And now with the rock ledges called “Pentland Skerries” on our right, we dance over the tide-rip of the terrible “Pight-land Firth,”[303] which has become classical in the north, like Pharaoh’s Ford in the Gulf of Suez. Mýsing, the sea-king, according to the Elder Edda, ended the “Peace of Fróði,” by slaying Fróði, king of Denmark; he also captured the clattering hand-quern Grótti, and the two prescient damsels Fenia and Menia. The victor ground white salt in the vanquished ships until they sank in Pentland Firth, causing the main to become briny: there has ever since been a vortex where the sea falls into the “well” or mill’s eye, and the roar of the ocean is the grinding of the quern.[304] And all this folk-lore because at times storm-wind meets tide running some five to seven knots an hour with “waws” and “swelchies,” causing sore grief to many a gallant ship. Yet there are men still young—Colonel Burroughs of the 93d (Sutherland) Highlanders is one—who habitually crossed this firth in open boats.
We had now turned the north-eastern end of Scotland, where Ben Dorrery, a blue saddleback somewhat crater-shaped, rose supreme; and where Foss or cascade water, anciently Fors, draining Lake Lunnery, suggested Scandinavia. We presently passed the Paps of Caithness, and admired the grand profile of classical Dunnet Head,[305] whose flanks are horizontally streaked with broad golden patches, whilst a Cockney gun of our party brought out a swarming colony of birds from their cliffy homes. Behind it lay Thurso (Thjórsá, or Bull water), built with the dull grey stone of Bath, not the picturesque red of Edinburgh, nestling in the usual fertile bight, shallow withal and open to the northern ocean. We halted for the first and last time off Holburn Head to take in and deal out letters. Beyond it the picturesque Sutherland Highlands ended in a long line of bluffs remarkably quoin-shaped. Dim in the slaty and stormy sky rose Farout Head, not unlike the Elephant Mountain, the classical Mons Felix that outlies the murderous Somali Coast. Ten miles west of it rose the north-western Land’s End of Scotland, a mere hummock low down upon the horizon. This was Cape Wrath, which some understand literally, whilst others derive it from “Rath,” a conical hill, or a fortified place: it is evidently Cape Hvarf, a common name, as Hvarven, near Bergen, for a sudden turn of coast. “You should see it in December,” said the steward, when we were disposed to deride its anger: he had doubled it in a casual vessel from Liverpool to Dundee carrying sugar and palm oil.
And now it is time to cast a look starboardways from Duncansbay Head. The first feature is Stroma Island (Straumsey, corrupted to Stromey), bluff to the north-west, and sloping gradually to the south-eastern sea; the inner sound is a narrow channel, lately rendered safe by a red beacon. The scrap of land—a small item of the two hundred inhabited which form the British archipelago—is politically included in Caithness, but, popularly speaking, it belongs to the Scoto-Scandinavian race, the fourth great family of Great Britain, utterly dissimilar from the Norman of the Channel Islands, the Kelt, and the Anglo-Kelt. Their neighbours talk of the “poor sneaks of Stroma,” and these retort by the opprobrious term “ferrie-loupers.” The memory of many a broken head and bloody fray in bygone day is preserved in the couplet—
“Caithness cabes (i.e., ticks), lift up your heads,
And let the Orkney sheep go by!”
How soon will telegrams and steamers—there is a daily mail between Thurso and Stromness—cause these local differences to share the fate of the national garb?
Behind Stroma, and towering over it in the purple grey cloud, is South Ronaldshaw, or Ronaldsha, in whose corrupted and degraded name we can hardly trace the pure and classical Norsk termination.[306] Properly Ronansey, from St Ronan, Ringan, or Ninian, it still preserves an old-world flavour. Till the last thirty years wreckers were rife: it was held “best to let saut water gang its gate;” in other words, uncanny, as we find in “The Pirate,” to save a drowning sailor. Mariners lost all their rights when keel once touched sand; whatever was cast ashore became the lawful property of the people; Earl Patrick, who now is cursed at Scalloway because “he hung the Shetlanders,” was blessed for his wise laws against all that would help ships amongst the breakers; a wreck was a sight to “wile the parson out of his pulpit in the middle of his preaching,” and the blessing upon the shore was coupled with a wish that the Lord would send “mair wrecks ere winter.” Men still remember the old Orcadian minister’s prayer: “O Lord, I wish not ill to my neighbours, but if wrecks be going, remember Thy poor island of Sandey!”[307] The clergy feared to offend those sturdy pagans, their “little ones,” by denouncing from the pulpit what the devoutest held to be a “dispensation of Providence.” A pious fraud began by excommunicating all who broke the Sabbath in such Satan’s work, and the course of time did the rest.
