The Small Isles E-Book

Denis Rixson

• Herausgeber: Origin
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 279

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

This is the first book ever to be written on the collective history of the little group of islands between Ardnamurchan and Skye. As some of the best known Hebridean islands, Canna, Rum, Eigg and Muck have a long and varied history, but are also amongst the least documented. Rum was the playground of the Macruari kings of the Northern Hebrides; Eigg was the island meeting point where their descendants conceded primacy to the Islay Macdonalds, while Muck and Canna were the property of Iona, spiritual nerve centre of the west. With reference to both the extensive material remains on the islands and rare original source material, this book is a dynamic and wideranging account of the Small Isles and their history.

Leseprobe

THE SMALL ISLES

THE SMALL ISLES

Canna, Rum, Eigg and Muck

Denis Rixson

First published in 2001 by

Birlinn Limited

West Newington House

10 Newington Road

Edinburgh

EH9 1QS

www.birlinn.co.uk

Reprinted 2011

Copyright © Denis Rixson 2001

The moral right of Denis Rixson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978 1 78027 000 5

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Typeset by Initial Typesetting Services, Edinburgh Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Cox & Wyman, Reading

Contents

__________

List of Maps and Figures

Introduction

1. Prehistory

2. Early Christianity

3. The Viking Period

4. The Mediaeval Period

5. The Small Isles and the ’45

6. The Economic Base 1500–1850

7. Population and Resources

8. Opportunity and Expectation

9. From Support to Dependency

Select Bibliography

Maps

  1  The Small Isles

  2  Prehistoric sites in the Small Isles

  3  Early Christian sites

  4  Viking archaeology on Eigg

  5  Norse place-names

  6  The Norse valuation of Eigg

  7  Eigg’s ouncelands?

  8  Ouncelands in the Small Isles

  9  The Macruari estate in the early fourteenth century

10  Deer-traps in Rum, Crosses in Eigg

Figures

  1  Crosses of arcs

  2  Eigg charters

Population Tables

Table 1 Eigg

Table 2 Rum

Table 3 Canna

Table 4 Muck

Table 5 Small Isles

Introduction

__________

THIS BOOK OFFERS A history of the Small Isles – Canna, Rum, Eigg and Muck. Like other small islands they have been extensively written about, both individually and collectively. I have no wish to simply repeat what can be found elsewhere. Relevant books and articles are listed in the Bibliography for those who wish to pursue their research. Instead I have picked up common themes, certain traits which help define their economic and cultural history.

Some aspects of island life will always be individual – the local geology and geography, the presence or absence of good soil, harbours and fuel. Such factors determine the particular features of settlement. In more recent times questions such as political and religious affiliation, and above all ownership, have modified island life. But for most of their history these islands shared a common environment, a common climate and a common economic and cultural framework. That is the subject of this book.

For the early history of the islands we have little more than the patchy archaeological record. This reflects the haphazard way in which such research was conducted on the west coast, in turn largely determined by the interests of individual landowners. In the nineteenth century Eigg was owned by Professor Norman Macpherson, a keen antiquarian who excavated a number of sites himself. In recent times Rum and Canna have undergone more thorough investigation. We have a substantial number of Early Christian carvings, some Viking grave-goods, but very little documentary evidence before the sixteenth century. From then on there is an explosion of topographical material; not all of which is truly original since early writers borrowed freely from each other.

Island life changed radically during the nineteenth century as the old economy fell apart. From then on the fortunes of each island depended increasingly upon the family that owned it. It was a fatal dependence, but the fundamental cause was not so much landlord power as the relative economic failure of the Highlands and Islands. Their peripheral economy was too fragile to cope with imperial and industrial Britain.

The old history of the Small Isles as independent economic communities came to an end between about 1750 and 1820. From then on the islands changed hands increasingly often and the people were largely cleared from Rum and Muck. Islanders became subject to the whims and caprices of their owners, their benevolence or otherwise. Much of this recent history has been charted, and repeated, elsewhere, but the economic impasse had been reached by about 1820.

