and everywhere it woos with varied wiles
the living things of earth and air. Before the dykes have seen many
seasons they begin to deck themselves with velvet mosses, and to the
miniature forests of moss come insects of the lesser sorts, flying and
creeping things, red and brown and blue. In pursuit of these small deer
come the spiders, which lurk in crevices of the walls and spread their
cunning snares across the mouths of culverts where farm roads branch off
from the highway. Long-legged water-skaters dart to and fro among the
floating weeds on the surface of the stagnant ditches; and over these
ditches the midges weave their fantastic dances on summer evenings. The
litter of passing traffic brings hurrying, busy, burnished beetles,
which find harbourage in the loosely piled banks of ditch scrapings that
form the boundary between highway and moorland. Where the road, with
its generous grassy margin, runs like a white ribbon with green borders
through the brown moors, wild flowers that are choked or hidden in the
heather spread themselves to the sunshine—primroses and daisies, clover
red and white, milkwort and tormentil, hawkweed and violets, thyme and
crowfoot: their very names read like a poem. The number of small wild
flowers that grow in our roadside ditches and within reach of the road
is amazing when one begins to reckon them. Here the steep grassy bank is
gorgeous with rose-campion and with the purple and gold of the vetches,
and all the air is sweet with the perfume of wild mustard, which with
the pale yellow of its blossoms almost hides the green in that field of
springing barley. This wet meadow, on either hand all aglow with the pink
blossoms of the ragged robin, a little earlier in the year had its wide
and shallow ditches glorified by the broad green leaves and exquisite
feathery blooms of the bog-bean, while its drier grounds were starred
with the pale cups of grass of Parnassus. In spring the vernal squills
shone on yonder hillocks with a blue glory as of the sea in summer.
On this long flat stretch of peat-bog these are not untimely snowdrifts
but nodding patches of cotton-grass. In autumn, when a strong wind
blows from that quarter, all the road will be strewn with the silvery,
silken down that makes so brave a show among the purple heather of the
bog. Later still in the year the same bog will glow ruddy as with a
perpetual sunset, when the long, coarse grass reddens. Passing this way
on some gray afternoon the wayfarer will find it hard to believe that
the “charmed sunset” has not suddenly shone out through the clouds “low
adown in the red west.” And the peat-moss on which the road is built
has other glories—green moss and moss as red as blood, fairy cups of
silver lichen with scarlet rims, and long reaches of bog-asphodel,
shining like cloth-of-gold and sweetening the winds with their faint,
delicate perfume. Here, where our road runs on a firmer foundation, grow
the wild willows, all low-growing and all adding a beauty to the year
in their catkins. When the daisies have hardly ventured to thrust their
heads into a cold world the catkins gleam in silky silver, changing as
the days lengthen to yellow gold. Later on some of them are covered with
an exquisite white down which floats their seeds about the land. The
little burns which our road bridges ripple and chatter through miniature
forests of ferns and meadow-sweet, the foxglove shakes its bells above
the splendour of the gorse, and the yellow iris hides the young wild-duck
that are making their way by ditch and brooklet to the sea. These are but
a few of the flowers with which the road garlands and bedecks herself to
welcome the little peoples who love her.
To the flowers come all day long in summer the humble-bees. These little
reddish-yellow fellows, hot and angry-looking, have their byke or nest
in some mossy bank or old turf dyke, to which they carry wax and honey
for the fashioning of a round, irregular, dirty-looking comb. The chances
are that they will be despoiled of their treasure by some errant herd-boy
before July is half over. Their great cousins in black velvet striped
with gold prefer to live solitary in some deserted mouse-hole; but they
cannot, for all their swagger and fierce looks, save their honey from
Boy the Devourer. Though there are no wasps in Orcady, the roadside
blossoms have visitors other than the bees. Here come the white and
brown butterflies, and those dainty little blue creatures whose wings
are painted and eyed like a peacock’s tail. And at night moths, white,
yellow, and gray, flit like ghosts above the sleeping flowers, or dance
mysteriously in the dusk on silent wings.
Where the insects come, there follow the insect-eaters. On a June evening
there are parts of the road where one may see kittiwakes and black-headed
gulls hawking for moths. Wheatears and starlings, larks and pipits,
and, more rarely, thrushes, blackbirds, and wrens, with an occasional
stonechat, all come to prey on the insect life of the road. Swallows
there are none in Orcady, but the ubiquitous sparrow is there. To his
contented mind the road offers a continual feast. When the birds set
up housekeeping in spring, many of them choose their nesting-places in
the near neighbourhood of the road. It seems almost as if they argued
that here, under the very eye of man, they run less risk of discovery
than further afield, where he may expect to find their treasures. From
crannies of the loosely-built walls that bound the road you may hear
the hungry broods of starlings, sparrows, and wheatears chirping on
every side as you pass in May. I have seen a nestful of young larks
gape up with their foolish yellow throats from a tuft of grass on the
very edge of a roadside ditch, and have found a grouse’s nest in the
heather not fifty yards from the most man-frequented part of the road.
Yellow-hammers, too, and other buntings often nest in the long grass by
the ditchside. Here, in a hedge of whin or gorse which crosses the road
at right angles, are the nests of the thrush, the blackbird, and the
wren. If you drive along our road in spring you shall see the male pewit,
in all the glory of his wedding garments, scraping, a few yards from
the roadside, the shallow, circular hollow in which his young are to be
hatched; and a little later you shall see his patient spouse look up at
you fearlessly from her eggs, or even, if your passing be at noonday, you
may watch her slip off the nest as her mate comes up behind to relieve
her in her domestic duties. For these birds have learned that man on
wheels is not to be feared, though man on foot is one of their most
dreaded enemies.
In Orcady there are not many four-footed wild things, but those that
dwell among us are drawn to the road as surely as the birds are. In the
gloaming rabbits come down to the roadside clover where the bees have
gathered honey all day. Great brown hares, too, come loping leisurely
along the road—moving shadows that melt into the dusk at the least alarm.
Hares always like to make their forms near a road of some sort, for it
affords them a swift and ready means of flight when they are pursued.
They must be hard pressed indeed before they will dive like rabbits into
roadside drains or culverts, but these refuges are not to be despised
when greyhound or lurcher is close upon their heels. Mice, voles, and
rats find shelter in the banks of road-scrapings or in the walls and
drain-mouths; and the sea-otter does not despise the road when he makes
a nocturnal expedition inland. It is not long since a man who was early
afoot on a summer morning met a pair of otters almost on the street of
our sleeping island capital. Seals, of course, cannot use the road, but
where it runs by the sea-marge their shining heads rise up from the
water to watch the passers-by, and he who is abroad before dawn may find
them on the beaches within a few yards of the roadway.
The deer, roe, foxes, badgers, stoats, weasels, wild-cats, and moles of
Orcady are even as the snakes of Iceland. Tame cats ran wild, however,
we do not lack, and they take their tithe from the road as surely as do
the hawks and falcons. Neither snakes, lizards, nor frogs are found in
the isles, but on a damp autumn evening the road is dotted with toads of
all sizes, which sit gazing into infinity or hop clumsily from before the
passing wheel.
In pursuit of beetles, mice, and small birds, hawks and owls come to
the road. The kestrel of all hawks loves it the most. He sits upon
the humming telegraph wires or hangs poised, like Mahomet’s coffin,
in mid-air, ever watchful and ready to swoop down upon his prey. The
same wires which give him a resting-place often furnish him with food,
ready killed or disabled. When man first set up his posts along the
road and threaded them with an endless wire, sad havoc was wrought
among the birds. Plover—green and golden—snipe, redshanks, and grouse
dashing across the road in the dusk, struck the fatal wires and fell
dead or maimed by the wayside. I have seen a blackbird fly shrieking
from a prowling cat, and strike the wire with such force that his head,
cut clean off, dropped at my very feet. The older birds appear to have
learned a lesson from the misfortunes of their fellows, but every autumn
young birds, new to their wings, pay their tribute of victims to the
wires. More especially is this the case with the plovers, and though
the kestrel rarely touches so big a bird when it is whole and sound, he
feasts upon their wounded.
The hen-harrier skims to and fro along the roadside ditches, but he is
a wary and cautious fowl, and is never within gunshot of the road when
a man comes down that way. The merlin, that beautiful miniature falcon,
glides swift and low across the moors and meadows, flashes suddenly
over the roadside dyke, and before the small birds have time to realize
that their enemy is upon them, he is gone again—only a little puff of
feathers floating slowly down the air showing where he struck his prey.
The peregrine wheels high overhead, but is too proud and shy a bird to
hunt upon man’s roads. Nor has the road any charm for the raven, who
goes croaking hoarsely over it on his way from shore to hill. The little
short-eared owls hide all day among the heather near our road, and come
flapping up in the gloaming on noiseless wings to take their share of its
good things. In the treeless islands the kestrel is not the only bird
that sits upon the wires. There the starling sings his weird love song,
mingling with his own harsh notes the calls of every other bird that the
islands know; and the buntings chant their lugubrious and monotonous
ditties there.
The telegraph wires are not the only mysterious works of man which have
disturbed and interfered with the feathered life so near to and yet so
far apart from his. What a mystery must he be to those fellow-creatures
who watch him, with his continual scratching and patching of the breast
of kindly Mother Earth! Not wholly does he yield the road to them between
sunset and sunrise; but when he goes abroad in the dark it is often
in the guise of a rumbling dragon with great eyes of flame. Once, to
the writer’s knowledge, a gannet swooped down in valiant ignorance on
such a horrid creature of the night. He flashed suddenly, white out of
the darkness, into the circle of light of a doctor’s gig lamps. That
bold bird his fellows saw no more; and one may fancy that with his
disappearance a new terror was added to the fiery-eyed creatures that
roam the roads by night. He died, though not without a fierce fight for
his life; and his skin, cunningly filled out with wire and straw, stands
under a glass case in his slayer’s home even unto this day.
It is in spring and summer that the road sets forth its choicest lures
for its lovers, yet even in “winter and rough weather” it has its
beauties for the seeing eye. The puddles and cart-ruts shine like dull
silver when the clouds are heavy and gray overhead. When the rain cloud
blows over and the sky clears, these same shallow pools and channels
gleam with a cold, clear blue, more exquisite than that of the heavens
they reflect; and at night the stars besprinkle them with diamonds.
Again,—
“Autumnal frosts enchant the pool,
And make the cart-ruts beautiful.”
“When daisies go”—and of all roadside blossoms they linger latest and
reappear earliest (I have seen them lifting their modest crimson-tipped
heads in December and opening their yellow eyes before the coltsfoot
stars begin to shine)—but even when they are gone the gray stone dykes
have still a glory of green moss, of gray and golden lichens.
When all the land is soaked and sodden with heavy rains, the road, where
it climbs that low brown hill, will suddenly shine out across the
intervening miles like a sword flung down among the heather.
When the winter rains have given place to the first snowfall of the year,
go out early in the morning, before hoofs and wheels have blotted out
the traces of the night, and you shall learn, as nothing else save long
and close observation can teach you, how great is the nocturnal traffic
of birds and beasts upon the road. Like fine lacework you shall find
their footprints, to and fro, round and across, up the middle and down
again. Hares and rabbits, rats and mice, gulls and plovers, thrushes and
larks, water-hens and water-rails—these and many more have been busy here
while you slept. And even now bright eyes are watching you, themselves
unseen—those unsuspected eyes which are ever upon us as we follow the
road on our daily round of duty or pleasure. Do they look on us with
fear or wonder, with contempt or admiration, or with a mingling of all
these feelings? That we can never know while the great barrier of silence
stands between us and them. We blunder across their lives, doing them
good and evil indiscriminately, but we understand them no more than they
can understand us.
Now in winter, new birds come to our road. Great flocks of snow-buntings,
circling and wheeling with marvellous precision, at one moment almost
invisible—a dim, brown, moving mist—and the next flashing a thousand
points of silver to the level rays of the wintry sun. Scores of
greenfinches, which we never see in summer, rise from the road edges to
circle a little way and settle again. The “spink spink” of the chaffinch,
also unknown to us in summer, may now be heard; fieldfares spring
chuckling through the air far overhead, and red-winged thrushes hop
among the stubbles. Down this shallow pass between the low hills come in
the gloaming the lines of the wild swans, flying from the upland lochs
to the sea. Their trumpet call rings far through the frosty air, and as
we hear them there stir within us vague thoughts and dreams of the white
north whence they came. As if answering the thought, the wet road shines
with a new, faint, unearthly light, as flickering up the northern sky
come the pale shifting streamers of the aurora borealis.
Of the human life that pulses intermittently along our road there is not
space now to write. Boy and girl, youth and maiden, man and woman, day by
day, year in, year out, they follow the winding line, till for each in
turn the day comes when it leads them to the kirkyard or to the sea, and
the roads of Orcady know them no more.
DUNCAN J. ROBERTSON.
(_“Longman’s Magazine.” By permission._)
[Illustration: _Kirkwall Pier—a midnight photograph._]
A LOCH IN ORCADY.
It is one among many, in an island where the lochs lie scattered like
fragments of the sky fallen among the hills—one among many, and one of
the least known of them all. On it the fisherman casts no fly, or casts
it in vain, for fish have never prospered in its waters. It can never
be an ideal trout loch, for it is not fed, like its sister lochs, by
the innumerable small burns that channel our low hills. One surface-fed
streamlet indeed flows into it, a streamlet hardly worthy of the
courtesy-title it bears; but for the most part its waters are drawn from
the secret sources of the springs.
Its placid surface mirrors no hillsides purple with heather and green
with waving fern, but from its margin the land rolls back in low billows,
squared with fields that year by year darken under the plough and smile
again in due season with the homely crops of the isles. Yet the little
loch has charms of its own for those who know it—charms that its wilder
and more romantic sisters cannot boast. Not a quarter of a mile from its
western shore the Atlantic billows boom and thunder upon the cliffs, or
roll in, great and green, to burst and spread in a whirling smother of
foam upon the sands; and the quiet of the inland water is thrice welcome
to eye and ear when these are dazzled and wearied by the ceaseless
turmoil and tumult of the sea.
The valley in which lies the loch runs down to a deeply curved bay, swept
and scoured out by the sea, where there is a breach in the great cliff
rampart that guards our island’s western coast. Up this valley the wind
has, through the ages, heaped a huge sandhill which rolls and ripples
under its greensward down to the lip of the bay. Between the sand and the
clay lies the loch, narrowed by the rising slope of sand that forms its
northern bank.
At its eastern end is the germ of a village. A little shop, a post
office, the long, low building which was a school before these days of
school boards—these and a few cottages stand between the loch and the
sunrise. Close to the water’s edge runs the highroad leading from a steep
little seaport town, away through the quiet country, luring men to the
sea and the great world of adventure beyond it. For with us isles-folk
the tune that sings itself in the dreams of youth is not “Over the
_hills_,” but “Over the _seas_ and far away.”
Along the northern shore, as close as may be to the water, runs another
road—a road that leads to the kirk and the kirkyaird, and, incidentally,
to the laird’s house. Yet because men, who made the road, must preserve
an apparent sobriety and straightness of purpose, while Nature, who laid
the line between land and water, need care nothing for her reputation,
there runs between the road and the water a grassy margin. Here it is
of the narrowest, and there it spreads out into miniature capes and
peninsulas, where teal love to rest in the early morning, and rabbits
come down to nibble the juicy water-plants long before man is afoot.
[Illustration: _Some “Big Hooses.”—I._
1. Skaill, Sandwick. 2. Binscarth. 3. Hall of Tankerness. 4. Westness,
Rousay. 5. Holodyke, Harray.]
On the other side of the road the sandbank rises steep and green, a cliff
of sandy sward sometimes attaining a height of full twenty feet. There
the rabbits have their outposts. The green turf is splotched with the
scattered sand from their burrows, and their white tails bob and flutter
among the mounds they have made.
This is but the flank of the sandhill. Farther to the west, where man has
never ploughed the sand, the loch is bounded by low, green links which
swarm with rabbits. Bunkers and hazards there are to delight the soul of
the golfer; yet hither that lover of links comes but seldom. The rabbits
and the birds have it all to themselves, save where some little fields
are set amid the links, and one or two houses of men.
Out of the turf of the bank projects a great stone, gray with lichen, and
looking like the broken and petrified shaft of a mighty spear flung by
one of the giants who of old waged a titanic warfare from isle to isle.
Yet if a vague legend be true, the great stone is rather some bewitched
living creature waiting the breaking of spells; for, so they say, there
is a certain night in each year when it leaves its sandy bed and goes
down to quench its thirst in the waters of the loch.
Yet the birds do not fear it. The wheatear jerks and bobs upon its
topmost edge as we gaze and wonder how and when he came hither. Then
with a flirt of his tail he is off to repeat his cheerful, tuneless call
upon the nearest mound.
At its western end the loch widens and is divided into two little bays, a
bay of sand and a bay of mud. In the more northerly of these bays there
is being fought a long skirmish in the great, slow, endless war between
land and water; and now victory leans towards the land, for the sand,
blowing up day by day from the sea, settles here in the shallow water and
drives it back.
Twenty years ago, between the loch’s edge and the links lay a field of
shining yellow sand, to which the golden plover were wont to come down in
great flocks of an autumn evening. Once the sand had established itself,
the advance of grass and flowers began. Pushing forward a vanguard of
reeds and rushes, they pursued their steady march down to the water’s
edge; and now, where the sands were, is a grassy meadow, starred in its
season with the pale blooms of the grass of Parnassus, its landward side
meshed by rabbit tracks, the tiny rivulets winding through it beset with
scented beds of wild peppermint and haunted by snipe, and its outer
margin giving cover to duck and coots, to water-hens and dabchicks.
There are little islets beyond the meadow, some grass-grown, some still
of bare sand, and a little sandy beach at one place, where redshanks and
ringed plover run in the shallows. Thither too come the dunlin and the
sandpiper, and rarer birds—knots and ruffs, greenshanks with their triple
call, and whimbrels, the “summer whaups” of the isles-folk. Here you may
wade, knee-deep in clear water, to the very outer edge of the reeds
and find all the way a footing on hard sand. And the reeds will yield
their secrets. On this heaped pyramid the little grebe is hatching her
eggs, and that reedy platform is a coot’s nest. Or at a later season you
may chance, if the Fates be kind, to catch a glimpse of scurrying dusky
ducklings vanishing among the green stems, while their mother flutters
off, making-believe to have a broken wing.
A wide, shallow ditch divides the marsh from the fields on the south,
and where the ditch ends an old stone wall begins, marches a little way
towards the water, and then breaks off to run round the bay of mud, and
so up along the south shore of the loch. Where it turns off, this wall
seems at one time to have meditated an advance into the water, and in
its retreat has left a tumbled straggle of stones which runs out along a
little cape. Here at twilight come great gray herons, shouting hoarsely,
to sit gazing into the waters. Here, too, curlews are wont to gather,
keeping well out of gunshot from wall or ditch.
The southern bay—the bay of mud—holds a great reed-bed, where shelter
many water-fowl. The swans breed there, with coot and water-hen and
grebe. There, too, come the wild duck after their kind, mallard and teal,
pochard and scaup, golden-eye and merganser. But the bottom there is
muddy and treacherous, and it is a very doubtful pleasure to follow the
wild-fowl through their haunts in the reeds. About the inner margin of
the reed-bed, among the grassy tussocks and muddy pools, is a favourite
feeding-ground for snipe. There, too, the pewits gather, and gulls of
many kinds, while redshanks rise screaming from the water’s edge.
Out in the middle of the loch is a small islet or holm. This islet is
nested on every summer by a colony of black-headed gulls. There, too, the
terns breed, and there the great white-breasted cormorants, which come
up after the eels of the loch, sit with black wings widespread in the
sunlight. The circling, screaming cloud of gulls which hovers over the
islet is a sight never to be forgotten, and the very thought of the sound
of their calling brings back those wonderful summer days when all the
world was young, and a brighter sun shone in a bluer sky.
There are men scattered here and there about the world who look back to
the loch and its environs as to an earthly paradise; and ever in their
dreams the loch, the links, the shore are but a beloved and beautiful
background to one central figure—a boy with a gun. The seasons may
change and mingle, as seasons do in dreams, but the boy treads again the
familiar places, and renews his old disappointments and triumphs. Each
man sees different pictures and a different boy, but a boy with a gun is
always there.
It is strange to think that there may be other boys to-day who hold the
loch and all its pleasant places in fee as we hold it by the tenure of
our memories. Stranger still to think of all the vanished boys, back
through the years, the generations, the centuries, who have loved our
little loch, hunted by its margins, and dreamed strange dreams among the
sunny hollows of the links. Could they return to-day, islesman born,
Norseman, Pict, or Scot, they would find many changes; for man is ever
busy improving and altering the face of his kindly Mother Earth: yet the
loch they would see but little changed.
The waters shine as of old under the same sunlight, or ruffle into
miniature white-capped billows with the autumn winds, and by night
they mirror the unchanging stars. The splendour of the sandhills in
summer, when they robe themselves like kings with the purple and gold
of crowfoot and thyme; the hot scent of wild peppermint crushed under
foot; the trumpet call of the wild swans ringing through the frosty air
on winter nights; the pipings and flutings of the water-fowl among the
summer reeds; the screaming of falcons and croaking of ravens from the
cliffs; and overhead, from dawn to dusk, in the long days of the northern
summer, the myriad music of the larks;—all these things they would find
unchanged. And though the little fences and fields, the roads, the byres
and barns of men have changed the nearer scene, yet man has not altered
the “beloved outline of familiar hills,” nor silenced the deep music of
the eternal sea.
DUNCAN J. ROBERTSON.
(_“Longman’s Magazine.” By permission._)
[Illustration]
AMONG THE KELPERS.
In the end of March and the beginning of April, when the isles rise brown
from a steel-gray, wind-ruffled sea, their bare unloveliness is veiled by
pale blue smoke-drifts, which cast over the low, sloping shores a certain
charm of remoteness and of mystery. Later in the year, when the summer
seas are only less blue than the skies above them, and every island
shines like an emerald, white jets and spirals as from many altars rise
round all the shores. For spring and summer are the kelper’s seasons, and
long, dry days, which scorch and wither the young crops, are welcome to
the crofter who has secured a good stock of “tangles” in winter and a big
share in a “brook of ware,” now that “burning weather” has come.
Until recently no kelp was burned after Lammas—that is, August 2—but of
late years, when the season has been dry, the fires have been burned even
so late as October.
The kelper’s year may be reckoned from mid-November. Then he is paid for
his work in the year that is ended. Then the gales sweep up from north
or west, tearing from its deep sea-bed the red-ware, of which the long
supple stems are known to the islesmen as “tangles.” Should the wind
freshen to a gale during the night, the diligent kelper is up and out
before the first glimmer of dawn. Buffeted by the wind and lashed by the
stinging spray, he peers through the darkness, watching for those shadows
against the white surf of the breaking waves which he knows to be rolling
masses of seaweed and wrack. He is armed with a “pick,” an implement
resembling a very strong hayfork, but with the prongs set, like those of
a rake, at right angles to the handle. With this pick, struggling often
mid-thigh deep in the rushing waters, he grapples the tumbling seaweed
and drags it up the beach, out of reach of the waves. For the wind may
change, and the “brook,” as he calls a drift of weed, if not secured
at once, may be carried out to sea again, or even worse, to some other
strand where it will be lost to him. Of course, the winds and waves often
do this work alone, and pile the tangles in huge, glittering rolls along
the beaches.
When the brook is fairly on the strand, the work of the kelper is only
begun. He has to carry the tangles from the beach to the seabanks above,
in carts where that is possible, and where no carts can pass, then
laboriously on hand-barrows. I know of one strand on which the great gale
of November 1893 landed a brook of tangles which kept the kelpers busy
for three months. Once on the banks, the tangles are stacked in great
heaps on “steiths,” or foundations built of sea-rounded stones arranged
in such fashion as to give free ingress to the air. There they lie till
spring, when by the action of wind and sun they have become hard, dry,
and wrinkled—brands ready for the burning.
[Illustration: _Some “Big Hooses.”—II._
1. Trumbland, Rousay. 2. Graemeshall, Holm. 3. Melsetter. 4. Balfour
Castle. 5. Smoogro, Orphir.]
Only the tangles can be dried in winter; but the softer parts—the
foliage, one may call it—of the red-ware is not lost, but goes to manure
the fields, and until a sufficient quantity has been obtained for that
purpose none is made into kelp.
Each proprietor in the islands has right, generally under a charter
from the Crown, to the weed cast up on his shores. Each ware-strand, or
beach where drift-weed comes to land, is set apart for a certain number
of tenants on the estate to which it belongs, and each brook of ware as
it comes ashore is divided among these tenants, usually in proportion
to their rents. The general custom is, that it is decided by lot from
which portion of the brook each man shall draw his share. The middle is
generally considered the best part, as there the weed is in its greatest
bulk, and less rolled and beaten by the sea than at the ends; but it may
happen that one end is near the only part of the beach where the ware can
be carried up, and then the man who draws his lot there is saved much
labour.
The sharing of the ware is a fertile seed of dispute and an inexhaustible
source of quarrel. The “kelp grieve,” or overseer who acts for the
proprietor, generally settles all disputes; and each kelper, with the aid
of his family, carries up his share of the brook, and spreads it on the
drying-greens. These are most frequently links that know not cleek or
driver, and upon them in the early morning the ware is spread, as thinly
as may be, to be dried on the short, crisp grass by sun and wind.
To the man whose daily life is built about with stone and lime, the
summer work of the kelpers shines tempting as the waters to Tantalus.
He thinks not of that kelper in winter, plunging and struggling with the
slippery tangles amid the turmoil of the surf, but dreams only of quiet
summer days and the gray glimmer of sunlit waters seen through a veil of
drifting smoke.
[Illustration: _Kelp-burning._]
The links roll down in long, green billows from the ruins of an old
feudal castle, where the brown rabbit is the door-ward, and in whose
towers the starling nests unscared—roll down to a little bay, where
the long waves of the Atlantic come up unceasingly, curving in great,
green arches, before they break in thunder of white foam on the brown
rocks and yellow sand. Where the grass is thin and scant the sand shines
through, and this makes a bad drying-green, as kelp is of less value
when mixed with sand. But here is a short, close turf, nibbled upon by
rabbits, a racing-ground for lambs, where the thrift or sea-pink meets
the meadow-clover, and thyme and crowfoot break in ripples of purple and
gold to sweeten all the summer air.
Than this a better drying-green cannot be found. On one side of the bay
a long stretch of flat rocks runs down from the grass to the sea, and
they too are utilized, when tides allow, to dry the seaweed. Here, in
May and June, the whole air tingles with the song of larks innumerable.
Long before sunrise, before the last stars have faded in the west, they
are up, weaving a magical garment of song over all the green land. All
day and far into the dim twilight that is our northern night they sing
without ceasing. Larks are everywhere. In that tuft of grass at our
feet is a nest with four of the dusky-brown eggs which hold next year’s
music. There, in the ditch by the roadside, is another nest, from which
the featherless young raise feeble necks to gape for food, showing their
yellow tongues with the three black spots, which children here are told
will appear on the tongue of that child who takes the laverock’s nest.
Again, a fledgeling, speckled like a toad, rises suddenly from the clover
and flies a few yards, while its anxious parents circle close overhead
with little tremulous bursts of song, or flutter with trailing wing along
the grass.
That pretence of a broken wing, which now seems to be an instinct, must
surely at first have been arrived at by a process of reasoning. There
must have been long since a broken wing, and a boy, or a dog, or a snake
to chase the fluttering sufferer, and some wise observer among the
mother-birds of that forgotten day to see and make a note of the chase,
and with the heart-leap of a happy inspiration to find in it a new method
of protecting her eggs and tender young, and to hand down the lesson she
learned to our blithesome bird of the wilderness.
But this summer world, so thrilled with lark music, is not held by the
lark alone in fee. From every dry-stone wall young starlings are calling,
“Chirr! chirr! chirr!” and the old birds hurry to and fro between their
nests and the brown fields, soon to wave with oats and bere, where they
gather the insects and grubs their younglings love. Their bronze feathers
gleam in the sunshine as they pass, and at their harsh note of warning as
they see strangers near their homes the tumult of the young birds among
the stones is instantly hushed. The farmer owes these cheerful and busy
birds a heavy debt of gratitude, as the number of his insect enemies
which they destroy is incalculable.
On the smooth turf the dried ware is piled in conical heaps, like
giant molehills, to preserve it from the heavy night dews and from
possible rain, and among the brown hillocks the wheatear bobs up and
down, flirting his tail and repeating his cheerful “Tchk! tchk! chek-o!
chek-o!” At times the rapture of summer and of his love inspire him with
a vain desire of song. Up he goes, as if he were in very deed the skylark
he takes as his model, uttering harsh and unmelodious notes—a feeble
travesty of the golden rain of song that falls from the blue above him.
But his flight extends upwards only a yard or two, and he sinks down
again, chuckling to himself, as pleased with his song as any minor poet.
As the day wears down to afternoon the corncrakes begin to call from the
young grass, and all night long they answer each other from field to
field. Speak of them to the kelpers, and everywhere one hears the same
story of their hibernation in old walls. That landrails migrate has been
proved beyond question, but equally beyond question does it seem that
some few sleep out the winter here. Any kelper will tell how he, or if
not he himself then some one of his neighbours, once in winter found a
corncrake in some old dyke, to all appearance dead. He carried it home,
and, laying it before the fire, watched the death-like trance slowly melt
into life and motion.
As to the winter sleep I can only speak at second-hand; but I have seen
the birds in summer run like rats into the dry-stone dykes with which
our crofters so love to encumber and adorn their land. That these dykes
can be meant only for ornament is evident to the most casual observer in
this land where ponies, cows, sheep, ay, and the very geese, are ofttimes
tethered by the leg.
Yet if the dykes serve no other purpose, they provide nesting-places for
the starling and the wheatear, for the rock-pipit and the sparrow, which
save the crops of the crofter from destruction by grub and fly. Mice
also shelter in them, and rats in those islands where rats are found. In
the happy isle of which I write no rat can live. They come ashore time
and again from vessels touching at the little pier near the village, but
where they go or what fate awaits them none can tell—only this, that they
are seen no more on the green lap of the world.
But we have left the ware too long in the sun. Should rain come, the
kelper sees much of his profit melt away, for the salt which it causes
to crystallize on the dried weed wastes, and what is left makes inferior
kelp. All along the edges of the drying-greens are the burning pits or
kilns—hollows for all the world like huge plovers’ nests in shape, lined
with flat blue stones from the beach. They are about two feet deep and
some five feet in diameter.
When the ware is ready to be burned a smouldering peat or a handful of
lighted straw is laid in the bottom of the pit. Over this dry ware is
piled, slowly at first till the fire catches, and ever more rapidly as
the red core of smouldering flame waxes.
Sometimes ware and tangles are burned separately, but more frequently
the kelper burns them together. The tangles make the stronger and better
kelp. The pit is filled, and the ware or tangles are piled on till the
mass rises two feet or more above the level of the earth. Then for six or
eight hours it must be carefully watched and tended, and ever new fuel
piled on to prevent a burst of flame. When tangles are being burnt alone,
the kelper finishes off his pit with dried ware, as otherwise the tougher
knots and lumps of the latest burned tangles would not be thoroughly
consumed.
Each pit holds about half a ton, and takes the best part of a summer
day to burn, the actual time depending on the state of the wind and the
condition of the weed. When at last it smoulders low, it is “raked”
before being left to cool. One man takes a spade with a very small blade
and a handle fully seven feet long, the lower half being of iron; two
other workers, as often women as men, have “rakes,” implements not
unlike a rough caricature of a golfer’s iron, but with handles as long as
that of the spade. With these rakes the kelp is mixed and smoothed, while
the spadesman turns it up from the bottom of the pit. Hard work it is and
hot, great jets of flame shooting out under the spade from what looks
like gray crumbling earth mingled with black ashes and white quartz; for
the kelp assumes so many colours and forms that to describe it accurately
were impossible. As the kelper turns and tosses the glowing mass on a
warm June evening, he knows he has come near the end of that labour which
began in the gray winter dawn, when the rolls of red-weed lashed about
him amid the roaring backwash of the waves.
When the kelp has been sufficiently mixed, the pit is levelled and
smoothed over, all the outlying ashes are swept in with a handful of
dry ware, and it is left to cool and harden. Then, as the kelpers turn
homewards, the white sea fog creeps up by the rocks where all day long
the kelp smoke drifted.
Such is the work of the kelper, and such the places of his toil. An easy
and a pleasant life it is compared to that of the men who labour in the
bowels of the earth or in the great manufactories of smoke-darkened
cities. He has the green turf under his foot and the clear sky over
him, the sea makes music for him unceasingly, and the salt winds bring
him health and strength. The furred and feathered folks share his land
with him, and gather their harvest on the same shores. As he goes to
his work in the morning, through the silver mists of dawn, a flock of
blue rock-doves with great clatter of wings flash off through the clear
air. The redshank pipes shrilly at him from the copestone of the nearest
wall, and over the ploughed fields where their precious eggs are lying
the pewits wheel and scream. “Pewit-weet! pee-weet!”—their note has in
it for the isles folk, to whom the cuckoo is but a name, the very voice
of spring and hope and love. The ringed plover stands motionless on his
three-toed yellow feet, calling with his sweet, low note, and invisible
save to the keenest eye until he makes a little run and betrays himself.
Linnets swing and sing on the swaying thistles and among the heather. On
the blue waters of the bay a little fleet of eider ducks is afloat, and
their curious, hoarse, barking chuckle rolls up over the waters. Perhaps
a seal raises his round head, shining like a bottle, and gazes with
mild eyes at the men upon the beaches; while overhead gulls and terns
swing past, cleaving the strong air with careless wing. Far out to sea
the white gannets hawk to and fro. Suddenly one poises in mid-air for a
moment, then drops like a stone into the water, a fountain of white spray
flashing up in the sunlight as he disappears. Your kelper will tell you
how in his younger days he caught the solan geese by means of a herring
fastened to a board and sunk a few inches below the surface of the water.
The bird sees the fish, poises, and swoops down only to drive his mighty
bill through the board and break his neck.
Nearer shore than the gannets the kittiwakes are fishing, when suddenly
there glides among them a dusky skua, who forces the luckiest fisher to
drop his spoil, which the ravager catches in mid-air and bears off. A
true pirate of the air is the skua, and reminds me always of those low,
dark feluccas so dreadful and so dear to the sailor on the high seas
of romance. Far up in the blue ether a peregrine falcon sweeps round,
circling wide on motionless, outspread wings, or a raven goes croaking
from the cliffs to seek a prey, as he may have done for years unnumbered.
If the tradition of his longevity may be believed, that dark corbie who
flies croaking over the kelpers toiling in the morning sunlight, and sees
the white smoke rise from their harmless kilns—what fires may he not have
seen upon these beaches, and what strange smoke of sacrifice go up from
forgotten altars to the unchanging heavens? Give him even a shorter lease
of life than that which tradition assigns him, and still he may remember
the blazing beacons leap up to carry from isle to isle a warning of the
coming of Norse invaders. Allow him only two short centuries, and yet
he must have watched the smoke of many a burning homestead in the days
when the followers of the “Wee, wee German Lairdie” avenged their private
wrongs in the name of their king. The older men among the kelpers still
tell tales of the Jacobite lairds who lay hid like conies in the clefts
of the rocks till these calamities were overpast.
The old stories—the folk-tales of the isles—linger fragmentary among the
kelping people. One may hear from them how all the fairies were seen to
leave some island riding on tangles, and how they all went down in the
windy firth, never to be seen again of mortals. Here is a man, bowed and
crippled by rheumatism, who will tell how he was shot in the back by a
“hill-ane” when ploughing. He saw not his assailant, but only the shadow
of him on the earth. Another old man remembers having his side hurt as
a boy, and going to a “wise woman” to be cured. She told him he had been
“forespoken”—that is, bewitched—by a woman then dead, and made him drink
water mixed with earth from the “fore-speaker’s” grave. She then put a
hoop covered with a sheep’s skin on his head, a basin of water on that,
and poured melted lead through the head of a key into the water, giving
the patient a piece of the lead in the form of a heart as a charm. The
cure wrought by this modern Norna was not, however, effectual.
