Part II.—The Isles and the Folk.

A SURVEY OF THE ISLANDS.

On Wideford Hill.

There is no better view-point from which to make a general survey of the Orcadian Archipelago than Wideford Hill. It is less than half the height of the Ward Hill of Hoy, but it is at once more central and more easily accessible. The Ward Hill of Orphir exceeds it in height by nearly one hundred and fifty feet, and affords a much finer view to the westward; but Wideford Hill is more isolated from other hills, and from its summit we can obtain a better general outlook over the islands.

Wideford Hill rises to a height of seven hundred and forty feet, and, standing within two miles of Kirkwall, it may be easily approached either from the main Stromness road over the Ayre, or from the old road above the site of the Lammas market. If we choose the right kind of day, when a cool northerly breeze gives us a horizon free from haze, and when thin gray clouds veil the sun only at intervals, we shall see from Wideford a panorama which surpasses in loveliness and in human interest that seen from many a mountain top.

The charm of Orkney scenery lies in its colour rather than its form, in its luminous distances rather than its immediate foreground, in its restfulness rather than its grandeur. The landscape does not overwhelm the beholder with a sense of his puny insignificance, as great mountains are apt to do; it wins his love by suggestions of peace and of home.

But let us look around and note what we see. Far to the southward lies the silvery streak of the Pentland Firth, very innocent now in its summer calm. Beyond it stretch the low shores of Caithness; and in the blue distance we see Morven and the mountains of Sutherland, the “southern land” of the Norsemen. Nearer is the green expanse of South Ronaldsay, much foreshortened to the view, with the lighthouse towers of the Pentland Skerries showing beyond, and the island of Burray at its nearer end. To the right, over Scapa Flow, rises the long brown ridge of Hoy, separated by streaks of shimmering sea from Flotta, Fara, Cava, and its other neighbours. Very stern and solemn look its heath-clad heights as the passing shadows fall across them.

The whole of the East Mainland lies at our feet—Deerness, bright and sunny, with the Moul Head stretching boldly out to sea; nearer is St. Andrews, and Holm, half hidden by the ridge of high ground in the north of that parish; and, nearer still, St. Ola, deeply cut into by the Bays of Kirkwall and Scapa, which look as if they only awaited the next spring tide to join hands across the narrow isthmus, the Peerie Sea lying ready to do its part.

[Illustration: _Round about Kirkwall._]

Kirkwall, the “Kirk Voe” of the Norsemen, is more worthy of its name to-day than when the little church of St. Olaf was the chief object in the landscape. Approach it how we may, the great Cathedral of St. Magnus arrests our attention. Seen from Wideford Hill the tower does not break the skyline, as it does from the sea; yet the mass of sombre reddish masonry asserts itself, and dominates the pearl-gray cluster of walls and roofs that spreads around, as it has done for nearly eight hundred years.

“Tame” and “uninteresting” are the words often used to describe the appearance of our island capital. It does not seem so to-day. As the eye sweeps down over the purple shoulder of the hill to the green fields below, and passes over the silver gleam of the water with broken reflections of tower and gable beyond, it rests upon a picture filled with many charms of line, mass, and colour, from which the deep cool green of tree and shrub is not wholly wanting. Open to the north and the south by the “Viking path” of the sea, and joined to the east and the west by more modern paths, the thin white lines of curving roadway, Kirkwall shows itself the natural focus of our island commerce and social life, and the centre of a wide and fair landscape.

Northward and westward next we turn our view. Kirkwall Bay opens out into the “Wide Fiord,” which doubtless gave our hill its name, and westward into the “Aurrida Fiord,” or Sea-trout Firth, which first gave its name to the parish of Firth, and then received in exchange its present name, the Bay of Firth. Its shores are low and well cultivated, but to the north rises the dark brown ridge formed by the hills of Firth and of Rendall, which hide from our view most of the parish of Evie and parts of Harray and Birsay.

To the left of this ridge, through the central valley of Firth and Stenness, a charming vista opens out. A rich and fertile sweep of low ground forms the basin of the great lochs, and on the long peninsula between them we can distinguish the Standing Stones rising as needle points against the blue expanse of the Loch of Stenness. The green mound of Maeshowe, too, is clearly visible. Far away, over the cultivated slopes of Sandwick, we see the soft shimmer of the Atlantic, and to the northward the undulating skyline of the Birsay Hills.

Due west from where we stand the view is shut in by the long ridge of the Keelylang Hills and the bold outline of the Ward Hill of Orphir, and the fairest part of the West Mainland, Stromness, with its bays and islets, is beyond our ken. To enjoy a view of these we must take our stand upon the Ward Hill itself, but this will come into the programme of another day.

Of the island-studded sea to the north and east we have not yet spoken. We can hardly disentangle the maze of sounds and bays, of holms and promontories, except by the aid of a map, and if we are wise we shall have one in our pocket. With this before us the maze becomes clear. The bold hills of Rousay stand clear of the Mainland to the north, with the lower islands of Gairsay, Wyre or Veira, and Egilsay near at hand. Westray is all but hidden, but the blue ridge of Eday stands boldly forth, shutting out from view the greater portion of Sanday and North Ronaldsay. The tall lighthouse pillar on the Start, however, is clearly seen.

Close to Kirkwall Bay, and protecting it from the eastern sea, lies the fertile island of Shapinsay, with Balfour Castle standing in clear view among its gardens. Beyond we see the bold outline of Stronsay, and to the south of it Auskerry and its lighthouse.

Now we let our eye rest on the horizon, a sharp and clear line where we can trace the smoke of trawlers and other craft which are themselves hidden by the great curve of the ocean plain. There, right over Balfour Castle, something catches our eye. It might be the smoke of a passing steamer, but it does not change its form as we look; it stands clear and sharp, a tiny blue pyramid showing over the horizon. There is only one thing it can be—the Fair Isle, distant some sixty miles from where we stand! Only on rare occasions is this lonely sea-girt rock so free from cloud and mist that its top is thus to be distinguished. Yet if we know where to look for it, we may occasionally see it as we do to-day; and it is useful to remember that from Wideford Hill its bearing is directly over Balfour Castle.

Among the North Isles.

A glance at the map of Orkney will show that most of the important islands lie north of the Mainland. The term “North Isles,” however, is generally used to mean only the more distant of these—Stronsay, Eday, Sanday, North Ronaldsay, and Westray, with the smaller islands adjacent to them. These can be visited by steamer from Kirkwall in one day, with the exception of North Ronaldsay; and at the same time a good view can be obtained of the nearer islands—Shapinsay and Rousay, with the smaller group of Egilsay, Wyre, and Gairsay. North Ronaldsay may also be seen on the far north-eastern horizon.

Leaving Kirkwall pier in the early morning, we sail northwards out of the bay, when the String opens on our right, and Shapinsay is close at hand. There, sheltered by Helliar Holm, we notice the bay of Ellwick, where, in 1263, King Haco moored his hundred ships when on that ill-starred expedition which ended at Largs. West of the bay stands Balfour Castle, the finest specimen of modern domestic architecture in the islands, surrounded by its noted gardens.

The sea to the west of Shapinsay is dotted with shoals and skerries; but as we pass Gairsay on the left and sail round Galt Ness, the north-western point of Shapinsay, we find open water before us, and steer north-east towards Eday, passing the Green Holms on our way.

Eday, the first island at which we call, is hilly and heath-clad, with abundance of peat. Ever since the days of Torf Einar, no doubt, it has yielded a supply of peat for such unprovided islands as Sanday, up to modern times when coal has come into more general use. Even yet the peat industry is considerable, and Eday peats have been recently seen in use for drying malt in a distillery near Edinburgh. The most interesting part of Eday, however, is the north end of the island, where our steamer will call later in the day.

[Illustration: ORKNEY ISLANDS]

From Eday we cross to Stronsay, keeping to the north of that island, and then turning southwards to the village of Whitehall in Papa Sound, protected on the north-east by the small island of Papa Stronsay. This sheltered roadstead so near the open eastern sea has long been an important centre of the herring fishery. About the middle of last century as many as four hundred Orkney boats and many from the Scottish mainland found anchorage in Papa Sound. In modern times Stronsay has again risen in importance as a fishing station.

Stronsay is one of the best agricultural districts in Orkney, and is noted for the size and the excellence of its farms. Near Lamb Head, in the extreme south-east of Stronsay, are the remains of a very extensive pier, erected before the time of the Norsemen.

Leaving Whitehall pier, we next sail due north across Sanday Sound to Kettletoft Bay in Sanday. This bay and that of Otterswick in the north afford safe anchorage; but the low, flat island, with its numerous projecting points and skerries, presents many dangers to navigation. As early as 1529 a lighthouse was erected on the extreme eastern point of the island, and was called the Star, from which, it is said, the headland derived its name, Start Point. Long after that time, however, the island was noted for the number of shipwrecks which occurred on its shores.

Sanday is emphatically the “Sand Island.” Its soil is sandy and generally fertile, and its surface is low and flat. Only in the south-west is there any rising ground, where the highest point in the island reaches a height of a little over two hundred feet.

[Illustration: _Orkney Villages.—I._

1. St. Margaret’s Hope, South Ronaldsay. 2. Pierowall, Westray. 3. Whitehall, Stronsay. 4. Finstown, Firth.]

From Kettletoft pier our course is now south-west, until we double Spur Ness, the most southerly point of Sanday; then turning northwards, we make for Calf Sound, at the north end of Eday. This sheltered channel, between Eday and the Calf of Eday, is memorable as the scene of the capture of the pirate Gow in 1725.

Gow, or Smith, was a native of Stromness, where “Gow’s Garden,” a name given to a patch of ground on the east side of the harbour, afterwards occupied by a shipbuilding yard, seems to mark the site of his father’s house. The name Gow, however, which is the Gaelic equivalent of Smith, indicates a Scottish rather than an Orcadian descent. In 1724 Gow was sailing as second mate on board the _George_, an English vessel of two hundred tons, mounting eighteen guns, and trading on the Barbary coast. He and several others of the crew mutinied, murdered the captain, and started on what proved to be a very brief career of piracy.

After a few months’ cruising, Gow carried his ship, now named the _Revenge_, into Stromness to refit; but as he soon made the place too hot for safety, he put to sea in February 1725. Having sailed north round Westray, he turned south towards Eday, and in beating through Calf Sound ran his ship aground on the Calf, opposite Carrick House, then occupied by Mr. James Fea of Clestran. To him Gow applied for help to get his ship off the rocks; but the opportunity was too good to be missed, and Fea by various stratagems succeeded in making prisoners of Gow and his crew. They were handed over to the authorities, and afterwards suffered the penalty of their crimes in London.

Nearly a century later, in 1814, Sir Walter Scott made his memorable visit to Orkney and Shetland, and the legends which he collected regarding Gow formed a centre round which he wove his well-known story, “The Pirate.”

[Illustration: _Noltland Castle._]

Carrick was at one time the site of a thriving manufacture of salt, but that too is now a tale of the past.

On leaving Carrick our steamer passes out of Calf Sound between the Red Head on the west and the Grey Head on the east, so named from the colour of their sandstone cliffs. The stone of the former has been much in favour for building purposes, as St. Magnus Cathedral can testify, and has on occasion found its way as far south as London.

A north-westerly course now brings us to Pierowall in Westray, our last port of call. The long, low island guarding it on the north-east, fertile and well cultivated, is Papa Westray. Towards its south end is a small lake, on a holm in which are the ruins of a chapel dedicated to St. Tredwall, a place of great sanctity in former days, and a special shrine for such pilgrims as suffered from sore eyes. Long after the Reformation, indeed, we are told that the minister of the island had much difficulty in preventing his flock from resorting thither to pay their devotions to the saint before assembling in the church.

[Illustration: _Noup Head Lighthouse._]

The chief point of interest in Westray is Noltland Castle, now roofless indeed, but scarcely yet a ruin. It was built early in the fifteenth century by Bishop Tulloch, and afterwards passed into the hands of Sir Gilbert Balfour, Master of the Household to Mary Queen of Scots. After the escape of the unfortunate queen from Lochleven Castle, he was ordered to prepare Noltland for her reception. Had the ill-fated Mary turned northwards instead of southwards when the day went against her at Langside, and had she sought shelter among these northern islands instead of trusting to the tender mercies of her cousin and rival, Queen Elizabeth, what a romantic chapter might have been added to the history of Orkney!

[Illustration: _North Ronaldsay Lighthouse._]

Westray contains much good arable land, and supports a large population. On the west side the scenery is bold and romantic; and from Fitty Hill, which is over five hundred and fifty feet in height, the view extends to Foula in Shetland and the Fair Isle. The cliffs facing the Atlantic are lofty and picturesque. About a mile south of Noup Head, the western extremity of the island, is the Gentlemen’s Cave, where five Orcadian adherents of “Prince Charlie” are said to have found shelter for several months after the “’Forty-five.”

From Fitty Hill we may obtain a distant view of North Ronaldsay, the most northerly and perhaps the most verdant island of the group. Separated from its nearest neighbour, Sanday, by the wild and stormy North Ronaldsay Firth, the crossing of which in the usual open boat is often dangerous, even when possible, this island impresses the visitor as being very much cut off from the world. But in such matters all depends upon comparison, and doubtless there are many who regard the whole of our islands as similarly remote and inaccessible.

A stone dyke surrounds the island of North Ronaldsay, outside which a number of native sheep pick up a living on the “banks” and even in the “ebb.” On the most northerly point, near Dennis Head, stands one of the finest of our lighthouses; for North Ronaldsay, like Sanday, has been the scene of many a shipwreck.

Our return from Westray to Kirkwall is made direct, and we now keep to the west of Eday, passing Faray and its Holm, and having the heath-clad hills of Rousay clear in view to the westward. Rousay far surpasses the other islands of the northern group in its hill and cliff scenery, its highest elevation reaching eight hundred and twenty feet, and its western shore presenting many romantic effects in stack and cave. Among its other attractive features are the Loch of Wasbister, in the north; the Burn of Westness and Westness House, overlooking the sacred isle of Eynhallow and the tumultuous Roost of Burgar; and the modern mansion of Trumbland, looking out on the calm sound and the green island of Veira or Wyre.

Nearer our course, however, lies the long, low stretch of Egilsay, the “Church Island” of the Norsemen, where the saintly Earl Magnus was done to death. The present ruined church, with its far-seen round tower, though of later date, doubtless occupies the site of that earlier church which was the scene of his murder.

Wyre, too, soon opens out to view, with its ruined chapel, and the mound which marks the traditional site of “Cubbie Roo’s Castle,” the home of the once formidable Kolbein Hruga, whose name is even yet used to terrify into good behaviour some obstreperous youngster, in the awful threat, “Cubbie Roo’ll get thee!”

[Illustration: _Westness, Eynhallow, and Costa Head._]

Gairsay, with its rounded hill over three hundred feet high, next claims our attention, and the name of Sweyn Holm, lying off its eastern shore, recalls to us Sweyn Asleifson and the great drinking-hall which he built on the island when he made it his winter home: the summer home of the stout old Viking was on board his long-ship. But now the tower of St. Magnus rising ahead reminds us that our day’s sail is at an end, and we are shortly alongside Kirkwall pier once more.

Among the South Isles.

For a visit to the South Isles of Orkney, Stromness is our best starting-point. It is the natural centre of communication for this group—or rather for the western division of the group, for South Ronaldsay and Burray may be visited equally well from Kirkwall by way of Scapa Bay. The small steamer which makes the regular round of the islands will serve us for the beginning of our tour, but we must soon branch off from the ordinary route if we are to see much of interest.

[Illustration: _Stromness Harbour._]

The green island of Graemsay, with its beach of gleaming white sand, looks very attractive as we sail out of Stromness harbour. Its chief attraction to visitors is the lofty tower of the East Lighthouse, which serves, along with the lower West Lighthouse, to guide ships through the swift tideway of Hoy Sound. The official name, indeed, for these lights is not Graemsay, but Hoy.

[Illustration: _Graemsay East Lighthouse._]

Graemsay is separated from Hoy by Burra Sound, and here we shall leave our steamer, landing at Linksness, the best starting-point for the long walk and climb which we have before us. Hoy is next to the Mainland in size, but little of its surface is cultivated, and roads are few and far between. So we strike westward, and, leaving cultivation behind, make for the Meadow of the Kame, keeping the Ward Hill and its neighbour the Cuilags on our left. There is a famous echo here, which we may stop to test before beginning the climb to the Kame itself—a long ridge some twelve hundred feet high, which runs from the Cuilags to the sheer precipice on the north.

The coast-line we now reach is one of the loftiest in the British Isles, rising at St. John’s Head to a perpendicular height of 1,140 feet. With due care we may approach the edge and look down this fearful and giddy height, but it is not a place for foolhardy daring. The view of this stupendous cliff, with the white surges breaking a thousand feet below in a slow and strangely noiseless movement, and the seagulls flitting like midges in their mazy dance midway between us and the blue water, is something which cannot be described and cannot be forgotten.

Beyond St. John’s Head the ground falls to half the height or less, and a couple of miles brings us to the far-famed Old Man of Hoy. This wonderful pillar stands well out from the cliff, on a ledge of rock which connects with the land near sea-level. The height of the pillar is four hundred and fifty feet; that of the cliff on which we stand is about fifty feet less. Tradition tells us that the Old Man of Hoy has suffered considerably from the battering of wind and wave even within recent times. It is said that he formerly stood on two legs, but that many years ago part of the divided base fell before the Atlantic breakers, and left him standing on one leg, as we now see him. Doubtless time and the weather will one day lay him low, but in the meantime he looks fairly solid and durable.

Another mile or more and we reach Rora Head, the most westerly point of Orkney, and turn southeastward towards Rackwick Bay, and now one of the finest views in all the islands meets our gaze. Beyond the deep glen at our feet stretches the great western sea-wall, gleaming red in the sunshine. In the bay below us the rollers are breaking in ceaseless foam over a strip of shining sand and gravel. The little township of Rackwick is a patchwork of green and gold, contrasting strangely with the dark glen and the towering hills behind.

[Illustration: _The Old Man of Hoy._]

The glen itself, we find as we make the descent into it, is a bit of true highland scenery—the only bit, indeed, which Orkney has to show. Its rugged, lonely grandeur is unique in these islands. Heather and bracken, wild rose and honeysuckle, juniper, dwarf birch, and willow mingle in such luxuriance as to suggest a more favoured latitude. The glen of Berriedale, which opens out of the main valley to the west, is sometimes called the “Garden of Orkney,” but it is a garden of nature’s own.

Hoy is for the most part of a sterner aspect, as we shall quickly find if we cross the valley and dare to attack the Ward Hill. The only risk we shall run in doing so will be that of stiff limbs for several days to come, unless, indeed, a sudden descent of cloud or mist should find us unprovided with a guide who knows the “lay of the land.” The sturdy luxuriance of the heather is likely to be our chief difficulty in the climb.