Acknowledgements

I owe a good deal to the staff of Highland Council Library Service. Studying in a remote location is difficult, and they have helped greatly. I should like to thank Norman Newton, Gail Priddice and Edwina Burridge for all their assistance and in particular Sue Skelton and Lorna Skelly for so patiently fulfilling my endless requests. I am also grateful to Mrs Campbell of Canna for her kind hospitality when I was taking photographs of carved stones.

I wish to thank the Scottish Gaelic Texts Society for permission to quote from N. Ross’s Heroic Poetry from the Book of the Dean of Lismore and Edinburgh University Press for permission to quote from Iona: The Earliest Poetry of a Celtic Monastery by Clancy and Markus (copyright Thomas Owen Clancy and Gilbert Markus 1995).

Photographic acknowledgements

I am grateful to the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland for permission to publish a number of their photographs. I am also grateful to the Württembergisches Landesmuseum, Stuttgart, Germany, for permission to publish a plate on the stone from Waldenbuch.

Note

Place-names in the Highlands and Hebrides can be spelled in a bewildering number of ways. For ease of identification I have generally followed modern Ordnance Survey spellings. Exceptions occur when I am quoting from a source and wish my accompanying text to match.

When quoting from early accounts I give the date of composition if that is significantly earlier than the date of first publication.

Map 1   The Small Isles

1

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Prehistory

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Rum

A MESOLITHIC BEACH SITE above the north-west corner of Loch Scresort provides one of the earliest examples of human settlement in Scotland. Radiocarbon dates give an occupation range between about 6500 and 5500 BC. The site seems to have been used for domestic purposes, possibly all year round, and stakeholes suggest structures such as windbreaks or tents. One of the attractions of Rum was the presence of bloodstone which could be worked into tools and weapons; while not as good as flint at least it was available locally on Bloodstone Hill.

These earliest settlers have been described as ‘strandloopers’ or ‘hunter-gatherers’. Essentially their economy was based on collecting whatever food sources occurred naturally. Only when people came together in larger communities and started farming, did they have the numbers and resources to erect large-scale public monuments such as chambered cairns. We distinguish these latter groups by the name Neolithic.

Map 2   Prehistoric sites in the Small Isles

Map 2 shows a number of ancient monuments in the Small Isles. Unfortunately there has been a dearth of proper archaeological excavation and we can say little other than mark their distribution. Moreover, some of these sites, particularly the forts and duns, were occupied for many centuries after their first construction. Defences thrown up in the Iron Age may still have been in use in mediaeval times. Such sites drew comments from the earliest visitors.

Muck

There is ane Illand called Illand Muck . . . and there is a strenght in it on a rock or craig builded be the Master and Superior of the Illand in tyme of warrs which was betwixt him and certaine enemies.

(Mitchell (ed.) Macfarlane’s GeographicalCollections, vol. II, p. 175, ?1590s)

Eigg

There is a defensive wall on the Sgurr of Eigg and a small dun in the nearby Loch nam Ban Mora.

And there is ane high mountaine on the southwest syde of this Countrey. And it is ane verie good strength against enemies, that wold doe anie harme or skaith to the Countrey for it wold keep themselves that are Inhabitants of the Iland saiff, and their wyffs and children with all their moveable goods or geir which they could bring or carie with them to the tope of that hill, or mountaine. In this mountaine there is a Mure, and Mosses and in the midst of the tope of that mountaine there is a fresh water Logh. And in the midst of that Logh there is ane Illand which wold hold a certain number of men and women with their bairnes.

(ibid. pp. 175–6)

Crannogs (loch-houses), and island duns sometimes had underwater causeways linking them to the shore.

There is a mountain in the south end, and on the top of it there is a high rock called Skur Egg, about an hundred and fifty paces in circumference, and has a fresh-water lake in the middle of it; there is no access to this rock but by one passage, which makes it a natural fort.