There are many quaint and even beautiful turns of speech among these
hard-working crofters. Their faces shine on my memory red like setting
suns through the white reek of the kelp pits. Here is one whose fathers
fled from Perthshire after “the ’45,” and who thinks that some day he
would like to go back to see the old place again—the “old place” which
none of his have looked upon for one hundred and forty years! He toils
night and day in summer cultivating his croft, fishing for lobsters, and
making kelp. His rent is perhaps seven or eight pounds. Books, you would
think, must be unknown to him; yet he will tell you he has “always been
a great reader of Sir Walter Scott’s works,” and under the spell of that
mighty wizard his hard life has budded and wreathed itself with romance.
At the next pit is a man of a very different type. Quiet and slow, this
man has led an honest life, with an eye ever to the main chance. Pressed
once for an answer to some question important to the settling of a kelp
dispute, after vain attempts at evasion, he burst out, “Gie me time, Mr.
Blank, to wind up me mind.”
Across the bay the pits are watched by an old bachelor—a _rara avis_
among the kelpers—a little, clean-shaven, mouse-like man, who has “money
in the bank.” He holds a croft where his ancestors have dwelt longer than
the memory of man extends. The peat fire smouldering on his hearth has,
to his certain knowledge, burned unquenched for two hundred years. How
much longer ago it was kindled tradition recordeth not. Every night his
last work is to “rest” that precious fire, and every morning it claims
his earliest care. All his life he has toiled, gathering a harvest both
from land and sea, and a harvest of content and happiness as well, such
as few crofters know how to reap. “When I come oot on a fine simmer
morning at four o’clock wi’ never anither reek but me ain, I’m laird o’
a’ the land as far as I can see.” He has the secret of the lordship of
the eye, which can give to a penniless man more profit of the pleasant
earth than to the greatest lord of land among them all.
Look at this fellow, gaunt, black, and shaggy; he might be one of
_Punch’s_ Scotch elders. Asked if he remembered some event of thirty
years ago—“No, sir,” he said. “Ye see, I wasna at hame then; I was divin’
in the face o’ the sea for a livin’.” He had been a fisherman, and quite
naturally chose to say so in this poetic phrase.
These are only a few from among the many typical kelpers whose friendship
I am proud to own. But if the types among them are many and various, in
one thing they are all alike—their capacity for hard work. That work
does not cease with the smoothing over of the smouldering pits. When
the kelp has cooled it is broken up and lifted out of the pit in great
lumps which look like gray slag, with streaks of white, blue, and brown
running through it. Should it be exposed to rain its quality is much
deteriorated, and to avoid this danger storehouses are built by the
lairds, to which the kelp is carted. The kelp grieve weighs each man’s
quantity as it is brought in, and he is paid a fixed sum per ton. When
a sufficient quantity is gathered in the store a vessel is chartered,
and where there is a pier the kelp is carted alongside. In islands
where there is no pier it must be taken off in small boats. The kelpers
themselves provide the carriage. Then the sails are spread, and the
produce of the year’s work is carried off to chemical works far over
sea, where, by processes unknown to me, iodine is extracted from it. The
kelper receives about two pounds ten shillings for each ton of kelp he
manufactures, and the importance and benefit of the industry to these
crofters cannot be overestimated. I have known a man paying a rent of
eight pounds receive thirty-four pounds for his kelp in one year. Nor
is the actual price he receives the only benefit the crofter derives
from kelp. Were it not for the share of the profit falling to the laird,
he too often could not, in these days, afford to assist his tenants in
improving either their houses or their land. On the whole, then, the
kelper’s lot is not an unhappy one. His work lies in pleasant places, and
it is eminently healthy, and his days, as a rule, are long in the land
and on the sea.
DUNCAN J. ROBERTSON.
(_“Longman’s Magazine.” By permission._)
A WHALE-HUNT IN ORKNEY.
“Whales in the bay so soon in the season!” exclaimed the clergyman,
starting to his feet. “Come away,” he continued, “you have yet another
day before you; we imitate the great of old, who entertained their guests
with tournaments.”
The manse garden commanded a fine view of Mill Bay, and on rushing out
into the open air we saw a long dark line of boats, some with sails and
some with oars, stretching across the blue waters of the broad voe,
upwards of a mile from the shore. The practised eye of my host caught the
gleam of dorsal fins in front of the boats, and we immediately hurried
down to the beach, scarcely drawing breath till we stood on the bank
above the sands of Mill Bay. The inmates of the neighbouring cottages
had already assembled in eager groups on the grassy downs, and other
islanders still came flocking from remoter farms and cabins to the shore.
Several of the men were armed with harpoons, while farm lads flourished
over their shoulders formidable three-pronged “graips” and long-hafted
hayforks.
Many of the matrons had their heads encased in woollen “buities,” and
this peculiar headdress imparted a singular picturesqueness to the
excited groups on the sea-bank. Other boats with skilled hands on board
put off from various points along the shore, and the fleet of small craft
in the bay was rapidly increased by the arrival of fresh yawls. The crowd
of urchins on the beach, who “thee’d” and “thou’d” each other like little
Quakers in the Orcadian vernacular, cheered lustily as boat after boat
hove in view round the headlands, swelling the fleet of whalers.
The line of boats was now little more than a quarter of a mile from the
beach. The bottle-nosed or ca’ing whales, showing their snouts and dorsal
fins at intervals, seemed to advance slowly, throwing out skirmishers and
cautiously feeling their way. As the beach was smooth and sandy, with
a gentle slope, the boatmen in pursuit were endeavouring to drive the
“school” into the shallows, where harpoons, hayforks, and other weapons
could be used to advantage.
The excitement of the spectators on land increased as the long line of
the sea-monsters drew closer inshore. From the boats there came wafted
across the water the sound of beating pitchers and rattling rowlocks,
and the hoarse chorus of shouting voices. This babel of noises, which
the water mellowed into a wild war-chant with cymbal accompaniment, was
meant to scare the “school” and hasten the stranding of the whales. But
an incident occurred that changed the promising aspect of affairs, turned
the tide of battle, and gave new animation to the scene.
Eager to participate in the expected slaughter, two or three farm lads,
whose movements had escaped notice, suddenly shot off from the shore in
a skiff rowing right in front of the advancing line. The glitter and
splash of oars alarmed the leaders, and the entire “school,” seized with
a sudden panic, wheeled round and dashed at headlong speed into the line
of pursuing boats.
A shout rose from the shore as the flash of tail-fins, the heaving of
the boats, and the rapid strokes of the boatmen showed all too plainly
the escape of the whales, and the success of their victorious charge.
Away beyond the broken line of the fleet they plunged in wild stampede,
striking the blue waters into spangles of silver foam. Arches of spray,
blown into the air at wide distances apart, served to indicate the size
of the “school” and the speed of the fugitives.
“Whew!” exclaimed my reverend friend, “that was a gallant charge, and
deserved to succeed; but I hope our brave lads will yet put salt upon
their tails. The boatmen have toiled hard for their share of the fish,
and great would be the pity if the whales made right off to the open sea.
It is not every day that a ‘drave’ a hundred strong visits our shores,
and there they go round the head of Odness in full career.”
A commotion among the crowd at a short distance along the beach here
arrested our attention. The exciting spectacle of the grand charge and
wild flight of the whales had so absorbed our gaze that we failed to
notice a mishap which was fortunately more ludicrous than alarming.
The three youths who foolishly rowed off from the shore and caused the
stampede had suffered for their rashness by getting their skiff capsized
when the sea-monsters wheeled round to the charge. On gaining the
outskirts of the crowd, we found the three luckless whale-hunters already
beached. Bonnetless, dripping, and disconsolate, they were the objects
of mirth to some, of commiseration to others.
At last they made off, and we immediately set out in the direction of
Odness to catch a sight of the whales, which had quite disappeared from
the bay. The boats had turned in pursuit when the “school” escaped, and
they were now making all haste to double the headland. On gaining the top
of the cliffs, we were glad to observe that the whales, recovered from
their fright, drifted leisurely along the coast, giving way at times to
eccentric gambols.
“All right!” cried my friend, handing me back my binocular; “they are
coasting away famously round Lamb Head, and they are almost certain to
take a snooze in Rousholm Bay, which is the best whale-trap I know in
Orkney. Let us sit down here on the top of the cliffs till the boats come
abreast, and then we shall take a nearer way to Rousholm than following
the coast.”
The summit of the rocks, softly carpeted with grass, moss, and wild
flowers, afforded a pleasant resting-place, and commanded a picturesque
prospect. To eastward there was a wide expanse of sea, stretching away
without a break to the Norwegian fiords. The whale-hunting fleet,
composed of all varieties of small craft, was soon well abreast of
our resting-place. A fine and favourable breeze had sprung up, and
fishing-yawls, with their brown sails outspread, coasted briskly along.
The rearguard of the fleet consisted of row-boats manned by patient
and determined boatmen, who pulled hard at the oars in the prospect
of winning some share of the spoil. We remained a short time on the
moss-crowned cliffs gazing on the animated scene, and listening to the
voices of the boatmen, the plash of the waves below, and the plaint
of restless sea-birds. On leaving our lair we dropped down upon a
neighbouring farmhouse, where a couple of “shelties” were placed at our
disposal, and away we trotted along field-paths and rough tracks to the
head of Rousholm Bay, on the south side of the island. From all the
cottages and farms in the district the islanders were flocking to the
shore of the bay, and we thus had good hope that a portion of the school
at least had run blindfold into the whale-trap of Rousholm. On nearing
the shore we were delighted to find that our hope was fulfilled. A large
detachment of the whales, supposed to number one hundred and fifty, had
entered the bay, while the rest of the school had disappeared amid the
reaches of the Stronsay Firth.
Rounding the point of Torness, and stretching across the mouth of the
bay, the fleet of small craft again hove into view, and pressed upon the
rear of the slowly advancing and imprisoned whales. Among the onlookers
there was now intense excitement, the greatest anxiety being manifested
lest the detached wing should follow the main army, and again break the
line of boats in a victorious charge. The shoutings and noise of the
boatmen recommenced, and echoed from shore to shore of the beautiful and
secluded bay. A fresh alarm seized the monsters, but instead of wheeling
about and rushing off to the open sea as before, they dashed rapidly
forwards a few yards, pursued by the boats, and were soon floundering
helplessly in the shallows.
The scene that ensued was of the most exciting description. Fast and
furious the boatmen struck and stabbed to right and left; while the
people on the shore, forming an auxiliary force, dashed down to assist
in the massacre, wielding all sorts of weapons. The wounded monsters
lashed about with their tails, imperilling life and limb, and the ruddy
hue of the water along the stretch of shore soon indicated the extent of
the carnage. Some of the larger whales displayed great tenacity of life;
but the unequal conflict closed at last, and no fewer than a hundred and
seventy carcasses were dragged up on the beach.
One or two slight accidents occurred, but to me it seemed marvellous that
the boatmen did not injure each other as much as the whales amid the
confusion and excitement of the scene. The carcasses, as I was informed,
would realize between £300 and £400; and grateful were the people that
Providence had remembered the island of Stronsay, by sending them a
wonderful windfall of bottle-noses fresh from the confines of the Arctic
Circle.
DANIEL GORRIE
(_“Summers and Winters in the Orkneys.”_)
[Illustration: _Wreck at Burgh Head, Stronsay._]
ARTICLES MADE OF STRAW.
The Orkney peasantry of two centuries ago lived in a poor country—a
country ground down by the tyranny of greedy and unscrupulous rulers; a
country whose inhabitants had neither the raw materials from which to
construct many necessary utensils nor the money to purchase them. It is
interesting to note some of the ways in which our forefathers overcame
the circumstances in which they were placed. One of the most notable is
the ingenious use of straw for the construction of many domestic utensils.
The materials from which articles of straw were made were principally
_bent_ and the straw of black oats. The bent, after being cut, was
loosely bound into rough sheaves and left to dry and wither. It was then
bound into neat sheaves called _beats_, the legal size of which used to
be two spans in circumference. Each beat was carefully pleated at the
upper end, gradually tapering upwards into a cord which served to bind
two beats together. The pair of beats so fastened was called a “band of
bent,” twelve of which formed a “thrave.” From this bent were made the
cords, always called _bands_, which were used in the manufacture of
straw. During the long winter evenings each ploughman was required to
wind into bands one beat of bent. The cord was spun or twisted by the
fingers, the two strands being each twisted singly, and at the same time
laid into each other in such a way that the tendency of the strands to
untwist was the means of keeping the two firmly twisted together.
The straw used was that of the common Orkney black oats, which was at
once tougher and more flexible than that of other cultivated kinds.
The straw to be used was not threshed with the flail, which would have
spoiled it, but was selected from the sheaves, held in a bunch between
the hands, and beaten on some hard edge to remove the grain. Such straw
was called _gloy_. From those two materials, bent bands and gloy, a very
wide variety of indispensable articles were manufactured by the Orkney
farmer.
These articles may be divided into three classes—flexible, semi-flexible,
and inflexible. Of the flexible type, the most simple and primitive
article was the _sookan_, or, to give it a still older name, the
_wislin_. This was simply straw twisted loosely into a thick cord of one
strand, for temporary use. If not at once used to tie round something, it
had to be wound into a clew to preserve its twist.
A very common use of sookans in the winter-time was to form what were
known as “straw boots.” A loop of the sookan was passed round the instep,
over the shoe or _rivlin_, the thick straw cord being then wound round
the ankles and the lower part of the leg. When the snow was deep, such
straw boots formed a very comfortable part of the peasant’s attire. Less
than a century ago, on a Sunday when the snow lay deep on the ground,
more than forty men wearing straw boots were seen in one Orkney church.
It must be added that on the way home some of them were severely reproved
by a neighbour for having performed this unnecessary labour on the
Sabbath day!
Next in order comes _simmans_. This was a strong straw rope made of two
strands, also twisted by hand, and rolled into great balls or clews, the
size of which was the width of the barn door. The main use of simmans
was to thatch the corn stacks, and also the roofs of the cottages. A
newly-thatched cottage, with the bright warm colour of the new straw
ropes, was a pleasing object in an Orkney landscape. The sombre colour
given when the simmans were twisted of brown heather was less cheerful,
but Nature did her best even here by her decoration of the low walls with
bright yellow and green lichens.
Most of the ropes and cordage required by the Orkney farmer were made
either of hair or of bent. The bent bands already noticed were made
into ropes on a rude machine called a _tethergarth_, and were used
for tethering cattle and sheep, and for “boat tethers” for small
fishing-boats. Finer bent ropes were applied to a great many uses, such
as flail “hoods,” sheep shackles, and all parts of horse harness. A very
important part of this, the collar or _wazzie_, was formed by twisting
four thick folds of straw together; and, when properly made, I suspect
the wazzie was much cooler for the horse than the modern collar with
its absurd cape. Even the plough-traces were made of bent ropes, which,
if quickly worn, were easily replaced. For bringing in the crop, a large
net made of bent cord, and called a _mazie_, was put round a bundle of
sheaves, and suspended, one on each side of the horse, from the horns of
the _clibber_, a rough kind of wooden pack-saddle.
_Flackies_, or mats made of straw bound together with bent cord, were
used for many purposes. Small ones were used as door-mats, and large
ones were hung up as an apology for an inner door. Horse flackies were
laid over the back of the horse to protect it from the friction of the
clibber, and his sides from the load which it supported. Flackies were
also fixed on the rafters, under the straw, when thatching house roofs.
We next come to what I have called the semi-flexible class of straw
articles. The first to be noticed is the _kaesie_, which, in various
shapes and sizes, was put to a great number of uses. It was made of
straw, bound by bent cord, like the flackie, but was of a closer texture,
and it was usually in the shape of a basket. The _meils-kaesie_ was so
called because it was made to hold a “meil” of corn—that is, a little
over a hundredweight.
It was in these meils-kaesies that the corn was carried to the mill, and
the meal brought back from it; for carts were unknown, and roads were
but paths or tracks. Each horse carried a full kaesie on either side.
The horses travelled in single file, the head of each being tied to the
tail of the one in front. A man was in charge of each pair of horses,
to attend to the proper balancing of their loads. A train of twenty or
thirty horses marching in this way was a picturesque sight. On arriving
at the mill, the burdens were removed, and the head of the foremost horse
was tied to the tail of the hindmost, which prevented their moving away
until their drivers were ready to return home.
Next may be mentioned the _corn-kaesie_, which was used to hold dressed
grain. These were shaped somewhat like a barrel, and were made in various
sizes. Then comes the common kaesie, used for carrying burdens on the
back. These also were of different sizes. In form they were narrow and
rounded at the bottom, and widened gradually towards the top, which was
finished by a stiff circular rim called the _fesgar_, to give firmness
to the basket. To the fesgar were fastened the ends of a bent rope of
suitable length, called the _fettle_, by which the kaesie was suspended
from the shoulders of the bearer.
To the same class as the kaesies belong the _cubbies_, the names and uses
of which are legion. These were smaller than the former, and firmer in
texture, while the shapes showed more variety, as might be needed for
their special uses. We need only mention a few. The windo’ or winnowing
cubbie was used to pour out the corn gently on the barn floor, while the
wind blowing in at one door and out at the other carried away the chaff.
The sawin’ or sowing cubbie carried the seed corn in spring. The horse
cubbie was used as a muzzle for a horse when necessary. The hen cubbie
was suspended as a nest for the domestic fowls. The use of the spoon
cubbie, which hung by the side of the fire, needs no explanation. The
bait cubbie and the sea cubbie must close our list, the former used for
carrying bait, and the latter for the catch of fish. A cubbie was always
carried by the beggars who swarmed before the introduction of the poor
law, and to “tak’ the cubbie and the staff” was a phrase meaning to be
forced to beg one’s bread.
We now come to what I have called inflexible articles. Here we may
mention first the _luppie_, once in universal use for holding all sorts
of dry materials, such as meal, burstin, eggs, and the like. Luppies were
round and barrel-shaped, close in texture, and as firm as a board. They
varied much in size, being made from about ten inches to three feet in
height. They had a rim round the lower end to protect the bottom, and two
“lugs” at the top. Those of the smallest size were used by housewives as
work-baskets.
The work on these luppies, and on the straw stools to be mentioned next,
was considered the finest and most durable. Small coils or gangs of straw
were firmly and closely laced over one another. The lacing cord was of
the strongest bent, and the projecting ends of the bent were carefully
clipped off. These bands were known as _stool bands_.
We now come to the straw stools or chairs, which were mainly of three
kinds. The first was a sort of low, round stool without any back. Such a
stool could be easily lifted to or from the fireside, and on an emergency
could be instantly converted into a luppie by simply being turned upside
down. The next was called the low-backed stool, having a semi-circular
back reaching to the shoulders of the sitter. Last comes the high-backed
or hooded stool, which was the easy-chair of the Orkney cottage. In
later times the seat was always made of wood, in the form of a square
box, with a slightly projecting top. Strips of wood were used to support
the front edges of the back, and to form elbow rests in front of these.
The seat box usually contained a drawer, in which the goodman kept his
supply of snuff, and perhaps the few books which made up the cottage
library. This form of chair, which is now regarded as the orthodox one,
was invented in the middle of the eighteenth century by a native of North
Ronaldsay, as the construction of the seat of wood took far less time
than working it all in straw; but the older form, with its circular straw
seat, and the side slips and elbow rests entirely covered with straw and
bent cords, was much more elegant in the lines of its form.
WALTER TRAIL DENNISON.
(_Adapted from “Orcadian Papers.”_)
[Illustration: _Making a straw-backed chair._]
THE WEATHER OF ORKNEY.
A foreign writer has said that Englishmen grumble more at their weather
than at anything else, while it is really the only thing about their
country of which they might be proud. His meaning is that, compared with
other regions of the world, the climate of Great Britain is singularly
free from disagreeable extremes of heat or cold, and of drought or flood.
And if this is true of Great Britain as a whole, it is especially true
of Orkney. In summer we rarely suffer from heat, and in winter we are
equally free from extreme cold. The mean temperature of the whole year in
Orkney (45·4°) is little below that of Aberdeen (46·3°), of Alnwick in
Northumberland (46·3°), or of Kew near London (49·4°).
The equability of our temperature, or its freedom from all extremes of
heat and cold, is due to the influence of the sea. The temperature of the
ocean varies only about 13° during the year; it is lowest in February,
being 41·6°, while that of the air is 38·6°, and is highest in August,
being 54·5°, while that of the air is 54°.
The smallness of the difference between the annual mean temperature of
Orkney and that of Kew is really due to the mildness of our winters.
Taking the mean of the three winter months, we find that of Orkney to be
almost the same as that of Kew, and slightly higher than that of Alnwick.
For the three summer months, however, Orkney is three degrees colder than
Alnwick and eight degrees colder than Kew. The hottest day in Orkney
during the last thirty years only reached 76°, while at Kew 92° was
recorded.
The extent to which the sea influences our climate can best be seen by
comparing it with that of an inland or continental station of similar
latitude. Winnipeg, in the province of Manitoba, formerly well known to
Orkney men as Fort Garry in the Red River Settlement, lies in nearly the
same latitude as London. Its mean temperature, however, during the three
winter months is only 0·9°, or thirty-one degrees below freezing-point,
and thirty-eight degrees lower than that of Orkney; in summer it is 66°,
or thirteen degrees above that of Orkney.
Not only is our climate ruled by the sea; it is ruled by a sea whose
waters are themselves somewhat warmer than their latitude might lead us
to expect. The temperature of the ocean is often affected by currents,
bringing water either from warmer or from colder regions. In the case of
the ocean waters round our coasts, the movement is from the south-west.
This movement is due at first to the Gulf Stream, which carries a great
mass of warm water from the Gulf of Mexico into the North Atlantic, and
afterwards to a surface drift caused by the prevailing south-westerly
winds.
Our coast waters are therefore somewhat warmer than they would be if
there were no such movement, and much warmer than if there were a current
in the opposite direction, sweeping along the shores of Norway from the
northern ocean. If we compare our climate with that of Nain, in Labrador,
which lies in nearly the same latitude, and is also on the Atlantic
coast, we shall see how much depends upon the ocean currents. The cold
Arctic current which washes the Labrador coast, bringing with it melting
icebergs, snow, and fog, reduces the mean annual temperature of Nain to
less than 26°, more than nineteen degrees below that of Orkney.
While the climate of oceanic islands is benefited by the equable
temperature of the ocean, it is often marked by excessive moisture and
rainfall. Yet even in this matter we shall see that Orkney has little to
complain of, while, of course, serious droughts are practically unknown.
Scotland, though small in area, shows great inequality in the
distribution of its rainfall, due to the diversity of its surface and to
the fact that most of its rain is brought by westerly winds. Districts
near the west coast, especially if mountainous, have a much greater
rainfall than those towards the east, which are also on the whole less
elevated. Thus considerable portions of the West Highlands have an annual
rainfall of over 80 inches, Ben Nevis recording over 150. Many parts of
the eastern Lowlands, on the other hand, have only 30 inches or less; and
Cromarty, which is the driest station in Scotland, has only 23 inches.
Compared with the mainland of Scotland, then, it does not seem that the
climate of our islands gives us much cause for grumbling, for our annual
rainfall varies from 37·7 inches at Sandwick to 30·7 at Start Point in
Sanday. Our wettest months are October, November, and December, during
which we receive from one-third to one-half of our yearly rainfall; our
driest months are April, May, and June, which together give us only
one-eighth of the total.
One fact about rain is sometimes overlooked: in cool climates rain brings
heat. This may not be noticeable at the time, but its general effect can
be observed. Just as it requires heat to turn water into vapour, and as
evaporation always produces cold, so the change back again from vapour
into water sets free some of this heat, raising the temperature of the
air, of the rain itself, and of the land on which it falls. Much of the
warming effect of our westerly winds is due not to the direct warmth of
the Gulf Stream, as used to be supposed, but simply to the fact that
these winds are rain-carrying winds. They thus bring to us the benefit
of that solar heat which far away to the south-west caused the vapour to
rise from the surface of the ocean.
The chief difference between our weather and that of Scotland is,
perhaps, the greater prevalence of high winds in Orkney. The land being
low, our islands are swept by the full force of the gales so common in
the North Atlantic. When speaking of winds, it may be useful to remember
the classification which is recognized by the Meteorological Office.
A wind moving at the rate of thirteen miles an hour is called a light
breeze; forty miles represents the velocity of a moderate gale, and
fifty-six miles a strong gale; seventy-five miles an hour is the speed
of a storm, and ninety miles that of a hurricane. We have the record of
only one hurricane, on November 17, 1893, with a velocity of ninety-six
miles. Several gales of over eighty miles have been experienced, and one
summer gale of seventy-five miles in the year 1890. During the fifteen
years 1890 to 1904 three hundred gales were recorded in Orkney, while
Alnwick experienced only one hundred and fifty-seven, and Valencia, on
the west coast of Ireland, one hundred and thirty for the same period.
Fleetwood, on the coast of Lancashire, however, had a record of three
hundred and six gales during those years.
Every Orcadian must have noticed a type of weather which is common all
the year round, but especially so in winter. On a blue sky wisps of
cirrus or “mare’s-tail” cloud appear in patches. Gradually these increase
till they form a continuous haze, in which a lunar halo or “broch,” and
occasionally solar halos or “sun-dogs,” may be seen. Then the wind, which
was light and probably westerly, backs to the southward and eastward, and
the sky becomes threatening. The wind increases, perhaps to a moderate
gale, and rain falls heavily. The wind then shifts towards the south and
south-west, increasing in force, sometimes quite suddenly, or it may
change still further round towards the north. Meantime the barometer,
which has been low and falling, begins to rise briskly, and the weather
clears.
To understand how this common series of weather changes comes about, a
little knowledge of cyclones is necessary. A cyclone is a movement in
the air resembling a whirlwind; the cyclones of the Indian Ocean and
the China seas, indeed, are real whirlwinds of the most violent and
destructive type. In the North Atlantic they exist for the most part as
enormous eddies in the great air-ocean, often several hundreds of miles
in diameter, probably rotating with the force of a gale near the centre,
and at the same time moving forward as a whole at a moderate speed. A
cyclone has been known to keep company with one of our Atlantic liners
during its whole voyage, but the rate of progress is often less than this.
A cyclone owes its origin to some local excess of heat, such as might
arise from a heavy rainfall, the heat causing an upward movement in
the air. The inrush of cool air which then follows begins a circular
or whirling motion. The moist air in front of the cyclone gives up
its moisture with the fall in temperature, causing the rains that are
invariably found in front of such a movement. The air after the rainfall
is dry and warmer, and its ascent keeps up a partial vacuum or area of
low pressure, which is the centre or vent of the cyclone. It is really
the rainfall in front of the cyclonic system that causes its forward
movement, assisted by the rotation of the earth. Each space relieved
of its moisture forms in its turn the new centre. A coast-line, or an
anti-cyclonic movement of the air in front of a cyclone, will alter its
course. When one reaches the shores of Europe, it soon spends itself for
want of the moisture-laden winds in front to keep up the system.
In the northern hemisphere the direction of rotation of a cyclone is
opposite to the movement of the hands of a watch; in the southern
hemisphere it is in the same direction as the movement of the hands of a
watch. This is the effect of the rotation of the earth, as will be clear
after a little thought on the matter. In the North Atlantic the forward
motion of a cyclone is always from the westward to the eastward; hence
the “storm warnings” which reach us from the United States.
[Illustration: _Diagram of a typical Atlantic cyclone._]
Our islands lie in the most common track of those Atlantic cyclones, and
the centre of the whirl often passes over or near the Orkneys. Now if you
will look at the chart or diagram of a typical cyclone as given here, and
suppose it to be moving slowly from south-east to north-west, or suppose
yourself to be moving through it in the opposite direction while it
remains still, you will see how the changes of wind and weather which we
have described must result from this movement.
During the greater part of the year our weather is mainly due to a
constant procession of those Atlantic cyclones, great and small, and
hence arises the changeableness of our winds and our weather. But in
the spring we often have weather of a different type. Our winds are
then often cold, sometimes dry, and frequently easterly or northerly
in direction for several days together. Such weather is due to
anti-cyclones—that is, areas of high pressure, from which the air flows
downwards and spreads outwards in every direction. An anti-cyclone is
the opposite of a cyclone in almost every respect. Its supply of dry air
often comes from the ascending air in the centre of a cyclone, which has
deposited its moisture. At the meteorological station on Ben Nevis it
was sometimes noticed that when an anti-cyclone was stationed over the
south of England, and a cyclone was crossing the north of Scotland, there
was an upper air-current travelling from the latter to the former, and
no doubt supplying the dry air of the anti-cyclone. This is a type of
movement which is usually found over land rather than sea, and it has not
the regular forward movement of the cyclone.
The last point which we may notice about our weather is the amount of
sunshine which we receive. At every well-equipped observatory, such as
that of Deerness, there is an instrument which records the duration of
sunshine, hour by hour and day by day, all the year round. In the matter
of sunshine, Orkney is not so badly treated as we may sometimes think.
The average number of hours of sunshine each year recorded at Deerness
is 1,177, while Edinburgh enjoys only 1,166. London is a little better,
with 1,260, while Hastings, on the more favoured south coast of England,
has an average record of 1,780 hours. Our brightest month is May, with an
average of 178 hours of sunshine, and our gloomiest month is naturally
December, with only 20·6 hours.
THE PLACE-NAMES OF ORKNEY.
Orkney place-names form an attractive subject of study. There is always
some reason why a certain place received its own particular name, though
that reason may often be difficult to discover. The use of a name is, of
course, to distinguish one place from other places of a similar class,
and the most obvious way of doing so is to refer to some special feature
or peculiarity of the place. In this way arise such names as the Red
Head, the North Sea, the Muckle Water, and Green Holm. Houses and farms
and islands are often named after the owner.
When people of a different race and language settle in a country, or
when the language changes, as happened in Orkney after its annexation to
Scotland, the old names may still be used, although when their meaning
is unknown or has been forgotten they are apt to be changed in various
ways. People rarely take the trouble of inventing a new name for a place
if they can find out the name already given to it. Thus if there had
been any Celtic or Pictish inhabitants left in Orkney when the Norsemen
settled there, the Celtic names of the islands and hills and bays would
have been handed down from them to us. But all the old place-names in
Orkney are Norse, and the only Celtic elements found in them refer to the
settlements and churches of the Culdees, as we have already mentioned.
The Norse place-names are usually descriptive, based either on the
appearance or the situation of the place, or on the name of its occupier.
Such names have an interest which is entirely wanting in the modern
names given to farms or houses, names which are often selected for
absurd or trivial reasons. There is little need for inventing any new
names in a land which has been so fully supplied with them already. For
it is not only the various islands and their most prominent physical
features that bear descriptive Norse names; hillock and meadow, field
and spring, rock, geo, and skerry—all have been named by our forefathers
with names of which the form as well as the meaning is now in many cases
forgotten. Those names should be regarded as relics entrusted to our
care, and we ought to learn them from the old people by whom they are
still remembered, and preserve them from alteration or oblivion, as the
material relics of our romantic history are now being preserved from
destruction and decay.
_Orkney_, the general name of the island group, is partly Celtic and
partly Norse. Pliny, the Roman geographer, mentions _Cape Orcas_,
probably Duncansby Head in Caithness, and calls the islands _Orcades_.
The Celtic Scots called them the _Orc Islands_, and southern writers use
the form _Orcanig_. The root of the name is supposed to be _orc_, which
meant the bottlenose whale. The Norse visitors added the termination
_-ey_, meaning “island.”
When the Norsemen settled in these islands, they gave to each a name
in their own language, and these names have been preserved with little
alteration, though their meaning has generally been forgotten. Some were
named from their configuration or appearance, as Hoy (_Ha-ey_), the high
island; Flotta (_Flat-ey_), the flat island; Sanday, the sand island;
Eday, the island of the _eith_ or isthmus; Burray (_Borgar-ey_), the
islands of the “brochs.” Some were named from their position, as Westray,
the west island; Auskerry, the east skerry. Some were named after
persons as Rousay, Rolf’s island; Gairsay (_Gareksey_), Garek’s island;
Graemsay (_Grimsey_), Grim’s island; Copinsay, Kolbein’s island. The name
_Rinansey_, the island of St. Ninian, often called Ringan, was afterwards
changed to Ronaldsay, with “North” prefixed to distinguish it from the
original Rognvald’s island, now South Ronaldsay. A few were named from
their uses, as Faray, the sheep island; and Hrossey, the horse island, an
old name for the Mainland (_Meginland_), or principal island of the group.
It is very odd to find in books and on maps the Latin name _Pomona_
applied to this last island—Pomona, the Roman goddess of harvest-plenty,
whose name was also used to indicate the fruits of the earth. The
explanation seems to be that a mistake was made by George Buchanan,
the greatest Latin scholar whom Scotland ever produced, in quoting a
passage from Solinus, an old Latin writer. Solinus, speaking of some
island which he calls Thylé or Thulé, says that it is five days’ sail
from the Orcades, and that it is large and rich in the constant yield
of its harvests (_pomona_). Buchanan, who knew much of Latin but little
of either Thulé or the Orcades, takes this to mean that “Thulé is large
and Pomona is rich and fertile,” and he concludes from this that Pomona
must be the chief island of the Orcades. Thus by a mere blunder the name
“Pomona” was given to the Mainland; but there is no good reason why
we should perpetuate this blunder. “Mainland” is the name which every
intelligent Orcadian should use. It is believed by some that the use of
the word _pomona_ itself is due to another blunder, the mistake of a
copyist, and that what Solinus really wrote was a contracted form of a
word which simply meant fruit.
Our place-names have suffered much from the blunders of surveyors and
map-makers who knew nothing of the Norse language. Whenever they found
a name which bore some resemblance to an English word, they immediately
changed it into what they supposed to be its correct English form. A
good example of a name thus “corrected” for us is that of the place now
called “Walls.” The proper name of the district is _Waas_, and this is
the name which it should bear on the map. But the intelligent surveyors
no doubt knew that there is an English word “walls” which is pronounced
“wa’s” in Scotland, and so they assumed that the Norse place-name “Waas”
ought to be written and pronounced “Walls.” This is of course an absurd
error. “Waas” is a form of “Voes,” a name which is admirably suited to
the district, the land of the voes or bays.
The name of our county town, Kirkwall, has been similarly disguised
by the well-meaning reforms of ignorant persons. Old people in the
islands still call it “Kirkwaa,” and this is the correct form of the
name. The Peerie Sea was called the “Kirk-voe” long before St. Magnus
Cathedral was built, the name being derived from the old church of St.
Olaf, whose doorway still exists, and this name, applied to the town,
naturally changed into “Kirkwaa.” It would probably be impossible now
to restore the old name; we can only be grateful that our map-makers
did not also turn “kirk” into the English form “church.” We may suspect
that the parish name Holm has been similarly tampered with. The local
pronunciation, which is “Ham,” indicates that the name may be derived
from _hafn_, a harbour, as in “Hamnavoe” (_Hafnarvagr_) and other cases,
but has no connection with _holm_, which means a small island. When the
meaning of _hafn_ had been forgotten, and the local pronunciation was
ignored, the name was naturally supposed to be connected with the _holms_
which lie off the shore.
A similar intrusion of the letter _l_ is found in _Pierowall_, and also
in _Noltland_, in Westray. The latter is sometimes, and more correctly,
written as “Notland.” The Norse name was _Nautaland_, the pasture for
“nowt” or cattle. The word _Pentland_ must be our last example of such
blunders. To the Norsemen the Scottish mainland was _Pettland_, the land
of the Picts; and even at the present day Orcadians, who have not been
misled by books and maps, still speak of the “Pettland Firth.”
