With nature and a camera

Chapter I. St Kilda and its people

The women of St Kilda

The order of things in St Kilda is sometimes a good deal reversed. For instance, the men make all the women's clothes, whilst their future wearers dig the potato-beds or pull dock-leaves for the cows. As a result of this, the dresses are neither fashionably made nor very close-fitting. I saw one young woman in church with her frock skirt hung upon her hips by the aid of a large French nail, the head and an inch or so of which protruded awkwardly from the material it was pinning together. This, however, did not abate my respect for the woman one jot, as I would infinitely rather see a member of the fair sex with her attire stuck full of French nails than one decorated with birds' wings.

St Kilda brooch

[page 19]

The younger women wear hats and bonnets whilst in church, but the elder ones still adhere to the picturesque, many-coloured handkerchief and shawl over their shoulders. I was considerably struck by the brooches with which they fasten their shawls. These are of two sorts - one, a large copper ring, said to be made from an old penny beaten out, and the other consisting simply of a ship's brass washer, with a wire pin attached to it. In both cases the sides of the shawl to be fastened are pulled through the ring and then transfixed by the pin.

I was much puzzled by seeing the women tramping about amongst the grass in the enclosure round the Village bare-foot and bare-leg with their skirts tucked up to their knees, pulling dock leaves. It turned out upon inquiry that the cows refuse to be milked unless they are being fed the while with this weed. Poor women of St Kilda! theirs is a hard lot. They shoulder an immense load of dock leaves which they carry up the tremendously steep hill separating the Village from the Glen, where the cows are milked, and often fetch back an equally great load of turf in addition to their buckets of milk. They also milk a number of ewes on the island, but although we tried every device to get them to allow my brother to photograph them in the act we failed. They would not permit this to be done for love or money, under the impression that people who saw the picture would laugh at them.

[page 20]

Unmarried woman

[page 21]

Married woman

[page 22]

The married women are distinguished from the unmarried ones by a white frill which is worn in front of the head-shawl or handkerchief and serves the part of a wedding ring, which is unknown in St Kilda.

As illustrative of the love of gaudy-coloured apparel existent amongst the women of this lonely isle, Seton says, "When the Rev. Neil Mackenzie went to St Kilda in 1830, his servant-maid, a native, asked permission to take the hearth-rug to church by way of a shawl. Regarding her proposal as a joke he innocently assented, and to his infinite astonishment he beheld the girl in his own pew enveloped in the many-coloured carpet, the envied of an admiring congregation! All the women in the island were eager candidates for the 'shawl' on the following morning, some of them offering to give ten birds for its use."