Orkney has produced scarce a churchman or a lawyer who has distinguished himself as such. The great Robert Reid, founder of Edinburgh University, was perhaps the most celebrated of her pre-reformation bishops, while James Atkine, a native of Kirkwall, was bishop of Moray in the seventeenth century. William Honyman, of the Honymans of Graemsay, sat on the Scottish bench as Lord Armidale in the early part of the nineteenth century, but his marrying Lord Braxfield’s daughter was perhaps his doughtiest feat. The list of Orkney Sheriffs, however, includes the famous names of Charles Neaves, Adam Gifford, and William Edmonstone Aytoun. Aytoun kept house at Berstane, near Kirkwall, and his humourous sketch The Dreep-daily Burghs, is supposed to make covert allusion to the climatic and other amenities of the group of parliamentary burghs of which the Orcadian capital at that time formed one. His connection with the Islands also inspired his poem of Bothwell; and contact with the surrounding seas moved the lively Neaves to verse of nigh as dolorous strain.
21. The Chief Towns and Villages of Orkney
(The figures in brackets after each name give the population in 1911, and those at the end of each section are references to pages in the text.)
Finstown is a small village in the parish of Firth, the half-way house between Kirkwall and Stromness. The village has a pier, an inn, and a monthly cattle fair. (p. [27].)
Kettletoft, a small village on a bay of the same name, on the east side of Sanday, is the business centre of the island, and a minor herring-fishing station.
Stromness, Orkney, about the year 1825
(From an old print)
Kirkwall (3810), is situated at the northern end of a low isthmus dividing the Mainland into two, and has a harbour on two sides, that at Scapa Bay to the south being the port of call for the daily mail-steamer to Caithness. The harbour of Kirkwall proper, facing to the north, was designed by Telford, and is the place of general traffic. The town takes its name, in Norse Kirkjuvágr,[1] churchbay, from the old parish church of St Olaf, supposed to have been erected by Jarl Rognvald I, c. 1040, but it only became the capital of the Islands after the foundation of the cathedral in 1137, and the consequent transfer of the seat of the Bishopric from Birsay. Kirkwall received its earliest charter as royal burgh from James III, in 1486, and was visited by James V, in 1540. Of several later charters the governing one is that granted by Charles II, in 1661. The population consists mainly of professional men, tradesmen, artisans, and labourers, there being no manufactures of consequence, although fish-curing is prosecuted to some extent, and there are two distilleries adjacent to the town. The volume of trade is very considerable, however, as the town shares with Stromness the position of shopping and shipping centre for a large and comparatively well-to-do agricultural community. The ancient Grammar School of Kirkwall, now housed in a spacious modern building and styled the Burgh School, has given the rudiments of education to many distinguished sons of town and county. The institution dates at least from Danish times (1397-1468). Owing to the narrowness of the streets, and the many old buildings both public and private, the general impression created by the town is one of quaint antiqueness; while the Oyce, a miniature inland sea on its north-western outskirts, imparts an additional touch of picturesque individuality to the place. Two weekly newspapers, The Orcadian and The Orkney Herald, are published at Kirkwall. (pp. [16], [27], [41], [42], [50], [53], [55], [58], [68], [77], [79], [81], [84], [85], [86], [90], [95].)
[1]Kirkjuvágr softened into Kirkwa, and Scots mistook the final syllable for their own wa’ = wall; hence Kirkwall.