The names of farms or small districts are often very interesting. A
common termination in these is _-bister_, which represents the Norse
_bolstadr_, a farmsteading, the first part of the name usually being
derived from the name of the original owner, as in “Grimbister” and
“Swanbister,” the farm of Grim and of Sweyn. The word is connected with
_bol_, a dwelling, which still exists in our local dialect in the form
“beul,” meaning a stall in a byre or stable. Two Norse words, _bu_ and
_bær_, meaning a home or a household, give rise respectively to the
common farm name Bu, and to several names ending in _-by_, as Houseby
and Dounby.
The termination _-ster_ or _-setter_, which is also very common,
represents the Norse word _setr_; the name _saeter_ is still used in
Norway for a summer pasture among the hills at some distance from the
farm. Several of our farms bear the name of Seatter, and the number of
compounds of this word is too large to need illustration.
_Garth_, which meant an enclosure, is akin to the English words _yard_
and _garden_, and is found in numerous farm names, sometimes alone, but
more frequently in compounds, where it appears as the termination _-ger_,
the _g_ being sounded hard. Other names for enclosed land were _quoy_
(_kvi_) and _town_ (_tun_), and in almost every district we find farm
names in which these words appear. The Norse _skali_, a hall, appears
as _skaill_, either alone or as an element in compound names. There
are other common terminations which might be mentioned, all of them
significant and worthy of study, but these may suffice to illustrate how
full of meaning and interest our common place-names really are.
We have said that the Norse word for “island” now appears as the
termination _-ay_ or _-a_. This termination, however, has in some cases a
different origin, especially where the name does not refer to an island.
Thus in the names Scapa and Hoxa the _-a_ is a contraction of _eith_,
meaning an isthmus. Scapa was _Skalpeith_, the ship-isthmus, and Hoxa was
_Haugseith_, the isthmus of the haug or howe. In the name of the island
of Sanday, the termination means “island;” in the name Sanday applied to
several places round Deer Sound, the reference is to the “Sand aith” or
isthmus already mentioned. In names of places such as Birsay and Swannay,
where a large burn is found, we may conclude that the _-ay_ represents
the Norse _-a_, meaning a river, as the _o_ does in Thurso.
As we should expect from a seafaring race, the Norsemen have left us a
very liberal heritage of names for the various natural features of our
shores. Projecting points of land are called “ness” or “moul” or “taing,”
according to their configuration, and even the less prominent rocks
are still known as “clett” or “skerry,” or bear other names which were
originally simple descriptions of their peculiar forms. In the same way
descriptive names were applied to the water features, and every “voe” and
“sound,” every “hope” and “geo” have names which offer us a fine field
for study.
In dealing with this last class of names, there are two Norse words
which may cause us some trouble—_hella_, a flat rock, and _hellir_, a
cave, both of which appear in place-names as _hellya_, while a third
word _helgr_, holy, sometimes assumes the same form. It is impossible to
determine what the original form and meaning of a name have been unless
we examine the place as well as its name.
In studying our place-names, we ought to remember that the correct names
are those that are used by the old people who live in the district, not
those that are found on the map, or are used by people who adopt the
pronunciation suggested by the spelling. By means of the knowledge of a
few dozen common Norse roots, and a careful examination of the places
to which the names belong, most of our old-fashioned place-names may be
made to yield up their ancient meanings, and to throw some light upon the
past condition of the islands. When studied in this way, our place-names
are seen to be fragments of fossil history, organic remains of an early
stratum of society, as eloquent of the past as are the geological fossils
of the early ages of plant and animal life.
[Illustration: _At the quern._]
Part III.—Nature Lore.
THE STORY OF THE ROCKS.
“Sermons in Stones.”
A stone quarry is a common enough object in Orkney—so common, indeed,
that we may never have taken any interest in it. Yet this common quarry
is a place where we may learn some strange facts about the making of our
islands, if we visit it in the spirit of one who
“Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.”
The quarrymen begin their work by clearing away the “redd” from the rock
beneath. First they remove the soil. This is dark in colour, not very
rich or deep, perhaps, and not so black as the more fertile soils of
other lands. Yet it contains the plant-food which nourishes our crops,
and thus nourishes ourselves. The particles are fine and loose, and the
soil is traversed everywhere by the small rootlets of plants. The dark
colour is due to the decayed substance of past crops of plants, which
largely consists of carbon. We must try to find out how this soil, which
is so precious to the farmer, has been formed.
Every one knows the difference between the appearance of a new house and
that of an old one: in the former the stones of the walls are clean and
sharp, in the latter they have a weathered, time-worn look. In graveyards
the headstones recently put up have their inscriptions sharp and clear;
the older stones have their surfaces pitted, and the letters carved on
them are indistinct. Compare the old carvings and tracery on the outer
walls of our cathedral, made hundreds of years ago, with the clean-cut
masonry of new buildings which stand near it, and you will see that
stones decay with time and moulder away; they crumble into dust under the
winter’s frost and rains and the heat of the summer sun.
So it is with all the rocks of which the surface of our islands is made
up. Year by year they moulder away. The dust or earth into which they
break down forms a soil in which plants take root and grow. The plants
push their root fibres downwards, helping to open up the cracks in the
rock; and when these roots die and decay their substance mingles with the
soil, giving it that black colour which marks old fertile soils that have
long been cultivated.
Under the soil lies the subsoil—that is, rock which is half decayed and
partly broken up. In course of time it will become as fine as the soil
itself; for the subsoil gradually changes into soil. In wet weather the
rain, and in dry weather the wind, carry away the fine particles of earth
from the surface of the fields, and would sooner or later take away all
the fertile soil; but the continual action of the weather on the subsoil
supplies fresh material. Hence, while the old soil is constantly being
removed, new soil is forming to take its place.
As we see in the quarry, under the soil and the subsoil there is rock.
This is true of all parts of our country; there is a rocky skeleton
beneath the thin layer of fertile soil which supports the plants and
animals. In the rocky skerries which are common along the shores we see
the nature of the rock-built framework of the islands. If the soil and
subsoil were swept away, as the waves have swept it from the skerries, it
would be plainly seen that the islands are built up of rocks.
All the rocks of our islands, almost without exception, were laid down
under water. They consist of three different substances. One is sand,
in small rounded white or yellow grains. Another is clay, dark gray in
colour, very close grained and soft. The third is lime.
A rock which consists mostly of sand is called sandstone. The Eday
freestone, which is much used for putting round the doors and windows
of shops and large buildings, is a sandstone. The common blue flagstone
contains clay mixed with more or less sand. The sandy beds are coarse,
gritty, and hard; the fine-grained flags contain more clay, and are
darker in colour, softer, and smoother on the surface. Nearly all the
fine flags contain lime; often it is seen in white shining crystals on
the joint-faces of the stones used in building. The presence of lime in a
soil improves it considerably.
In different parts of Orkney the rocks differ much in appearance. In one
place we find yellow and red sandstone, in another blue and gray flags,
in another pudding-stone and granite. What is the meaning of this? It
shows that while the whole area of our islands was covered with water,
gravel was being laid down at one place, sand or muddy silt at another,
and so on. We can even make out the order in which the different layers
or strata were laid down.
It is done in this way:—Usually the beds of rock are not now flat but
tilted, and show their edges turned up in a more or less sharp slope. If
we walk along any bare rocky shore we shall find that bed succeeds bed,
each resting on the top of all those which underlie it. No place could be
found to show this better than the shore of Hoy Sound from Stromness to
Breckness. We go on and on, crossing over bed after bed of rock, till we
have passed over the edges of a pile of flagstone which must be several
thousand feet thick. The same thing can be seen to the east of Kirkwall,
or, in fact, almost anywhere in the islands.
Sometimes the beds dip or slant in different directions at different
parts of the shore. Then again they may be broken by cracks or faults
which bring different kinds of rock up against one another. If one could
visit the whole of Orkney and examine all the rocks, making out in what
order they follow one another, how often they are interrupted or repeated
by faults, and what is their inclination or dip, one could tell exactly
the order in which the rocks of each district were laid down on the
bottom of the old lake where they were formed. This is one of the tasks
which the geologist undertakes; and though it looks very difficult, yet
in Orkney it is quite possible to do so with pretty fair accuracy.
What is the result? At the bottom of the whole we place the granite of
Stromness and Graemsay. This represents part of the floor of the old lake
on which the gravel and sand and mud were laid down—a part which stood
up above the water as an island. Next to this we find a thin layer of
pudding-stone. This is formed of the old gravel which gathered on the
beaches and shores around the granite island as it was slowly covered
over. Above that were laid down the flagstones of the West Mainland;
then those of Kirkwall, the East Mainland, and the North Isles; then
the yellow and red sandstones of Eday, Shapinsay, the Head of Holland,
Deerness, and South Ronaldsay.
[Illustration: _Cliff showing horizontal strata._]
The whole series of these rocks must be thousands of feet thick, and how
long they took to form we cannot conceive.
Then there is a gap in the series. This means that for a time the lake
was dry land and instead of mud and sand being laid down, the rocks which
had been formed were partly washed away by rain and streams. After a long
time had passed, another lake was formed, and in it were laid down the
yellow sandstones of Hoy, which are quite different from the other yellow
sandstones of Orkney.
When you think that each thin flagstone or layer of sandstone in our
quarry was once a sheet of mud and sand, and that it took months, no
doubt, or even years, to gather on the lake bottom, you can understand
how vast a space of time is represented by the old red sandstone of
Orkney.
“Books in the Running Brooks.”
Let us now take a stroll along one of the little burns which flow between
their green or heathery banks in any of the valleys of our native
islands. These little burns are very small in comparison with the mighty
rivers of the world, yet they are quietly performing a great task, and in
the long past ages the amount of work which they have done is far greater
than you have ever imagined.
It is summer, and the burn runs shallow and slow; the pebbles and sand
show clearly in the pools. The burn enters a little bay, and as it flows
across the shore it breaks up into several streamlets, each working its
way through the gravel. Brackish water plants grow here; the shore is
muddy, and the seaweed is often soiled with fine sediment. The burn has
brought this down, and has dropped it where it enters the sea.
We follow the channel upwards, through flat, rich meadows, which may
be tilled, and covered with corn and other crops. In the meadow the
burn winds to and fro, and in each loop the outer side is steep, often
overhanging: under the grassy bank the trout lie hid. The inner side of
the bend is shallow, slopes gradually down to the water, and is covered
with small broken stones and gravelly pebbles. We can see that the
current is eating away the steep outer bank by undermining it, while on
the inner side the small stones are gathering.
The meadow through which we are passing is flat, and covered with wiry
grasses which love wet situations. The stuff of which it is made can be
seen on the banks of the burn. It is a soft, dark-brown earth, almost
without stones, or with here and there a layer of pebbles. How has this
meadow been formed? The stream has done it.
To find out how the stream made the meadow we must visit it in winter
after several days of heavy rain. Then a sheet of water covers the
meadow, making it a shallow lake. The water is very still except near the
channel of the burn; it is brown and full of mud. For some days the lake
remains, then the water begins to fall. The stream is clearer now, though
still dark with mud; good water this for the trout-fisher. A few days
more and the lake has vanished; the stream keeps within its banks, though
it is still full.
Now look at the meadow. It is covered with a very thin film of
grayish-brown mud. In spring the grasses will grow quickly, and will be
greener than ever. The meadow is a little—ever so little—higher for the
new sheet of mud it has acquired. Winter after winter this goes on. The
brown earth which forms the meadow is flood mud. Its flat configuration
is due to its being laid down in a little temporary lake.
Let us follow the stream still farther, and leave the meadow behind. The
channel gets steeper, and the water flows along quite merrily, faster
than in the level meadow below. The bends in the burn disappear. It is
in a hurry here and flows straight; in the flat meadow below it loiters
and swings lazily to and fro. The channel is shallow, and there are few
pools. The banks are often bare rock, or the stony clay which is produced
by the weathering of rock. The stream is washing away the clay; it even
attacks the hard rocks.
To see how this is done you must come when the burn is swollen with heavy
rains. Then you will hear it rolling the stones along. They grind on one
another, and thus they get their rounded shape, or are broken up into
small fragments. As they are rolled along they wear away the rocks and
deepen the bed of the stream. Loose pieces are swept away, soft layers
are planed down. Many of the cracks and joints are opened and loosened,
ready for fresh attacks during the floods of next winter.
This is where the gravel comes from. In the lower part of its course the
stream cannot move large stones, but in floodtime the smaller pebbles
are carried downwards. The big stones lie in the upper stream; they must
be broken smaller before they can be carried away. After rainy weather
you will often find that a rapid branch stream has shot a big heap of
pebbles into the main stream. When the floods rise above the surface of
the meadow they may strew sheets of little stones here and there over the
grass.
After a big flood, if you know the stream well, you will find many
changes. Here a bank of gravel has been carried away; there a new one has
gathered. At every bend the bank shows undermining, and pieces have been
swept away. The fine stuff makes mud: part of this is laid down on the
meadow, but much of it is carried right out to sea.
That running water will wash away sand, gravel, and mud is not new to
you. You have often seen it on the roads and in the roadside ditches,
in the little runnels around the farmhouses, or in the ploughed fields.
The burn is always doing the same thing, according to its powers. In
dry weather it does little, for its current is weak; in floods it works
rapidly. For perhaps two dozen days in a year every burn is in great
strength, and is a powerful agent in changing the form of the land.
This leads you to grasp the fact that the stream has dug out its own
channel, and that it carries rock material to lower levels, and at last
to the sea. If you know some of our burns well, and study and watch them
closely, you will find a world of interest in them. Every feature of
their channels is due to the work the flowing water is doing, and shows
the manner in which it is done.
But what of the wide valley in which the burn flows? Other agencies have
been at work here besides the water: ice has left its mark on every
part of our valleys. But the burn has done most. On either side it is
joined by branches. Each of these is cutting its own channel, and thus
gradually deepening the valley. Each branch has its lesser branches;
together they cover the whole valley with an intricate system of water
channels.
Between these channels, heather and grass are growing in the stony soil.
The soil, as you have learned already, is due to the decay of the rocks.
Frost and rain begin the work, and the growth of plants hastens and helps
it. Over the whole of the sloping valley sides the rocks are being broken
up into finer and finer particles. When heavy rain comes it washes away
the smaller particles, and little runnels appear which carry away the
surface water.
Every year a portion of the soil is swept away to the meadows, or to the
mud sheets which floor the shallow sea below. None of this ever comes
back; it is sheer loss—a little at a time, but if the time be long enough
it amounts to a very great quantity. Every day since that burn began to
flow it has carried downwards a greater or smaller burden of soil.
It took a long time for people to grasp the fact that running water is
a great earth-shaping agent. Every valley you have ever seen was made
in this way. Other things helped, but the stream was the main cause. A
valley is only a great groove eaten out of the rock. It is not due to any
earthquake or rending apart of the rocks; it is not an original feature
of the country. There was a time when there was no valley there; but from
the day the stream first began to trickle over the rocks it has gone on
deepening its channel and excavating the valley, and it is still doing so.
The stream not only made the valley; it shaped the hills also. We
sometimes speak of “the everlasting hills.” No doubt the hills are very
old, and will last a long time. Yet the little stream is older and
mightier than they. It shaped them and brought them into being; in time
it will remove them and level them with the plain.
Let us climb the side of a hill, and see what we can learn about it
by patient observation and inference. Any one of our flat-topped,
round-shouldered Orkney hills will do. They were all formed in the same
way, and teach the same lessons.
[Illustration: _The Ward Hill, Hoy._]
The ascent is gentle at first as we leave the plain or the bottom of the
valley. Then it gets steeper and steeper. Often it is like a series of
great steps—a sharp rise for a little, then a flat ledge; another sharp
rise, followed by a gentle slope, and so on. These terraces are formed
of beds of hard stone, which weather down very slowly. The softer rocks
crumble fast, and form the steep slope. All our flagstone hills show
these steps or terraces. They prove that the slope of the hillside is
determined largely by the rate at which the different rock beds wear away.
After our stiff climb we get near the top. Many of our hills are
broad-backed. When we get above the steep part we find a flat top, and
it is often difficult to say where the actual summit is. In many places
there are great groups of hills, all of about the same height, but
separated by valleys. The Orphir, Firth, and Harray hills, the Rousay,
Evie, and Birsay hills, and the hills of Walls are all of this kind. Even
the Hoy hills show the same feature, though less clearly. In all these
cases the hilltops look like the remains of one continuous stretch of
high ground, which has been cut up into pieces by the digging out of the
valleys. The hills are the remnants of a plateau.
This is not a mere supposition, but can be proved quite clearly. In
many Orkney hills there are beds of rock which can be identified by
the geologist by certain marks. They may contain peculiar fossils, or
they may be of a special colour or structure. In Firth and Orphir, for
example, there is a band of flagstone which yields roofing slabs. You
can follow this band from hill to hill for several miles, often by the
quarries in which it was extensively worked in former years. It occurs at
much the same level in all the different hills, though sinking somewhat
to the north according to the dip or slope of the rock bed. It is found
on both sides of the valleys, as, for example, at Finstown, at much the
same height.
[Illustration: _The Hills of Orkney. Photographed from a Relief Model
based on the Ordnance Survey._]
The Orkney hills, then, consist of a great pile of beds of flagstone
which once spread unbroken over the whole country. Out of this great mass
of flagstones and sandstones the running water of the burns has carved
the valley systems. The hills are the remnants which the streams have
not yet removed. As time goes on the valleys deepen and broaden, and the
hills get less and less.
“The hills are shadows, and they flow
From form to form, and nothing stands.”
It has taken vast ages to do this work, and the work is still going on.
It is very slow. The oldest man hardly notices any visible change in
the configuration of the country. But wind, rain, frost, and running
water are ever at work. Every day sees some loss, some material swept
away never to return. What becomes of it? It reaches the sea, and there
forms mud and sand. Time will change these into solid rock again, and may
ultimately use them in building new continents. The hills crumble into
dust, but it is “the dust of continents to be.”
Cliffs and Beaches.
On looking at a map of Orkney or Shetland we are struck with the
irregularity in the shape of the islands and the winding nature of the
coast line. There must be some reason for this, and a little reflection
will bring it to light. If you look at the larger valleys you will notice
that most of them end in salt-water bays, while the hills or ridges
between the valleys run out into points or “nesses.” This is especially
the case in Shetland; but in Orkney, too, there are many instances
of it. The shape of the land extends beneath the water—the deep bay
continues the land valley, the point and the skerry mark the position of
the watersheds.
We have seen that the valleys were eaten out by running streams. At one
time the land stood higher, and the burns flowed where now the salt
water covers the bottom of the bay. Thus the land was shaped. Then
the ground sank a little, and the sea flooded the lower grounds. The
hilltops remained above water as islands; the valleys and flat grounds
were changed into bays and sounds and firths. Think what would happen if
the land sank another hundred feet. Many of the present islands would
become shoals, and new islands would be made where the sea flowed round
the higher ground, winding out and in among them in narrow sounds and
straits, just as it does among the islands of the present day.
Long ago Orkney and Shetland were much larger than they are at present.
Most of the North Sea was dry land, covered with trees. In several parts
of Orkney we can see trunks and roots of trees uncovered after heavy
storms have shifted the sand on the beach. These trees did not grow
beneath the sea, of course; but the land sank, and the salt water covered
the site of the old forest.
Our wild animals, such as hares and rabbits, mice, voles, and shrews,
were not imported in boats. They were here probably before man arrived,
and they walked in on their own feet when the sea bottom was still part
of the dry land of Europe. Those who have studied this question think the
land is still sinking, or at any rate has not yet begun to rise. If it
were rising, we should find gravels and shells and sea-beaches above the
level of the present shores. Such raised beaches are found in many parts
of Scotland, but not in Orkney or Shetland.
The shores are always changing, and every part of them bears evidence
of constant alterations. Where there are high banks or cliffs, you will
often find that pieces have fallen down; this is especially the case
where the bank consists of clay. Our Orkney rocks are very hard and our
cliffs very lasting, but in some parts of England there are villages
and churches now standing on the very edge of the cliffs which a few
centuries ago were at a considerable distance from the sea.
It is the sea that wears away the cliffs by hammering at the rocks;
during storms the big stones on exposed beaches are rounded and worn by
the billows tossing them about and driving them against the rocks. On the
west coasts of our islands the great winter waves have enormous power;
no breakwater could resist them, and a ship which is driven ashore soon
goes to pieces. The cliffs are undermined at their base by the formation
of caves; the soft parts are eaten out into geos. Frost and rain open the
seams of the rocks and great masses tumble down; these are then tossed to
and fro until they are converted into heaps of boulders. The boulders get
less and less, and become pebbles; last of all they are ground down to
fine shingle and sand.
Every kind of rock has its own characteristic type of cliff scenery. When
pieces are detached they separate along natural cracks which are called
“joints,” and these joints have a different arrangement in sandstone,
in granite, in serpentine, and in schist. Weathering then acts on the
exposed surface, and, if the rock is bedded, some beds are eaten away
more rapidly than others. There is much to interest us in our cliffs;
there is not a detail in their form which has not a meaning.
[Illustration: _A sandstone cliff._]
On wild shores where storm-waves are high we find large boulders; the
smaller ones are washed away and swept out to sea. Sometimes there is no
beach, but the cliff plunges down into deep water, for there the waves
are so powerful that they clear away all the broken rock. On sheltered
beaches we find small rounded pebbles. If we look at the stones on the
shore of a small fresh-water loch we find them scarcely rounded at all,
for the little waves cannot toss them about and rub them against one
another.
The tear and wear of pebbles produces sand, and the sand is driven to and
fro by currents and by storms. It rests for a time in some of the bays,
but is not a fixture. A high wind drives some of it ashore to cover the
grass of the sandy links. A heavy storm may drag a great deal of it out
to sea. Unless it is held fast by bent or other plants, sand is always
moving.
Even the stones travel along the shore, driven by the beat of the waves
in bad weather. There are stone beaches common in Orkney and Shetland
which are often called ayres, and which have behind them a salt lagoon
or oyce. The oyce opens to the sea at one end of the ayre, and a strong
tidal current flows out and in through the opening. An ayre is really
an army of stones on the march, constantly moving forward. In every bay
there is one direction from which the biggest waves come, and the stones
of the ayre have come from that direction. The opening of the oyce is at
the other end of the ayre.
At first there was a bay with a shallow inner end. When the big waves
reach shallow water they turn over and have their speed checked. Stones
carried along the shore are dropped at the edge of the shallow water,
forming a bar. The bar goes on stretching across the bay as the storms
fetch more stones, and in time the oyce is nearly walled in. But as the
opening gets narrower and narrower the tidal flow gets stronger and
stronger There is a combat between the tidal currents and the storm
currents, and in time things are adjusted so that the speed of the
outflow is just enough to keep the opening from being closed up.
The Age of Ice.
Along the burns and the seashores, and in stone quarries, we often see
banks of clay. Usually this clay is full of stones. In some places the
clay is merely the softened, crumbling top of the rock, and the stones in
it are of the same kind as the solid rock below. In other places the clay
contains stones which are quite unlike any rocks in the neighbourhood.
Sometimes these stones are very large, and they must have been carried
from some distant place, for they are of a kind of rock which is not
found in the islands. What is the history of this clay with travelled
stones, or “boulder clay,” as it is called?
Boulder clay may be recognized by several marks. It is tough and sticky;
it shows no bedding or layers; and it may be only a few inches thick, or
it may form cliffs thirty or forty feet high. Pick a few stones out of
it: you will notice that they are not all of the same kind. Wash them
carefully in the sea or the burn. Their ends are blunt and worn, but they
are not rounded like sea-pebbles. Their surfaces are smooth, and are
covered with fine scratches, as if some one had drawn a needle or the
point of a knife along them. Nowhere except in this clay will you see
stones with these curious scratches.
If you find the place where the bottom of the clay rests on the hard
rock, you should carefully remove a little of the clay and lay bare the
rock surface beneath. Wash it with a little water, and you will see that
it is covered with fine scratches exactly like those on the stones. Now
this smoothing and scratching of the stones and of the rock might be
explained by imagining that the clay at one time was in motion, pushed
forward by some immense force, and that the stones rubbing on one another
and on the rocky floor produced these scratches.
Among the Alps, in Norway, in Greenland, and in other places where there
are high snow-clad mountains or a very cold climate, the snow gathers
in the valleys till it forms thick masses, and is compressed by its own
weight into ice: these masses are known as glaciers. Glaciers are really
slow-moving rivers of ice; they slip very slowly down the valley slopes,
travelling usually only a few inches in a day. When they reach the warmer
region at the base of the mountains, they melt away, leaving behind them
heaps of clay which they have swept down from the hills. The stones in
this clay are worn and smoothed and scratched exactly like those in
the boulder clays of Orkney and Shetland, and the rocks over which the
glaciers have moved are smoothed and scratched likewise.
The boulder clay, then, is clearly a glacial deposit, formed at a time
when our islands were covered with moving sheets of ice. These ice sheets
were travelling from the North Sea towards the Atlantic, in a west or
north-west direction, for the scratches on the rock surface always have
that trend. We can often prove also that the boulders found in the clay
have travelled from the south-east. Thus at the Mont, near Kirkwall,
the boulder clay is full of red sandstone from the Head of Holland and
Inganess Bay. In Shetland stones have been carried from the east side of
the mainland right over the hills to the west shores.
When we piece together all the evidence about this Ice Age or Glacial
Period, not only in Orkney and Shetland but in all the north-west of
Europe, we learn that it lasted a very long time, and that the North
Sea was filled with a great sheet of ice which must have been several
thousand feet thick. This ice was pushed out of the basin of the North
Sea westwards into the Atlantic by the pressure of the deep snow-cap
which covered the mountains of central Europe, and on its way it passed
over Orkney and Shetland. The broken stones and rubbish which gathered
below it formed the boulder clay. This may seem a very strange tale,
but every kind of evidence that is needed to prove its truth has been
found by those who have studied the boulder clay and the scratched rocks
beneath it.
After the great ice sheet melted, the climate was still cold, and there
were times when snow and ice gathered on our hilltops and little glaciers
flowed down the valleys. These also have left traces behind by which you
can know where they were. In every one of the higher glens in the Orkney
hills you will find mounds of clay and stones, often forming a crescent
or bow running from side to side of the valley. They are very well seen
in Harray, Birsay, Orphir, and Hoy; but even in the East Mainland the
hills, though low, gave rise to little glaciers. In Shetland they are
almost as common as in Orkney. In many parishes there are clusters of
large and small mounds, some of them grassy and others covered with
heather, lying near the mouths of the main valleys. When these mounds
have been cut into by streams or by roads, we see that they are not
rocky hillocks but consist only of clay and stones, and that the stones
are often scratched like those in the stiff boulder clay. These mounds
are the “dumps” or moraines where the glaciers which filled the valleys
melted and dropped their rubbish. At that time our islands must have
resembled Spitzbergen, where to-day most of the hills have an ice-cap and
nearly all the valleys are filled with glaciers, some of which reach the
sea and give birth to icebergs, while others melt away and deposit lumpy
moraines over the valley bottoms.
Orkney Fossils.
You cannot examine many of our Orkney flagstones carefully without
finding fossils. The most common are scales and bones of fishes. In the
rock these often appear as coal-black specks. When a fossil has weathered
for a long time, as in a stone dyke or on the seashore, it often becomes
bright blue, like a splash of blue paint. Sometimes whole fishes are
found in the gray flagstones, with every fin and every scale perfect. Of
course you will not find these every day or every year, but there are
many quarries in Orkney where you may get them occasionally. When the
quarryman uncovers a bed of rock, he often finds it sprinkled over with
great numbers of fossil fishes.
We can picture to ourselves that, at some time long gone by, when these
flagstones were being laid down in the old Orcadian lake as sheets of
sandy and muddy silt, the fishes were suddenly killed by a volcanic
eruption, or by a period of drought, and their dead bodies covered the
muddy bottom for miles. Fresh mud then came down and buried them, and
preserved their remains. In process of time their bones and scales were
changed into the pitch-black substance which we now find in the rocks.
But we can still see that these specks and scales are really parts of
fishes. If we examine them under the microscope, we find that they have
all the marks of structure that the same parts of certain fishes have at
the present day.
In almost every parish in Orkney there is at least one quarry which
contains good fossils, and there must be many others which we do not yet
know of. But no person who knows what a bit of fossil fish is like need
search very long among the flagstones of the shore without finding a
scale, a jaw bone, a tooth, or other relic of the fishes which lived in
Orkney at the time the flagstone muds were gathering. A heap of stones
thrown down by the roadside, for building a dyke or for mending the
roads, often contains fragments of dozens of fishes.
It is not difficult for us to picture what these fishes were like when
alive. Some of them were about the size of sillocks or herrings, others
were as large as a big cod. They had scales all over their bodies, and
fins, supported by bony rays, just like living fishes. But though many of
them were of the same shape and general outline as a trout or a herring,
they differed from these in many ways.
Their scales were often hard and bony, with a smooth, shining outer
layer of enamel like that which covers a tooth. Those fishes are called
_ganoids_. On their heads they had bony plates with the same hard
covering, often showing ridges and furrows, knobs, and other markings.
You may see these beautifully preserved in many of the fossil bones which
occur in the gray and blue flagstones. Those fishes belong to species
which are no longer living on the earth’s surface, but closely allied
kinds of fish are still found in a few rivers in Africa, America, and
Europe. The royal sturgeon is one of these.
None of the fishes which are common in our seas at the present day are
ever found as fossils in rocks as old as the Orcadian flagstones. The
water of the Orcadian lake was fresh water. We know this because we find
no marine shells, and no crabs or cuttle-fishes in the flagstones, though
these kinds of animals peopled the sea at that time, and would have been
preserved as fossils if they had inhabited the lake.
Some of the fishes in the lake were very grotesque and oddly-shaped
creatures. One of them had two curious bony arms or wings which stuck out
from its sides. It is not very common in Orkney, but is sometimes found
in quarries near Stromness, and a smaller fish of much the same shape may
be got in Deerness occasionally. They are called “winged fishes,” and are
quite unlike any fishes now living. So strange is this fossil that when
first found it was thought to be a curious beetle.
Another strange fish was of great size; its head bones are a foot or more
in length. Pieces of the head of this fish may be seen in many parts of
Orkney, but the bones of the body were soft and rotted away after the
fish died. The back of its head was somewhat like a shovel in shape, and
the bones are often half an inch in thickness. There were two great holes
for the eyes near the corners of this shield. The back of the neck was
protected by another large plate. A specimen of this fossil can be seen
in the Stromness museum; it was called by Hugh Miller the _Asterolepis_,
or “star-scale fish,” of Stromness.
Besides the fishes, other fossils occur in the flagstones, but not of
many kinds. At Pickaquoy, near Kirkwall, and in several other places,
very small shells, like tiny mussel shells, often cover the surface of
the beds of rock. Pieces of wood may also be seen in the flagstones; they
are flattened out and form black strips of a coaly substance, but as
they must have drifted a long distance from land, and sunk to the bottom
only when they became water-logged, they do not tell us much about the
nature of the plants which clothed the islands and the shores of the
lake. Yet we know that there were no flowers then, no grasses, or sedges,
or trees like those that now live, but only great reeds and tree-like
plants belonging to the same groups as the horse-tail that grows in
watery places and along roadsides, and the little green scaly club moss
that creeps through the heather, sending up its fruit-bearing spikes.
There were also many kinds of ferns. In the forests and swamps there were
land-snails and insects, but no frogs or lizards, still less any birds or
other warm-blooded creatures. The fishes are the highest types that then
existed; they were the “lords of creation” in that day.
[Illustration: _“Winged fish” (Pterichthys)._]
A PEAT-MOSS.
Earl Einar it was, as the story goes, who first taught the Orkneyman to
make the turf into peats—Torf Einar, as he was called in memory of this
fact. If the story is true, he did a great work for the islands,—not
quite treeless in his day, perhaps, but yet in a bad way for fuel in the
long winter evenings,—and he deserves a monument almost as splendid as
that of Earl Magnus.
The wood fires went out long ago, and the peat fires will, no doubt,
follow in due time. True, the peat-mosses are not yet exhausted, but year
by year they recede, and the road to “the hill” grows longer. There is
less time to spare now for peat-cutting than there used to be, for our
modern methods of farming require more constant labour. But through our
trade with other lands money is circulating more freely, and coal can be
bought to take the place of peat. The change means more money and less
time, and that is just the great difference between this century and
those which have gone by.
But the peat-moss is not yet deserted, and in the early summer it is
still a busy scene in many places. Harvest has ever been a time of
joy, and peat-cutting is the harvest of the moss. The flaying-spade and
the tuskar are not mere toys, nor is “taking out” the newly-cut peats
a holiday task; but there are few scenes where more cheerfulness and
wholesome mirth can be seen than at many an Orkney peat-cutting.
Let us approach one of these familiar “peat-banks,” not necessarily to
share in the fun, and certainly not to take part in the labour, but to
find out what we can about the substance which we call peat. Here is a
bank where the moss is deep enough to give three lengths of peat, one
above the other, besides the surface layer, which is cut off and thrown
down on the old peat ground.
This top layer, we see, is, like ordinary turf, full of the roots of
growing plants—heather, rushes, sedges, and grasses of various kinds.
Filling up the spaces between them is a tangled mass of spongy mosses.
These mosses are the most important plants of all in the formation of
peat.
The most common of the bog-mosses is the _Sphagnum_, a small branching
plant with thin, scaly leaves. Where there is plenty of light it is of
a vivid green, and the tops of the sprays look like tiny emerald stars.
Lower, where less light comes, the plant looks yellow and sickly, while
still lower it is black and decaying. The black substance which we call
peat is really a mass of decayed sphagnum moss.
The upper part of our peat-bank, just below the turf which has been cut
away, is more loose and fibrous than the under part. The roots of the
larger plants may still be seen in it. The second and especially the
third peat are much closer in texture and of a deeper black colour. The
vegetable matter is more completely decayed, and if we were to compress
it sufficiently it would look very like coal.
At one part of the face of the bank we notice a layer of a different
kind. We find the roots and parts of the stems and branches of small
trees embedded in the moss. There has been a wood here at one time—how
long ago, we cannot tell. That layer of moss which now lies above the
remains of the trees may have taken centuries to form.
In many places we find more than one such layer of wood, separated as
well as covered by thick layers of moss. Some of the trees have been of
considerable size, too; the trunk of one found in the parish of Stenness
measured about five feet in circumference, while the moss near it was
thickly studded with the nuts which had fallen from it year after year.
The trees whose remains have been found in our mosses include the poplar,
pine, mountain ash, birch, hazel, alder, and willow. One very interesting
fact is that the silver fir is also found, a tree which does not now
grow in Scotland, and is not found in Scottish peat-mosses, but which is
common in Norway.
What curious tales those peat-mosses tell of the changes of climate
which have passed over our islands! At the present day it is only in our
deepest glens, as in Hoy, that we can find even small trees and bushes
growing wild. Yet at one time our islands must have been well wooded,
though it is only in the mosses that the remains have been preserved for
us to see.
The sphagnum, again, has another story to tell. It requires abundant
moisture for its growth, and at present it can find this only in flat and
boggy ground. It is therefore only in such places that peat is now being
formed. Yet we find peat on most of our hillsides and even hilltops. This
tells of a time when our climate was much wetter than it now is, and when
sphagnum flourished everywhere.
One more story of a different kind can be read from the peat-moss. Here
and there, as at Deersound and Widewall Bay, when the tide is out, we may
find peat-moss, and the remains of large trees among it, far down on the
beach, many feet below the level of high water, and most of it covered to
a considerable depth with the sand and gravel which form the upper beach
and the land near it. This tells clearly of a gradual sinking of the land
in the neighbourhood. When that moss was being formed, and when those
trees were growing, the shallow bay must have been dry land.
The plants and flowers which grow on our mosses are worth more than a
passing glance. Let us look at some of them. The sphagnum we have already
mentioned; it belongs to the class of flowerless plants. The others we
shall mention are flowering plants.
Best known of all, perhaps, is what we call heather. This name is used
for at least four different plants in Orkney. Two of these bear that
common but beautiful flower the heather-bell. One bears bells of a pale,
rose-coloured, waxy appearance; the other, which is more common, has
bells of a darker and often purplish red. The former is the cross-leaved
heath, with its little green leaves arranged in whorls of four; the
latter has its leaves in whorls of three, and is known as the fine-leaved
heath.