But old ideas do not readily die. Lately a farmer in Orphir parish (Ör-fjara, or Ör-fyri, “a reef covered by high tide”), having lost many head of cattle by “witching,” applied to the “spae-wife,” who prescribed the sacrifice of a bull-calf, probably by cremation, to Baal. The practice is, of course, kept secret, yet the best possible authority at Kirkwall told me he had reason to suspect that such offerings to the sun-god are by no means singular. The late pugnacious Sir James Simpson (Archæological Essays) also heard of a cow being buried alive as a sacrifice to the spirit of murrain. The Yule bonfires and the games of ball at that season were also in honour of the greater light.
Beyond South Ronaldshaw we had a fair profile view of Hoy (=Há-ey, high isle), a three-hilled, long, narrow parallelogram which took us some five hours to pass. The fierce south-westers which scoop and scallop western Scotland, like western Iceland and the occidental coasts of north Europe generally, render cultivation impossible except on the leeward side, where the “links” are.[308] En passant, it may be observed that the island capitals between Caithness and Iceland, as Stornoway of the Hebrides, Kirkwall of the Orkneys, Lerwick of the Shetlands, and Thorshaven of the Færoes, are all built upon the eastern shore. We strained eyes in vain to sight the position of Walter Scott’s “Dwarfie Stones,” so called per antiphrasin, says Brand;, and equally vain was the “search for the great carbuncle” of Ward Hill, now invisible as the gem of the Diamond Rock, and probably never seen save by the eyes of faith. I heard of the same mysterious light in the far Gaboon River. We were more fortunate with the Hill of Hoy, the tallest part of the dorsum (1500 feet), whose “Old Man,” which farther north would be called a “witch finger,” appeared first a dot, then a column, and lastly a dome upon the summit of a huge cathedral. It is of the “Old Red,” a pale, unfossiliferous sandstone, the normal material of the western mainland, though some describe it as a slaty formation supported by a base of granite, which also crops out near Stromness. According to Bleau, the midnight sun can be seen from it in midsummer; Dr Wallace qualifies the statement by opining that the true solar body cannot be visible, but only its image refracted through some watery cloud upon the horizon. The last glimpse of Hoy was Ronay Head, a glorious bluff at least 1000 feet high, and beyond it lay nought save pontus et aer.
I will here step out of the order of my journey, which would more wisely have been reversed. To begin with Iceland is to begin at the end, neglecting the various steps and stages of Orkneys, Shetlands, and Færoes, whilst to describe the climax and its anti-climax, would be utterly uninteresting and bathetic. My three days (Sept. 10, 11, and 12) at the Church-bay (Kirkjuvágr, vogr, vad, waw, wall) produced some results, and these shall be briefly recorded.
The good ship “St Magnus” ran up “the String” to Kirkwall Roads, and landed me after a ten hours’ passage from Lerwick. My first care was to send my introductory letter, the gift of Mr Gatherer, to Mr George Petrie, well known in the anthropological world. He kindly led me to the little museum, which, like that of Lerwick, is far behind the order and neatness of Reykjavik. The collection contains good specimens of netting needles, cut out of rein and red deer bone: the former animal extended to the Orkneys, as broken bones have been found in the burghs, and suggest that they were continental. There were natural stone knives, looking as if shaped by art—the Brazil shows heaps of celts equally deceptive—pots of micaceous schist and steatite from Shetland; combs conjectured to have been used for ornamenting pottery; a two-handed scraper of whale’s bone; specimens of “bysmers” and “pundlers,” wooden bars used as steelyards, the former three, and the latter seven, feet long: they carried the Norwegian weights, “bysmars” and “lispunds,”[309] which took root in the Shetlands. I noticed the huge Varangian[310] fibulæ and torques; the querns still common amongst the islandry; red “keel” or pigment of silicious hæmatite, showing that even the artless dames did not ignore the art of rouge; rude beads of bone and clay; and a human skull with four rabbit teeth, possibly bevelled by the “bursten bigg,” coarse roasted bere or barley, even as the Guanches of Tenerife ground down their molars with parched grain. My guide showed me his ingenious plan for “squeezes,” and making casts of spearheads and similar articles by means of warmed gutta-percha applied to the stone, and lastly cooled in water.