ed to its destination by a voyage across the Pentland Firth. Now, thanks to James Watt and the gallant Sovereign, tout cela est changé. We are, at least nine months in the year, within reach of civilization and fashion once a-week. cies, brought to our islands in some of the coming over and bartering linen for ponies; Greenland ships. A pig, in its different but this practice ceased when a regular stages of existence, has almost as many packet communication was established bedistinctive names with us as a lion or a tween Lerwick and Leith. At that time, camel among the Arabs. When sucking, and until the introduction of steam-navigaor in a state of infancy, he is known by the tion connected us with the rest of the world, name of a runny or grice; one fed about we had less intercourse with our neighbors the fire-side is a patty; one with young a the Orcadians than with any other part of silik; a boar is called a gaat. The most Great Britain. A letter or parcel to the prevalent distemper to which they are lia-nearest of these islands had generally to be ble is the gricifer, which deprives them of sent to Edinburgh, and thence was returnthe use of their hind legs, and is seldom curable. Of the pony little need be said. He is well known, for he is almost the only live inhabitant, except the fisherman, that visits foreign parts. He is of every color, white, black, brown, grey, dun, cream, chestnut, piebald, and of every size on a Having said a few words about cows, it limited scale, between twenty-eight and would be an unpardonable omission to pass forty-four inches. He is hardy, docile, and over the diary and its management, which capable of showing high mettle. Like the are always important matters in a Shethog, he undergoes a marked transition in lander's household economy, and have even the annual aspect of his "outer man," for been sung in poetry and regulated by anwhen the shelty (as Dr. Hibbert remarks) cient laws. In the article of milk we have "is in his winter or spring garb it is diffi- nothing to complain of; it is good in quality cult to suppose that his progenitors were and yielded in greater quantity than could the same animals which travellers have de- be expected from the size of the cow, which, scribed as prancing over the arid tracks of when put on good feeding, will give thirArabia. The long shaggy hair with which teen or fourteen quarts per day, being more he is clothed has more the appearance of than Burns's "dawtet twal-pint hawkie" a polar dress, or of some arctic livery spe- gave in the rich pastures of Ayrshire. It is in cially dispensed to the quadruped retainers the proper management of the milk that we of the genius of Hialtland." Instead of fail; and here our want of cleanliness, espethe sleek skin and handsome appearance cially in the olden time, not only compelled which he displays with so much spirit in the interference of the magistrate, but affordthe summer months, in winter his exterior ed a theme for the sarcastic wit of the travelis uncouth, his symmetry disappears, all his ler and the poet. In the parish of Sandsting motions are dull and languid. The general the excellent and respected minister states torpor of nature seems to freeze up his en- that those farmers who keep four or more ergies and paralyze his whole frame. His cows churn once every day in summer; food is coarse and scanty; but, notwith- but the quantity of butter is not in proporstanding the privations he endures, he fre- tion to the frequent churning, for the cream quently lives to a good old age. I have is never properly gathered. An old but known them live thirty years and more, and abominable fashion prevails, greatly injurieven at that age able to travel a pretty longous to the reputations of our housewives, journey in carrying feals from the hill to for when the operation of churning is admix with manure for composts. No at-vanced to a certain stage a heated stone is tention is paid to the breed, which conse-dipped into the churn, and by this means quently is degenerating; and this is to be the labor is shortened and an addition is regretted, for the best proportioned is always the one first sold, and fetches the best price. They might easily be improved, and were due care employed, I am convinced there would nowhere be found a finer race of animals. Their value is from twenty or thirty shillings to six pounds sterling; and their yearly export to England and Scotland forms a considerable traffic. At one time the Orkney traders were in the habit of made to the quantity, though not to the quality of the butter. Part of the curd thus becomes incorporated with the butter, which presents a white and yellow spotted appearance, resembling mottled soap or the grease-butter of Sir Robert Peel's tariff, with which the House of Commons