THE PIRATE
The Shetland and Orkney Islands, seen from an aeroplane at great height
on a calm day, would resemble, I fancy, two handfuls of gravel thrown
upon a horizontal sheet of window-glass. When I was a boy they meant
little to me except a few black specks at the top of the map of Great
Britain. Upon examining a larger map, an active lad might fancy that
it would be great fun to skip from one island to another, or to play
tag, leaping over the numerous indentations in the coast. The Shetland
group is broken into about one hundred islands, stretching north and
south for seventy miles, but the total land surface is only five
hundred and fifty-one square miles, or less than half the area of the
State of Rhode Island. The Orkney group, lying fifty miles farther
south, is even smaller, its fifty-six islands containing only three
hundred and seventy-five square miles.
Upon closer acquaintance, however, the islands do not seem so
diminutive. Great rugged cliffs tower perpendicularly to enormous
heights above the sea-level. Huge broken fragments of rock form
gigantic towers, or stacks, rising out of the sea to a height of
hundreds of feet. One of the most picturesque of these, the Old Man of
Hoy, would tower above the dome of St. Peter's in Rome. Our small boy,
standing on the edge of one of these cliffs, looking down upon the
ocean, boiling and seething through strange caverns and natural arches,
{291} five hundred feet below, would quickly forget his desire to leap
to the nearest island. The wildness of the scene is accentuated by the
screaming of thousands of cormorants, guillemots, and gulls, mingling
with the roar of the sea and the mournful soughing of the wind.
We sailed into the Sound of Bressay, the harbour of Lerwick, at twelve
o'clock on a Saturday night in June. It was still light enough to see
plainly, for in these regions the summer sun has to rise so early in
the morning that he does not think it worth while to go to bed.
Expecting to land at the wharf of some quiet little seaport town, we
were astonished at the sight which the twilight revealed. A forest of
masts crowded the sound, which is here a mile wide. It was at the
height of the herring-fishing, and nearly a thousand vessels had
arrived to land their fish and enable their crews to spend Sunday on
shore, for these fishermen observe the Sabbath, piously or otherwise,
as a day of rest. All the remainder of that night and all day Sunday
the stone pavements of Lerwick resounded to the clatter of wooden shoes
worn by the Dutch fishermen. These Dutchmen are largely responsible
for the importance of Lerwick, having discovered many years ago that it
would be a convenient centre for the curing and shipping of herring.
Other nations are also represented, particularly Norway, Sweden,
Germany, and France, while the native Shetlanders still retain a
portion of the trade, though relatively a small one. Besides filling
the harbour, the vessels were crowded along the quays, five or six
deep, so that the crews of late arrivals could reach the shore only by
crossing the decks of several other ships. As soon as possible after a
boat arrives, its cargo is auctioned off at {292} the Fishmarket, after
which it proceeds to one of the curing stations. Nearly all the
vessels were 'steam-drifters,' which have superseded the old
sailing-boats. These drifters usually carry a crew of ten men. Their
engines are capable of ten knots an hour, sometimes more. As it often
happens that profitable shoals of fish cannot be found without
travelling at least a hundred miles, the advantage over the old
sailing-ships is apparent.
Crowds of people flock to Lerwick in the season to look for employment
in the curing establishments. On the little steamer which conveyed us
thither, we noticed, in various out-of-the-way corners of the deck,
what seemed to be piles of black and brown rags. They were there when
we came on board at Aberdeen, and remained nearly all the next day.
They turned out to be women, huddling together to keep warm, and
covered only by their thick dresses and a few old shawls. They
belonged to a class known by the not very pleasing, but thoroughly
descriptive, name of gutters, and were making their annual trip to
Lerwick to spend the season in the great curing establishments. These
sturdy women become very expert. Each fish is eviscerated with two
quick motions of the knife, assisted by the thumb and fingers, the
process continuing for long hours, at the rate of about two dozen of
herring a minute.
[Illustration: LERWICK, SHETLAND]
Lerwick, the capital of the Shetland Islands, is a town of picturesque
appearance. When it was built there were no carts in the islands, and
no occasion for any, for there were no roads. A long zigzag street
runs the length of the town, near the shore, and is the main business
thoroughfare. A century ago it would have been impossible to drive an
ordinary wagon through its narrow and awkward {293} turnings. Now the
buildings are sufficiently altered to admit the passage of teams, but
in many places, when a vehicle passes, the pedestrians must step into
the nearest doorways. The town is built on a hillside, so that the
cross-streets are steep lanes, alternating with short flights of
stairs. They have rough pavements, and usually a rail is placed along
the buildings for the safety of the pedestrians in icy weather. The
main thoroughfare, varying in width from ten to twenty-five feet, is
paved with flagging and its stone buildings, though small and of many
different shapes, have a substantial look. Strolling through the
streets of Lerwick, one might estimate the population at about five
thousand; looking out over the harbour on Sunday morning he would be
inclined to change the figure to twenty times that number; but again
looking seaward on Monday afternoon, when the fishing fleet has
disappeared, he would doubtless revert to his original estimate.