Standing at last on the summit of the Ward Hill, we find ourselves at a height of 1,564 feet above the sea, on a somewhat bare and stony plateau, and not far from the highest point there is, curiously enough, an excellent spring of water. A very clear day is necessary if we are to enjoy the sight of all that this elevation commands. We shall then see the whole archipelago spread out before us as on a map—a marvellous panorama of sea and land. Even the Fair Isle shows its conical head above the north-eastern horizon. The north coast of Scotland stretches out westward to Cape Wrath, and in the blue distance to the southwards many a peak of the Northern Highlands can be distinguished.

If we descend the hill on its southern slope, we shall find a short though a steep way to the next point of interest in Hoy—the Dwarfie Stone. The description of this curious relic of the industry of some unknown workman has been well given by Hugh Miller, whose name may still be read carved on its bare interior, while the legendary interest may best be gathered from Sir Walter Scott in his notes to “The Pirate.”

South of the valley in which the Dwarfie Stone lies, the ground rises to a long stretch of moorland, broken only by burns and lochs, till it dips down to the fringe of low, cultivated ground round Longhope, in the parish of Walls. This part of the island, however, is too distant to be included in our day’s excursion, and may be visited direct by steamer from Stromness some other day.

Longhope, as we shall then see, is a sheltered bay nearly four miles long and about one mile in average width, and forms a magnificent natural harbour. Before the days of steam as many as a hundred and fifty vessels might be seen at anchor here, sheltered from the westerly gales which barred their passage through the Pentland Firth. The martello towers on either side of the entrance remind us of a time when storms were not the only danger to our shipping. Protection of a kind more necessary to-day is afforded by the strong revolving light on Cantick Head, and on occasion by the Longhope lifeboat, the heroism of whose hardy crew has often shown itself in deeds of noble daring such as no sea-roving Viking of the ancient days could have surpassed.

At the western extremity of Longhope stands the mansion house of Melsetter, with its extensive gardens. On the farther side of the bay is South Walls, a peninsula which is literally “almost an island,” as the waters of Aith Hope almost meet those of Longhope across a narrow “aith” or isthmus.

Opposite the entrance to Longhope, whence we start on our return journey to Stromness, we pass the island of Flotta, the “flat island” of the Norsemen, thriving and well cultivated, especially towards the east, where it curves round Pan Hope. To the south of it lies the green island of Switha, to the north-east the tiny Calf of Flotta, and to the north-west, off Mill Bay, the island of Faray. Farther north, and close to the shore of Hoy, lies Risa, or Risa Little, a favourite nesting-place of many of our sea-birds. The last island we notice on our homeward sail is Cava, a couple of miles eastward of which we see the beacon which marks a skerry known as the Barrel of Butter.

The eastern group of the South Isles is more closely connected with the East Mainland, being divided from Holm by Holm Sound, where lie the two green islets of Lamb Holm and Glims Holm. Immediately to the south is Burray, the _Borgarey_ of the Norsemen, so called, doubtless, from the two brochs or _borgs_ whose ruins still exist in the north of the island. To the west of Burray lies the peat-covered islet of Hunda.

South of Burray, across the narrow channel of Water Sound, lies the large and populous island of South Ronaldsay. At the head of the little bay of the same name stands the neat and thriving village—almost a town—of St. Margaret’s Hope, pleasantly situated among its fertile gardens and fields, and with a substantial pier to accommodate its increasing traffic.

Westward from “The Hope” lies Hoxa, a peninsula cut off by Widewall Bay on the south. On the narrow isthmus or “aith” stands a green mound, the “haug,” or howe, from which the name of _Haugseith_ or Hoxa is derived. On the shores of Widewall Bay at low water we may see the submerged peat-moss and decaying remains of large trees which mark a bygone stage in the climate of the islands, and likewise tell of gradual subsidence of the land.

From south to north, South Ronaldsay measures about seven miles. The surface is well cultivated, and the highest point, the Ward Hill, is only some three hundred and sixty feet high. The bay of Burwick, in the south-west corner of the island, was formerly the landing-place for the south mails, which were carried across the Pentland Firth in an open boat. Some of the rock scenery in the southern part is very fine, especially “The Gloup,” near Halcro Head, an open pit near the shore into which the sea enters by a subterranean channel.

To the south-west we see the lonely, storm-swept island of Swona with its half-dozen or so of houses, and to the south rise the twin lighthouse towers on the Pentland Skerries, only one of which is now used as a light. Here we reach the southern extremity of the county, some forty miles in a straight line from North Ronaldsay, the extreme northern point.

ROUND THE MAINLAND.

First Day.

The best way to see the Mainland, and the only way to appreciate its extent and the variety of its scenery, is to make use of the excellent roads by which it is now traversed and encircled. On this tour the bicycle will be our best conveyance; and if we can secure the company of a congenial friend, we may spend a few days very pleasantly and profitably on a ride round the Mainland.

We shall begin with the East Mainland. Leaving Kirkwall by the Deerness road, we shortly afterwards find ourselves skimming down the long brae of Wideford—not Wideford Hill, but the farm of Wideford, about two miles south-east of the town. On our left is the wide expanse of Inganess Bay, with its beach of sand and shingle, where we can recall seeing on one memorable occasion a school of whales stranded after a great whale hunt: that was in our early school days, now rapidly becoming a part of the time known as “long ago.”

[Illustration: _Orkney Villages.—II._

1. St. Mary’s, Holm. 2. Orphir. 3. Kettletoft, Sanday. 4. Finstown. 5. Balfour Village, Shapinsay. 6. Evie.]

We next pass the long, low peninsula of Tankerness, which lies between Inganess Bay and Deer Sound. On its south side, between the loch and the shore, stands the Hall of Tankerness, its position marked out by one of those rare patches of dark green which indicate that trees may still be made to grow in Orkney under intelligent fostering care. The cliffs near Rerwick Head are worth a visit. There are several caves, one of which, tradition affirms, gave refuge for weeks to one of the Covenanters who were shipwrecked at Deerness in 1679.

After passing through the parish of St. Andrews, we reach that of Deerness. Deerness is literally a peninsula—very nearly an island indeed. The isthmus which joins it to the Mainland is not only narrow but low and sandy, and in former days mariners approaching from the south sometimes overlooked its existence when making for shelter, and came to grief accordingly. On this narrow neck of land is found an ancient mound or _haug_, which bears the name of Dingishowe.

Deerness is on the whole flat, the highest point in the peninsula, the Ward, being only 285 feet above the sea. Yet the view from the road, which crosses the centre of the parish, is very extensive. To the south we notice the island of Copinsay, formerly much frequented for gathering sea-birds’ eggs, and its “Horse,” a steep black rock rising high out of the water.

If time permits, it will be worth our while to cycle to Sandside, and thence walk along the cliffs to the Moul Head. The scenery here is fine, and we shall find the Broch, with its ancient ruined chapel, specially interesting. A church existed here before the Norse period, and was doubtless the cause of the name _Deir-ness_, or the ness of the Culdee priests, being given to the district. Not far distant we see another object which recalls priestly memories—a gray stone pillar erected to commemorate the shipwreck by which two hundred Covenanters lost their lives when on their way to be sold as slaves in the American Colonies or “Plantations.”

The story is a dark and tragic one. There is some reason to believe that the shipwreck was not entirely an accident; it is said that the ship was not even provisioned for so long a voyage, and that the fate designed for the unhappy prisoners was not slavery but death by shipwreck whenever circumstances favourable for such an “accident” should arise.

On returning to the St. Andrews road we may strike off towards the south and make our way homewards through the parish of Holm. The most fertile part of this parish lies in a broad valley sloping towards the south, where the crops ripen early. As we descend into this valley, the mellow light of an autumn afternoon reveals to us a view of rare sweetness and charm.

Amid the river-like tidal stream of Holm Sound lie the green islets of Glims Holm and Lamb Holm or Laman, with Burray and the darker Hunda, and the imposing stretch of South Ronaldsay beyond. To the westward, Hoy rises in deep-blue shadow, reflected in the still surface of Scapa Flow. Over the gleam of the Pentland Firth we see the flat shores of Caithness, while the more distant peaks of the Sutherland mountains rise sharp and clear above the horizon.

But there are a few miles of road yet to cover, so we hold on our way towards the seashore, where the steep-gabled mansion of Graemeshall stands beside its pretty reed-fringed loch. A mile beyond lies the village of St. Mary’s, with its pier and its line of cottages stretching along the beach; and after taking a passing glance at this well-known fishing-station, we turn our faces northwards. We have a long hilly ride in front of us here, and by the time we reach the end of it our interest in the charming views is not so keen as it was. Then comes the welcome change of gradient; we spin down the “Distillery Brae,” and soon our circuit of the East Mainland is completed.

Second Day.

Our second day’s circuit will take us round the central part of the Mainland, which is divided from the East Mainland by the isthmus of Scapa, and from the larger mass of the West Mainland by the lochs of Stenness and Harray and the wide isthmus between the latter and the Bay of Firth.

We leave Kirkwall by the “Head of the Town” and keep to the old Scapa road for about a mile, when we turn sharp to the right and soon begin the long ascent of nearly three hundred feet to Greenigo. This is followed by a corresponding dip down to the valley of Kirbuster, whose loch lies on our right; but as fishing is not our programme at present we keep to the road as it ascends once more, and soon find ourselves entering upon the broad fertile slope which forms the most thickly inhabited part of the parish of Orphir.

Westward we see the road stretching across this well-cultivated district, dotted with houses large and small, which gather here and there in groups and clusters almost ranking as villages. Time does not press, and we are out for the purpose of seeing all we can, so we decide to leave the main road here and take a by-road to the right which skirts the east side of the Ward Hill. It is fairly steep, and the riding cannot be called good, but it has the advantage of bringing us within a mile of the Ward Hill itself, the top of which we shall find a pleasant halting-place.

[Illustration: _Orphir._]

Leaving our bicycles by the roadside, we face a pretty stiff climb through luxuriant heather and bracken, and soon find ourselves on the highest of a group of hilltops, 880 feet above the sea. If we are favoured with a clear atmosphere, the scene before us will amply repay the labour of our ascent.

The view from the Ward Hill is supplementary to that from Wideford Hill. Parts of the landscape to the east and north are shut out by Wideford Hill itself, by the long Keelylang ridge, and by the broad-backed mass between Harray and Evie. To the south the scene is somewhat similar to that seen from Wideford Hill; to the westward, however, the panorama now before us is unique.

Ireland, or _Ayre-land_, as it once was, sloping gently downwards to its bay, lies at our feet, a patchwork of farms and fields in varying tints of green and yellow and brown. Beyond it, the picturesque “western capital,” Stromness, fringes its landlocked harbour, secure in the shelter of the protecting hills behind. To the left lies Graemsay with its lighthouses, an “emerald set in a sapphire sea,” and beyond it the frowning cliffs and the purple ridge of Hoy dominate the scene.

Away towards the west the horizon line, more than thirty miles distant as we now see it, cuts sharp and straight against the soft blue sky. If we have a good glass, we may make out on this line, just above the town of Stromness, the Stack of Suleskerry.

[Illustration: _Stromness from the east._]

But our day’s ride is yet mostly before us, so we descend from the Ward or “watch-tower,” mount our bicycles, regain the main road, and continue our way through the smiling landscape which lies in front of us. Orphir was an important district in the old Norse days, and a residence of the Orkney Earls stood on the seashore near the parish church; and adjoining that church may still be seen part of a much earlier church, one of the few circular temples in this country which were built in the time of the Crusades on the model of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. In the little cove sheltered by the Head and the Holm of Houton, some of King Hakon’s ships found shelter during the winter after the battle of Largs, while the king himself lay dying in the ancient palace at Kirkwall.

[Illustration: _Ruins of circular church, Orphir._]

After a particularly stiff ride over Scorriedale, we enter upon a long and somewhat uninteresting stretch of road through Clestran and Ireland, and at last reach the main road from Kirkwall to Stromness, close to the Bridge of Waith, which crosses the narrow strait between the Loch of Stenness and the sea. We can see just above this bridge the traces of a still older one, and the name Waith probably indicates that this was originally a “wading-place” or ford at low tide.

But we are not to cross the bridge to-day; we turn back towards Kirkwall to complete our tour of the Central Mainland. The road runs along the side of the loch, through the pretty district of Clouston, and past the comfortable hotel which has been erected there for the convenience of such summer visitors as are attracted by the trout-fishing of the loch. The largest trout ever seen was caught in the Loch of Stenness, and if the proverb is true that “there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it,” the same may yet be proved true of this loch.

We halt only long enough to obtain a welcome cup of tea, and then continue our ride. Less than a mile brings us to the road which leads over the Bridge of Brogar to the Standing Stones, and we decide on making a brief pilgrimage to this the most ancient shrine in the islands—if, indeed, it was a shrine. But as the afternoon is wearing towards evening, and we have been here several times before, we merely sit down on the short heather beside the circle long enough to let the mystery and “eeriness” of the scene sink into our minds and set us wondering silently what it all meant in the far-off days when it was new.

We need not wait here in the hope of finding out, so we ride back past the tall “sentinel” stone and the smaller circle of Stenness to the main road. Another mile brings us abreast of Maeshowe, and with the spirit of the past upon us we stop once more. We obtain the key of this famous chambered mound from the farmhouse opposite, in order that we may spend a few minutes more in “wondering.”

There is nothing about Maeshowe, or even about the Standing Stones, to attract the superficial mind, but to those who “wonder,” and who can see things which vanished from outward view many centuries ago, those places are almost holy ground. They embody and embalm some of the deepest thoughts of a long-vanished people; and though we can hardly guess what these thoughts were, the monuments are sacred relics to us. They are milestones, we may say, marking early stages in the long advance of our race.

[Illustration: _The Sentinel Stone, Stenness._]

After leaving Maeshowe we face an incline just heavy enough to recall our thoughts to the present, and soon we are passing through the pretty glen which opens on the Bay of Firth. The patches of shrubbery and trees round Binscarth on our left give a pleasing variety to the scenery, and show us once more the possibilities and the limitations of our islands as regards the cultivation of woods.

The village of Finstown, the half-way house between Kirkwall and Stromness, has a beautiful situation, which can be better appreciated from the hillside above it than from the road, and it is well placed for attracting a share of the ordinary business of the districts around. It has a prosperous look, and its name reminds us that it claims to be more than a mere village.

[Illustration: _Maeshowe._]

Before us on our left lies the wide, shallow Bay of Firth, or “The Firth,” as it might more correctly be called, which gives its name to the surrounding district. To the Norsemen it was the “Sea-trout Firth,” and must have been important for its fishing. In more recent times it had a famous oyster-fishery; but that too has become a thing of the past, though by the exercise of a little foresight and public spirit it could easily be restored.

In the bay lie the Holm of Grimbister and the island of Damsay, or “St. Adamnan’s Isle.” The latter, as its name indicates, was the site of a Culdee monastery, and is mentioned in the later Saga story. Damsay has also its share of the legendary tales which are connected with many of the old ecclesiastical centres in the island.

On our right the old Kirkwall road branches off, passing over the southern shoulder of Wideford Hill; and beside it, on a rising ground, we see the manse of Firth, the home of the soldier-poet Malcolm, whose father was minister of the parish. Soon our road bears to the left to avoid the steep, dark mass of Wideford Hill; we cross the broad stretch of Quanterness, and a bend to the right brings us once more in view of Kirkwall, lying beyond the Peerie Sea, whose still waters mirror the dark mass of St. Magnus, now gleaming with a dusky red in the glow of sunset.

Third Day.

Our third day’s tour is of a different character; we are to make our way through Rendall and Evie to Birsay. As we shall spend the night there, our bicycles must be loaded with a few necessary articles; but old campaigners always march light, and our baggage is reduced to its absolute minimum.

The first stage of our journey takes us to Finstown, along the main Stromness road which we traversed yesterday. Then we turn sharp to the right, and cross the bridge over the mouth of the “Oyce,” which reminds us of the Peerie Sea and its Ayre. The district in front of us, the “North Side” of Firth, consists of a broad slope, almost a plain, fringing the bay, and the steep escarpment of a long range of hills on our left. Most of this range is 500 feet in height, and parts exceed 700 feet.

There is a certain monotony about the road, due to its straightness; but there is really no reason why it should turn either to the right hand or to the left, so we pedal away, mile after mile. When opposite the Bay of Isbister we pass a very pleasing valley, that of Settascarth, through which a road crosses the long ridge into the parish of Harray. Then we reach the parish of Rendall, and find a long ascent in front of us, as the road runs straight up the “dale” whence the name of the parish arises. We pass between the high, steep ridge on the left and a group of hills on the right which lie between us and the sea, forming a broad peninsula between the Bay of Isbister and Woodwick.

When we reach the summit of this rise, we are quite ready to halt for a while and enjoy the new panorama which opens out to the northward. The inner group of the North Isles—Rousay, Egilsay, Wyre, and Gairsay—lie at our feet, as it seems; and the more distant members of the group can be easily made out. Rousay is the dominant feature in the landscape, and its steep brown hills, descending in step-like “hammars,” make an impressive background to the green fringe of farmland and the liquid blue of the sea.

As we resume our way along an undulating road, we pass through a district which, despite its northerly exposure, seems able to support a large population, and numerous tidy cottages cluster here and there along the roadside. By-and-by the cultivated strip becomes narrower, the sandy beach of Aikerness gives place to the rocky shores of Burgar, and the road turns inland with a steep incline to dip down on the other side of the ridge towards the Loch of Swannay.

Here we shall find it well worth our while to make a somewhat longer halt than before, and, leaving our bicycles, we turn to climb Costa Hill, and to view the wild cliffs at Costa Head. From the hill we look down upon the mysterious green islet of Eynhallow, the “Holy Island,” where the ruins of an ancient monastery have been traced, and round which more than the usual crop of legends has sprung up. A fair contrast it offers to the bold, rocky cliffs of Rousay just beyond.

If it happens to be the time of spring tides, and the ebb is running out, we shall see at this place one of the most impressive sights which our coasts present. However calm be the sea, as soon as the tide begins to gather strength, the channels on either side of Eynhallow for some distance out to sea become a mass of heaving, foaming billows, reminding one of the long stretch of boiling rapids below the Falls of Niagara.

And that is just what this “roost” is—rapids on the course of the tidal river which is now sweeping westward through Eynhallow Sound. When we look at our pocket map, we see that on each side of the islet the depth of water is only about five fathoms. In about a quarter of a mile it becomes ten fathoms, and within a mile of the west end of the island twenty fathoms. Thus the tidal river first passes over a ridge on each side of Eynhallow, where it is less than thirty feet deep, and then plunges down a slope which dips nearly one hundred feet in a mile.