was made so merry by the premier during the great corn-law debate. It must be confessed that by very few is attention paid to the stones. in this vary The edge of this rough satire was, doubtless, whetted by the strong national English prejudices of the time. But whatever proximity to truth there might have been in it at the middle of the seventeenth century, the description is totally inapplicable now, and nothing, even in Shetland, comes near the overcharged picture of loathsome filth which this morose critic has drawn. Before quitting the subject of our dairy, so that one of the ancient local acts | This grease (for soe they trully call it) pleases would still require to be enforced, which The eye, the taste, the smelling, &c. ordains, "That no butter be rendered for They use a charme, too, with three heated payment of land-rent, or for sale, but such Nine Ave Maryes, and seven ill-far'd groans, as is clear from hairs, and claud and other To fetch their nasty butter upp, which when dirt." It is the custom for landlords to They're done the witches conjure down againe have part of their rents made payable in Through their own whems. Their punishment butter; and probably this regulation, added Is well proportion'd to their wickednesse. to the want of proper milk-houses and due Then of the aforesaid butter take and squeeze attention to the milk-vessels, may help to A parcell 'twixt two rotten boards-that's cheese. account for the sad neglect of cleanliness Judge, then, my friends, how much our lime-pits in this department. Very little butter is In smell, taste, color, from an Orkney dary." sold; and no wonder, seeing our peculiar style of manufacture is no recommendation to the foreign market. The butter-milk is called bleddick, and into this is poured a quantity of boiling water, by which means the curd is separated from the whey or serum. The former is named kirn, and eaten with sweet milk; the latter is called bland, and used as drink instead of small-beer. It will keep for several months, when it acquires a strong acidity. The stigma of untidiness in regard to the dairy attached" hearths and homesteads," there are one in former times to the Orcadians as well as to us, although our neighbors have now completely wiped it off (and why should not we?), for their butter is the finest that can be eaten, and commands a high price wherever it is known. The case, however, was not always so; and I have in my possession a curious poem entitled The Character of Orkney, printed in 1842 from a volume of miscellaneous verses in manuscript, preserved in the library of the Faculty of Advocates at Edinburgh, wherein the author indulges his humor with more severity than justice, I am inclined to think, on the slovenly habits of the people in their persons, as well as in their food. On the articles of butter and cheese his coarse ribald wit is not surpassed by that of Butler, whose quaint style he seems to imitate, although he wrote in 1652, when Cromwell was in the north of Scotland. I shall give a short quotation slightly modifying the antiquated spelling: or two other customs which ought not to pass unnoticed. Our principal articles of food are oats, bear (or big), and potatoes. Wheat has been attempted, but does not succeed; turnips, carrots, cabbages, and other esculents, are not cultivated to any extent in the open fields, although they thrive well enough in the gardens. Some families will plant as many as three thousand cabbages, which they use as food both for man and beast. In raising the potato-crop, a different mode of culture is adopted here from that which prevails in other parts of the kingdom; and, as we wholly escaped the mysterious rot of last year, probably we may owe this fortunate exemption to our peculiar manner of husbandry. When preparing the field for the seed, the manure is not laid in the furrow and the cut seedling stuck into it. It is spread on the surface of the ground, and delved in with the spade. Sometimes the potato is planted in the furrow thus prepared, and covered up; and sometimes the earth is first delved and the seed dibbled in afterwards. The plan of spreading the manure on the surface instead of burying it in the drill, is recommended, I observe, by some of the thousand and one potato-doctors or agricultural theorists, as they are called, as an antidote to prevent the recurrence of the disease; and certainly the experiment is worth trying, and may plead our example in its favor. The oats in general use here are the old Scotch or grey-bearded kind, which is neatness and accommodation to be found pleasant enough to the taste, but dark-col-in the dwellings of the same class in the ored, and from the very imperfect way of other districts of the kingdom. In generdressing it, the meal is never entirely freed