St. Kilda: Family, Community, and the Wider World

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 19, 348 –368 (2000) doi:10.1006/jaar.1999.0361, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on

St. Kilda: Family, Community, and the Wider World Andrew Fleming Department of Archaeology, University of Wales Lampeter, Ceredigion SA48 7ED, United Kingdom Received May 17, 1999; revision received July 7, 1999; accepted October 20, 1999 During most of its recorded history (essentially 1698 –1930) the people of St. Kilda (a small and remote archipelago in Scotland and now a World Heritage site) were members of a closely knit, communitarian society. Their habit of locking their doors forms the starting point for an exploration of the potential role of cash in the community, intracommunity tensions and family identities, and the relationships between the islanders and visiting outsiders, including tourists and fishermen. The article also discusses strategies deployed by the St. Kildans to resist the exactions of the McLeod chiefdom. It is argued that the “egalitarianism” of St. Kilda was accompanied by “equality of opportunity” with institutionalized ways of maintaining family difference and identity. © 2000 Academic Press Key Words: St. Kilda; Scotland; World Heritage; social history; economic history.

able potential for the exploration of stimulating tensions and dialogues between community and family as well as between community and the wider world. But sometimes the narrative choices made for a particular community may have had rather stereotypical effects, closing off the areas where some of the most interesting social and political dynamics are in operation. I would argue that this has been the case for the St. Kilda group of islands (57°N49⬘, 8°W34⬘), which lie some 55 km west-northwest of North Uist in the Western Isles of Scotland (also known as the Outer Hebrides and the Long Island) (Figs. 1 and 2). There never was a saint called Kilda; the name has arisen from a misunderstanding (Taylor 1969). The archipelago consists of one habitable island, Hirta (Hiort in Gaelic), with an area of 637 ha; it includes an area of land sheltered to an extent from all winds except southeasterlies by an arc of hills ranging in height from 216 m (Mullach Sgar) to 423 m (Conachair). Village Bay is also sheltered by the precipitous island of Dun, which is

INTRODUCTION In anthropological and historical treatments of small communities, there is a certain tendency toward polarization. In some accounts, the community is treated mostly as a frame within which families act and interact, socially, economically and politically; in others, the emphasis is on the community itself as a self-managing, almost organic entity, whose communitarian ethos, regulations, and social codes transcend the independence and significance of its component families. Of course, the choice of the writer may be influenced by his or her political views and by the nature of the available evidence. And it also has to be recognized that communities within relatively complex societies, those located within chiefdoms, states, or feudal systems, for example, cannot be discussed as if they were isolated entities, with well-defined boundaries; their economic behavior, social institutions, and customary practices are likely to be strongly influenced by “outside” forces. In narratives of particular communities, there is thus consider0278-4165/00 $35.00 Copyright © 2000 by Academic Press All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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FIG. 1. Location of St. Kilda and places mentioned in the text. Note that the Western Isles are also known as the Outer Hebrides. Rockall Bank is to the west of St. Kilda.

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FIG. 2. The St. Kilda archipelago (inset, lower left) and Hirta, including places mentioned in text. TC, Tobar Childa; TFF, Taigh an Fhir Faireadh (“the Watchman’s House”); TnB, Tobar nam Buaidh (“The Well of the Virtues”). Contours in meters.

separated from Hirta by a narrow channel. Within the period of written history, permanent settlement has been confined to Village Bay. From a boat arriving in the bay, what catches the eye first, apart from the military base constructed in the 1970s, are the roofless houses of the village abandoned in 1930 by its last 36 inhabitants; 16

single-storied houses in a line, facing the sea, each with a central doorway and two windows, and fronting onto a narrow paved “street.” They are almost lost, sometimes, amid the lush green of the enclosed land; they stand near the centers of their crofts, which ran down a gentle slope to the edge of the sea and also con-

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tinued up the slope, behind the houses, up to the “head dyke,” the substantial wall which enclosed the most cultivable land. At the east end of the village, there are other buildings of dressed stone: manse, church, school, the house occupied by the factor when he came to collect the rent, and the “Feather Store,” where some of that rent was accumulated and stored—for it was often paid in kind. What makes the landscape even more “busy” are the cleits or cleitean, corbelled stone-built store-houses with turf-capped roofs. They crowd behind the houses, and above and beyond the head dyke, glinting oatmeal-color in the sun, for they are made of granophyre. Then one’s eye travels up the steep slopes of the hills behind the village. The western slopes of Oiseval are covered with cleitean, mostly ruined ones; then further west, on the slopes of Conachair and Mullach Sgar, there are more cleits, sometimes in lines and clusters, but mostly in ones and twoes—set in breath-catching locations and spreading up onto the ridges, where they look like little towers, dark against the skyline. There are over a thousand of them on Hirta; many measure ca. 3– 6 m in length by ca. 2–3 m wide. Such structures are hardly found at all in other parts of northern Scotland. Probaby most of those inside the 1830 head dyke, and just above it, were constructed in the 19th century, but many of those further afield are likely to be at least several hundred years old. Among the cleits graze the celebrated Soay sheep, ginger, brown, and black; they are a primitive breed brought across from Soay (Norse, “isle of sheep”) not long after the 1930 evacuation. Over the saddle between Conachair and Mullach Sgar lies Gleann Mo´r, Hirta’s only other sheltered zone—a U-shaped valley, the sea at its mouth, with a dozen unusual stone structures scattered at the lower end— clusters of tiny corbelled cells around small enclosed courtyards. Their

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date is unknown; they were already old in the 17th century. From the head of Gleann Mo´r—“the great glen”— can be seen the looming bulk of Soay (99 ha). Some 6 km to the northeast of Hirta lies Boreray (76 ha), and off Boreray are two great stacks: Stac an Armin and Stac Lee, the latter shining white in the summer, for it is occupied by one of the largest gannet colonies in the northeast Atlantic. Soay and Boreray are girt by steep cliffs; in historic times they were utilized as sheep pastures and as temporary bases for fowling parties. The islands are composed of intrusive igneous rocks formed in a Tertiary volcano some 60 million years ago (Harding et al., 1984). They are treeless, and the Gleann Mo´r pollen diagram suggests (Walker 1984) that they have probably never contained more than scrub willow, which apparently disappeared some 6000 years ago, probably as a consequence of human intervention. In terms of distance, the St. Kilda group of islands are the most remote of the offshore islands of Britain and Ireland. As a result of Hirta’s exposure to relatively frequent high winds, its tendency to generate local low cloud cover, and a topography of steep hills which restrict potential sunlight hours in Village Bay and Gleann Mo´r (Small 1979:17–18; Harman 1997:10 – 11), the climate tends to be regarded as extreme in the context of northwest Europe. St. Kilda became a World Heritage Site in 1986, partly because of its wildlife but also because of its history, which is generally held to symbolize the enduring tenacity and courage of humankind in the face of the elements. For historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists, however, the characteristic which makes St. Kilda special must surely be its rich literature. In 1697 the archipelago was visited by Martin Martin, and his detailed account of the lifeways of the inhabitants, then numbering some 180 –200 (Martin 1753), may well represent the most com-