The men of the islands are nearly all fishermen. They work hard in the
season, which lasts from June to September, and spend their money,
during the long dark days of winter, in various amusements. Some
maintain small farms of five or ten acres each, known as crofts, where
they raise a few cattle and sheep. Only about one sixth of the land is
under cultivation, and of this about three fourths is pasture land.
The soil and climate of the Shetlands is decidedly unfavourable to
agriculture. The women look after the cattle, till the soil in their
small kail-yards, or gardens, bring in the winter supply of peat, and
attend to all the duties of housekeeping. In the intervals of their
busy lives, they knit shawls and other garments, out of wool which they
card and spin {294} themselves. Indeed, they knit nearly all the time.
It is not uncommon to see them walking along the roads or across the
moors, with heavy baskets of peat on their backs, the knitting-needles
clicking busily, as if every woman had been born with these implements
in her hands.
On the morning after our arrival we set out to discover the scenes of
'The Pirate.' Not knowing what changes had occurred since Scott's
visit to the islands in 1814, I was not sure whether I should be
obliged to catch a Shetland pony upon which to travel or make up my
mind to walk the twenty-seven miles between Lerwick and Sumburgh Head,
over a roadless country of rocks and mountains, morasses, and
quagmires. It was a delight, therefore, to learn not only that there
was a good road all the way, but that Lerwick now boasted the
possession of an automobile, the only one on the islands. I lost no
time in hiring the car, with a chauffeur who said he 'knew the road,'
though he afterwards confessed he had never been over it. When he
reached the mountainous regions, where the road dodges in and out
around a bewildering succession of short curves, along the edges of
cliffs from which we could look down upon rugged rocks or into the
lakes and voes a hundred feet below, speeding the machine as though he
were on level ground and familiar with every foot of it, he gave us a
thrill or two at every turn.
[Illustration: A CROFTER'S COTTAGE, ORKNEY]
We started out in the general direction taken by Mordaunt Mertoun, when
he left the comfortable home of Magnus Troil and his two pretty
daughters, Minna and Brenda, to return to the forlorn habitation of his
father at Jarlshof. There was just enough strong wind, with occasional
dashes of rain, to suggest the storm which {295} Mordaunt faced. But
he had to find his way around the edges of the numerous inland lakes
and voes by a kind of instinct, having no path to follow. We
travelled, on the contrary, over a good hard road, one of the
improvements of the last half-century. Most of the people whom we
passed had never seen an automobile. They not only hastily gave us the
road, but usually climbed high up on the adjacent banks, sometimes
dragging their pony-carts after them. One old man, when he saw us
coming, hastily took his horse out of the shafts, and rushed up the
side of the hill with the animal, to a safe distance of a hundred yards
before he dared look back. The horse gazed upon us in mild-eyed
curiosity, but the man's expression of terror suggested that he might
have seen old Norna of the Fitful Head herself and her leering,
sneering, grinning, and goggling dwarf, Nick Strumpfer, flying along in
a vehicle of the Devil's own invention. Though not particularly
grateful for the implied compliment, we were obliged to accept some
such explanation of the fact, which became more and more apparent, that
the men and women feared us far more than did their horses.
At one point we stopped to watch some women gathering peat. Only the
wealthy can afford to import coal and there is no wood on the islands,
because the fierce winds and rocky soil prevent the growth of trees.
The universal fuel for the poor is therefore peat, which seems to have
been providentially provided. For a fee of half-a-crown a year, or in
some cases a little more, paid to some large landowner, each family may
take a winter's supply. Every crofter's cottage has its peat-stack
near the door. Peat is simply decayed moss, the most common variety of
which is called _Sphagnum_. It is a small plant with {296} thin, scaly
leaves. In the light it has a hue of vivid green, changing in the
lower and darker places to a sickly yellow, and finally in the lowest
and dampest places, where it is thoroughly decayed, to a deep black.