The most common kind of heather is the ling, which flowers somewhat later
than the heaths. It is this plant whose spikes of tiny rose-coloured
flowers make our hillsides a purple glory in the early autumn, and whose
leaves and stems give them their familiar brown tint during the rest of
the year. A white variety is also found, the “white heather” which is
supposed to bring good luck to the finder.
Another kind of heather is that which bears the small black berries so
well known to every young Orcadian. This plant is not a heath at all; it
is really the black crowberry. The berry is preceded by a tiny purplish
flower, which probably few of the berry-gatherers have ever seen.
The “rashes” or rushes are a common feature of our moors. Two kinds may
be noticed, one with its flower-tuft more closely packed together than
the other. These rushes were of some use in former days. The white pith
was extracted and dried for winter use as wicks in the old oil-burning
“crusies,” before the introduction of paraffin.
There are many smaller plants of a similar type, one of which, the bog
asphodel, ought to be well known; its pretty, yellow, star-like flowers,
grouped on a stalk some eight inches high, often make patches of our
moorlands glow with the shimmer of gold.
The cotton-grass is probably more familiar. There are two kinds found
in Orkney, one bearing a single tuft of white down on each stem when
seeding, the other a group or cluster of tufts. This plant is not a
grass, and has no connection with the cotton plant; but the name is a
good one for all that, and no one can mistake the plant to which it
applies.
[Illustration: _Plants of the peat-moss._
1. Common ling (_Calluna vulgaris_). 2. Cross-leaved heath (_Erica
tetralix_). 3. Black crowberry (_Empetrum nigrum_). 4. Cotton grass
(_Eriophorum polystachion_). 5. Grass of Parnassus (_Parnassia
palustris_). 6. Bog asphodel (_Narthecium ossifragum_).]
One of our most beautiful moorland plants is that which bears the
attractive name, “grass of Parnassus.” This also is not a grass, and does
not in the least resemble one. It is well worth looking for and looking
at when found. From a group of dark-green, glossy, heart-shaped leaves
rises a slender stem four or five inches high, with one leaf growing on
it midway up its height. This stem bears a single cup-shaped flower as
large as a common buttercup, with five white petals marked with darker
veins. The central parts of the flower are yellowish-green. Round the
stigma stand the five stamens, and between these and opposite the petals
are five curiously shaped nectaries or honey vessels. They are fringed
with a row of white hairs, each ending in a yellow knob, and look like a
tiny golden crown placed in the centre of the flower-cup. The name of the
flower is said to be taken from Mount Parnassus in Greece, the home of
the Muses. Certainly the flower itself is dainty enough to be a favourite
with the poets.
[Illustration: _Butterwort._]
Some plants have developed the curious habit of eating, or, at any rate,
digesting and absorbing the juices of insects. Two of those insectivorous
plants may be found in our peat-moss. In certain places we may notice
that the thick carpet of moss is dotted with little rosettes of bright
yellowish green, which look like vegetable star-fishes scattered over
a beach of moss. That is one of our “plants of prey.” It is called the
butterwort.
From the centre of the rosette rises a slender stalk of two or three
inches, bearing a small dusky purple flower somewhat like a dog-violet.
The green leaves which form the rosette are stiff, and lie close to the
ground, as if to keep a clear space among the other plants. They curl
up at the edges, and look as if they did not want to mingle with their
kindred round about; and indeed they do not, for they have other game in
view.
Attracted by this bright green star, a small insect comes in search,
perhaps, of honey. He finds the leaf covered with a sticky fluid, and his
touch causes more of the fluid to come out of little pores in the leaf.
The insect is held fast, and the gum clogs up the pores of his body so
that he cannot breathe. He soon dies. Then the plant pours out an acid
liquid, which dissolves all the soft parts of the captured insect, and
leaves only the skeleton. At the same time this dissolved or digested
food is sucked in by the pores of the leaf.
The acid juice of the butterwort is so like the juice of the animal
stomach, that in Lapland the people used to pour warm milk over
butterwort leaves, and thus changed it into a curd, just as we do by
adding to the milk some rennet, made from the stomach of a calf.
[Illustration: _Sundew._]
On this same patch of moor we may find another flesh-eating plant.
This is smaller than the last, and less easily found. It has a slender
flower-stalk with a spike of small whitish flowers rising from the centre
of a curious group of leaves. The leaves lie flat on the ground; they are
small and round, no larger than split peas, and covered with bright red
hairs that look like tiny red pins stuck in a tiny green pin cushion.
Each of these hairs carries at its tip a bead of clear fluid, which
glitters in the sun; hence the plant is called the sundew. Let any
thirsty insect come to drink this dew, and a strange thing happens.
He finds his feet held fast by the sticky dewdrops, and the more he
struggles the more of these does he rub against. He is held fast until he
is suffocated, and then he is digested and absorbed by the leaf.
When the fly alights on the plant, the hairs begin to bend in towards the
centre of the leaf. Even those hairs which have not been touched bend
over until all of them are helping to hold fast the prey and dissolve it
with their liquid. If the insect alights near the edge of the leaf, he
is thus carried towards the centre and held fast, while the leaf itself
bends so as to form a cup for the acid that pours from the hairs. If two
insects alight on the same leaf, the hairs form into two groups, those
near each animal curving towards him, so that the leaf acts as if it had
two hands. In this way all the insects that come are attended to.
There are many other curious plants to be found in the peat-moss, but
those we have mentioned will suffice to show how much of interest there
is in our bleak mosses and moors.
SOME COMMON WEEDS.
What is a weed? We may best describe it, perhaps, as a plant growing in
the wrong place. A weed is not necessarily ugly, or harmful, or even
useless. Many common weeds are very beautiful, and some of them are very
useful; but if they are growing where we wish something else to grow,
we call them “weeds,” and root them out, or try to do so. Grass in our
hayfields and meadows is a valuable plant; grass in our flower-borders or
turnip-fields is a weed. So when we speak of weeds, we do not mean any
special class of plants, but only those which force themselves upon our
notice by springing up where we wish something else to grow.
Many of our common weeds are very interesting plants to the botanist.
They have to fight for their lives; and the way in which they scatter
their seeds, and the power of those seeds to lie dormant for years
waiting a chance to grow, are well worth study. It is a war between the
farmer and wild nature, and when we look over our fields and pastures in
spring and summer we see clearly enough that the farmer is not always the
victor. In many a cornfield the oat crop seems to be merely incidental,
while the hardier children of nature flourish in spite of its intrusion.
This is not as it ought to be. Even if they are otherwise harmless, the
weeds use up a large part of the plant food in the soil, and they rob the
young oats of the necessary light and air. In this way weeds prove an
expensive crop to the farmer. It pays him to study their life-history so
as to learn how they may be eradicated, and to spend some labour in the
task of doing so.
A common pest in the Orkney cornfields is the “runcho” or “runchic,”
known elsewhere by the name of charlock or wild mustard. Its pale-yellow
flowers overtop the growing oats, and their unwelcome gleam makes some
fields conspicuous for miles around. The form of the flower shows that
the charlock belongs to the same family as the turnip and the cabbage
and the fragrant wallflower of our gardens. The flower has four petals,
and the cross-like arrangement of its six stamens, four long and two
short, has given them their name of _Cruciferæ_, or cross-bearers. The
seed-vessels, like those of the turnip, are in the form of a long, narrow
pod with a partition running down the middle. The seeds are small and
hard, and they grow only in a freshly-stirred soil with plenty of light
and air. When a field is laid down in grass they make no sign of life,
but when it is ploughed for the next crop of oats they spring up once
more, and make it as gay as a flower-bed. Two kinds of this plant are
found—the one, charlock, of a light yellow colour, common in peaty and
clayey ground; and the other, wild mustard, of a deeper yellow, found in
sandy soil.
[Illustration: _Some common weeds._
1. False oat grass. 2. Chickweed. 3. Ragwort. 4. Prunella. 5. Wild
mustard (_Brassica Sinapis_). 6. Charlock (_Raphanus Raphanistrum_). 7.
Corn spurrey. 8. Sheep’s sorrel. 9. Common sorrel.]
Another showy weed is the yellow corn-marigold. This handsome flower
seems more dainty in its choice of soil, and in some districts it is
not common. A glance at the open flower shows its kinship to the “wee,
modest, crimson-tipped” daisy. The so-called flower is not one, but a
host of tiny flowers or florets growing upon a broad green disc called
the receptacle. This compound or composite type of flower is found in a
large number of common plants, named on this account _Compositæ_. Many of
them are found in Orkney, and they are a very interesting as well as a
numerous family.
One of the best known is the dandelion, a more beautiful flower than
many which we grow in our gardens, and only its abundance prevents our
admiring it. If we examine the florets of the dandelion, we see that
each of them has a corolla forming a long yellow ribbon on the side
farthest from the centre of the flower. In the corn-marigold only the
outer florets have this ribbon, which forms a halo of rays round the
central portion. In the daisy these rays are white, with the tips pink,
especially underneath.
A well-known feature of the dandelion is the white down which it produces
when in seed—a wonderfully beautiful arrangement for spreading its seeds
far and wide to find room to grow. This is a common method of broadcast
sowing among the Compositæ family. The thistles, which form a well-known
section of that family, depend largely on their floating seeds in their
struggle against the farmer. Some farmers seem to forget this fact, for,
crowded in some corner of an old pasture, or in serried ranks by roadside
and ditchside, we may see those armed foes allowed to blossom and send
forth thousands of winged seeds to overrun the neighbouring fields,
and even the neighbouring farms. A few hours’ work with a scythe would
prevent the mischief. There might well be laws to prevent the careless
spreading of weeds as there are to prevent the spreading of infectious
disease among animals.
One of the Compositæ family is a common weed in Orkney pasture fields—the
“tirsac” or ragwort. This is a coarse, vigorous plant, with a tough
stalk about two feet in height, crowned with a spreading tuft of yellow
daisy-shaped flowers. In fields where this weed is allowed to grow and
multiply, it soon comes to occupy a large proportion of the whole area,
and this means a considerable loss in the grazing value of the pasture.
The large family of the grasses includes some of the plants most useful
to the farmer. All the grain crops, such as wheat, barley, and oats, are
cultivated grasses, as are also the plants which are used for pasture and
for hay. There are some wild grasses, however, which are very persistent
and troublesome weeds. Some of these, like couch grass, spread more by
creeping underground stems than by seeds. A common grass in Orkney is
that known as “swine-beads,” from the knotted form of its underground
stems. Its common name is false oat grass. It resembles small black oats,
but is much taller. Cartloads of its beaded stems may be gathered from
some fields when being prepared for turnips, and by so doing much trouble
may be saved.
When a field is laid down in turnips or potatoes, the weeds have a hard
struggle for life. Those of slow growth are checked by the ploughing and
grubbing and harrowing, and later by the hoe and the scuffler. Yet there
are a few which in a moist season spring up quickly and soon cover the
drills. The common spurrey, with its narrow, sticky leaves growing in
whorls, and its tiny white flowers which open only in the sun, is perhaps
the best known. The chickweed is another common weed in such fields.
These, however, if kept down at first by the hoe, are of too feeble
growth to injure the crop among which they strive to find a living.
Sheep’s sorrel and common sorrel, both commonly known as “sooricks,” were
more harmful half a century ago than they are at present. Cultivation and
the rotation of crops have reduced their quantity, but their enormous
power of spreading can be witnessed in a poor, thin, or peaty soil, where
the crops, especially grass, are meagre. There they spread, and sometimes
with such vigour that they push every other plant aside. Both kinds of
sorrel are common. The one with arrow-shaped leaves is called common
sorrel; that with spear-shaped leaves, sheep’s sorrel. Their leaves,
which have a very acid taste, often turn reddish.
Another common and pretty little flower is prunella or self-heal. Whorls
of green bracts and violet flowers form a dense, short spike. It grows
from four to six inches high, and is to be met with on dry soils, and
although fairly common in oats, flourishes best in second year’s grass.
It is one of the large order of _Labiates_, a group which includes
the dead-nettle and the hemp-nettle, and when abundant it is a clear
indication of the exhaustion of some ingredients of the soil—often
lime. When fields are brought to a high state of cultivation, or are
near enough the seashore to get an abundant supply of sand, it almost
disappears; but when they are impoverished, it soon returns.
These are only a few of the weeds which every farmer knows well. They are
worth study, for it is only when we know how they grow and spread that we
are able to prevent their increase. The cultivation and manuring of the
soil and the sowing of seeds are only one side of the farmer’s work; he
has to remove the wild growth as well as to promote the growth of what he
sows. Otherwise his fields will bear two crops at a time, one of nature’s
sowing and one of his own, and of these two the natural crop is likely to
be the more flourishing.
[Illustration]
HOME LIFE ON THE ROCKS.
Guillemots.
Nothing is more interesting than to look down from the summit of some
precipice on to a ledge at no great distance below, which is quite
crowded with guillemots. Roughly speaking, the birds form two long rows,
but these rows are very irregular in depth and formation, and swell here
and there into little knots and clusters, besides often merging into or
becoming mixed with each other, so that the idea of symmetry conveyed is
of a very modified kind, and may be sometimes broken down altogether.
In the first row a certain number of the birds sit close against and
directly fronting the wall of the precipice, into the angle of which
with the ledge they often squeeze themselves. Several will be closely
pressed together, so that the head of one is often resting against the
neck or shoulder of another, which other will also be making a pillow of
a third, and so on. Others stand here and there behind the seated ones,
each being, as a rule, close to his or her partner. There is another
irregular row about the centre of the ledge, and equally here it is to
be remarked that the sitting birds have their beaks pointed towards
the cliff, whilst the standing ones are turned indifferently. There are
generally several birds on the edge of the parapet, and at intervals one
will come pressing to it through the crowd in order to fly down to the
sea, whilst from time to time others also fly up and alight on it, often
with sand-eels in their beaks. On a ledge of perhaps a dozen paces in
length there may be from sixty to eighty guillemots, and as often as they
are counted the number will be found to be approximately the same.
[Illustration: _Guillemot._]
Most of the sitting birds are either incubating or have young ones under
them, which, as long as they are little, they seem to treat very much as
though they were eggs. Much affection is shown between the paired birds.
One that is sitting either on her egg or her young one—for no difference
in the attitude can be observed—will often be very much cosseted by the
partner who stands close behind or beside her. With the tip of his long,
pointed beak he, as it were, nibbles the feathers (or, perhaps, scratches
and tickles the skin between them) of her head, neck, and throat; whilst
she, with her eyes half closed, and an expression as of submitting to an
enjoyment—a “Well, I suppose I must” look—bends her head backwards, or
screws it round sideways towards him, occasionally nibbling with her bill
also amidst the feathers of his throat, or the thick white plumage of
his breast. Presently she stands up, revealing the small, hairy-looking
chick, whose head has from time to time been visible just peeping out
from under its mother’s wing. Upon this the other bird bends its head
down and cossets in the same way—but very gently, and with the extreme
tip of the bill—the little tender young one. The mother does so too, and
then both birds, standing side by side over the chick, pay it divided
attentions, seeming as though they could not make enough either of their
child or of each other. It is a pretty picture, and here is another one.
A bird—we will think her the female, as she performs the most mother-like
part—has just flown in with a fish—a sand-eel—in her bill. She makes her
way with it to the partner, who rises and shifts the chick that he has
been brooding over from himself to her. This is done quite invisibly, as
far as the chick is concerned, but you can see that it is being done.
The bird with the fish, to whom the chick has been shifted, now takes it
in hand. Stooping forward her body, and drooping down her wings, so as
to make a kind of little tent or awning of them, she sinks her bill with
the fish in it towards the rock and then raises it again, and does this
several times before either letting the fish drop or placing it in the
chick’s bill—for which it is I cannot quite see. It is only now that the
chick becomes visible, its back turned to the bird standing over it, and
its bill and throat moving as though swallowing something down. Then the
bird that has fed it shifts it again to the other, who receives it with
equal care, and bending down over it, appears—for it is now invisible—to
help or assist it in some way. It would be no wonder if the chick had
wanted assistance, for the fish was a very big one for so small a thing,
and it would seem as if he swallowed it bodily. After this the chick
is again treated as an egg by the bird that has before had charge of
him—that is to say, he is sat upon, apparently, just as though he were to
be incubated.
On account of the closeness with which the chick is guarded by the parent
birds, and the way in which they both stand over it, it is difficult to
make out exactly how it is fed; but I think the fish is either dropped at
once on the rock, or dangled a little for it to seize hold of. It is in
the bringing up and looking after of the chick that one begins to see the
meaning of the sitting guillemots being always turned towards the cliff,
for from the moment that the egg is hatched one or other of the parent
birds interposes between the chick and the edge of the parapet. Of course
I cannot say that the rule is universal, but I never saw a guillemot
incubating with its face turned towards the sea, nor did I ever see a
chick on the seaward side of the parent bird who was with it.
I observed that the chick—even when, as I judged by its tininess, it had
only been quite recently hatched—was as alert and as well able to move
about as a young chicken or partridge; but whilst possessing all the
power, it appeared to have little will to do so. Its lethargy—as shown
by the way in which, even when a good deal older, it would sit for hours
without moving from under the mother—struck me as excessive; and it would
certainly seem that on a bare, narrow ledge, to fall from which would be
certain death, chicks of a lethargic disposition would have an advantage
over others who were fonder of running about.
The young guillemot is fed with fish which are brought from the sea in
the parent’s bill, and not—as in the case of gulls—disgorged for them
after having been first swallowed. It is, however, a curious fact that
the fish when thus brought in are, sometimes at any rate, headless. The
reason of this I do not know, but with the aid of glasses I have made
quite certain of it, and each time it appeared as though the head had
been cleanly cut off. Moreover, on alighting on the ledge the bird always
has the fish (a sand-eel, whenever I saw it) held lengthways in the beak,
with the tail drooping out to one side of it, and the head part more or
less within the throat—a position which seems to suggest that it may have
been swallowed or partially swallowed—whereas puffins and razor-bills
carry the fish they catch crosswise, with head and tail depending on
either side.
[Illustration]
I have once or twice thought that I saw a bird which just before had
no fish in its bill all at once carrying one. But I may well have been
mistaken; and it does not seem at all likely that the birds should
usually carry their fish, and thus subject themselves to persecution,
if they could disgorge it without inconvenience. With regard to the
occasional absence of the head, perhaps this is sometimes cut off in
catching the fish.
Seals.
Quite near to where I watch the guillemots there is a little iron-bound
creek or cove, walled by precipice, guarded by mighty “stacks,” and
divided for some way into two by a long rocky peninsula running out from
the shore. On the rocks in one of these alcoves were lying eight seals,
which were afterwards joined by another, making nine, whilst in the
adjoining one were four—also, as it happened, joined by another, as I
watched—making fourteen in all: such a sight as I had never seen before.
[Illustration: _Common seal._]
I watched these seals of mine on this, my first meeting with them, for
a considerable time from the top of the cliffs—the glasses giving me a
splendid view—and soon knew more about them than I had done before, and
got rid of some popular errors. For instance, I had always imagined that
seals had one set attitude for lying on the rocks—namely, flat on their
bellies—a delusion which every picture of them in this connection had
helped to foster. Imagine my surprise and delight when it burst upon
me that only some three or four were in this attitude, and that even
these did not retain it for long. No; instead of being in this state of
uninteresting orthodoxy, they lay in the most delightful free-thinking
poses, on their sides, showing their fine, portly, columnar bellies in
varying degrees and proportions; whilst one utter infidel was right and
full upon his broad back, yet looked like the carved image of some old
Crusader on the lid of his stone sarcophagus. Every now and then they
would give themselves a hitch, and bring their heads up, showing their
fine round foreheads and large mild eyes; a very human—mildly human—and
extremely intelligent appearance they had, looking down upon them from
above. Again, they had the oddest or oddest-appearing actions, especially
that of pressing their two hind feet or flippers together, with all their
five-webbed toes spread out in a fan, with an energy and in a manner
which suggested the fervent clasping of hands. Then they would scratch
themselves with their fore feet lazily and sedately, raising their heads
the while, looking extremely happy, having sometimes even a beatific
expression. And then again they would curl themselves a little and roll
more over, seeming to expatiate and almost lose themselves in large,
luxurious ease—more variety and expression about them lying thus dozing
than one will see in many animals awake and active.
Even in this little time I learnt that they were animals of a finely
touched spirit, extremely playful, with a grand sense of humour, and
filled “from the crown to the toe, top-full” of happiness. Thus one
that came swimming up the little quiet bay, in quest of a rock to
lie upon, seemed to delight in pretending to find first one and then
another too steep and difficult to get up on (for obviously they were
not), and would fling himself from off them in a sort of little sham
disappointment, gambolling and rolling about, twisting himself up with
seaweed, and generally having a most lively, solitary romp. A piece of
bleached spar, some four or five feet long, happened—and I am glad that
it happened—to be floating in the water at quite the other side of the
creek and, espying it, this delightful animal swam over to it, and began
to play with it as a kitten might with a reel of cotton or a ball of
worsted. More frolicsome, kitten-hearted, and withal intelligent play I
never saw. He passed just underneath it, and, coming up on the opposite
side, rolled over upon it, cuffed it with one fore foot, again with
the other, flipped it then with his footy tail as he dived away, and
returning, in a fresh burst of rompiness, waltzed round and round with
it, embracing it, one might almost say. At last, going off, he swam to a
much steeper rock than any he had made-believe to find so difficult, and,
scrambling up it with uncouth ease, went quietly to sleep in the best
possible humour.
What intelligence all this shows! Much more, I think, than the sporting
of two animals together. This seal was alone, saw the floating spar at a
distance, and swam to it with the evident intention of amusing himself in
this manner. Later, another seal played with this same spar in much the
same way; yet both of them seemed to be quite full-grown animals.
Then I saw something which looked like a spirit of real humour, as well
as fun. Three seals were lying on a slab of rock together, and one of
them, raising himself half up, began to scratch the one next him with
his fore foot. The scratched seal—a lady, I believe—took it in the most
funny manner, a sort of serio-comic remonstrance, shown in action and
expression: “Now do leave off, really. Come now, do leave me alone”—and
when this had reached a climax the funny fellow left off and lay still
again; but as soon as all was quiet, he heaved up and began to scratch
her again. This he did—and she did the other—three times, at the least,
and if not to have a little fun with her I can hardly see why.
Shags.
Now I have found a nest with the bird on it, to see and watch. It was
on a ledge, and just within the mouth of one of those long, narrowing,
throat-like caverns into and out of which the sea, with all sorts of
strange, sullen noises, licks like a tongue. The bird, who had seen me,
continued for a long time afterwards to crane about its long neck from
side to side or up and down over the nest, in doing which it had a very
demoniac appearance, suggesting some evil being in its dark abode.
[Illustration: _Shag._]
As it was impossible for me to watch it without my head being visible
over the edge of the rock I was on, I collected a number of loose flat
stones that lay on the turf above, and, at the cost of a good deal of
time and labour, made a kind of wall or sconce with loopholes in it,
through which I could look and yet be invisible. Presently the bird’s
mate came flying into the cavern, and wheeling up as it entered, alighted
on a sloping slab of the rock just opposite to the nest. For a little
both birds uttered low, deep, croaking notes in weird unison with the
surroundings and the sad sea-dirges, after which they were silent for a
considerable time, the one standing and the other sitting on the nest
_vis-à-vis_ to each other. At length the former, which I have no doubt
was the male, hopped across the slight space dividing them on to the
nest, which was a huge mass of seaweed. There were now some more deep
sounds, and then, bending over the female bird, the male caressed her by
passing the hooked tip of his bill through the feathers of her head and
neck, which she held low down the better to permit of this. The whole
scene was a striking picture of affection between those dark, wild birds
in their lonely wave-made home.
The male bird now flies out to sea again, and after a time returns
carrying a long piece of brown seaweed in his bill. This he delivers to
the female, who takes it from him and deposits it on the heap, as she
sits. Meanwhile the male flies off again, and again returns with more
seaweed, which he delivers as before; and this he does eight times in the
space of one hour and forty minutes, diving each time for the seaweed
with the true cormorant leap. Sometimes the sitting bird, when she takes
the seaweed from her mate, merely lets it drop on the heap, but at
others she places and manipulates it with some care. All takes place in
silence for the most part, but on some of the visits the heads are thrown
up, and there are sounds—hoarse and deeply guttural—as of gratulation
between the two.
The nest of the shag is continually added to by the male, not only while
the eggs are in process of incubation, but after they are hatched, and
when the young are being brought up. In a sense, therefore, it may be
said to be never finished, though for all practical purposes it is so
before the female bird begins to sit. That up to this period the female
as well as the male bird takes part in the building of the nest I cannot
but think, but from the time of my arrival on the island I never saw the
two either diving for or carrying seaweed together. Once I saw a pair of
birds together high up on the cliffs, where some tufts of grass grew in
the niches. One of these birds only pulled out some of the grass, and
flew away with it, accompanied by the other.
It is not only seaweed that is used by these birds in the construction
of the nest. In many that I saw grass alone was visible, though I have
no doubt seaweed was underneath it; and one in particular had quite
an ornamental appearance, from being covered all over with some land
plant having a number of small blue flowers; and this I have observed
in other nests, though not to the same extent. I think it was on this
same nest that I noticed the picked and partially bleached skeleton—with
the head and wings still feathered—of a puffin. It had, to be sure, a
sorry appearance to the human—at least to the civilized human—eye, but
if it had not been brought there for the sake of ornament, I can think
of no other reason; and brought there or at least placed upon the nest
by the bird it must almost certainly have been. The brilliant beak and
saliently-marked head of the puffin must be here remembered. Again,
fair-sized pieces of wood or spar, cast up by the sea and whitened by
it, are often to be seen stuck amongst the seaweed, and on one occasion
I saw a bird fly with one of these to its nest and place it upon it. In
all this, as it seems to me, the beginnings of a tendency to ornament the
nest are clearly exhibited.
Both the sexes share in the duty and pleasure of incubation, and (as in
some other species) to see them relieve each other on the nest is to see
one of the prettiest things in bird life. The bird that you have been
watching has sat patiently the whole morning, and once or twice, as it
rose in the nest and shifted itself round into another position on the
eggs, you have seen the gleam of them as they lay there “as white as
ocean foam in the moon.” At last, when it is well on in the afternoon,
the partner bird flies up and stands for some minutes preening itself;
while the one on the nest, who is turned away, throws back the head
towards it, and opens and shuts the bill somewhat widely, as in greeting,
several times. The new-comer then jumps and waddles to the farther side
of the nest, so as to front the sitting bird, and sinking down against it
with a manner and action full both of affection and a sense of duty, this
one is half pushed, half persuaded to leave, finally doing so with the
accustomed grotesque hop. It has all been done nearly in silence, only
a few low, guttural notes having passed between the birds whilst they
were close together. Just in the same way the birds relieve each other
after the eggs have been hatched, and when the young are being fed and
attended to.
A shag is sitting on her nest with the young ones, whilst the male stands
on a higher ledge of the rock a yard or so away. He now jumps down and
stands for a moment with head somewhat erected and beak slightly open.
Then he makes the great pompous hop which I have described before, coming
down right in front of the female, who raises her head towards him, and
opens and closes the mandibles several times in the approved manner. The
two birds then nibble, as it were, the feathers of each other’s necks
with the ends of their bills, and the male takes up a little of the grass
of the nest, seeming to toy with it. He then very softly and persuadingly
pushes himself against the sitting bird, seeming to say, “It’s my turn
now,” and thus gets her to rise, when both stand together on the nest
over the little ones. The male then again takes up a little of the grass
of the nest, which he passes towards the female, who also takes it,
and they toy with it a little together before allowing it to drop. The
insinuating process now continues, the male in the softest and gentlest
manner pushing the female away, and then sinking down into her place,
where he now sits, whilst she stands beside him on the ledge. As soon as
the relieving bird has settled itself amidst the young, and whilst the
other one is still there—not yet having flown off to sea—it begins to
feed them. Their heads—very small, and with beaks not seeming to be much
longer in proportion to their size than those of young ducks—are seen
moving feebly about, pointing upwards, but with very little precision.
Very gently, and seeming to seize the right opportunity, the parent
bird takes first one head and then another in the basal part, or gape,
of his mandibles, turning his own head on one side in order to do so,
so that the rest of the long bill projects sideways beyond the chick’s
head without touching it. In this connection, and while the chick’s head
is quite visible, little, if any, more than the beak being within the
gape of the parent bird, the latter bends the head down and makes that
particular action as of straining so as to bring something up which one
is familiar with in pigeons. This process is gone through several times
before the bird standing on the ledge flies away, to return again in a
quarter of an hour with a piece of seaweed, which is laid on the nest.
As the chicks become older they thrust the head and bill farther and
farther down the throat of the parent bird, and at last to an astonishing
extent. Always, however, it appeared to me that the parent bird brought
up the food into the chicks’ bills in some state of preparation, and
was not a mere passive bag from which the latter pulled fish in a
whole state. There were several nests all in unobstructed view, and so
excellent were my glasses that, practically, I saw the whole process as
though it had been taking place on a table in front of me. The chicks, on
withdrawing their heads from the parental throat, would often slightly
open and close the mandibles as though still tasting something, in a
manner which one may describe as smacking the bill; but on no occasion
did I observe anything projecting from the bill when this was withdrawn,
as one would expect sometimes to be the case if unmodified fish were
pulled up. Always, too, the actions of the parent bird suggested that
particular process which is known as regurgitation, and which may be
observed with pigeons, and also with the night-jar.
Young shags are at first naked and black, also blind, as I was able to
detect through the glasses. Afterwards the body becomes covered with a
dusky gray down, and then every day they struggle more and more into
the likeness of their parents. They soon begin to imitate the grown-up
postures, and it is a pretty thing to see mother and young one sitting
together with their heads held stately upright, or the little woolly
chick standing up in the nest and hanging out its thin little featherless
wings, just as mother is doing, or just as it has seen her do. At other
times the chicks lie sprawling together either flat or on their sides.
They are good tempered and playful, seize hold playfully of each other’s
bills, and will often bite or play with the feathers of their parent’s
tail. In fact, they are a good deal like puppies, and the heart goes out
both to them and to their loving, careful, assiduous mother and father.
When both birds are at home, the one that stands on the rock, by or
near the nest, is ready to guard it from all intrusion. Should another
bird fly on to the rock and alight, in his opinion, too near it, he
immediately advances towards him, shaking his wings, and uttering a low
grunting note which is full of intention. Finding itself in a false
position, the intruding bird flies off; but it sometimes happens that
when two nests are not far apart, the sentinels belonging to each are
in too close a proximity and begin to cast jealous glances upon one
another. In such a case neither bird can retreat without some loss of
dignity, and, as a result, there is a fight.
I have witnessed a drama of this nature. The two locked their beaks
together, and the one which seemed to be the stronger endeavoured with
all his might to pull the other towards him, which the weaker bird, on
his part, resisted as desperately, using his wings both as opposing props
and to push back with. This lasted for some while, but the pulling bird
was unable to drag the other up the steeply-sloping rock, and finally
lost his hold. Instead of trying to regain it, he turned and shuffled
excitedly to the nest; and when he reached it, the bird sitting there
stretched out her neck towards him, and opened and shut her beak several
times in quick succession. It was as if he had said to her, “I hope you
observed my prowess. Was it well done?” and she had replied, “I should
think I did observe it. It was indeed well done.” On the worsted bird’s
ascending the rock to get to his nest, the victorious one ran, or rather
waddled, at him, putting him to a short flight up it. This bird was also
cordially received by his own partner, who threw up her head and opened
her bill at him in the same way, as though sympathizing, and saying,
“Don’t mind him; he’s rude.” In such affairs, either bird is safe as soon
as he gets within close distance of his own nest; for it would be against
all precedent, and something monstrous, that he should be followed beyond
a charmed line drawn around it.
EDMUND SELOUS. (_From “Bird Watching” and “The Bird-Watcher
in the Shetlands.” J. M. Dent and Co. By permission._)
THE BIRDS OF SULE SKERRY.
Sule Skerry is a tiny, barren, surf-bleached islet, lying far out in the
open ocean, thirty-two miles west from Hoy Head, about the same distance
from Cape Wrath, and thirty miles from the nearest land, Farrid Head,
in Sutherlandshire. The Skerry, roughly rhomboidal in outline, is about
half a mile in length and a quarter of a mile in its greatest width, and
attains a height of only forty-five feet in its central part. All round
the shore is a belt of bare, jagged rock, where the wash of the great
Atlantic waves prevents any vegetation from finding a foothold, and of
the thirty-five acres or so which form the entire area of the island only
some twelve are covered with a mossy, vegetable soil.
Lying, as it does, right in the track of trading vessels, this low
islet, together with the Stack, which rises to a height of more than a
hundred feet some four and a half miles to the south-westward, formed
a death-trap to many a ship, which was, no doubt, afterwards merely
reported as “missing,” and its shores when visited were rarely found
without some stranded wreckage to tell of the unrecorded tragedies of
the winter seas. It was not till the year 1892 that steps were taken to
mark this dangerous rock, but three years later saw the completion of
Sule Skerry Lighthouse, a massive tower of a hundred feet in height, with
a powerful light visible for a distance of eighteen miles.
Sule Skerry is no longer either a dangerous or a lonely islet when
compared with its former state. The three lightkeepers who are always
on duty, together with their goats, poultry, and rabbits, give quite
an inhabited air to the place—probably too much so for the comfort of
the original occupants, the flocks of birds which find on it either
a permanent home or a temporary dwelling-place. Sule Skerry is an
ideal place for observation of the birds which frequent our islands,
both from the immense numbers of them which nest there, and from the
absence of high cliffs or inaccessible rocks. Luckily for us, one of the
lightkeepers formerly on this station, Mr. Tomison, a native of Orkney,
was a man unusually well qualified for such observation, and he has
recorded much that is of interest regarding the bird life of the Skerry.
From one of his papers on this subject we quote the following interesting
pages.
[Illustration: _Sule Skerry Lighthouse._]
The Residenters.
The birds of Sule Skerry may be divided into three classes—the
residenters, the regular visitors, and the occasional visitors. The class
of residenters is represented by the great black-backed gull, the herring
gull, the shag or green cormorant, and the meadow pipit.
[Illustration: _Great black-backed gull._]
The great black-backed gull is one of the handsomest birds of the gull
family, but owing to its destructive propensities amongst small birds,
rabbits, and occasionally young lambs, a continual warfare has been
waged against it for years by farmers and gamekeepers, until now it is
almost entirely banished to the outlying parts of the country. Before
the lighthouse was erected on Sule Skerry, large numbers of this species
frequented the island; but the lightkeepers found them such arrant
thieves that they reduced their numbers considerably. There are still
about twenty pairs resident on the island all the year round, and they
seem to find plenty of food either on land or at sea. Their breeding-time
is in May, and sometimes as late as June. When the young are hatched the
parents are continually on the lookout for food, and I have often seen
them swoop down and seize young rabbits. Frequently they make desperate
efforts to capture the old rabbits, but never successfully. They lay
three eggs in a nest composed of withered grass, and the process of
incubation lasts about four weeks.
[Illustration: _Herring gull._]
A small colony of herring gulls stays on the island all the year round,
but in summer vast flocks of them are in evidence when the herrings are
on the coast. Only the residents remain to breed, and about a dozen
pairs annually rear their young and spend their whole time in the
vicinity. Some of the young must emigrate to a more genial climate, for
although rarely disturbed their numbers are not increasing. They lay
three eggs early in May, and sit about four weeks. When hatched, the
young immediately leave the nest, and are so like the surrounding rocks
in colour that when they lie close it is almost impossible to discover
them. When hunting for food for their offspring, these gulls are almost
as great a pest as their cousins, the great black-backed, and are more
audacious thieves.