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plete “anthropological” account of any 17th-century European rural community. From Martin’s time until the evacuation, numerous visitors and short-term residents were fascinated by St. Kilda and have left written accounts of the lifeways of its inhabitants; there is also an extensive post-1930 literature [see Mary Harman’s An Isle called Hirte (1997) for a nearcomprehensive recent bibliography]. Writing St. Kilda’s history for the last 300 years or so is more comparable to writing the history of certain Pacific islands than that of the average British rural community, where most of the sources are legal and official documents of various kinds, rather than eyewitness accounts of people who, until the boat arrives to take them away, can observe nothing other than the island and its people. These “thick descriptions” go a long way toward bringing this extinct community to life from an anthropological point of view. Although the gulf between visitors and “natives” was wider than would have been the case in most other parts of Britain, this was more than compensated for by the intensity of the encounter and the visitors’ sense that they were witnesses to a remarkable way of life. Before exploring dominant perceptions of the history and character of the St. Kilda community, a little more descriptive detail will be helpful. As already indicated, the recent history of the archipelago from 1697 to 1930 is quite well known. St. Kilda’s “protohistory,” the period when the archipelago is rather sparsely represented in the written record, commences with the first written mention, in an Icelandic saga written ca. 1250 (Taylor 1967). Before that, St. Kilda’s past is truly prehistoric, attested only by archaeological evidence. For the purposes of this article, the more remote past need not concern us, though recent discoveries of extensive stone quarries for the manufacture of flaked hoe blades, almost certainly

dating to the Neolithic and/or Bronze Age (broadly ca. 4000/3500 to ca. 500 B.C.) should be noted (Fleming and Edmonds in press; Fleming 1995); they suggest a long though not necessarily unbroken settlement history. Hirta seems to have come fully within the ambit of Scandinavian Scotland (conventionally dated from the early raids of the late 8th century A.D. to 1266, when the lands of the Norwegian crown were ceded to Scotland). There are Norse place names, recorded and lost artifacts from a Norse burial site (Taylor 1967), and the remains of robbed-out head dykes (Fleming 1995:33–34; Harman 1997: Fig. 38) which probably also date to this period. Furthermore, the genetic affinities of the Hirta subspecies of the long-tailed fieldmouse (Apodemus sylvaticus hirtensis) are much closer to those of conspecifics in Norway than to those of the Western Isles or mainland Scotland, and the house mouse (now extinct) was “almost certainly” introduced by the Scandinavians (Berry 1969). It is worth noting briefly some major events and processes in the historic period. In 1697 Hirta, with its ca. 180 –200 inhabitants, was a component of the MacLeod chiefdom, based at Dunvegan on the Isle of Skye, and had been so for at least 150 years (Harman 1997:80 – 81). The island had a strictly regulated, largely communitarian economic system; it was visited annually by a subchief from Pabbay in the Western Isles, bringing a substantial retinue with him (by this time, such visits were probably illegal under the Statutes of Iona) and taking away substantial tribute in kind. (Later, this became the visit of the “tacksman” and later still the “factor” collecting rents, which were still often paid mostly in kind). In 1727 the population was reduced to 30 by a smallpox epidemic, and Hirta was largely repopulated from elsewhere within the chiefdom, though apparently without much effect on cultural continuity. From

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this time onward it seems that it was neonatal tetanus, causing the deaths of numerous infants, which kept the population down to around 100. By the time its cause was understood and the situation remedied, in the early 1890s, the departure of 36 emigrants for Australia in 1852 had already dealt the Hirta community a demographically disastrous blow (Clegg 1977). There is some evidence that crop yields had declined by the late 19th century and that supplies of turf and peat, used for fuel and as a matrix for manure, were much depleted by this time (MacDiarmid 1877: 242–243, 251). A critical episode in Hirta’s history was the ministry of Neil Mackenzie (1829 – 1843) during which the islanders agreed to a major land reorganization at Village Bay, laying out 16 crofts within a substantial enclosure wall and replanning their settlement so that the houses were no longer clustered, but arranged along the “street.” Later, in the 1860s, these rather primitivelooking thatched “blackhouses” were replaced by single-story houses of modern design. During the 19th century, both tourism and Sabbatarianism intensified. The former was present from the beginning of the century (e.g., Brougham 1871), while the latter was noted by Martin at the end of the 17th century (1753:43). A decline in the observation of the old saints’ festivals, and also in music and dancing, took place between the late 18th century and the early 1840s (Harman 1997:227, 237). The people grew barley and oats, and later potatoes, in small, intensively manured plots; most families owned a small number of cattle and rather more sheep. There were horses— used for transport, especially of peat— until the mid-19th century. The summer dairying area was Gleann Mo´r, where butter and cheese were made by the women. Weaving was important, and the islanders eventually exported a good deal of their own cloth.

But the most important part of the economy was fowling and egg collecting. Gannets, puffins, and fulmars were the most important prey species; the islanders harvested birds and eggs from Boreray and its two adjacent rock stacks as well as from the cliffs of Hirta. The eggs and winddried carcasses of sea birds, stored in the cleitean, were important winter foods; sheep meat too was wind-dried. These preserved foods must also have been important as a buffer against the failure of the cereal crop. By 1758 salting meat in barrels had become the preferred mode of preservation (Harman 1997:217). It is the cleits which make the most dramatic and unusual archaeological contribution to the landscape of St. Kilda. There are some 1100 –1260 on Hirta itself, with about 40 on Soay, 50 on Boreray, 80 on Stac an Armin, and none on Dun (Stell and Harman 1988: 29; Harman 1997:159 –161). HISTORICAL TREATMENTS Much of the existing literature, both pre- and post-1930, tends to emphasize the isolation of the St. Kilda community, the exotic nature of the people and their lifeways, and their struggle against the elements: “isolation,” “difference,” and “marginality.” Economic and social decline, and the events and processes leading up to the 1930 evacuation, lend a poignant tone to the narratives of the later 20th century (e.g., Steel 1975). Selective quotation from the pre-1930 literature would allow a commentator to assert that the St. Kildans were prosperous and fortunate by regional standards— or that they led a miserable, impoverished existence. Likewise, there is no agreement on whether the MacLeods were exploiting the islanders by extracting excessive taxes and rents and preventing free access to the market for their exports (MacAulay 1764:40) or behaving as benevolent landlords, subsidizing (or investing in) the is-

