Even last century, something that modern nomenclature calls "savage" was visible in these north-western localities. On one occasion, when Dr. Johnson and his irrepressible biographer were exploring those north-western islands, the natives who rowed their boat seemed, to Boswell, "so like wild Indians that a very little imagination was necessary to give one an impression of being upon an American river." One of them, he tells us, was "a robust, black-haired fellow, half-naked, and bare-headed, something between a wild Indian and an English tar" (of the eighteenth century). And some of the McRaas of the mainland he describes as being "as black and wild in their appearance as any American savages whatever."[45]
Other tokens of "savage" customs might easily be adduced. For example, decaying specimens of the rude "dug-out," the most primitive of all canoes—a mere hollowed log—are now and then found in the depths of some Highland loch, or peat-bog; and are rashly pronounced to be "pre-historic;" whereas these very canoes were in common use in the north and west of Scotland less than two centuries ago.[46] However, neither this species of canoe, nor the vague references of Boswell, point unmistakably to the Ugrian or Mongoloid castes whom we are here considering; although it is not unlikely that these latter were one and the same as the "wild Indians" and the owners of the "dug-outs."
What is certain is that, when, in the October of 1599, one of the ships belonging to the Fifeshire colonists of the Lewis was about to start on its homeward trip, it was surrounded by "a fleet of small vessels peculiar to those islands," and the natives, swarming on board, put to death all except the captain.[47] Now (although the act was simply a legitimate incident in the warfare of the time and locality), these islanders were the people whom King James spoke of as "wild savages." And it is tolerably certain that their "small vessels" were those "slight pinnaces" of skin that Armstrong says were "much in use in the Western Isles"—in other words, the kayaks of the Eskimos or Finn-men. It is not unlikely that the resemblance to the modern Eskimo was very close in many details. For example, the West Highland traditions tell of "savages" who played the game of chess; which fact in itself argues decidedly a form of civilization. Now, although the art of carving chessmen is extinct among modern Hebrideans, the traditional accounts were quite borne out by the discovery, in this century, of the now famous Lewis chessmen, "in all fifty-eight pieces, ingeniously and elaborately carved from the walrus tooth."[48] Consequently, it would appear that the Finn-man occasionally hunted the walrus, in which pursuit he no doubt employed "the Dart he makes use of for killing Fish:" exactly like a modern Eskimo.
CHAPTER IV.
But, admitting the existence, at so recent a date, of a visibly "Eskimo" caste in some parts of the Hebrides, what evidence is there that any of these people found their way to Shetland? One writer, we have seen, brings the Shetland Finns all the way from Davis Straits, another draws them from Finland, and the Shetlanders themselves say that they "came ow'r fa Norraway," especially from the neighbourhood of Bergen. The correctness of this last belief need not be questioned, as regards some of that caste. But it has been suggested in the foregoing pages that many of those "Finns" who persecuted the Shetland fishermen were those kayak-using Hebrideans who avowed their ancient right to despoil and to exact tribute from others, not only when fishing among "the Isles where they dwell," but in other waters.
We read[49] of raids made in the Orkneys and Shetland, during the latter part of the fifteenth century, by "bands of Islemen" (i.e., Hebrideans), "Irish, and Scots, from the woods"; which last term strongly suggests the "robber" denizens of the thickly-wooded islands spoken of by Buchanan two centuries later. The raiders were, no doubt, heterogeneous. But the piratical kayak-men were surely among them. There are many traditions extant in some parts of the north-eastern archipelagos regarding these raids—in the island of Westray, in Orkney, for instance, where, at a certain "Fitty Hill," there was once a great fight between the Westray people and the invading Lewismen, all of whom were slain. Now, this Fitty Hill is associated strongly with the people recognizable as "Finns," or at least was so in the year 1701, according to a writer previously quoted (Brand, p. 57), and both he and Wallace (who wrote in 1688) mention the frequent visits of Finn-men to the Westray fishing-grounds. Indeed, the kayak preserved in Edinburgh seems, according to the latter writer, to have been one of those secured by the Orkneymen; who probably made sure that the Finn himself should have no further use for it.
Thus, it is a simple historical fact that certain castes of the Hebrideans, whose practice of despoiling and exacting tribute from others was a thing beyond question, were very frequent visitors to the Orkney and Shetland groups, whose natives they did their utmost to overawe. And, as the skin skiffs of the Hebrideans were of such a description that the skiffmen "fearlessly committed themselves in these slight pinnaces to the mercy of the most violent weather," they were well qualified to sing the song of the Finn-man:
I am a man upo' da land,
I am a selkie i da sea.