If Charles Lamb and Herbert Spencer had been sent to Lerwick and Bressay to write a report on what they saw, I daresay the difference of their accounts would have astonished every reader. Lamb would probably have swilled porter in the Ultima Thule Refreshment Bar and written a most interesting account of Bressay without ever crossing the Sound. The ribs of a big uncouth Dutch boat, square, cumbrous, shell-fretted, and tilted up on the beach, would probably have bulked more in Lamb's narrative than the modern steam-trawlers that abound in these waters. His politico-economical reflections on the rise in price of peppermint lozenges, consequent on the annual arrival of the Dutch fishing crews would, I am sure, have furnished excellent reading. Spencer's report would have dealt, I fancy, with the rotation of crops, the cause of the different currents, the varieties of pigmentation (with percentages) among the islanders, and the evolution of fishing gear from its rudimentary forms—in sum with the definite combination of heterogeneous changes both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with external coexistences and sequences. No two out of a hundred visitors see the same things, a fact which may help to prove Bishop Berkeley's theory that the universe is subjective entirely.
I went over to Bressay with a genial and erudite clergyman to visit the schoolhouse and inspect the ruins of an eighth century church. Three Shetland women rowed us over the Sound and handled the oars splendidly. The minister, a plump, jolly be-spectacled gentleman, who has not "perpetrated matrimony," declared with a sigh that he was an unprotected male, and on our arrival at the Bressay beach, he called aloud to the oarswomen to lift him out of the boat. These muscular dames shrieked with laughter and proceeded to unship their oars as if to buffet him: he, thereupon, leaped lightly enough on the strand and, turning round, would have improved the occasion by a word in season had not the tittering Nereids begun to splash him as he stood on the shingle.
Innumerable sheep pasture on the Bressay slopes, and on the sky-line of some of the hills one can discern companies of rollicking Shetland ponies. My friend, the minister, who is writing a book on Darwin, got into conversation with Mr. Manson, the Bressay pony-breeder. The latter spoke thus about his tiny steeds: "Pony-breeding is a more puzzling business than anything else in God's universe. The parents, grandparents, and great grandparents of a given pony have all been perfect in every point. Good! You naturally expect that a pony with such exceptionable ancestry will itself be without a flaw. But is it? No, often it is not. Too frequently you get bitter water from sweet, and thistles instead of grapes. Just look at that tricky, mischievous, ill-tempered, wall-eyed little rascal. Where did he get his evil cantrips and his wall-eye? I have known his ancestors for four generations back and they were all without a blemish." The minister made a note of this fact within the book and volume of his brain: it may be useful in the pulpit, and I expect to see it in print when he publishes his book on Darwin.
The eighth century church was at last reached. It is about three miles from the landing-place and quite near the water. Every point was most lucidly explained by my ecclesiastical guide. To the outer eye the place consisted of some low, ruined walls enclosing various species of rank, wet grass. Such remains of olden piety are provocative of gloomy reverie, which the rushing of the inconstant tide close by only serves to deepen. Immediately after the Crucifixion and long before this church was reared by saintly hands, the little Christian communities thought the kingdom of God would shortly be established and all sin and suffering be banished from the world. But the apostles died, and so successively have
"Priest, doctor, hermit, monk grown white
With prayer, the broken-hearted nun,
The martyr, the wan acolyte,
The incense-swinging child"—
the bishop, the church-builder, and the patriot in all those generations, and the kingdom of God is not with us yet, seems, indeed, to be as far off as ever. When the world has been at peace for a while and the millennium seems imminent, all of a sudden a perverse, stiff-necked, wall-eyed generation supervenes, and evolution gives way to deterioration!
Lightly bounding down the ages, my companion turned my thoughts from unrealised dreams of religion to those of politics. Along these waters that cast their spray on the ancient ruin, James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, third husband of Queen Mary, fled in hot haste, with a pursuing squadron at his heels, in the year 1567. Kirkaldy of Grange entered the Sound of Bressay as Bothwell was leaving by the northern exit.
Our walk lasted about four hours, and ended up in the school-house, where the teacher's hospitable dame regaled us to a welcome and excellent cup of tea. It did us good after the strain of so many reminiscences. The teacher is a hearty and sociable gentleman, who loves his books and his fireside. On the fine Saturdays, friends ferry across from Lerwick for a round of golf with him over the Bressay links. The fine library, recently sent from Paisley, furnishes a pleasant variety of reading both for himself and his pupils. On my remarking that, as chairman at the lecture next evening, he need not speak more than thirty minutes, he replied, with visible emotion, that he would concentrate his remarks into a space of thirty seconds.
We got back to Lerwick in a lugsail that was full of passengers, potatoes, and milk-cans. There was a good deal of loud, elementary chaff during the twenty minutes' crossing. An old, wrinked, peat-smoked dame gave us much good advice and (better still) a sprig of white heather apiece. I found by subsequent experience that the trip is not always so amusing. Next evening a boatman pulled us over, and it was stiff work for him, as the Sound was lumpy and the wind contrary. Coming back, he hoisted his sail, and we careered over in rollicking style. I was a little scared at the swift-rushing currents and the switchback motion of the boat. Overhead were moon, stars, and flying clouds; the hulls of big steamers loomed like phantoms on the surface of the Sound; on the hill opposite twinkled the ever-nearing light of Lerwick.
Bressay, I may add, has a nice little hall, with all items of modern convenience, including ventilation. The building is used for every legitimate purpose, from worship to weel-timed daffin'.