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land economy and supplying certain rare or absent commodities without which Hirta would have been barely habitable in the long term— boats, iron, salt, wood, and tobacco, for example. Both views in fact represent the historical situation in long-term perspective, and it is not necessary to choose between them. The post-1930 literature also displays a regrettable dichotomy. On the one hand there are regionally focused histories, which virtually ignore the archipelago, treating it as marginal in every sense (some even omit it from maps). On the other, there are accounts, written by those whom one might call “hirtologists,” which deal with little else but St. Kilda to the point where the annual visit of the subchief/tacksman/factor represents more a calendrical event than the symbol of a relationship with numerous ramifications. Personally I am inclined to sympathize with the comment of the geologist MacCulloch (1819:23): “the remote and solitary position of St. Kilda has continued, ever since the days of Martin, to confer on it an interest to which it is scarcely entitled from any peculiarity either in the manners or the condition of its inhabitants.” Comparing Martin Martin’s account of St. Kilda with his general account of northwest Scotland, I have provided ample documentation of MacCulloch’s view elsewhere (Fleming 1999). From the early 19th century at least, the astute St. Kildans did their best to provide the exoticism which visiting tourists expected (see below); in any case, since St. Kilda had not suffered the Clearances of the early/mid-19th century, in regional terms the islanders probably looked more exotic, more like cultural survivals, than they had done in Martin Martin’s time. I have also insisted that, as a component of the MacLeod chiefdom, St. Kilda must be characterized as neither center nor periphery, but in terms of its involvement in the chiefdom “system” recently described so eloquently

by Dodgshon (1998) and the processes implicated in the transition from chiefs to landlords (lairds). In the debate about prosperity versus impoverishment, I would strongly maintain that the situation of the St. Kildans gave them a number of distinct advantages, in regional terms— most notably perhaps, the diverse resource base which allowed them greater possibilities of risk buffering (Fleming 1999). Clearly, the MacLeods had no intention of abandoning this “marginal” community even after it had been almost wiped out by the smallpox epidemic of 1727, and even despite the St. Kildans’ annoying habit of regularly losing the boats with which they were regularly supplied (Harman 1997:267–274). Many visitors were struck by Hirta’s communitarian ethos. In Martin’s time, for instance, the community divided responsibility equally between “families” for the maintenance of collective property, drawing lots to randomize exposure to risk, to allocate resources which could not be split into “equal” shares, and to establish a rota for access to a facility which could only be used by one family at a time. Lots were drawn for the use of the common corn-drying kiln, the maintenance of the island’s boat was a joint responsibility, and “lands, grass, and rocks” were frequently reallocated. Climbing ropes were communal property, and the drawing of lots determined the time and place of their use and the persons using them. Where shared provision was impractical, individual families were rewarded for supplying a critical resource. Good commons management also included an annual payment by each family to the maor (the headman). The community also shared responsibility for welfare provision for the poor, hospitality for guests and shipwrecked sailors, and for feeding and billeting the retinue of the “Steward” during its annual visit. The most detailed description of Hirta’s

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“regulated commons” is Martin’s, but aspects of the islanders’ communitarian ethos were still being recorded in the 1980s; Lachlan Macdonald, who was 24 when the island was evacuated, recalled how responsibility for feeding the bull in winter was shared between the crofters, who used an agreed rope measure to equalize the size of the bundles of hay provided (“they never quarrelled about it”) (Quine 1988:139). In terms of the dichotomies discussed at the beginning of this article, it seems clear that both the pre- and post-1930 accounts of St. Kilda have mostly stressed the communal at the expense of the familial and have preferred to focus on the community-in-itself, allowing its involvement in the wider world to fade into the background. SECRETS AND LIES At this point my argument must take off in a different direction. It is a single item of material culture, surviving now in museums a long way from Hirta, which challenges the communitarian picture model and poses a series of other questions; what of tension, suspicion, disharmony? In the face of so many accounts which foreground community self-regulation and endogenous social control, at first sight it comes as something of a shock to discover the important role played by locks and keys on Hirta (summarized by Harman 1997:163–164). Many of these were wooden “tumbler” locks, working by gravity rather than by the operation of a steel spring, and belonging to a craft tradition which was once widespread in northern Scotland and the Faroe Isles (Fenton and Hendry 1984). Their presence on Hirta was first recorded by Campbell in 1799 (quoted in Harman 1997:163). In 1819 MacCulloch (p. 29) recorded that “each house has a door with a wooden lock and key, a luxury quite unknown in

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other parts of the Highlands.” In 1858 Muir’s party discovered that the doors were locked “in most instances” while the islanders were at church (1858:13). Smith’s party had a locked cowhouse opened for them, a building which had been built as a blackhouse in the 1830s (1875:264). Ross (1884:83) noted that they were “on almost every barn and byre, but on the houses they had been superseded by ordinary rim brass-knobbed locks.” Kearton (1897: 12) was surprised to discover “ingeniously-constructed wooden locks on all their cowhouse doors. The fact that the cowhouses were once dwelt in by the people themselves cannot be accepted as a satisfactory explanation, inasmuch as they have—instead of utilising the old locks for their dwelling-houses—made new ones. . . .” One of Harman’s informants in the 1980s remembered making a lock himself, explaining to her that they were sometimes necessary on cleit doors to prevent petty theft of hay or salted birds, for example (Harman 1997:163). Harman has recorded 15 locks in museum collections (1997:165). On this treeless island, the wood to make such security devices must have been brought in, along with the necessary woodworking tools, and/or the locks and keys themselves were imported. Harman (1997:164) suggests that one of the locks preserved in Glasgow, a particularly fine example said in 1901 to be 200 years old, might have been taken to St. Kilda by one of the 18th-century catechists and then widely copied. Apparently allowance was made for the warping and sticking which might result from the damp conditions on Hirta (Harman 1997:163). It seems that in the later 19th century there might well have been some 40 or 50 locks in the village, not all of them the old-fashioned wooden sort. Knowledge of how to make wooden locks and keys, and tools to make and maintain them, must have been present on Hirta from at least the late 18th century.

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Because of differential survival of the evidence, we cannot know whether the use of locks and keys on St. Kilda was more or less prevalent than was the case in other parts of northern Scotland. The St. Kildans were not culturally conservative or notably backward in regional terms; Martin described them as having “a great inclination to novelty” (1753:63). It might be pointed out that locks and keys are security devices commonly encountered in rural communities and that the only special characteristic of the St. Kilda evidence is the richness of its detailed documentation. This may be so. But one still has to remember the physical conditions of existence on the island—and that the right sort of wood and/or completed locks had to be imported (and paid for), that the wooden locks and keys had to be made or at least maintained, protected from warping, and, if necessary, made to fit more precisely by use of carpenters’ tools appropriate for the purpose (also imported and requiring maintenance). Such widely distributed and persistently maintained security devices seem at first sight unnecessarily “expensive,” both financially and in terms of cultural commitment and energy, when considered in the context of a small community, living on a distant island and seemingly imbued with a strong communitarian ethos, with a developed system of social control and a knowledge of Christian ethics which was regularly maintained in the 19th century, if more intermittently in earlier times. As Buchan wrote of the people whom he knew well in the early 18th century: “there seldom falls out any strife among them (for they are generally very subject and submissive to their own laws)” (1727:28). According to Martin (1753:52), cases of violence against the person were brought before the subchief (the “Steward”) and those convicted were liable to a fine. In these circumstances, it is rather hard to believe that theft of portable property