If there is a long swell rolling in from the Atlantic, as there often is on our western shores, the turmoil is increased, and the boiling fury of Burgar Roost, as it is called, is a sight which it is worth going far to see. The roost which is formed in Hoy Sound with a strong ebb-tide is due to similar causes but there the dip in the sea-bottom is not so steep. When the tide turns, the change seems almost magical, and in a short time there may be not a ripple on the water to mark the scene of this mad dance of the billows.

[Illustration: _Birsay, the Barony._]

The cliffs at Costa Head are the highest on the Mainland, but we can only see them from above, and thus we lose much of their wild grandeur. We enjoy, however, an impressive view of the cave-pierced shores of Rousay, and of the stern ramparts of Noup Head, in Westray, with its sentinel lighthouse.

Sooner or later we must return to our bicycles, and now we coast rapidly down to the Loch of Swannay, sweep round its northern shore, and, crossing the burn, climb the opposite slope towards the part of Birsay quaintly named, “Abune the Hill,” or “Above the Hill,” as the map-makers have it. Instead of following the road which strikes southward through the centre of the parish, we turn towards the west, and by means of an older road make our way to the Barony of Birsay, where we shall find accommodation for the night.

But we have still a long evening before us, and after due rest and refreshment we shall find time to explore our surroundings. The place is full of historical interest. The old name of _Birgisharad_, in which we may trace the names of Birsay and Harray, indicates that here was the chief hunting-ground of the Norse Jarls. The mixture of hill and loch and stream, the valleys being then perhaps furnished with coverts of brushwood where now there is only pasture or crops, made this northern part of the Mainland the best hunting-ground in the county.

Birsay may be said to have been the capital of the Earldom at one time. It was the favourite residence of the Earls, and it was also the ecclesiastical centre, and the residence of the first bishop of the islands. When the sainted Earl Magnus was slain, it was in Christ’s Kirk in Birsay that his body first found burial. On the Brough we may still see the ruins of a very ancient chapel dedicated to St. Peter.

The Stewart Earls, of dishonoured memory, found Birsay an attractive locality. They raised on the site of its old Norse castle a palace built after the plan of Holyrood in Edinburgh, the ruins of which still form one of the chief features in the landscape. The whole district, in short, is full of those remains which we have called milestones of the past, marking stages in the history of our race.

The shore near the Barony is interesting. We may walk to the Brough at low water, but we must take care not to be caught and imprisoned by the returning tide. The cliffs rise to the southward, and in Marwick Head reach a height of nearly three hundred feet.

[Illustration: _The Brough of Birsay._]

The chief attraction for tourists is the Loch of Boardhouse and its trout fishing. This loch receives the drainage of a wide stretch of country, its chief feeder being the Hillside Burn, which rises in the hills between Rendall and Harray, flows north-west for some five miles to the Loch of Hundland, and under the name of the Burn of Kirbuster reaches the larger loch in about another mile. This drainage basin is next in importance and area to that of the “Great Lakes” of Orkney, the Lochs of Stenness and Harray.

If we have time and energy left to climb Ravie Hill, on the south side of the loch, we shall get an excellent idea of the “lay of the land,” and the relation of these two loch basins. We may notice in particular that the Harray basin extends northward almost to the hill on which we stand, and includes a number of small lochs near it which look as if they ought to belong to the Boardhouse or Birsay system.

If scenery rather than geography is our study, we shall be equally well repaid for this walk. From its isolated position, Ravie Hill commands a very extensive view, despite its moderate elevation. The panorama of hill and valley and plain, of land and lake and sea, which is spread out around us, is really one of the finest in Orkney, and we can quite understand how the picturesque Barony came to occupy so important a place in the past. Even at the present day its rich soil and pleasant situation give it some right to be called the “Garden of Orkney.” But meantime we must make our way back to our inn, for the sun is dipping in the western sea, and to-morrow will bring us fresh tasks to perform.

Fourth Day.

Our fourth and last day’s exploration will be confined to the western shore of the Mainland, between Birsay and Stromness. As we leave the Barony and ride along the south side of the loch we are tempted to stop and view once more the landscape from Ravie Hill, before we finally turn our back upon this romantic corner of the Mainland. While we watch the people at work in the fields, and listen to the restful sounds of country life, it is hard to picture the past whose relics stand yonder, plain in our view.

If Birsay were to display before our eyes this morning a pageant of her past history, the procession would be a varied one. The hunting-parties of the Norse Earls, the coming of the first bishop to teach the new faith, the building of the first Norse church, the burial of Earl Magnus, the procession of pilgrims seeking miraculous healing at his tomb, the removal of the sacred relics to the church of St. Olaf at Kirkwall to await the building of a more magnificent shrine, the ruinous favour of the Scottish Earls, the raising of a second Holyrood in the old Barony whose stately splendour was the measure of the robbery and extortion suffered by the people, the passing of this incongruous pomp and the return of welcome obscurity and quiet—truly a long and picturesque procession!

We resume our journey, however, and soon reach Twatt, where the road divides. The branch to the left leads to the important district of Dounby, on the borders of the three parishes of Birsay, Harray, and Sandwick, and then passes through the whole length of Harray to join the Kirkwall and Stromness road.

Harray is an interesting parish. It is the only parish in Orkney which does not touch the sea. Its soil is on the whole fertile, the surface being diversified by moraines brought down by glaciers from the steep hills to the east. The farms are generally small, but the farmers are mostly in the happy position of being owners as well as occupiers, and the number of “lairds” in this parish has long been proverbial in Orkney.

We decide, however, on taking the road to the right, as we wish to see something of the famous “west shore.” Three or four miles brings us to the head of the Harray Loch; but instead of descending to the mill of Rango we turn to the right at the cross-roads, and shortly reach the hamlet of Aith, beside the Loch of Skaill, our charming “Loch in Orcady.” Here we turn once more to the right, following a road which skirts the loch and leads us almost to the shores of the Bay of Skaill, a fine sweep of sandy beach, but exposed to the full fury of the Atlantic.

[Illustration: _Marwick Head, Birsay._]

At its southern corner we examine a large “Pict’s House,” now opened up—the “Weem of Scarabrae.” Then we decide to climb the slope beyond and visit the “Hole o’ Roo,” a famous cave piercing a bold headland, which from the horizontal lie of the rock strata looks as if it had been built of gigantic flagstones by a race of Titans.

We are now entering on the finest stretch of cliff scenery in the islands, with the exception of Hoy, and from here to Stromness, a distance of some eight miles, the walk is one to remember and to repeat. But now for the first time we find our bicycles a hindrance instead of a help, and we are at a loss what to do with them. We may decide to turn back to the main road, ride to Stromness, and, leaving them there, explore the coast on foot, which is the most satisfactory plan. If we decide to take them on with us, we shall find that considerable stretches of the ground are level enough to permit of a rough ride on the turf, and for the last three miles of the distance there is a fair road.

[Illustration: _The Castle of Yesnaby._]

The next point of interest after leaving Row Head is the Noust of Bigging, sheltered by its Brough, an excellent place from which to watch the Atlantic breakers when a heavy sea is running. A little way to the south is the Castle of Yesnaby, one of those isolated stacks of rock which have withstood the battering of the ocean while the cliffs around have crumbled and fallen. Its slender base, however, proclaims that its fate is only a matter of time.

In another mile and a half, after passing Lyre Geo and Inganess Geo, two impressive examples of how rocks decay, we reach the Castle of North Gaulton, a singularly slender and graceful pillar of rock. Then we cross a stretch of low ground, after which there is a steep climb up to the summit of the Black Craig. The height of the hill is 360 feet, and that of the cliff little less, while its sheer plunge down into the waves makes it look higher than it really is.

As we descend towards the south we pass over a district which is sacred in the eyes of geologists, for it was here that Hugh Miller discovered the fossil remains of the _Asterolepis_ or “star-scale” fish, a monster of the ancient days when the rocks of this hill were being laid down as mud and sand on the bottom of a primeval lake. The great geologist describes this district as “the land of fish,” and the rock strata fairly swarm with fossils.

The shore in front is now low and tame, but the whole district from hill to sea is fertile and well peopled. That it was so in the past also we see sufficient proof. For there, on the shore of Breckness, stand the ruins of a mansion built by Bishop Graeme, who knew well where to build; and a mile beyond it, in the lonely churchyard by the lonely sea, rises a fragment of an ancient church. There stood the church of Stromness in former days, and there also the manse; while the names of Innertown and Outertown doubtless refer to their relative nearness to this centre of parish life.

[Illustration: _Round about Stromness._

1. Dundas Street. 2. Church Road. 3. Victoria Street. 4. From the South End. 5. From the Harbour. 6. From the Hill.]

But times have changed, and it is no longer fertility of soil but convenience for trade which draws men together in close neighbourhood, and so the modern Stromness arose on the shore of that romantic little bay which spreads out beneath us as we cross the ridge to the left. That landlocked sea, and not the rocky hillside, was the source of its life and growth; and as we note the frequent steamships and the clustered fishing-fleet we realize that it is still the sea which brings prosperity to the little gray town.

Here, then, our circuit of the Mainland fitly ends, for in the opinion of many the town of Stromness, the “ness of the tide-stream,” is the fairest spot in all the islands. However this may be, it is indeed fair, and the Stromness boy will wander far and sail over many seas ere he will find a fairer scene than his island home;—fair when it lies before him under the pearl-gray light of its northern sky; fairer still, perchance, when the golden haze of memory gilds the landscape, and the joyous vision of the outward eye has given place to the wistful retrospect of the imagination.

[Illustration: _The Black Craig._]

SKETCHES BY HUGH MILLER.

The Dwarfie Stone.

We landed at Hoy, on a rocky stretch of shore composed of the gray flagstones of the district. They spread out here in front of the tall hills composed of the overlying sandstone, in a green, undulating platform, resembling a somewhat uneven esplanade spread out in front of a steep rampart. With the upper deposit a new style of scenery commences, unique in these islands. The hills, bold and abrupt, rise from fourteen to sixteen hundred feet over the sea-level; and the valleys by which they are traversed—no mere shallow inflections of the general surface, like most of the other valleys of Orkney—are of profound depth, precipitous, imposing, and solitary. The sudden change from the soft, low, and comparatively tame to the bold, stern, and high serves admirably to show how much the character of a landscape may depend upon the formation which composes it.

A walk of somewhat less than two miles brought me into the depths of a brown, shaggy valley, so profoundly solitary that it does not contain a single human habitation, nor, with one interesting exception, a single trace of the hand of man. As the traveller approaches by a path somewhat elevated, in order to avoid the peaty bogs of the bottom, along the slopes of the northern side of the dell, he sees, amid the heath below, what at first seems to be a rhomboidal piece of pavement of pale Old Red Sandstone, bearing atop a few stunted tufts of vegetation. There are no neighbouring objects of a known character by which to estimate its size. The precipitous hill-front behind is more than a thousand feet in height; the greatly taller Ward Hill of Hoy, which frowns over it on the opposite side, is at least five hundred feet higher; and dwarfed by these giants it seems a mere pavier’s flag, mayhap some five or six feet square by some eighteen inches to two feet in depth. It is only on approaching it within a few yards that we find it to be an enormous stone, nearly thirty feet in length by almost fifteen feet in breadth, and in some places, though it thins wedgelike towards one of the edges, more than six feet in thickness—forming altogether such a mass as the quarrier would detach from the solid rock to form the architrave of some vast gateway or the pediment of some colossal statue. A cave-like excavation, nearly three feet square, and rather more than seven feet in depth, opens on its gray and lichened side. The excavation is widened within, along the opposite walls, into two uncomfortably short beds, very much resembling those of the cabin of a small coasting vessel. One of the two beds is furnished with a protecting ledge and a pillow of stone hewn out of the solid mass; while the other, which is some five or six inches shorter than its neighbour, and presents altogether more the appearance of a place of penance than of repose, lacks both cushion and ledge. An aperture, which seems to have been originally of a circular form, and about two and a half feet in diameter, but which some unlucky herd-boy, apparently in the want of some better employment, has considerably mutilated and widened, opens at the inner extremity of the excavation to the roof, as the hatch of a vessel opens from the hold to the deck; for it is by far too wide in proportion to the size of the apartment to be regarded as a chimney. A gray, rudely-hewn block of sandstone, which, though greatly too ponderous to be moved by any man of ordinary strength, seems to have served the purpose of a door, lies prostrate beside the opening in front.

[Illustration: _The Dwarfie Stone._]

And such is the famous Dwarfie Stone of Hoy, as firmly fixed in our literature by the genius of Sir Walter Scott as in this wide valley by its ponderous weight and breadth of base, and regarding which—for it shares in the general obscurity of the other ancient remains of Orkney—the antiquary can do little more than repeat somewhat incredulously what tradition tells him—namely, that it was the work many ages ago of an ugly, malignant goblin, half earth, half air, the elfin Trolld—a personage, it is said, that even within the last century used occasionally to be seen flitting about in its neighbourhood.

I was fortunate in a fine, breezy day, clear and sunshiny, save where the shadows of a few dense, piled-up clouds swept dark athwart the landscape. In the secluded recesses of the valley all was hot, heavy, and still; though now and then a fitful snatch of a breeze, the mere fragment of some broken gust that seemed to have lost its way, tossed for a moment the white cannach of the bogs, or raised spirally into the air, for a few yards, the light beards of some seeding thistle, and straightway let them down again. Suddenly, however, about noon a shower broke thick and heavy against the dark sides and gray scalp of the Ward Hill and came sweeping down the valley. I did what Norna of the Fitful Head had, according to the novelist, done before me in similar circumstances—crept for shelter into the larger bed of the cell, which, though rather scant, taken fairly lengthwise, for a man of five feet eleven, I found, by stretching myself diagonally from corner to corner, no very uncomfortable lounging-place in a thunder-shower. Some provident herd-boy had spread it over, apparently months before, with a littering of heath and fern, which now formed a dry, springy couch; and as I lay wrapped up in my plaid, listening to the raindrops as they pattered thick and heavy atop or slanted through the broken hatchway to the vacant bed on the opposite side of the excavation, I called up the wild narrative of Norna and felt all its poetry.

The Dwarfie Stone has been a good deal undervalued by some writers, such as the historian of Orkney, Mr. Barry; and, considered simply as a work of art or labour, it certainly does not stand high. When tracing, as I lay abed, the marks of the tool, which in the harder portions of the stone are still distinctly visible, I just thought how that, armed with pick and chisel, and working as I was once accustomed to work, I could complete such another excavation to order in some three weeks or a month. But then I could not make my excavation a thousand years old, nor envelop its origin in the sun-gilt vapours of a poetic obscurity, nor connect it with the supernatural through the influence of wild, ancient traditions, nor yet encircle it with a classic halo borrowed from the undying inventions of an exquisite literary genius.

The pillow I found littered over with the names of visitors; but the stone—an exceedingly compact red sandstone—had resisted the imperfect tools at the command of the traveller, usually a nail or a knife, and so there were but two of the names decipherable—that of an “H. Ross, 1735,” and that of a “P. Folster, 1830.” The rain still pattered heavily overhead, and with my geological chisel and hammer I did, to beguile the time, what I very rarely do—added my name to the others, in characters which, if both they and the Dwarfie Stone get but fair play, will be distinctly legible two centuries hence. In what state will the world then exist, or what sort of ideas will fill the head of the man who, when the rock has well-nigh yielded up its charge, will decipher the name for the last time, and inquire, mayhap, regarding the individual whom it now designates, as I did this morning when I asked, “Who was this H. Ross, and who this P. Folster?”? I remember when it would have saddened me to think that there would in all probability be as little response in the one case as in the other; but as men rise in years they become more indifferent than in early youth to “that life which wits inherit after death,” and are content to labour on and be obscure.

The sun broke out in great beauty after the shower, glistening on a thousand minute runnels that came streaming down the precipices, and revealing through the thin, vapoury haze the horizontal lines of strata that bar the hillsides, like courses of ashlar in a building. I failed, however, to detect, amid the general many-pointed glitter by which the blue, gauze-like mist was bespangled, the light of the great carbuncle for which the Ward Hill has long been famous—that wondrous gem, according to Sir Walter, “that, though it gleams ruddy as a furnace to them that view it from beneath, ever becomes invisible to him whose daring foot scales the precipices whence it darts its splendour.”

The Standing Stones.

[Illustration: _The Standing Stones—The Ring of Brogar._]

The Standing Stones—second in Britain, of their kind, only to those of Stonehenge—occur in two groups; the smaller group (composed, however, of the taller stones) on the southern promontory, the larger on the northern one. Rude and shapeless, and bearing no other impress of the designing faculty than that they are stuck endwise in the earth, and form, as a whole, regular figures on the sward, there is yet a sublime solemnity about them, unsurpassed in effect by any ruin I have yet seen, however grand in its design or imposing in its proportions. Their very rudeness, associated with their ponderous bulk and weight, adds to their impressiveness. When there is art and taste enough in a country to hew an ornate column, no one marvels that there should be also mechanical skill enough in it to set it up on end; but the men who tore from the quarry these vast slabs, some of them eighteen feet in height over the soil, and raised them where they now stand, must have been ignorant savages unacquainted with machinery, and unfurnished, apparently, with a single tool.

The consideration, too, that these remains—eldest of the works of man in this country—should have so long survived all definite tradition of the purposes which they were raised to serve, so that we now merely know regarding them that they were religious in their uses—products of that ineradicable instinct of man’s nature which leads him in so many various ways to attempt conciliating the Powers of another world—serves greatly to heighten their effect.

The appearance of the obelisks, too, harmonizes well with their great antiquity and the obscurity of their origin. For about a man’s height from the ground they are covered thick by the shorter lichens—chiefly the gray-stone _parmelia_—here and there embroidered by the golden-hued patches of the yellow _parmelia_ of the wall; but their heads and shoulders, raised beyond the reach alike of the herd-boy and of his herd, are covered by an extraordinary profusion of a flowing beard-like lichen of unusual length—the lichen _calicarus_ (or, according to modern botanists, _Ramalina scopulorum_), in which they look like an assemblage of ancient Druids, mysteriously stern and invincibly silent and shaggy as the Bard of Gray, when

“Loose his beard and hoary hair Streamed like a meteor on the troubled air.”

The day was perhaps too sunny and clear for seeing the Standing Stones to the best possible advantage. They could not be better placed than on their flat promontories, surrounded by the broad plain of an extensive lake, in a waste, lonely, treeless country, that presents no bold competing features to divert attention from them as the great central objects of the landscape; but the gray of the morning or an atmosphere of fog and vapour would have associated better with the misty obscurity of their history, their shaggy forms, and their livid tints than the glare of a cloudless sun, that brought out in hard, clear relief their rude outlines, and gave to each its sharp, dark patch of shadow. Gray-coloured objects, when tall and imposing, but of irregular form, are seen always to most advantage in an uncertain light—in fog or frost-rime, or under a scowling sky, or, as Parnell well expresses it, “amid the livid gleams of night.” They appeal, if I may so express myself, to the sentiment of the ghostly and the spectral, and demand at least a partial envelopment of the obscure. Burns, with the true tact of the genuine poet, develops the sentiment almost instinctively in an exquisite stanza in one of his less-known songs. “The Posie,”—

“The hawthorn I will pu’, wi’ its locks o’ siller gray, Where, like an aged man, it stands at break o’ day.”

