ORKNEY AND SHETLAND.
I took my family to these Northern Isles of the Sea in 1859, sailing
from Aberdeen in a once-a-week steamer; some of our passengers were
notable, as Dasent of the Norse Tales (since Sir George) and his sons,
Day the Oxonian in Norway, Ellicott, now Bishop of Bristol, Biot
Edmondstone, and some others, inclusive of our noble selves. It was a
dark night and a dense fog, and we had perilously to thread our careful
way through the herring-fleet, fog-horns blowing all night, whilst our
distinguished party bivouacked on deck, every cabin having been secured
by folks crowding to the Kirkwall fair; and so we enjoyed a seagoing
experience which, however cold and dark, was warmed and brightened by
the conversation of clever friends all night through.
Next day, jumping into a boat on the top of a wave (it was very rough
weather), I and a few others landed at Wick, and witnessed the
extraordinary scene of a herring harvest being cured. Much as at
Cincinnati they say pigs walk in, and come out at the other end of a
long gallery salted and smoked,--live herrings are within some three
minutes killed, cleaned, pickled, and tubbed by the fishermen's wives
and daughters in their brightest caps and jewellery, for the whole scene
is a fair and a festival.
In due time we arrived at Kirkwall, where we stayed a fortnight, in the
course of which we were soon invited to Mr. Balfour's castle at
Shapinshay. I call to mind in that mediæval-looking stronghold (but it
is a modern structure) his splendid banqueting-room, lighted by the
illuminated points of twelve stags' heads, each having twelve tynes,
thus 144 of them, ranged on the sides of that baronial hall: the castle,
of grey granite in the Norman style, having its own gasometer, all the
light was gas; this struck me as a remarkable feature inside: on the
outside was one quite as memorable. Those sterile-looking isles of the
North Sea are so swept by stormy winds as to be absolutely treeless:
insomuch that it is jocularly said, that for cutting down a tree at
Kirkwall, the penalty is _death!_ simply because no trees exist there.
Well, the wealthy Baron of Shapinshay conquers nature thus; he has dug
round the castle vast hollow gardens (not a continuous moat) in which
flourishes a profusion of flowers and shrubs and even trees,--till
arboriculture is cut shear off, if it dares to look over the mounds. I
put it thus:--
"When to the storm-historic Orcades
The wanderer comes, he marvels to find there
A stately palace, towering new and fair,
Bedded in flowers, though unbanked by trees,
A feudal dream uprisen from the seas:
And when his wonder asks,--Whose magic rare
Hath wrought this bright creation?--men reply,
Balfour's of Balfour: large in mind and heart,
Not only doth his duteous care reclaim
All Shapinshay to new fertility,
But to his brother men a brother's part
Doing, in always doing good,--his fame
Is to have raised an Orcade Arcady,
Rich in gems of Nature as of Art."
At Kirkwall we could not help noticing what a fine race of men and
women, blue-eyed and yellow-haired, many of these Northerners are; at
St. Magnus Cathedral they trooped in looking like giants, seeming taller
perhaps because the pews are on a dead level with the floor. Of course
we duly did all the sights of the place, in the way of the ruinous
bishop's palace and so forth, and received hearty welcomes from both
high and low, the isolation of those parts conducing to the popularity
of strangers; to say less of any greed for the cash of tourists.
I made there good acquaintance also with Aytoun, the poet of Dundee and
Montrose, of whom it is rememberable that he used to read all through
Scott's novels every year. I thought it a marvellous feat, but at any
rate he told me so. He was sheriff of all those northern regions; and
writer, amongst other things, of "Hints for Authors" in _Blackwood_,
which for their wit and sense ought to be reprinted: but when I urged it
in Princes Street, I found such a booklet was not to be--nor "Firmilian"
either--which is a pity, as both are admirable for humour. He was a
zealous florist and fruitist; the white currants trained by him upon
walls were as large as grapes.