This decayed portion is the peat, which, when well dried, burns with a
smouldering fire, of greater heat than an equal weight of wood, but
with far greater volume of smoke. The peat-banks resemble miniature
terraces, each about a foot high. The cutting is done with a curious
spade, with long narrow blade, called a _twiscar_ or _tuskar_. The top
layer, consisting of coarse dry grasses and the roots of heather and
other plants, is of no value. The second layer is a thick, moist,
spongy substance of a dark brown or black colour, while the third is
still more compressed, and, but for the moisture, looks somewhat like
coal. Each spadeful resembles a big, blackened brick, of unusual
length. They are laid in rows to dry and finally carried away to the
crofter's cottages, generally in baskets. The women swing their heavy
loads upon their backs and trudge long distances. Occasionally the
peat is loaded upon small sledges drawn by ponies. We saw an old
woman, with a very pretty granddaughter, loading their fuel upon one of
these sledges, which was drawn by a little 'Sheltie' with furry coat of
pure white. The old woman kindly allowed me to take her picture, a
favour which two other women declined to grant, because they did n't
have on their best clothes!
Burgh-Westra, the home of Magnus Troil and his daughters, is purely
fictitious. It was supposed to be twenty miles from Sumburgh Head,
which would make it seven miles south of Lerwick. We passed numerous
voes, as the long arms of the sea are called, any of which {297} would
have answered the description of the one upon which the Udaller's
residence was situated, and we could have found many sheltered places
among the rocks, corresponding to that in which Mordaunt Mertoun
secretly met Brenda, or to the beach of white sand beneath a precipice,
where Minna offered to pledge her hand to the pirate, Cleveland, by the
mysterious 'promise of Odin.'
Ten miles below Burgh-Westra was Stourburgh, where Triptolemus
Yellowley and Mistress Baby took up their residence. This, too, is
fictitious. Sumburgh Head, on the contrary, is very real. It is a
rocky promontory, three hundred feet high, at the southern extremity of
the Mainland, as the largest of the Shetland Islands is called.
Conflicting tides, sweeping around the rugged headland from two oceans,
make a dangerous current, called the Roost of Sumburgh, from the
Icelandic word, _röst_, signifying a strong tide. It has been a menace
to navigation for centuries and the scene of countless shipwrecks. The
novelist, quite naturally, therefore, made it the scene of the wreck
and rescue of Cleveland. Such a place would appeal strongly to Scott,
whose visit to the islands was made on a lighthouse yacht, the business
of which was to inspect just such points of danger. He climbed the
grassy slope to the top of the head, where he could look down from the
loftiest crag upon a wild mass of rocks below, and said it would have
been a fine situation in which to compose an ode to the Genius of
Sumburgh Head or an elegy upon a cormorant or to have written and
spoken madness of any kind. Instead of doing this he gave vent to his
enthusiasm by sitting down on the grass and sliding a few hundred feet
down to the beach! {298} Whether the performance was voluntary or
involuntary, he did not see fit to inform us.
A short distance north of Sumburgh Head, and in full view of it, we
found the ruins of Jarlshof, the abode of Basil Mertoun and his son.
It was a poorly built house of rough, unhewn stone, and even at its
best must have been desolate enough. Its age and history are not
definitely known. Robert Stewart, a son of James V, who received the
earldom of the Orkney and Shetland Islands from Mary Queen of Scots in
1565, may have been the builder. He is known to have dwelt in the
house, as did his son, Patrick, who abandoned Jarlshof after building
the Castle of Scalloway.
When Scott visited Sumburgh he saw nothing in Jarlshof more interesting
than a ruined dwelling-house, partly buried by the sand, and once the
residence of one of the Orkney earls. But directly beneath his feet,
though he knew it not, was an object that would have delighted his
antiquarian instincts more than anything else in the islands. He gave
great attention to the old Pictish castles or brocks, especially to a
small one on the shores of a lake near Lerwick, called by him
Cleik-him-in (Clickimin), and later to the larger tower on the island
of Mousa. Here at Jarlshof, though the fact was unknown to the
inhabitants at the time of Scott's visit, there was once a series of
brocks, as old as Mousa or Clickimin, and far more extensive.
[Illustration: SUMBURGH HEAD, SHETLAND]
This interesting discovery was made in 1897. Mr. John Bruce, the
principal landowner in the parish of Kinrossness, upon whose property
the ruin of Jarlshof stands, noticing the encroachments of the sea
after a storm, began to suspect the existence of masonry beneath {299}
the old castle. Two friends who were visiting him saw what seemed to
be jutting ends of walls. They threw off their coats and began to
excavate, continuing with enthusiasm until they discovered, to their
great surprise, evidences of a far more extensive building than they
had suspected. Mr. Bruce then engaged labourers and continued the work
of excavation for five years.