Scott, too, in describing these very stones, chooses the early morning as the time in which to exhibit them, when they “stood in the gray light of the dawning, like the phantom forms of antediluvian giants, who, shrouded in the habiliments of the dead, come to revisit, by the pale light, the earth which they had plagued with their oppression, and polluted by their sins, till they brought down upon it the vengeance of the long-suffering heaven.” On another occasion he introduces them as “glimmering, a grayish white, in the rising sun, and projecting far to the westward their long, gigantic shadows.” And Malcolm, in the exercise of a similar faculty with that of Burns and of Scott, surrounds them, in his description, with a somewhat similar atmosphere of partial dimness and obscurity:—

“The hoary rocks, of giant size, That o’er the land in circles rise, Of which tradition may not tell. Fit circles for the wizard’s spell, Seen far amidst the scowling storm, Seem each a tall and phantom form, As hurrying vapours o’er them flee, Frowning in grim obscurity, While, like a dread voice from the past, Around them moans the autumnal blast.”

There exist curious analogies between the earlier stages of society and the more immature periods of life—between the savage and the child; and the huge circle of Stennis seems suggestive of one of these. It is considerably more than four hundred feet in diameter; and the stones which compose it, varying from three to fourteen feet in height, must have been originally from thirty-five to forty in number, though only sixteen now remain erect. A mound and fosse, still distinctly traceable, run round the whole; and there are several mysterious-looking tumuli outside, bulky enough to remind one of the lesser moraines of the geologist. But the circle, notwithstanding its imposing magnitude, is but a huge child’s house after all—one of those circles of stones which children lay down on their village green, and then, in the exercise of that imaginative faculty which distinguishes between the young of the human animal and those of every other creature, convert, by a sort of conventionalism, into a church or dwelling-house, within which they seat themselves and enact their imitations of the employments of their seniors, whether domestic or ecclesiastical. The circle of Stennis was a circle, say the antiquaries, dedicated to the sun. The group of stones on the southern promontory of the lake formed but a half-circle, and it was a half-circle dedicated to the moon. To the circular sun the great rude children of an immature age of the world had laid down a circle of stones on the one promontory; to the moon, in her half-orbed state, they had laid down a half-circle on the other; and in propitiating these material deities they employed in their respective enclosures, in the exercise of a wild, unregulated fancy, uncouth, irrational rites.

HUGH MILLER (_“Rambles of a Geologist.”_)

THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. MAGNUS.

You would hardly expect to find an ancient cathedral up in those Orkney Islands that one usually sees huddled away in a spare corner of the map, and made to look even smaller than they are by the exigencies of space. It is curious to think of: once, long ago, strange ships with monstrous figure-heads and painted sides, full of the northern actors of history, crawled with their lines of oars into the sounds and bays of these islands, till for centuries they became the stage for dramatic events and stirring personages. Some of the players bore names that any history book tells of. Harald Hardrada, old King Haco, Bothwell, and Montrose have all played their parts. And there are others, earls and prelates, and northern kings, and old sea-rovers, who were really far better worth knowing than half the puppets with more familiar labels. Then, gradually the lights went out and the audience turned away to look at other things, and the Orkneymen were left to observe the Sabbath and elect a County Council. One by one the old buildings toppled down, and the old names changed, and the old customs faded, till the place of the islands in history became their place upon the map; but time and men have spared one thing—this old cathedral church of St. Magnus in Kirkwall.

[Illustration: _In Kirkwall._

1. Earl’s Palace. 2. Bridge Street. 3. Albert Street. 4. Bishop’s Palace.]

On the ancient houses of the little borough and the winding slit of a street, the old red church still looks down benignly, and sometimes (of a Sunday, I think, especially) a little humorously. Over the gray roofs and the tree-tops in sheltered gardens, and the black mites of people passing on their business, its lustreless Gothic eyes see a wide expanse of land and a wider and brighter sweep of sea. The winding sounds and broadening bays join and divide and join again, through and through its island dominions. Backwards and forwards, twice a day, the flood tide pours from the open Atlantic, and each channel becomes an eastward flowing river; and then from the North Sea the ebb sets the races running to the west. Everywhere is the sight or the sound of the sea—rollers on the western cliffs, salt currents among the islands, quiet bays lapping the feet of heathery hills. Out of the two great oceans the wind blows like the blasts of an enormous bellows, and on the horizon the clouds are eternally gathering.

It is over this land of moor and water and vapour that the cathedral watches the people; and though from the difficulty of passing through so narrow a street it has never moved from the spot where it first arose, and has never seen, one would suppose, the greater part of its territories, yet it knows—none better—the stories and the spirit of all the islands. Crows and gulls cruise round the tower familiarly, and perhaps bring gossip; but eyes so long and narrow, and of so inhuman an anatomy, may very likely see through a hill or a heart for themselves.

The country is like a fleet at sea, and the old spirit of the people came from the deep. At first that spirit was only restless and fierce and free; in time it began to think, and at odd moments to be troubled, and they called it pious. Then it looked for a fitting house where it might live when it could no longer find a home in the people. So it built the red cathedral, and there it silently dwells to-day.

There is something in their church that none of the respectable townsfolk have the slightest suspicion of—something alive that vibrates to the cry of the wind and the breaking of the sea, and the little human events that happen in the crow-stepped houses.

On the wild autumn afternoons when the hard north-east wind is driving rain and sleet through the town, the old church begins to remember. The wind and the sleet coming over the sea stir the quick spirit so sharply that every angle is full of sighing noises. As the shortened day draws to an end, and lights begin to twinkle in the town, and the showers become less frequent, and the clouds are rolled up and gathered off the sky, then the people come out into the streets and see the early stars above the gable-ends and high cathedral tower. They think it cold, and walk quickly, but a personage of sandstone takes little note of the temperature. The cathedral merely feels refreshed.

When the clear, windy night draws in, the people go to rest, and one by one the lights are put out till only the stars and the lighthouses are left. Looking over a darkened town and an empty night, with the air moving fresh from Norway, the memories come thick upon the old church which shelters so many bones. It is like digging up the soil of those lands from which the sea has for centuries receded, and where the ribs of ships and the skeletons of sailors lie deep beneath the furrows of the plough.

Kirkwall must have been a strange little town before the cathedral’s memory begins, when there was no red tower above the narrow street and the little houses, in the days when Rognvald, the son of Kol, had vowed to dedicate a splendid minster to his uncle, St. Magnus, should he come by his own and call himself Earl of Orkney; and when the islanders waited to see what aid the blessed saint would furnish to this enterprise.

It is one of the island tragedies—the saga of how the evil Earl Hakon slew his cousin, Earl Magnus, outside the old church of Egilsay with that high round tower that you can see over Kirkwall Bay from the cathedral parapet, and how the grass grew greener where he fell, and miracles multiplied, and they made him a saint in time.

Though all these events happened before a stone of the cathedral was laid, they may help to give the meaning of its story, and on that account they are worth, perhaps, a rough telling here. Earl Hakon had died, and his son Paul ruled in his stead. He was a silent, brave, unlucky man, upright and honourable in his dealings, but the shadow of his father’s crime lay over the land. It brought old age and prosperity and repentance to the doer of the deed; and on his son the punishment fell.

[Illustration: _St. Magnus Cathedral, interior._

1. South aisle. 2. North aisle. 3. Nave.]

Rognvald claimed the half of the earldom. Paul answered that there was no need for long words, “For I will guard the Orkneys while God grants me life so to do.” And then the contest began. Rognvald attacked from north and south. Paul vanquished the southern fleet, and hurrying north drove his rival back to Norway; and so the winter came on, and the peace that in those days men kept in winter.

All had gone well with Paul, but his luck was to change with a little thing. He was keeping Yule with his friends and kinsmen, when upon a winter’s evening, a man, wet with the spray of the Pentland Firth, came out of the dusk and knocked upon the door. He was hardly the instrument, one would think, a departed saint would choose to build a cathedral with—a Viking with his sword ever loose in its sheath, and his lucky star obscured, coming here for refuge, from the ashes of his father and his home. He was known as Sweyn Asleifson (a name to be famous in the islands), and was welcomed for his family’s sake; they brought him in to the feast, and the drinking went on. In a little while there arose a quarrel over the cups; Sweyn killed his man, and fled into the night again. He was a landless outlaw this time, for the dead man had been high in favour, and the earl was stern. Meanwhile men went on drinking over the hall fires; but Paul’s luck had departed, and St. Magnus had a weapon in his hand. In the spring the war began again, and suddenly in the midst of it Earl Paul disappeared—his bodyguard cut down upon the beach, himself spirited clean away. Sweyn Asleifson had come for him, and carried him to a fate that was never more than rumoured. So Rognvald won the earldom, and the first stones of his church were laid. The saint had certainly struck for him.

That is the true story of the vow and the building of the cathedral, a tale too old for even the venerable church to remember. But all the long history of the seven centuries since it knows; and indeed it has played such a part in scene after scene and act after act, that a memory would have to be of some poorer stuff than hewed sandstone to forget a past so stirring. And who can be so far behind every scene as the house which during men’s lives listens to their prayers, and at last upon a day takes them in for ever?

When it first began to look down from its windows upon those men going about their business in the sunshine or the rain, it saw among the little creatures some that were well worth remembering, though there be few but the cathedral to remember them now. There was Rognvald himself, that cheerful, gallant earl who made poetry and war, and sailed to Jerusalem with all his chiefs and friends, fighting and rhyming all the way, and riding home across the length of Europe, and who, when he fell by an assassin’s hand, was laid at last beneath the pavement of this cathedral he had founded. And then, most memorable of all the great odallers who followed him in war and sat at his Yule feasts, there was the Viking, Sweyn Asleifson, he who kidnapped Paul, and afterwards became the lifelong and, on the whole, faithful friend of Rognvald, and the faithless enemy of almost every one else; the most daring, unscrupulous, famous, and—judging by the way he always obtained forgiveness when he needed it—the most fascinating man in all the northern countries. He was the luckiest, too, till the day he fell in an ambush in the streets of Dublin, exclaiming with his last breath, in most remarkable contrast to the tenor of his life: “Know this, all men, that I am one of the Saint Earl Rognvald’s bodyguard, and I now mean to put my trust in being where he is, with God.” May he rest in peace wherever his bones lie, even though his reformation came something late, the turbulent, terrible old Viking, whom the Saga writers called the last of that profession.

The generation who built it had passed away, when on a summer’s day, after it had weathered nearly a century of storm and shine, the cathedral saw the greatest sight it had yet beheld. Haco of Norway had come with his fleet to conquer the Western Isles of Scotland, the Norse kings’ old inheritance. The pointed windows watched ship after ship sail by with coloured sails and shining shields, bearing the Norsemen to their last battle in southern lands; and then the islands waited for the news that in those days was brought by the men who had made the story.

Month upon month went by; men wondered and rumours flew; the days grew shorter, and the gales came out upon all the seas. At last, when winter was well upon the islands, what were left of the battered ships began to struggle home. They brought back stories that the cathedral remembers, though six centuries have rolled them out of the memories of the people—tales of lee-shores and westerly gales, of anchors dragging under the Cumbraes, and Scottish knights charging down upon the beach where the Norwegian spears were ranked on the edge of the tide; then of more gales and whirlpools in the Pentland, until at length they carried their old sick king ashore, to die in the bishop’s palace at Kirkwall.

[Illustration: _St. Magnus Cathedral, exterior._

1. West doorway, nave. 2. East window. 3. Doorway, south transept. 4. Doorway, north aisle. 5. Doorway, south aisle.]

He lay for two months in that ancient building—now a roofless shell, standing just beyond the churchyard wall—his most faithful friends beside him, the restless Orkney wind without, and the voice of the Saga reader by the bed. First they read to him in Latin, till he grew too sick to follow the foreign words; and then in Norse, through the Sagas of the saints, and after of the kings. They had come down to his own father, Sverrir, and then, in the words of the old historian, “Near midnight Sverrir’s Saga was read through, and just as midnight was past Almighty God called King Hakon from this world’s life.” They buried him in the great red church that had stood sentinel over the sick-chamber; and as the race of Vikings died with Sweyn, so the roving, conquering kings of Norway passed away with Haco, and never again came south to trouble the seaboards.

The Orkneys, however, were not yet out of the current of affairs. They cut, indeed, but a small figure compared with the Orkney of the great Earl Thorfinn in the century before Rognvald founded his cathedral—he who owned nine earldoms in Scotland and all the Southern Isles, besides a great realm in Ireland. But there was still a bishop in the palace and an earl with powers of life and death in his dominion, and an armed following that counted for something in war; and the cathedral was still the church of a small country rather than of a little county. The sun cast the shadows of dignitaries in the winding street, and the bones they were framed of were laid in time beneath the flags of St. Magnus’s church. When one comes to think of it, the old cathedral must hold a varied collection of these, for here lie the high and the low of two races, and no man knows how many chance sojourners and travellers.

At last, upon a dark day for the islands, their era of semi-independence and Vikingism and Norse romance came to a most undignified end. A needy king of the north pledged them to Scotland for his daughter’s dowry, as a common man might pledge his watch. East to Norway was no longer the way to the motherland, and the open horizon meeting the clouds, the old highroad, led now to a foreign shore. Henceforth they belonged to the long coast with its pale mountain peaks far away over the cliffs, which had once, so far as the eye could see, belonged to them. It was a transaction intended for a season, but the season has never ran to its limit yet. Now, it is to be hoped, it never will; but for centuries it would have been better for the Orkneys if they had gone the way of some volcanic islet and sunk quietly below the gray North Sea.

One might think that, when they had ceased to be a half-way house between their sovereign and his neighbours of Europe, and were become instead a geographical term applied to the least accessible portion of their new lord’s dominions, their history and their troubles would soon have ceased, and the islanders been left to fish and reap late crops and try to keep out the winter weather. But there was no such good luck for many a day to come. Alas for themselves, they were too valuable an asset in the Scotch king’s treasury. Orkney too valuable! That collection of windy, treeless islands, where great ponds of rain-water stand through the fields for months together, and a strawberry that ripens is shown to one’s friends! The plain truth is that, measured by a Scotch standard of value in those days, it would have been hard to find a pocket not worth the picking. The rental of Orkney was more than twice that of the kingdom of Fife, and Fife, I suppose, was an El Dorado compared with most provinces of its impecunious country. So north they came, Scotch earls and bishops and younger sons, to make what they could before the pledge was redeemed. And to the old cathedral was flung the shame of standing as the symbol of oppression. It was not its fault, and every stone must have silently cried to Heaven for forgiveness. But a cathedral meant a bishop, and an Orkney bishop meant the refinement of roguery and exaction. When these prelates in their turns came to inhabit permanently their minster, and they could at last hear the voice of its spirit that loves the land it watches, demanding an account of their stewardship, what could they say? The old excuse—“We must live”? I can hardly think the church perceived the necessity.

That monument which the old sailors and fighters of the north had built, that they might link a better world with the rough and warring earth, had to stand immovable for century upon century, watching the trouble of their sons. It saw them make their stand at Summerdale in the old fashion, with sword and halbert and a battle-cry on their lips, and march back again to the town in a glimpse of triumph. But that quickly faded, and the weight of new laws and evil rulers gradually broke the high spirit entirely. It saw the proud odallers reduced to long-suffering “peerie lairds,” and all their power and romance and circumstance of state pass over to the foreigner, until after a time it was hard to believe that, some pages further back, there was a closed chapter of history which read quite differently from this.

Down below the parapet of the tower the narrow streets were full of the most splendid-looking people, all in steel and the Stewart arms. Earls Robert and Patrick of that royal name, each, through his scandalous life, made the island the home of a prince’s court; and out among the moors and the islands the old race wondered whose turn it should be for persecution next, and how long Heaven would let these things be.

The downfall of the Stewarts’ rule came at last, violently as was fit, but to the end they used the old church on behalf of the wrong. The tower was wrapped in the smoke of the rebels’ musketry when old Earl Patrick lay by the heels in Edinburgh awaiting his doom as a traitor, and his son held Kirkwall against what might, by comparison, be termed the law, and it was only at the point of the pike that they turned the last Stewart out of the sepulchre of St. Magnus.

Then the long windows watched the shadows of all manner of persons, who are well forgotten now, darken the prospect for a while, and pass away to let other clouds gather; and in all that time there cannot have been many whom a critical edifice can recall with pride.

The bishops were sent about their business, and the Solemn League and Covenant was solemnly sworn. The troopers of Cromwell stalked through the old pillars with their wide hats the firmer set on. The Covenant was unsworn, and the bishops came back and acquired emoluments for a little while longer, till at last they went altogether, and in good, sober Presbyterian fashion the awakened people set about purifying their temple. Poor old church! they did it thoroughly. Away went carving and stained glass, and ancient tombs and bones, and everything that the austere taste of Heaven is supposed by man to dislike. They made it clean with a kind of yellowish whitewash, and divided it by a sanitary deal screen impervious to draught. In this shameful guise the cathedral has watched the advent of quiet days and the slow healing of time. To-day the greatest clamour it hears is made by the rooks. No earl’s men or bishop’s men quarrel in the streets; no one either fears or harries the islanders; the history of Orkney is written and closed and laid upon the shelf. The hands of the clock move evenly round, and the seasons change by the almanac.

But there stands the old red church, silently remembering and arranging in their due perspective all these things remarkable and true. The worst of it is that it makes no comment that a mortal can understand, so that no one can say what a seasoned, well-mortared observer of seven centuries of affairs thinks of changing dynasties and creeds, and whether it is disposed to take them more seriously than so many moultings of feathers, and if one can retain any optimism through a course of whitewash and draught-proof screens.

It is pleasant to think, for the old minster’s sake, that it heeds the rubs of fortune very little, and regards material changes just as so many shifts of plumage. Its people are still flesh and blood, and its islands rock and turf and heather, and it will take more than pails and paint-brushes, and pledges and covenants to make them otherwise. The winter days are as bleak as ever, and the summer evenings as long and light, and the sun rises out of the North Sea among the flat green islands, and sinks in the Atlantic behind the western heather hills; and it is likely enough that from the height of the cathedral tower many other most serious events look surprisingly unimportant.

J. STORER CLOUSTON. (_“Macmillan’s Magazine.” By permission._)

[Illustration: _Kirkwall in winter._]

A ROAD IN ORCADY.