was a recurrent problem on Hirta; the community could surely have handled the odd misdemeanour committed from time to time by a child or a simpleton. One sanction against theft of property, food, or fuel would have been the fact that many of the cleitean were located on the steep hill slopes around the settlement zone at Village Bay— especially on the side of Oiseval. Anyone approaching them in conditions of fair visibility in daylight hours would have been observed. Away from the village area, it seems apparent that the normal door of a cleit consisted simply of a large stone slab (some of these are still more or less in situ). It seems that in principle doors had to be either closed or fully open, since a fine was payable for the death of a trapped sheep or when an imprisoned cow was killed or injured by one of its fellows (Buchan 1727:27). Kearton (or rather his brother) photographed a cleit with a wooden door (1897: 45) and a good illustration of a wooden lock on the door of a cleit is supplied by Stell (1995:Fig. 22). Some categories of property carried their owners’ marks; this applied to sheep (Harman 1997:192) and, sometimes at least, to gannet carcasses (Martin 1753:25). If theft of portable property was a problem, the replanning of the village around 1830 would have been a golden opportunity to make each house less vulnerable to intruders by setting it at the upper end of its croft rather than along the “street.” But this opportunity was not taken. There is another possible explanation which, I suggest, may identify the central reason for the use of locks and keys to such an extent on Hirta. What if most families had hoards of money or small tokens of value whose existence was supposed to be secret? A hoard of coins would presumably have been stored in a purse or a small bag; once its hiding place had been discovered, it could easily have been secreted about the person of a thief, who

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could promptly find a new hiding place for his or her booty. There would have been times when many people were absent from the village. Women would have been in Gleann Mo´r with the cattle during the long days of summer, and some of them went to outlying islands on fowling expeditions. Men went on trips which involved overnight stays on stacks and islands. Those left behind would have had plenty of opportunity for searching other families’ houses and outhouses for hiding places. In fact, conditions would have been in place for a Kafkaesque scenario. Since a hoard’s existence was supposed to be secret, the owner could not be seen too frequently checking, and thus identifying, its hiding place. To announce the occurrence of a theft might well be problematic. The amount stolen could hardly be openly discussed (and the thief might in any case have split it into several components). The identity of the thief would be difficult to discover, and there would have been almost limitless potential for various accurate and inaccurate accusations, accusations of false accusation, and so on. Could the victim of theft afford to be seen scouring other people’s houses, openly or surreptitiously trying to recover his or her property? This would have been one of those rare contexts in which the headman, however deeply he was respected, would have had considerable difficulty in bringing his powers of arbitration to bear on the situation. It is one thing to arbitrate on questions which relate to the food quest— the sharing of climbing ropes, for example—where the parties in dispute have an underlying interest in reaching agreement without much delay. It is quite another to intervene successfully in a context of accusations and counteraccusations. One can easily imagine the seriousness of the threat to the community as a medium for continuing social and economic cooperation which would be posed by even one or

two accusations concerning theft of valuables. Such thefts would have had far more serious social consequences than the casual taking of a few peats or a couple of gannet carcasses. This community of all communities, isolated in the literal sense, could not possibly have allowed itself to become vulnerable to that degree of social tension. Fitting effective locks on houses, byres, and even some cleitean would have gone a long way toward a solution to this problem. Interestingly, this practice implies that reasonably strong and secure wooden doors and door frames would have been mandatory. But well-fitting doors were presumably desirable anyway for climatic reasons, and lockable ones would have reduced the need for lockable chests which would have used up additional quantities of valuable imported wood. Each household would have needed someone who could make and maintain the locks (even if a few were imported). But this general scenario also implies that there was more cash on the island, by the late 18th century at least, than one might expect from the literature. The presence of locked doors and cash on St. Kilda in the 18th and 19th centuries may seem unremarkable, perhaps providing simple confirmation of the fact that the islanders were not culturally backward—if we may assume that comparable densities of locked doors existed elsewhere in the region. What is important is the implied counterpoint to the “communitarian” model of historic St. Kilda. A SEMI-CASH ECONOMY? According to Harman (1997:134) a cash economy existed alongside the barter economy by the mid-19th century. Long before this, however, it seems likely that cash played at least two simultaneous roles on Hirta: in a monetary system which must have included “exchange

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rates,” allowing the islanders to trade with outsiders (including the subchief or factor), and probably an internal system of “primitive valuables.” According to Martin: “they have neither gold nor silver, but barter among themselves and the steward’s men for what they want” (1716:290). But the same writer also quantifies the fines payable for offences against the person and refers to the payments made by each family to the supplier of the communal cooking pot and the fire-making equipment taken on long-distance fowling expeditions—the “pot-penny” and the “fire-penny” respectively (1753:52; 1716:292). The early 18th-century missionary Alexander Buchan quotes the price to the islanders of a peck of salt (20 pence Scots), which was the same as for a pound of coarse tobacco; he also quotes the prices paid in compensation for sheep losses at different seasons (1727:23, 27). But in each case, he notes, payment was usually made in kind. That the islanders were keen to get their hands on cash, however, is suggested by Alexander Buchan’s experiences on Hirta. However much they may have valued the missionary’s spiritual ministrations, the St. Kildans charged him for all or most goods and services supplied and may for once have been able to turn the price and value system imposed on them by the subchief or factor to their own advantage. A letter written by Rev. Daniel Campbell, dated March 1706, and evidently based on a letter from Buchan, is quite explicit: “he buyes everie thing at a dear rate: they give him nothing for nought, no not a vessell to carrie water to him, or a drop milk to his tender young one. . .he adds yt he payes twenty pennies for every pint to his two babbies. But now yt he has not a farthing to but onie more, and yt he cannot get a drink of whey wtout giveing thrice ye worth of it of Tobacco for it. . .yt he must hire one to fetch him peats. . . .” and so on (NAS CH 1/2/32 f. 477). In 1717 it was said that “they [the minister’s family] are

obliged to hire the natives to grind their meall in quirns, cast and lead their peats, herd their few cattle, thatch their oun house and do other services, wherethrough the three hundered merks [Buchan’s salary] is every year exhausted long before the Stewart come to the island, and they are put to the borrowing, which exposes them to disdain and reproach” (ibid, ff. 202–204). Buchan was charged Edinburgh prices for milk (ibid, f. 472), and he was himself treated as a milch cow. A hundred years later, Lord Brougham claimed “there is no money current here”— but he went on to detail the prices or exchange values of livestock and agricultural produce (1871:107). Harman’s table of 18th-century St. Kilda rents (1997: 97) frequently mentions amounts of money, though it is not altogether clear how far these were references to payments made in cash or how far they represented the cash value of rent payments which had in fact been made in kind. The St. Kildans themselves, of course, had to pay, in kind or in cash, for imports brought by the subchief or his factor. But evidently they were not always totally dependent on these individuals. MacCulloch (1819:26) gives an explicit account of the St. Kildans’ independent mercantile activities: “with the effective [boat] they make a voyage once or twice in the year to the Long Island [i.e. the Western Isles], to dispose of that part of their wool, feathers, and cheese, which is not required for payment of rent; purchasing with them such commodities as are wanted for the uses of their limited establishments.” It may be that this practice was more common than its representation in the literature might suggest. But in any case the islanders had other sources of cash. Gauld (1989) has noted Martin’s three references to ships visiting St. Kilda and highlighted the presence of deep-sea fishing boats working on the

