MAGNUS TROIL'S COUNTRY.
NORTII-EAST of the extreme north of the Scottish mainland, a boundary-line between the Atlantic Ocean, which rolls against their western, and the North Sea, which lashes their eastern coasts, lie more than a hundred islands, which form the northern- most county of Scotland, and are so irregular in size and shape, that they vary from the Mainland, seventy-two miles in length, and thirty at its greatest breadth, to fantastic, detached rocks, whereon only a few sea-fowl can cluster, pausing in their storm- driven flight. The islands dot the surface of the fretting sea, like fragments of the skeleton of i dead continent ; and weird, wondenful crags stand out into the roes like fossils of the ancient mammoth warders of the North, before ever man came there to brave its blasts, And rob its swarming waters of their teeming life. Don Holm, near Tangwick, on North Maven, stands in the ocdan like a gigantic, petrified beast, with its legs under water, its huge flanks and serrated back rising vast and grim, while the stony, articulated neck—a bridge under which the raging sea boils and foams—supports the heavy,, hollow-eyed head, with the dull patience of innumerable years upon it, and the haggard jaws for ever dipped in the gurgling waters, which leap into the stretehed stone nostrils and are sucked back with a swirl. A
wonderful place is Papa Stour, or the Great Island of the Priests, one of the three islets to which the ancient Culdees gave their names. It is but two miles long, but its coasts are riven by the Ives into many harbours, which form little fishing- stations, and are bound by fearful precipices, black towering rocks, with vast caves among their recesses, and one tunnel-like cavern with an aperture in its roof, so that light enters its deep recesses. At the inner end of the cavern is a sea-beach, up which the seals travel to their subterranean playground in the cave. They are strange people who live on Stour Papa, clinging to old Norse customs, unknown elsewhere among the Shetlands, ex- cept at Fouls, and regarding the Ve Sherries—the name signifies "danger "—which lie seven miles north of their island, with super- stitious dread. That group of naked rocks, only a little above the sea-level, where seals live—believed until of late years, perhaps suspected still, to be mermen and mermaidens, who had but to dive beneath the sea to reach their mansions of pearl and coral, where soft and serene ails blow—is the only object between Papa and the New World, the last object which the whalers behold between them and the ice-kingdom ; and a wonderful stone creature seems to be for ever gazing at it, from the island's northernmost point. The Horn of Papa is a vast crag, singularly like the head and neck of an elephant. Here, again, the limbs stand sturdily in the sea ; but the arched trunk dips into the water, and one small, sagacious eye keeps its untiring look-out, under the flat, plate-like rock which forms the semblance of the forehead. The horn is more like the crouching figure of a man, as it might be the fossil elephant's fossil mahout. Only twenty years ago, the old Scandinavian sword- dance was performed on Stour Papa, daring the evenings of the terribly long Shetland winters, and Norna of the Fitful Head would have been in keeping with the every-day life of the island, which was in ancient days a place of banishment for the lepers from the western mainland. It is difficult not to regard man as an impertinence among the Shetlands, which do not lay themselves out, like the fair, flaunting isok belle of Southern seas, to tempt him to easily-won wealth and soft pleasures ; but turn to him the face of nature in a stern mood,—beautiful, indeed, but with a hard and deterrent beauty. Land and water seem always fighting there, and at no point of all the hundred isles is it possible to be more than three miles from the sea. The coast-line of cliff and headland has but few slopes, where the placid voes and sounds render the shore useful to man ; and the inland tracts abound in fresh-water lakes, which send burns through deep clefts in the peat moss—giving the heath-clad interior a dark and rueful aspect— down to the hungry sea. The traveller who loves the Shetlands best will say that the inland landscape is tame and monotonous. But what does it matter, when one is never out of sight of the mural precipice, cloud-capped, a thousand feet above the tumbling sea ; or the solitary islet, which is no more than a sharp-peaked column ; or the huge rock, pierced by a triumphal arch ; or when, from the ruins of some watch-tower, whence the ancient Picts or Norsemen espied the enemy's ships, one looks across the arms of the inland sea at the strips of low- lying land, with the fishermen's cottages surrounded by fields of waving corn, on the bills dappled over with the little Shetland