(Martin A Description of the WesternIslands of Scotland, c. 1695)

The Loch contains an island with remains of mason work, and an under-water footway, which seems to be really a ridge of rock.

(Robertson ‘Topography andTraditions of Eigg’, 1898)

The Revd F. M’Clymont wrote to Blundell:

There is a funny tradition of its being inhabited by abnormally big women, who used stepping-stones so far apart that none else could use them.

(Blundell Proceedings of the ScottishAntiquarian Society, 1913)

The following remarks suggest there may once have been more souterrains or earth-houses:

Eg . . . Thair is mony coves under the earth in this Ile, quhilk the cuntrie folkis uses as strenthis hiding thame and thair geir thairintill;

(Skene The Description of the Isles ofScotland, 1577–95)

About thirty yards from the church there is a sepulchral urn under ground; . . . Some few paces to the north of the urn there is a narrow stone passage under ground, but how far it reaches they could give me no account.

(Martin A Description of the WesternIslands of Scotland, c. 1695)

Canna

In this Ile is ane heich craig callit Corignan weill braid on the heicht thairof, and but ane strait passage, that men may scairslie climb to the heid of the craig, and quhan the cuntrie is invadit the people gadderis thair wives and geir to the heid of the craig and defend thame selfis utherwayis the best thay may, and will not pass to the craig, because it may not be lang keepit onlie for fault of water.

[In this isle there is a high crag called Coroghon which is broad on the summit and with only one narrow access. When the island is invaded the men put their wives and goods into the Coroghon whilst they defend themselves as best they can. They will not go to the Coroghon themselves because it cannot be defended for long since it lacks water.]

(Skene The Description of the Isles ofScotland, 1577–95)

Visit a lofty slender rock, that juts into the sea: on one side is a little tower, at a vast height above us, accessible by a narrow and horrible path: it seems so small as scarce to be able to contain half a dozen people. Tradition says, that it was built by some jealous regulus, to confine a handsome wife in.

(Pennant A Tour in Scotland andVoyage to the Hebrides, 1772)

Bloodstone

Bloodstone was an important natural resource in Stone Age Rum. Flint was not available locally but bloodstone provided an alternative for making tools and weapons. Finds of bloodstone on other sites suggest it was valued and traded as a commodity. Even in the nineteenth century men came for bloodstone, at some risk in the stormy seas.

The expedition to Rum ended as many others had done before. I had ballasted the boat with as much bloodstone as would have furnished all the shops in London. But still it blew hard, the boat would not scud, and I was obliged to throw the ballast overboard. Gold and silver have gone the same road too often, to justify any especial lamentation over half a ton of jasper. There was a blockhead on board who thought fit to cry, because, as he said, he had a wife and children, and did not choose to risk his life for a ‘wheen chucky-stanes’.

(MacCulloch The Highlands andWestern Isles of Scotland, vol. IV, 1824)

Hunting and gathering

A recurrent theme today is the notion that somehow we have to rediscover a past ability to live in harmony with our environment. Primitive peoples apparently have this, and in our capitalist world we have forgotten it. We exploit, but do not sustain; we exhaust, but do not enrich – the soil, the sea, the air. The Hebrides are a good environment in which to explore this issue. Did we destroy this Garden of Eden? Or did it collapse from within?

The first settlers in the Small Isles practised a hunter-gatherer economy. This was the case throughout the Hebrides. Shellfish offer the only assured, year-round food supply; so people camped on the beach. They ate shellfish, in their millions, and gathered nuts, berries and edible plants as the seasons offered. Some early shell-middens are so enormous that these first communities may have exhausted the supplies on particular beaches and had to move on in search of new resources. (There is a large shell-midden at Papadil, Rum). No doubt these early groups also pursued animals, set traps for game and snares for birds.

