MANNERS, TRADITIONS, AND SUPERSTITIONS OF THE SHETLANDERS.

If REGINA will permit an UltimaThulian, a dweller in the solitary isles of the Caledonian archipelago, to offer an occasional mite to her great metropolitan treasury of knowledge, I flatter myself I could "submit to public inspection" (as a fashionable modiste newly returned from the spring markets would say) some facts new to our modern periodical literature. Vigilant and far-searching as the spirit of literary enterprise now is, it has scarcely turned a thought to the fields of curious and interesting information that bound the northern extremity of our own empire. An adventure in Tahiti or New Zealand, a ramble in the Marquesas, a tigerhunt in India, "a dinner in ancient Egypt," a legend of the twelfth century, is devoured with avidity, and admired, however trivial in itself, because it is associated in the reader's mind with the idea of rarity or distance. Like the fruits of warm climates, the knowledge that is dug from antiquity or transported across the Pacific is often more prized than the observations which we could gather from the study of society around us, and at the small cost of a few days' sail from the metropolis of the kingdom.

It is for this reason, probably, and because it does not require the writer to encounter savages or circumnavigate the globe, that our cluster of islands, lying between the parallels

VOL. XXXIII. NO. CXCVI.

of the fifty-ninth and sixty-second degrees of north latitude, are a sort of terra incognita in the current literature of the day. An Englishman knows more of Australia or China, of the Oregon or the Punjaub, than he does about any one of the Shetland Isles, though they are above ninety in number, and cover a space of seventy miles from south to north, and more than fifty from east to west. If he has read Sir Walter Scott's Pirate he may, perhaps, remember the name of "Sumburgh Head," the southmost promontory of the group; or of the "Fitful Head," rendered classical by the same pen as the residence of Norna. If he has chanced to be at Windsor, or Brighton, or Buckingham Palace, he may have seen a little hirsute quadruped called a shelty, or Shetland pony, about the size of a Newfoundland dog, and imported expressly for the equestrian amusement of the royal children. But with this animal, and the two extreme points I have mentioned, the probability is that his knowledge of the country and its inhabitants-historical, geographical, zoological, and statistical

nates.

termi

Ask him about Foula, or Burray, or Bressay, or Papastour, or Whalsey, or Yell, or Fetlar, or Unst, the Out Skerries, the Noup, the Sneug, or any other locality between Lamba Ness and Quendal Bay, and he will

TT

turn a bewildered stare of amazement in your face, or, perhaps, exclaim, with a shrug of his shoulder, that he does not understand Gaelic. We venture to say he never heard of the Grind of the Navir, or the Villains of Ure, or the "Doreholm of Northmaven," or those sublime caverned rocks that present a mural front of porphyry, with arched doorways, to the wild fury of the Atlantic, roaring in the wintry blast, and battering the weatherworn rampart with the force of artillery. Were I to tell him about the Drongs of Hillswick Ness and St. Magnus Bay, towering above the waves like the ruins of Thebes or Palmyra, and carved by the storm into ten thousand shapes, more fantastic than castles in the air, or the cloud-built palaces that adorn the horizon in a gloomy November evening, he would, probably, inquire if I was describing to him the mountains of the moon, or had newly arrived from the last-discovered planet. Take him to the Stones of Steffs, or the precipitous cliffs of Noss, rising perpendicularly from the sea, where a tremendous chasm is traversed by a wooden trough named a "cradle," slung across the abyss from rock to rock, and merely large enough to ferry over one man and a sheep, his head would turn giddy at the sight, or he might imagine himself making a first voyage to the north pole in Henson's aerial machine. It would puzzle him to understand flinching a whale, or skyleing a lum; nor could he say with old Basil Mertoun, "I know the meaning of scat, and wattle, and hawkhen, and hagalef, and every other exaction by which your lords have wrung your withers." Sights and sounds would arrest his senses droller than any to be met with in the modern Babylon, where you Londoners have no days two months long, and cannot like us shave by the light of the sun at midnight.

