HARDY ISLANDERS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 55, Issue 260, 16 August 1935, Page 8

HARDY ISLANDERS

LIFE ON THE HEBRIDES.

“WHERE FAIRIES STILL EXIST”

I have returned from a land where fairies still exist, where ghosts are always green, where people possessed of second sight are feared, where .there are no cinemas, no telephones, and no hospitals. I have returned' from the Outer Hebrides, writes a special correspondent of the “Sunday Express,” London.

Living in sophisticated London or hard-headed Manchester, or even in rural Buckinghamshire one may regard the British Isles as one of tho most highly civilised parts of the world. People would probably find it difficult to believe that within 60 miles of the mainland there are communities living in conditions almost as primitive as those of the early Britons. Come with me to Scarpa, to /Sealpay . to Eriskay, or one of the other desolate Hebridean isles, and you will see and hear astonishing things. Were it not for the calling of mail steamers at some of the larger isles, these people would b 9 veritable modem Robinson Crusoes. Sometimes they are cut off for weeks by raging Atlantic storms. Can you conceive of villages where Greta Garbo is simply the name of an inanimate figure that looks out from the pages of magazines, where the telephone is unknown, where the nearest doctor may be 60 miles away across a raging sea; communities of people who have never seen a. railway train, who have never listened to radio programmes, who have never seen a car, and to whom what we regard almost as history is red-hot news? There are more than 60 islands in the Hebrides. At least 10 of them are wild, trackless wastes with a. combined population of, perhaps, 15,000. Some of thorn have only a handful of inhabitants—Mingulay for example, with only three inhabitants, Killegay with five, and Leiravay with eight. They are the hardiest and hardest-working people in the world. Life in the outer, unknown isles of Britain is a constant battle against Nature—and only the fit survive. Scarpa is a typical example of the “forgotten” Hebridean isle. A Barren Mountain. To the visitor it appears nothing more than a■ barren mountain rearing 1000 ft out of the sea. .Yet it provides the means of livelihood for 95 people. In winter, when the wind is seldom below gale force ,it is dangerous to walk along the cliffs. A sudefcn gust might easily hurl one over the unprotected cliff's into the boiling sea. A visitor to Scarpa is so> raro that he receives as much attention as a museum piece- Mental note is made of everything he weal’s and he Is the sole topic of conversation lor days even weeks. If Scarpa were suddenly completely cut off dirom interlcouirse with the mainland, life would not alter one whit. There are four industries, each with its own season. Agriculture is practised on land which would make an English farmer shudder. There are also the cutting of peat, the manufacture of famous Harris tweeds and fishing. Years ago iodine used to bo made in quantities from the kelp (seaweed) found in profusion on the seashore, but synthetic iodine has killed this industry. There are no roads to make work easier . Everything has to be hauled by bodily strength over the rough moors. The women work as hard as the men. They play tho chief part in the manufacture of Hariris tweeds. How many mainland women could care to have a baby knowing there was no midwife or doctor within 30 miles? That is what the women of the isles endure. It is not very long since a woman who gave birth to a child in Scarpa had to be taken 60' miles in an open boat to Stornoway because of complications which the islanders could not understand. When she arrived in Stornoway she gave birth to a second) child, 48 hours after tho birth of the first. Her midwife fo rtlie birth of the first child was a. woman neighbour aged 80. Such incidents are almost common in these unknown territories of the British Isles. Living in Crude Huts. The islanders’ only diversion is the ceilidh—a sort of smoking concert, at which whisky is consumed largely and songs are sung solo and in chorus. One of the houses fs chosen for this. On the mainland they would be described as crude huts. But they are always spotlessly clean, and they are real homes to those who live in them. The people still have a wholesome belief in fairies and in ghosts. Fairies are always about four feet high and they mean happiness for tho person who secs them. There are two forms of ghosts live ghosts and dead. ones. Both are invariably green. If the ghost ol a living person is seen it means the death ©f, that person. Tho ghost of a dead person foretells the death of a kinsman. Almostgll of the islanders speak Gaelic and know no English. Fortunate being who are bi-lingual are in great demand' as translators of English magazines. .;