The Castle of Jarlshof was erected on top of an older structure, the
existence of which was evidently entirely unknown to the builder. The
excavations reveal a circular tower sixty-three feet in diameter,
similar in design to the other Shetland brochs, but larger at the base.
Its main wall is pierced with a passage three feet wide, evidently
leading to a staircase, and it has, within its thickness several
chambers. Half of the broch has been swept away by the sea. On the
west are portions of three smaller buildings, resembling beehives in
form, the largest of which is oval in shape with a length of
thirty-four feet and a width of nineteen. Outside of this structure
was a great wall, varying from ten to twenty feet thick. It has been
uncovered for a distance of seventy feet. Its shape suggests that it
may have been part of a great circular wall surrounding the whole group
of buildings, of which the central tower was the strongest and most
important. Away back in the eighth or ninth century, some Pictish
ruler may have constructed this immense fortress at the southern end of
the islands, to repel attacks by sea, and to afford a refuge to the
inhabitants in case of danger. Had Walter Scott known of its
existence, he would have fairly revelled in the discovery, and perhaps
the plot of 'The Pirate' might have been different.
{300}
Standing on the sands at Jarlshof, we could see, toward the northwest,
the towering promontory of the Fitful Head, rising nine hundred and
twenty-eight feet above the sea. This seemed a little puzzling at
first, for Scott places the residence of Norna of the Fitful Head at
the extreme northwestern edge of the Mainland. The Pictish burgh, or
broch, which Norna is supposed to have inhabited, is on the island of
Mousa,[1] off the eastern coast about ten miles north of Sumburgh Head.
The Wizard, for a very good reason, set the old tower on the top of a
great headland, ten miles to the south-west, and then moved the
combination fifty miles to the north.
[Illustration: CROSS-SECTION OF THE BROCH OF MOUSA]
The dwelling of Norna, therefore, which to the casual reader seems so
weird, was a very real thing. It represents {301} one of the earliest
forms of architecture, a rude attempt to construct a dwelling of loose
stones, without cement or timber, and with very slight knowledge of the
art of building. The Norsemen did not come to the Shetland Islands
until late in the eighth century and they found many of these brochs
already in existence. The most perfect of them all is the one on the
island of Mousa. It measures fifty-three feet in diameter at the base
and thirty-eight feet at the top. It is forty-two feet high. The
interior of what appears, externally, to be a rather large building, is
less than twenty feet in diameter owing to the peculiar construction of
the walls, which are really double. They are seventeen feet wide at
the base. Inside the walls is a kind of rude stair, or inclined plane,
winding around the building, and a series of very narrow galleries or
chambers. These receive air through openings in the inner wall, but,
excepting the door, there is no aperture in the outer wall.
This is the real building which Scott made the residence of Norna
because of his profound interest in it as a structure of unknown
antiquity. But standing in full view, firmly planted on a solid and
easily accessible rock, its situation was too commonplace for the
requirements of the story. He knew well how to create quite a
different impression, by supposing the same kind of house situated in a
wild and remote locality, on a ragged piece of rock split off from the
main plateau and leaning outward over the sea as though the slightest
weight would tumble the whole structure, rock and all, into the ocean.
Then, to supply the needed air of mystery, he fancied it occupied by a
crazy old witch, claiming sovereignty over the winds and the seas; her
servant an ugly, big-mouthed, {302} tongueless dwarf, with malignant
features and a horrible, discordant laugh; her favourite pet an uncouth
and uncanny trained seal; her companions the unseen demons of the air;
and her occupations the utterance of sibylline prophecies and the
incantation of weird spells. Clearly, all this would have been
impossible on the island of Mousa, so the author simply adjusted the
geography of the country to the requirements of his romance.