But I could tell him of other wonders in our islands besides those peculiar to our natural scenery, strange and picturesque though our coasts and headlands appear. A great proportion of our inhabitants (they are reckoned about 30,000) are amphibious; the men, like the old seakings, spending more of their lives on the water than the land, "rarely

sleeping under a roof or warming themselves at a cottage fire." The women, too, brave the dangers of a sailor-faring life; for they will navigate boats, as a northern chronicler says, "through terrible seas with the utmost skill and ability." And I verily believe our Arctic Grace Darlings would surpass the heroine of the Fern Islands in deeds of generous intrepidity, should it happen that distressed humanity required their aid. No part of the country is more than six miles distant from the sea, and some of our islands (or holms) are not larger than an or dinary drawing-room. We have "horses," and "warts," and "old men," hundreds of feet in height, but they are hills of peculiar shape. Our crows build their nests of fishbones, for lack of sticks; and as trees and hedges are rare with us, our birds, instead of being inhabitants of the air, must become denizens of the soil. Our eagles are worth five shillings a-head to any that can shoot them; we can buy a young calf for eighteenpence, and sell a pair of knitted stockings for four guineas. We are believers in magical arts and preternatural creatures, in the great kraaken and the sea-serpent, in mermaids and mermen, in witchcraft and the evil eye, in the power of invocations and maledictions, in amulets and spectral illusions and occult sympathies, in trows and elf-arrows, in "healing by the coin," "casting the heart," curing by rhyme or ing-needle stuck in the leaf of a rowan-tree, or cow-hair, or a darnpsalm-book. We believe in the pos

sibility of abstracting, by certain charms, "the profits" of a neighbour's cow, or transferring the butter from one woman's churn to another woman's dairy; and all by the "devilish cunning" of spells and cantrips. That such marvels in nature and humanity should exist in the broad daylight of this omniscient age, and yet so little be known about them by the millions who devour monthly articles, is a fact scarcely credible.

It is true we have been visited naturalists, and moralists, inspectors from time to time by tourists, and of education, commissioners of lighthouses, &c. The Great Unknown delighted us with his presence in the summer and autumn of 1814, to

gather materials for one of his immortal fictions, if fictions they can be called which represent life and nature in the mirror of truth. Here

he viewed our bleak and bold scenery, scaled our stupendous cliffs, studied our manners, which he has so admirably portrayed in the Mordaunt, the Magnus Troil, the Minna and Brenda, the Norna, the rustic Yellowley, the pedlar Snailsfoot, and other personages that seem to move and breathe in his fascinating pages. These are all set forth in his novel and his diary. His visit is not forgotten, and his Pirate is still the delight of our youths and maid

ens.

I pass over the old missionary Brand, who came about the beginning of last century on a religious errand, by order of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland; and I need merely allude to the Tour of Dr. Patrick Neill in 1804, to the excellent Description of Dr. Samuel Hibbert in 1822, and to the more recent steam-voyage of Miss Catherine Sinclair, about five or six years ago. This lady performed a whole volume out of a flying visit of forty-eight hours; and undertook to give a description of the country without stirring from Mr. Hay's drawing-room in Lerwick, and on a misty Sunday, when she could not see across the narrow bay opposite her window. But then she had Mr. Hay's chart obligingly spread before her, "on so large a scale that three inches are given to each mile, and not a single peat-stack seemed wanting; so we made a leisurely tour over this wide expanse, pausing occasionally to hear elaborate descriptions of the curiosities we ought to have seen, and of the accidents we might probably have met with; all very interesting, but also rather tantalising." From an hour's inspection of this spacious map, this ingenious lady contrived to manufacture a Journal of a Two Days' Residence in Shetland, with a Full, True, and Particular Account of the Habits, Manners, and Language of the Natives; their Dress, Appearance, and Costumes; also, New and Original Discoveries respecting the Geography, Astronomy, Natural History, and Geological Structure of these Islands, &c. This may be intended as a "right merry jest," but it was rather

too much to make the public pay seven and sixpence for it!