In southern lands—and most lands are southern to us—the road runs between fragrant hedgerows or under shady trees; but in Orcady trees and hedges are practically unknown. Yet the road lacks not its charm, for this is a world of compensations. If we never breathe the fragrance of the may or hear the whisper of the wind-stirred branches, we have, on the other hand, nothing to shut out from our eyes the wide expanse of land and sea or to hide the blue sky over us, no fallen timber after a gale to block our way and make of our progress an involuntary obstacle race, and no thorns to puncture our cycle tyres. The lover of the highway may miss here much of the bird-life that enlivens the roads of the south; but our road has a life and traffic of its own quite apart from the trickling stream of men and horses which flows fitfully along its white channel. Flowers and flies, birds and beasts, the road has something for each and all of them. Even by day they use it, but from dusk to dawn they claim it as their very own.

[Illustration: _By the Roadside—“Peerie Hooses.”_

1. Holm. 2. Harray. 3. Birsay. 4. Tankerness. 5. Orphir.]

I do not remember that Stevenson, who so loved the road, has written anywhere of its little life—of the birds and beasts, the shy living things, that haunt it. In the treeless isles of Orcady, at least, the furred and feathered creatures seem to think that man makes the road for their especial delectation. For all creatures of beach and bog, hill and meadow, it has its charms; and hence it is ever beat upon by soft, soundless feet and shadowed by swiftly moving wings, and many a little comedy or tragedy is played out upon its stage. We walk upon it in spring and summer through an air fragrant with the perfume of innumerable small, sweet flowers, with the music of birds and bees about us, and ever, under and behind all song, the voice of the great sea, full of indefinable mystery as of a half-remembered dream.

The engineer who makes the road unwittingly plans it in such fashion as to be of service to the folk of moor and marsh, of shore and furrow. In Orcady every road, sooner or later, leads to the sea. In former days the sea itself was the great highway, and therefore close to its shores are found the old kirks and kirkyards. For by sea men came to worship God, and by sea they were carried to their long home. The kirks and kirkyards being beside the sea, the road comes thither to them. It comes down also to the piers, the slips, and jetties, which play so important a part in the lives of the islanders. Thus the road passes within a few yards of the haunts of all the divers, swimmers, and waders that frequent our shores.

Also in making a road the aim of the man who plans it is to avoid, so far as possible, all ascents and descents. In carrying out this aim he raises the road on embankments where it passes through low and marshy grounds, and makes cuttings through the higher lands. Where it runs through such a cutting the roadside ditches catch and keep a little store of water in a dry season, and thither plover, snipe, redshanks, and dotterel bring their velvet-clad birdlings to drink. If the season be wet, the road raises above the marsh a comparatively dry platform, on which the birds may rest when not feeding, and the roadside dykes offer a shelter from wind and sun.

But our road draws feet and wings to it in many other ways. It passes now through cultivated fields, with dry stone dykes fencing it on either side; now it runs unfenced through the open moorland, and again along the very margin of the sea. Here it is bordered by marshes and there by a long reach of black peat-bog, and everywhere it woos with varied wiles the living things of earth and air. Before the dykes have seen many seasons they begin to deck themselves with velvet mosses, and to the miniature forests of moss come insects of the lesser sorts, flying and creeping things, red and brown and blue. In pursuit of these small deer come the spiders, which lurk in crevices of the walls and spread their cunning snares across the mouths of culverts where farm roads branch off from the highway. Long-legged water-skaters dart to and fro among the floating weeds on the surface of the stagnant ditches; and over these ditches the midges weave their fantastic dances on summer evenings. The litter of passing traffic brings hurrying, busy, burnished beetles, which find harbourage in the loosely piled banks of ditch scrapings that form the boundary between highway and moorland. Where the road, with its generous grassy margin, runs like a white ribbon with green borders through the brown moors, wild flowers that are choked or hidden in the heather spread themselves to the sunshine—primroses and daisies, clover red and white, milkwort and tormentil, hawkweed and violets, thyme and crowfoot: their very names read like a poem. The number of small wild flowers that grow in our roadside ditches and within reach of the road is amazing when one begins to reckon them. Here the steep grassy bank is gorgeous with rose-campion and with the purple and gold of the vetches, and all the air is sweet with the perfume of wild mustard, which with the pale yellow of its blossoms almost hides the green in that field of springing barley. This wet meadow, on either hand all aglow with the pink blossoms of the ragged robin, a little earlier in the year had its wide and shallow ditches glorified by the broad green leaves and exquisite feathery blooms of the bog-bean, while its drier grounds were starred with the pale cups of grass of Parnassus. In spring the vernal squills shone on yonder hillocks with a blue glory as of the sea in summer.

On this long flat stretch of peat-bog these are not untimely snowdrifts but nodding patches of cotton-grass. In autumn, when a strong wind blows from that quarter, all the road will be strewn with the silvery, silken down that makes so brave a show among the purple heather of the bog. Later still in the year the same bog will glow ruddy as with a perpetual sunset, when the long, coarse grass reddens. Passing this way on some gray afternoon the wayfarer will find it hard to believe that the “charmed sunset” has not suddenly shone out through the clouds “low adown in the red west.” And the peat-moss on which the road is built has other glories—green moss and moss as red as blood, fairy cups of silver lichen with scarlet rims, and long reaches of bog-asphodel, shining like cloth-of-gold and sweetening the winds with their faint, delicate perfume. Here, where our road runs on a firmer foundation, grow the wild willows, all low-growing and all adding a beauty to the year in their catkins. When the daisies have hardly ventured to thrust their heads into a cold world the catkins gleam in silky silver, changing as the days lengthen to yellow gold. Later on some of them are covered with an exquisite white down which floats their seeds about the land. The little burns which our road bridges ripple and chatter through miniature forests of ferns and meadow-sweet, the foxglove shakes its bells above the splendour of the gorse, and the yellow iris hides the young wild-duck that are making their way by ditch and brooklet to the sea. These are but a few of the flowers with which the road garlands and bedecks herself to welcome the little peoples who love her.

To the flowers come all day long in summer the humble-bees. These little reddish-yellow fellows, hot and angry-looking, have their byke or nest in some mossy bank or old turf dyke, to which they carry wax and honey for the fashioning of a round, irregular, dirty-looking comb. The chances are that they will be despoiled of their treasure by some errant herd-boy before July is half over. Their great cousins in black velvet striped with gold prefer to live solitary in some deserted mouse-hole; but they cannot, for all their swagger and fierce looks, save their honey from Boy the Devourer. Though there are no wasps in Orcady, the roadside blossoms have visitors other than the bees. Here come the white and brown butterflies, and those dainty little blue creatures whose wings are painted and eyed like a peacock’s tail. And at night moths, white, yellow, and gray, flit like ghosts above the sleeping flowers, or dance mysteriously in the dusk on silent wings.

Where the insects come, there follow the insect-eaters. On a June evening there are parts of the road where one may see kittiwakes and black-headed gulls hawking for moths. Wheatears and starlings, larks and pipits, and, more rarely, thrushes, blackbirds, and wrens, with an occasional stonechat, all come to prey on the insect life of the road. Swallows there are none in Orcady, but the ubiquitous sparrow is there. To his contented mind the road offers a continual feast. When the birds set up housekeeping in spring, many of them choose their nesting-places in the near neighbourhood of the road. It seems almost as if they argued that here, under the very eye of man, they run less risk of discovery than further afield, where he may expect to find their treasures. From crannies of the loosely-built walls that bound the road you may hear the hungry broods of starlings, sparrows, and wheatears chirping on every side as you pass in May. I have seen a nestful of young larks gape up with their foolish yellow throats from a tuft of grass on the very edge of a roadside ditch, and have found a grouse’s nest in the heather not fifty yards from the most man-frequented part of the road. Yellow-hammers, too, and other buntings often nest in the long grass by the ditchside. Here, in a hedge of whin or gorse which crosses the road at right angles, are the nests of the thrush, the blackbird, and the wren. If you drive along our road in spring you shall see the male pewit, in all the glory of his wedding garments, scraping, a few yards from the roadside, the shallow, circular hollow in which his young are to be hatched; and a little later you shall see his patient spouse look up at you fearlessly from her eggs, or even, if your passing be at noonday, you may watch her slip off the nest as her mate comes up behind to relieve her in her domestic duties. For these birds have learned that man on wheels is not to be feared, though man on foot is one of their most dreaded enemies.

In Orcady there are not many four-footed wild things, but those that dwell among us are drawn to the road as surely as the birds are. In the gloaming rabbits come down to the roadside clover where the bees have gathered honey all day. Great brown hares, too, come loping leisurely along the road—moving shadows that melt into the dusk at the least alarm. Hares always like to make their forms near a road of some sort, for it affords them a swift and ready means of flight when they are pursued. They must be hard pressed indeed before they will dive like rabbits into roadside drains or culverts, but these refuges are not to be despised when greyhound or lurcher is close upon their heels. Mice, voles, and rats find shelter in the banks of road-scrapings or in the walls and drain-mouths; and the sea-otter does not despise the road when he makes a nocturnal expedition inland. It is not long since a man who was early afoot on a summer morning met a pair of otters almost on the street of our sleeping island capital. Seals, of course, cannot use the road, but where it runs by the sea-marge their shining heads rise up from the water to watch the passers-by, and he who is abroad before dawn may find them on the beaches within a few yards of the roadway.

The deer, roe, foxes, badgers, stoats, weasels, wild-cats, and moles of Orcady are even as the snakes of Iceland. Tame cats ran wild, however, we do not lack, and they take their tithe from the road as surely as do the hawks and falcons. Neither snakes, lizards, nor frogs are found in the isles, but on a damp autumn evening the road is dotted with toads of all sizes, which sit gazing into infinity or hop clumsily from before the passing wheel.

In pursuit of beetles, mice, and small birds, hawks and owls come to the road. The kestrel of all hawks loves it the most. He sits upon the humming telegraph wires or hangs poised, like Mahomet’s coffin, in mid-air, ever watchful and ready to swoop down upon his prey. The same wires which give him a resting-place often furnish him with food, ready killed or disabled. When man first set up his posts along the road and threaded them with an endless wire, sad havoc was wrought among the birds. Plover—green and golden—snipe, redshanks, and grouse dashing across the road in the dusk, struck the fatal wires and fell dead or maimed by the wayside. I have seen a blackbird fly shrieking from a prowling cat, and strike the wire with such force that his head, cut clean off, dropped at my very feet. The older birds appear to have learned a lesson from the misfortunes of their fellows, but every autumn young birds, new to their wings, pay their tribute of victims to the wires. More especially is this the case with the plovers, and though the kestrel rarely touches so big a bird when it is whole and sound, he feasts upon their wounded.

The hen-harrier skims to and fro along the roadside ditches, but he is a wary and cautious fowl, and is never within gunshot of the road when a man comes down that way. The merlin, that beautiful miniature falcon, glides swift and low across the moors and meadows, flashes suddenly over the roadside dyke, and before the small birds have time to realize that their enemy is upon them, he is gone again—only a little puff of feathers floating slowly down the air showing where he struck his prey. The peregrine wheels high overhead, but is too proud and shy a bird to hunt upon man’s roads. Nor has the road any charm for the raven, who goes croaking hoarsely over it on his way from shore to hill. The little short-eared owls hide all day among the heather near our road, and come flapping up in the gloaming on noiseless wings to take their share of its good things. In the treeless islands the kestrel is not the only bird that sits upon the wires. There the starling sings his weird love song, mingling with his own harsh notes the calls of every other bird that the islands know; and the buntings chant their lugubrious and monotonous ditties there.

The telegraph wires are not the only mysterious works of man which have disturbed and interfered with the feathered life so near to and yet so far apart from his. What a mystery must he be to those fellow-creatures who watch him, with his continual scratching and patching of the breast of kindly Mother Earth! Not wholly does he yield the road to them between sunset and sunrise; but when he goes abroad in the dark it is often in the guise of a rumbling dragon with great eyes of flame. Once, to the writer’s knowledge, a gannet swooped down in valiant ignorance on such a horrid creature of the night. He flashed suddenly, white out of the darkness, into the circle of light of a doctor’s gig lamps. That bold bird his fellows saw no more; and one may fancy that with his disappearance a new terror was added to the fiery-eyed creatures that roam the roads by night. He died, though not without a fierce fight for his life; and his skin, cunningly filled out with wire and straw, stands under a glass case in his slayer’s home even unto this day.

It is in spring and summer that the road sets forth its choicest lures for its lovers, yet even in “winter and rough weather” it has its beauties for the seeing eye. The puddles and cart-ruts shine like dull silver when the clouds are heavy and gray overhead. When the rain cloud blows over and the sky clears, these same shallow pools and channels gleam with a cold, clear blue, more exquisite than that of the heavens they reflect; and at night the stars besprinkle them with diamonds. Again,—

“Autumnal frosts enchant the pool, And make the cart-ruts beautiful.”

“When daisies go”—and of all roadside blossoms they linger latest and reappear earliest (I have seen them lifting their modest crimson-tipped heads in December and opening their yellow eyes before the coltsfoot stars begin to shine)—but even when they are gone the gray stone dykes have still a glory of green moss, of gray and golden lichens.

When all the land is soaked and sodden with heavy rains, the road, where it climbs that low brown hill, will suddenly shine out across the intervening miles like a sword flung down among the heather.

When the winter rains have given place to the first snowfall of the year, go out early in the morning, before hoofs and wheels have blotted out the traces of the night, and you shall learn, as nothing else save long and close observation can teach you, how great is the nocturnal traffic of birds and beasts upon the road. Like fine lacework you shall find their footprints, to and fro, round and across, up the middle and down again. Hares and rabbits, rats and mice, gulls and plovers, thrushes and larks, water-hens and water-rails—these and many more have been busy here while you slept. And even now bright eyes are watching you, themselves unseen—those unsuspected eyes which are ever upon us as we follow the road on our daily round of duty or pleasure. Do they look on us with fear or wonder, with contempt or admiration, or with a mingling of all these feelings? That we can never know while the great barrier of silence stands between us and them. We blunder across their lives, doing them good and evil indiscriminately, but we understand them no more than they can understand us.

Now in winter, new birds come to our road. Great flocks of snow-buntings, circling and wheeling with marvellous precision, at one moment almost invisible—a dim, brown, moving mist—and the next flashing a thousand points of silver to the level rays of the wintry sun. Scores of greenfinches, which we never see in summer, rise from the road edges to circle a little way and settle again. The “spink spink” of the chaffinch, also unknown to us in summer, may now be heard; fieldfares spring chuckling through the air far overhead, and red-winged thrushes hop among the stubbles. Down this shallow pass between the low hills come in the gloaming the lines of the wild swans, flying from the upland lochs to the sea. Their trumpet call rings far through the frosty air, and as we hear them there stir within us vague thoughts and dreams of the white north whence they came. As if answering the thought, the wet road shines with a new, faint, unearthly light, as flickering up the northern sky come the pale shifting streamers of the aurora borealis.

Of the human life that pulses intermittently along our road there is not space now to write. Boy and girl, youth and maiden, man and woman, day by day, year in, year out, they follow the winding line, till for each in turn the day comes when it leads them to the kirkyard or to the sea, and the roads of Orcady know them no more.

DUNCAN J. ROBERTSON. (_“Longman’s Magazine.” By permission._)

[Illustration: _Kirkwall Pier—a midnight photograph._]

A LOCH IN ORCADY.

It is one among many, in an island where the lochs lie scattered like fragments of the sky fallen among the hills—one among many, and one of the least known of them all. On it the fisherman casts no fly, or casts it in vain, for fish have never prospered in its waters. It can never be an ideal trout loch, for it is not fed, like its sister lochs, by the innumerable small burns that channel our low hills. One surface-fed streamlet indeed flows into it, a streamlet hardly worthy of the courtesy-title it bears; but for the most part its waters are drawn from the secret sources of the springs.

Its placid surface mirrors no hillsides purple with heather and green with waving fern, but from its margin the land rolls back in low billows, squared with fields that year by year darken under the plough and smile again in due season with the homely crops of the isles. Yet the little loch has charms of its own for those who know it—charms that its wilder and more romantic sisters cannot boast. Not a quarter of a mile from its western shore the Atlantic billows boom and thunder upon the cliffs, or roll in, great and green, to burst and spread in a whirling smother of foam upon the sands; and the quiet of the inland water is thrice welcome to eye and ear when these are dazzled and wearied by the ceaseless turmoil and tumult of the sea.

The valley in which lies the loch runs down to a deeply curved bay, swept and scoured out by the sea, where there is a breach in the great cliff rampart that guards our island’s western coast. Up this valley the wind has, through the ages, heaped a huge sandhill which rolls and ripples under its greensward down to the lip of the bay. Between the sand and the clay lies the loch, narrowed by the rising slope of sand that forms its northern bank.

At its eastern end is the germ of a village. A little shop, a post office, the long, low building which was a school before these days of school boards—these and a few cottages stand between the loch and the sunrise. Close to the water’s edge runs the highroad leading from a steep little seaport town, away through the quiet country, luring men to the sea and the great world of adventure beyond it. For with us isles-folk the tune that sings itself in the dreams of youth is not “Over the _hills_,” but “Over the _seas_ and far away.”

Along the northern shore, as close as may be to the water, runs another road—a road that leads to the kirk and the kirkyaird, and, incidentally, to the laird’s house. Yet because men, who made the road, must preserve an apparent sobriety and straightness of purpose, while Nature, who laid the line between land and water, need care nothing for her reputation, there runs between the road and the water a grassy margin. Here it is of the narrowest, and there it spreads out into miniature capes and peninsulas, where teal love to rest in the early morning, and rabbits come down to nibble the juicy water-plants long before man is afoot.

[Illustration: _Some “Big Hooses.”—I._

1. Skaill, Sandwick. 2. Binscarth. 3. Hall of Tankerness. 4. Westness, Rousay. 5. Holodyke, Harray.]

On the other side of the road the sandbank rises steep and green, a cliff of sandy sward sometimes attaining a height of full twenty feet. There the rabbits have their outposts. The green turf is splotched with the scattered sand from their burrows, and their white tails bob and flutter among the mounds they have made.

This is but the flank of the sandhill. Farther to the west, where man has never ploughed the sand, the loch is bounded by low, green links which swarm with rabbits. Bunkers and hazards there are to delight the soul of the golfer; yet hither that lover of links comes but seldom. The rabbits and the birds have it all to themselves, save where some little fields are set amid the links, and one or two houses of men.

Out of the turf of the bank projects a great stone, gray with lichen, and looking like the broken and petrified shaft of a mighty spear flung by one of the giants who of old waged a titanic warfare from isle to isle. Yet if a vague legend be true, the great stone is rather some bewitched living creature waiting the breaking of spells; for, so they say, there is a certain night in each year when it leaves its sandy bed and goes down to quench its thirst in the waters of the loch.

Yet the birds do not fear it. The wheatear jerks and bobs upon its topmost edge as we gaze and wonder how and when he came hither. Then with a flirt of his tail he is off to repeat his cheerful, tuneless call upon the nearest mound.

At its western end the loch widens and is divided into two little bays, a bay of sand and a bay of mud. In the more northerly of these bays there is being fought a long skirmish in the great, slow, endless war between land and water; and now victory leans towards the land, for the sand, blowing up day by day from the sea, settles here in the shallow water and drives it back.