[Illustration: SCALLOWAY, SHETLAND]
Although Lerwick is now the only town of importance in the Shetlands,
the village of Scalloway, directly across the Mainland on the eastern
coast, once held that distinction. It is picturesquely situated on an
arm of the sea. Approaching from the east, we paused at the top of the
hill to look down upon it. Just below was one of those long narrow
voes, so common in these islands. The whale-hunt described in 'The
Pirate' came instantly to mind. It was easy to understand how one of
these monsters might come in at high tide and find himself stranded at
the ebb. At the mouth of this voe and circling around a small bay of
its own lies the quaint little village. At the extremity of a point of
land between the voe and the bay, rising higher than any of the
surrounding buildings, stands the ruined Castle of Scalloway. It was
built in 1600 by Patrick Stewart, the Earl of Orkney to whom I have
previously referred. He was the 'Pate Stewart' whose name is still a
synonym on the islands for all that is cruel and oppressive. He
compelled the people to do his bidding. They were obliged to work in
the quarries, drag the stone to the town, build the house as best they
could without proper appliances, and perform any kind of menial service
he might exact. For this they received a penny a day if the Earl felt
{303} good-natured. Otherwise they received nothing. If they
displeased him they were thrown into dungeons and not infrequently
hanged. A huge iron ring near the top of the castle, which was used
for this purpose, still bears witness to Pate Stewart's cruelty. He is
said to have boasted that the ring seldom lacked a tassel. As
mentioned in 'The Pirate,' the inhabitants only remembered one thing to
his credit, and that was a law which accorded well with Patrick's own
ideas of the rights of people to possess their own property. This was
the law, so dear to boyish hearts, of 'finders keepers.' Property
washed up from wrecks at sea belonged to those who found it. There was
a prevalent superstition that to save a drowning person was unlucky,
and no doubt this was one of the results of Pate Stewart's ruling. If
a man was not rescued he could claim no rights of property. It was
this superstition, so prevalent on the islands, that Scott wove into
his plot, making the rescue of Cleveland and the saving of his chest an
extremely unlucky occurrence for Mordaunt Mertoun.
We left Lerwick at midnight and stood on deck for an hour enjoying the
scenery by twilight. The little steamer was loaded to the gunwales
with barrels of fish, piled upon the decks in every nook and corner, so
that there was scarcely room to stand, making us feel like two very
insignificant bits of merchandise in the midst of such a valuable cargo
of good salt herring. In the morning we reached the port of Kirkwall,
the capital and chief city of the Orkneys.
Instead of a long busy quay, lined with hundreds of steam-drifters as
at Lerwick, we saw an almost empty harbour and a dock, which, but for
the arrival of our {304} own vessel, would have been deserted. The
permanent population of the two towns is about the same, Kirkwall
having the advantage of the better agricultural facilities of the
Orkneys. Its streets are narrow like those in Lerwick. Bridge Street,
up which the pirates marched so insolently to meet the city
magistrates, and down which they swaggered again, dragging the
terrified Triptolemus Yellowley, is one of the narrowest of
thoroughfares. It is commonly said that here, 'two wheelbarrows
tremble as they meet.' At the end, or 'top' of this street we turned
to the right and found ourselves in Albert Street, one striking feature
of which is a solitary tree. It was said, enviously, in Lerwick, that
the people of Kirkwall were so proud of this wonderful vegetation that
they took it in every night and set it out again in the morning.
Kirkwall is far more interesting than Lerwick because of its historical
associations, most of which centre about the Cathedral of St. Magnus.
The ancient building looks almost modern as you approach the wide plaza
opening out from Broad Street. Although older than Melrose, Dryburgh,
Holyrood, and Dunfermline abbeys, all of which are now in ruins, and in
spite of the fact that it is built of the soft red and yellow
sandstone, it still stands, complete and proudly erect. When Melrose
was rebuilt, through the munificence of Robert Bruce in the fourteenth
century, the central portions of St. Magnus had been standing for two
centuries. In the sixteenth century, when an English king was
battering down the fine old Gothic churches of Scotland, the people of
Kirkwall not only protected their cathedral, but witnessed the addition
of some of its finest features, notably the west doorway. In earlier
times it had a spire, which, judging {305} from the massive columns
upon which it rested, must have been an imposing one. The steeple was
burned in 1671, and never replaced, except by a stumpy little tower
which completely spoils the effect of an otherwise impressive building.
The story of the founding of St. Magnus is one of the most interesting
of the sagas of the Orkneys. Hakon and Magnus, both grandsons of the
great Earl Thorfinn, were joint rulers of the islands. Hakon was
ambitious and treacherous; Magnus was virtuous, kind-hearted, and
well-beloved. By a wicked conspiracy of Hakon and his associates, the
saintly Magnus was murdered in the island of Egilsay in 1115, bravely
meeting his death as a noble martyr. Hakon died soon after, and his
son Paul inherited the earldom. Another claimant appeared in the
person of Rognvald, a nephew of Earl Magnus, now called 'Saint' Magnus,
a bold and skilful warrior and a born leader of men. Before proceeding
against Paul, Rognvald accepted the advice of his father, who told him
not to trust to his own strength, but to make a vow, that if, by the
grace of St. Magnus, he should succeed in gaining his inheritance, he
would build and dedicate to him a minster in Kirkwall, more magnificent
in size and splendour than any other in the North. With the powerful
but mysterious assistance of Sweyn Asleifson, 'the last of the
Vikings,' who seized Earl Paul and carried him away bodily, Earl
Rognvald became the sole ruler of the earldom. He set to work at once
to fulfil his vow, and began work upon the cathedral in the year 1137.