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Continental Shelf or the Rockall Bank, part of a long-established tradition pioneered by boats based in England, though Hebrideans also seem to have been fishing in this zone by the early 18th century. Martin recorded archaeological evidence, in the form of “English hooks” found “sticking to the fish-bones” in gannets’ nests (1716:283). Martin mentioned that the (probably English) crew of one ship stole some cows from the islanders, offering in exchange “a few Irish copper pieces” and that they attempted to purchase the favors of the island women (1753:46). Gauld suggests that fishermen would quite frequently have put into Hirta for fresh water; perhaps it was they who supplied the barrels which were increasingly used to contain salted sea birds from sometime in the 18th century onward (Harman 1997:217). Such visits would have provided the St. Kildans with sporadic opportunities for trade, and they might well have been paid in cash. Presumably deep-sea fishermen would have been prepared for eventualities like having to call in at places like Hirta, and they might even have taken orders for various goods and materials from the St. Kildans; one is reminded of the friendly relations between the islanders and various trawler and whaler captains in the early years of the 20th century, as recorded for example in the diaries of Alice MacLachlan (Quine 1988:55–107). Another source of money would have been visitors. An early, famous one was the facetious Lord Brougham, better known for his later role in pioneering tourism on the French Riviera, who came to Hirta in 1799 (Brougham 1871). The word “tourist” was used in connection with St. Kilda as early as the 1820s (McDonald in Mackenzie 1911:28 –29). Some sources have helped to confuse matters in this area. Macaulay, whose work was published in 1764, was taking a conventional “noble savage” line when he

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wrote (p. 275): “silver and gold. . .they neither have nor desire” but he also noted that: “they are now perhaps possessed of a score of shillings and some brass pence, more than will pay off the debt of their whole state” (1764:223). If cash was kept behind locked doors, commentators would necessarily have been ill-informed about the islanders’ resources. Given Martin’s account of the St. Kildans’ skills at financial negotiation (“they are very cunning, and there is scarce any circumventing of them in traffic and bartering,” 1753:38), he appears to contradict himself when he writes that: “the Inhabitants make no Distinction betwixt a Guinea and a Sixpence” (1753:46). However, as well as coping with the exchange values of the outside world, it is likely that the people of Hirta would have had their own quite separate system of values, and it may be this to which Martin is alluding. Another early reference to coins occurs in Macaulay’s account of Tobar nam Buaidh (The Well of the Virtues) at the lower end of Gleann Mo´r. Offerings made by those who sought a cure at the well included “sometimes, though rarely enough, copper coins of the smallest value” (MacAulay 1764:95). This too may be an allusion to the different roles played by coins within the Hirta community. There is reasonable evidence, then, to suggest that cash would have been present on Hirta throughout the period when doors were locked; indeed it must have been more abundant, widespread, and important than suggested by the St. Kilda literature in general. Given that references to tumbler locks can be traced back to 1734 (in the Scottish Highlands) (Fenton and Hendry 1984:12), and in the light of what has been suggested above for the situation at the end of the 17th century, Harman’s suggestion that these security systems were introduced by a late 18th-century catechist may well be too conservative.

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THE HOUSEHOLD AND THE COMMUNITY It is thus possible to characterize the St. Kilda households as being immensely secretive about their cash. Did this represent a counterweight to the communitarian spirit? Certainly we need to consider how far families and households exerted themselves as independent social units in contradistinction to the all-pervasive community ethos. The locked doors of Hirta are a reminder that the islanders’ communitarianism was intricately constructed. A family’s hoard of cash would have been a symbol of its separateness and sense of privacy, of its need to withold something from the common weal, to control some independent source of bargaining power and potentially even the wherewithal to leave Hirta. Ironically, the individual family’s resort to lock and key was also the ultimate expression of social control in this community in that it effectively neutralized the threat to social cohesion posed by stashes of cash. But it seems that in any case cash was not the liberating force on Hirta which it might have been elsewhere. According to Neil Mackenzie (1911:30): “Equal in their hopes and fears and habits, they in everything insisted upon an equality which had a deadening influence and effectually hindered any real progress. If anyone attempted to better himself he was set upon from all sides and persecuted by everyone. There must be no departure from what their fathers had done. . . .No one must be allowed to make himself much more comfortable than others.” This is the testimony of a man who lived on Hirta for 14 years and who did after all succeed in persuading the St. Kildans to make radical changes to the layout of their village and its lands and to espouse a new variant of Christianity; it must be regarded as a considered judgement. It seems, then, that the flow of cash on

St. Kilda was circumscribed by a regularly maintained, all-pervasive security system as well as customary prohibitions on individual families adopting lifestyles which elevated them above their peers. This raises questions about the symbolic value of money within the household. Could it be that the cash which these security devices were intended to safeguard was mainly a proxy for the identity and integrity of individual families so that the existence of the locks represented an assertion of the right of these families to maintain and defend their own “secrets”? This idea is attractive not simply in the abstract. It would fit in with the essentially dormant nature of the cash, in a society with an egalitarian ethos and infrequent trading opportunities. In this scenario cash would not be a frequently used and familiar medium of exchange, but something whose force lay mostly in its potential for making an intervention into social and economic transactions. In this respect, St. Kilda would have been distinctly “old-fashioned,” perhaps more like the Iron Age (ca. 500 B.C.— ca. A.D. 50) societies of southern Britain where coinage had made a somewhat limited appearance. Taking an overview, and recognizing that we cannot know how much cash was held by the islanders, we might have to consider the role of money as (a) a currency for use in dealings with outsiders, (b) a currency used within the community, perhaps with a different “exchange rate,” (c) a symbolic medium which was used by the islanders in a “tokens of value” system, or (d) as a proxy for the theoretical independence of individual families—a resource sparingly used, a medium used in a game of bluff and counterbluff which was centered around secrecy and “face.” We know almost nothing of the nature of marriage transactions on Hirta—they were not part of the normal visitor experience and would probably have been largely kept secret from the minister.