The economy of the West Highlands and Islands has retained this hunter-gatherer element throughout its history. The scant resources of the region meant that people have always been constrained to hunt and gather as opportunity offered. There was seldom a sufficient surplus to allow them to forego this. So shellfish remained a staple even in the eighteenth century, despite the success of the potato and the area’s recently enforced contact with the outside world. In Skye:

The poor are left to Providence’s care: they prowl like other animals along the shores to pick up limpets and other shellfish, the casual repasts of hundreds during part of the year in these unhappy islands. Hundreds thus annually drag through the season a wretched life.

(Pennant A Tour in Scotland andVoyage to the Hebrides, 1772)

It was the same in north-east Scotland:

For it is well known, that from the month of March, to the middle of August, some poor upon the coast, have nothing but shell-fish, such as muscles [sic], cockles, and the like, to support them.

(Life of Barisdale, 1754)

Of course larger game were also pursued. Animals such as seals, otters, deer, salmon, geese, seabirds, all yielded valuable products: skin, oil, fur, food and feathers. We are most familiar with this aspect of the Highland economy in the context of St Kilda, where the culling of seabirds was most developed and lasted longest. However it was formerly widespread, from Ailsa Craig to North Rona, both places which were reckoned of value for their seabird harvests. Seals were culled regularly. The slaughter of ‘selchis’ features prominently in the accounts of Dean Monro and Martin Martin.

The Small Isles offer numerous examples of a marginal economy which perpetually has to fall back on its scant resources and its hunter-gatherer techniques. Here follow some extracts about the natural resources that could be gathered, harvested or culled.

Tidal fish-traps

In Rum there were tidal fish-traps at Kinloch and, apparently, Kilmory. These are common throughout the Highlands and Islands although many of them, because they lie below the water-line, are now unnoticed or forgotten. Sometimes a place-name including the Gaelic word caraidh (or cairidh) gives us a clue. Unfortunately these traps are undated and probably for the most part undateable.

On the map there is still a Camas na Cairidh in Muck. There had, according to information given to the School of Scottish Studies in 1976, formerly been a caraidh in Canna and another in Sanday. Walls were built below the tide line, the fish came in with the tide and were trapped by the walls when the tide went out. Although these were doubtless reused and rebuilt many times over the centuries they are probably very ancient.

At Raonapoll, Rum:

The pool is fed by the streamlet which wanders down the mountain side through the little ravine. When the tide is out the pool is not more than twenty yards across; and it empties itself into the sea by a short channel about two yards in width. When the tide is in, however, the influx of water from the bay increases the pool very considerably, and, at the same time, brings into it fish from the sea, which are easily caught by netting in the narrow channel, before the water retires.

(Waugh The Limping Pilgrim, 1882)

Shellfish and migratory fish(Salmon and Sea-trout)

Shellfish continued to be a critically important food source for people in the Small Isles until quite recently. In 1794 Donald M’Lean, the minister, wrote of the predicament of:

a married common labourer in husbandry . . . Many of them have one fourth of the crop they make with the plough, being generally barley and oats, and a third of the crop they make with the spade, and manure with sea-ware, which is principally potatoes, and grazing for two cows with their followers. This must afford them but a scanty subsistence, especially in years of scarcity, when they have a numerous family of weak children; but, with the aid derived from the shore, they are enabled to live.

Continual pressure on shellfish as a food source probably took its toll, especially on those beaches closest to populated areas such as Cleadale. It is possible that a beach once rich in shellfish was simply cleaned out. We may have a rationalisation of this in a story about

The traditional ploughing of Laig beach, by which one of the richest beaches in shell-fish in the Hebrides was rendered utterly barren.

(Robertson ‘Topography andTraditions of Eigg’, 1898)

This vengeful act is associated with the Macleod raid in the sixteenth century which led up to the massacre in Uamh Fhraing. However there is a similar tradition in connection with a beach at Barrisdale in Knoydart which was supposedly ploughed up by Hanoverians after the 1745 Rising. It seems more likely that in both these cases the beaches became exhausted by human pressure and that a convenient scapegoat was sought.

