By 1930 only thirty-eight people were left on the once thriving island of St Kilda, and many of them were old. For decades the population had been finding its marginal way of life increasingly gruelling, and after the First World War, which gave a few the opportunity to see something of the outside world, discontent with an almost medieval way of life spread. As the number of able-bodied islanders dwindled and crops failed, so hardship heightened for a society dependent on climbing cliffs to catch its staple food of fulmar and puffin. When the final evacuation came, there was little regret among those leaving. Many were wholly unsentimental about selling their distinctive spinning wheels and oil cruses to those desperate for relics from this unique outpost of civilization. One put a sign in the window of an abandoned house: St Kildan Relics for Sale. Apply Within.
OBAN, Friday, 29 August
A rugged little man with his jacket buttoned up to his throat to half conceal a red ’kerchief, and wearing well-patched blue trousers, stood with a melancholy mongrel beside a turf cleit at the base of Ruival and looked steadily out to sea between the Point of Coll and Levenish towards a blur of eastern horizon. On his left rose the towering green cone of Conachair, grey with screes and steaming with mist, at the base of which are the tin-roofed cottages of the village, held back from the rocky shore by pastured croftlands. On his right the sun shone out of the sea on steep green slopes which come to sharp pinnacles black as the Coolin tops.
Under his gaze and ahead was the village bay, or Loch Hirta as some call it, the only landing-place on the island…. The sentinel on the cliff and the wet-haired dog had stood vigil on the cliff from after dawn, patient and unwearying. Many of his kind had done the same thing before him, but few would do it again. The rain swept down in fierce squalls, but still he stood, the moisture sparkling on his dark eyebrows. The white vapours draped Levenish and sea and sky melted into one, but still he stayed.
For two days now the islanders had been waiting. Then suddenly he straightened. A way out on the waters to where the Sound of Harris lay behind the cloud of mist was the spectred shape of a narrow steamer. He rose, tapped the dog with his stick, and lumbered along the ledge towards the village with the news.
His look-out was ended. The last landing ship to call before the islanders deserted their wild volcanic rock in the Atlantic had been sighted.
The Dunara Castle, that was to carry away the sheep of the hills and the simple goods and chattels of the population before the Admiralty vessel would come to remove them too and complete the story, was swinging between the headlands as man and dog crossed the dyked pastures towards the village.
This was the beginning of the end of St Kilda as a human habitation. The episodes of the watcher belong to Wednesday. On Thursday the fishery cruiser Harebell, commissioned to clear the island, came over by Levenish and dropped anchor beside the Dunara Castle …
The evacuation was suddenly dramatized by the advent of the navy. Bugles sounded on the deck. Presently a boat was lowered from the davits. Three braided officers were pulled away to the shore by navymen in white ducks …
Soon the waters of the bay were churned with traffic. The black flat-bottomed boats of the St Kildans, sea water over the floor-boards, were in strange contrast to the gleaming enamel and glistening brass of the naval craft.
All morning between quay and steamer they plied with sheep, cows, dresser, tables, and canvas bags to be lodged on the Dunara Castle.
The embarkation of the shaggy Highland cattle was extraordinary. The great tan beasts followed in the wake of the boats which towed them from shore to ship until, alongside, they were hoisted aboard by a noose around the horns, their big eyes bulging and their necks taut with the bellying weight below.
Before the morning sun had melted the mists on Conachair, the pens between decks on the Dunara Castle were packed with the hill sheep, Blackfaced and cross bred soays, that look like Nubian goats, while the holds were stowed with the frugal household goods of a unique race …
The last black boat rocked away before midday. The Dunara Castle closed her hatches, hauled up her anchor, swung round, and steamed towards the entrance of the bay. Her siren shrieked out its farewell blasts, which echoed to the very summit of Conachair.