Among these Isles of Thule palpable evidences of the Gulf Stream are
frequent; besides that it warms the northern seas so well that snow and
ice are not too common there as in much lower latitudes they are with
us--it is the fact that most of the seafaring men have for snuff-boxes
the large brown circular beans from Mexico floated on tropical seaweed,
full of hand coral, and found on the island beaches westwardly. Another
notable matter in these Orcades is the strange disproportion between the
sexes, eleven women to one man, as Mr. Hayes, the Lerwick banker, told
me; this being due to the too frequent drowning of whole boat's crews:
hence, one often sees women at the oar. A pleasanter thing to mention is
the Fair Isle hosiery, the patterns whereof in the woven worsted are
distinctly Moorish, just like those at Tangiers; said to be a survival
of some wreck from the Spanish Armada cast upon the shore, with of
course its crew and contents, the local manufacture of said patterns
having been kept up ever since, with dyes derived from seaweeds, and
from flowers. I frequently observed how diligent in knitting the island
women were (reminding me of those notable spinsters of Herodotus)
working the needles all the while they tended cattle, and with the pile
of some costly shawl upon their heads while they fidget at the fringe;
its various devices being of natural unstained wools, white, grey, or
brown. In those interesting islands I can dimly recall many other
noticeable things and people, everywhere having received the warm
welcome which is usually the privilege of a bookwright all the world
over; visiting the Stones of Stennis with Mr. Petrie, the Celtic tower
of Scalloway with Aytoun, and divers similar antiquities, as Maeshow and
other refuges of the Picts and Troglodytes.
At Lerwick two of the boatmen who took us to shore from the steamer
surprised me by quotations from my old book--even the common folk being
full of literature. They are so separate from the great world, and have
so little to do, that they cannot help being hard readers,--even of me.
A haberdasher told me that though there are in the short summer plenty
of simple wild-flowers, there is naturally a dearth all the year round
of the brighter and more highly-coloured cultivated kinds; and so these
being scarce and female vanity rather common, there is a large trade in
artificial fuchsias, pinks, and roses, &c., thus constantly making
chapel and church quite gay; the same ladies who so bedizen themselves
on the Sabbath going about all the week carrying burdens of peat,
bare-footed and kilted to the knee on account of the bogs, among which
they have to chase those small shaggy equines, the Shetland ponies. By
the way Mr. Balfour at Oronsay had a special breed of his own, and
showed us a pair of little darlings which he valued at £100 apiece. The
true race, stunted and shaggy from climate, is rare in these days; and I
suspect may be picked up cheaper at Aldridge's than at Shapinshay.
On our return voyage we skirted the whole north of Scotland, having had
the rare chance of the steamer which once a year is chartered to take
back the herring-fishers from Thurso to the Hebrides. But first Sir
George Sinclair most hospitably entertained us at Thurso Castle, whose
grim battlements frown flush over the Arctic Sea: all within the walls
luxurious warmth, and without them wrecks and desolation. So also with
the garden; on one side of the high wall greenhouses and flower-beds in
the Italian style,--on the other, in strange contrast, the desolate wild
ocean, which you see through windows of thick plate-glass let into the
walls. At Thurso town I conversed with the local genius, Robert Dick,
made of world-wide fame since by that kind-hearted and clear-minded
author, Samuel Smiles, the said genius being a noted self-taught
naturalist, who as a small baker struggled with poverty through life, to
be inconsistently rewarded after death by a national monument; his
fellow-townsmen let the living starve to deify him when dead. Cervantes
and his like have met the same fate elsewhere. Leaving Thurso for the
Hebrides, in company with no fewer than 700 Gaelic fishermen, we passed
the magnificent cliffs of Cape Wrath in a pleasant calm,--which next day
when we had reached Stornoway turned to a furious storm: had we
encountered it with those 700 loading the deck it would infallibly have
wrecked us,--as it did many other vessels on that night.
Sir James Matheson was our great host at Stornoway, who treated me and
mine with magnificent hospitality. If I had wished to shoot a buck or to
catch a salmon (the kilted gillie stood ready with his tackle), I might
have done so and welcome; but there was no time to spare for anything
but a visit to the prehistoric temple of Callanish, where the stones
strangely enough are set in the form of a cross instead of the ordinary
circle; and to a Pictish tower, and other antiquities,--which I
preferred to sport.
Sir James's piper always wakes the guests a'mornings, parading round the
terraces with his bagpipes, and after dinner, as usual at the feasts of
Highland magnates, he marches round the table in kilt and flying tartans
with his drone-like dirge or furious slogan,--being rewarded on the spot
with whisky from the chief.
Here I will cease my quick reminiscence of that pleasant northern
travel, though I might recount many noticeable matters about Skye and
its dolomite Cuchullins, Staffa, Iona, and Oban, where The MacDougal
allowed us to see and handle (an unusual honour) the famous brooch of
Lorne, the loss of which saved The Bruce's life, when he broke away from
his captor, the then MacDougal; leaving tartan and shoulder-brooch in
his grasp.