The most numerous of the residenters are the scarfs. In summer and winter
they are always on the island, and apparently there is an abundant supply
of suitable food in the vicinity, for they never go far away. During
winter they congregate on the rocks in large flocks or colonies, and they
have become so accustomed to man’s presence that they fly only when one
approaches within a few yards of them. In very stormy weather they seek
refuge in some sheltered spot, far enough away from the coast-line to
be safe from the encroaching waves, and only when frightened by any one
approaching too near do they choose what is, in their opinion, the lesser
of two evils, and seek safety in flight. With the advent of spring they,
like all other birds, turn their thoughts to love. Their comparatively
homely winter dress gradually changes to one more appropriate to this
sentiment and more in harmony with the imposing surroundings. Early in
the year their plumage assumes a greener tint, and the graceful tuft
or crest on the top of the head becomes more and more prominent. This
crest practically disappears about the end of June, and seems to be a
decoration in both sexes only during the nuptial season. Usually they
manage to get through with their love-making and selecting of partners
by the middle of March, after which the operations of nest-building are
undertaken.
In Orkney we associate a scarf’s nest with some almost inaccessible
cliff, but such is not the case on Sule Skerry, for the simple reason
that there are no cliffs. The nests are built all over the island, but
principally near the coast-line; and the sociableness of the bird’s
disposition shows itself in this fact, that they tend to crowd their
nests together in certain selected spots, to which they return year after
year. One place in particular, a patch of rough, rocky ground from forty
to fifty yards square, I have named the scarf colony on account of its
numerous population during the breeding season. Here in 1898 I counted
fifty-six nests.
As to the materials used for nest-building, these are principally seaweed
and grass, but the scarf is not very particular as to details, and uses
anything that will suit the purpose. I have found pieces of ordinary
rope, even wire rope, and small pieces of wood used, and a very common
foundation is the skeleton of a rabbit which has died during the winter.
During building operations I have observed that one bird builds and the
other brings the materials. After all has been completed, three, four,
and sometimes five eggs are laid. Three is the most common number; five
is rare. During incubation the one bird relieves the other periodically.
It is a common sight to see one come in from the sea, sit down at the
edge of the nest, and hold a long palaver with its mate. The sitting bird
then gets up and flies out to sea, the other taking its place.
When the young come out of the egg they are entirely naked, of a dark
sooty colour, and particularly ugly. Towards the end of the first week of
their existence a coating of down begins to grow, followed by feathers in
about three weeks. As near as I can judge from observation, the bird is
fully fledged in five weeks from the time of hatching.
[Illustration: _Meadow-pipit._]
The only other residenter is the meadow-pipit, tit-lark, or moss-cheeper.
It is the only small bird that remains on the island all the year round.
It nests generally in May, and lays five or six eggs. It is said that
two broods are raised in the season, but I have never noticed that here.
Towards the end of summer they are to be seen in considerable numbers,
but in September and October the island is visited by kestrels, who soon
thin them down.
The Regular Visitors.
The regular visitors are puffin, razor-bill, common guillemot, black
guillemot, oyster-catcher, tern, eider duck, kittiwake, stormy petrel,
curlew, snipe, turnstone, and sandpiper. In this list I have advisedly
placed first the puffin, or tammynorie, or bottlenose, or coulterneb,
or pope, or sea-parrot, for it is a well-known and well-named bird. In
point of interest it undoubtedly takes the first place among all our
feathered friends. Its remarkable appearance, its activity, its assertive
disposition, and the regularity of its habits, compel the attention of
the most careless observer.
[Illustration: _Puffin._]
At one time puffins were much in demand for food. An old history of the
Scilly Islands tells us that in 1345 the rent of these islands was three
hundred puffins. In 1848, on account of the bird having got scarcer, and
consequently more valuable, the rent was fifty puffins. We are also led
to understand that the young birds, being plump and tender, were more
highly esteemed than their more elderly and tougher relatives.
The most remarkable feature of this curious bird is its beak, the
peculiarities of which are its enormous size compared with the size of
the body, and its brilliant colours—blue, yellow, and red. For a long
time it was a puzzle that occasional dead specimens found washed ashore
in winter had a beak very much smaller and destitute of bright colours.
It has now been ascertained that the outer sheath is moulted annually,
being shed on the approach of winter and replaced at the return of the
breeding season.
To give any idea of their numbers on Sule Skerry is an almost impossible
task, for when they are on the island they are hardly ever at rest. The
air is black with them, the ground is covered with them, every hole is
tenanted by them, the sea is covered with them. They are here, there, and
everywhere.
They first make their appearance early in April, and spend from eight to
twelve days at sea before landing, coming close in round the island in
the forenoon and disappearing at night. Before landing they fly in clouds
round the place, and after having made a survey to see that all is right,
they begin to drop in hundreds, till in half an hour every stone and rock
is covered. They do not waste time, but start at once to clear out old
holes and make new ones, and for burrowing they can easily put a rabbit
in the shade. Those who are not engaged in digging improve the shining
hour by fighting, and for pluck and determination they are hard to beat.
They are so intent on their work that I have often seized the combatants,
and even then they were unwilling to let go their hold of each other; but
when they do, it is advisable for the person interfering to let go also,
if he would avoid a rather unpleasant handshake.
After spending a few hours on the island they all disappear, and do not
usually land again for two days; but when they do come back the second
time there is no ceremony about their landing. They come in straggling
flocks from all points of the compass, and resume their digging and
fighting. They continue in this manner, never remaining ashore all
night till the first week of May. They spend very little time on the
construction of their nests, which consist merely of a few straws. The
greater number burrow in the dry, peaty soil, and their holes will
average at least three feet underground; but there are also an immense
number that lay amongst loose rocks and stones on the north side of the
island. The eggs laid there are always clean and white until the young
bird is hatched; but those laid underground in a day or two become
as brown as the soil, and seem more like a lump of peat than an egg.
During the time of incubation, which lasts a month, those not engaged in
hatching spend their time in fishing and resting on the rocks, and as a
pastime indulge in friendly sparring matches.
One easily knows when the young are hatched by seeing the old birds
coming in from sea with herring fry or small sand-eels, which are carried
transversely in their bills, from six to ten at a time. The sole work of
the parent birds for the next three or four weeks is fishing and carrying
home their takes to the young. Very little time is given to nursing.
They remain in the hole just long enough to get rid of their burden,
and then go to sea again. As the young ones grow, the size of the fish
brought home increases. At first it is small sand-eels from one and a
half to two inches long, but at the end of a fortnight small herrings and
moderate-sized sand-eels are the usual feeding. I noticed an old bird fly
into a hole one day with a bigger fish than usual, and, to see what it
was, I put in my hand and pulled out both birds. The tail of the fish was
just disappearing down the young one’s throat, but I made him disgorge
his prey, and found it to be a sand-eel eight inches long. How that small
bird could find room for such a dinner was really wonderful.
At first the young are covered with a thick coating of down, and probably
their appearance at this stage has given rise to the name “puffin,”
meaning a “little puff.” In a fortnight the white feathers on the breast
begin to show, and the birds are fully fledged in four weeks, when they
at once take to the water. As soon as they go afloat, young and old leave
the place, and about the middle of July one can easily see that their
numbers are decreasing, the end of August usually seeing the last of them.
[Illustration: _Razor-bill._]
There is a considerable colony of razor-bills on the island. Their time
of arrival is about the same as that of the puffin, but they make no
commotion when they come. They seem to slip ashore, and always keep near
the coast-line, ready to fly to sea when any one approaches. They begin
laying towards the end of May, and lay one egg on the bare rock, usually
under a stone, but in some cases on an exposed ledge. During incubation
one bird relieves the other, for if the egg were left exposed and
unprotected the black-backed gull would very soon appropriate it. Some
authorities say that the male bird brings food to its mate; but I have
never observed this, though I have watched carefully to see if such were
the case The young remain in the nest, or, to speak more correctly, on
the rock, for about two weeks if not disturbed, and I have seen a young
one remain ashore until covered with feathers, which would mean about
four weeks from the time of hatching. They all, young and old, leave
early in August. I am sorry to say they are becoming scarcer every year,
chiefly on account of their shyness and fear of man.
The common guillemots are scarce. Their great haunt in this vicinity is
the Stack. There they are to be seen in myriads on the perpendicular side
of the rock facing the west. Only two or three pairs take up their abode
on the island; in fact their numbers scarcely entitle them to be called
Sule Skerry birds. The few young ones I have seen are carried to the
water as soon as they are hatched—at least they disappear the same day.
Black guillemots or tysties are plentiful. Their time of arrival is about
the middle of March, but they are rarely seen ashore before the end of
April. Their nests are to be found in out-of-the-way crevices or under
stones, and are not easily discovered on account of the extraordinary
watchfulness of the birds and their care not to be caught on or near
their nests. They lay two eggs, and the young are fully feathered before
going afloat. They remain about the island till the end of September.
[Illustration: _Oyster-catcher._]
The first of all the visitors to arrive are the oyster-catchers. They
first put in an appearance about the end of February, when their
well-known cry denotes that the long, dreary winter is over. They spend
their time till the end of March chiefly feeding along the coast-line;
but after that time they pair, and are seen all over the island. About
the end of May they lay three eggs in a nest composed of a few small
stones; and when the young are hatched the noise of the old birds is
perfectly deafening on the approach of an intruder, and even when no one
is annoying them the clamour they make almost amounts to a nuisance.
On calm, quiet nights it is hardly possible to sleep for them, and one
feels inclined to get out of bed and shoot them down wholesale. The young
leave the nest as soon as hatched, and are rarely seen, for on hearing
the warning cry of the parent bird they at once hide among the long
grass or under stones, and on one occasion I found a pair some distance
underground in a rabbit’s hole. They all leave the island during the
first half of September.
Next to the puffins in numbers are the terns—the Arctic terns. They are
also like the puffins in the regularity of their arrival at the island.
When first seen they are flying high up, and they continue doing so for a
day or two, only resting at night. There are several varieties of terns
scattered all over the British Isles, but in the north the most numerous
are the Arctic and the common tern. The latter rarely visits the island.
[Illustration: _Arctic tern._]
There are certain localities where the terns take up their abode, and
they stick closely to the same ground year after year, never by any
chance making a nest twenty yards outside their usual breeding ground.
They begin to lay in the first week of June, but I have found eggs on
the last day of May. They lay two eggs, and sometimes three. When the
young are hatched the parents are kept busy supplying them with food,
which consists chiefly of sand-eels and herring fry. Their method of
fishing is to hover over the water, not unlike the way a hawk hovers
when watching its prey, and when they see a fish to make a dart on it,
rarely if ever failing to make a haul. They also prey on worms when
it is too stormy for fishing at sea. On a wet evening, when the worms
are having an outing, the terns are to be seen in hundreds all over
the island, hovering about six feet above the ground, every now and
again making a dart down, and, when successful, flying home with their
catch to the young. No time is lost, for the old bird seldom alights
when handing over the worm. It swoops down to where the young ones are
standing with outstretched necks and bills gaping, screaming out to let
their whereabouts be known, and then flies off again for more. When the
young are able to fly they accompany their parents over the island, and
occasionally do a little hunting on their own account.
About the first of August the young are fully fledged. Young and old then
assemble from all parts of the island to a piece of bare rocky ground on
the north-east corner, which they make their headquarters for about ten
days, flying out to sea for food, but always returning at night. About
the fifteenth of August they all disappear, and are seen no more till the
following May.
[Illustration: _Stormy petrel._]
The island is the headquarters of a large colony of stormy petrels. It
is not an easy matter to fix the exact date of their arrival, for they
are never seen during the day, and only come out of their holes at night.
They are first seen in the latter end of June, when on a fine clear night
one can see them flitting about close to the ground, very like swallows
in their movements. They begin to lay in July, and their nests are to be
found under stones and in rabbits’ holes. Almost the only way to find
them is to listen for their peculiar cry, which they keep up at intervals
the whole night through. If captured during the day, they seem quite
dazed when released, and at once fly into some dark place. The date of
their departure, like that of their arrival, is not easily fixed, but I
think it is during September. Young birds have been got on the lantern at
night as late as the end of September, but never in October.
[Illustration: _Eider duck (male)._]
The eider duck is a regular visitor, and a considerable flock make Sule
Skerry their headquarters for about eight months in the year. They are
first seen in March fishing off the island, but they very rarely land
before the end of April. In May they may be seen ashore every day, but
always near the water, ready to pop in if alarmed. They are very shy and
difficult to approach. In June the duck and the drake both come ashore
and select a place for their nest, and that is the only occasion on which
the drake takes a part in the hatching process. So far as my observation
goes, I have never seen him approach his mate during the month of
incubation.
The nest is built sometimes on a bare rock, but more commonly among
grass, and consists of coarse grass for a foundation, the famous down
being added only as the eggs are laid. Five or six is the common number
found in one nest. From the time it begins to sit until incubation is
completed, the duck never leaves the nest unless disturbed, and will only
fly to sea if driven off. If approached quietly, it will allow one to
stroke it, and does not seem afraid. There are always one or two nests
close to the house, and though I have watched them closely at all hours,
night and day, I have never seen the birds go away for food, nor have I
seen their undutiful spouses bring any to them. I will not venture to
say that the duck lives a month without sustenance, but I am strongly
inclined to that belief. When frightened away, it goes only a short
distance, and returns immediately as soon as the cause of its fright has
been removed.
[Illustration: _Eider duck on nest._]
The whole inside of the nest is lined with down, which seems to be
intended only for the purpose of keeping the eggs warm. It is certainly
not intended to form a cosy nursery for the young, as they leave for the
sea a few hours after birth and do not return. Unless the down is removed
before the young are hatched it is useless, for it gets mixed up with the
egg-shells, which are always broken into very small pieces. After leaving
the nest the young birds rarely come ashore again, but remain afloat,
feeding along the edge of the rocks on mussels and crustaceans. The old
birds disappear in October, but some young ones remain till the end of
November.
[Illustration: _Kittiwake._]
Few kittiwake gulls visit the island, but these come regularly, and take
up their abode on the same ground year after year. They arrive in April,
and about the first of May begin nest-building, a work which keeps them
employed for about three weeks. They begin laying about the end of May,
and lay three eggs. The young are fully grown before leaving the nest,
and are fed by both the parent birds. They all leave the island about the
end of August, and not even a straggler is seen till the following spring.
[Illustration: _Curlew or whaup._]
I have now gone over all the birds that breed on Sule Skerry, and come
next to the regular winter visitors, consisting of the curlew, the snipe,
the turnstone, and the common sandpiper.
About a dozen curlews or whaups make the island their home for about nine
months of the year. They leave about the end of May and return in August,
remaining on the island all winter. Their number always keeps about the
same—twelve or fifteen. They have the same characteristics as those found
elsewhere—their extraordinary alertness and their peculiar cry—but they
are distinctly less shy than is usually the case in other parts of the
country. They are never disturbed in any way, and the result is that, if
any one wished, it would be an easy matter to get within gunshot of them.
Their chief food is worms and insects, of which there is a plentiful
supply on the island.
When the curlews leave the island, a few whimbrels take their place, and
remain about six weeks. They breed in Orkney and Shetland, but though
they remain on the island most of the breeding season I have never yet
found a nest. I have spent many an hour watching them from the light-room
with the glass to see if they were sitting, and have gone over the ground
where they are most frequently seen, but could never find an egg or any
attempt at nest building. They are very much like the curlew in general
appearance, only much smaller.
[Illustration: _Snipe._]
The snipe leaves the island in May, and is absent about four months,
usually returning in October. None, so far, have ever nested on
Sule Skerry, and they all go elsewhere for that purpose. There is a
considerable number of them resident during the winter, larger in some
years than in others. They sometimes get killed by dashing against the
lantern at night, but it is not often they fly so high.
[Illustration: _Turnstone._]
The turnstone always spends the winter on the island, arriving about
the end of August or the first of September, and from then on till
April it spends its time feeding on insects. On Sule Skerry it is in
no way afraid of man, but rather the opposite, for it depends a good
deal on the lightkeepers for its livelihood in stormy weather. Whenever
the lightkeepers go to feed their hens, the turnstones gather from all
parts of the island and sit round at a respectful distance—about a dozen
yards—waiting for their share, which they receive regularly every day,
and they seem to enjoy it very much. The lightkeepers often turn over
big stones to enable the hens to feed on the insects which are there
in immense quantities. The turnstones have learned the meaning of this
operation, and whether the hens are present or not, they soon gather
round for a feast when one retires a short distance. A few specimens of
the common sandpiper always accompany them, but they feed more amongst
the seaweed along the coast-line, and are more afraid of the approach of
man.
[Illustration: _Sandpiper._]
Occasional Visitors.
We now come to the third class, the occasional visitors. These are the
wild goose, the mallard or stock duck, the teal, the widgeon, the Iceland
gull, the Sclavonian grebe, the heron, the kestrel, the hooded crow,
the rook, the lapwing, the golden plover, the redshank, the corncrake,
the water rail, the fieldfare, the redwing, the snow-bunting, the
starling, the song thrush or mavis, the blackbird, the water-wagtail, the
stonechat, the woodcock, the skylark, the twite or mountain linnet, the
robin, the swallow, the black-headed gull, and the little auk.
Wild geese pass the island on their way south in October, but very rarely
rest. Occasionally a flock will hover round for some time, but the sight
of a human habitation scares them away, and they continue on their way in
the direction of Cape Wrath. Last October half a dozen were seen resting
on the island one morning about eight o’clock. They seemed to be feeding
in one of the fresh-water pools, but all they would find there would not
fatten them. Sule Skerry is a very likely place for them to call at, as
it is right in their track when on the way to and from Iceland and Faroe,
but perhaps the island being inhabited causes them to give it a wide
berth. At any rate very few of them ever honour it with a visit.
[Illustration: _Mallard._]
The mallard pays the island frequent visits during the winter, two and
three at a time. They never stay long, for there is very little feeding
for them. They are particularly shy, resting only on the most outlying
parts, and seeming continually on the watch. Teal and widgeon are not
common. Of the former one sees a specimen or two every winter, while of
the latter only two have visited the island, and that was in March 1897,
when they stayed a few days.
In November 1895 an Iceland gull arrived on the island, and remained to
the end of February following. It became fairly tame, sitting the greater
part of the day near the house on the watch for any scraps of meat that
were thrown out. Hopes were entertained that it intended remaining
permanently on the island, but on the approach of the breeding season it
departed. In 1898 one stayed for a week in November; in the following
year another was seen on the 23rd of November. This one was fishing in
company with some common gulls, and occasionally flew over the island
quite close to the tower; but I did not see it alight, nor was it seen
again on any of the following days.
[Illustration: _Heron._]
The common heron every year spends a day or two on the island, generally
in October or November, but it never seems at home. They wander about
in search of food, but apparently do not find very much. When leaving
the island they always, without exception, fly in the direction of Cape
Wrath, but where they come from I cannot say, never having noticed them
arriving.
The hooded crow is an annual visitor, generally in November, and it
sometimes comes for a short visit in April. Two or three is the common
number at one time. There is, however, not much food for them, and on
that account their visit is soon over. A few rooks call about the same
time.
Every year in April the lapwings make the island a resting-place,
staying from a week to a fortnight. The place does not seem to suit them
for nesting purposes, for I have never seen them make any attempt at
nest-building. After resting and renewing their strength, they seek out
some more hospitable part of the country. Small flocks of the golden
plover also rest on the island on their passage north in March and April,
and again on their way south in October and November, staying from eight
to twelve days. There are also a few straggling visitors during the
winter.
The common redshank is a frequent visitor, staying perhaps a week at a
time, but it never nests on the island. In 1896 a corncrake’s well-known
song was heard during the greater part of June. It was heard again the
following season, but never since. The bird, however, is occasionally
seen in summer. The only way I can account for its silence is that the
goats and rabbits never allow the grass to grow to any length, and thus
there is no cover for it. I think most ornithologists are now satisfied
that this bird migrates to a warmer climate every year on the approach of
winter. Whether such is the case or not I do not feel prepared to say,
but from my experience of Sule Skerry I am quite satisfied it is only a
summer visitor there, and does not remain on the island all winter. The
water-rail pays the island a visit every winter, but I do not think
there is any danger of its being mistaken for the corncrake. They are a
little like one another in shape, but they are two distinct species, and
easily recognized.
[Illustration: _Water-rail._]
In October and November the island is visited annually by considerable
numbers of fieldfares, redwings, blackbirds, rock-thrushes, starlings,
and woodcocks. They generally stay from a week to a fortnight, and are
more numerous some years than others. Water-wagtails are rare visitors,
seen at various times of the year. Stonechats are also rare visitors,
only staying a few days in May. The skylark, so common everywhere else,
is a very rare visitor, and is only seen or heard once or twice during
the summer months. Robin redbreast is always seen in the autumn, and
generally stays a few weeks if the weather is moderate. The twite or
mountain linnet pays an occasional visit in summer, and stays for some
time; but I have never yet found a nest, and cannot say if it breeds on
the island. In June every year a few sparrows spend a fortnight on Sule
Skerry. Snow-buntings almost deserve the name of regular winter visitors,
for from October to March they are seldom long absent.
Last September I got a bird which I knew to belong to the grebe family,
but I could not be sure of its proper name, and I sent it to Mr. Harvie
Brown for identification. He informed me it was a Sclavonian grebe, a
bird not very common in this part of the country. In November 1897 I
found a dead specimen of the little auk.
[Illustration: _Solan goose._]
Though not a Sule Skerry bird, the solan goose deserves notice in this
paper. The Stack, distant four and a half miles, has been their chief
breeding place in Orkney for ages, and every year it is tenanted by
immense numbers. The rock is 140 feet high, rising perpendicularly on
the west, but sloping gradually from the water to the summit on the
east side. It is on this slope that the solans congregate, and no other
bird is allowed to trespass on their preserves. In May, June, July,
and August their numbers are so vast that any one seeing the rock at a
distance would imagine it was painted white or composed of chalk. Sule
Skerry, however, is too far distant to allow of one forming any idea
of their numbers, but looking at them with the glass one sees the rock
simply covered, and apparently as many flying about as resting. Lewis men
visit the place annually in August, and carry away a boatload of young
birds. Last year they came up to the rock, but there was too much surf
for a landing, and as the weather was threatening they headed for the
Sutherlandshire coast. That night the wind blew half a gale, and fears
were entertained that it would prove too much for them, for their boat
was small and hardly powerful enough to be so far from home; but a few
days later they again approached the rock. They again failed to negotiate
it, and after waiting for about an hour they made sail for home, and did
not return. The weather certainly favoured the solans on these occasions.
I have never seen a solan resting on Sule Skerry; they even carefully
avoid flying across the island, though they fish in immense numbers all
round, and sometimes within forty or fifty yards of the shore. They
usually begin to arrive in the vicinity about the end of January, and
their numbers continue to increase until the end of April, when they take
possession of the rock, and from then until the end of August their name
is legion. When the young are fledged, they gradually disappear, and from
the first of December till the last days of January they are not to be
seen.
Thus they go on year after year, a fraction of that great feathered
multitude which has come and gone since the earliest ages, and will
probably continue to come and go as long as the world lasts, some
arriving and departing in silence, others heralding their coming and
going with the wildest clamour. On this subject, and speaking of the
northern isles, Thomson the poet says:—
“Where the Northern Ocean, in vast whirls,
Boils round the naked melancholy isles
Of farthest Thule, and the Atlantic’s surge
Pours in amongst the stormy Hebrides;
Who can recount what transmigrations there
Are annual made? what nations come and go?
And how the living clouds on clouds arise,
Infinite wings! till all the plume-dark air
And rude resounding shore are one wild cry?”
J. TOMISON
(_“Orcadian Papers.”_)
[Illustration]
COMMON SEAWEEDS.
A severe storm has been raging for several days on our shores, and no
ship has dared to cross the Pentland. To-day a great calm has fallen upon
the face of the waters, and the sun shines clear in the sky. A walk by
the seashore on such a morning will afford an excellent opportunity for
collecting specimens of our seaweeds, and for studying their life-history.
Here they lie in all their varied colours, strewn on the beach like
autumn leaves in a forest. Now is our chance to secure some of those rare
and beautiful weeds that grow in the deeper water, and have been torn
off and driven ashore by the waves. If pressed and dried with care, they
will remain things of beauty for long. For this purpose we use squares of
stiff paper or card, on which we spread them out carefully under water.
When pressed, they will adhere to the paper by means of the mucilage
which they contain.
[Illustration: _Common seaweeds.—I._
A, _Sargassum_ (Gulf-weed), B, _Cladophora_. C, _Enteromorpha_. D 1,
_Fucus vesiculosus_. D 2, Receptacle of same, with eggs and sperms. D 3,
Egg, with sperms. E, _Polysiphonia_.]
The delicate fern-like or feathery fronds of those red seaweeds will
compare in beauty with the best of our flowering plants. This is all
the more wonderful when we consider their lowly origin. For the family
of the _Algæ_, to which the seaweeds belong, is the oldest and most
primitive of all the families of plants. To the Algæ most likely
belonged the first forms of life which appeared on the earth.
If we are fortunate to-day we may find a specimen of the famous Gulf-weed
(_Sargassum_), which gives its name to the Sargasso Sea, and which is
said to have cheered Columbus on his celebrated voyage of discovery. In
the tropical Atlantic it covers immense areas of the ocean, and it is
occasionally cast ashore on the Orkney coasts, drifted hither by the Gulf
Stream and the westerly winds. It is easily recognized by its numerous
little round air-bladders, each on a separate branch.
Now let us turn our attention to the seaweeds which we find growing
on the beach around us. In many a rock pool in the “ebb” we may see
a miniature forest of tiny weeds of beautiful colours and forms, a
veritable ocean garden. Near high-water mark we find here and there
in the pools pretty green algæ, some with broad, flat fronds, such as
the sea-lettuce (_Ulva_), and others with slender branching feathery
filaments (_Cladophora_). Many of the green algæ, however, prefer to live
in fresh water. If you make an aquarium, you will find the sea-lettuce
and the sea-grass (_Enteromorpha_) of great value in keeping the water
pure, owing to the amount of oxygen which they give out.
Farther down on the beach the rocks are covered thickly with algæ of an
olive-brown colour. The rocks, indeed, would fare much worse in a storm
if the seaweeds were not there to protect them, as the grass protects the
soil of the fields.
Look more closely at those big brown sea-wracks and you will notice
that the most common kind (_Fucus vesiculosus_) has little globular
air-bladders arranged in pairs along its flat, smooth-edged fronds. Each
blade has a distinct midrib, and where it divides, like all the Fucus
group, it splits into two equal branches. On some of the little end
branches you may see a yellowish swelling dotted over with minute knobs
and pores. These swellings are receptacles for holding the eggs and
sperms, which are contained in tiny cavities under each projecting knob.
Many seaweeds produce their fruit in winter, when the land plants are
sleeping and the fields are bare.
The microscopic sperms correspond to the pollen and the eggs to the
ovules of the flowering plants. But there is one wonderful difference.
The sperms of the Fucus can move about freely by means of two little
projecting threads or cilia. When the tide is out, both eggs and sperms
come to the door of their little houses by the help of the mucilage in
which they float; and when the sea comes back swarms of these sperms swim
away and wriggle about, till one of them comes in contact with an egg. It
adheres to and fuses with the egg, which thus becomes fertilized, and is
then able to give rise to a young plant. A similar process goes on in all
the plants of the Fucus group.
Here is one with notched or serrated edges (_Fucus serratus_), and
without air-bladders; there another well known to every schoolboy as the
“bell tang” (_Fucus nodosus_), with large air-bladders in the centre
line of the frond, and yellow fruit-bodies each on a branch of its own,
without any trace of midrib.
The air-bladders of the seaweeds are natural buoys, by means of which
the plants are kept erect in the water. The mucilage which makes them so
slippery to walk over is of the utmost importance, as it protects them
from drought when they are left uncovered by the tide. Seaweeds are very
simple in their structure, and have no true roots, stems, or leaves. They
do not need such organs, for every part of their body is in contact with
the water which contains their food-supply.
What are those tufts of reddish-brown threads growing all over the fronds
of this Fucus? That is a red seaweed (_Polysiphonia_), which often
makes its home under the shelter of a more hardy plant. In the red algæ
the sperms have no cilia, and cannot move about of themselves, but the
eggs have each a long thread, corresponding to the stigma of the higher
plants, and against this thread the sperms are driven by currents of
water.
The little Fucus known as “teeting tang” (_Fucus canaliculatus_) ought
not to be passed unheeded. It is often much relished by sheep and cattle.
You may know it by its greenish-brown colour and by the distinct groove
on one side all along its length. It is found only in the upper part
of the “ebb”. Another interesting plant of this group may be found on
the large rocks nearer low-water mark. It is called the “sea-thong”
(_Himanthalia lorea_), because its fructification grows out from a
button-shaped base into long, forked, thong-like branches.
[Illustration: _Common seaweeds.—II._
F, _Fucus canaliculatus_. G, _Himanthalia lorea_. H, _Laminaria
digitata_. I, _Rhodymenia_. K, _Chondrus crispus_. L, _Porphyra_.]
If the tide is far out, we shall be able to see the tops of the
“red-ware” standing out of the water, and some of the tangles will be
quite dry. These tangles belong to the _Laminaria_ group, the giants
among the seaweeds. They contain a large amount of iodine in their
composition, and that is why they are used for the manufacture of kelp.
Notice how firmly they cling to the sea-bottom by their strong holdfasts,
which have weathered many a storm.
An interesting feature in this group is their manner of growth. The
growing region lies at the junction of the stalk with the blade. You
will often find a specimen in which the old blade is being pushed away
on the end of the young one, ready to be broken off and cast adrift by
the waves. The stalk itself is perennial, but in some kinds of Laminaria
(_Laminaria digitata_, for example) the blade is usually torn into shreds
before it is thrown off.
A well-known ally of the tangles is the “merkal,” also called
“honey-ware.” You can tell it by the prominent midrib and the broad, thin
wing on each side, running all its length. This is one of the edible
seaweeds. Do you see this bright red palmate plant growing under the
shelter of the tangles? It is the common dulse (_Rhodymenia palmata_),
which may often be seen for sale on the streets of our cities. Examine
it well and taste it, and you will be able to recognize it in future,
however much it may vary in form or colour. But do not eat too much of
it, for it is said to be somewhat indigestible.
Another edible seaweed which has been widely used as an invalid food
may be found in the lower part of the “ebb,” often under the shelter of
larger plants. This is the Irish moss or carrageen (_Chondrus crispus_).
It is fleshy and pink in colour. A jelly is made from it which is
considered a great delicacy.
The purple laver (_Porphyra_) is perhaps the most valuable of the
seaweeds as a food, and is said to sell at a high price in Yokohama. In
form it resembles the sea-lettuce. Many other marine algæ have been used
as food, and none of them are poisonous. In North Ronaldsay the sheep
seem to esteem them highly as food.
The most important use of seaweed is to serve as food for various
kinds of molluscs, crustaceans, and fishes. The “plankton” of the
sea-surface—minute one-celled algæ—are very important in this way. What
grass is to the land animals, the marine algæ are to the living creatures
of the sea. When driven ashore by the waves, or when cut down by the once
familiar “hook,” the larger seaweeds are much used as manure for field
crops. They thus repay the debt they owe for any portion of their food
that may have come originally from the dry land.
Before returning from our walk let us haul down this small boat from
its “noust” and take a bird’s-eye view of the seaweeds in their natural
habitat. Through the clear water beneath us we can see the strange shapes
of the submerged vegetation, dense and tangled, with here and there a
lazy sea-urchin on the broad red-ware, and the sillocks actively swimming
around. But our oars are entangled in the “drew” (_Chorda filum_), so
full of annoyance and even of danger to the swimmer. Look at one of those
long threads. It is covered with hairs; it tapers towards both ends, and
its fructification extends along its whole surface. In structure it is a
hollow tube divided into many chambers.
What a variety of colours and shades we see as we look down on this
wonderful submarine scenery! We notice that near high-water mark green is
the predominant colour, and that the lower belt is mostly brown, while
here at low-water mark and beyond it, as well as under the shelter of the
sea-wracks and tangles, shades of red prevail. Beyond the depth of thirty
or forty fathoms seaweeds are extremely rare, owing to the want of light
at the sea-bottom: seaweeds, like other plants, cannot take in their food
in darkness.
Notwithstanding their varied tints, the fundamental colour of all
seaweeds is green, as you can prove for yourselves by boiling a few brown
specimens, or soaking them for some time in fresh water. You will find
that the other colouring matters are dissolved out, and only the green
is left. The red or brown pigments are probably of use in aiding or in
protecting the green colouring matter, chlorophyll, in its important work
of assimilating the food material.
[Illustration]
CRABS.
When I was a boy at school we frequently amused ourselves by catching
crabs. The scene of our operations was the Peerie Sea, where a wall had
been built along the shore. Here we used to gather, armed with a piece
of string and bait of some kind, and we often spent a whole long evening
perched on the wall, fishing for crabs. The Peerie Sea was a receptacle
for all kinds of refuse, and formed a happy hunting-ground for swarms of
crabs.
When one thinks of catching crabs, one may naturally imagine an excursion
to the shore during ebb-tide, and much turning over of stones and
seaweed. Our method was quite different. We made the crabs come to us.
Our bait was a piece of fish or anything of an animal nature, provided it
was fairly tough. No hook was necessary; we simply tied the end of the
string round the bait.
The baited line was let down into the water, preferably in the vicinity
of a crab, and drawn slowly along the bottom. If the animal was timid,
and not very hungry, he often scuttled off in a fright. Usually,
however, he was both hungry and fearless, and seized the bait at once,
trying to drag it in among seaweed or into a hole. Now came the exciting
part of the business. Our object was to haul him up before he quitted his
hold. The wall was high, and he required careful management. Sometimes
when he was drawn up out of the water he would let go, and fall back with
a flop into the sea again; sometimes he would hold on till he was drawn
up over the wall, and then we shook him off on the pavement behind.
[Illustration: _Common shore crab._]
Occasionally when we had no bait we would manage to land a crab with a
small stone or a cinder. So long as the stone lies motionless on the
bottom he pays no attention to it. As soon as it begins to move, drawn
along by the string, the crab rushes at it and seizes it with his claws,
and it is some time before he finds out his mistake. Not infrequently
he will allow himself to be drawn quite out of the water, clinging to
his find. It is very amusing to see the crab worrying a hard stone, then
dropping it when he has discovered it is not eatable, and then seizing it
again as it begins to move away from him, just like a kitten with a ball
of wool. Apparently he cannot resist the idea that movement means life.
The commonest kind of crab in Orkney is the green shore-crab. He is on
the whole a bold animal, but when frightened he runs away with great
speed. He moves sideways, and thus meets with less resistance from the
water than if he were to move directly forward. Usually, however, he does
not walk fast, but creeps over the bottom in a leisurely fashion. When
seizing his food he comes up to it “head on,” his nipping claws held wide
apart; when he is near enough, he suddenly brings them together, and
begins to tear up the food in little bits and pack it into his mouth.
His eyes are placed on the tip of movable projections, so that they
command a wide view. He cannot see behind him, however, or under his
body, and he usually keeps his eyes fixed in the direction in which he is
going. When he is resting, his eyes are ever on the watch. Every little
movement on the beach near him he notices at once.
The crab has a peculiar method of feeding. His mouth is just under his
head, and the opening is guarded by two flat jointed plates, one on
each side of his mouth. If you pull these two plates apart—after having
arranged with a friend to hold his pincers—you can see where his mouth
is, and you may notice two strong things which look like teeth. These are
really his jaws; they move from side to side, and not up and down like
our jaws. To see how he feeds, you must put him into a glass jar, and
look up from below while he is eating a bit of fish. He tears it up with
his pincers, and puts little bits into his mouth, the parts of which move
from side to side as he eats.
He is not very particular as to what he eats. He is, indeed, a cannibal,
and will eat the crushed leg of another crab as readily as anything else.
He is one of the most useful animals on the beach, however, and has been
called the scavenger of the shore. In fact, if one wishes to get the
flesh cleaned off the skeleton of any large animal, there is no easier
method than to lay it on the beach, well below high-water mark, and build
stones around it, leaving spaces between them to admit crabs.