Rum

The rivers on each side afford salmon.

(Martin A Description of the WesternIslands of Scotland, c. 1695)

There was light enough left, as we reached the upper part of Loch Scresort, to show us a shoal of small silver-coated trout, leaping by scores at the effluence of the little stream . . . There was a net stretched across where the play was thickest; and we learned that the haul of the previous tide had amounted to several hundreds. On reaching the Betsey, we found a pail and basket laid against the companion-head – the basket containing about two dozen small trout – the minister’s unsolicited teind of the morning draught; the pail filled with razor-fish of great size. . . . The razor-fish had been brought us by the worthy catechist of the island. He had gone to the ebb in our special behalf, and had spent a tide in laboriously filling the pail with these ‘treasures hid in the sand’ . . .

We were told . . . that the expatriated inhabitants of Rum used to catch trout by a simple device of ancient standing, which preceded the introduction of nets into the island, and which, it is possible, may in other localities have not only preceded the use of the net, but may have also suggested it: it had at least the appearance of being a first beginning of invention in this direction. The islanders gathered large quantities of heath, and then tying it loosely into bundles, and stripping it of its softer leafage, they laid the bundles across the stream on a little mound held down by stones, with the tops of the heath turned upwards to the current. The water rose against the mound for a foot or eighteen inches, and then murmured over and through, occasioning an expansion among the hard elastic sprays. Next a party of the islanders came down the stream, beating the banks and pools, and sending a still thickening shoal of trout before them, that, on reaching the miniature dam formed by the bundles, darted forward for shelter, as if to a hollow bank, and stuck among the slim hard branches, as they would in the meshes of a net. The stones were then hastily thrown off, – the bundles pitched ashore, – the better fish, to the amount not unfrequently of several scores, secured, – and the young fry returned to the stream, to take care of themselves, and grow bigger. We fared richly this evening, after our hard day’s labour, on tea and trout.

(Miller The Cruise of the Betsey, 1845)

Seabirds and their eggs

Seabirds were a very important economic resource throughout the Hebrides. This is one reason why they feature so often in early topographical accounts. They were important for food, feathers and fat. Even today their eggs are occasionally used. In the following accounts solan geese are gannets, puffins are Manx Shearwaters and penguins are probably puffins!

RONIN.[RUM] . . . In this ile will be gotten about Britane als many wild nests upon the plane mure as men pleasis to gadder, and yet by resson the fowls hes few to start them except deir. . . . Maney solan geise are in this ile. . . .

EGGA. . . . many solan geese.

(Monro A Description of the WesternIsles of Scotland, 1549)

J. L. Campbell thought Britane was a mistake for Beltane, that is, 1 May. An unknown author, probably Timothy Pont, writes of the Manx shearwaters in Rum and Canna in the 1590s. He had obviously eaten them and found them oily.

And certane foullis which will be taken in these mountaines and are exceeding fatt, of the fattest birds or foulis which is in all the sea they are no bigger then a dove or somewhat les in bignes. Somewhat gray in coloure of their feathers being of the most delicate birds to be eaten that is bred within the whole Illand, except that doe taste oyld. . . .

Cainna . . . And there is verie manie of these foulls and birds aforsaid which are found in Rhum, are found in this Illand.

(Mitchell (ed.) Macfarlane’s GeographicalCollections, vol. II, p. 177, ?1590s)

Rum . . . hath certaine wild fowles about the bigness of a dow, gray coloured, which ar scarce in uthir places, good meat they ar.

(ibid. p. 528)

Then Ruma . . . the sea fowles lay their egges heere and there in the ground. In the middest of spring time, when the egges are laid, any man may take of them. In the high rockes, the solayne geese are taken in abundance. . . . In Egga are solayne geese.