In my communications I can promise no exploits by land or water to rival this. But if any of the thousand and one contributors to REGINA, or even her great accoucheur himself of 215 Regent Street, should take a fancy to adventure upon an excursion to our Scottish Cyclades, I can promise a welcome reception from our resident landlords, and udallers, and clergy, whose hospitality is not the less warm though it may have a contracted field or limited opportunities for its exercise. I can imagine that a denizen of London, accustomed to the luxuries of cabs and coffee-houses, of coal-fires, easy chairs, and first-class carriages, may have grave objections to risk the perils of an Arctic tour of pleasure. He will likely picture to himself seas swarming with monsters,-the leviathan of the deep spread over many a rood like a vast continentthe marine snake, trailing its wavy length along the surface for miles, his neck covered with a flowing mane, his cold glaring eyes shining like carbuncles, and his head, when looking out for a victim, elevated mast high, with a mouth capable of swallowing a one hundred and forty horse-power steamer. He may dream of billows like mountains, of precipices and headlands, sunken reefs, dark caverns, boiling foam, currents, eddies, tempests, and the whole catcgory of Shetland horrors sung by Norna of the Fitful Head to the trembling Brenda :--

"By beach and by wave, By stack and by skerry, by noup and by

roe,

By air and by wick, and by helyer and gio,

And by every wild shore which the northern winds know,

And the northern tides lave." His nerves, like poor Dame Yellowley's, may be shaken at the thought of the hurly-burly of our rousts, or the ungovernable fury of our elements. He may be no admirer of the fey folk, or of the Satanical ponies the neagles, who gallop off with travellers whom they have allured to mount them, over lank and bog, casting the rider from some promontory into the sea, and then vanishing in a flash of light. He may,

perhaps, have no great confidence in the prayers of Bessie Millie, who sells favourable winds to mariners for the small consideration of sixpence; and he may regard with still greater suspicion the humanity of our consuetudinary laws, which attach a sort of retributive punishment to every native who shall rescue a drowning stranger or assist a shipwrecked crew. But if such chimeras haunt his imagination, I fearlessly bid him dismiss them. The tourist is in no danger of casting anchor on a kraaken, or being dragged by the multifarious claws of some gigantic polypus to the bottom of the ocean. These legendary monsters exist only in our popular creed, and disturb the repose of none but the superstitious fishermen.

It is true if the visitor expects the accommodation of railways, or postchaises, or turnpike-roads, he will be disappointed; but he will find our rude climate, and our barren soil, tempered by the warmth of a friendly greeting, and lighted up with a glorious luminary that for three months scarcely quits the horizon. During that period darkness is unknown, the short absence of the sun being supplied by a bright twilight. To use the words of a native historian, "Nothing can surpass the calm serenity of a fine summer night in the Shetland Isles, the atmosphere is clear and unclouded, and the eye has an uncontrolled and extreme range; the hills and the headlands look more majestic, and they have a solemnity superadded to their grandeur; the water in the bays appears dark, and as smooth as glass; no living object interrupts the tranquillity of the scene, unless a solitary gull skimming the surface of the sea; and there is nothing to be heard but the distant murmuring of the waves among the rocks." Surely such a picture of tranquil grandeur as this, is enough to put heart into the most timid, to scare away all the traditionary perils and monstrosities with which ignorance and superstition have surrounded our northern archipelago.

Another drawback to tourists has now been removed by the facilities which steam has supplied; the passage from Leith to Lerwick, a distance of ninety-six leagues, can be

made as regularly as her majesty's mail, and in as short space as Roderick Random's post-wagon took to travel from York to London. No doubt the case was very different before this great revolution in smack and packet navigation was introduced. Then our means of commu. nication with the rest of the world were difficult and few. A letter from Shetland to Orkney had to go round via Edinburgh; or if any of our enterprising merchants wished for early intelligence, he had to despatch a vessel of his own for the purpose, and after all might find the

post-office authorities refuse for his convenience to interrupt the ordinary means of correspondence. We were often half-a-year behind in our information, which led us into the commission of ridiculous anachroOur nisms and irregularities. clergymen prayed for kings and queens, months after they were dead and buried. A young prince, or princess, might be weaned, or walking, before we were apprised of its birth. The greatest national occurrences, the wars of the Common

wealth, the persecutions of the Stuarts, the change of one dynasty for another, were events known the extremities of Europe before they reached us. And if we were unwittingly guilty of high treason, in praying for one monarch when, by a fiction of the law, we were understood to have sworn fealty to another, the fault was not ours, but in the want of steam-boats.