As we have already said, the crab is bold and fearless. He is safe in
his coat of armour, and his pincers are powerful weapons of offence and
defence. When fighting he rears himself up and throws his nipping legs
far apart with the pincers wide open. He then looks a formidable animal;
and he really is formidable, for with these legs he can protect almost
any part of his body, and the strength of his grip is considerable.
Take up a dead crab and examine his biting leg. The different parts are
joined by hinges. Each hinge allows of motion only in one plane, but the
various planes are so adjusted that the limb can be moved in almost any
direction. Only one part of his body cannot be touched by his pincers,
and that is his back. If you wish to grasp a live crab with impunity,
seize him across the back just where his walking legs join the body. He
may struggle as he pleases, but he cannot nip you.
It is quite a common thing to find a shore crab with one or more legs
wanting, or with one large pincer and one small one. What is the reason
of this? It means that at one time or other the crab has had a limb torn
off in a fight, for the males are continually fighting with one another.
When a limb is lost it is not a very serious matter, for a new limb soon
begins to grow on again, and after a time becomes as large as the lost
one.
There are times, however, when the crab is by no means pugnacious. One
sometimes finds under a stone a crab which has hardly enough spirit to
lift his pincers in self-defence. On touching him one finds that he is
quite soft. What has happened to him? He has recently been casting his
coat; for, as the animal goes on growing within his shell, he becomes
too big for it, and the only thing he can do is to burst the shell and
come out of it, and then wait for a bigger one to grow. When he is thus
moulting, he is glad to crawl away and hide till he is able to face the
world again. Many of the empty crab shells that one picks up on the
beach are the old cast-off clothes of crabs still alive and vigorous. By
examining one of these we can see how thorough the process of moulting
is; not only are the shells of his back and his legs thrown off, but the
covering of his eyes, his feelers, his mouth parts, and even the inside
lining of his stomach,—for, strange to say, the wall of his stomach is
lined with the same kind of shell as the outside of his body.
The crab is formed for living in water, but he can stand long exposure
to the air. If you cover him with damp garden soil or peat mould he will
survive for days. The reason is that so long as his gills are kept damp
he can breathe and live quite well. The lobster breathes in exactly the
same way, and when lobsters are being shipped for the southern markets
they are put in boxes with layers of wet seaweed to keep them alive.
Have you ever seen the beautiful set of gills which the crab has? If you
find a dead crab that has been lying on the beach for some little time,
you can easily remove the upper shell, leaving the soft parts of the body
with the legs attached. Just above the attachment of the legs there is
a series of brown feathery-looking things which seem to cover the whole
side of the body. These are the gills. They lie in a special chamber,
occupying about half of the whole space inside the shell. While the crab
is alive, the gills are continually bathed in a current of water, which
is pumped in through a small hole at the side of his mouth and drawn out
at another hole near it. If the gills become dry the animal soon dies.
There is a curious pointed flap folded tightly across the crab’s body
underneath, which is commonly called its “purse.” It used to be a
schoolboy belief that the crab carries its money here. The fact simply
is that the purse is kept closed for the sake of protection, as the skin
underneath it is soft and might easily be injured in a fight.
You have all seen the long tail of the lobster, with its broad flaps at
the end. By suddenly bending its tail underneath its body the lobster is
able to propel itself backwards through the water at a great rate. The
crab and the lobster are, as you may know, closely related, and the purse
of the former corresponds to the tail of the latter. The purse or tail of
the crab, however, is always tucked up under the body, and is never used
for swimming.
Both animals carry their eggs on this part of their body, and you may
occasionally find a crab with its purse so full of eggs that it cannot be
closed. These eggs have a curious history. When they are hatched, it is
not a small crab that comes out, but a funny little creature not in the
least like its parent. It has a rounded body and a long thin tail, and
swims actively about. At this stage it is called a _zœa_.
By-and-by the creature settles down to the sea-bottom and casts its
shell. Its back is now broader and its tail shorter, and it is provided
with claws; but it is still quite unlike a crab, and swims freely about.
It is now known as a _megalopa_. Swarms of these may be found clustered
round seaweed and other floating substances, both near the shore and in
deep water. As it grows it again casts its shell, but it now tucks in
its tail and settles down in life as a real crab, though of course a
very small one as yet: you may find scores of them on the beach not much
bigger than a split pea.
Besides the green crab there are others which are common on the
sea-beach. One of these is the edible crab or “partan.” This crab lives
in somewhat deeper water than the other, and is of a dark reddish or
purplish hue on the back, while its under parts are white. It is not
nearly so quick and active in its movements as the green crab, but when
it does get hold of anything it has a stronger bite. In deep water it
grows to a giant size, and it is regularly caught in creels and sold for
food, as its flesh is firm and good to eat. The flesh of the green crab,
on the other hand, is much softer and less abundant, and it is not used
for eating. Strangely enough, all crabs turn red when boiled, whatever
their colour when alive.
Another curious crab is sometimes found in weedy pools on the beach. This
animal is of a spidery form, and is much more difficult to see than an
ordinary crab, for he is elaborately disguised. His back and legs are
grown over with hairy brown seaweed, and as he always lies among a mass
of similar weed it is impossible to detect him so long as he remains at
rest. When he does move, his movements are extremely slow. If you take
him out of the water, he looks a most uncouth creature as he feebly
sprawls about. Place him back in the bunch of seaweed from which he was
taken, and he immediately adjusts himself so as to become invisible. This
is his mode of escaping observation, for he is too slow and weak to be
able to defend himself.
Still another odd-looking crab may be found in deep water. This animal
has rather thin legs, while its back is somewhat pear-shaped, the pointed
end being directed forwards. It is, however, a much more active animal
than the last mentioned, and we may often see it from a boat as it climbs
about on the broad blades of the tangles. It is rarely found on the
beach, but the cast-off shell of the animal may be found on almost any
part of our shores.
One of the most interesting of our crabs is known as the hermit-crab.
He belongs to the family of soft-tailed crabs, and in shape is more
like the lobster than the other crabs we have mentioned. The hinder part
of his body being without armour, he is forced to seek an artificial
defence, and this he finds in the empty shell of a whelk or “buckie,”
into the spiral coils of which he inserts his unprotected tail. These
creatures are generally called hermit-crabs, because each lives in his
own separate habitation, like a hermit in his cell or like Diogenes in
his tub; but unlike these in their habits, they are so pugnacious that
they are also known as soldier-crabs.
[Illustration: _Hermit-crab (with anemone on shell)._]
Hermit-crabs may be found plentifully on the shores, of various sizes,
and inhabiting any kind of shell that they find to suit their size. If
we look into a shallow sand-bottomed rock-pool, we may see some of these
shells moving about at a rate to which they were quite unaccustomed
during the life of their builder and original occupier: we know at once
that each of these shells has now as a tenant one of those interesting
crabs.
By means of an apparatus at the extremity of his tail the hermit holds
firmly to his temporary abode, and he flattens himself closely against
the shell, leaving exposed only the one large pincer which is specially
fitted to bar the door against intruders. It is difficult to seize the
creature at all; and even when a grasp of any portion can be secured, the
hold of the tail is so firm that the animal runs some risk of being torn
apart rather than leave his shell.
A well-known writer on Natural History, the Rev. J. G. Wood, has given an
interesting account of the hermit-crab, from which we quote the following
paragraphs:—
“The combative propensities of these creatures are wonderful. If two
hermits of fairly equal size are placed in an aquarium, they are
not content with appropriating different portions of the vessel to
themselves, but must needs travel over it and fight whenever they meet.
This struggle is constantly renewed, until one of them discovers his
inferiority and makes way whenever the victor comes near. When they fight
they do so in earnest, tumbling over each other, and flinging about their
legs and claws with great energy. They are not at all particular about
diet so long as it is of an animal substance, and will eat molluscs, raw
meat, or even their own species. More than once when a hermit has died
I have dropped the body into the water so as to bring it within view of
another hermit. The little cannibal caught the descending body in one of
his claws very dexterously, and holding it firmly with one claw he picked
it to pieces with the other, and put each morsel into his mouth in a
rapid and systematic manner that was highly amusing.”
“When a hermit desires to change his habitation, he goes through a
curious series of performances. A shell lies on the ground, and the
hermit seizes it with his claws and his feet and twists it about with
wonderful dexterity, as if testing its weight; and after having examined
every portion of its exterior, he proceeds to satisfy himself about its
interior. For this purpose he pushes his fore legs as far into the shell
as they will reach, and probes every spot that can be touched. If this
examination satisfies him, he whisks himself into the new shell with such
rapidity that he seems to have been acted upon by a spring. Such a scene
as this will not be witnessed in the sea unless the hermit is forcibly
deprived of his shell, but when hermits are placed in a tank or vase they
seem to be rather fond of ‘flitting.’”
[Illustration]
HOPPERS AND SHOLTIES.
Of the great multitude of different animals which live on the seashore
possibly the most numerous are the little creatures known as “sholties”
or “Shetland sholties.” They are to be found on almost every beach. Their
peculiar shape, flattened on the sides, their habit of hiding in crowds
under stones or seaweed, their intense alarm when they are suddenly
exposed, and their vigour in escaping into a new hiding-place, are known
to every schoolboy. They look very different from their pugnacious
relatives, the crabs; they are feeble creatures, more ready to escape
from danger than to offer fight. Yet they are most interesting little
animals, and the more one watches their ways the more one comes to
understand their wonderful adaptation to their surroundings.
Though their general appearance is quite familiar, it is not so commonly
known that there are many different varieties of these creatures. As a
matter of fact, there are scores of different kinds, some living on the
beach, some just below extreme low-water mark, and others in the deep
sea. We shall concern ourselves here only with those that live on the
beach.
There are three common kinds which every one ought to know. Two of these,
curiously enough, though _beach_ animals are not really _sea_ animals.
They are hardly ever in the water; they live on the fringe of beach which
lies just above high-water mark. The sea reaches them but rarely, and
they never voluntarily seek the water. These two kinds are known as the
shore-hopper (_Orchestia_) and the sand-hopper (_Talitrus_), the latter
being found mostly on sandy beaches, where they make little burrows in
which to hide, and the former living under stones or among the decaying
seaweed on stony beaches. They both get their name of “hopper” from their
habit of leaping or springing into the air, by means of which they often
avoid capture by enemies. French people call them “sea-fleas.”
[Illustration: _Shore-hopper (Orchestia)._ _Sand-hopper (Talitrus)._
_Sholtie (Gammarus)._
(All magnified about three times.)]
The third variety, which is probably best known of all, and to which
the name of “sholtie” is here more especially applied, is that which
occurs farther down on the beach in places which are constantly wet with
sea-water. This animal (_Gammarus_) is much narrower in the body than
the other two, and some of its legs are bent backwards along its side,
so that by means of them it can run or crawl on its side. Indeed, when
out of the water this creature in quite unable to walk back uppermost;
whenever by any chance it does succeed in raising itself into what is for
most animals the normal attitude, it immediately topples over on its side
again. It can be readily distinguished from the other two forms by having
_two_ pairs of long, delicate feelers or antennæ in front of its head;
the hoppers have only one long pair of antennæ and one short pair.
All these animals, in spite of their small size, are near allies of the
crabs and lobsters. A naturalist would tell you that they belong to
the group of the _Crustacea_, this name being applied to all animals
of the crab tribe on account of the firm, crackly skin or shell which
surrounds them. The Crustacea are marked by other features in addition
to the possession of this hard exterior. They are all jointed animals,
their body being built up of a series of segments, each of which carries
a pair of legs or appendages of some kind, these appendages also being
jointed. In the crab and the lobster a number of segments have become
fused or welded together to form the front part or body of the animal. In
the group of animals to which the sholties belong the segments are all
distinct.
To understand something of the structure and the general habits of the
sholtie, all that we require to do is to collect a few specimens from
the beach and put them in a saucer with a little sea-water. They will
swim about in a very active fashion, the swimming being performed by
means of little fan-like appendages attached to the under part of the
animal just where the swimmerets are in the lobster. By the vigorous
strokes of these appendages the animal forces its way through the water.
These appendages are, however, of use in another way; the gills of the
animal are attached to them. Even when it is lying almost dry, or in
water too shallow for swimming, these appendages can be seen to work
regularly and rhythmically with a gentle flapping movement. Sometimes
they stop working for a little and then begin again, but they are never
long at rest. In this way currents of water are made to bathe the gills
continually, and the flapping of the appendages is really a breathing
movement.
The walking legs are attached to the fore part of the body. Some of them
point backwards, as has already been mentioned, and the animal prefers
to crawl or run on its side. As a rule, too, it propels itself over the
ground by jerking movements of its body, its tail being alternately
curled up and then suddenly straightened out again. It is in this way
that it wriggles over the stones and escapes into a place of safety when
exposed.
One of the most characteristic points about the sholtie is its habit of
clinging to objects, especially if they afford a cover from the light.
Drop a bit of seaweed into the dish where they are swimming, and in two
or three minutes the sholties will all be found clinging to the under
surface of the weed. We might indeed imagine that they had escaped
from the saucer. They cluster like swarming bees round the smallest
blade of seaweed, and it is only by turning over the weed that we can
make sure that they are there. When exposed to full daylight they seem
uncomfortable, and keep swimming about trying to find a hiding-place. It
is only when they find something to cling to and to hide under that they
really rest and feel at ease.
But we have not yet examined the hoppers. Though externally so like
the sholties, they are very different in constitution and habits. To
understand the difference between the two classes of animals, the best
plan is to put either a shore-hopper or a sand-hopper into some water
along with a sholtie. The latter is an active little animal in the water,
capable of moving about like a fish. The hopper, on the other hand, is
obviously out of his element; he sinks to the bottom of the dish and
there works his way along in lumbering fashion. His breathing organs can
be seen waving backwards and forwards in rhythmical fashion, but they are
too feeble to be used for swimming. The shore-hopper can breathe quite
well in water, and may live in it for days. It is said that sand-hoppers
do not stand long-continued immersion, and die of drowning.
On land, however, the hopper is at home, provided he gets just
sufficient moisture to keep his gills damp. Not only can he crawl about
back uppermost—a feat which the _Gammarus_ would attempt in vain—but
as he crawls he keeps his tail curled up under his body, and by
suddenly straightening this out he can throw himself into the air with
considerable vigour. In this way he often not merely escapes from an
enemy, but even drives terror into the heart of the pursuer. It takes
some little time to realize that hoppers can be handled with impunity,
and are harmless for all their sudden jerky movements.
Why do these animals live on the upper fringe of beach, and what do they
find there to eat? The answer is simple. They live on the cast up refuse
of the sea; they are the scavengers of the jetsam. Naturalists who are
collecting the skeletons of small animals often put the carcases which
they wish to have cleaned under some decaying weed on the beach. After a
week or a fortnight the bones are found to be picked absolutely clean.
In order to tell the sand-hopper from the shore-hopper we have only to
look at his front feet. If they are all thin and slender, the animal is
a sand-hopper; if one pair of the front feet are clubbed at the end and
armed with a claw, we know that he is a shore-hopper.
[Illustration]
SEA-ANEMONES.
When the tide ebbs and leaves the rocks exposed we may find here and
there a few soft, rounded objects attached to the bare rock, often bright
red in colour, and looking like strawberries or ripe cherries. They are
found especially on the sheltered sides of high rocks and in the angles
formed by slight ridges and clefts. We do not seem to have any local
name for these objects, although they are so common and conspicuous; one
wonders why our name-inventing forefathers did not bestow on them some
descriptive title. Their English name is “sea-anemone,” a term derived
from their resemblance to the anemone flower.
It is only when they are covered by the water, however, that they deserve
the name of anemone, for then they open out like a bud and spread out
circles of leaf-like projections, much as an opening daisy or dandelion
does. They usually remain open during the whole time that the tide is
up; when the water goes back again these leaves all curl in towards the
middle of the anemone and are folded up inside, leaving only a little
dimple on the top to indicate where they have disappeared.
Sea-anemones, however, are by no means flowers. Their jelly-like
consistency and their habits would lead us to classify them as animals,
and this they undoubtedly are. Though they seem to be rooted to one spot,
and to open and close like a plant, their real habits are those of an
animal. As a matter of fact, they are carnivorous animals; they first
kill their victims by poisoning them, and afterwards devour them. If they
had the power of moving rapidly in pursuit of prey, they would be as
deadly to the general population of the beach as are the most venomous
snakes to the creatures on land. As it is, they account for a very
considerable number of the beach inhabitants by simply lying in wait and
grasping the little animals that happen to stray within their reach.
[Illustration: _Sea-anemones._]
The beautiful circles of leaflets which we see so regularly arranged are
really active grasping tentacles, armed with whole batteries of little
poisonous stings. With these tentacles they seize hold of any little
creature, such as a “sholtie” or a young crab, that happens to move
over them. The poor animal is held fast in spite of all its struggles,
tentacle after tentacle is brought up by the anemone to grasp it, while
hundreds of fine stinging darts discharge into it their poison, and
the victim, its struggles gradually becoming more and more feeble, is
ultimately drawn into the centre of the animal, where lie its mouth and
its stomach. Then the tentacles are all closed in over the prey, and
remain thus closed for a time—a day or several days, according to the
size of the animal caught. During this time the process of digestion is
going on, and when it is completed the skeleton and useless parts of the
animal are discharged by the same opening as that by which it was taken
in, and the anemone once more spreads its tentacles to wait for its next
victim.
It is not only living animals that the anemone will devour. Anything of
animal nature, dead or alive, is grist to its mill; and though it has
no eyes, it can quite well distinguish what is good for food. A waving
branch of seaweed borne towards it by currents in the water is quite
ignored, while a bit of flesh is never allowed to come in contact with
the tentacles without an effort being made to secure it. By some natural
power, whether by the sense of smell or of taste or by some other sense
unknown to us, the creature distinguishes unfailingly what it needs. It
is great fun to feed it with small portions of limpet or of whelk, and by
doing so one can see exactly how the process of feeding is carried on.
One might imagine that the anemone would easily fall a prey to larger
and stronger animals. It has no hard skin or shell to protect it, and
its beautiful jelly-like appearance would suggest to any hungry fish or
crab that it is not only easy to demolish but would form a juicy morsel.
Yet it does not seem to be in any danger from such enemies. I was once
amusing myself by throwing little pieces of bait into the sea among a
crowd of sillocks. Along with the bait, which consisted of limpet and
fish, I threw in a morsel of one of these red anemones. A bold young
sillock immediately snapped it up. Then something seemed to go wrong, for
the poor young fish suddenly shot the anemone out of its mouth and swam
off without so much as looking at the other bait which I threw all round
about it. The piece of anemone was less palatable than it looked.
Strangely enough an anemone is not much inconvenienced by being cut into
bits. The individual pieces if put into the sea again close up and grow
into new animals. No doubt the piece which the sillock swallowed was
fully alive, and stung the mouth and throat of its captor so severely
that the fish was only too glad to be rid of it.
All anemones are not red in colour like those of which we have been
speaking. There is a great number of different kinds of these creatures
round our shores, but most of them are only to be found by careful
searching. Some are found in rock-pools; these are generally coloured
more or less like the seaweeds in the pools. Others are found only in
dark places; under large stones or boulders near low-water mark they grow
in all attitudes—upright, sideways, and upside down—attached by their
base to the surface of the stone. The greatest variety of them I ever saw
was found among the stones of a little jetty or pier, which was being
taken down to make room for a larger pier. The under surface and the
sides of the stones on this pier were simply covered with anemones of all
sizes, shapes, and colours.
The various kinds of anemone differ not only in colour but also in size
and shape. Some are minute things, with a thin body or stalk crowned at
the top with long, fine tentacles, which they wave about actively through
the water in search for small prey. Others again are large, and one kind,
known as the dahlia, which is common in Orkney, attains to gigantic
proportions; when its tentacles are expanded it is as wide across the top
as the mouth of a large breakfast cup. The dahlia is variously coloured,
sometimes dark crimson, the tentacles being marked with broad rings of
crimson and white, sometimes green with red markings. The outside of
its body is usually covered with bits of gravel and broken shells, so
that when the animal closes up there is nothing to be seen but a rounded
heap of gravel. When open it is a magnificent creature, and its broad,
tapering tentacles shine with an iridescent light.
[Illustration: _Dahlia anemone._]
Part IV.—Legend and Lay.
THE OLD GODS.
In the north of Europe there lived long ago that race of people whom we
know as the Norsemen—tall, fair-haired men, strong and warlike, and as
much at home on sea as on land. They came to Britain in great numbers
at different times, and many of them settled there. We read of them
sometimes as Vikings, sometimes as Danes, and sometimes as Normans. The
Saxon settlers of a still earlier time were of the same kindred. We have
already told the story of their settlement in Orkney, and of the earldom
which they established there. Everything that we can find out about this
wonderful race of sea-rovers and warriors is of interest to us; for
while most of the lowland dwellers of Scotland and England have some
Norse blood in their veins, we who live in these northern islands regard
ourselves as the lineal descendants of those Vikings.
Before the Norsemen became Christians, they believed in many gods and
goddesses. They had gods of the sky and of the sea, of spring and of
summer, of thunder and lightning, of frost and of storm. Many a strange
tale they told of the doings of their gods, and most of those tales are
really pictures of the processes that take place in nature—of the wars
between wind and sea, between light and darkness, and between sun and
frost.
In the beginning, they believed, there was the great Spirit, the Creator.
Of him they have no tales to tell. Then the world was made—or rather
the worlds, for the Norsemen thought that besides this world of men
there were a world of the gods, a world of the giants, and other worlds.
Between Asgard, the home of the gods, and Midgard, the world of men, a
beautiful bridge was built, which we call the rainbow.
Odin was the highest of the gods. He was the god of wisdom and of
victory, and the friend of heroes. Men spoke of him as tall and strong,
with long, flowing hair and beard, and wearing a wide blue mantle flecked
with white, as the blue sky is flecked with fleecy clouds. On his
shoulders sat two ravens, Thought and Memory. They roamed over the world
every day, and came back at night to whisper in his ear all they had seen
and heard. At his feet crouched two wolves, which he fed with his own
hand.
Odin had three palaces in Asgard. One of these was Valhalla, the home
of heroes; and hither came at their death all the brave men Odin loved
so well. He sent forth beautiful maidens to hover over every field of
battle, and to carry home to Valhalla those who fell in the fight. In
Valhalla the brave lived for ever. They spent their days in fighting, as
they had loved to do on earth; but every evening the warriors returned
to the hall of feasting, unhurt, and the best of friends. Such was the
Norsemen’s idea of a heaven for heroes.
Odin gave men wisdom as well as courage. Only through suffering, however,
did he become the god of wisdom. It happened on this wise. Far below
the world of the giants was a crystal spring which watered the roots of
the tree of life—a great tree reaching up to heaven. This well was the
fountain of wisdom, and whoever drank of it became wise. It was guarded
by a giant called Mimir, or Memory. Mimir was older than the gods, and
wiser than they, for he remembered all things. Odin went down below the
world of the giants one day, and he said to Mimir, “Give me a drink of
the clear water of your well.”
“Ah,” said Mimir, “this water is never given to any except at a great
price. You must be willing to give up the most precious thing you possess
before you can drink at Mimir’s fountain.”
“Be it so,” replied Odin; “I will give whatever you ask.”
Mimir looked at him, admiring his courage, and at length replied, “If you
would drink, you must leave with me one of your eyes.”
This was a great price to pay, but Odin did not flinch. He drank of the
fountain, and came back to Asgard with only one eye, but he had won the
wisdom he desired.
Thor was the god of thunder; he was the champion of the gods, and
defended Asgard against the giants. His was the largest palace in Asgard;
it had five hundred and forty halls and many great doors, and was called
by a name which means Lightning. Thor wore a crown of stars upon his
head, and rode in a chariot drawn by two goats, from whose hoofs and
teeth flashed sparks of fire. To Thor belonged three very precious
things. The first was his mighty hammer, with which he fought the frost
giants. The second was his belt of strength: when he girded himself with
this his strength was doubled. The third was his iron gauntlet: with this
he grasped his famous hammer, which he made red-hot when he fought the
giants.
Loki was the spirit of evil and mischief. Having been banished from
Asgard for his wickedness, he lived many years in giant-land, rejoicing
in his evil deeds. He had three children, each as full of evil as
himself. So much mischief did they work that Odin looked down from Asgard
with a grave countenance. “This must not be,” he said; “Loki’s children
will fill the world with evil.” So Odin fared forth to giant-land. One of
the evil brood he sent to the under world of darkness, and one he threw
into the sea. The third, Fenris the wolf, was so strong that Odin spared
him. “If he were to live with the gods,” he said, “his strength might be
turned to good instead of ill.” So he took Fenris the wolf up to Asgard,
to see whether he would learn goodness with his strength.
Who among the gods would care for the wolf-spirit? Brave Tyr was ready
with the answer. “Father Odin,” he cried, “I delight in strength. Let me
have the charge of this fierce fellow; I care not if the task be hard and
dull.” So Fenris became his charge. He fed him with sheep and oxen, and
took him with him upon his journeys. But Fenris did not learn the ways of
the gods. His muscles were like iron, and his teeth stronger than steel,
but his heart remained savage and cruel.
One night Odin called the gods together. “Sons,” he said, “I have looked
upon Fenris, and seen his cruel strength. There is no love in his eyes,
and no thought of good in his heart. Day by day he becomes stronger for
evil. We must bind him, or he will destroy us.” They listened, and saw
that the counsel of Odin was good. “Come with me,” said Thor the mighty;
“I will forge a chain that will hold him fast.” All night long the gods
watched Thor toiling at his anvil, dealing great blows upon the glowing
iron, and sending sparks like shooting-stars through the darkness. When
morning came the massive chain was finished.
“Come, Fenris,” called Thor, “you are strong; let us see you break this
chain which I have made.” Fenris allowed them to bind him with the heavy
links: when they had done so, he stretched his huge limbs, and the thick
iron snapped like a thread of silk. The gods kept silence as Fenris
walked away.
Again Thor led them to his forge; again he toiled all night, hammering
and shaping great bars of steel. When morning came, another chain was
ready, ten times stronger than the first. But this chain also snapped
like a spider’s thread before the might of Fenris.
The gods once more sat in council, and Odin’s face was grave. “Great
indeed is the power of evil,” said the All-wise, “but the power of good
must be greater still. Sons, let us call to our aid the skill of the
dwarfs. Tyr shall tell them of our need, and they will help us to bind
the enemy.” Like an arrow from the bow, Tyr sped from Asgard to the cave
of the dwarfs, the skilful workers in gold and gems, and gladly they lent
their aid to Father Odin. Three nights they toiled in the darkness, and
then they brought to Tyr a delicate chain which might have been spun from
a cobweb. “Here is thy chain, O Tyr,” they said. “Fierce Fenris cannot
escape from its bands.”
When Tyr came back to Asgard, Fenris was called once more to test his
strength. He looked on the delicate thread, and he trembled; yet he would
not seem to be afraid. “If one of you will place his hand in my mouth,
so that there may be fair play, I will let you bind me,” he replied. The
gods looked in one another’s faces. Who would dare the power of the wolf?
Brave Tyr stepped forward and put his arm between the wolf’s jaws. The
tiny chain was wound round Fenris. He rose to stretch himself and shake
it off, but it held him fast. With a wild howl he gnashed his teeth
together, and Tyr stood before the gods without his strong right arm.
Then a great shout arose in Asgard, “Hail to Tyr! he has given his right
hand to save the world from evil.” It was echoed from the hills, and rang
through the caves of the dwarfs. “The chain of the dwarfs is mighty,”
they said, “but stronger is the brave heart of Tyr.” So wisdom and
goodness together were more than a match for strength and evil.
Baldur was the god of light. He was the fairest of all that dwelt in
Asgard, the best beloved of gods and men. Wherever he went he carried
with him that kindness and love which is to the heart of man what light
is to the sky. Every one loved him but Loki; the spirit of evil hated the
goodness that was in Baldur. Baldur’s palace was the home of all that
was bright and pure. It was built of the blue of the sky and the clear
crystal of running water. Here he lived in peace, for no evil thing
could enter. But Baldur became sad and troubled, for he dreamed that his
life was in danger.
Then his mother went abroad over the whole world, and made everything
promise not to hurt Baldur. Who would harm the beautiful god? Earth, air,
and water, beasts and birds, and plants and flowers—all things promised
never to hurt him. So his mother returned to Asgard with joy, but still
Baldur was sad. Then the gods invented a kind of game to cheer his heart.
They made him stand in the midst while they threw at him weapons and all
hurtful things, to show that nothing could do him harm; and thus they
amused themselves many days.
In the meantime Loki disguised himself as an old woman, and went to
Baldur’s mother. He said he marvelled that Baldur was not hurt, and then
the mother told him of the promise which all things had made never to
harm her son.
“What! have all things promised this?” asked Loki.
“Yes,” was the reply; “all things have promised except one weak little
plant, the mistletoe, which grows far away, and which I did not think it
worth while to ask.”
Loki rejoiced in his evil heart when he heard this. He hurried to the
place where the mistletoe grew, and plucked a twig of it, which by his
magic he made into a spear. Then he came back to Asgard, where the gods
were playing their game of throwing spears at Baldur.
“Why do you not join in the game?” he asked one of the gods.
“Because I am blind,” he replied.
“For the honour of Baldur you should throw a spear at him,” Loki went on.
“I have no spear to throw,” answered the blind god.
Then Loki put into his hand the mistletoe spear, and helped him to aim
it. The spear pierced Baldur through the heart, and he fell dead. Then
there were grief and anger in Asgard; weeping and mourning were heard for
the first time among the gods.
Odin sent a message to the daughter of Loki, who ruled over the world of
the dead, and asked her to set Baldur free. She replied that he would
be set free if every living thing would weep for him; but if a single
creature refused to weep, he could not return.
Then the gods went through all the earth, and prayed all things living to
weep for Baldur. One old woman alone refused, and so Baldur could not be
set free. The old woman was no other than Loki, who had taken this form
in order to hide himself.
After the death of Baldur came a gloomy time in Asgard. The gods had
fierce wars with the frost-giants, and were defeated. This time is called
“the twilight of the gods.” But even then they looked forward to a better
time which was to come, when Baldur should return, and all should be
light and joy and peace.
Thus the old Norsemen gave us the beautiful tale of Baldur, the sun-god.
When the days are short in winter, the time of the mistletoe, Baldur is
dead; but when spring returns, the war with the frost-giants is over, and
Baldur returns with light and joy to the northern lands.
A VANISHING ISLAND.
Eynhallow—the “holy island”—lies in the middle of the fierce tideway that
separates the Orcadian mainland from Rousay, the Hrolfsey of the Sagas.
“Eynhallow frank, Eynhallow free,
Eynhallow stands in the middle of the sea;
With a roaring roost on every side,
Eynhallow stands in the middle of the tide.”
So runs an old island rhyme, and surely never was there an island so
beaten upon and shouted round by the angry tides. It sets a black front
of jagged rocks to the Atlantic on the west, and the great billows,
rushing on the rocks, send spouts of spray high in the air, to whirl
eastward over the gradual slope of the isle. All day long the tide sweeps
past on either side, boiling and eddying like a swift and deep river.
When the wind is in the north-west and a strong ebb-tide is running, then
is the time to see the roosts in all their glory; for the inrolling ocean
swell meets the outrushing tide in the narrow channels, and the white
waves leap and roar as if some
“wallowing monster spouted
His foam fountains in the sea.”
To see this mad turmoil of the roost on a wild winter day is strange
and terrible; but when the white breakers shout and toss themselves in
the sunlight of a still June morning there is a paradoxical charm in
the sudden outburst of leaping, sparkling foam amid the blue waters,
unruffled of any wind, that the wildest storm of winter can never claim.
There is an even stronger fascination in the swift, dark, silent rush of
the tides, ceaseless along the shores, sweeping in with the flood and
whirling out again with the ebb, and with the little green isle in their
midst setting its steep front to the angry ocean, but sheltering with its
two long eastward points a quiet sandy bay where no current ever comes.
All along the coast, on either side of Eynhallow Sound, are low green
mounds, marking the places where once were the homes of the prehistoric
Orcadians, that Celtic or Pictish race which the conquering Norsemen
destroyed so completely that there is not in all the place-names of the
isles any trace of their forgotten tongue. Amidst such surroundings, one
has only to look at Eynhallow to know that it must have gathered legend
and tradition in the long years.
In Rousay there still lingers a tale of the breaking of the spell that
held Eynhallow sea-bound; for “once upon a time” the isle was enchanted,
and visible to human eyes only at rare intervals. It would rise suddenly
out of the sea, and vanish as suddenly before any mortal could reach it.
And if any one should feel inclined to doubt this tale, can we not point
him to the isle of Heather-Bleather, which is still held by the spell of
the sea-folk, and appears and disappears even unto this day?
When Eynhallow was still a vanishing island, it became known in Rousay
that if any man, seeing the isle, should hold steel in his hand and,
taking boat, go out through the tides, never looking at aught but the
island, nor ever letting go the steel till he leaped on to its virgin
shore, that man should break the spell and win the isle from the sea-folk
for his own people. After many failures—and who can tell how many a brave
heart went down the tide to the sea-trows in that perilous venture?—there
came at last the hour and the man; the vanishing isle was won from the
waters, and left standing “in the middle of the tide.”
If there be yet any man brave enough to try the adventure of the
vanishing island, Heather-Bleather awaits his coming. I have never met
any person who would confess to having seen that mysterious isle, but
many of the dwellers by the roosts have spoken to those who saw it rise
green out of the waters. This island is the home of the Fin-men or
Sea-men (not to be too rashly identified with the sea-trows), a race of
beings who play a prominent part in Orcadian folk-lore.
In Rousay they tell of a maiden mysteriously rapt from the hillside over
the sea, and sought in vain by her kindred. Long years after, “when grief
was calm and hope was dead,” the lost girl’s father and brothers were at
sea in their fishing-boat, when there rolled down upon them one of those
dense banks of sea-fog so common in the North in summer. The fishermen
knew not where they were, but sailed on until their boat grounded on
an island which at first they took to be Eynhallow. They soon found,
however, that they were on an island they had never seen before, and on
going up to a “white house” they found in the “guid-wife” who admitted
them their long lost daughter and sister. She welcomed them, and in a
little time her husband and his brother came in from the sea in “wisps”
(the local name for great rolls of heather “simmons,” or ropes, used
in thatching houses). Others say that they came in the guise of seals,
and cast off their skins. Be that as it may, they treated their human
connections well and hospitably. When the time came for the men to leave
for home, the woman refused to accompany them, but she gave her father
a knife, and told him that so long as he kept it he could come to the
isle of the waters whenever he pleased. Just as the boat put to sea the
knife slipped from the old man’s hand into the water; in a moment the fog
swallowed the island, and no man has set foot on it since.
In summer and autumn evenings, when the sea-fog comes rolling up in great
banks from the Atlantic, and the westering sun fills the hollows between
with fantastic lights and shadows—when the islands seem all to shift and
change, appearing and disappearing among the huge masses of white vapour,
it requires no very strong imagination to see once more the green isle
of Heather-Bleather riding the waters, real and solid as its sister of
Eynhallow, won so long since from the sea-folk.
Of its old enchantment the isles-folk say that Eynhallow still retains
some small part. No steel or iron stake, such as are used for tethering
cattle, will remain in its soil after sunset. Of their own motion they
leap from the ground at the moment when the sea swallows the sun. Then,
again, no rat or mouse can live upon the island, and it is not long since
it was usual to bring boatloads of earth from Eynhallow to lay under the
foundations of new houses, and under the corn-stacks in the farmyard. It
was firmly believed that through the charmed earth no mouse or rat could
pass.