The massiveness of the building is best realized by looking into the
nave from the west doorway. The roof {306} is supported by immense
round pillars of red sandstone, seven on each side. On the north and
south of these pillars are long aisles, the walls of which are covered
with ancient tombstones, taken up from the floor and set on end. In
the north aisle is a mort-brod, or death-board, inscribed with the name
of a departed Orcadian, whose picture is shown, sitting on the ground
in his grave-clothes, a spade over his shoulder, an hour-glass in his
lap, and a joyful grin on his face. On the reverse is the following:--
Below
Doeth lye
If ye wold trye
Come read upon
This brod
The Corps of on Robert
Nicholsone whos souls above
With God.
He being 70 years of age ended
This mortal life and 50 of that he
Was married to Jeane Davidson
His wife. Betwixt them 2
12 children had, whereof
5 left behind the
other 7 with him 's
In Heaven, who's
Joy's shall
never
end
In the south aisle are some curious tombstones, most of them having
carved representations of the skull and crossbones. The death's heads
are all much enlarged on the left side, the Orcadian idea being that
the soul escapes at death through the left ear.
{307}
The pirate, Cleveland, it will be remembered, was kept a prisoner in
these aisles, and was walking about disconsolately when Minna Troil
entered. Concealed from the guards at the door by the huge pillars,
they planned an escape. Suddenly Norna of the Fitful Head mysteriously
appeared, and warning Minna that her plan would lead to certain
discovery, sent the young woman away. Norna then led Cleveland through
a secret passage out of the church to a place of safety. In the south
aisle there is a low arch which formerly led, so it is said, through a
secret underground passage to the Bishop's Palace across the street.
This fact doubtless suggested to the novelist the means by which Norna
might spirit away the captive pirate.
Across the street which runs by the south side of the cathedral are the
ruins of two large mansions. The Bishop's Palace, which is not
mentioned in 'The Pirate,' is chiefly interesting from the fact that
Hakon Hakonson, the last of the great sea-kings of Norway, after his
splendid fleet had been driven on the rocks by the fury of a great
storm and there almost annihilated by the fierce onset of the Scottish
warriors, sought refuge within its walls, only to die a few days later.
This was in 1263. How much older the palace is, nobody knows.
The Earl's Palace, with its grounds, occupies the opposite corner, a
narrow street intervening between the two ruins. The enclosure is
filled with sycamores and other trees, thus refuting the slander of the
envious Shetlanders. In fact, when we came to look for them, we found
more than one enclosure in Kirkwall which could boast of fairly
good-sized trees. The castle is, or was, a very substantial building,
with fine broad {308} stairways and many turrets. Seen from the south,
across the bowling-green, it might be taken for the ruin of some large
church. It was built by the notorious Patrick Stewart, the same earl
who abandoned Jarlshof, and compelled the people to build him a larger
castle at Scalloway. By the same methods, he constructed the palace at
Kirkwall, forcing the people to quarry the stone and do all his work
without pay. An example of his tyranny was related to me by a resident
of Kirkwall. According to this tale, the Earl coveted a piece of land
adjoining the palace, with which the owner refused to part. Patrick,
not accustomed to be thwarted in his plans, was quick to apply the
remedy. He secretly caused some casks of brandy to be buried in the
desired tract. In due time he began to complain that somebody was
stealing his liquor and finally charged his neighbour with the offence.
The casks were then triumphantly 'discovered' as proof positive.
Inasmuch as the Earl was his own judge, jury, and court of appeals, the
poor innocent landowner was quickly condemned, hanged, and his property
confiscated. Many a man made over a part of his land to the Earl on
demand, having no alternative.
We noticed many portholes under the windows, showing that the castle
was intended to serve as a fortress as well as a mansion. This was the
secret of the Earl's final downfall. The authorities of Edinburgh
could go to sleep when the Earl of the far-distant islands merely
oppressed his own people, but to fortify a castle against the King was
an act of treason. When Patrick Stewart and his son Robert prepared to
maintain their independence by fortifying not only the castle but the
cathedral, Scotland woke up. The Earl of Caithness {309} was sent
against the rebels. Robert, who was in command, withstood the siege
for one month, when he was overcome, carried to Edinburgh, and hanged.