From two cottage doors white sheets fluttered. One felt a catch in the throat …
The people of St Kilda, the last of the sea-girt Hebrides, perched on the edge of the great Atlantic plateau just before the ocean dips to unfathomable depths, have been calmly preparing for evacuation from Monday, four days ago. The Dunara Castle was expected on Monday night or thereabouts. All depended upon the weather …
The packing and parcelling were begun in the village.… The women worked at packing from the hour the sun climbed over the speckled slopes of Conachair. The men were out on Mullack and Carn Mohr, peaks of the mountainous island, with the shepherds and dogs from the Outer Isles, chasing the sheep that had taken refuge on crag and ledge…
I went in the dark to visit one of the cottages.… I was greeted in Gaelic, which is the language used, English being spoken imperfectly. Through the little lobby filled with laden boxes I passed into the living room.
The St Kildans are not a forgotten people, living in black houses. The cottages, by many standards in the isles, are comfortable. There is nothing here to resemble the hovel I once saw in Skye, so low-roofed that one crawled into it, and which had yet produced two Metropolitan policemen.
As I sat down in the St Kildan cottage the father and three sons in the blue fisher jerseys and patched and repatched trousers, just returned from inhospitable hills, were steaming in the warmth. A single oil lamp lit the deep shadows on the boarded walls, which were plastered with newspaper illustrations and lithographs. A stock pot sat by the open fireplace. It contained the household supper of salted mutton, a staple dish, with porridge, syrup, baked scones, dried ling, and the exclusive dishes of the islanders – salted fulmar and roasted puffin, the food of a race of expert fowlers.
In a corner rested a broom of gannet’s wings used for sweeping the stone floor. This broom, the St Kildan mother told me, is far superior to a heather switch, but it belongs to the hygiene of a later day, for once the St Kildans allowed the refuse to gather deep on the floor of their dwellings, and cleared it out for manure once a year.
The women, as always, worked as they talked, the mother sitting at her spinning wheel and a daughter of 13 of with glorious hair – a rarity among the St Kildans – adroitly carding wool with hand implements.
Yesterday morning I was awakened early by the next phase of the Exodus. Through a sound sleep on the floor of the schoolhouse … I heard the steady tramp of feet and of quick jabbering in the Gaelic. Usually it has been the bleating of half a thousand head of sheep awaiting shipment that has called me in the morning.
I rose and looked through the window into the white mist that swept coldly over the slopes of the Oiseval and blotted out the bay. Across the glebe towards the school, which is attached to the church buildings, came a chain of St Kildans from the village bearing boxes and furniture on their backs … Now they were ready and waiting for the approach of the Dunara Castle, men were out on the slopes of the Ruaival scanning the horizon like Cortes on his peak in Darien …
Perhaps the Dunara Castle will come this day, perhaps it won’t. We wait for a sail, like Robinson Crusoe. As we wait there is plenty of time for reflection. We are about to leave an island that has been inhabited since the second century.… Within a few short hours, as time is rated in this island, where the clock is given the same short shrift as all things mechanical, the hearths will be stone cold, and the people will be gone and scattered to places unfamiliar.
Two of them, Ewan Macdonald and his sister … have never before left St Kilda. They will see roads, horses, and trains for the first time, but to what end?
The transplantation from the island, with its distinctive life and habits, to the routinized mainland will be salutary. No longer will turfs be cut on the Mullack Mhor to be stored in the drystone cleits. No more will barefooted St Kildans descend fearlessly that dreaded 1,000 feet fall of Conachair to the frothed sea far below in search of the fulmar, that skunk of birds whose flesh, oil, and feathers once sustained life. The 60-fathom manila ropes will go into the limbo where the salted cowhide and horsehair strands of their fathers went.
August is now nearly over. The young fulmar is undisturbed. September is nearly here, but the nests of the gong, or tender solan goose, are not raped. The last trip has been made in the lug sailboat to Boreray where the shearing kept the men for long summer months. The women have ended their task of snaring the puffins or ‘Tammie Norrie,’ the sea pigeons that look like parrots and taste like kipper.
The churns are curios and the handmills are with the collectors. St Kilda is of the historied past. The play is ended.