al they are mere huts. The landlords from the chaff and dust. The way in show an aversion to building farm-steadwhich corn is here prepared for meal is ings, or if they have erected them once, accurately described by my reverend friend tenant after tenant must be content to oclast mentioned. Every family has a small cupy them as they are, and when they beoblong kiln built in their barn, called a come ruinous, he must either repair or cinny, which will dry about a half barrel build anew for himself. of oats at a time. This kiln, instead Dr. Maculloch, when he visited the of an iron-plate floor, is furnished with Western Isles, declared that he often could ribs of wood; and these are covered with not distinguish the cottages in the remoter layers of oat-straw, called gloy, upon Hebrides from heaps of rubbish. He menwhich the grain is laid. In an opening tions that when conversing with one of the about a foot square in the end of the kiln, natives, he had supposed the interview like an oven or boiler, a gentle fire is kept took place on a dunghill, and was not a up till the grain is sufficiently dried. It is little surprised to learn that they were then taken off the ribs, put into a straw standing on the top of the house. Cottabasket made for the purpose, called a skeb, ges in Shetland are not much in advance and while warm, well rubbed under the of those in the Hebrides, and have somefeet, an operation which is intended to thing of the Irish economy about them, separate the beard and dust from the grain. contrived, like Goldsmith's chest of drawIt is next winnowed betwixt two doors, or ers," a double debt to pay," by harboring in the open air, if there be a slight current, the quadrupeds as well as the bipeds of the put into another straw basket called a bud- family. They are in general of a rude, dy, and carried to the mill to be ground. comfortless description, being usually built When brought home from the mill, two of stone and turf, or with dry mortar. The sieves are made use of, a coarse and a finer, rafters, joists, couples, &c. are nearly in to separate the seeds from the meal; and it their natural state, being chopped and is twice sifted carefully before it is fit moulded to fit by a hatchet. The luxuries to be eaten. The larger seeds taken of slating and ceiling are unknown. Over out with the coarse sieve in the first sifting the bare rafters is laid a covering of pones are given to the cows; and the finer seeds or divots (sods), and sometimes flaws; and taken out with the smaller sieve are re- above these is a coating of straw, which is served for sowens, a sort of pottage made secured by ropes of the same material, or from the sediment of the meal that rests at of heather, called simnins. The floor is the bottom of the vessel in which the seeds the hardened earth, without carpets, boards, are steeped or soaked in water. This is or any other artificial manufacture; and if or was a kind of national food in Scotland, the weather be wet, which it frequently is, when foreign luxuries were not introduced the access is somewhat difficult, especially in such abundance; and it is still prescrib- to those who have any regard for keeping ed to invalids, from its lightness of digestion. Sometimes corn is dried very hard in a pot; the meal prepared from this is called burstane, and is generally ground in the quern or hand-mill, a simple, primitive instrument, but now rarely found except in Shetland and the museums of antiquarian societies. It consists of two hard flat stones, hewn into a circular shape, the one laid above the other, and perforated with a large hole in the centre, through which the grain slowly filters, and is ground by the rapid motion of the upper stone, into which a wooden peg, sometimes a long shaft, is fixed and turned by the hand. Our houses and cottages, it must be confessed, are poor and mean, without the their feet dry and clean. This becomes a difficult matter even in the interior, from the moistened compounds that strew the floor. The dunghill occupies a place as near the door as possible, that it may be enriched by the accumulations of every fertilizing substance; and frequently, before the door of the mansion can be reached, a passage must be made through the byre (cow-house), and perhaps other impediments unnecessary to specify. The furniture is homely, and contains nothing superfluous. It is generally so arranged as to supply the want of partitions, or divisions into rooms, the only apartments being a but and a ben, that is a kitchen and parlor. In the kitchen end of the house, in There, att another end, runs a whole sea By falling in amongst the meal, a pudding; addition to the family, there are generally assembled the household dogs and cats, a calf, a patty swine, and, perhaps, some half-dozen caddy