Patrick took refuge in the Castle of Scalloway and for a time baffled
his pursuers by hiding in a secret chamber. He could not resist the
consolation of tobacco and took a few surreptitious pulls at his pipe,
while the searchers were in the house. The smoke, or the smell,
betrayed him. He was speedily taken to Edinburgh, where he paid the
penalty on the gallows of a long career of tyranny, cruelty, extortion,
confiscation, robbery, and murder.
The most interesting room in the Earl's castle is the banqueting-hall,
which had a high roof or ceiling and was lighted on the south by three
tall but narrow arched windows. On one side is a huge fireplace with
two arches, the lower one flat. Supporting this curious combination
are two pillars, on which are carved the initials P.E.O., meaning
Patrick, Earl of Orkney, the letters being still legible. In this room
Cleveland is supposed to have met Jack Bunce upon his return to
Kirkwall.
The two pirates, after leaving the castle, walked to Wideford Hill, two
miles from the town, where the Fair of St. Olla was being held. The
annual Lammas Market or Fair at this place is still one of the
institutions of Kirkwall, although no longer so important as in the
time of 'The Pirate.'
If Scott took liberties with the geography of Shetland, he was
scrupulously exact in his treatment of the Orkneys. Every movement of
the brig of Magnus Troil, as well as those of the pirate ship, can be
traced on the map. The latter, it will be recalled, sailed around to
{310} Stromness, where she dropped anchor. Two inland lakes, known as
the Loch of Stennis and the Loch of Harray, now favourite resorts for
anglers, lie northeast of the town. They are separated by a narrow
causeway called the Bridge of Brogar. This is the place where the
pirates landed their boat on the night of the final tragedy of the
story. We found the locality one of the most interesting in the
islands.
At the entrance of the bridge stands a huge, rough-hewn stone, eighteen
feet high, known as the 'watch-stone' or 'sentinel.' This is the
largest of the 'stones of Stennis,' a collection of ancient monoliths
comparable in Great Britain only to those of Stonehenge. At the
farther end of the bridge is the so-called 'Circle of the Sun,' a ring
about one hundred and twenty yards in diameter, surrounded by a trench
about six feet deep. The stones composing this circle are from eight
to sixteen feet high and of irregular shape. One of them is at least
five or six feet wide. There were about forty stones originally, but
now only fifteen remain standing. A smaller group, known as the
'Circle of the Moon,' but composed of larger stones, stands in a field
near the eastern end of the bridge. A horizontal stone, laid on top of
these vertical ones, makes a rude table or altar. This may have been a
place of druidical sacrifices, if the most prevalent belief is to be
accepted, or possibly the work of Scandinavian hands. It was by this
table of stone that Minna stood, to meet and bid farewell to her lover,
looking like a druidical priestess, or, if the Scandinavian theory be
accepted, 'she might have seemed a descended vision of Freya, the
spouse of the Thundering Deity, before whom some bold sea-king or
champion bent with an awe {311} which no mere mortal terror could have
inflicted upon him.'
[Illustration: THE STANDING STONES OF STENNIS]
The Stone of Odin formerly stood on the east side of this circle.
Minna had offered to pledge her faith to Cleveland by the 'promise of
Odin' and Norna of the Fitful Head had married her lover by the same
rite. This stone differed from the others only in the fact that it had
a round hole near the base. Lovers who found it inconvenient to be
married by a priest, or who wished to plight their troth by some
unusually solemn vow, resorted to this stone, and a promise here given
was regarded as sacred and never to be broken. The marriage ceremony
was peculiar. The couple first visited the Circle of the Moon, where
the woman, in the presence of the man, knelt and prayed to the god
Woden, or Odin, that he would enable her to perform all her obligations
and promises. They next went to the Circle of the Sun, where the man
in like manner made his prayers. Then they returned to the Stone of
Odin, where, the man standing on one side and the woman on the other,
they joined hands through the hole and took upon themselves the solemn
vows of matrimony. Such a marriage could never be broken.
Scott visited the Stones of Stennis in 1814. Had he arrived a year
later he would not have seen the Stone of Odin, for some irreverent
Orcadian broke it up, probably to help build the foundation of his
cottage.
Leaving, with some reluctance, these relics of a civilization more than
a thousand years old, we resumed our journey toward Stromness. The
town lies on the slope of a hill, resembling Lerwick in this respect
and in the closeness of the houses to the sea. Some of the buildings
{312} stand so near the water that parts of the bay look like a
miniature Venice. Our motor-car frequently occupied the entire width
of the street, sidewalks and all, as we twisted our tortuous course for
a mile along the main thoroughfare. From the high ground behind the
town, we had a fine view of the sea, and across the sound, the great
towering island of Hoy, the highest and most impressive of all the
Orkney group. On the western side a long line of precipitous cliffs,
rising a thousand feet above the sea, opposes an unbroken front to the
full force of the Atlantic. At the western end as we saw it from above
Stromness, the rocks form the profile of a man's face, not so stern as
that in the Franconia Notch of the White Mountains, but having rather a
more genial look. It is said to resemble Sir Walter Scott, a likeness
which, I confess, I could see only when I shut my eyes and thought of
Chantrey's bust.
