Topographical, statistical, and historical gazetteer of Scotland > Volume 2

662
SHETLAND.
the evils occasioned by the natural accumulation of
drifted sand. — " Many very curious arctic birds,"
says Miss Sinclair, " stray over to this country; and
I have seen one most beautiful snovv-ovvl, which had
been killed in this neighbourhood, as large as an
eagle, and the colour of a swandown muff. Eider
ducks are very abundant ; and eagles so very de-
structive, that 5s. a-head used to be given for shoot-
ing them. Swans appear in great flocks during
spring. Of course all the breeds here must live on
the ground, having neither hedges nor trees in which
to form a colony; but the plovers and other unambi-
tious kinds make themselves quite at home. I am
told the crows build their nests of fish-bones, as a
substitute for sticks, which shows a great deal of
genius, equal to that of the Greenlanders, who form
their houses of whalebone." The mountain-linnet,
which is rare in the Lowlands of Scotland, abounds
in the Shetland islands, and is a very formidable foe
of the husbandmen, cropping the young turnip and
corn plants as they peep out from the ground, tearing
them up by the root, and extensively defeating the
labours of tillage and sowing.
Shetland, like Orkney, has neither forest, grove,
nor coppice ; and, in regard to even shrubbery, is
barer than the naked Orcadian group. Yet not a
few unwarrantable sayings have been penned respect-
ing the dismalness of its unwooded aspect, the ex-
treme dwarfishness of its few shrubs, and its alleged
incapacity to produce a tree. The lively authoress
whom we have already twice quoted, shakes off one
of the current prejudices, but at the same time gives
rash sanction to another, when she says: "The
woods and forests of the Shetlanders could scarcely
supply so much as a pair of Dutch clogs, and still
less a new flag-staff; but we must suppose the trees
were all cut down, to show the sea- views which are
so very fine. The tallest and grandest tree I saw
during my stay on the island, was a stalk of rhubarb
nearly 7 feet high, which had run to seed, and waved
its head majestically in a garden below the fort," at
Lerwick, " looking quite shady and ornamental."
"We learn from Dr. Edmondston that, in one or two
gardens, sycamores and other trees, planted probably
a century ago, are 40 or 50 feet high, with a girth
of upwards of 6 feet a yard from the ground; that
there are a few natural dwarf bushes of birch, willow,
and mountain-ash ; that evidence exists in the peat-
mosses of trees having formerly been abundant; that
no experiment at planting has yet been fairly made ;
and that there appears no peculiarity in either soil
or climate to warrant any a priori opinion unfavour-
able to the country's arboricultural capacity. Shet-
land and Orkney, in fact, are probably in not a very
different plight in reference to wood than the whole
sea-board of the Lowlands of Scotland was previous
to the spirited experiment of the Earl of Haddington
in East-Lothian. See Tynninghame.
The Shetlanders, to be understood in their habits,
their social character, and their political position,
must be viewed as emphatically and engrossingly a
great community of fishermen, who fish for their
food as men, for their rents as farmers, and, for nearly
the whole staple of trade, as members of the social
body. A proportion of them, as has already been
hinted, have long been in the practice, like a pro-
portion of the Orcadians, of annually serving in the
Greenland whale-ships ; and these may be regarded
as half-sailors when away, and irregular members of
society when at home. All the others, with the
exception of a fractional part so very small that it
cannot enter into a general view of the commu-
nity, are more or less fishermen ; for, whether they
be farmers or whatever else, they, on the whole,
look mainly to the finny tribes for their means of
subsistence. Their regular fisheries are of three
classes ; that of the coal-fish, or gadus carbonarius ;
that of the Haaf, or deep sea-fishing; and that of
the herring.. — The coal-fish are singularly abundant,
and easily caught ; and, being at once palatable,
nutritious, and always prolific and accessible, and
furnishing, in their liver9, an oleaginous matter
whence oil is obtained for lighting up the Shetland-
er's hut, they constitute both the main staff of life
throughout the islands, and the means of diffusing
cheerfulness through the long winter evenings.
Throughout successive years of scarcity, this fish
has often for days together formed the sole food of
the Shetland peasant; and when want of corn and
potatoes presses most heavily, as in the four years
ending in 1840, it has providentially proved to be
more than usually abundant. But tor the wondrous
manner in which He who ' holds the waters in the
hollow of his hand,'
" Throngs the seas with spawn innumerable,"
of this eminently useful fish, just in the manner
most adapted to the circumstances of the islanders,
and in quantity proportioned to the failure of their
resources by land, they must, in spite of liberal
charitable donations from their more happily situ-
ated fellows, have, in great numbers, fallen victims
to famine. Whoever reflects on the lavish abun-
dance of the fish, their habits, and their wondrous
subordination to the support of human life amid the
hyperborean asperities of such a country as Shetland,
must be practically an infidel not to see the agency
and the paternal care of the infinitely wise and good
Governor of the world The fry of the fish appear
in May in comparatively small quantities, and little
more than an inch long ; they increase in numbers
till about the month of August, when they are very
abundant, and measure from 6 to 8 inches in length;
and, during all this period, they are provincially de-
signated siltoc/is. Against the following March they
grow to the length of about 15 inches, and then ob-
tain the name of piltocks; and afterwards they
thrive with rapidity till they attain the mean size of
cod, and they are then called stthes or snitlies. The
smaller fry seem to court the security of dense thick-
ets of sea-ware, which shelter them from the keen
eye of the feathered tribes which prey on them; and
the larger fry frequent all parts of retired bays, and
swarm almost everywhere upon the margin of the
coast, but have their favourite resort among the
constant floods and eddies of the tide, near sunken
rocks and bars which are alternately covered and
abandoned by the waves. " There is probably,"
says Dr. Hibbert, " no sight more impressive to the
strange? who first visits the shores of Zetland, than
to observe, on a serene day, when the waters are
perfectly transparent and undisturbed, the multitudes
of busy shoals, wholly consisting of the fry of the
coal-fish that Nature's full and unsparing hand has
directed to every harbour and inlet. As the even-
ing advances, innumerable boats are launched, crowd-
ing the surface of the bays, and filled with hardy
natives of all ages. The fisherman is seated in his
light skiff, with an angling rod or line in his hand,
and a supply of boiled limpets near him, intended
for bait. A few of these are carefully stored in his
mouth for immediate use. The baited line is thrown
into the water, and a fish is almost instantaneously
brought up. The finny captive is then secured j
and while one hand is devoted to wielding the rod,
another is used for carrying the hook to the mouth,
where a fresh bait is ready for it, in the application
of which the fingers are assisted by the lips. The
alluring temptation of an artificial fly often super-
sedes the use of the limpet ; and so easily are cap-