DUNCAN J. ROBERTSON
_(The Scots Magazine). By Permission._
[Since the preceding article first appeared, a very interesting discovery
has been made on Eynhallow, which may help to explain both the name of
the island—the “Holy Isle”—and the existence of so many supernatural
legends regarding it. References are made in the Sagas to a monastery
in Orkney in Norse times, and it is recorded that an abbot from this
monastery was appointed to that of Melrose in 1175. Many probable
sites were suggested as having been occupied by this monastery, but no
remains could be found, and some doubt was felt as to whether it ever
really existed in Orkney at all. In the year 1900, however, Professor
Dietrichson, a Norwegian, examined the ruins on Eynhallow, and was able
to show that they are the long-sought remains of the lost monastery—small
in size, but complete in all the details of a Cistercian monastery of the
period referred to in the Sagas.]
HELEN WATERS: A LEGEND OF SULE SKERRY.
The mountains of Hoy, the highest of the Orkney Islands, rise abruptly
out of the ocean to an elevation of fifteen hundred feet, and terminate
on one side in a cliff, sheer and stupendous as if the mountain had been
cut down through the middle and the severed portion of it buried in the
sea. Immediately on the landward side of this precipice lies a soft green
valley, embosomed among huge black cliffs, where the sound of the human
voice or the report of a gun is reverberated among the rocks till it
gradually dies away into soft and softer echoes.
The hills are intersected by deep and dreary glens, where the hum of the
world is never heard, and the only voices of life are the bleat of the
lamb and the shriek of the eagle. The breeze wafts not on its wings the
whisper of the woodland, for there are no trees on the island; the roar
of the torrent stream and the sea’s eternal moan for ever sadden those
solitudes of the world.
The ascent of the mountain is in some parts almost perpendicular, and in
all exceedingly steep; but the admirer of Nature in her grandest and most
striking aspects will be amply compensated for his toil, upon reaching
their summits, by the magnificent prospect which they afford. Towards
the north and east, the vast expanse of the ocean, and the islands, with
their dark heath-clad hills, their green vales, and gigantic cliffs,
expand below as far as the eye can reach. The view towards the south is
bounded by the lofty mountains of Scaraben and Morven, and by the wild
hills of Strathnaver and Cape Wrath, stretching towards the west. In the
direction of the latter, and far away in mid-ocean, may be seen, during
clear weather, a barren rock called Sule Skerry, which superstition in
former days had peopled with mermaids and monsters of the deep. This
solitary spot had long been known to the Orcadians as the haunt of
sea-fowl and seals, and was the scene of frequent shooting excursions,
though such perilous adventures have been long since abandoned. It is
associated in my mind with a wild tale, which I have heard in my youth,
though I am uncertain whether or not the circumstances which it narrates
are yet in the memory of living men.
On the opposite side of the mountainous island of which I speak, and
divided from it by a frith of several miles in breadth, lie the flat
serpentine shores of the principal island or Mainland, where, upon a
gentle slope, at a short distance from the sea-beach, may still be traced
the site of a cottage, once the dwelling of a humble couple of the name
of Waters, belonging to the class of small proprietors.
Their only child Helen, at the time to which my narration refers, was
just budding into womanhood; and though uninitiated into what would now
be considered the indispensable requisites of female education, was yet
not altogether unaccomplished for the simple times in which she lived,
and, though a child of nature, had a grace beyond the reach of art.
Henry Graham, the accepted lover of Helen Waters, was the son of a small
proprietor in the neighbourhood; and being of the same humble rank with
herself, and, though not rich, removed from poverty, their views were
undisturbed by the dotage of avarice or the fears of want, and the smiles
of approving friends seemed to await their approaching union.
In the Orkneys it was customary for the bridegroom to invite the wedding
guests in person; for which purpose, a few days previous to the marriage,
young Graham, accompanied by a friend, took a boat and proceeded to the
island of Hoy in order to request the attendance of a family residing
there; which done, on the following day they joined a party of young men
upon a shooting excursion to Rackwick, a village romantically situated
on the opposite side of the island. They left the house of their friends
on a bright, calm autumnal morning, and began to traverse the wild and
savage glens which intersect the hills, where their progress might be
guessed at by the reports of their guns, which gradually became fainter
and fainter among the mountains, and at last died away altogether in the
distance.
That night and the following day passed, and they did not return to the
house of their friends; but the weather being extremely fine, it was
supposed they had extended their excursion to the opposite coast of
Caithness, or to some of the neighbouring islands, so that their absence
created no alarm whatever.
The same conjectures also quieted the anxieties of the bride, until the
morning previous to that of the marriage, when her alarm could no longer
be suppressed. A boat was manned in all haste, and dispatched to Hoy in
quest of them, but did not return that day nor the succeeding night.
The morning of the wedding day dawned at last bright and beautiful,
but still no intelligence arrived of the bridegroom and his party; and
the hope which lingered to the last, that they would still make their
appearance in time, had prevented the invitations from being postponed,
so that the marriage party began to assemble about midday.
While the friends were all in amazement, and the bride in a most pitiable
state, a boat was seen crossing from Hoy, and hope once more began to
revive; but, when her passengers landed, they turned out to be the
members of the family invited from that island, whose surprise at finding
how matters stood was equal to that of the other friends.
Meantime all parties united in their endeavours to cheer the poor bride,
for which purpose it was agreed that the company should remain, and that
the festivities should go on—an arrangement to which the guests the more
willingly consented, from a lingering hope that the absentees would still
make their appearance, and partly with a view to divert in some measure
the painful suspense of the bride; while she, on the other hand, from
feelings of hospitality, exerted herself, though with a heavy heart, to
make her guests as comfortable as possible, and by the very endeavour to
put on an appearance of tranquillity acquired so much of the reality as
to prevent her from sinking altogether under the weight of her fears.
Meantime the day advanced, the festivities went on, and the glass began
to circulate freely. The absence of the principal actor of the scene
was so far forgotten that at length the music struck up, and dancing
commenced with all the animation which that exercise inspires.
Things were going on in this way when, towards night, and during one of
the pauses of the dance, a loud rap was heard at the door, and a gleam
of hope was seen to lighten every face, when there entered, not the
bridegroom and his party, but a wandering lunatic named Annie Fae, well
known and not a little feared in all that countryside. Her garments were
little else than a collection of fantastic and parti-coloured rags, bound
close around her waist with a girdle of straw, and her head had no other
covering than the dark tangled locks that hung, snake-like, over her wild
and weather-beaten face, from which peered forth her small, deep, sunk
eyes, gleaming with the light of insanity.
Before the surprise and dismay excited by her sudden and unwelcome
appearance had subsided, she addressed the company in the following wild
and incoherent manner,—
“Hech, sirs, but here’s a merry meeting indeed. Plenty o’ gude meat and
drink here, and nae expense spared! Aweel, it’s no a’ lost neither; this
blithe bridal will mak’ a braw burial, and the same feast will do for
baith. But I’ll no detain you langer, but jog on upon my journey; only I
wad juist hint that, for decency sake, ye suld stop that fine fiddling
and dancing.”
Having thus spoken, she made a low curtsy, and hurried out of the house,
leaving the company in that state of painful excitement which, in such
circumstances, even the ravings of a poor deranged wanderer could not
fail to produce.
In this state we too may leave them for the present, and proceed with the
party who had set off on the preceding day in search of the bridegroom
and his friends. The latter were traced to Rackwick; but there no
intelligence could be gained, except that some days previous a boat,
having on board several sportsmen, had been seen putting off from the
shore, and sailing away in the direction of Sule Skerry.
The weather continuing fine, the searching party hired a large boat,
and proceeded to that remote and solitary rock, upon which, as they
neared it, they could discover nothing, except swarms of seals, which
immediately began to flounder towards the water’s edge. A large flock
of sea-fowl arose from the centre of the rock with a deafening scream;
and upon approaching the spot, they beheld, with dumb amazement and
horror, the dead bodies of the party of whom they had come in search,
but so mangled and disfigured by the sea-fowl that they could barely be
recognized.
It appeared that these unfortunates upon landing had forgotten their guns
in the boat, which had slipped from her fastenings, and left them upon
the rock, where they had at last perished of cold and hunger.
Fancy can but feebly conceive, and still less can words describe, the
feelings with which the lost men must have beheld their bark drifting
away over the face of the waters, and found themselves abandoned in the
vast solitude of the ocean.
With what agony must they have gazed upon the distant sails, gliding over
the deep, but keeping far aloof from the rock of desolation. How must
their horrors have been aggravated by the far-off view of their native
hills, lifting their lonely peaks above the wave, and awakening the
dreadful consciousness that they were still within the grasp of humanity,
and yet no arm was stretched forth to save them; while the sun was riding
high in the heavens, and the sea basking in his beams below, and Nature
looking with reckless smiles upon their dying agonies!
As soon as the stupor of horror and amazement had subsided, the party
placed the dead bodies in their boat, and, crowding all sail, stood for
the Orkneys. They landed at night upon the beach, immediately below the
house where the wedding guests were assembled; and there, while debating
in what manner to proceed, they were overheard by the insane wanderer,
the result of whose visit has already been recorded.
She had scarcely left the house, when a low sound of voices was heard
approaching. An exclamation of joy broke from the bride. She rushed out
of the house with outstretched arms to embrace her lover, and the next
moment, with a fearful shriek, fell upon his corpse! With that shriek
reason and memory passed away for ever. She was carried back delirious,
and died towards morning. The bridal was changed into a burial, and Helen
Waters and her lover slept in the same grave!
JOHN MALCOLM. (_Adapted._)
(Native of Firth, Orkney; 1795-1845.)
A LEGEND OF BORAY ISLAND.[1]
In the far-off Northern Islands,
Where the wild waves ever flow,
I have heard a wondrous legend
Of the days of long ago.
There, amid the circling waters,
Boray Isle lies all alone,
Silent ever, save at nightfall
On the eve of good St. John.[2]
Those who in the faith of Odin
’Neath the waves have sunk for aye,
Are as sea-beasts doomed to wander
Till the dawn of Judgment Day.
Once a year on Boray Island
They revisit scenes of earth,
And, their ancient forms resuming,
Hold their wild unhallowed mirth.
On the shore their sealskins leaving,
They in revels pass the time,
Till the midnight hour resoundeth
From St. Magnus’ distant chime.
At the solemn knell the dancers
In wild haste their guise regain,
And as seals once more appearing
Plunge below the waves again.
Long ago a Northern fisher
In a storm was left alone,
And to Boray Isle was driven
On the eve of good St. John.
There saw the ghostly revels—
Music wild fell on his ear;
And he snatched a cast-off sealskin,
And he hid in mortal fear.
All the evening long he watched them,
Till he heard St. Magnus’ chime—
Twelve deep tones proclaimed the hour
When was o’er the fated time.
At the solemn knell the dancers
In wild haste their guise regain—
All save one; a fair sea-maiden,
Seeking for her robe in vain.
All the others plunged and left her,
And no more could Eric bide,
But his friendly shelter leaving,
Hurried to the maiden’s side.
Flung his fisher mantle round her;
With the Cross he signed her o’er;
And with loving words addressed her,
Bidding her to fear no more.
“Fairest one! no longer fated
As a wild sea-beast to roam,
Come and be my bride, my treasure,
Mistress of my hearth and home.
“Thou shalt be a christened woman
By the help of good St. John,
And at blessed Magnus’ altar
Holy Church shall make us one.”
So he spake, and so he won her,
And he took her to his home;
‘Margaret’ was the name they gave her,
‘Pearl’ cast up from Ocean’s foam.
Three bright years they dwelt together,
Love and joy around her grew;
Every day he blessed the tempest
That his bark on Boray threw.
But when spring three times had circled,
Margaret’s cheek was thin and white;
Day by day her strength departed,
And she faded in his sight.
Then she spoke, and thus she bade him:
“Death’s cold touch is on my heart,
But in peace from this dear homestead
Soul and body cannot part
“Till I know my fate for certain—
If the holy water shed
On my christened brow will save me
From the doom of Odin’s dead.
“Row me in your skiff, my husband,
On the eve of good St. John;
Take me back to Boray Island,
Lay me on the sands adown.
“Clasping fast the Cross of Jesus,
I must meet the dead alone;
If they still have power o’er me,
Ere day breaks I shall be gone.
“All alone you needs must leave me;
Pass in fast and prayer the time;
And return when o’er the waters
Peals St. Magnus’ midnight chime.
“And if Cross and Chrism guard me
From the sway of spirits foul,
Then, my husband, know for certain
Christ will save my ransomed soul.”
All her bidding he accomplished,
Though his heart was sad and sore:
On the fated eve he took her,
Laid her down on Boray shore;
Went where he no more could see her,
To the islet’s farthest bound.
Soon he heard the ghostly dancers
With wild cries his wife surround.
All the evening long they tried her,
Tempting her to turn again,
With weird strains of love or threatening,
To her life below the main.
Sadly Eric watched and waited,
Passed in fast and prayer the time,
Till at last, o’er rippling water,
Pealed St. Magnus’ midnight chime.
Then he rose, and hastened to her;
Found her on the lonely sands,
Lying with the Cross of Jesus
Claspèd in her folded hands.
To the Islands of the Blessed
Margaret’s ransomed soul had fled,
And a smile of victory lingered
On her lips, though cold and dead.
ALICE L. DUNDAS
(The Honourable Mrs. John Dundas).
[1] Boray Island, or Holm of Boray, off Millburn Bay in Gairsay.
[2] Midsummer Eve.
[Illustration]
SONGS OF THE GODS.
The Challenge of Thor.
I am the God Thor,
I am the War God,
I am the Thunderer!
Here in my Northland,
My fastness and fortress,
Reign I for ever!
Here amid icebergs
Rule I the nations.
This is my hammer,
Miölner the mighty;
Giants and sorcerers
Cannot withstand it!
These are the gauntlets
Wherewith I wield it
And hurl it afar off.
This is my girdle;
Whenever I brace it
Strength is redoubled!
The light thou beholdest
Stream through the heavens
In flashes of crimson
Is but my red beard
Blown by the night-wind,
Affrighting the nations!
Jove is my brother;
Mine eyes are the lightning;
The wheels of my chariot
Roll in the thunder,
The blows of my hammer
Ring in the earthquake!
Force rules the world still,
Has ruled it, shall rule it;
Meekness is weakness,
Strength is triumphant,
Over the whole earth
Still is it Thor’s Day!
Thou art a God too.
O Galilean!
And thus single-handed
Unto the combat,
Gauntlet or Gospel,
Here I defy Thee!
LONGFELLOW.
Tegner’s Drapa.[3]
I heard a voice that cried,
“Balder the Beautiful
Is dead, is dead!”
And through the misty air
Passed like the mournful cry
Of sunward sailing cranes.
I saw the pallid corpse
Of the dead sun
Borne through the Northern sky.
Blasts from Niffelheim
Lifted the sheeted mists
Around him as he passed.
And the voice for ever cried,
“Balder the Beautiful
Is dead, is dead!”
And died away
Through the dreary night,
In accents of despair.
Balder the Beautiful,
God of the summer sun,
Fairest of all the Gods!
Light from his forehead beamed,
Runes were upon his tongue,
As on the warrior’s sword.
All things in earth and air
Bound were by magic spell
Never to do him harm;
Even the plants and stones—
All save the mistletoe,
The sacred mistletoe!
Hœder, the blind old God,
Whose feet are shod with silence,
Pierced through that gentle breast
With his sharp spear, by fraud
Made of the mistletoe,
The accursed mistletoe!
They laid him in his ship,
With horse and harness,
As on a funeral pyre.
Odin placed
A ring upon his finger,
And whispered in his ear.
They launched the burning ship!
It floated far away
Over the misty sea,
Till like the sun it seemed,
Sinking beneath the waves.
Balder returned no more!
So perish the old Gods!
But out of the sea of Time
Rises a new land of song,
Fairer than the old.
Over its meadows green
Walk the young bards and sing.
Build it again,
O ye bards,
Fairer than before!
Ye fathers of the new race,
Feed upon morning dew,
Sing the new Song of Love!
The law of force is dead!
The law of love prevails!
Thor, the Thunderer,
Shall rule the earth no more,
No more, with threats,
Challenge the meek Christ.
Sing no more,
O ye bards of the North,
Of Vikings and of Jarls!
Of the days of Eld
Preserve the freedom only,
Not the deeds of blood.
LONGFELLOW.
[3] The Song of Tegner, a Swedish poet.
THE SONG OF HAROLD HARFAGER.
The sun is rising dimly red,
The wind is wailing low and dread;
From his cliff the eagle sallies,
Leaves the wolf his darksome valleys;
In the mist the ravens hover,
Peep the wild-dogs from the cover—
Screaming, croaking, baying, yelling,
Each in his wild accents telling,
“Soon we feast on dead and dying,
Fair-haired Harold’s flag is flying.”
Many a crest in air is streaming,
Many a helmet darkly gleaming,
Many an arm the axe uprears,
Doomed to hew the wood of spears.
All along the crowded ranks,
Horses neigh and armour clanks,
Chiefs are shouting, clarions ringing,
Louder still the bard is singing,
“Gather, footmen—gather, horsemen,
To the field, ye valiant Norsemen!
“Halt ye not for food or slumber,
View not vantage, count not number;
Jolly reapers, forward still;
Grow the crop on vale or hill,
Thick or scattered, stiff or lithe,
It shall down before the scythe.
Forward with your sickles bright,
Reap the harvest of the fight—
Onward, footmen—onward, horsemen,
To the charge, ye gallant Norsemen!
“Fatal choosers of the slaughter,
O’er you hovers Odin’s daughter;
Hear the choice she spreads before ye—
Victory, and wealth, and glory;
Or old Valhalla’s roaring Hail,
Her ever-circling mead and ale,
Where for eternity unite
The joys of wassail and of fight.
Headlong forward, foot and horsemen,
Charge and fight, and die like Norsemen!”
SIR WALTER SCOTT.
[Illustration: _A woodland path, Binscarth._]
KING HACON’S LAST BATTLE.
All was over; day was ending
As the foemen turned and fled.
Gloomy red
Glowed the angry sun descending;
While round Hacon’s dying bed
Tears and songs of triumph blending
Told how fast the conqueror bled.
“Raise me,” said the king. We raised him—
Not to ease his desperate pain;
That were vain!
“Strong our foe was—but we faced him:
Show me that red field again.”
Then with reverent hands we placed him
High above the battle plain.
Sudden on our startled hearing
Came the low-breathed, stern command,—
“Lo! ye stand?
Linger not—the night is nearing;
Bear me downwards to the strand,
Where my ships are idly steering
Off and on, in sight of land.”
Every whispered word obeying,
Swift we bore him down the steep,
O’er the deep,
Up the tall ship’s side, low swaying
To the storm-wind’s powerful sweep,
And his dead companions laying
Round him—we had time to weep.
But the king said, “Peace! bring hither
Spoils and weapons, battle-strown—
Make no moan;
Leave me and my dead together;
Light my torch, and then—begone.”
But we murmured, each to other,
“Can we leave him thus alone?”
Angrily the king replieth;
Flashed the awful eye again
With disdain:
“Call him not _alone_ who lieth
Low among such noble slain;
Call him not _alone_ who dieth
Side by side with gallant men.”
Slowly, sadly we departed;
Reached again that desolate shore,
Never more
Trod by him, the brave, true-hearted,
Dying in that dark ship’s core!
Sadder keel from land ne’er parted,
Nobler freight none ever bore!
There we lingered, seaward gazing,
Watching o’er that living tomb,
Through the gloom—
Gloom which awful light is chasing—
Blood-red flames the surge illume!
Lo! King Hacon’s ship is blazing;
’Tis the hero’s self-sought doom.
Right before the wild wind driving,
Madly plunging—stung by fire—
No help nigh her—
Lo! the ship has ceased her striving!
Mount the red flames higher, higher,
Till, on ocean’s verge arriving,
Sudden sinks the Viking’s pyre—
Hacon’s gone!
LORD DUFFERIN.
THE DEATH OF HACO.
The summer is gone, Haco, Haco;
The yellow year is fled;
And the winter is come, Haco,
That numbers thee with the dead!
When the year was young, Haco, Haco,
And the skies were blue and bright,
Thou didst sweep the seas, Haco,
Like a bird with wings of might.
With thine oaken galley, proudly,
And thy gilded dragon-prow,
O’er the bounding billows, Haco,
Like a sea-god thou didst go.
With thy barons gaily, gaily,
All in proof of burnished mail,
In the voes of Orkney, Haco,
Thou didst spread thy prideful sail;
And the sturdy men of Caithness,
And the land of the Mackay,
And the men of Stony Parf, Haco,
Knew that Norway’s king was nigh.
And the men of utmost Lewis, Haco,
And Skye, with winding kyles,
And Macdougall’s country, Haco,
Knew the monarch of the isles.
And the granite peaks of Arran,
And the rocks that fence the Clyde,
Saw thy daring Norsemen, Haco,
Ramping o’er the Scottish tide.
But scaith befell thee, Haco, Haco!
Thou wert faithful, thou wert brave;
But not truth might shield thee, Haco,
From a false and shuffling knave.
The crafty King of Scots, Haco,
Who might not bar thy way,
Beguiled thee, honest Haco,
With lies that bred delay.
And hasty winter, Haco, Haco,
Came and tripped the summer’s heels,
And rent the sails of Haco
And swamped his conquering keels.
Woe is me for Haco, Haco!
On Lorn and Mull and Skye
The hundred ships of Haco
In a thousand fragments lie!
And thine oaken galley, Haco,
That sailed with kingly pride,
Came shorn and shattered, Haco,
Through the foaming Pentland tide.
And thy heart sunk, Haco, Haco,
And thou felt that thou must die,
When the bay of Kirkwall, Haco,
Thou beheld with drooping eye.
And they led thee, Haco, Haco,
To the bishop’s lordly hall,
Where thy woe-struck barons, Haco,
Stood to see the mighty fall.
And the purple churchmen, Haco,
Stood to hold thy royal head,
And good words of hope to Haco
From the Holy Book they read.
Then out spake the dying Haco,
“Dear are God’s dear words to me,
But read the book to Haco
Of the kings that ruled the sea.”
Then they read to dying Haco
From the ancient saga hoar,
Of Holden and of Harold,
When his fathers worshipped Thor,
And they shrove the dying Haco,
And they prayed his bed beside;
And with holy unction Haco
Drooped his kingly head and died.
And in parade of death, Haco,
They stretched thee on thy bed,
With a purple vest for Haco,
And a garland on his head.
And around thee, Haco, Haco,
Were tapers burning bright,
And masses were sung for Haco
By day and eke by night.
And they bore thee, Haco, Haco,
To holy Magnus’ shrine,
And beside his sainted bones, Haco,
They chastely coffined thine.
And above thee, Haco, Haco,
To deck thy dreamless bed,
All crisp with gold for Haco,
A purple pall they spread.
And around thee, Haco, Haco,
Where the iron sleep thou slept,
Through the long, dark winter, Haco,
A solemn watch they kept.
And at early burst of springtime,
When the birds sang out with glee,
They took the body of Haco
In a ship across the sea—
Across the sea to Norway,
Where thy sires make moan for thee,
That the last of his race was Haco,
Who ruled the Western Sea.
And they laid thee, Haco, Haco,
With thy sires on the Norway shore,
And far from the isles of the sea, Haco,
That know thy name no more.
JOHN STUART BLACKIE.
(_From “Lays of the Highlands and Islands.” By permission
of the Walter Scott Publishing Company._)
[Illustration: _A modern war-fleet in Kirkwall Bay._]
THE OLD MAN OF HOY.
The Old Man of Hoy
Looks out on the sea,
Where the tide runs strong and the wave rides free;
He looks on the broad Atlantic sea,
And the Old Man of Hoy
Hath this great joy,
To hear the deep roar of the wide blue ocean,
And to stand unmoved ’mid the sleepless motion,
And to feel o’er his head
The white foam spread
From the wild wave proudly swelling;
And to care no whit
For the storm’s rude fit,
Where he stands on his old rock-dwelling—
This rare Old Man of Hoy.
The Old Man of Hoy
Looks out on the sea,
Where the tide runs strong and the wave rides free;
He looks on the broad Atlantic sea,
And the Old Man of Hoy
Hath this great joy,
To look on the flight of the wild seamew,
With their hoar nests hung o’er the waters blue;
To see them swing
On plunging wing,
And to hear their shrill notes swelling,
And with them to reply
To the storm’s war-cry,
As he stands on his old rock-dwelling—
This rare Old Man of Hoy....
The Old Man of Hoy
Looks out on the sea,
Where the tide runs strong and the wave rides free;
He looks on the broad Atlantic sea,
And the Old Man of Hoy
Hath this great joy,
To think on the pride of the sea-kings old—
Harolds and Ronalds and Sigurds bold—
Whose might was felt
By the cowering Celt
When he heard their war-cry yelling.
But the sea-kings are gone,
And he stands alone,
Firm on his old rock-dwelling—
This stout Old Man of Hoy.
But listen to me,
Old Man of the Sea,
List to the Skulda that speaketh by me:
The Nornies are weaving a web for thee,
Thou Old Man of Hoy,
To ruin thy joy,
And to make thee shrink from the lash of the ocean,
And teach thee to quake with a strange commotion,
When over thy head
And under thy bed
The rampant wave is swelling;
And thou shalt die
’Neath a pitiless sky,
And reel from thy old rock-dwelling—
Thou stout Old Man of Hoy!
JOHN STUART BLACKIE.
(_From “Lays of the Highlands and Islands.” By permission
of the Walter Scott Publishing Company._)
ORKNEY.
The parting beam of autumn smiles
A farewell o’er these lonely isles;
Capped with its fire, the mountains soar
Like lighted beacons on the shore,
While far beneath, in depth profound,
The tides roll through each darksome sound—
Those passes where the troubled sea
Hurries with roar and revelry;
Where waves dash on in headlong haste,
By a wide world of waters prest.
Here ruined hall and nodding tower
Hint darkly at departed power,
Their domeless walls, time-worn and gray,
Give dimly back the evening ray,
Like gleams from days long past away.
Saint Magnus! pile of ages fled,
Thou temple of the quick and dead!
While they who raised thy form sublime
Have faded from the things of time;
While hands that reared, and heads that planned,
Have passed into the silent land,
Still hath thy mighty fabric stood
’Mid sweeping blast and sheeted flood.
Above thy tower and turrets tall
The thunder-cloud hath spread its pall, ...
And muttered o’er thine airy height
Its bursting accents to the night:
Though oft the wild and wintry storm
Hath reeled around thy towering form,
The mighty pile still proudly rears
Its head above the wreck of years.
As through thy pillared aisles I tread,
Where rest the gone forgotten dead,
Each step a mournful echo calls
To wander through the dreary walls;
The sullen sounds they backward throw,
Which falter into whispers low.
Each tombstone’s frail and crumbling frame
Preserves not e’en an airy name;
The lines by Friendship’s fingers traced,
Now touched by Time’s, are half effaced;
The few faint letters lingering still
Are all the dead man’s chronicle.
How often have the guests who ranged
Thy sacred labyrinths been changed!
Of crowds, who sang their anthems here,
How still each tongue—how deaf each ear!...
But thou like them must pass away
Beneath the hand of pale decay;
Even now thy towering turrets feel
The weight of ages o’er them steal;
Thy summit in its airy waste
Rocks to the rude and rushing blast;
When years that wander o’er thee call
Thy time-struck fabric to its fall,
Thy mouldering columns lone and gray
Shall shelter then the bird of prey;
Each worshipless recess shall be
Place for their frightful revelry;
The raven’s hoarse and funeral note
Shall o’er sepulchral ruins float....
Still doth the ruined palace stand,
A crumbling relic in the land—Tenantless
fabric, huge and high,
And proud in ruined majesty;
The verdant ivy robes thy wall,
Weeds are the dwellers in thy hall,
And in the wind the tufted grass
Waves o’er thy dim and mouldering mass,
And freshly each returning spring
Blooms o’er thy mortal withering.
On darkening piles, and waning wrecks,
A gay green garment oft is spread;
For ruin, as in mockery, decks
The faded victims she hath made.
With time and tempest thou art bent,
A drear, neglected monument,
Lorn as some frail and aged one
Who lives when all his friends are gone!—
Where is thy voice of music?—where
The strains that hushed the midnight air,
When Beauty woke her witching song,
And spellbound held the festive throng?—
A narrow and a nameless grave
Hath closed upon the fair and brave,
And all around is deadly still,
Save when, from some high pinnacle,
The raven’s croak, or owlet’s wail,
Blends with the sighing of the gale....
The hoary rocks, of giant size,
That o’er the land in circles rise,
Of which tradition may not tell,
Fit circles for the wizard’s spell,
Seen far amidst the scowling storm,
Seem each a tall and phantom form,
As hurrying vapours o’er them flee,
Frowning in grim society,
While like a dread voice from the past
Around them mourns the autumnal blast....
Yet not the works of man alone,
Though hallowed by long ages gone,
Charm us away in musing mood;
Bear witness each grim solitude,
’Mid Hoy’s high shadowy mountain walls
Where mournfully the twilight falls:
There bosomed in a deep recess
Sleeps a dim vale of loneliness,
The circling hills, all bleak and wild,
Are o’er its slumbers darkly piled,
Save on one side, where far below
The everlasting waters flow,
And round the precipices vast
Dance to the music of the blast....
There rocks of ages sternly throw
Their shadows o’er a world below,
And fierce and fast each dark-brown flood
Careering comes in maddening mood:
O’er the sheer cliffs the waters flash,
And down in whitest columns dash,
Till, far away, we scarce can hear
Their dying falls and murmurs drear,
As, bursting o’er the dizzy verge,
They melt into the boiling surge.
Here, when, perchance, the voice of men
Is heard within the fairy glen,
Deep muttering echoes start around,
And rocks of gloom fling back the sound,
While from their fragments, rent and riven,
A thousand airy dwellers driven,
Send forth a wild and dreary scream.
Like such as breaks a fearful dream
When Conscience to the sleeper’s gaze
Holds up the view of other days....
When, by Night’s mantle hooded o’er,
The heaving hills are seen no more,
Oft blended with the torrent’s dash
Are heard the thunder’s startling crash,
And burst of billows on the shore,
Like cannon’s deep and distant roar,
By echoes answered loud and fast,
That gallop on the midnight blast,
As if the Spirit of the vale
Heard in his cave the stormy wail,
And to the tempest rolling by
Shrieked loud his frightful mockery....
Where cairns of slumbering chiefs are piled,
And frown above the waters wild,
Rear their hoar heads, forlorn and dim,
Upon the ocean’s lonely brim,
There the fierce storm and maddening surge
Howl loud and long the warrior’s dirge,
And blended there together rave
Through many a deep and dreary cave,
And waken from their sullen lair
Sea-monsters, darkly slumbering there.
Seen from those death-towers of the flood,
The ocean’s mighty solitude
Widens through boundless space around,
Vast, melancholy, lone, profound;
So vast that thought with weary wing
Droops o’er its distant wandering,
And, left behind, again returns
To muse upon the mouldering urns....
As the rude brush of evening’s wind
Leaves not a lingering trace behind
Of landscapes living in the stream,
Like the dim scenery of a dream
Called up by Fancy’s wizard wand,
When Sense is sealed by Slumber’s hand;
So Time’s drear blast hath swept along
Alike from record and from song
Their very names, who now lie hid
Beneath each dusky pyramid;
And all that hint of them are graves
Where the green flag of ruin waves,
Or crumbling remnant of the past
That ivy shelters from the blast,
And clings to still when others flee,
Like true love in adversity.
On Noltland’s solitary pile
The last blush of the dying day
Plays like a melancholy smile
And hectic glow on pale decay ...
The moss of years is on the wall,
And fitfully the night-winds start
Through Bothwell’s roofless ruined hall,
Like sobs of sorrow from the heart;
Upon each floor of cold, damp sod
The clustering weeds like hearse-plumes nod;
Through chambers desolate and green
Hoots the gray owl at evening’s close.
Meant for far other guests, I ween—
Where wave-worn Beauty might repose,
And find that bliss in Love’s caress
Which hallows scenes of loneliness.
See Hoy’s Old Man, whose summit bare
Pierces the dark-blue fields of air,
Based in the sea, his fearful form
Glooms like the spirit of the storm,
An ocean Babel, rent and worn
By time and tide—all wild and lorn—
A giant that hath warred with heaven,
Whose ruined scalp seems thunder-riven,
Whose form the misty spray doth shroud,
Whose head the dark and hovering cloud,
Around his dread and lowering mass,
In sailing swarms the sea-fowl pass,
But when the night-cloud o’er the sea
Hangs like a sable canopy,
And when the flying storm doth scourge
Around his base the rushing surge,
Swift to his airy clefts they soar,
And sleep amidst the tempest’s roar,
Or with its howling round his peak
Mingle their drear and dreamy shriek.
The dying day has had its rest
Upon the mountain’s lofty crest;
Now, o’er the ocean it has fled,
And to the past is gathered;
From stunted shrubs of foliage bared
The farewell melodies are heard;
The twilight spreads a duskier veil
Upon the deep and lonely dale,
And, moaning to the evening star,
The mountain stream is heard afar.
The twilight fades and night again
Claims from our time her portioned reign;
Earth sets, and leaves us to admire
Yon vaulted canopy of fire,
Those burning glories of the sky,
Those “sparks of immortality,”
Which shed from high their living light,
And blaze through the blue depths of night....
At such an hour, should music stray
Soft from some isle, far, far away,
It seems to charm to silent sleep
The murmurs of the mighty deep;
The torrent, as it speeds along,
Stills its dark waters to the song,
And the full bosom feels relief,
Soothed by the mystic “joy of grief;”
Upon the heart-chords stealing slow,
It hallows every cherished woe,
And wakes sensations in the mind,
Wild, beautiful, and undefined,
As tones that harp-strings give the wind.
Oh! at such soul-inspiring strain
The wondrous links of memory’s chain,
Though scattered far, unite again,
And Time and Distance strive in vain.
Again Youth’s fairy visions pass
In morning glow o’er Memory’s glass,
At every magic melting fall
They come like echoes to their call,
And with the dreams of vanished years
Steal forth again our smiles and tears.
JOHN MALCOLM.
SCENES FROM “THE BUCCANEER.”
Night.
Night walked in beauty o’er the peaceful sea,
Whose gentle waters spake tranquillity;
With dreamy lull the rolling billow broke
In hollow murmurs on the distant rock;
The sea-bird wailed along the airy steep;
The creak of distant oar was on the deep.
So still the scene, the boatman’s voice was heard;
The listening ear could almost catch each word;
From isles remote the house-dog’s fitful bay
Came floating o’er the waters far away;
And homeward wending o’er the silent hill,
The lonely shepherd’s song and whistle shrill;
The lulling murmur of the mountain flood,
That sung its night-hymn to the solitude;
The curlew’s wild and desolate farewell,
As slow she sailed adown the darksome dell;
The heathcock whirring o’er the heathy vale;
The mateless plover’s far-forsaken wail;
The rush of tides that round the islands ran,
And danced like maniacs in the moonlight wan,—
All formed a scene so wild, and yet so fair,
As might have wooed the heart from dreams of care,
If aught had charms to soothe, or balm to heal,
The pangs that guilt is ever doomed to feel....
Morning.
Day dawns, and from the main the mist is furled,
The night-cloak of a solitary world;
And slow emerging from the fleecy cloud
The mountains soar like giants from the shroud.
High o’er the rest, and towering to the storm,
Glooms o’er the ocean Hoy’s majestic form;
From his lone head, as roll the clouds away,
Behold Creation bursting into day,
As first it broke from night and nothingness,
When the Great Spirit brooded o’er the abyss.
How calm and clear the boundless waters seem,
As if awakening from a heavenly dream;
The little isles within their bosom lie,
Like dwellers in a bright infinity;
The crag terrific beetling o’er the west
Beholds the heaven reflected in their breast.
The dark-brown hills embrace each silent bay
That loves amid their solitude to stray;
And far beneath, with low sepulchral sound,
Moans the dark torrent through the dell profound;
And from the thunder-throne, the mountain cairn,
Shrieks to the waste the solitary erne....
Scenes of my song, of earliest smiles and tears,
Ye wake the memories of departed years!