sheep, and the shaggy, hardy ponies ? A serene, sunny silence characterises the scene during the brief summer, but in the winter "Thule bellows to her utmost isles ;" the tremendous force with which the sea dashes against the cliffs sends the foam high into the air and far over the hills, and shipwreck reigns, but little checked by the lighthouses—surely the loneliest and dreariest in the world—which are comparatively modern boons to the "thirty parishes." Several of the smaller islands are uninhabited, freeholds of the sea-birds, several contain only two families, a few one single household. Probably no peasantry in the world are in more comfortable and easy circumstances than the Shetlanders, living in peaceful industry on the islands, which have an ancient and romantic history as wild, tortured, and tumultuous as their physical features. They have many resources beside the haaf or deep-sea fishing, and Shetlanders are famous sailors all the world over. The islands contribute 700 men yearly to the whale and seal-fishing, and during their absence the notable, sturdy, ugly women do the farm-work, and immense quantities of the famous knitting, the trick and patterns of which the natives of the Fair Isle learned from the Spaniards, who were wrecked with ther "tall Amiral," of the Armada fleet, in 1588, and for which they still find their chief market among the Spaniards in London. There is a fine picture somewhere of the loss of the Spanish ship on the terrible coast, with its battered carved and gilded poop, and its ragged pennant, its trailing mass of mast and cordage, and its riven sides driving in upon the grey, looming, mist-wrapped cliff, with cowering men in coats of skins peering curiously at the strange, maimed monster of the deep ; but that reminiscence is quite modern history, in comparison with what the Shetlands have to recall. They claim to be the Ultima Thule of the Romans, and though, after the Pictish times, the history of the great Norse " Earls" was more intimately allied with the Orkneys, they came often to Shetland, and the names of Magnus and Hakon are famous there. The ruined walls of Scalloway Castle are a perpetual memorial of the " bad " Earl Patrick Stewart, whose father succeeded the "lofty line of high St. Clair," on whom the earldom of Orkney and Zetland was conferred when the Scandinavian rule terminated in 1468, and the islands were handed over to Scotland, in pledge for the dowry of the Danish princess whom James III. wedded. Since the annexation of the earldom to the Scottish Crown, after the execution of Earl Patrick, the element of romance dies out of the history of the Shetlands, though they underwent many troubles in the political and religious warfare of Scotland. To the tourist among the islands, nothing is half so real as "The Pirate," and Sumburgh and the Fitful Head have phantom com- pany for him more distinct than the turbulent ghosts of Scalloway, and the fugitive lovers, Erlend and Margareta, whose memory still lingers round Mouse, the most perfect Pictish castle extant. A desultory cruise, directed pretty much according to his fancy, is now within the tourist's reach, for steamers ply frequently between Lerwick and the North Isles, which had no regular communication at all until 1839. The people of the North Isles never saw a steamer until 1847, when a Mr. Arthur Anderson, then a candi- date for the representation of the county, entered a certain voe in Yell in his steam-yacht. The late Dr. Robert Cowie, whose "Handbook to the Shetlands" is the completest work of the kind that can be desired, tells the following story, apropos of the event : --" Some noise was occasioned by blowing-off steam.' Two un- sophisticated islanders, who were picking limpets on the sea-shore, surveyed the fire-ship in blank amazement. At length, the more strong-minded of the two handed his snuff-horn to his terrified companion, with the exhortation, '0 ! Jamie, Jamie tak' doo a snuff, for dool snuff nae more wi' me till we snuff togither in glory!' He had concluded that the great day of wrath had come, and that on board the steamer was the angel blowing the last trumpet."
A quaint, goodly, prosperous place is Lerwick, the most
northerly town in the British Isles ; with its streets and lanes paved with flagstones, and many of its houses built actually in the sea ; and at a little distance from it the old Nun of Sound, with its primitive, prejudiced, hard, honest people, who pride themselves on inhabiting the exact spot of ground held by their ancestors for centuries, and look down upon the Lerwegians as mere fisher-people and upstarts, their own industry being directed to milk and pests. They have a charming characteristic legendary rhyme, familiar to every child in Sound, which tells how,— " Sound was Sound when Lerwick was none,
And Sound will be Sound when Lerwiek is done."
