Whisky, Kilts, and the Loch Ness Monster

by William W. Starr

  Historian Elizabeth Bray, whose commentary on Wordsworth informs my own, tells the story of one of the great Hebridean laments drawn from an almost unbelievably tragic story, that of Annie Campbell of Scalpay (a tiny island off the southeast coast of Harris), who was engaged to marry a sea captain, Allan Morrison of Stornoway. On his way to Scalpay for the ceremony, the captain’s ship foundered on the rocks, and all aboard were drowned. Brokenhearted, Annie died of grief a few months later. Her body was taken for burial, but on the voyage to the church a storm came up, and her coffin had to be tossed overboard to lighten the load and save the ship. Not long after that Captain Morrison’s body was found washed up on one of Shiant Islands in the Minch. A few days later Annie’s body washed up on the very same beach. You can understand easily why this lament achieved a certain stature among Gaelic laments.

  Human habitation on these islands is said to go back 6,500 years; prehistoric evidence abounds. At the famous Callanish Standing Stones a few miles south from my cottage, nearly fifty giant stone monoliths—some as high as fifteen feet, dating back to maybe 3000 B.C.—are stark and imposing. Not only are they easily accessed, but on the day I visited, I was alone. The small visitor center was closed, and in the light snowfall—with intermittent sunshine—I walked to and through the monoliths. I confess to touching them and walking close by—and I doubt I’m the first to do so—even though it is officially prohibited. Callanish is quite a contrast to the slightly larger, better-known site at Stonehenge in England, where the stones are fenced off to keep visitors back. I stood quietly for a few minutes to allow the magic of the site to sink in. It is certain that these stones did not arrive here by accident, though what the plan in their arrangement may have been—a predictor of seasonal cycles for the farming community? forming the shape of a Celtic cross for religious purposes?—is lost to the ages. My guess is that they served a religious need for people in a remote area who needed strength and certitude in their beliefs. This is a boldly constructed site, not a casual one. Its symbol is enduring strength.

  The Vikings made their mark on the Western Isles, largely because they were such good sailors and no one else could get there. For several centuries, until the 1200s, they ruled, and the Norse influence is still prevalent throughout all of northern Scotland and the Orkney and Shetland Islands. After the Vikings the MacLeods ran things for a few more centuries until their archrivals, the Mackenzies, took over for several hundred more years. Eventually the potato famine in the 1840s forced people out, and many who remained were later thrown out in the clearances. The evictions were as harsh here as elsewhere, but there are reminders that all over the Highlands and Islands there were people who resisted. In 1849 on the island of North Uist in the outer Hebrides, police enforced eviction orders, and when several houses were demolished, crowds gathered. There was violence between authorities and the evictees, according to historian Eric Richards. Similar scenes were enacted in other locations, but sadly, the results were the same.

  Survival has been a struggle ever since that period. Employment opportunities have been limited, and until the last century so was education. The immigration of younger people to the job-rich cities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, and London continues as a major problem into the twenty-first century.

  The next day brought some broken clouds, dabs of blue sky, and only brisk winds, so I headed off for a day of exploring. Temperatures hovered in the thirties, and during the day I encountered sun, rain, sleet, and snow, and not necessarily in that order. At one point on the road south of Barvas I had sun on the right and sleet on the left, a description that probably translates into a single word in Gaelic. Literally I was in the middle of that meteorological muddle and marveled at the most peculiar weather I have ever experienced. To deal with the cold in my house I purchased a small electric space heater in Stornoway. It immediately became the best thing I bought on the trip. Well … maybe I wrote that in haste … there are those bottles of Scotch, after all. Nonetheless, when I got home I could move the heater from room to room: I could go to bed in a warm room, I could make dinner in a warm room, and I could step out of my shower into a warm bathroom (luxury!). After that purchase I think my affection for Lewis grew a bit warmer, too.

