An Island Odyssey. Hamish Haswell-Smith

       Preface

      It began with Gavin Bell – that lean and rangy foreign correspondent and author of the award-winning book In Search of Tusitola, which is an intriguing account of his travels among the many islands of the Pacific on the trail of Robert Louis Stevenson. He suggested to Cate Devine, the vivacious editor of the Herald weekly magazine, that I should write a series of articles: each one about a different Scottish island, selected at random and illustrated with an original watercolour, mainly factual, but leavened with an occasional local myth or personal anecdote. I succumbed and this book is the response to many readers’ requests that the series, which initially ran for a year, should be published in a more permanent form.

      For the purpose of coherence, I have rearranged the articles so that they follow an imaginary voyage of discovery, an odyssey. This has one shortcoming. Because the articles refer in fact to separate visits at different times and my sailing companions also vary there is an occasional lack of what film-makers call ‘continuity’. I hope the reader will forgive this.

      Of the many close friends who sail with me I have a special bond with Peter, Ian and Craig through our joint ownership of Jandara, our well-bred sloop-rigged Moody 41. This remarkably amicable partnership has given us many memorable voyages of discovery together. Among the others I must mention are Harry and Brenda who have sailed with me for many years; with Harry’s sailing ability and Brenda’s expertise in the galley they are an asset to any cruise; and my cousin Ronald, yet another competent sailor and amusing raconteur. There are, of course, many more who have sailed in Jandara either with me or my partners and we have much to thank them for because each and every one of them has contributed something of interest to the sea-chest full of memories which Jandara carries with her.

I have strung the islands on a thread of abridged quotations from the inimitable Martin Martin. We all owe a debt to him, because anyone carrying out historical research on the Scottish islands soon comes across his remarkable book, published in 1703,* which recorded so much of interest for posterity. The full title, which gives some conception of its wide scope, is:

      ‘A Description of the Western Islands of SCOTLAND containing

      ‘A Full Account of their Situation, Extent, Soils, Product, Harbours, Bays, Tides, Anchoring Places, and Fisheries.

      ‘The Ancient and Modern Government, Religion and Customs of the Inhabitants, particularly of their Druids, Heathen Temples, Monasteries, Churches, Chappels, Antiquities, Monuments, Forts, Caves, and other Curiosities of Art and Nature.

      Of their Admirable and Expeditious way of Curing most Diseases by Simples of their own Product.

      ‘A Particular Account of the Second Sight, or Faculty of foreseeing things to come, by way of Vision, so common among them.

      ‘A Brief Hint of Methods to Improve Trade in that Country, both by Sea and Land.

      ‘With a New MAP of the whole, describing the Harbours, Anchoring Places, and dangerous Rocks, for the benefit of Sailers.

      ‘To which is added a Brief Description of the Isles of Orkney, and Schetland.

      By M. MARTIN Gent.’

      Apart from a very brief appraisal of the ‘Hybrides’ by Dean Sir Donald Munro in 1549 (and not published until 1774) Martin was the first person ever to write a comprehensive account of this wonderful region. At the time his book was published the area was almost entirely inaccessible and unknown and the average mainlander then knew less about the Scottish islands than the average mainlander of today knows about, say, the tribes of central Papua New Guinea.

      BUT WHO WAS MARTIN MARTIN?

      He was born in about 1657 near Duntulm at the northern tip of Skye. His family had a sea-faring background for his great-grandfather had roamed the Western Isles, master of his own galley, and known to his contemporaries as Angus of the Wind (Aonghas na Gaoithe). He was said to have married a Danish princess. Martin’s father, Donald, fought under the Macdonald banner in the Montrose campaign, became a chamberlain of Troternish and married the niece of Sir Donald Macdonald of Sleat. Martin was his third or fourth son – the youngest. When he was about twenty-four years old he graduated MA at Edinburgh University and became a tutor, first to the young Laird Macdonald, and later to MacLeod of Dunvegan.

      Then in 1692, Sir Robert Sibbald, the antiquary, asked him if he would collect information on the conditions and habits of the islanders and it was this request that set him on a course which changed his life. As an educated man with an enquiring mind, an islander who was at home in the region, and one who was equally fluent in both English and ‘Irish’ (as Scottish Gaelic was then known), he was ideally suited for the task. So he took up the challenge and started to travel widely among the islands and write his unique and memorable account of all he saw and heard. It would appear that this research was all carried out at his own expense but ultimately he was well rewarded.

      It can be hard enough today to land on any island that isn’t served with public transport but think how much more difficult it must have been in Martin’s time! Only occasionally does he give an inkling of the problems involved. For example, at 6pm on the 29th of May, 1697 he and a new minister for the island set sail from Ensay in the Sound of Harris for St Kilda – forty miles away in the Atlantic. This was Martin’s third attempt to reach the island. A favourable breeze turned against them when it was judged too late to return to Ensay so the crew rowed on a compass course for sixteen hours in atrocious weather. They made no landfall and as they saw some sea birds flying southwards they decided that they must have been blown too far north. Sure enough, after a time they spotted Boreray twelve miles to the south of them. This was ‘a joyful sight, and begot new vigor in our men’ who were plied ‘with plenty of aqua vitae to support them’. They eventually reached Boreray and sheltered behind Stac an Armin as the men were utterly exhausted. But this disturbed the nesting gannets whose ‘excrements were in such quantity, that they sullied our boat and cloaths’. Then a violent storm blew up which drove them out to sea again and tossed them around all night so that they ‘laid aside all hopes of life’. Fortunately as the morning of 1st June dawned, ‘it pleased God to command a calm day’ and so they managed eventually to reach Hirta (St Kilda).

      Martin spent three weeks among the islanders and contributed a paper on the subject to the Royal Society later that year which was so well received that it obviously encouraged him to continue with his research.

      It is very clear from his book that he had a particular interest in medical matters and in 1710, some years after his ‘best-seller’ had been published in London, he chose to enter Leiden University where he studied the subject and later graduated as a doctor of medicine. However, he was already in his mid-fifties and it was obviously the academic side which had appealed to him for he never practised as a doctor. He settled in London and died, unmarried, in 1719.

      There is a copy of Martin Martin’s book in the National Library of Edinburgh which has been inscribed by Boswell: ‘This very book accompanied Mr Samuel Johnson and me in our tour