(A Short Description of the Western Isles ofScotland, printed in Miscellanea Scotica, 1818)

The advantage of Manx Shearwaters was that they nested in burrows high in the cliffs and hills. Here they could be caught easily.

RUM . . . There is plenty of land and sea-fowl; some of the latter, especially the puffin, build in the hills as much as in the rocks on the coast, in which there are abundance of caves

(Martin A Description of the WesternIslands of Scotland, c. 1695)

Rum . . . in all parts, there is great Abundance of Moorfool.

. . . The Puffin of the Isle of Man also builds here, which is reckoned the greatest Delicacy of all Sea Birds. It is rarely to be met with in other places, and keeps the Sea all the year round except in hatching Time. It builds in Holes under Ground, and we found its Nests among the loose Rocks, above a Mile from the Shore.

(Walker Report on the Hebrides, 1764)

The puffins are found in considerable numbers, which, though sea fowls, lay and hatch sometimes at a great distance from the shore, even near the tops of high hills. Their young, before they leave the nest, are as large as the dam, transparent with fat, and delicious to the taste of many.

(M’Lean Old Statistical Account,Parish of Small Isles, 1794)

The puffin, a comparatively rare bird in the inner Hebrides, builds, I was told, in great numbers in the continuous line of precipice which, after sweeping for a full mile round the Bay of Laig, forms the pinnacled rampart here, and then, turning another angle of the island, runs on parallel to the coast for about six miles more. In former times the puffin furnished the islanders, as in St Kilda, with a staple article of food, in those hungry months of summer in which the stores of the old crop had begun to fail, and the new crop had not yet ripened; . . . I found among the islanders what was said to be a piece of the natural history of the puffin, sufficiently apocryphal . . . The puffin feeds its young, say the islanders, on an oily scum of the sea, which renders it such an unwieldy mass of fat, that about the time when it should be beginning to fly, it becomes unable to get out of its hole. The parent bird, not in the least puzzled, however, treats the case medicinally, and, – like mothers of another two-legged genus, who, when their daughters get over-stout, put them through a course of reducing acids to bring them down, – feeds it on sorrel-leaves for several days together, till, like a boxer under training, it gets thinned to the proper weight, and becomes able not only to get out of its cell, but also to employ its wings.

(Miller The Cruise of the Betsey, 1845)

One early traveller, L. A. Necker de Saussure, found the change from Switzerland to the Hebrides rather overwhelming. The waters may have appeared icy but for one type of seabird he was badly served by his eyesight or his imagination.

We had near us, on the west, the high and wild mountains of the Isle of Rum; on the north, the fine mountains of the Isle of Sky, with their tops covered with snow. The sea rolled its high billows, and broke against the rocks; whilst innumerable flights of sea-gulls, penguins, and other birds inhabiting the icy seas, were swimming, plunging, and flying.

(Necker de SaussureA Voyage to the Hebrides, 1807)

Geese

ISLE CANNAY

. . . the rock Heisker on the south end abounds with wild geese in August, and then they cast their quills.

(Martin A Description of the WesternIslands of Scotland, c. 1695)

Whales, seals, otters

Sail under the vast mountains of Rum, and the point of Bredon, through a most turbulent sea, caused by the clashing of two adverse tides. See several small whales, called here Pollacks, that when near land are often chaced on shore by boats: they are usually about ten feet long, and yield four gallons of oil.

(Pennant A Tour in Scotland andVoyage to the Hebrides, 1772)

Of the otter:

As he preys in the sea, he does little visible mischief, and is killed only for his fur.

(Johnson A Journey to the WesternIslands of Scotland, 1773)

The amphibious animals are seals and otters; the blubber of the one is made into oil, and the skin of the other is sold for fur, at a price proportionate to its size; some of them have been sold for above 12s. Sterling.

(M’Lean Old Statistical Account,Parish of Small Isles, 1794)

For comparison a female domestic servant received annually from 12s. to 20s. (with shoes etc.) and the price of a sheep was about 4s.

