The Life and Death of St. Kilda: The moving story of a vanished island community. Tom Steel
on St Kilda, the steward or ‘tacksman’ would take back to Skye the oils and feathers of the sea birds and the surplus produce of the islanders’ scant crofts. The goods would either be sold to tenants who lived on other parts of the Chief’s estates or else sent south to the commercial markets. Part of the proceeds of their sale would go towards the St Kildans’ rent, and part would be retained by the tacksman as profit. But he had to fulfil his obligation to the islanders. A good part of the money obtained by the sale of the island produce was used to purchase commodities such as salt and seed corn which the St Kildans had need of. Supplies of essentials that the island could not provide were normally transported to St Kilda the following summer, or else delivered later the same year should the people be in dire need of them.
For centuries the system worked admirably. Hirta’s exports were in much demand on the mainland, and the island was a source of profit for the tacksman and proprietor alike. According to Lord Brougham in 1799, the tacksman paid £20 a year to MacLeod of MacLeod and reckoned to make twice as much himself. The barter system, however, benefited the people of Hirta. No one would have claimed that the islanders received a true market price for their goods, but on the other hand they did not need to bother themselves with finding outlets. In bad years they never went without essential supplies. It was in no one’s interest that the St Kildans starve. A loss to the tacksman one year would no doubt be turned into profit the next.
An islander, called the ground officer, was appointed by the Chief to speak for the community should differences of opinion arise with the steward. If the difference was serious, it was the ground officer’s duty to make a personal appearance before MacLeod of MacLeod himself to air the complaint. ‘He makes his entry very submissively,’ wrote Martin Martin, ‘taking off his bonnet at a great distance when he appears in MacLeod’s presence, bowing his head and hand low near the ground, his retinue (usually the crew that had rowed him over from St Kilda) doing the like behind him.’ MacLeod of MacLeod would then listen solemnly to the evidence and pass judgement. Few disputes, however, came about regarding the management of St Kilda. The tacksmen for the most part were ‘Gentlemen of benevolent dispositions, of liberal education and much observation’ (John Knox).
The Chief rarely failed to exercise what was seen as a moral responsibility towards his people. During the last quarter of the eighteenth century, MacLeod of MacLeod ceased to receive any money from his estates for a while. ‘This estate’, wrote Knox in his Tour Through the Highlands of Scotland and the Hebride Isles, which was published in 1787, ‘has been greatly diminished of late years on account of debts, and much remains to be discharged. Notwithstanding this circumstance, the proprietor raised no rents, turned out no tenants, used no man with severity, and in all respects maintained the character of a liberal and humane friend of mankind.’ In 1780 the proprietor supplied the St Kildans with a new boat, and although salt was heavily taxed at that time and was virtually unobtainable in many districts of the Highlands, the people of St Kilda still received their more than adequate supplies.
Life on the mainland, however, was changing, and MacLeod of MacLeod suffered drastically from the changes, being forced to sell much of his estate. Tacksmen became people of the past, and what remained of the estate of the Chief of Clan MacLeod was henceforth managed by his factor at Dunvegan. St Kilda forever held an affectionate place in the history of the MacLeod family and was not sold.
The last factor was John Mackenzie of Dunvegan, an amiable man fond of St Kilda and its people. Once a year it was Mackenzie’s duty to go to Hirta and collect the Chief’s rents. Dressed in a long tweed trenchcoat and rarely seen without a gamekeeper’s deer-stalker hat, Mackenzie was much liked by the islanders. He would spend most of his time on St Kilda having long conversations with them, listening to their problems and attempting to solve them while on the island. If that was not possible, he would see what could be done after he had returned to Dunvegan. To the St Kildans, the factor was the go-between. He was their real link with the outside world.
One of the major tasks of his visit would be the landing of the stores he brought with him on board the Robert Hadden. Such work was normally done by the women, supervised by the men of the island. One of the most important things he took with him was a cask of paraffin, which was invariably given to the islanders as a gift.
The ceremony attached to the annual payment of rent always remained the same. The St Kildans would gather outside the old storehouse down by the shore, and once their produce had been inspected by the factor the bartering would begin. As fair a price as possible would be bargained by both sides – in later years it proved less and less favourable to the islanders. During the twentieth century the payment of rent was less a reality and more a symbolic act. During the thirteen years prior to the evacuation, the islanders failed to raise enough produce to pay rent due on their crofts. In John Mackenzie’s day, the only produce of any real value was tweed, a few stones of dried ling, and perhaps a sheep or two. The end of the annual rent ceremony was marked by the factor presenting sweets to the St Kildans, instead of the traditional presentation of Highland whisky with the receipts. The St Kildans never kept account of what they handed over to the factor: there was trust on both sides.
The introduction of money, however, did more than all the vengeance exacted after Culloden to destroy traditional Gaelic society. Crofting, the most prominent feature of the Highlanders’ way of life, was proving to be extremely uneconomic. The coming of the Industrial Revolution and the payment of money in exchange for labour was drawing people away from the country. It was no longer possible to think in terms of payment in kind. The barter system was no longer relevant or tenable. Money was required for the purchase of foodstuffs and materials essential to the maintenance of life upon the island and the cost involved in the transportation of those goods; both factors conspired to render a fatal blow to the old social order. The St Kildans, like other Celts, were forced to accept modern society and its values or else be condemned to oblivion.
From time immemorial the men and women of Hirta governed their lives as best suited their lonely predicament. ‘Their government is strictly a republic,’ wrote George Atkinson in 1831, ‘for though subject to Great Britain, they have no official person among them; and as they are only visited twice a year for a few days by the Tacksman, who is referred to as a sort of umpire or settler of disputes, their knowledge of our laws must be very trifling and of little use or importance in their system of economy.’
The community as a whole shared the responsibility for the two major tasks: to ensure that every islander was fed, clothed, and housed as was thought proper, and to provide sufficient wares to pay the proprietor his rent. All possessions, such as boats and ropes, upon which the safety and prosperity of the community depended, were therefore held in common. Authority over the actions of every islander was vested in what tourists were later to call ‘Parliament’.
Every morning after prayers and breakfast all the adult men on the island met in the open air to discuss what work was to be done. In latter years, the men met outside the post office, every day except the Sabbath. In so small a community, where the normal pursuits of its members were so fraught with danger, it was important that all knew what was planned, and a meeting was a sensible way of letting everyone know where members of the community could be found during the rest of the day. ‘It wouldn’t do to go away on your own,’ recalls Lachlan Macdonald, ‘and the other fellows didn’t know where you were going. So they always decided where they were going and what they were going to do that day.’
It was a simple way in which a people who thought and acted in terms of each other could communicate as a group. The St Kildan Parliament, however, came in for criticism from outsiders. ‘The daily morning meeting’, wrote John Ross, the schoolmaster, ‘very much resembles our Honourable British Parliament in being able to waste any amount of precious time over a very small matter while on the other hand they can pass a Bill before it is well introduced.’ But the islanders themselves would have been the last to think of their assembly as capable of great, philosophical thought. As far as they were concerned, the morning meeting was the only way, in a land that lacked telephones and newspapers, of letting others know what was planned, what was believed, and what was to be done.
If it was a ‘Parliament’, it was one that perhaps met the needs of those it served better than any other. There were no ‘headmen’ in parliament. Every islander had an