Twenty years ago, between the loch’s edge and the links lay a field of shining yellow sand, to which the golden plover were wont to come down in great flocks of an autumn evening. Once the sand had established itself, the advance of grass and flowers began. Pushing forward a vanguard of reeds and rushes, they pursued their steady march down to the water’s edge; and now, where the sands were, is a grassy meadow, starred in its season with the pale blooms of the grass of Parnassus, its landward side meshed by rabbit tracks, the tiny rivulets winding through it beset with scented beds of wild peppermint and haunted by snipe, and its outer margin giving cover to duck and coots, to water-hens and dabchicks.

There are little islets beyond the meadow, some grass-grown, some still of bare sand, and a little sandy beach at one place, where redshanks and ringed plover run in the shallows. Thither too come the dunlin and the sandpiper, and rarer birds—knots and ruffs, greenshanks with their triple call, and whimbrels, the “summer whaups” of the isles-folk. Here you may wade, knee-deep in clear water, to the very outer edge of the reeds and find all the way a footing on hard sand. And the reeds will yield their secrets. On this heaped pyramid the little grebe is hatching her eggs, and that reedy platform is a coot’s nest. Or at a later season you may chance, if the Fates be kind, to catch a glimpse of scurrying dusky ducklings vanishing among the green stems, while their mother flutters off, making-believe to have a broken wing.

A wide, shallow ditch divides the marsh from the fields on the south, and where the ditch ends an old stone wall begins, marches a little way towards the water, and then breaks off to run round the bay of mud, and so up along the south shore of the loch. Where it turns off, this wall seems at one time to have meditated an advance into the water, and in its retreat has left a tumbled straggle of stones which runs out along a little cape. Here at twilight come great gray herons, shouting hoarsely, to sit gazing into the waters. Here, too, curlews are wont to gather, keeping well out of gunshot from wall or ditch.

The southern bay—the bay of mud—holds a great reed-bed, where shelter many water-fowl. The swans breed there, with coot and water-hen and grebe. There, too, come the wild duck after their kind, mallard and teal, pochard and scaup, golden-eye and merganser. But the bottom there is muddy and treacherous, and it is a very doubtful pleasure to follow the wild-fowl through their haunts in the reeds. About the inner margin of the reed-bed, among the grassy tussocks and muddy pools, is a favourite feeding-ground for snipe. There, too, the pewits gather, and gulls of many kinds, while redshanks rise screaming from the water’s edge.

Out in the middle of the loch is a small islet or holm. This islet is nested on every summer by a colony of black-headed gulls. There, too, the terns breed, and there the great white-breasted cormorants, which come up after the eels of the loch, sit with black wings widespread in the sunlight. The circling, screaming cloud of gulls which hovers over the islet is a sight never to be forgotten, and the very thought of the sound of their calling brings back those wonderful summer days when all the world was young, and a brighter sun shone in a bluer sky.

There are men scattered here and there about the world who look back to the loch and its environs as to an earthly paradise; and ever in their dreams the loch, the links, the shore are but a beloved and beautiful background to one central figure—a boy with a gun. The seasons may change and mingle, as seasons do in dreams, but the boy treads again the familiar places, and renews his old disappointments and triumphs. Each man sees different pictures and a different boy, but a boy with a gun is always there.

It is strange to think that there may be other boys to-day who hold the loch and all its pleasant places in fee as we hold it by the tenure of our memories. Stranger still to think of all the vanished boys, back through the years, the generations, the centuries, who have loved our little loch, hunted by its margins, and dreamed strange dreams among the sunny hollows of the links. Could they return to-day, islesman born, Norseman, Pict, or Scot, they would find many changes; for man is ever busy improving and altering the face of his kindly Mother Earth: yet the loch they would see but little changed.

The waters shine as of old under the same sunlight, or ruffle into miniature white-capped billows with the autumn winds, and by night they mirror the unchanging stars. The splendour of the sandhills in summer, when they robe themselves like kings with the purple and gold of crowfoot and thyme; the hot scent of wild peppermint crushed under foot; the trumpet call of the wild swans ringing through the frosty air on winter nights; the pipings and flutings of the water-fowl among the summer reeds; the screaming of falcons and croaking of ravens from the cliffs; and overhead, from dawn to dusk, in the long days of the northern summer, the myriad music of the larks;—all these things they would find unchanged. And though the little fences and fields, the roads, the byres and barns of men have changed the nearer scene, yet man has not altered the “beloved outline of familiar hills,” nor silenced the deep music of the eternal sea.

DUNCAN J. ROBERTSON. (_“Longman’s Magazine.” By permission._)

[Illustration]

AMONG THE KELPERS.

In the end of March and the beginning of April, when the isles rise brown from a steel-gray, wind-ruffled sea, their bare unloveliness is veiled by pale blue smoke-drifts, which cast over the low, sloping shores a certain charm of remoteness and of mystery. Later in the year, when the summer seas are only less blue than the skies above them, and every island shines like an emerald, white jets and spirals as from many altars rise round all the shores. For spring and summer are the kelper’s seasons, and long, dry days, which scorch and wither the young crops, are welcome to the crofter who has secured a good stock of “tangles” in winter and a big share in a “brook of ware,” now that “burning weather” has come.

Until recently no kelp was burned after Lammas—that is, August 2—but of late years, when the season has been dry, the fires have been burned even so late as October.

The kelper’s year may be reckoned from mid-November. Then he is paid for his work in the year that is ended. Then the gales sweep up from north or west, tearing from its deep sea-bed the red-ware, of which the long supple stems are known to the islesmen as “tangles.” Should the wind freshen to a gale during the night, the diligent kelper is up and out before the first glimmer of dawn. Buffeted by the wind and lashed by the stinging spray, he peers through the darkness, watching for those shadows against the white surf of the breaking waves which he knows to be rolling masses of seaweed and wrack. He is armed with a “pick,” an implement resembling a very strong hayfork, but with the prongs set, like those of a rake, at right angles to the handle. With this pick, struggling often mid-thigh deep in the rushing waters, he grapples the tumbling seaweed and drags it up the beach, out of reach of the waves. For the wind may change, and the “brook,” as he calls a drift of weed, if not secured at once, may be carried out to sea again, or even worse, to some other strand where it will be lost to him. Of course, the winds and waves often do this work alone, and pile the tangles in huge, glittering rolls along the beaches.

When the brook is fairly on the strand, the work of the kelper is only begun. He has to carry the tangles from the beach to the seabanks above, in carts where that is possible, and where no carts can pass, then laboriously on hand-barrows. I know of one strand on which the great gale of November 1893 landed a brook of tangles which kept the kelpers busy for three months. Once on the banks, the tangles are stacked in great heaps on “steiths,” or foundations built of sea-rounded stones arranged in such fashion as to give free ingress to the air. There they lie till spring, when by the action of wind and sun they have become hard, dry, and wrinkled—brands ready for the burning.

[Illustration: _Some “Big Hooses.”—II._

1. Trumbland, Rousay. 2. Graemeshall, Holm. 3. Melsetter. 4. Balfour Castle. 5. Smoogro, Orphir.]

Only the tangles can be dried in winter; but the softer parts—the foliage, one may call it—of the red-ware is not lost, but goes to manure the fields, and until a sufficient quantity has been obtained for that purpose none is made into kelp.

Each proprietor in the islands has right, generally under a charter from the Crown, to the weed cast up on his shores. Each ware-strand, or beach where drift-weed comes to land, is set apart for a certain number of tenants on the estate to which it belongs, and each brook of ware as it comes ashore is divided among these tenants, usually in proportion to their rents. The general custom is, that it is decided by lot from which portion of the brook each man shall draw his share. The middle is generally considered the best part, as there the weed is in its greatest bulk, and less rolled and beaten by the sea than at the ends; but it may happen that one end is near the only part of the beach where the ware can be carried up, and then the man who draws his lot there is saved much labour.

The sharing of the ware is a fertile seed of dispute and an inexhaustible source of quarrel. The “kelp grieve,” or overseer who acts for the proprietor, generally settles all disputes; and each kelper, with the aid of his family, carries up his share of the brook, and spreads it on the drying-greens. These are most frequently links that know not cleek or driver, and upon them in the early morning the ware is spread, as thinly as may be, to be dried on the short, crisp grass by sun and wind.

To the man whose daily life is built about with stone and lime, the summer work of the kelpers shines tempting as the waters to Tantalus. He thinks not of that kelper in winter, plunging and struggling with the slippery tangles amid the turmoil of the surf, but dreams only of quiet summer days and the gray glimmer of sunlit waters seen through a veil of drifting smoke.

[Illustration: _Kelp-burning._]

The links roll down in long, green billows from the ruins of an old feudal castle, where the brown rabbit is the door-ward, and in whose towers the starling nests unscared—roll down to a little bay, where the long waves of the Atlantic come up unceasingly, curving in great, green arches, before they break in thunder of white foam on the brown rocks and yellow sand. Where the grass is thin and scant the sand shines through, and this makes a bad drying-green, as kelp is of less value when mixed with sand. But here is a short, close turf, nibbled upon by rabbits, a racing-ground for lambs, where the thrift or sea-pink meets the meadow-clover, and thyme and crowfoot break in ripples of purple and gold to sweeten all the summer air.

Than this a better drying-green cannot be found. On one side of the bay a long stretch of flat rocks runs down from the grass to the sea, and they too are utilized, when tides allow, to dry the seaweed. Here, in May and June, the whole air tingles with the song of larks innumerable. Long before sunrise, before the last stars have faded in the west, they are up, weaving a magical garment of song over all the green land. All day and far into the dim twilight that is our northern night they sing without ceasing. Larks are everywhere. In that tuft of grass at our feet is a nest with four of the dusky-brown eggs which hold next year’s music. There, in the ditch by the roadside, is another nest, from which the featherless young raise feeble necks to gape for food, showing their yellow tongues with the three black spots, which children here are told will appear on the tongue of that child who takes the laverock’s nest. Again, a fledgeling, speckled like a toad, rises suddenly from the clover and flies a few yards, while its anxious parents circle close overhead with little tremulous bursts of song, or flutter with trailing wing along the grass.

That pretence of a broken wing, which now seems to be an instinct, must surely at first have been arrived at by a process of reasoning. There must have been long since a broken wing, and a boy, or a dog, or a snake to chase the fluttering sufferer, and some wise observer among the mother-birds of that forgotten day to see and make a note of the chase, and with the heart-leap of a happy inspiration to find in it a new method of protecting her eggs and tender young, and to hand down the lesson she learned to our blithesome bird of the wilderness.

But this summer world, so thrilled with lark music, is not held by the lark alone in fee. From every dry-stone wall young starlings are calling, “Chirr! chirr! chirr!” and the old birds hurry to and fro between their nests and the brown fields, soon to wave with oats and bere, where they gather the insects and grubs their younglings love. Their bronze feathers gleam in the sunshine as they pass, and at their harsh note of warning as they see strangers near their homes the tumult of the young birds among the stones is instantly hushed. The farmer owes these cheerful and busy birds a heavy debt of gratitude, as the number of his insect enemies which they destroy is incalculable.

On the smooth turf the dried ware is piled in conical heaps, like giant molehills, to preserve it from the heavy night dews and from possible rain, and among the brown hillocks the wheatear bobs up and down, flirting his tail and repeating his cheerful “Tchk! tchk! chek-o! chek-o!” At times the rapture of summer and of his love inspire him with a vain desire of song. Up he goes, as if he were in very deed the skylark he takes as his model, uttering harsh and unmelodious notes—a feeble travesty of the golden rain of song that falls from the blue above him. But his flight extends upwards only a yard or two, and he sinks down again, chuckling to himself, as pleased with his song as any minor poet.

As the day wears down to afternoon the corncrakes begin to call from the young grass, and all night long they answer each other from field to field. Speak of them to the kelpers, and everywhere one hears the same story of their hibernation in old walls. That landrails migrate has been proved beyond question, but equally beyond question does it seem that some few sleep out the winter here. Any kelper will tell how he, or if not he himself then some one of his neighbours, once in winter found a corncrake in some old dyke, to all appearance dead. He carried it home, and, laying it before the fire, watched the death-like trance slowly melt into life and motion.

As to the winter sleep I can only speak at second-hand; but I have seen the birds in summer run like rats into the dry-stone dykes with which our crofters so love to encumber and adorn their land. That these dykes can be meant only for ornament is evident to the most casual observer in this land where ponies, cows, sheep, ay, and the very geese, are ofttimes tethered by the leg.

Yet if the dykes serve no other purpose, they provide nesting-places for the starling and the wheatear, for the rock-pipit and the sparrow, which save the crops of the crofter from destruction by grub and fly. Mice also shelter in them, and rats in those islands where rats are found. In the happy isle of which I write no rat can live. They come ashore time and again from vessels touching at the little pier near the village, but where they go or what fate awaits them none can tell—only this, that they are seen no more on the green lap of the world.

But we have left the ware too long in the sun. Should rain come, the kelper sees much of his profit melt away, for the salt which it causes to crystallize on the dried weed wastes, and what is left makes inferior kelp. All along the edges of the drying-greens are the burning pits or kilns—hollows for all the world like huge plovers’ nests in shape, lined with flat blue stones from the beach. They are about two feet deep and some five feet in diameter.

When the ware is ready to be burned a smouldering peat or a handful of lighted straw is laid in the bottom of the pit. Over this dry ware is piled, slowly at first till the fire catches, and ever more rapidly as the red core of smouldering flame waxes.

Sometimes ware and tangles are burned separately, but more frequently the kelper burns them together. The tangles make the stronger and better kelp. The pit is filled, and the ware or tangles are piled on till the mass rises two feet or more above the level of the earth. Then for six or eight hours it must be carefully watched and tended, and ever new fuel piled on to prevent a burst of flame. When tangles are being burnt alone, the kelper finishes off his pit with dried ware, as otherwise the tougher knots and lumps of the latest burned tangles would not be thoroughly consumed.

Each pit holds about half a ton, and takes the best part of a summer day to burn, the actual time depending on the state of the wind and the condition of the weed. When at last it smoulders low, it is “raked” before being left to cool. One man takes a spade with a very small blade and a handle fully seven feet long, the lower half being of iron; two other workers, as often women as men, have “rakes,” implements not unlike a rough caricature of a golfer’s iron, but with handles as long as that of the spade. With these rakes the kelp is mixed and smoothed, while the spadesman turns it up from the bottom of the pit. Hard work it is and hot, great jets of flame shooting out under the spade from what looks like gray crumbling earth mingled with black ashes and white quartz; for the kelp assumes so many colours and forms that to describe it accurately were impossible. As the kelper turns and tosses the glowing mass on a warm June evening, he knows he has come near the end of that labour which began in the gray winter dawn, when the rolls of red-weed lashed about him amid the roaring backwash of the waves.

When the kelp has been sufficiently mixed, the pit is levelled and smoothed over, all the outlying ashes are swept in with a handful of dry ware, and it is left to cool and harden. Then, as the kelpers turn homewards, the white sea fog creeps up by the rocks where all day long the kelp smoke drifted.

Such is the work of the kelper, and such the places of his toil. An easy and a pleasant life it is compared to that of the men who labour in the bowels of the earth or in the great manufactories of smoke-darkened cities. He has the green turf under his foot and the clear sky over him, the sea makes music for him unceasingly, and the salt winds bring him health and strength. The furred and feathered folks share his land with him, and gather their harvest on the same shores. As he goes to his work in the morning, through the silver mists of dawn, a flock of blue rock-doves with great clatter of wings flash off through the clear air. The redshank pipes shrilly at him from the copestone of the nearest wall, and over the ploughed fields where their precious eggs are lying the pewits wheel and scream. “Pewit-weet! pee-weet!”—their note has in it for the isles folk, to whom the cuckoo is but a name, the very voice of spring and hope and love. The ringed plover stands motionless on his three-toed yellow feet, calling with his sweet, low note, and invisible save to the keenest eye until he makes a little run and betrays himself. Linnets swing and sing on the swaying thistles and among the heather. On the blue waters of the bay a little fleet of eider ducks is afloat, and their curious, hoarse, barking chuckle rolls up over the waters. Perhaps a seal raises his round head, shining like a bottle, and gazes with mild eyes at the men upon the beaches; while overhead gulls and terns swing past, cleaving the strong air with careless wing. Far out to sea the white gannets hawk to and fro. Suddenly one poises in mid-air for a moment, then drops like a stone into the water, a fountain of white spray flashing up in the sunlight as he disappears. Your kelper will tell you how in his younger days he caught the solan geese by means of a herring fastened to a board and sunk a few inches below the surface of the water. The bird sees the fish, poises, and swoops down only to drive his mighty bill through the board and break his neck.

Nearer shore than the gannets the kittiwakes are fishing, when suddenly there glides among them a dusky skua, who forces the luckiest fisher to drop his spoil, which the ravager catches in mid-air and bears off. A true pirate of the air is the skua, and reminds me always of those low, dark feluccas so dreadful and so dear to the sailor on the high seas of romance. Far up in the blue ether a peregrine falcon sweeps round, circling wide on motionless, outspread wings, or a raven goes croaking from the cliffs to seek a prey, as he may have done for years unnumbered. If the tradition of his longevity may be believed, that dark corbie who flies croaking over the kelpers toiling in the morning sunlight, and sees the white smoke rise from their harmless kilns—what fires may he not have seen upon these beaches, and what strange smoke of sacrifice go up from forgotten altars to the unchanging heavens? Give him even a shorter lease of life than that which tradition assigns him, and still he may remember the blazing beacons leap up to carry from isle to isle a warning of the coming of Norse invaders. Allow him only two short centuries, and yet he must have watched the smoke of many a burning homestead in the days when the followers of the “Wee, wee German Lairdie” avenged their private wrongs in the name of their king. The older men among the kelpers still tell tales of the Jacobite lairds who lay hid like conies in the clefts of the rocks till these calamities were overpast.

The old stories—the folk-tales of the isles—linger fragmentary among the kelping people. One may hear from them how all the fairies were seen to leave some island riding on tangles, and how they all went down in the windy firth, never to be seen again of mortals. Here is a man, bowed and crippled by rheumatism, who will tell how he was shot in the back by a “hill-ane” when ploughing. He saw not his assailant, but only the shadow of him on the earth. Another old man remembers having his side hurt as a boy, and going to a “wise woman” to be cured. She told him he had been “forespoken”—that is, bewitched—by a woman then dead, and made him drink water mixed with earth from the “fore-speaker’s” grave. She then put a hoop covered with a sheep’s skin on his head, a basin of water on that, and poured melted lead through the head of a key into the water, giving the patient a piece of the lead in the form of a heart as a charm. The cure wrought by this modern Norna was not, however, effectual.