To Lerwick, in the late, scanty summer, come, with the smooth seas, the plenteous harvest of the fishing-nets, and the bright, flecked skies, many visitors, among them the Dutch fishermen, with their picturesque "busses," whereof, in the good old times, two thousand annually would visit Shetland, and form a bridge on which Bressay Sound might be crossed. Now, from thirty to forty " busses " come to Lerwick in June, and the Hollanders spend their time on the "wall," as they call the shore. Then there are great doings in the northernmost town, and the people make holiday ; the Dutchmen parading the streets in their queer canvas costume, and sabots not unlike their ships in shape, their arms twined round each other's necks, solemnly singing the praises of Vaterland, and dancing at all the open spaces. Eye-witnesses declare that notwithstanding the giving and taking of "schnapps," the festive Dutchmen do not get drunk on these occasions. Doubt- less there is much in custom, but also there must be much in climate, in respect of the harmless absorption of ardent liquors. Some ingenuity has been displayed by Dr. Cowie and others in maintaining the equality and general delightfulunss of the climate of the Shetlands, and there is no doubt that a large proportion of the inhabitants live to a very advanced age, under favourable conditions ; but the real drawback to these beautiful and interest- ing islands is, nevertheless, their climate, which is damp and stormy. Dr. Cowie's own table of the seasons ranges November, December, January, February, and March as winter months, and the prevalence of diseases of the lungs bears its sad testimony to the nature of the climate.
The busy, primitive fishing town has marvellous neighbours, in the cave of Bressay and the cliffs of Noss. No wonder the people of the old times believed that the mermaids had palaces under the sea, when their own boats could float them under a symmetrical archway whose walls and rod glow with gorgeous colouring,— into a spacious hall, where chalk pillars rise from the„.sea, and fantastic stalactites flash in the blaze of the torches ; while the slightest touch of an oar produces a sound like booming thunder, as the boat floats on to a shallow sea-beach, where a faint light shines through a chink in the rock, telling of the sun and the outer world beyond. Four miles to the east- ward of this mysterious cavern lies the Holm of Noss, an islet 160 feet high, precipitous on all sides, and divided by a narrow strait from the island of Noss. To the north, is the Noup of Noss, a magnificent precipice, 577 feet high. It is an awful chasm that lies between the island and the Holm, in whose depths rages the furious water of the North Sea. But it was bridged formerly across the sixty-five-feet space by a cradle, or wooden box swung on two cables, like the terrible bridges over the ravines in Japan. By means of this frightful bridge sheep were conveyed to and from the narrow scrap of rich pas- ture-land which crowns the Holm, and the gulls' eggs were collected. The late tenant of the island had the danger- ous structure removed, and the grass grows uncropped, the myriad birds rear their broods unmolested on the Holm and the Noup. When one rests in one's boat at the foot of the grand, sheer, dark precipice, and looks up, one sees an innumerable army of gulls, kittiwakes, guillemots, and puffins, sitting on their nests in the rounded depressions with which the stately cliffs are honeycombed from within a few feet of the water to within a few feet of their black and threatening crests. There they are, in close, serried ranks, and their shrill clangour mingles with the thunderous roll of the sea. A pistol-shot will bring them, screaming with rage and fear, in thousands to darken the air around, and swoop angrily about their insulted home. At Fouls is the breeding-place of the skim-gull, a beautiful creature, the largest and fiercest of its tribe. It is found nowhere in Great Britain, save in the north of Dust; and the eagle, king of the wilds, is afraid of it. Its island home is one great line of mighty precipices, compared with which even Noss is insignificant, but which the daring cragsmen scale for the feathers and the eggs of the wild-fowl. On one of the projecting points of the highest peak the white-tailed eagle dwells ; while, from another point, farther north, some rays of bright light can be seen at night, radiating from the dark surface of the precipices,—and these were long held to be gleams from an imprisoned flame in a huge carbuncle. Concerning this supposition, the authorities will say no more than that "it has never been confirmed." Who cares?' Those who don't believe it do not deserve to hear Noma chanting her runes on Fitful Head, or to meet Minna and Brenda in their wanderings by land and sea in Magnus Troll's country.
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