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However, Buchan does tell us that “the richer sort give their help at this time to the poorer, to enrich their stock, viz. by giving the married parties some of their cattle; others, seed to sow their land, etc.” (1716:33). One may easily imagine how useful the prevalence of locks and keys would have been in marriage negotiations, allowing one party to pretend to be “richer” or “poorer” than the other party might be inclined to believe or claim, in a poker game of bluff and counterbluff in which only a selection of the cards might eventually be laid on the table. There were, after all, some wealth differentials among the St. Kildans (Harman 1997:132). OUTSIDERS Issues of mistrust and secrecy, security, and theft were also heavily involved in relationships between the St. Kildans and outsiders—the subchief or factor, ships’ crews, and tourists. Apparently the islanders’ normal custom was to treat visiting ships’ crews with courtesy and generosity, if they came “peaceably and with good designs” and if they were not too numerous (Martin 1753: 45, 66). But by Martin’s time they had had some bad experiences; visitors had failed to respect their property, the virtue of their women, and the sanctity of their Sabbath (Gauld 1989). The islanders had become strongly prejudiced against “Lowlanders” (probably the English) (Martin 1953:14). The arrival of a strange ship was a source of serious concern, not to say raw fear. Various writers mention this, from Otter (1825:348) (referring to a landing made in 1797) to Connell (1887: 1902). At times of good visibility the islanders would frequently have had advance warning of the coming of strangers. On the flank of Mullach Bi was the Taigh an Fhir Faireadh, the “Watchman’s House,” which was apparently used for keeping a sea watch (Harman 1997:73), a

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frequent practice, incidentally, all over the Norse Atlantic realm (Harman 1997:74; Clouston 1932). The St. Kildans sometimes hid themselves in cunningly disguised, carefully constructed subterranean shelters in the screes to the southwest of the settlement, from which they might observe the new arrivals (Harman 1997:Fig. 33, 84, 231). According to Steel (1975:32), when soldiers searching for “Bonnie Prince Charlie” (the fugitive pretender to the British crown) arrived in 1746, the inhabitants hid in “caves” in the Mullach Sgar screes. Maclean (1838:47) was shown “a house completely underground” on the southwest side of the bay. Sands (1878:82) dug out a recently rediscovered “subterranean house” in the Mullach Sgar screes, complete with two wall-beds (as in the pre-1830 Hirta houses). To judge from Kearton’s account (1897:38), people were still sometimes fleeing “to the rocks” in the late 19th century. A close watch would be kept on the situation. Would the strangers simply make their way to the spring at Tobar Childa? Would they display their peaceful intentions by coming ashore unarmed, calling out, displaying goods for exchange? Would they attempt to force the locked doors with which they were confronted, or would they show their honesty and respect for the islanders by conspicuously not doing so? The presence of locks and keys would have played an important role in this particular social transaction. Then there were the tourists. By the early 1820s the islanders had already learned to milk them with as much skill as they milked their own sheep. McDonald, who visited Hirta in 1822 and 1824, is worth quoting at length: Encouraged by the amazing credulity of the ordinary tourist, the natives have got to be very successful in imposing upon them. The tourist comes with a certain idea in his mind as to what the native is like, and would be disappointed if they did not find him like that; this the natives

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have been shrewd enough to discover and turn to their own profit. For example, when they went on board a yacht they would pretend that they thought all the polished brass was gold, and that the owner must be enormously wealthy. Yet, when in a few minutes after they might be offered the choice of several coins, selecting not the gold but the largest as if they had no idea of the relative value of the different metals. At the very same time some of them would be below with the steward showing the keenest knowledge of the value of the supplies which they were trying to sell and of the value of every several coin. Again, they would pick up pieces of coal and affect surprise at not being able to eat them; and when they would come in front of a looking-glass they would start back and express great surprise at not being able to find the person who appeared to be behind it; and yet a moment’s observation would have shown anyone that they had that very morning shaved before a looking-glass. . .all the time they would be saying to themselves in Gaelic. . .“if we seem to be paying great attention and make them believe that we are simple, they will be sure before they go away to give us something much better.” (quoted in Mackenzie 1911:28 –29)

Tourism intensified during the course of the 19th century; it must have hastened the onset of the cash economy and considerably expanded its volume. Sometimes the St. Kildans stole from tourists, or attempted to. According to Lord Brougham: “we were in constant jeopardy of pocket, so nimble-fingered are the savages. Bottles, sticks, &c. &c., all were seized. . .my dear boat-cloak fell among others” (1871:106). According to Mackenzie: “stealing. . .was only limited by their opportunities, and if the thing which it was possible to steal belonged to the proprietor, it was all right” (1911:29). The St. Kildans’ habit of locking their doors while they were at church (Muir 1858:13) presumably shows that they distrusted tourists (perhaps justifiably, considering Muir’s comment that “we were utterly unable to conjecture by what means [a lock] could be opened”). Further questions about the attitudes of tourists are raised by the evidently total disappearance from Hirta of the rotary querns

which would have been regular equipment in every house and also of the (perhaps prehistoric) trough querns mentioned by Kearton (1897:53). Whether these items were sold or just taken and whether they left the island before or after the evacuation, their disappearance does highlight the predatory approach of some tourists. By definition, and to some extent as a result of bitter experience, it would have been an effort for the St. Kildans to consider outsiders as part of their moral universe, though presumably Christian missionaries attempted to change this attitude. By far the most critical encounter with outsiders, however, ensued from the arrival of the factor and his party—and before that, the coming of the subchief and his retinue—to collect the “rent.” The arrival of the chief’s representatives would have been a mixed blessing, in which the delivery of vital supplies, the making or renewal of contact with outsiders, and the sense of inclusion within wider social networks was counterbalanced by the essentially predatory nature of the visit. Harman’s account (1997:Tables 1 and 2) suggests that the amounts of rent paid, in kind or in money, were variable and flexible; for example, 2 years’ rent was remitted in 1712, but in 1754 the rent was doubled. Since both sides must sometimes have had a serious interest in flexibility, it may have been impossible for either to insist too firmly on sticking to precedent and agreed practice. It is clear that negotiations were intense at times; one may readily imagine the reasons cited by the subchief, factor, or tacksman for increasing the payments and by the headman for decreasing them. The islanders often closed ranks (“the voice of one is the voice of all”; Martin 1753:38). Martin’s characterization of encounters between the subchief and the islanders suggests a mixture of genuine confrontation and ritualized standoff which must have had deep his-

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torical roots. He described the islanders’ use of violence to successfully resist new “taxes”; a complex dispute over the factor’s method of compensating for the deficiencies of a wooden measuring standard which had become worn with age; and the necessity for the headman to provoke the “steward” into giving him three (ritual) blows on the head with a cudgel (Martin 1716:290; 1753:49, 50). The islanders had a vested interest in concealing the truth about St. Kildan economics from the laird’s representatives. Their shrewdness and cunning have already been noted. They were evasive, for example, about the number of sheep which they owned. As MacAulay (1764: 129) put it: “The people have their own mysteries of state.” It was MacAulay, too, who made a direct link between “taxation” and mendacity; he noted the existence of “a certain heavy tax,” based on livestock numbers, and pointed out that “[the Hirta man’s] interest inclines him daily to dissemble in this article, and a practice of lying soon becomes general and habitual” (1764:245). The St. Kildans must have discouraged inventories of the contents of cleitean and may have been able to prevent them (perhaps here too locked doors had their uses). Probably they became forgetful, vague or obstructive when it came to establishing who owned what. Community solidarity was all important. “Mysteries of state” were evidently involved in the two St. Kilda murders recorded by Mackenzie (1911:30); they must have taken place quite a long time before 1830. In one case, a Skye man married into the island and settled there; he was a McLeod (“and consequently a clansman of the proprietor”). However, he soon “came to be suspected of giving information in regard to some things which had come to the factor’s knowledge.” The following winter he was thrown into the sea. The other case concerned a woman, for-