The distant murmur of your mountain streams
Steals o’er my spirit with departed dreams,
With many a tale and recollected lay,
Which, like the twilight of an autumn day,
Faint on your shores, of wonderful and wild,
Meet for the musing moods of Fancy’s child.
There have I roamed o’er many a soaring steep
When the last day-gleam died along the deep,
And o’er the still and solitary land,
The distant music of the reaper band
Came soft and mournful on the pensive soul,
As mermaid’s siren song o’er ocean’s roll.
There have I gazed upon the pathless seas,
As on the gates of two eternities—
Far east, where future days shall gild the wave,
And west, where all the past hath found a grave.
JOHN MALCOLM.
TO ORKNEY.
Land of the whirlpool, torrent, foam,
Where oceans meet in maddening shock;
The beetling cliff, the shelving holm,
The dark, insidious rock;
Land of the bleak, the treeless moor,
The sterile mountain, seared and riven;
The shapeless cairn, the ruined tower,
Scathed by the bolts of heaven;
The yawning gulf, the treacherous sand;—
I love thee still, my native land!
Land of the dark, the Runic rhyme,
The mystic ring, the cavern hoar,
The Scandinavian seer, sublime
In legendary lore;
Land of a thousand sea-kings’ graves—
Those tameless spirits of the past,
Fierce as their subject Arctic waves,
Or hyperborean blast;
Though polar billows round thee foam,
I love thee!—thou wert once my home.
With glowing heart and island lyre,
Ah! would some native bard arise
To sing, with all a poet’s fire,
Thy stern sublimities—
The roaring flood, the rushing stream,
The promontory wild and bare,
The pyramid where sea-birds scream
Aloft in middle air,
The Druid temple on the heath,
Old even beyond tradition’s breath.
Though I have roamed through verdant glades,
In cloudless climes, ’neath azure skies;
Or plucked from beauteous Orient meads
Flowers of celestial dyes;
Though I have laved in limpid streams
That murmur over golden sands,
Or basked amid the fulgent beams
That flame o’er fairer lands;
Or stretched me in the sparry grot,—
My country! thou wert ne’er forgot.
DAVID VEDDER.
(Native of Deerness; 1790-1854.)
THE TEMPLE OF NATURE.
Talk not of temples; there is _one_,
Built without hands, to mankind given.
Its lamps are the meridian sun
And all the stars of heaven;
Its walls are the cerulean sky;
Its floor the earth so green and fair;
The dome is vast immensity,—
All nature worships there!
The Alps, arrayed in stainless snow,
The Andean ranges yet untrod,
At sunrise and at sunset glow
Like altar-fires to God!
A thousand fierce volcanoes blaze,
As if with hallowed victims rare;
And thunder lifts its voice in praise,—
All nature worships there!
The ocean heaves resistlessly,
And pours his glittering treasures forth;
His waves, the priesthood of the sea,
Kneel on the shell-gemmed earth,
And there emit a hollow sound,
As if they murmured praise and prayer;
On every side ’tis hallowed ground,—
All nature worships there!
The grateful earth her odours yield
In homage, Mighty One, to Thee,
From herbs and flowers in every field,
From fruit on every tree;
The balmy dew, at morn and even,
Seems like the penitential tear,
Shed only in the sight of Heaven,—
All nature worships there!
The cedar and the mountain pine,
The willow on the fountain’s brim,
The tulip and the eglantine,
In reverence bend to Him;
The song-birds pour their sweetest lays
From tower, and tree, and middle air;
The rushing river murmurs praise,—
All nature worships there!
Then talk not of a fane, save _one_,
Built without hands, to mankind given.
Its lamps are the meridian sun
And all the stars of heaven;
Its walls are the cerulean sky;
Its floor the earth so green and fair;
The dome is vast immensity,—
All nature worships there!
DAVID VEDDER.
APPENDIX I.
CHRONOLOGY OF ORCADIAN HISTORY TO THE END OF THE EARLDOM, WITH RELATED
CONTEMPORARY EVENTS.
Certain historians assign earlier dates than those given below to the
events before 933. The chronology adopted here is that which harmonizes
best with the dates of events in other lands during that period.
Approximate dates are marked “c” (circa); events not directly connected
with the Earldom are in square brackets, and their dates in lighter type.
A.D.
=78= (c.) Agricola’s visit to Orkney.
563. [Columba in Scotland.]
=580= (c.) Cormac’s missionary journey to Orkney.
597. [Augustine in England.]
787. [First recorded appearance of Vikings in England.]
800 (c.) [First period of Norse colonization begins.]
841. [Rouen taken by the Norsemen.]
852. [Norse kingdom established in Dublin.]
862. [Rurik founds the Norse line in Russia.]
871. [Alfred the Great King of England.]
885. [Siege of Paris by the Norsemen.]
=900.= Battle of Harfursfirth—Second period of Norse colonization
begins.
— [Iceland colonized by Norsemen.]
=901= (c.) Harald Fairhair in Orkney—Earldom established.
— Sigurd I. earl.
=905= (c.) Battle with Maelbrigda of Ross—Sigurd’s death.
— Guttorm, Sigurd’s son, earl.
=907= (c.) Hallad, son of Rognvald, Earl of Moeri, earl.
=910.= Einar I. (Torf Einar), Rognvald’s son, earl.
912. [Rolf or Rollo, Rognvald’s son, Duke of Normandy.]
=933.= Arnkell, Erlend I., and Thorfinn I., Einar’s sons,
joint-earls.
950. [King Eric (Bloody axe) expelled from Norway.]
=954.= Eric and Earls Arnkell and Erlend fall at battle of
Stainsmoor.
=963.= Arnfinn, Havard, Ljot, and Hlodve, Thorfinn’s sons,
joint-earls.
=980.= Sigurd II. (the Stout), Hlodve’s son, earl.
980. [Discovery of Greenland by the Norsemen.]
986. [Discovery of America (Vinland) by the Norsemen.]
=995.= Conversion of Sigurd to Christianity by Olaf Tryggvason.
998. [Olaf Tryggvason, King of Norway.]
=1014.= Battle of Clontarf—Death of Earl Sigurd.
— Sumarlid, Einar II., Brusi, and (later) Thorfinn II.,
Sigurd’s sons, joint-earls.
1015. [Olaf the Saint King of Norway.]
=1015.= Death of Earl Sumarlid.
1017. [Knut (Canute) King of England.]
=1020.= Murder of Einar II.
1027. [Norse kingdom established in Southern Italy.]
1030. [Battle of Sticklestad—Death of St. Olaf.]
=1031.= Death of Earl Brusi—Thorfinn II. sole earl.
— Rognvald, Brusi’s son, claims a share of the earldom.
=1045.= Battle in the Pentland Firth between Rognvald and Thorfinn.
=1046.= Murder of Rognvald in Papa Stronsay.
1056. [Malcolm Canmore King of Scotland.]
=1057.= Christ’s Kirk in Birsay founded.
=1064.= Death of Thorfinn; his sons Paul I. and Erlend II.
joint-earls.
=1066.= Harald Hardradi visits Orkney.
— Harold, Godwin’s son, King of England.
— Battle of Stamford Bridge.
— Invasion of Duke William of Normandy—Battle of Hastings.
1087. [Moorish Empire established in Spain.]
1096. [First Crusade.]
=1098.= Magnus (Barefoot), King of Norway, sends the Orkney earls
to Norway, and makes his son Sigurd “King” of Orkney.
1103. [Death of Magnus—Sigurd King of Norway.]
=1103.= Hakon, Paul’s son, and Magnus, Erlend’s son, joint-earls.
=1115.= Murder of Earl Magnus (St. Magnus) in Egilsay.
=1122.= Death of Earl Hakon; his sons Harald I. and Paul II.
joint-earls.
=1127.= Death of Harald—Paul sole earl.
=1129.= Rognvald II. (Kali) appointed joint-earl by King Sigurd.
=1135.= Rognvald’s first expedition to claim the earldom.
— St. Magnus Church, Egilsay, founded.
=1136.= Rognvald’s second expedition—Earl Paul kidnapped by Sweyn
Asleifson.
=1137.= St. Magnus Cathedral founded.
=1139.= Harald II. (Maddadson) joint-earl.
=1151.= Crusaders winter in Orkney.
=1152.= Earl Rognvald’s Crusade to Jerusalem.
=1154.= Erlend III. joint-earl.
=1156.= Death of Erlend III.
=1158.= Earl Rognvald killed.
=1171.= Sweyn Asleifson’s last cruise and death at Dublin.
1171. [English invasion of Ireland.]
=1175.= Abbot Laurentius transferred from Orkney (Eynhallow) to
Melrose.
1194. [Battle of Floravoe, near Bergen; defeat of the
“Island-beardies.”]
=1196.= Shetland separated from the Orkney earldom.
=1197.= Harald III. (the Young), grandson of Rognvald, joint-earl.
=1198.= Death of Harald the Young.
=1206.= Death of Earl Harald II. (Maddadson); his sons David and
John joint-earls.
=1214.= Death of Earl David.
1214. [Alexander II. King of Scotland.]
1215. [Magna Charta granted in England.]
=1222.= Burning of Bishop Adam in Caithness.
— Death of Bjarne, the poet-bishop of Orkney.
=1231.= Death of John, the last earl of the Norse line.
=1232.= Magnus II., the first of the Angus line, earl.
— Loss of ship carrying the chief men of the Isles from
Norway.
=1239.= Gilbride I. earl.
? Gilbride II. earl.
1249. [Alexander III. King of Scotland.]
=1256.= Magnus III. earl.
=1263.= King Hakon’s expedition—Battle of Largs—Death of Hakon at
Kirkwall.
=1266.= Treaty of Perth—“Annual of Norway” established.
=1276.= Magnus IV. earl.
=1284.= John II. earl.
1286. [Death of Alexander III. of Scotland—Margaret of Norway
heiress to the crown.]
1292. [Death of Margaret the “Maid of Norway.”]
1306. [Robert Bruce King of Scotland. According to a tradition,
the credibility of which is supported by various lines
of evidence, Bruce passed the winter of 1306-7 in
Orkney, not in the island of Rathlin.]
=1310.= Magnus V. earl.
1312. [Treaty of Perth confirmed at Inverness.]
1314. [Battle of Bannockburn.]
=1325.= Death of Earl Magnus V.; end of the Angus line.
— Malise of Stratherne earl.
=1353.= Erngisl earl.
=1379.= Death of Earl Erngisl; end of the Stratherne line.
— Henry I. (St. Clair) earl—Shetland restored to the earldom.
— Union of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark (Union of Calmar).
=1400.= Henry II. (St. Clair) earl.
1406. [Prince James of Scotland captured by the English when on
his way to France.]
=1420.= Bishop William Tulloch, commissioner in Orkney for the
Crown of Norway.
=1423.= David Menzies of Wemyss commissioner.
=1434.= William St. Clair earl, the last earl under Norse rule.
1453. [Constantinople taken by the Turks.]
=1468.= Orkney and Shetland pledged to the Scottish Crown.
— Marriage of James III. of Scotland to Margaret of Denmark.
=1471.= Lands and revenues of Earl William purchased by the
Scottish Crown.
=1472.= Bishop William Tulloch appointed to collect Crown revenues.
=1485.= Henry St. Clair representative of the Crown.
1492. [First voyage of Columbus.]
1497. [Voyage of Cabot to Labrador.]
=1513.= Battle of Flodden—Death of Henry St. Clair.
1524. [Union of Calmar dissolved.]
=1529.= Battle of Summerdale.
=1540.= James V. of Scotland visits Orkney.
1542. [Mary Queen of Scots born.]
=1565.= Lord Robert Stewart obtains a feu charter of Orkney and
Shetland.
1567. [Mary Queen of Scots deposed—James VI. proclaimed—Flight
of Bothwell to Orkney and Shetland.]
=1568.= The Islands resumed by the Crown of Scotland.
=1581.= Lord Robert Stewart earl.
1588. [The Armada.]
=1592.= Earl Patrick Stewart obtains the Islands.
1603. [Union of the Crowns of Scotland and England.]
=1614.= Execution of Earl Patrick.
APPENDIX II.
NORSE WORDS IN ORKNEY PLACE-NAMES.
The following is a list of the Norse words most commonly found in
place-names in Orkney, with their meaning. The forms in which they now
appear, as names or parts of names, are given in italic, except where the
old form is preserved with little change.
1. LAND FEATURES.
=Ass=, ridge; _-house_.
=Bjarg=, rocky hill; _-berry_, _-ber_.
=Bratt=, steep; _brett-_.
=Brekka=, slope; _-breck_.
=Dal=, valley; _-dale_, _-dall_.
=Fjall=, hill; _-fell_, _-fea_, _-fiold_.
=Gil=, narrow glen; _-gill_.
=Grjot=, gravel; _grut-_.
=Hals=, neck, col; _hass_.
=Hammar=, crag.
=Haug=, mound; _howe_, _hox-_.
=Hlith=, slope; _-lee_.
=Hvāll=, =hōll=, hill; _hol-_, _hool-_.
=Hvamm=, small valley, grassy slope; _quholm_.
=Kamb=, ridge or crest; _kame_.
=Knapp=, hilltop, knob.
_Kuml_, burial mound; _cumla-_.
=Leir=, clay; _ler-_.
=Mel=, sandbank, sandy downs.
=Mor=, pl. mos, moor; _mous-_, _-mo_.
=Myri=, wet meadow; _-mire_.
=Skal=, soft rock, shale; _skel-_.
=Thufa=, mound; _-too_.
=Varthi=, watch-tower; _ward_, _wart_.
=Voll=, valley; _vel-_, _-wall_.
2. FRESH WATER.
=A=, =o=, =or=, burn.
=Brun=, well; _-burn_.
=Fors=, waterfall; _furs-_.
=Kelda=, spring.
=Oss=, burn-mouth; _oyce_.
=Tjörn=, small lake; _-shun_.
=Vatn=, water; _watten_.
3. SHORE FEATURES.
=Bakki=, banks; _-back_.
=Barth=, projecting headland (edge of a hill, beak of a ship, etc.).
=Berg=, mass of rock; _-ber_, _-berry_.
=Bringa=, breast; _bring_.
=Eith=, isthmus; _aith_, _-ay_, _-a_.
=Ey=, island; _-ey_, _-ay_, _-a_.
=Eyrr=, gravel beach; _ayre_.
=Fles=, flat skerry; _flashes_.
=Gnüp=, peak; _noup_.
=Hella=, flat rock; _-hellya_.
=Hellir=, cave; _-hellya_.
=Hōlm=, small island.
=Klett=, low rock; _-clett_.
=Muli=, muzzle, lip; _mout_.
=Nef=, növ, nose; _nevi_.
=Nes=, nose; _-ness_.
=Oddi=, sharp point; _od_.
=Sker=, skerry.
=Stakk=, pillar rock; _stack_.
=Tangl=, tongue; _-taing_.
4. SEA FEATURES.
=Brim=, surf.
=Efja=, backwater, eddy; _evie_.
=Fjörth=, firth; _firth_, _-ford_.
=Gja=, chasm, creek; _geo_.
=Glup=, throat; _gloup_.
=Hafn=, harbour; _ham_, _hamn-_.
=Hōp=, shallow bay.
=Straum=, tide-stream; _strom-_.
=Vag=, narrow bay; _voe_, _-wall_.
=Vath=, wading-place, ford; _waith_.
=Vik=, bay; _-wick_.
5. FARMS AND HOUSES.
=Bolstadr=, dwelling; _-buster_, _-bister_, _-bist_.
=Brū=, bridge; _bro-_.
=Bu=, =bær=, farm; _bu_, _-by_.
=Bygging=, building, from byggja, to settle, to build; _-biggin_.
=Garth=, enclosure, dyke; _-garth_, _-ger_.
=Grind=, gate.
=Hagi=, enclosed pasture; _hack-_.
=Hus=, house.
=Krō=, sheepfold; _-croo_.
=Kvī=, cattle pen; _-quoy_.
=Rett=, sheepfold; _-ret_.
=Sel=, “saeter” hut; _selli-_.
=Setr=, =saetr=, out-pasture; _seatter_, _-setter_, _-ster_.
=Skali=, hall, house; _-skaill_.
=Skipti=, dividing, boundary; _skippi-_.
=Stadr=, homestead; _-ster_, _-sta_.
=Stofa=, room, house; _stove_.
=Thopt=, plot, site of a house; _-toft_, _-taft_.
=Tūn=, enclosure, hedge; _-ton_, _-town_.
6. MISCELLANEOUS.
=Djup=, deep; _deep-_, _jub-_.
=Faer=, sheep; _far-_.
=Flat=, flat; _flot-_.
=Gra=, gray.
=Graenn=, green.
=Ha=, high; _ho-_.
=Helgr=, holy; _hellya_.
=Hest=, horse.
=Hrafn=, raven; _ram-_, _ramn-_.
=Hross=, horse; _russ-_.
=Hund=, dog.
=Hvit=, white; _wheetha-_.
=Ling=, heather.
=Mykill=, great; _muckle_.
=Raud=, red; _ro-_.
=Skalp=, ship; _scap-_.
=Skip=, ship.
=Svart=, black; _swart-_.
APPENDIX III.
LIST OF BIRDS FOUND IN ORKNEY.
Local names are given in brackets. An asterisk (*) indicates that the
bird is not known to breed in the islands. When any bird not in this list
is found, it will usually be worth while to put the fact on record.
*=Auk, Little= (Rotchie).
=Blackbird= (Blackie).
=Bunting, Corn= (Chirlie Buntling).
*=Bunting, Snow= (Snowflake).
=Chaffinch=—_rare_.
=Coot= (Snaith).
=Cormorant= (Palmer, Scarf).
Crow, Hooded (Craa, Hoodie Craa, Grayback).
=Cuckoo=—_rare_.
=Curlew= (Whaup).
*=Diver, Black-throated=—_rare_.
*=Diver, Great Northern= (Immer Goose).
=Diver, Red-throated.=
*=Dotterel=—_rare_.
=Dove, Ring= (Wood-pigeon)—_rare_.
=Dove, Rock.=
=Dove, Stock.=
=Duck, Eider= (Dunter).
*=Duck, Golden-eye=—_rare_.
=Duck, Long-tailed= (Calloo)—_rare_.
*=Duck, Scaup=—_rare_.
=Duck, Sheld= (Sly-goose).
=Duck, Teal.=
=Duck, Tufted.=
=Duck, Wild= (Stock Duck).
=Dunlin= (Plover-page, Plover-pagick).
=Falcon, Peregrine.=
*=Fieldfare.=
=Gannet= or =Solan Goose=.
*=Goose, Bernacle=—_rare_.
*=Goose, Brent.=
*=Goose, Graylag=—_rare_.
=Grebe, Little.=
=Greenfinch= (Green Lintie).
=Grouse, Red= (Muirhen).
=Guillemot, Black= (Tyste).
=Guillemot, Common= (Aak).
=Gull, Black-headed.=
=Gull, Common= (White-maa).
=Gull, Greater Black-backed= (Baakie).
=Gull, Herring= (White-maa).
=Gull, Lesser Black-backed.=
=Hen Harrier= (Goose-haak).
=Heron, Common.=
=Jackdaw= (Jackie, Kae).
=Kestrel= (Moosie Haak).
=Kittiwake= (Kittie, Kittick, Kittiwaako).
=Lapwing= (Teeack, Teewhup).
=Linnet= (Lintie, Lintick).
=Merganser, Red-breasted= (Sawbill, Harl, Rantick).
=Merlin.=
=Moorhen= (Waterhen).
=Owl, Long-eared=—_rare_.
=Owl, Short-eared= (Cattie-face).
=Oyster Catcher= (Skeldro).
=Petrel, Fulmar.=
=Petrel, Stormy= (Sea-swallow).
=Phalarope, Red-necked.=
=Pipit, Meadow= (Teeting).
=Pipit, Rock= (Tang Sparrow, Tang Teeting).
=Plover, Golden.=
=Plover, Ringed= (Sandlark, Sinlack).
=Pochard.=
=Puffin= (Tammie-norrie).
=Quail=—_rare_.
=Rail, Land= (Corncrake).
=Rail, Water=—_rare_.
=Raven= (Corbie).
=Razor-bill= (Cooter-neb).
=Redbreast= (Robin Redbreast).
=Redshank.=
*=Redwing.=
=Rook.=
*=Sanderling=—_rare_.
=Sandpiper, Common.=
*=Scoter, Common.=
*=Scoter, Surf=—_rare_.
*=Scoter, Velvet.=
=Shag= (Scarf).
=Shearwater, Manx= (Lyrie).
=Shoveller=—_rare_.
=Skua, Richardson’s= (Scootie-allan).
=Skylark= (Laverock, Lavro).
*=Smew=—_rare_.
=Snipe= (Snippick, Horse-gowk).
=Sparrow, Hedge.=
=Sparrow, House= (Sprug).
=Starling= (Stirling, Strill).
*=Stint, Little=—_rare_.
=Stonechat=—_rare_.
*=Swan, Hooper=—_rare_.
=Tern, Arctic= (Pickie-terno, Rit-tick).
=Tern, Common= (Pickie-terno, Rit-tick).
=Tern, Sandwich=—_rare_.
=Thrush= (Mavis).
*=Turnstone=—_rare_.
=Twite= (Heather Lintie).
=Wagtail, Pied= (Willie-wagtail).
=Warbler, Sedge=—_rare_.
=Wheatear= (Chackie, Stonechat).
=Whimbrel= (Little Whaup, Summer Whaup)—_rare_.
=Whinchat=—_rare_.
=Widgeon.=
=Woodcock=—_rare_.
=Wren= (Wirenn, Jenny Wren).
=Wren, Gold-crested=—_rare_.
=Yellowhammer= (Yallow Yarling).
APPENDIX IV.
BOOKS FOR FURTHER STUDY.
The subjoined list of books is given as a guide to further study by those
who may wish to extend their knowledge of Orkney in any of the aspects
suggested in this book. It is not in any sense a complete list of works
relating to the Islands, nor does it, on the other hand, confine itself
to such works in subjects where general study is the best foundation for
local research. The books marked * are now out of print, and can only be
obtained from libraries, or bought, when occasion offers, from dealers
in second-hand books. As regards books still current, the list may be
helpful to those who are building up school or parish libraries in the
Islands. The most complete bibliography of Orkney and Shetland is the
=List of Books and Pamphlets relating to Orkney and Shetland=, by James
W. Cursiter, F.S.A.Scot. (Wm. Peace and Son, Kirkwall, 1894.)
Archæology and Early History.
*=Orkneyinga Saga.= Translated by Hjaltalin and Goudie. Edited, with
Notes, by Anderson. (Edinburgh, 1873.) The historical introduction by Dr.
Joseph Anderson is of special value.
=The Orkneyingers’ Saga.= Translated by Sir G. W. Dasent. (London, 1894;
Rolls Edition.) A very fine spirited rendering into English, as may be
seen from the extracts given in the first part of this book.
=The Saga of Hacon, and a fragment of the Saga of Magnus.= Translated by
Sir G. W. Dasent. (London, 1894; Rolls Edition.) This gives the Norse
account of the battle of Largs, and events leading up to it.
The Icelandic text of the two preceding books is published in separate
volumes in the same series.
=The Story of Burnt Njal.= By Sir G. W. Dasent. (Edinburgh, 1861; also a
later and cheaper edition.) This is the finest of the Icelandic sagas.
It deals mainly with life in Iceland, but contains several references
to Orkney under Earl Sigurd the Stout, and the fine description of the
battle of Clontarf quoted in this book.
=The War of the Gaedhil with the Gaill; or, The Invasion of Ireland
by the Danes and other Norsemen.= Irish text, with translation and
introduction by Jas. H. Todd. (London, 1867; Rolls Edition.) This gives
an account from the Irish point of view of the Norse invasions of Ireland
up to and including the battle of Clontarf.
=The Heimskringla; or, Chronicles of the Kings of Norway.= Translated by
Samuel Laing. (3 vols., London, 1844; new edition, edited by Dr. R. B.
Anderson, 4 vols., London, 1889.)
=Heimskringla Saga.= The Saga Library Edition. Translated by Wm. Morris
and Eirikr Magnusson. (4 vols., London, 1893-1905.) The sagas included in
the Heimskringla form a history of the early kings of Norway, and contain
frequent references to Orkney. Snorri Sturlason, the author, ranks among
the greatest of historians.
=Corpus Poeticum Boreale.= By Gudbrand Vigfusson and F. York Powell.
(2 vols., Oxford, 1883.) This is an almost complete collection of old
Norse Eddic and Court poetry, including poems by Torf Einar, Arnor the
Earl’s poet, Earl Rognvald, and Bishop Bjarni. In a valuable introduction
Vigfusson shows that many of the Eddic lays were written in the western
Norse colonies in the British Isles, and some of them presumably in the
Orkney earldom.
=Icelandic Primer.= By Henry Sweet. (Oxford, 1886.)
=Icelandic Prose Reader.= By G. Vigfusson and F. York Powell. (Oxford,
1879.)
=Icelandic-English Dictionary.= By R. Cleasby. Edited by G. Vigfusson,
with appendix by W. W. Skeat. (London, 1874.)
The preceding three books form the best equipment for studying the
language of the Norse period.
=The Dialect and Place-Names of Shetland.= By J. Jakobsen. (Lerwick,
1897.) Many of the place-names explained occur in Orkney.
=The Vikings in Western Christendom=, by C. F. Keary (London, 1891),
gives an interesting account of the early Viking age, from 789 to 888 A.D.
=Saga Time=, by J. Fulford Vicary (London, 1887), gives a popular
description of society from the ninth to the eleventh century.
=Orcades, seu Rerum Orcadensium Historia.= By Thormodus Torfaeus,
Icelandic historian (1697). Translated by Alexander Pope, minister of
Reay. (Wick, 1866.) Only a partial translation.
*=Account of the Danes and Norwegians in England, Scotland, and Ireland.=
By J. J. A. Worsaae; translation. (London, 1852.) A standard work.
=Monumenta Orcadica: the Norsemen in the Orkneys and the Monuments
they have left, with a Survey of the Celtic Pre-Norwegian and
Scottish Post-Norwegian Monuments in the Islands.= By L. Dietrichson.
(Christiania, 1906.) The most recent and most scientific account of
the Norse remains in Orkney, written in Norwegian, but with a very
full summary—almost equivalent to a translation—in English. Of special
interest is the account of the newly-discovered monastery in Eynhallow.
=The Viking Age.= By Paul du Chaillu. (2 vols., London, 1889.) An account
of the manners and customs, as well as the history, of the Viking period;
well illustrated, but not accurate or authoritative.
=The Early Kings of Norway.= By Thomas Carlyle. (London, 1875.) A short
account of the period from 860 to 1397; of no great historical value.
Norse Mythology.
*=Northern Mythology.= By Benjamin Thorpe. (3 vols., London, 1851.) The
best and most complete work on the subject.
=Northern Antiquities.= By P. Mallet; translation. (London, 1770; edition
in Bohn’s Series.)
=The Mythology of the Eddas.= By C. F. Keary. (London, 1882.)
=Norse Mythology: the Religion of our Forefathers.= By R. B. Anderson.
(Chicago, 1875.)
=Asgard and the Gods: a Manual of Norse Mythology.= By Dr. W. Wägner.
(London, 1880.) The best popular book on the subject.
=The Tragedy of the Norse Gods.= By R. J. Pitt.
=Heroes and Hero-Worship.= By Thomas Carlyle. (London, 1841.)
=The Earthly Paradise.= By William Morris. (London, 1868-70.)
=Sigurd the Volsung.= By William Morris. (London, 1877.)
=Epic and Romance.= Essays on Mediæval Literature by W. P. Ker. (London,
1908.) An authoritative and very readable account of the old Icelandic
literary art.
Later History.
*=History of the Orkney Islands.= By the Rev. George Barry. (Edinburgh,
1805; reprinted, with prefatory account of the Islands, Kirkwall, 1867.)
One of the standard works dealing with the history of the Islands.
*=Odal Rights and Feudal Wrongs.= By David Balfour of Balfour.
(Edinburgh, 1860).
*=Oppressions of the Sixteenth Century in the Islands of Orkney and
Zetland.= (Edinburgh, 1859; Abbotsford and Maitland Clubs publications.)
The above two books give an account of Orkney under Scottish rule.
*=Monteith’s Description of the Islands of Orkney and Zetland.=
(Edinburgh, 1711; reprinted 1845.)
*=General View of the Agriculture of the Orkney Islands.= By John
Shirreff. (Edinburgh, 1814.) An exceedingly interesting account of the
state of the Islands in the early nineteenth century.
=Description of the Isles of Orkney.= By the Rev. James Wallace (minister
of Kirkwall). Published by his son. (Edinburgh, 1693; reprinted, with
notes by John Small, M.A., Edinburgh, 1883.)
=The Present State of the Orkney Islands Considered.= By James Fea
(Surgeon). (Edinburgh, 1775; reprinted, Edinburgh, 1884.)
=Orkney and Shetland Old-Lore Series.= A miscellany issued quarterly
by the Viking Club, London; contains numerous articles of historical
interest.
Descriptive.
*=The Orkneys and Shetland.= By John R. Tudor. (London, 1883.) The best
descriptive work on the county; at once popular and systematic.
=Kirkwall in the Orkneys.= By B. H. Hossack. (Kirkwall, 1900.) An
extremely full and detailed descriptive and historical account of the
town of Kirkwall.
*=History of the Orkney Islands=, by the Rev. George Barry (Kirkwall
edition, 1867), contains a well-written description of the Islands.
*=Summers and Winters In the Orkneys.= By Daniel Gorrie. (Kirkwall, N.D.)
A valuable series of sketches of Orcadian scenery and the conditions of
life about the middle of last century.
=Rambles In the Far North.= By R. M. Fergusson. (Paisley, 1884.)
=Our Trip North.= By R. M. Fergusson. (London, 1892.)
=Handbook to the Orkney Islands.= (W. Peace and Son, Kirkwall.) Full of
interest.
=Orkney and Shetland.= By M. J. B. Baddeley, B.A. Thorough Guide Series.
(Thomas Nelson and Sons, London.) The best tourist guide to the Islands.
=Orkney and Shetland Almanac and County Directory= (W. Peace and Son,
Kirkwall; issued annually) contains statistical and other material of
value.
=The North Sea Pilot. Part I.= (London, 1894.) A Government publication
for the use of mariners. Of much value to Orcadians interested in boating
or in navigation.
=Tour through the Islands of Orkney and Shetland.= By the Rev. George
Low, with introduction by Dr. Joseph Anderson. (Kirkwall, 1879.) An
interesting account of the appearance of the Islands at the end of the
eighteenth century.
Geology.
There is no book dealing specifically with the geology of Orkney.
Recourse must be had either to books dealing with the science generally,
or to those dealing with the Islands in which their geology is included.
=The Orkneys and Shetland= (Tudor) contains an account of the geology of
the islands, written by Drs. Peach and Horne, with a useful geological
map.
The most recent and complete geological survey of Orkney is that by
Dr. J. S. Flett, an account of which is contained in two papers in the
=Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh=.
Some of Hugh Miller’s works, such as =The Testimony of the Rocks=, =The
Old Red Sandstone=, =Rambles of a Geologist=, and =Footprints of the
Creator=, contain numerous references to the geology of Orkney.
=Robert Dick=, by Dr. Samuel Smiles, is an interesting account of a
Thurso baker who devoted his life to the study of geology in Caithness,
where the rook formation is the same as that of Orkney.
Among general works in geology suitable for beginners may be mentioned
Huxley’s =Physiography= and Sir Archibald Geikie’s =Outlines of Field
Geology=, his =Class-book of Geology=, and his =Scenery of Scotland=.
Botany.
=The Orkneys and Shetland= (Tudor) contains a list of the rarer British
plants found in Orkney, compiled by W. I. Fortescue.
Volume xviii. of the =Transactions of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh=
contains a complete list of Orkney plants by Prof. J. W. H. Traill.
Another list is in preparation by Mr. Magnus Spence.
=The Marine Algæ of the Orkney Islands=, by G. W. Traill (Edinburgh,
1890), contains a list of the seaweeds of Orkney.
The following are some general works on botany which may be of service
to the beginner:—=Open-air Studies in Botany=, by R. L. Praeger (London,
1897), a study of wild flowers in their homes, with illustrations;
=Flowering Plants, their Structure and Habitat=, by C. L. Laurie,
illustrated (London, 1903); =Nature Studies=, by G. F. Scott-Elliot
(London, 1903); =A Plant Book for Schools=, by O. V. Darbyshire,
illustrated (London, 1908); =Flowers of the Field=, by C. A. Johns
(London, 1894).
=Common Objects of the Seashore=, by the Rev. J. G. Wood (London, 1866),
contains good descriptions and illustrations of the seaweeds.
For identification of plants perhaps the best books are the =British
Flora=, by Bentham and Hooker (London, 1904), and =Illustrations to
Bentham and Hooker’s British Flora=, by Fitch and Smith (London, 1905).
For mosses, the best book is Dixon and Jameson’s =Student’s Handbook of
British Mosses=.
Zoology.
For a general introduction to natural history the best books are—=Life
and her Children= (London, 1880), and =Winners in Life’s Race= (London,
1882), by Miss A. B. Buckley (Mrs. Fisher), and Professor Arthur J.
Thomson’s fascinating =Study of Animal Life=, which gives a list of other
books on zoology.
The animals of the seashore are dealt with in Rev. J. G. Wood’s =Common
Objects of the Seashore= and =Fresh and Salt Water Aquarium=; =Seaside
Studies=, by G. H. Lewes; =The Aquarium=, by P. H. Gosse; and =The
Aquarium, its Inhabitants, Structure, and Management=, by J. E. Taylor.
Gosse’s =Manual of Marine Zoology for the British Isles= (2 vols.,
London, 1856) still remains the best book for the identification of
marine animals.
For the study of birds the best works are the following:—=The Birds of
Shetland=, by H. L. Saxby (Edinburgh, 1884); =The Birds of the West of
Scotland=, by Robert Gray; =Bird-Watching= and =The Bird-Watcher in the
Shetlands=, by Edmund Selous.
Saunders’s =Manual of British Birds= (London, 1889) is the best single
book for the identification of birds, each species being illustrated.
=The Vertebrate Fauna of the Orkney Islands=, by J. A. Harvie Brown and
T. E. Buckley (Edinburgh, 1891), is in greater part a list of the birds
of Orkney, with a short account of each.
=Orcadian Papers: being Selections from the Proceedings of the Orkney
Natural History Society from 1887 to 1904.= Edited by M. M. Oharleson,
F.S.A. Scot. (Stromness, 1905.) The selections are not confined to
natural history, but include historical and other contributions.
Fiction, Poetry, etc.
=The Pirate.= By Sir Walter Scott.
=Poems, etc.= By David Vedder. Edited by the Rev. G. Gilfillan.
(Kirkwall, N.D.)
=Poems, Tales, and Sketches.= By Lieutenant John Malcolm, with
introduction by the Rev. G. Gilfillan. (Kirkwall, N.D.)
*=The Orcadian Sketch-Book.= By Walter Traill Dennison. (Kirkwall, 1880.)
A unique collection of stories and poems written in the “North Isles”
dialect of the Orkney vernacular.
=Orcadian Sketches.= By W. T. Dennison. With introduction by J. Storer
Clouston. (Kirkwall, 1904.) A selection from the preceding.
=The Pilots of Pomona.= By Robert Leighton. (London, 1892.)
=Sons of the Vikings.= By Dr. J. Gunn, M.A. (Edinburgh, 1893. Cheaper
edition, 1909.)
=The Boys of Hamnavoe.= By Dr. J. Gunn, M.A. (Edinburgh, 1894.)
=Vandrad the Viking.= By J. Storer Clouston. (Edinburgh, 1897.)
=Garmiscath.= By J. Storer Clouston. (Cheaper edition, London, 1904.)
* * * * *
In addition to the material available in book form, much excellent
literature in prose and in verse, with more or less direct relation to
Orkney, has appeared in various magazines above the names of Duncan
J. Robertson, J. Storer Clouston, and others, specimens of which are
included in the pages of this volume.
THE END.
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