There are many quaint and even beautiful turns of speech among these hard-working crofters. Their faces shine on my memory red like setting suns through the white reek of the kelp pits. Here is one whose fathers fled from Perthshire after “the ’45,” and who thinks that some day he would like to go back to see the old place again—the “old place” which none of his have looked upon for one hundred and forty years! He toils night and day in summer cultivating his croft, fishing for lobsters, and making kelp. His rent is perhaps seven or eight pounds. Books, you would think, must be unknown to him; yet he will tell you he has “always been a great reader of Sir Walter Scott’s works,” and under the spell of that mighty wizard his hard life has budded and wreathed itself with romance.

At the next pit is a man of a very different type. Quiet and slow, this man has led an honest life, with an eye ever to the main chance. Pressed once for an answer to some question important to the settling of a kelp dispute, after vain attempts at evasion, he burst out, “Gie me time, Mr. Blank, to wind up me mind.”

Across the bay the pits are watched by an old bachelor—a _rara avis_ among the kelpers—a little, clean-shaven, mouse-like man, who has “money in the bank.” He holds a croft where his ancestors have dwelt longer than the memory of man extends. The peat fire smouldering on his hearth has, to his certain knowledge, burned unquenched for two hundred years. How much longer ago it was kindled tradition recordeth not. Every night his last work is to “rest” that precious fire, and every morning it claims his earliest care. All his life he has toiled, gathering a harvest both from land and sea, and a harvest of content and happiness as well, such as few crofters know how to reap. “When I come oot on a fine simmer morning at four o’clock wi’ never anither reek but me ain, I’m laird o’ a’ the land as far as I can see.” He has the secret of the lordship of the eye, which can give to a penniless man more profit of the pleasant earth than to the greatest lord of land among them all.

Look at this fellow, gaunt, black, and shaggy; he might be one of _Punch’s_ Scotch elders. Asked if he remembered some event of thirty years ago—“No, sir,” he said. “Ye see, I wasna at hame then; I was divin’ in the face o’ the sea for a livin’.” He had been a fisherman, and quite naturally chose to say so in this poetic phrase.

These are only a few from among the many typical kelpers whose friendship I am proud to own. But if the types among them are many and various, in one thing they are all alike—their capacity for hard work. That work does not cease with the smoothing over of the smouldering pits. When the kelp has cooled it is broken up and lifted out of the pit in great lumps which look like gray slag, with streaks of white, blue, and brown running through it. Should it be exposed to rain its quality is much deteriorated, and to avoid this danger storehouses are built by the lairds, to which the kelp is carted. The kelp grieve weighs each man’s quantity as it is brought in, and he is paid a fixed sum per ton. When a sufficient quantity is gathered in the store a vessel is chartered, and where there is a pier the kelp is carted alongside. In islands where there is no pier it must be taken off in small boats. The kelpers themselves provide the carriage. Then the sails are spread, and the produce of the year’s work is carried off to chemical works far over sea, where, by processes unknown to me, iodine is extracted from it. The kelper receives about two pounds ten shillings for each ton of kelp he manufactures, and the importance and benefit of the industry to these crofters cannot be overestimated. I have known a man paying a rent of eight pounds receive thirty-four pounds for his kelp in one year. Nor is the actual price he receives the only benefit the crofter derives from kelp. Were it not for the share of the profit falling to the laird, he too often could not, in these days, afford to assist his tenants in improving either their houses or their land. On the whole, then, the kelper’s lot is not an unhappy one. His work lies in pleasant places, and it is eminently healthy, and his days, as a rule, are long in the land and on the sea.

DUNCAN J. ROBERTSON. (_“Longman’s Magazine.” By permission._)

A WHALE-HUNT IN ORKNEY.

“Whales in the bay so soon in the season!” exclaimed the clergyman, starting to his feet. “Come away,” he continued, “you have yet another day before you; we imitate the great of old, who entertained their guests with tournaments.”

The manse garden commanded a fine view of Mill Bay, and on rushing out into the open air we saw a long dark line of boats, some with sails and some with oars, stretching across the blue waters of the broad voe, upwards of a mile from the shore. The practised eye of my host caught the gleam of dorsal fins in front of the boats, and we immediately hurried down to the beach, scarcely drawing breath till we stood on the bank above the sands of Mill Bay. The inmates of the neighbouring cottages had already assembled in eager groups on the grassy downs, and other islanders still came flocking from remoter farms and cabins to the shore. Several of the men were armed with harpoons, while farm lads flourished over their shoulders formidable three-pronged “graips” and long-hafted hayforks.

Many of the matrons had their heads encased in woollen “buities,” and this peculiar headdress imparted a singular picturesqueness to the excited groups on the sea-bank. Other boats with skilled hands on board put off from various points along the shore, and the fleet of small craft in the bay was rapidly increased by the arrival of fresh yawls. The crowd of urchins on the beach, who “thee’d” and “thou’d” each other like little Quakers in the Orcadian vernacular, cheered lustily as boat after boat hove in view round the headlands, swelling the fleet of whalers.

The line of boats was now little more than a quarter of a mile from the beach. The bottle-nosed or ca’ing whales, showing their snouts and dorsal fins at intervals, seemed to advance slowly, throwing out skirmishers and cautiously feeling their way. As the beach was smooth and sandy, with a gentle slope, the boatmen in pursuit were endeavouring to drive the “school” into the shallows, where harpoons, hayforks, and other weapons could be used to advantage.

The excitement of the spectators on land increased as the long line of the sea-monsters drew closer inshore. From the boats there came wafted across the water the sound of beating pitchers and rattling rowlocks, and the hoarse chorus of shouting voices. This babel of noises, which the water mellowed into a wild war-chant with cymbal accompaniment, was meant to scare the “school” and hasten the stranding of the whales. But an incident occurred that changed the promising aspect of affairs, turned the tide of battle, and gave new animation to the scene.

Eager to participate in the expected slaughter, two or three farm lads, whose movements had escaped notice, suddenly shot off from the shore in a skiff rowing right in front of the advancing line. The glitter and splash of oars alarmed the leaders, and the entire “school,” seized with a sudden panic, wheeled round and dashed at headlong speed into the line of pursuing boats.

A shout rose from the shore as the flash of tail-fins, the heaving of the boats, and the rapid strokes of the boatmen showed all too plainly the escape of the whales, and the success of their victorious charge. Away beyond the broken line of the fleet they plunged in wild stampede, striking the blue waters into spangles of silver foam. Arches of spray, blown into the air at wide distances apart, served to indicate the size of the “school” and the speed of the fugitives.

“Whew!” exclaimed my reverend friend, “that was a gallant charge, and deserved to succeed; but I hope our brave lads will yet put salt upon their tails. The boatmen have toiled hard for their share of the fish, and great would be the pity if the whales made right off to the open sea. It is not every day that a ‘drave’ a hundred strong visits our shores, and there they go round the head of Odness in full career.”

A commotion among the crowd at a short distance along the beach here arrested our attention. The exciting spectacle of the grand charge and wild flight of the whales had so absorbed our gaze that we failed to notice a mishap which was fortunately more ludicrous than alarming. The three youths who foolishly rowed off from the shore and caused the stampede had suffered for their rashness by getting their skiff capsized when the sea-monsters wheeled round to the charge. On gaining the outskirts of the crowd, we found the three luckless whale-hunters already beached. Bonnetless, dripping, and disconsolate, they were the objects of mirth to some, of commiseration to others.

At last they made off, and we immediately set out in the direction of Odness to catch a sight of the whales, which had quite disappeared from the bay. The boats had turned in pursuit when the “school” escaped, and they were now making all haste to double the headland. On gaining the top of the cliffs, we were glad to observe that the whales, recovered from their fright, drifted leisurely along the coast, giving way at times to eccentric gambols.

“All right!” cried my friend, handing me back my binocular; “they are coasting away famously round Lamb Head, and they are almost certain to take a snooze in Rousholm Bay, which is the best whale-trap I know in Orkney. Let us sit down here on the top of the cliffs till the boats come abreast, and then we shall take a nearer way to Rousholm than following the coast.”

The summit of the rocks, softly carpeted with grass, moss, and wild flowers, afforded a pleasant resting-place, and commanded a picturesque prospect. To eastward there was a wide expanse of sea, stretching away without a break to the Norwegian fiords. The whale-hunting fleet, composed of all varieties of small craft, was soon well abreast of our resting-place. A fine and favourable breeze had sprung up, and fishing-yawls, with their brown sails outspread, coasted briskly along. The rearguard of the fleet consisted of row-boats manned by patient and determined boatmen, who pulled hard at the oars in the prospect of winning some share of the spoil. We remained a short time on the moss-crowned cliffs gazing on the animated scene, and listening to the voices of the boatmen, the plash of the waves below, and the plaint of restless sea-birds. On leaving our lair we dropped down upon a neighbouring farmhouse, where a couple of “shelties” were placed at our disposal, and away we trotted along field-paths and rough tracks to the head of Rousholm Bay, on the south side of the island. From all the cottages and farms in the district the islanders were flocking to the shore of the bay, and we thus had good hope that a portion of the school at least had run blindfold into the whale-trap of Rousholm. On nearing the shore we were delighted to find that our hope was fulfilled. A large detachment of the whales, supposed to number one hundred and fifty, had entered the bay, while the rest of the school had disappeared amid the reaches of the Stronsay Firth.

Rounding the point of Torness, and stretching across the mouth of the bay, the fleet of small craft again hove into view, and pressed upon the rear of the slowly advancing and imprisoned whales. Among the onlookers there was now intense excitement, the greatest anxiety being manifested lest the detached wing should follow the main army, and again break the line of boats in a victorious charge. The shoutings and noise of the boatmen recommenced, and echoed from shore to shore of the beautiful and secluded bay. A fresh alarm seized the monsters, but instead of wheeling about and rushing off to the open sea as before, they dashed rapidly forwards a few yards, pursued by the boats, and were soon floundering helplessly in the shallows.

The scene that ensued was of the most exciting description. Fast and furious the boatmen struck and stabbed to right and left; while the people on the shore, forming an auxiliary force, dashed down to assist in the massacre, wielding all sorts of weapons. The wounded monsters lashed about with their tails, imperilling life and limb, and the ruddy hue of the water along the stretch of shore soon indicated the extent of the carnage. Some of the larger whales displayed great tenacity of life; but the unequal conflict closed at last, and no fewer than a hundred and seventy carcasses were dragged up on the beach.

One or two slight accidents occurred, but to me it seemed marvellous that the boatmen did not injure each other as much as the whales amid the confusion and excitement of the scene. The carcasses, as I was informed, would realize between £300 and £400; and grateful were the people that Providence had remembered the island of Stronsay, by sending them a wonderful windfall of bottle-noses fresh from the confines of the Arctic Circle.

DANIEL GORRIE (_“Summers and Winters in the Orkneys.”_)

[Illustration: _Wreck at Burgh Head, Stronsay._]

ARTICLES MADE OF STRAW.

The Orkney peasantry of two centuries ago lived in a poor country—a country ground down by the tyranny of greedy and unscrupulous rulers; a country whose inhabitants had neither the raw materials from which to construct many necessary utensils nor the money to purchase them. It is interesting to note some of the ways in which our forefathers overcame the circumstances in which they were placed. One of the most notable is the ingenious use of straw for the construction of many domestic utensils.

The materials from which articles of straw were made were principally _bent_ and the straw of black oats. The bent, after being cut, was loosely bound into rough sheaves and left to dry and wither. It was then bound into neat sheaves called _beats_, the legal size of which used to be two spans in circumference. Each beat was carefully pleated at the upper end, gradually tapering upwards into a cord which served to bind two beats together. The pair of beats so fastened was called a “band of bent,” twelve of which formed a “thrave.” From this bent were made the cords, always called _bands_, which were used in the manufacture of straw. During the long winter evenings each ploughman was required to wind into bands one beat of bent. The cord was spun or twisted by the fingers, the two strands being each twisted singly, and at the same time laid into each other in such a way that the tendency of the strands to untwist was the means of keeping the two firmly twisted together.

The straw used was that of the common Orkney black oats, which was at once tougher and more flexible than that of other cultivated kinds. The straw to be used was not threshed with the flail, which would have spoiled it, but was selected from the sheaves, held in a bunch between the hands, and beaten on some hard edge to remove the grain. Such straw was called _gloy_. From those two materials, bent bands and gloy, a very wide variety of indispensable articles were manufactured by the Orkney farmer.

These articles may be divided into three classes—flexible, semi-flexible, and inflexible. Of the flexible type, the most simple and primitive article was the _sookan_, or, to give it a still older name, the _wislin_. This was simply straw twisted loosely into a thick cord of one strand, for temporary use. If not at once used to tie round something, it had to be wound into a clew to preserve its twist.

A very common use of sookans in the winter-time was to form what were known as “straw boots.” A loop of the sookan was passed round the instep, over the shoe or _rivlin_, the thick straw cord being then wound round the ankles and the lower part of the leg. When the snow was deep, such straw boots formed a very comfortable part of the peasant’s attire. Less than a century ago, on a Sunday when the snow lay deep on the ground, more than forty men wearing straw boots were seen in one Orkney church. It must be added that on the way home some of them were severely reproved by a neighbour for having performed this unnecessary labour on the Sabbath day!

Next in order comes _simmans_. This was a strong straw rope made of two strands, also twisted by hand, and rolled into great balls or clews, the size of which was the width of the barn door. The main use of simmans was to thatch the corn stacks, and also the roofs of the cottages. A newly-thatched cottage, with the bright warm colour of the new straw ropes, was a pleasing object in an Orkney landscape. The sombre colour given when the simmans were twisted of brown heather was less cheerful, but Nature did her best even here by her decoration of the low walls with bright yellow and green lichens.

Most of the ropes and cordage required by the Orkney farmer were made either of hair or of bent. The bent bands already noticed were made into ropes on a rude machine called a _tethergarth_, and were used for tethering cattle and sheep, and for “boat tethers” for small fishing-boats. Finer bent ropes were applied to a great many uses, such as flail “hoods,” sheep shackles, and all parts of horse harness. A very important part of this, the collar or _wazzie_, was formed by twisting four thick folds of straw together; and, when properly made, I suspect the wazzie was much cooler for the horse than the modern collar with its absurd cape. Even the plough-traces were made of bent ropes, which, if quickly worn, were easily replaced. For bringing in the crop, a large net made of bent cord, and called a _mazie_, was put round a bundle of sheaves, and suspended, one on each side of the horse, from the horns of the _clibber_, a rough kind of wooden pack-saddle.

_Flackies_, or mats made of straw bound together with bent cord, were used for many purposes. Small ones were used as door-mats, and large ones were hung up as an apology for an inner door. Horse flackies were laid over the back of the horse to protect it from the friction of the clibber, and his sides from the load which it supported. Flackies were also fixed on the rafters, under the straw, when thatching house roofs.

We next come to what I have called the semi-flexible class of straw articles. The first to be noticed is the _kaesie_, which, in various shapes and sizes, was put to a great number of uses. It was made of straw, bound by bent cord, like the flackie, but was of a closer texture, and it was usually in the shape of a basket. The _meils-kaesie_ was so called because it was made to hold a “meil” of corn—that is, a little over a hundredweight.

It was in these meils-kaesies that the corn was carried to the mill, and the meal brought back from it; for carts were unknown, and roads were but paths or tracks. Each horse carried a full kaesie on either side. The horses travelled in single file, the head of each being tied to the tail of the one in front. A man was in charge of each pair of horses, to attend to the proper balancing of their loads. A train of twenty or thirty horses marching in this way was a picturesque sight. On arriving at the mill, the burdens were removed, and the head of the foremost horse was tied to the tail of the hindmost, which prevented their moving away until their drivers were ready to return home.

Next may be mentioned the _corn-kaesie_, which was used to hold dressed grain. These were shaped somewhat like a barrel, and were made in various sizes. Then comes the common kaesie, used for carrying burdens on the back. These also were of different sizes. In form they were narrow and rounded at the bottom, and widened gradually towards the top, which was finished by a stiff circular rim called the _fesgar_, to give firmness to the basket. To the fesgar were fastened the ends of a bent rope of suitable length, called the _fettle_, by which the kaesie was suspended from the shoulders of the bearer.

To the same class as the kaesies belong the _cubbies_, the names and uses of which are legion. These were smaller than the former, and firmer in texture, while the shapes showed more variety, as might be needed for their special uses. We need only mention a few. The windo’ or winnowing cubbie was used to pour out the corn gently on the barn floor, while the wind blowing in at one door and out at the other carried away the chaff. The sawin’ or sowing cubbie carried the seed corn in spring. The horse cubbie was used as a muzzle for a horse when necessary. The hen cubbie was suspended as a nest for the domestic fowls. The use of the spoon cubbie, which hung by the side of the fire, needs no explanation. The bait cubbie and the sea cubbie must close our list, the former used for carrying bait, and the latter for the catch of fish. A cubbie was always carried by the beggars who swarmed before the introduction of the poor law, and to “tak’ the cubbie and the staff” was a phrase meaning to be forced to beg one’s bread.

We now come to what I have called inflexible articles. Here we may mention first the _luppie_, once in universal use for holding all sorts of dry materials, such as meal, burstin, eggs, and the like. Luppies were round and barrel-shaped, close in texture, and as firm as a board. They varied much in size, being made from about ten inches to three feet in height. They had a rim round the lower end to protect the bottom, and two “lugs” at the top. Those of the smallest size were used by housewives as work-baskets.

The work on these luppies, and on the straw stools to be mentioned next, was considered the finest and most durable. Small coils or gangs of straw were firmly and closely laced over one another. The lacing cord was of the strongest bent, and the projecting ends of the bent were carefully clipped off. These bands were known as _stool bands_.

We now come to the straw stools or chairs, which were mainly of three kinds. The first was a sort of low, round stool without any back. Such a stool could be easily lifted to or from the fireside, and on an emergency could be instantly converted into a luppie by simply being turned upside down. The next was called the low-backed stool, having a semi-circular back reaching to the shoulders of the sitter. Last comes the high-backed or hooded stool, which was the easy-chair of the Orkney cottage. In later times the seat was always made of wood, in the form of a square box, with a slightly projecting top. Strips of wood were used to support the front edges of the back, and to form elbow rests in front of these. The seat box usually contained a drawer, in which the goodman kept his supply of snuff, and perhaps the few books which made up the cottage library. This form of chair, which is now regarded as the orthodox one, was invented in the middle of the eighteenth century by a native of North Ronaldsay, as the construction of the seat of wood took far less time than working it all in straw; but the older form, with its circular straw seat, and the side slips and elbow rests entirely covered with straw and bent cords, was much more elegant in the lines of its form.

WALTER TRAIL DENNISON. (_Adapted from “Orcadian Papers.”_)

[Illustration: _Making a straw-backed chair._]

THE WEATHER OF ORKNEY.