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merly the servant of the “steward,” who had married into the Hirta community. She, too, was suspected of giving information to her former master. One day, after her husband had gone to Dun to keep out of the way, a loop of rope was put round her neck and she was strangled by “all the men” who “all took part in it, so that all might be equally guilty, and thus less risk of any one informing.” Whether these unfortunates actually were informers is clearly beside the point; the St. Kildans were involved in a game of concealment and resistance in which the stakes were high. Neil Mackenzie’s perception of the true situation is interesting. Going into details about the winter supplies of the average family, he concluded: “I know of no place where people can have such a plentiful supply of food with so little exertion.” Calculating that agricultural operations and fowling took up 37 days per annum, to which the time taken for preparing fuel and manure had to be added, Mackenzie concluded that “they could finish all their work in about a third of their time” (1911:15). Admittedly he was talking about the men; women evidently worked longer hours, and many of their tasks were physically more demanding. Also the Protestant work ethic must have colored the minister’s views. His characterization of the males, who did not “care to do any more than [was] strictly necessary” has to be understood in the context of a gendered division of labor, in which the men took considerable personal risks climbing cliffs and stacks and on the sea. The potential for instant increases in “productivity” must have lain mostly in the area of men’s work, but one can readily understand their reluctance to take unnecessary risks to create a surplus which would have mostly benefitted the laird. The St. Kildans had a strong interest in attempting to conceal the potential productivity of the archipelago. MacAulay (1764:40 – 41) put it rather well: “the stew-

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ard will always have it in his power to monopolize the whole trade of this island . . . this being the true state of their case, to raise up larger quantities of corn than their land now produces, or what will be necessary to support them, would contribute very little to the happiness of the St. Kildians.” The remarks made by the long-serving minister, Neil Mackenzie, about the potential productivity of the island would have been deeply subversive from the community’s point of view. One can easily imagine how a minister could come to be classified as an outsider, even a hostile witness, and that his status as a priest may sometimes have given him limited protection against the consequences of that classification. The St. Kildans’ ruthlessly mercenary approach to Alexander Buchan has already been noted. MacAulay provided a classic piece of political advice for the priest who might identify with the situation of his flock: “. . .the minister is himself in some degree a prisoner, as his living here without any comfort, and enjoying the very necessaries of his subsistance, depend so much on the steward’s friendship, it may be convenient for him to look on with a prudent taciturnity, if he intends to continue long in the place” (1764:274). The era when the subchief brought a substantial retinue with him would almost certainly have been more oppressive and trying for the people of Hirta than the postretinue situation. According to Martin, the late 17th-century retinue of 40 – 60 persons was “retrenched” (1753:48). This custom would have allowed the chief to support substantial numbers of “retainers” directly, at any rate in the summer, in circumstances in which they would brook no argument from the islanders, who may, however, have profited to some extent from the social and economic exchanges which the annual invasion presumably made possible. Much of the potential for

“rent avoidance” would have developed later, after the demise of the retinue. CONCLUDING DISCUSSION This treatment of St. Kilda’s history has diverged from conventional narratives, moving away from the customary portrayal of the island community as a wellordered, communitarian microcosm, pursuing its exotic lifeways over the centuries. Using the locks and keys as a point of departure, it has explored the possibility of reconstructing social tensions and internal contradictions—stashes of cash and hidden resources, and the family’s maintenance of secrecy and privacy in a communitarian society. This takes us to the heart of the communal/ familial interface, because the locking of doors can be seen from either perspective. It must have acted as a device which partially safeguarded the cohesion of the community from the potential tensions surrounding the protection and maintenance of “private,” family possessions. At the same time, it was a counter to the pervasive communitarian ethos, maintaining the conditions of existence for limited family “holdouts.” From this viewpoint, this was not so much an “egalitarian” society as an “equal opportunity” society. In an earlier paper (Fleming 1999) the strict regulations to which many economic activities were subject in the late 17th century (and often later) were interpreted in terms of commons management. But here too it is possible to distinguish between the communitarian ethos of compulsory contribution to the common weal— every family contributing equally to the maintenance of the boat, for example—and the “equality of opportunity” represented by the drawing of lots for access to particular plots of land, fowling zones, fishing stances, and so on. Mackenzie (see above) saw the islanders’ conformity, their unwillingess to counte-

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nance public displays of difference, as having a debilitating effect on “real progress,” as he put it. Perhaps he failed to recognize more subtle ways of expressing social distinctions within the community. In the St. Kilda case this is probably about as far as the expression of familial distinctiveness and independence went. After all, collaboration was essential to the economy. Families worked together, for example, on fowling expeditions to the stacks; they agreed on the share-out of fishing stances on the rocks and the order in which they were to have access to the corn-drying kiln. The impact of disasters—the loss of the island’s boat, a summer of appalling weather—was felt by the whole community. As we have seen, solidarity was the key to the islanders’ approach to the annual visitation from the representative of the chief or laird. In the social and economic circumstances of St. Kilda, families which occasionally obtained access to the external market would have had limited ways of “exploiting” their advantage. It seems that in any case they would have been discouraged from conspicuous displays of social difference or distinctions of wealth and that the opportunities for exchanging cash for prestige goods would have been limited and unpredictable. One can also view locked and lockable stores, then, in terms of congealed exchange opportunities, as guaranteeing the dormancy of cash and other small valuables until the occasion arose for reactivating external exchange relationships—the arrival of a boatload of tourists, for example. Even here, however, one wonders whether the communitarian ethos demanded the equal distribution of the bonanza, as in the case of some small communities today—for example, on islands in Lake Titicaca (Peru)—where the accommodation of visiting tourists is rotated among different families. More speculatively, one wonders what

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impact the cultural experience of the St. Kildans had upon their interpretation of Christian doctrine. They are more likely, for instance, to have assimilated an inherent fatalism into the belief that all are equal in God’s sight than to have spent much time considering their own economic performance in the light of the Protestant work ethic; indeed several observers remarked upon the few hours worked by the St. Kilda men and on their “laziness” (the women apparently worked harder) (Mackenzie 1911:15; McGillivray 1842:55–56). This account has exploited the richness of the St. Kilda literature and has said not very much about the role of material culture and the archaeological record. To an extent, this is because limited forays have been made in this area so far. Hirta might be frivolously but accurately described as the Island of a Thousand Sheds (the cleitean), but no one has yet made a detailed study of them. Excavations in the late 1980s (Emery 1996) have shown the potential of the houses (i.e., those built in the 1860s and inhabited until the evacuation) and the “blackhouses” (their predecessors, built in the 1830s) to reveal details of, and distinctions in, material culture—for example, in imported prestige goods such as china tea sets. Photographs and literature may supplement these material fragments, but of course much of this evidence relates to the last few decadent decades of St. Kilda’s occupation. Rather to our embarassment, archaeologists have not yet identified the precise site of the pre-1830 “village,” despite the existence of at least two drawings of it (Stell and Harman 1988:32–33; Atkinson 1832). It seems clear that this “village” was nucleated, but the drawings and accounts are rather confusing about the extent to which the houses were clustered around a central open space or distributed along a “street” (or possibly two “streets”) (Harman 1997:142–143). Mackenzie’s reorgani-