  The interior of Lewis is mostly a peat moor, barren and marshy. It’s the plentiful fuel source, but it’s bleak-looking. And yet—off in the distance are the beautiful snow-topped peaks of Harris, as pretty as anything I’ve seen. These islands are contradictions; parts of north Harris are as bleak and alien-appearing as can be imagined; they were used to depict the planet Jupiter in Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey. The south has a coastal beauty that can steal your heart (at least when it’s not storming). The Atlantic coast of Lewis, where I was staying, is battered by the strong ocean winds and tides; there are many small bays and high cliffs, all showing the roughness of repeated exposure to the elements. At the peak of the Butt of Lewis—no jokes, now, for this is actually the northern tip of Lewis and not the bottom—I looked off to the west, a sea span unbroken by land until you get to North America, and to the north, where there is no land until the Arctic. The feeling of isolation, of being at the end of the world, is inescapable. It isn’t a bad feeling, or a scary one, just a very unusual sense of being at the edge. The wind blew fiercely at the Butt of Lewis—mind those jokes—and with temperatures near freezing, the feeling of wanting to get back in a warm car proved just as inescapable.

  Back in Stornoway I shopped for more groceries, but the pickings were on the slim side, particularly when it came to fresh vegetables. The storm had shut down ferry service for forty-eight hours, and stores over the island ran short on a lot of supplies. The rain finally slackened, but the wind remained high, and there was no certainty the ferries would return right away. I wandered over to the Lewis Loom Centre, a storehouse of Harris Tweed coats, sweaters, scarves, hats, and gloves. It was a well-worn establishment just off one of Stornoway’s main roads, and the fellow in it looked a mite well-worn, too.

  He was tall with unkempt white hair falling over and around his face, and he was wearing a rumpled blue sweatshirt. He was a Mackenzie, quite a character, and he had been working there for many years. Since I was the only person in the store, he spent a long time chatting and helping me pick out a Harris Tweed sport coat with heather blue/green shadings. Quite handsome, we agreed, and at 245 U.S. dollars it seemed a bargain. Our conversation continued about Stornoway and the Western Isles, about which Mr. Mackenzie had no lack of opinions to share. He had been saddened by the exodus of people but understood the few jobs and fewer alternatives. He needed more customers to keep business up, of course, and he worried about the future for Harris Tweed, a hand-woven cottage industry unique to these islands for centuries.

  The clatter of the loom and the warm, moist aroma of pure wool have been an integral part of the Outer Hebrides for generations. Finlay Macdonald, who grew up on Harris in the 1920s and 1930s and whose mother spun wool, remembered that everyone on the island was very poor, and the only means for removing the extreme oiliness of the fabric was with the use of community urine pools. Everyone would contribute, and after the urine had stood for a time in a rain-safe location, becoming “mature,” it could be incorporated into the process.

  That particular practice has long since gone, but the rich tradition of Harris Tweed itself has been threatened as orders worldwide have declined, the number of skilled weavers has diminished and fabric imitators have been on the rise. David Yeadon in Seasons on Harris, published in 2006, wrote with knowledge and compassion about what has happened, and his words gracefully speak to the concern of a handful of weavers who carry on the traditions on the island. But Mr. Mackenzie was not optimistic: “It’s dying now. A few more years maybe you won’t find this Harris Tweed any more. A pity, a great pity.”

  But there are some good signs. The Harris Tweed Act, passed by Parliament in 1993, acknowledged that the industry “is vital to the economy of those islands” and “should b
e maintained.” There’s now a statutory body charged with safeguarding the industry and, by implication, a critical slice of the economy of the islands. Terry Williams, writing in a 2008 issue of Scottish Life magazine, noted that in 2006 production of Harris Tweed almost closed down for good. Since then a coalition of private and government officials have been working together to physically and financially connect the remaining weavers and the tweed mills; the industry cannot survive without both. The most recent evidence seems to point to modest success.

  Lewis has lots of sites that I wanted to see before my time ran out. With slightly improving weather I paid a visit to the small village at Arnol where a marvelously preserved blackhouse was open for exploration. Once inhabited by crofters on the island, the blackhouses were built low to the ground to withstand the strong winds off the Atlantic. They were dark, of course, their interior lit mostly by a peat fire never allowed to go out. There was no chimney as such, only tiny openings in the thatch roof, so much of the smoke stayed inside. It sounds pretty grim, but in fact the smoke served several important purposes: most important, it kept out the midges. Midges are a subject that must be addressed here, because they are a part of the Scottish experience no less than tartans, pipes, shortbread, and the Loch Ness Monster.