Tradition says, that the Revolution of 1688 was not known in Shetland for six months after it happened. Brand, the missionary states, that "it was the month of May thereafter before they heard any thing of the late revolution, and that first, they say, from a fisher

man, whom some would have ar raigned before them, and impeached of high treason, because of his news.' Martin, in his History of the Isles, repeats the story with some im"The Shetprovement. He says, landers had no account of the Prince of Orange's late landing in England, coronation, &c., until a fisherman happened to land there in May fol lowing, and he was not believed, but indicted for high treason for spreading such news.'

This is the common report, which, however, is exaggerated, and not quite correct. The news of the landing of the Prince of Orange in England had reached the island of Unst within little more than a month after it took place-the 5th of November, 1688. The intelligence was evidently accidental, but the fact is stated in a letter written by one of the ancestors of Mr. Mowat, of Garth, and dated 15th December, 1688, which thus concludes, "I can give no account of news, save only that the skipper of the wreckt ship confirms the former report of the Prince of Orange his landing in England with ane considerable number of men, bot upon what pretence I cannot condishend." Though the fact of the prince's landing was known, it may be true that months elapsed before the Shetlanders learned the event of the Revolution. Now all this has passed away. We are no longer reckoned out of the circle of Christendom, or to be on visiting terms with any thing more civilised than shuas and bottle

nose whales. Every week we hold communication with the Scottish metropolis, the three winter months excepted; and I see no reason why this interruption should be, for if steamers ply all the year round between New York and Liverpool, why not between Lerwick and Leith?

Suppose, then, one of your literati, smitten with the curiosity to penetrate this extreme verge of her majesty's dominions, let him_put himself under my tutelage, and accompany me on the imaginary Voyage. Like good Mrs. Glass, who presumes her hare to be caught before it is skinned, I stipulate that my friend be in Edinburgh before starting. He must be at the North Bridge Duty-house by half-past five o'clock in the morning of any given Friday in the spring, summer, or autumn months. There he will find cab, hackney, minibus, omnibus, or railway at his service, to set him down at the nether extremity of Granton pier, where he has to pay twopence for his pierage, and where he will observe the Sovereign steamer, of two hundred horse power, rocking and roaring, casting forth volumes of black smoke, with

various other symptoms of a determination to be off. The last bell rings at six precisely, the luggage is stowed on deck, the driver and the porter are paid. You muffle yourself up in cloak or Codrington, look out for a conversable visage among the crowd, make up your mind to be desperately sea-sick, cast a parting gaze on the friends left behind, and away you go full boil.

The broad Firth, studded with islands, the shore on either hand planted with towns, and verdant with forests and green fields, diverts your attention from certain disagreeable inward emotions that begin to turn your countenance yellow, and threaten a premature separation between your stomach and your breakfast. Sternwards lie the small isles of Cramond and Inchcolm, and ten miles in the distance the Firth is land-locked by the strait at Queensferry, with its projecting rock and promontory. The bay presented to the eye in this direction is picturesque and beautiful. On the right is seen Edinburgh, with its castle, steeples, monuments, hills, blueslated roofs, and long terraces of streets. The opposite coast of Fife is sprinkled with dwellings, and lined with fishing villages, the nearest of which are Burntisland, Kinghorn, Kirkaldy, and Dysart.

Half-an-hour's sailing brings you under the lee of Inchkeith, where there are an elegant lighthouse, a rabbit warren, and a few agricultural donkeys. Beyond this island the Firth expands. Bounding the view southwards are Musselburgh and Prestonpans, the hills above Haddington, the high-cone of North Berwick Law, and the stupendous Bass-rock, the solangoosifera Bassa of old Drummond of Hawthornden, the friend and host of Shakspeare. To the north the range of fishingtowns (most of them dubbed burghs by King James VI.) continuesWemyss, Buckhaven, Leven, Largo, Elie, St. Monance, Pittenweem, the two Anstruthers, and Crail. several of these places, if weather permit, the Sovereign takes on board, and lands passengers, which gives you an opportunity for extracting from your now loquacious companion a little of his historical, topographical, and antiquarian knowledge.

At