With nature and a camera

Chapter II. The birds and fowlers of St Kilda

Primitive dwellings

In the course of our wanderings on the island we came upon the half-underground dwellings in which the men and women live when they visit the place to pull the wool off their sheep or snare and pluck birds. They are odd kind of houses - very dark, uncommonly damp, and weird to a degree - and seem as if they had owed their existence to the first glimmerings of human intelligence. In shape and general appearance they are much like a cleit half-buried in the steep hill-side.

There is a small doorway, through which those using the house are obliged to creep on hands and knees; the fire-pit is half-in and half-out of the house, and the place is illuminated by a stone lamp. I examined this remarkable relic of antiquity with considerable interest, and it appeared to me to have been carefully chosen for its peculiar accidental shape rather than made. It had a hollow in the middle for the reception of oil, and a narrow crevice or gutter running upwards from it to one end for the accommodation of the wick. It was blackened with smoke, and the damp stood upon it in great glistening beads. The St Kildan visitors sleep on a raised platform covered with straw.

[page 82]

The position of the fire-pit, which is considerably below the level of the floor of the house, is very ingeniously contrived so as to admit of a certain amount of light and heat and yet not have the burning fuel unduly interfered with by the wind. The fire is practically outside the house, but the earth is so piled up around that it rises above the aperture in the wall and forms a kind of chimney, thus preventing the smoke in ordinary weather from being blown inside the house.

There is a somewhat similar structure in St Kilda known as "The Strong Man's House," on account of the fact that it was built in a single day by the unaided efforts of one man, whose great physical strength is testified to by the huge stones he used in its construction, and whose handiwork is a treasured wonder of all the St Kildans.

Whilst exploring the interior of one of these temporary dwellings a young man pulled an old worm-eaten wooden ladle from a hole in the wall, and explained that it was used for dividing porridge amongst those who came to work on the island for a while. The condition of the utensil did not set me longing madly after Borrera porridge.

[page 83]

The Strong Man's house

[page 84]

As we sat chatting in semi-darkness it suddenly occurred to Finlay McQuien to ask me, through a younger man who could speak English, to tell them something about London. As they are all so good in St Kilda I knew it was of no use entering the great metropolis in a competition of that kind, so went at once to the opposite extreme and told the most dreadful stories I could remember or invent of pickpockets and other bad characters, and showed McQuien what they would probably do to him if he ever happened to wander so far south. This fetched him, with a vengeance. He seized a lump of timber lying close by, put himself in a slaying attitude, rolled his eyes to heaven, and showed his fine set of pearly-white teeth in imitative rage. I was greatly pleased with the effect I produced, but fear I have sown the seeds of a bitter harvest for any member of the Fagin brotherhood who may happen to cross the path of the champion cragsman of St Kilda.

In descending from the semi-underground dwellings I noticed three or four strips of ground, about two feet wide and twelve feet long, with the sod cut out and turned wrong-side up. The cuttings ran straight up and down the steep hill-side, and upon inquiry I discovered that they had been made by the members of a party which had recently been staying upon the island as a signal to their friends on St Kilda that the work which had occasioned their visit had been done, and they were ready to be taken off. If anybody should fall ill whilst sojourning on Borrera for more than a day this signal, or a fire lighted on the open hill-side, is used to warn the St Kildans at home that something is wrong and that the boat is wanted. During the time friends are absent from home on a prolonged wool-gathering, or bird-catching, expedition, daily watch is kept from the top of the hills behind St Kilda village for any signals which they may make for assistance.

By-and-by we were joined by the other members of our party, each of whom seemed to come from a different quarter of the island, laden with Fulmars and Puffins.

[page 85]

Ferguson fowling on Borrera

[page 86]

The ground officer's eldest son, Mr A Ferguson, who a year or two back forsook the lone crags of St Kilda for the more lucrative and less adventurous life of a Glasgow commercial house, happened to be at home on a holiday at the time of our visit, and we persuaded him to accompany us to Borrera, as he was not only an intelligent and genial companion, but also very useful in interpreting for us in the absence of our friend the factor, who could not go out that day. He was desirous of seeing whether his hand had lost its cunning with the fowling-rod, and one of the men accordingly fastened a rope round him and paid it out from a sure footing as he disappeared over the brink of a fearful precipice. I crawled on my hands and knees to the edge of the cliff, and was astonished to see him pass the noose over the head of a Fulmar and take her off her nest with so much skill and deftness that other birds sitting close around did not appear to be at all disturbed by the fate of their neighbour. Their conduct in this respect was totally unlike that of the birds we had watched under similar circumstances on the Doon.