  In most guidebooks midges rate their own entry. And how fitting, given the general tenor of Scottish history, that they involve bloodshed: yours. The midge is a very tiny fly which gets its joy from taking your blood, and it does it efficiently and very, very annoyingly. The females have twenty teeth and do the biting; the males are rather gentle, which brings up a thought about how you tell the difference between a male and a female midge. The answer, I think, is somewhere close to the same way you tell the difference between a male and female crocodile. The only people who know for sure are in no condition to respond. Midges are found all over the Highlands and the Islands, and here’s the really bad news: their swarming coincides almost perfectly with the tourist season. (That is only tangentially connected to the fact that my visit ended just about the time the midges began organizing for their attack season.).

  Midges love the twilight hours and overcast days, and they are like angry bees, only a lot smaller and more persistent. Someone in the middle of a midge attack may be forgiven for feeling like King Edward’s soldiers must have felt while getting clobbered by William Wallace’s men. And while midges are not the only troublesome insect of the Highlands and Islands—there are stealth clegs (horseflies), ticks, fleas, lice, and more—they have earned a special place in the country’s hall of obnoxiousness fame and have been recognized by travelers over the centuries.

  In the 1720s one account included this note about the midges: “The violent heat of the sun among the rocks, make my new companions … such voracious cannibals that I was obliged to lag behind, and set my servant to take vengeance on them for the plentiful repast they were making at my expense, and without my consent, and by which I was told they were become as red as blood.”

  And this, from 1737: “They are so very small that, separately, they are but just perceptible and that is all; and being of a blackish color, when a number of them settle upon the skin, they make it look as if it was dirty; there they soon bore with their little augers into the pores, and change the face from black to red.” So enough of blood; you undoubtedly get the point here. Boswell and Johnson were smart travelers; they arrived after midge season.

  For people who live in the area, however, midges are a matter of real concern every year. And that’s why—to get back to the subject of blackhouses again—the smoke is important for keeping the nasty little insects away and enabling everyone to sleep at night. The smoke also served another purpose: it turned the sod and thatch roof into next year’s fertilizer. Crofters, their families, and their animals—cows, sheep, chickens—all stayed inside together in winter. Some crofters permitted the dung to accumulate inside throughout the winter; the smell must have been intense. Others swept it out regularly. The last person who actually lived in the blackhouse I visited occupied it for eighty years and moved out in 1966. What is left attests mutely to a way of life that has completely disappeared.

  I returned to my cottage for more reading, some dinner, and heard a strange sound: the sound of nothing, an absence of wind. It was the first time since I arrived here that there was no wind blowing. I slept poorly overnight; I think that was because it was too quiet outside. In the morning I drove back to Stornoway for some cash, and my friends at the Royal Bank of Scotland—recall the shady moneylenders at Portree?—were asking ten dollars to cash travelers checks written in pound sterling. I reminded the teller that I paid nothing at their banks in Inveraray and Stirling; I was bluntly reminded that their policy is to charge a fee. It’s only ten dollars, but I vowed I’d sooner beg on the streets of Stornoway than pay them their miserable little fee. I walked several blocks to find another bank willing to cash my checks for nothing. And I resolved to be absolutely certain I mentioned the Royal Bank of Scotland unpleasantly throughout my book.

  Over a cup of tea I imagined what Boswell and Johnson might have written in their respective books over such an incident. Johnson would put it this way: “Sir, disagreeableness need not deter you. It is the pebble in the shoe that may be removed with but a gentle shake.” And Bozzy, surely, would have opined something like, “I could not conceive of a more onerous action to confront; you did well to move on to that place where you will be well received.” I’d like to think they would have been so moved. The truth is I was missing both of them here on Lewis.