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zation in 1830 was a relatively sensitive local variety of the “improvement” which lairds were imposing all over northern Scotland at this time— creating farms with fixed boundaries to be tenanted by individual families, at the expense of densely populated settlements which operated as communities, with systems of self-regulation and large areas of common land. St. Kilda, however, was not cleared and converted into one large sheep farm, as happened in many other places. After discussions with Mackenzie and among themselves, the St. Kildans created 16 crofts; historically, they were ahead of their time. The reorganization which Mackenzie initiated resulted in a much more explicit display, in landscape terms, of the public/ private dichotomy, the divisions between the crofts contrasting with the communal head dyke which enclosed them, and the public “street” linking the houses, each of which was on its own (rented) land. This is the cultural landscape which is dominant today. There is evidence that this dichotomy was played out, in terms of the landscape, in earlier times. The “communal” factor is represented by substantial traces of pre-1830 head dykes (Fleming 1995) which may date to the Norse period or the late Middle Ages. The “family independence” factor may perhaps be symbolized by the half-dozen or so corbelled buildings in the Village Bay settlement area which are clearly not cleits; they have sometimes been interpreted as medieval houses (Williamson and Boyd 1961:54 – 66). They are quite regularly spaced through the settlement area and raise the possibility that, sometime in the pre-Martin period, settlement was dispersed rather than nucleated. Such a “maximal dispersion” pattern is displayed also by the structures in Gleann Mo´r referred to above (Harman 1997:Fig. 60). But we should not take the archaeological evidence too literally. On St. Kilda, the

communitarian ethos of the islanders does not seem to have been much compromised, despite the creation of a landscape of individual crofts and the increasingly commercial and cash-driven climate of the later 19th century, with the arrival of more and more tourists. There is not much evidence that the Mackenzie reforms really changed the island mindset. Mackenzie himself, as we have seen, was highly critical of his charges, from the point of view of the Protestant work ethic, but his primary preoccupation, as one might expect, was with doctrinal matters. In the end, tourism intensified, the islanders became increasingly exposed to the pull of the world outside, and the community became demographically unviable and demoralized, especially after the emigration of 36 of its members in 1852. To some this might seem like a moral tale, symbolizing the long-term unviability of an old-fashioned communitarian society, whose members could only adapt to the modern world by taking the drastic solution of emigrating as families and individuals, the community itself being terminally ill-equipped to make the necessary changes. But did they choose the right strategy? Eighteen of the 36 who went to Australia in 1852 perished on the voyage (Holohan 1986). From a long-term perspective, the St. Kildans, both in 1852 and indeed in 1930, might have been better to insist on staying put, negotiating a new deal—a process for which their legendary solidarity, and their paradoxical skill and cunning when dealing with outsiders, had surely left them very well equipped. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank Bill Sillar for helpful comment, Mark Edmonds for stimulating discussion of some of the issues addressed here, Domhnall Uilleam Stiu`bhart for drawing my attention to the Buchan manuscript and making his transcripts available, and the National Archives of Scotland (Edinburgh) for permis-

ST. KILDA sion to reproduce short extracts from these transcripts.

REFERENCES CITED Atkinson, G. C. 1832 A notice of the island of St. Kilda, on the northwest coast of Scotland. Transactions of the Natural History Society of Northumberland 2:215–225. Berry, R. J. 1969 History in the evolution of Apodemus sylvaticus (Mammalia) at one edge of its range, Journal of the Society of Zoology of London 159:311–328. Brougham, Lord 1871 Memoirs of the life and times of Lord Brougham written by himself. Blackwood, Edinburgh. Buchan, A. 1727 A description of St. Kilda. Lumisden and Robertson, Edinburgh. Clegg, E. J. 1977 Population changes in St. Kilda during the 19th and 20th centuries. Journal of Biosocial Science 9:293–307.

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Harding, R. R., Merriman, R. J and Nancarrow, P. H. A. 1984 St. Kilda: An illustrated account of the geology. Her Majesty’s Staionery Office, London. Harman, M. 1997 An isle called Hirte: A history and culture of St. Kilda to 1930. Maclean Press, Waternish (Isle of Skye). Holohan, A. 1986 St. Kilda: Emigrants and disease. Scottish Medical Journal 31:46 – 49. Kearton, R. 1897 With Nature and a camera. Cassell & Co., London. MacAulay, K. 1764 The history of St. Kilda. Becket and de Hondt, London. MacCulloch, J. 1819 A description of the Western Isles of Scotland. Hurst, Robinson & Co., London. MacDiarmid, J. 1877 On St. Kilda and its inhabitants. Transactions of the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland 10:232–253.

Clouston, J. S. 1932 Our ward hills and ensigns. Proceedings of the Orkney Antiquarian Society 10:33– 41.

MacGillivray, J. 1842 Account of the island of St. Kilda, chiefly with reference to its natural history. Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal 32:47–70.

Connell, R. 1887 St. Kilda and the St. Kildians. Hamilton, Adams & Co., London.

Mackenzie, J. B. 1911 Episode in the life of Rev. Neil Mackenzie at St. Kilda from 1829 to 1843. Privately printed.

Dodgshon, R. A. 1998 From chiefs to landlords. Edinburgh Univ. Press, Edinburgh.

Maclean, L. 1838 Sketches of the Island St. Kilda with the Journal of an excursion to St. Kilda by the Vulcan steamer, 25th July, 1838. W. R. McPhun, Glasgow.

Emery, N. 1996 Excavations on Hirta 1986 –90. HMSO, Edinburgh. Fenton, A., and C. Hendry. 1984 Wooden tumbler locks in Scotland and beyond. Review of Scottish Culture 1:11–28. Fleming, A. 1995 St. Kilda: Stone tools, dolerite quarries and long-term survival. Antiquity 69:25–35. 1999 Human ecology and the early history of St. Kilda. Journal of Historical Geography 25(2): 183–200. Fleming, A., and M. Edmonds in St. Kilda: Quarries, fields, and prehistoric press agriculture. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Gauld, W. W. 1989 In the lee of Rockall. Northern Studies 26:43– 55.

Martin, M. 1716 A description of the Western Isles of Scotland. A. Bell et al., London. 1753 A voyage to St. Kilda 1697, 4th ed. Brown and Davis, London. Muir, T. S. 1858 St. Kilda: A fragment of travel by Unda. Privately printed. Otter, W. 1825 The life and remains of Edward Daniel Clarke. George Cowie & Co., London. Quine, D. 1988 St. Kilda portraits. Privately printed. Ross, A. 1884 A visit to the island of St. Kilda. Transactions of the Inverness Scientific Society and Field Club 3:72–91.

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