Beach wreck and driftwood

Of Guirdil, Rum:

We landed near a farm, called Guidhl . . . where we were regaled with new milk, oat-cakes, and Lisbon wine. I was surprised to find wine of that species, and of a superior quality in such a hut, but they told us it was part of the freight of some unfortunate vessel wrecked near the island, whose cargo came on shore.

(Edward Daniel Clarke, 1797)

I observed for the first time in the interior of this cottage, what I had frequent occasion to remark afterwards, that much of the wood used in buildings in the smaller and outer islands of the Hebrides must have drifted across the Atlantic, borne eastwards and northwards by the great gulf-stream. Many of the beams and boards . . . are of American timber, that from time to time has been cast upon the shore.

(Miller The Cruise of the Betsey, 1845)

Poverty, and the absence of proper resources meant that islanders had to manage as they could. This ‘mend and make do’ approach had its down side, as Waugh illustrates in a story about a ‘new’ bridge in Rum which replaced one carried away by the great tide of November 1881.

The three planks which made the footpath of the former bridge were carried away; and the only one of the three which was recovered was the cracked plank, which had been incorporated with the new bridge. This plank, with the addition of a deal baulk, – part of the wreck of some timberladen ship, – now form the sole footpath of the new bridge; and for one foot that treads upon the plank, there are twenty that choose the deal baulk. A simple wooden rail on one side only, completes the bridge, which is less than two feet wide, including the cracked plank. . . . The other day, when the stream was swollen with heavy rain, old Mackinnon, the gardener, was trying to wheel a barrowful of dirty clothes across the bridge; and not daring to trust the wheel upon the cracked plank, he was compelled to tilt his barrow so much on one side, that, at last, he overbalanced it, and down it went into the stream, with him after it. The fall was only about six feet; but it was quite enough at once, for an old man. He was crooning Gaelic verse when he came across the meadow; but, as he clambered up the bank out of that stream, he was talking prose.

Edwin Waugh goes on to describe how virtually everything was made from driftwood:

There are no timber yards, nor joiners’ shops, upon this island; and, with the exception of a few nails, which fasten the patch upon the cracked plank, the little bridge is entirely made out of wreck-wood brought ashore by the waves; indeed, nearly all kinds of simple household woodwork, such as tables, chairs, shelves, and chests for the living, and coffins for the dead, – such as the rude box in which the remains of ‘the old captain’ were lately laid in the old graveyard at Kilmory, – are made of these waifs of wreck from the wild ocean.

(Waugh The Limping Pilgrim, 1882)

These extracts show two things: firstly that the islanders had to make use of every available resource, secondly how precarious their lives were. If these resources failed, or could not be taken advantage of, then there was nothing to fall back upon. The islanders lacked the capital to invest and create an industry; they could only gather the windfalls of nature. This was sufficient as long as there was a balance between population and resources. For most island history there was, though cruelly administered by nature, famine and war. It was broken in the eighteenth century, firstly by an explosion of population, latterly by an explosion of expectation.

2

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Early Christianity

__________

THE SMALL ISLES HAVE a particularly rich Early Christian tradition. For the west coast the label Early Christian implies the activities of the various missionary saints in the period 500 to 800 AD. I am also going to touch on the subsequent period of Viking settlement because of the remarkable crosses in Eigg and Canna.

Attention has frequently been drawn to the fact that, after the fall of the Roman Empire, Christianity survived and spread again from the west. The vitality and asceticism of these Early Christians, as well as their artistic achievements, made a critical contribution to Western culture. However, historians of this process have had their own agendas and there is much debate about the nature of what is referred to as ‘Celtic Christianity’. I am not going to discuss ‘Celtic Christianity’, or the work of any of these early churchmen, except in the context of the Small Isles. If we confine ourselves to the facts then others can supply whatever conceptual or religious glosses they wish.