  At home that evening I watched a show on the telly called “Britain’s Worst Weather.” The announcer didn’t waste any time; he walked to a map, pointed to the west coast of Lewis—just about exactly where I was sitting—and said, “Here’s where you don’t want to be.” That was followed with a litany of ghastly storms, shipwrecks, drownings, houses washed out to sea, and people being blown about. Outside, it started to rain. And then I heard the wind starting up. I knew I’d be sleeping well.

  Morning brought sunny skies and relatively light breezes off the ocean and time to check out a weird bit of history in these islands. It involves a nineteenth-century soap baron with a lot of money, a lot of ambition, and a lot of unworkable plans, who almost wrecked these beautiful places. The soap baron was William Lever, the heir to a large wholesale grocery business in England. He was successful, and ultimately, as Lord Leverhulme, he turned the business into the giant Lever Brothers group, a commercial empire extending from Wales to Africa. In 1884 he visited Stornoway and fell in love with the Hebrides. In 1918 he bought the Isle of Lewis, and the following year he acquired its neighbor to the south, Harris. He thus became the landlord for some thirty-four thousand people and more than half a million acres. A colleague said of him, “The ruling passion of his life was not money or even power, but the desire to increase human well-being by substituting the profitable for the valueless.” In other words, he would be judge and jury for everyone. You can see the problems starting.

  Specifically he wanted to leave his mark as planner and philanthropist. He thought the land was useless and saw no purpose to crofting, which was how most everyone on the islands made a living, so he set about raising the standard of living by moving everyone off their land and into fishing and tweed factories. Residents of Lewis liked his lordship personally but couldn’t abide his notions, which were especially unpopular with servicemen returning from World War I—and the islands had more than their share of volunteers for the army—who wanted their land and felt they deserved it after giving up years for their country. And they had been promised land in return for service, so there was a clash between what the law said and what the landlord wanted. The government finally refused to evict men from their land, and Leverhulme abandoned his plans—at least for Lewis. Instead he “transferred his benevolence,” as Ian Mitchell put it, to Harris, where he encountered a more receptive population. He built a port which he modestly called Leverburgh as the base for
a mammoth fishing fleet to serve MacFisheries, a chain of fishmongers he had earlier created in Great Britain. His project included docks to accommodate up to fifty ships, huge fishcuring sheds, a refrigeration plant, accommodations for hundreds of workers, and—most peculiarly—parking lots for twenty cars on an island where cars and roads were a rarity. It was, again quoting Ian Mitchell, “the largest scheme of social engineering ever undertaken in the Highlands of Scotland, possibly anywhere in the British Isles.” And, duh, it also failed.

  Why? Well, for one, the waters in which he expected his fishing crews to sail were too dangerous for navigation in all but perfect weather, and as we know, there is no such thing for an entire day anywhere around here. The outcome? He landed one summer’s catch in 1924, and only because he used an English fishing fleet he summoned up to Harris, as well as importing women to work in the fishing factories. His accountant called it a disaster; Lord Leverhulme abandoned his scheme and died the next year. The accountant, meanwhile, offered his epitaph for Harris and Lewis: “The best thing you can do with your islands is to sink them in the Atlantic for four hours, and then pull them up again.” The corporation sold the islands. Leverburgh today is a small, somewhat rundown village that serves as a CalMac ferry stop on the treacherous run through the Sound of Harris to the extreme south of the Outer Hebrides.

  The accountant wasn’t the only one to hold a low opinion of the people of these remote islands, however. The late Scotsman Alasdair Alpin MacGregor relentlessly chronicled a series of offenses committed by the residents in a 1949 book entitled The Western Isles. MacGregor wrote knowledgeably about the islands’ geography, archaeology, and history, but when it came to the drunken, lazy, whoring, useless people who inhabited the islands—his ideas, not mine—he was extremely negative, and his attitudes expressed in the book grow from barely tolerant to almost abusive. Let me count the ways. “Two characteristics of the people, which the stranger to the Western Isles is swift to observe, certainly so far as the male population is concerned, are laziness and drunkenness.” Women, on the other hand, are never idle. “Indeed, they are not allowed to be,” he writes. And a darned good thing, too, because the women are “on the whole, plain, and many of them exceedingly so.” The women of the Outer Hebrides “bloom early, and fade early … and are spent within a few years after marrying.”