In fact, it was the first mailboat that was to bring help. On 22 February HMS Jackal arrived at St Kilda and took the nine Austrians and John Sands back to the mainland. By that time, the St Kildans had already given up eating porridge and bread. This continued for three months, until the factor’s smack visited the island and took grain, sugar, tea, salt, and other foodstuffs to them. The foodstuffs were paid for out of a donation of £100, made by the Austrian Government to the people of Hirta in recognition of their kindness.
The St Kildans were greatly amazed by such a crude method of communication as the mailboat of John Sands. It was thenceforth thought a useful way in which contact could be made with the mainland. The earlier mailboats were usually of a common construction; each consisted of a piece of driftwood, the centre of which was hewn out sufficiently to hold a letter and some money for postage, and then sealed with pitch. In later models, an inflated sheep’s bladder was attached to the block of wood, together with a rude flag to make the mailboat more conspicuous at sea.
Around 1900, cocoa became popular on Hirta. Instead of wood, an eight-ounce tin that once contained Van Houten’s chocolate was thought to be an admirable carrier of a message. The mailboats, with a penny enclosed for postage, were normally put out to sea from the rocks of Oiseval and, depending upon the North Atlantic Drift, occasionally turned up as far away as Norway. They were used by the St Kildans as a last resort in times of emergency, but more often than not as tourist attractions.
To the end, mailboats were a romanticism introduced to St Kilda by people from the mainland. The islanders preferred their age-old method of attracting attention if faced with a problem. Bonfires were lit on the hilltops, which in clear weather could be seen on the horizon by the inhabitants of Lewis or Harris.
For the greater part of St Kilda’s history, however, communication with the mainland was as sporadic as it was unnecessary. The community was self-sufficient, relying only upon the visit once or twice a year from a representative of the island’s owner to collect rent and deliver a few essential supplies, such as salt and seed.
3
The paternal society
Feudal society existed in Scotland centuries after it had disappeared elsewhere in Britain. The Celtic people who inhabited the most northerly remote parts of the British Isles were thought to be of little consequence by the Anglo-Saxons who dominated British society. The Celts were therefore allowed to carry on living the way they had always done. In most of northern Scotland the social system was ruthlessly destroyed after the 1745 Jacobite Rising, but in the more remote parts of the Highlands and in the Western Isles the old order lived on.
Enlightened paternalism was the basis of the society of the Gael. The Chief who owned the land also ruled over the people who lived upon it. As long as the Chief acted as a good and wise father and the crofters settled on his estate were respectful children, feudalism proved itself to be a successful as well as convenient way of managing society. If the critics of the more ‘civilized’ South thought the feudal system of the Celt was primitive, it could at least be seen to be a social organization that worked and worked well for hundreds of years. In the words of Dr Fraser Darling in West Highland Survey, Gaeldom is ‘an example of a culture finely adjusted to an environment which placed severe limitations on human existence’.
The people on the lone isle of Hirta were throughout their history part of the old order. Until the evacuation in 1930, the proprietor of the island group, MacLeod of MacLeod, not only owned St Kilda but held sway over its inhabitants. He was father as well as landlord, and as such received for himself and his house the greatest of respect and affection. ‘Their Chief is their God, their everything especially when a man of address and resolution,’ wrote Lord Murray of Broughton in a report on the Highlands he drew up in 1746 for the London government. The duty of the Chief was to protect his clan, administer good and impartial justice when settling disputes that might arise among his people, and above all hold his land so that his people might live and prosper upon it. In return the crofters would offer their services to fight for any cause deemed just by the Chief, and give him absolute claim over any produce deriving from the croft.
Although the Gaelic word clann means ‘children’, the system did not depend upon the people working the land being of the same family or even the same name as the owner. On St Kilda no inhabitant was related to MacLeod of MacLeod by ties of blood near or remote. The few families whose surname was MacLeod were like all the other families – they were descendants of the poor from other parts of the Chief’s estates who were encouraged to take up crofts on St Kilda. The concept of kinship played little or no part in the clan in the wider sense. What bound the people together was a shared feeling of loyalty to the Chief whose land they held, and mutual understanding between him and his people.
MacLeod of MacLeod, Chief of Clan MacLeod, owned St Kilda throughout most of its inhabited history. When and how the family gained possession are questions the answers to which are lost in time. Legend has it that at one time both Harris and Uist disputed ownership of St Kilda. Even in ancient times the island group was regarded as a jewel in the Atlantic that any laird would be proud to own.
A race was planned to settle the question of ownership. Two boats representing the contending interests were rowed out to the island by crews of equal size. It was agreed before the start that the first crew to lay a hand on Hirta would claim it for his Chief. The race was extremely close, and as the two boats neared the island the stout men of Uist were ahead. Colla MacLeod, head man of the Harris boat, cut off his left hand and threw it ashore in a last desperate attempt to win the island for his master. The loss of a hand was not in vain, and St Kilda was won for MacLeod of MacLeod. This noble deed, some would have it, is recorded for posterity by the red hand on the clan coat of arms.
The MacLeod of MacLeod was an island Chief with an island empire. As such he tended to be too remote to become involved with the politics of the mainland to the same extent as the Campbells or MacDonalds did. Although many MacLeods, for instance, fought at the battle of Culloden, they did so against the wishes of their Chief who had little heart for the Jacobite cause.
After Culloden, the policy adopted by the Hanoverians was aimed at obliterating the Celtic way of life. ‘In Scotland more than elsewhere,’ wrote Grant, ‘into the purely feudal relationship had crept something of the greater warmth and fervour of the ancient bond of union of the clan (or family)’, and the government was determined to put an end to such dangerous feudalism. The Disarming Act was revived and important additions made to it. The wearing of Highland dress and the use of tartan were prohibited, and the playing and even carrying of bagpipes was forbidden. The bans were to last thirty-six years and dealt a damaging blow to a people’s culture. In 1747, Parliament passed an Act for the Abolition of Heritable Jurisdictions which took away from the Chiefs their legal powers. After Culloden many Highland estates were forfeited.
The victors, however, did not take vengeance upon the laird of Dunvegan. He had played a passive part in the rebellion and, besides, his estate was remote and fragmented. MacLeod of MacLeod held on to his lands and the patriarchal rule of Dunvegan was allowed to continue well into the nineteenth century.
The economic buttress of the Chief’s hold over his people was the system of trading by barter. Every year a representative of the Chief would visit St Kilda to claim the rents in kind. Often the ‘tacksman’, as he was called, was related if only distantly to the Chief. He leased the island from the proprietor for a sum of money or was given the revenue of the island as a reward for performing some special service.
When Martin Martin visited St Kilda in 1697, he did so in the company of MacLeod of MacLeod’s representative. While on the island the steward and his retinue, which often numbered forty or fifty people, were housed and fed at the expense of the islanders. He would go once a year to the island in the summer and stay for anything up to two or three weeks. The ancient Gaelic due of free hospitality to the Chief or any of his household was known as cuddiche and was exacted in St Kilda when it had long disappeared elsewhere. Cuddiche was similar to the right to hospitality demanded by medieval and Tudor monarchs in England when they made their