A foreign writer has said that Englishmen grumble more at their weather than at anything else, while it is really the only thing about their country of which they might be proud. His meaning is that, compared with other regions of the world, the climate of Great Britain is singularly free from disagreeable extremes of heat or cold, and of drought or flood. And if this is true of Great Britain as a whole, it is especially true of Orkney. In summer we rarely suffer from heat, and in winter we are equally free from extreme cold. The mean temperature of the whole year in Orkney (45·4°) is little below that of Aberdeen (46·3°), of Alnwick in Northumberland (46·3°), or of Kew near London (49·4°).

The equability of our temperature, or its freedom from all extremes of heat and cold, is due to the influence of the sea. The temperature of the ocean varies only about 13° during the year; it is lowest in February, being 41·6°, while that of the air is 38·6°, and is highest in August, being 54·5°, while that of the air is 54°.

The smallness of the difference between the annual mean temperature of Orkney and that of Kew is really due to the mildness of our winters. Taking the mean of the three winter months, we find that of Orkney to be almost the same as that of Kew, and slightly higher than that of Alnwick. For the three summer months, however, Orkney is three degrees colder than Alnwick and eight degrees colder than Kew. The hottest day in Orkney during the last thirty years only reached 76°, while at Kew 92° was recorded.

The extent to which the sea influences our climate can best be seen by comparing it with that of an inland or continental station of similar latitude. Winnipeg, in the province of Manitoba, formerly well known to Orkney men as Fort Garry in the Red River Settlement, lies in nearly the same latitude as London. Its mean temperature, however, during the three winter months is only 0·9°, or thirty-one degrees below freezing-point, and thirty-eight degrees lower than that of Orkney; in summer it is 66°, or thirteen degrees above that of Orkney.

Not only is our climate ruled by the sea; it is ruled by a sea whose waters are themselves somewhat warmer than their latitude might lead us to expect. The temperature of the ocean is often affected by currents, bringing water either from warmer or from colder regions. In the case of the ocean waters round our coasts, the movement is from the south-west. This movement is due at first to the Gulf Stream, which carries a great mass of warm water from the Gulf of Mexico into the North Atlantic, and afterwards to a surface drift caused by the prevailing south-westerly winds.

Our coast waters are therefore somewhat warmer than they would be if there were no such movement, and much warmer than if there were a current in the opposite direction, sweeping along the shores of Norway from the northern ocean. If we compare our climate with that of Nain, in Labrador, which lies in nearly the same latitude, and is also on the Atlantic coast, we shall see how much depends upon the ocean currents. The cold Arctic current which washes the Labrador coast, bringing with it melting icebergs, snow, and fog, reduces the mean annual temperature of Nain to less than 26°, more than nineteen degrees below that of Orkney.

While the climate of oceanic islands is benefited by the equable temperature of the ocean, it is often marked by excessive moisture and rainfall. Yet even in this matter we shall see that Orkney has little to complain of, while, of course, serious droughts are practically unknown.

Scotland, though small in area, shows great inequality in the distribution of its rainfall, due to the diversity of its surface and to the fact that most of its rain is brought by westerly winds. Districts near the west coast, especially if mountainous, have a much greater rainfall than those towards the east, which are also on the whole less elevated. Thus considerable portions of the West Highlands have an annual rainfall of over 80 inches, Ben Nevis recording over 150. Many parts of the eastern Lowlands, on the other hand, have only 30 inches or less; and Cromarty, which is the driest station in Scotland, has only 23 inches.

Compared with the mainland of Scotland, then, it does not seem that the climate of our islands gives us much cause for grumbling, for our annual rainfall varies from 37·7 inches at Sandwick to 30·7 at Start Point in Sanday. Our wettest months are October, November, and December, during which we receive from one-third to one-half of our yearly rainfall; our driest months are April, May, and June, which together give us only one-eighth of the total.

One fact about rain is sometimes overlooked: in cool climates rain brings heat. This may not be noticeable at the time, but its general effect can be observed. Just as it requires heat to turn water into vapour, and as evaporation always produces cold, so the change back again from vapour into water sets free some of this heat, raising the temperature of the air, of the rain itself, and of the land on which it falls. Much of the warming effect of our westerly winds is due not to the direct warmth of the Gulf Stream, as used to be supposed, but simply to the fact that these winds are rain-carrying winds. They thus bring to us the benefit of that solar heat which far away to the south-west caused the vapour to rise from the surface of the ocean.

The chief difference between our weather and that of Scotland is, perhaps, the greater prevalence of high winds in Orkney. The land being low, our islands are swept by the full force of the gales so common in the North Atlantic. When speaking of winds, it may be useful to remember the classification which is recognized by the Meteorological Office. A wind moving at the rate of thirteen miles an hour is called a light breeze; forty miles represents the velocity of a moderate gale, and fifty-six miles a strong gale; seventy-five miles an hour is the speed of a storm, and ninety miles that of a hurricane. We have the record of only one hurricane, on November 17, 1893, with a velocity of ninety-six miles. Several gales of over eighty miles have been experienced, and one summer gale of seventy-five miles in the year 1890. During the fifteen years 1890 to 1904 three hundred gales were recorded in Orkney, while Alnwick experienced only one hundred and fifty-seven, and Valencia, on the west coast of Ireland, one hundred and thirty for the same period. Fleetwood, on the coast of Lancashire, however, had a record of three hundred and six gales during those years.

Every Orcadian must have noticed a type of weather which is common all the year round, but especially so in winter. On a blue sky wisps of cirrus or “mare’s-tail” cloud appear in patches. Gradually these increase till they form a continuous haze, in which a lunar halo or “broch,” and occasionally solar halos or “sun-dogs,” may be seen. Then the wind, which was light and probably westerly, backs to the southward and eastward, and the sky becomes threatening. The wind increases, perhaps to a moderate gale, and rain falls heavily. The wind then shifts towards the south and south-west, increasing in force, sometimes quite suddenly, or it may change still further round towards the north. Meantime the barometer, which has been low and falling, begins to rise briskly, and the weather clears.

To understand how this common series of weather changes comes about, a little knowledge of cyclones is necessary. A cyclone is a movement in the air resembling a whirlwind; the cyclones of the Indian Ocean and the China seas, indeed, are real whirlwinds of the most violent and destructive type. In the North Atlantic they exist for the most part as enormous eddies in the great air-ocean, often several hundreds of miles in diameter, probably rotating with the force of a gale near the centre, and at the same time moving forward as a whole at a moderate speed. A cyclone has been known to keep company with one of our Atlantic liners during its whole voyage, but the rate of progress is often less than this.

A cyclone owes its origin to some local excess of heat, such as might arise from a heavy rainfall, the heat causing an upward movement in the air. The inrush of cool air which then follows begins a circular or whirling motion. The moist air in front of the cyclone gives up its moisture with the fall in temperature, causing the rains that are invariably found in front of such a movement. The air after the rainfall is dry and warmer, and its ascent keeps up a partial vacuum or area of low pressure, which is the centre or vent of the cyclone. It is really the rainfall in front of the cyclonic system that causes its forward movement, assisted by the rotation of the earth. Each space relieved of its moisture forms in its turn the new centre. A coast-line, or an anti-cyclonic movement of the air in front of a cyclone, will alter its course. When one reaches the shores of Europe, it soon spends itself for want of the moisture-laden winds in front to keep up the system.

In the northern hemisphere the direction of rotation of a cyclone is opposite to the movement of the hands of a watch; in the southern hemisphere it is in the same direction as the movement of the hands of a watch. This is the effect of the rotation of the earth, as will be clear after a little thought on the matter. In the North Atlantic the forward motion of a cyclone is always from the westward to the eastward; hence the “storm warnings” which reach us from the United States.

[Illustration: _Diagram of a typical Atlantic cyclone._]

Our islands lie in the most common track of those Atlantic cyclones, and the centre of the whirl often passes over or near the Orkneys. Now if you will look at the chart or diagram of a typical cyclone as given here, and suppose it to be moving slowly from south-east to north-west, or suppose yourself to be moving through it in the opposite direction while it remains still, you will see how the changes of wind and weather which we have described must result from this movement.

During the greater part of the year our weather is mainly due to a constant procession of those Atlantic cyclones, great and small, and hence arises the changeableness of our winds and our weather. But in the spring we often have weather of a different type. Our winds are then often cold, sometimes dry, and frequently easterly or northerly in direction for several days together. Such weather is due to anti-cyclones—that is, areas of high pressure, from which the air flows downwards and spreads outwards in every direction. An anti-cyclone is the opposite of a cyclone in almost every respect. Its supply of dry air often comes from the ascending air in the centre of a cyclone, which has deposited its moisture. At the meteorological station on Ben Nevis it was sometimes noticed that when an anti-cyclone was stationed over the south of England, and a cyclone was crossing the north of Scotland, there was an upper air-current travelling from the latter to the former, and no doubt supplying the dry air of the anti-cyclone. This is a type of movement which is usually found over land rather than sea, and it has not the regular forward movement of the cyclone.

The last point which we may notice about our weather is the amount of sunshine which we receive. At every well-equipped observatory, such as that of Deerness, there is an instrument which records the duration of sunshine, hour by hour and day by day, all the year round. In the matter of sunshine, Orkney is not so badly treated as we may sometimes think. The average number of hours of sunshine each year recorded at Deerness is 1,177, while Edinburgh enjoys only 1,166. London is a little better, with 1,260, while Hastings, on the more favoured south coast of England, has an average record of 1,780 hours. Our brightest month is May, with an average of 178 hours of sunshine, and our gloomiest month is naturally December, with only 20·6 hours.

THE PLACE-NAMES OF ORKNEY.

Orkney place-names form an attractive subject of study. There is always some reason why a certain place received its own particular name, though that reason may often be difficult to discover. The use of a name is, of course, to distinguish one place from other places of a similar class, and the most obvious way of doing so is to refer to some special feature or peculiarity of the place. In this way arise such names as the Red Head, the North Sea, the Muckle Water, and Green Holm. Houses and farms and islands are often named after the owner.

When people of a different race and language settle in a country, or when the language changes, as happened in Orkney after its annexation to Scotland, the old names may still be used, although when their meaning is unknown or has been forgotten they are apt to be changed in various ways. People rarely take the trouble of inventing a new name for a place if they can find out the name already given to it. Thus if there had been any Celtic or Pictish inhabitants left in Orkney when the Norsemen settled there, the Celtic names of the islands and hills and bays would have been handed down from them to us. But all the old place-names in Orkney are Norse, and the only Celtic elements found in them refer to the settlements and churches of the Culdees, as we have already mentioned.

The Norse place-names are usually descriptive, based either on the appearance or the situation of the place, or on the name of its occupier. Such names have an interest which is entirely wanting in the modern names given to farms or houses, names which are often selected for absurd or trivial reasons. There is little need for inventing any new names in a land which has been so fully supplied with them already. For it is not only the various islands and their most prominent physical features that bear descriptive Norse names; hillock and meadow, field and spring, rock, geo, and skerry—all have been named by our forefathers with names of which the form as well as the meaning is now in many cases forgotten. Those names should be regarded as relics entrusted to our care, and we ought to learn them from the old people by whom they are still remembered, and preserve them from alteration or oblivion, as the material relics of our romantic history are now being preserved from destruction and decay.

_Orkney_, the general name of the island group, is partly Celtic and partly Norse. Pliny, the Roman geographer, mentions _Cape Orcas_, probably Duncansby Head in Caithness, and calls the islands _Orcades_. The Celtic Scots called them the _Orc Islands_, and southern writers use the form _Orcanig_. The root of the name is supposed to be _orc_, which meant the bottlenose whale. The Norse visitors added the termination _-ey_, meaning “island.”

When the Norsemen settled in these islands, they gave to each a name in their own language, and these names have been preserved with little alteration, though their meaning has generally been forgotten. Some were named from their configuration or appearance, as Hoy (_Ha-ey_), the high island; Flotta (_Flat-ey_), the flat island; Sanday, the sand island; Eday, the island of the _eith_ or isthmus; Burray (_Borgar-ey_), the islands of the “brochs.” Some were named from their position, as Westray, the west island; Auskerry, the east skerry. Some were named after persons as Rousay, Rolf’s island; Gairsay (_Gareksey_), Garek’s island; Graemsay (_Grimsey_), Grim’s island; Copinsay, Kolbein’s island. The name _Rinansey_, the island of St. Ninian, often called Ringan, was afterwards changed to Ronaldsay, with “North” prefixed to distinguish it from the original Rognvald’s island, now South Ronaldsay. A few were named from their uses, as Faray, the sheep island; and Hrossey, the horse island, an old name for the Mainland (_Meginland_), or principal island of the group.

It is very odd to find in books and on maps the Latin name _Pomona_ applied to this last island—Pomona, the Roman goddess of harvest-plenty, whose name was also used to indicate the fruits of the earth. The explanation seems to be that a mistake was made by George Buchanan, the greatest Latin scholar whom Scotland ever produced, in quoting a passage from Solinus, an old Latin writer. Solinus, speaking of some island which he calls Thylé or Thulé, says that it is five days’ sail from the Orcades, and that it is large and rich in the constant yield of its harvests (_pomona_). Buchanan, who knew much of Latin but little of either Thulé or the Orcades, takes this to mean that “Thulé is large and Pomona is rich and fertile,” and he concludes from this that Pomona must be the chief island of the Orcades. Thus by a mere blunder the name “Pomona” was given to the Mainland; but there is no good reason why we should perpetuate this blunder. “Mainland” is the name which every intelligent Orcadian should use. It is believed by some that the use of the word _pomona_ itself is due to another blunder, the mistake of a copyist, and that what Solinus really wrote was a contracted form of a word which simply meant fruit.

Our place-names have suffered much from the blunders of surveyors and map-makers who knew nothing of the Norse language. Whenever they found a name which bore some resemblance to an English word, they immediately changed it into what they supposed to be its correct English form. A good example of a name thus “corrected” for us is that of the place now called “Walls.” The proper name of the district is _Waas_, and this is the name which it should bear on the map. But the intelligent surveyors no doubt knew that there is an English word “walls” which is pronounced “wa’s” in Scotland, and so they assumed that the Norse place-name “Waas” ought to be written and pronounced “Walls.” This is of course an absurd error. “Waas” is a form of “Voes,” a name which is admirably suited to the district, the land of the voes or bays.

The name of our county town, Kirkwall, has been similarly disguised by the well-meaning reforms of ignorant persons. Old people in the islands still call it “Kirkwaa,” and this is the correct form of the name. The Peerie Sea was called the “Kirk-voe” long before St. Magnus Cathedral was built, the name being derived from the old church of St. Olaf, whose doorway still exists, and this name, applied to the town, naturally changed into “Kirkwaa.” It would probably be impossible now to restore the old name; we can only be grateful that our map-makers did not also turn “kirk” into the English form “church.” We may suspect that the parish name Holm has been similarly tampered with. The local pronunciation, which is “Ham,” indicates that the name may be derived from _hafn_, a harbour, as in “Hamnavoe” (_Hafnarvagr_) and other cases, but has no connection with _holm_, which means a small island. When the meaning of _hafn_ had been forgotten, and the local pronunciation was ignored, the name was naturally supposed to be connected with the _holms_ which lie off the shore.

A similar intrusion of the letter _l_ is found in _Pierowall_, and also in _Noltland_, in Westray. The latter is sometimes, and more correctly, written as “Notland.” The Norse name was _Nautaland_, the pasture for “nowt” or cattle. The word _Pentland_ must be our last example of such blunders. To the Norsemen the Scottish mainland was _Pettland_, the land of the Picts; and even at the present day Orcadians, who have not been misled by books and maps, still speak of the “Pettland Firth.”

The names of farms or small districts are often very interesting. A common termination in these is _-bister_, which represents the Norse _bolstadr_, a farmsteading, the first part of the name usually being derived from the name of the original owner, as in “Grimbister” and “Swanbister,” the farm of Grim and of Sweyn. The word is connected with _bol_, a dwelling, which still exists in our local dialect in the form “beul,” meaning a stall in a byre or stable. Two Norse words, _bu_ and _bær_, meaning a home or a household, give rise respectively to the common farm name Bu, and to several names ending in _-by_, as Houseby and Dounby.

The termination _-ster_ or _-setter_, which is also very common, represents the Norse word _setr_; the name _saeter_ is still used in Norway for a summer pasture among the hills at some distance from the farm. Several of our farms bear the name of Seatter, and the number of compounds of this word is too large to need illustration.

_Garth_, which meant an enclosure, is akin to the English words _yard_ and _garden_, and is found in numerous farm names, sometimes alone, but more frequently in compounds, where it appears as the termination _-ger_, the _g_ being sounded hard. Other names for enclosed land were _quoy_ (_kvi_) and _town_ (_tun_), and in almost every district we find farm names in which these words appear. The Norse _skali_, a hall, appears as _skaill_, either alone or as an element in compound names. There are other common terminations which might be mentioned, all of them significant and worthy of study, but these may suffice to illustrate how full of meaning and interest our common place-names really are.

We have said that the Norse word for “island” now appears as the termination _-ay_ or _-a_. This termination, however, has in some cases a different origin, especially where the name does not refer to an island. Thus in the names Scapa and Hoxa the _-a_ is a contraction of _eith_, meaning an isthmus. Scapa was _Skalpeith_, the ship-isthmus, and Hoxa was _Haugseith_, the isthmus of the haug or howe. In the name of the island of Sanday, the termination means “island;” in the name Sanday applied to several places round Deer Sound, the reference is to the “Sand aith” or isthmus already mentioned. In names of places such as Birsay and Swannay, where a large burn is found, we may conclude that the _-ay_ represents the Norse _-a_, meaning a river, as the _o_ does in Thurso.

As we should expect from a seafaring race, the Norsemen have left us a very liberal heritage of names for the various natural features of our shores. Projecting points of land are called “ness” or “moul” or “taing,” according to their configuration, and even the less prominent rocks are still known as “clett” or “skerry,” or bear other names which were originally simple descriptions of their peculiar forms. In the same way descriptive names were applied to the water features, and every “voe” and “sound,” every “hope” and “geo” have names which offer us a fine field for study.

In dealing with this last class of names, there are two Norse words which may cause us some trouble—_hella_, a flat rock, and _hellir_, a cave, both of which appear in place-names as _hellya_, while a third word _helgr_, holy, sometimes assumes the same form. It is impossible to determine what the original form and meaning of a name have been unless we examine the place as well as its name.

In studying our place-names, we ought to remember that the correct names are those that are used by the old people who live in the district, not those that are found on the map, or are used by people who adopt the pronunciation suggested by the spelling. By means of the knowledge of a few dozen common Norse roots, and a careful examination of the places to which the names belong, most of our old-fashioned place-names may be made to yield up their ancient meanings, and to throw some light upon the past condition of the islands. When studied in this way, our place-names are seen to be fragments of fossil history, organic remains of an early stratum of society, as eloquent of the past as are the geological fossils of the early ages of plant and animal life.

[Illustration: _At the quern._]