lambs; the term being applied to winter lambs fed in the house, or to those which have lost their dams, and are reared on cow's milk. Glass windows are nearly as rare with us as they must have been with the Jews in the wilderness. When an opening has been left for a window, it is sometimes filled up with a bladder or untanned lamb-skin, stretched on a frame, an invention rather superior to the Irish plan of substituting rags and old hats. The cottages have scarcely yet got into the fashion of wearing chimneys, or even the humbler imitations called lums. Instead of these, the frugal inmates have from two to six holes in the roof, to admit light and allow the smoke to escape; and for the better promoting the latter evacuation, a piece of feal or divot, or two pieces of board joined at right angles, called a skyle, is placed on the weather side of the hole, and performs the office of a can or an old wife on your city chimneys. No doubt the skyle has the disadvantage of being immoveable, and to shift or open and shut it As regards Orkney this picture of acmight appear a task of some difficulty. cumulated abominations is a libel, nor is its But here necessity, it may be indolence, severity to be justified by any thing to be sharpens invention; for instead of mount- found among the lowest of our population. ing on the roof every time the wind Forty years ago there certainly was greatchauges, some have a long pole reaching er want of tidiness and comfort than at down inside, by which this operation is present. Dr. Patrick Niell, an eminent performed; and the order for having this naturalist, who visited the islands in 1804, done is, Skyle the lum." These descrip- says,tions might be further extended, but I prefer giving a few more lines from the curious old poem already quoted, which I greatly fear are, in this respect, more applicable to us than to our Orcadian neighbors : "Wee have but little iron heere, or none, "T is eatable then, when neither ratt nor mouse, So. Would you behold a true representation streame Of fair meanders, winding in and out, The nurse has throwne there. Are they not to That say wee never have got clouted cream? Muck, when the barley-field was manured; "The greater part of the Shetland tenants appeared to me to be sunk into a state of the most abject poverty and misery. I found them even without bread-without any kind of food, in short, but fish and cabbage; living in many cases under the same roof with their cattle, and scarcely in cleaner apartments; their little agricultural concerns entirely neglected, owing to the men being obliged to be absent during the summer at the ling and tusk fishing." The latter part of this representation is still true. Fishing and farming continue to be joint occupations, to the great detriment of the latter; but in other respects, improvement has taken place, chiefly through the liberal and enterprising spirit of some of our principal landowners. Farmcottages are being built on a better plan, and a spirit of emulation is beginning to be excited. Among the landed proprietors who have given encouragement to this spirit, are Sir Arthur Nicholson, Bart.; Messrs. Mouat, of Garth; Hay, of Lexfirth; joy within. Not," he added, "but that I From the (Edinburgh) Torch. THE LAST LINES OF POETS. RALEIGH-COWPER-BYRON-L. E. L.-AND MICHAEL BRUCE. "Give me my scallop shell of quiet, My gown of glory, Hope's true gage, Tavelleth towards the land of heaven." The night before execution, after having well of his wife, Raleigh next bade adieu "Even such is Time, that takes on trust usual decision and spirit, he penned the "SIR WALTER hath been as a star at which the world have gazed," were the But these were not to be his last lines, words of Yelverton, the attorney-general, although probably intended as such. We on the solemn mockery of a trial, at which may suppose that, during their composition, the gallant Raleigh was condemned to be his mind, busied with its subject, took no executed; but had they known the fresh note of lesser matter; but, on their comlustre which his noble bearing in his last pletion, the neglected candle, "dimly burnmoments was to throw over his varied ca-ing," caught his eye, when, with all his reer, even his bitterest enemies would have paused in their vindictive persecution. Calm and serene, he rose superior to all their malice; while his fearlessness of death was such, that the Dean of Westminster, mistaking its cause, reprehended his levity; but Raleigh" gave God thanks that he had never feared death, for it was but an opinion and an imagination; and as for the manner of death, he had rather die so than of a burning fever; and that some might have made shows outwardly, but he felt the "Cowards fear to die; but courage stout, And Raleigh was "put out," but only to 1 |