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To sit on a boulder of rock in the strangers' gallery of a parliament, where all its members stand and speak at once in an unknown tongue, is a curious experience, which I have had the pleasure of indulging in. The St Kildans meet every morning - either in front of one of their cottages or on the rocks below the storehouse - and discuss how they shall go about the business of the day. One or two of the debates, at which I was present, became so animated and the din so prodigious that I thought the matter must inevitably end in blows and bloodshed; but I was greatly mistaken, for after awhile some satisfactory understanding was arrived at, and they all went forth harmoniously to share the toil and danger of the day.
Quern stone
The cliffs of St Kilda and the adjacent Isle of Doon are divided into lots, which change hands each year, so that everybody may in due course stand a chance of getting a fair share of birds and eggs. Those of Borrera, Soa, and the rock stacks are common property; and whenever they are raided the proceeds are divided amongst the members of the community, in order that the aged, widows, and orphans may receive a fair share. The profits of the boat are also shared by all the members of the Commonwealth.
In several parts of the village we saw relics of bygone days in the shape of quern stones, in which the corn was formerly ground, and my brother photographed one standing, half full of water, on a low wall in front of a cottage.
In Martin's time they had but one steel and tinder-box in the whole place, and when the men made a journey to Borrera, or Soa, on wool-gathering or fowling intent, the owner - for the fire-making tools were private property - used to levy an impost, called a "fire penny tax," of three eggs or one fowl from each man for striking a light. Our author, however, destroyed the value of this secret, and astonished the natives by showing them how to get a light by striking the blades of their pocket knives against a piece of "chrystal growing under the rocks."
They also had to pay a similar tax to the man who took his cooking-pot to these isles for general use.
Amongst other curious traditions rife among the natives is one to the effect that two men, named Dugan and Ferchar, whilst pulling heather for fuel on Oisaval, plotted a diabolical scheme to murder the whole of the inhabitants at one fell stroke. They rushed down the steep hillside and gave the alarm of an approaching fleet of warships, and as soon as all the people had assembled in the church for safety the two dastards set fire to a quantity of dry heather which they had placed against the closed door and smothered every soul except one old woman, who escaped by stealth to the rocks, where she managed to eke out an existence until the steward's avenging boat came the following spring, when she crept forth, to the surprise of the murderers, and divulged their black crime. Ferchar was placed on a rock-stack near Borrera to live on such birds as he could catch, or starve, but he chose to end his miserable career by flinging himself into the sea immediately after the boat that left him rowed away. His fellow-culprit, Dugan, was placed on Soa, where his bleached bones, and a dirk stuck in the ground beside them, were afterwards found in the cave represented in our picture, which is known to this day as Dugan's Cave.
Dugan's Cave
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