The island of Hoy plays an important part in 'The Pirate.' It was the
original home of Norna when the old witch was a handsome young girl.
The Dwarfie Stone, where she met the demon Trolld, and bartered her
life's happiness for the power to control the tempests and the waves of
the sea, is on the southwest slope of Ward Hill, the highest peak of
which rises to a height of over fifteen hundred feet. It is in a
desolate peat-bog, two miles from the nearest human habitation. The
stone is about thirty feet long and half as wide. Hollowed out of the
interior is a chamber, with two beds, one of them a little over five
feet long. It is difficult to conceive why any human being should have
taken the trouble to cut out the rock for a hermitage or place of
refuge, or why any one should seek so desolate an abode. {313}
Tradition therefore affirmed that the rock was fashioned by spirit
hands and was the dwelling of the elfin dwarf, Trolld. It was to this
island that Norna conducted Mordaunt after he had received a wound at
the hands of Cleveland.
It was at Stromness that Scott, in 1814, made the acquaintance of
Bessie Millie, an aged dame who made her living by selling favourable
winds to mariners at the reasonable price of sixpence each. The touch
of insanity, and the strong influence she possessed over the natives of
the island, who feared her power, were strongly suggestive of Norna.
This old sibyl related to Scott the story of John Gow, whose boyhood
was spent in Stromness. This daring individual had gone to sea at an
early age and returned to the home of his youth, a pirate, commanding a
former English galley of two hundred tons which he had captured and
renamed the 'Revenge.' He boldly came ashore and mingled with the
people, giving dancing-parties in the village of Stromness. Before his
real character was known he became engaged to a young woman, and the
two plighted their troth at the Stone of Odin. The houses of his
former neighbours were plundered and many acts of insolence and
violence committed. At length, through the exertions of a former
schoolmate, Gow was captured with his entire crew and speedily executed
at London. The young woman journeyed to London, too, for the purpose
of touching her former lover's dead body. In that way only, according
to the superstition of her country, could she obtain a release from her
vow and avoid a visit from the pirate's ghost, in case she should ever
marry. Gow's brief career furnished an excellent model for Cleveland,
{314} though the author endowed his 'pirate' with some very commendable
qualities which the prototype probably did not possess.
Bessie Millie, the old hag of Stromness, needed, in addition to her own
eccentricities, only a few touches of the gipsy nature, to make her a
good 'original' for Norna. A local preacher in the parish of Tingwall,
whom Scott met on his visit to Shetland, is said to have suggested
Triptolemus Yellowley. Three or four families, in whose homes the
novelist was a welcome visitor, have laid claim to the honour of
supplying the 'originals' of Minna and Brenda Troil. These two
delightful characters, however, were no doubt intended merely to embody
the ideal of perfect sisterly affection, and external resemblances to
real people, though such might easily be fancied, were probably far
from the author's purpose.
[Illustration: STROMNESS, ORKNEY]
For the rest, the great charm of 'The Pirate' lies in the expression of
the novelist's enthusiasm for the fresh and fascinating scenery of a
wild country, where strange weird tales are wafted on every breeze,
where the quaint customs of past ages are still retained, where Nature
reveals herself in a constant succession of new and ever captivating
forms, where the rush of the wind and the roar of the sea impart fresh
joys to the senses and fill one's soul with renewed veneration for the
Power that rules the elements.
As we sailed away for Aberdeen, it was with very much the same feeling
which Scott expressed at the close of his diary of the vacation of
1814.[2] He said he had taken {315} as much pleasure in the excursion
as in any six weeks of his life. 'The Pirate' was not written until
seven years later, but it carries as much freshness and enthusiasm as
though it had been composed on the return voyage.
[1] CROSS-SECTION OF THE BROCH OF MOUSA.
_a, a._ Rooms in Circular Wall, connected by a rude spiral stair.
_b, b._ Windows opening into inner court.
[2] The diary, containing a full account of the visit of 1814, in a
lighthouse yacht, to the Shetland and Orkney Islands, the Hebrides, and
the northern coasts of Scotland and Ireland, is printed in full in
Lockhart's _Life of Scott_.
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