Human ecology and the early history of St Kilda, Scotland

Journal of Historical Geography, 25, 2 (1999) 183–200
Article No. jhge.1999.0113, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on

Human ecology and the early history of
St Kilda, Scotland

Andrew Fleming

     It is 300 years since Martin Martin published his Voyage to St Kilda, one of the most
     informative accounts ever published of a seventeenth-century community. Historical
     treatments of St Kilda have often dramatized its isolation, distinctiveness and ‘mar-
     ginality’ but Martin’s writings suggest that the lifeways of the St Kildans were not very
     different from those of contemporary Hebrideans. The economy described by Martin
     was subject to a rigorous regime of communal self-management. This article argues
     that in late medieval climatic conditions, St Kilda’s particular combination of resources—
     sheltered arable land, seals and sea-bird colonies, including a huge gannetry—would
     have made the archipelago a valued component of the MacLeod chiefdom and a good
     target for the annual predatory visit of the sub-chief and his retinue. St Kilda’s history
     should be seen not in isolation, but in a context of regional interdependence, and the
     archipelago’s ‘marginality’ is best understood in a long-term historical perspective.
                                                                                 1999 Academic Press

Introduction
The St Kilda group of islands (Figures 1 and 2) lie some 55 km WNW of North Uist
in the Western Isles of Scotland. There never was a St Kilda; the name has arisen from
a misunderstanding.[1] There is one habitable island, Hirta (formerly Hirt), which has
an area of 637 hectares.[2] Just off Hirta’s north-west tip is Soay (99 hectares) and 6 km
to the north-east lies Boreray (76 hectares). These two islands, girt by steep cliffs, have
traditionally been utilized as sheep pastures and as temporary bases for fowling parties.
   St Kilda has an extensive literature, fed by its spectacular scenery, its remoteness,
the real or apparent cultural idiosyncracies of its former inhabitants, and the drama
surrounding its abandonment in August 1930. Commentators’ emphasis on isolation,
distinctiveness and marginality have had the effect of making the archipelago both
special and apparently irrelevant to regional history. The three existing modern accounts
of St Kilda’s history, those by Steel, Maclean and Harman, are all excellent in terms
of their own objectives.[3] But if archaeological research is to build upon evidence
provided by the written record, we need to make a sober appraisal of St Kilda’s
‘distinctiveness’ and to set this island group into the context of the long-term history
of north-west Scotland. That is what this article attempts to achieve.
   Three hundred years ago, on the 29 May 1697, Martin Martin set sail for St
Kilda. On his return he wrote Voyage to St Kilda (1698), one of the earliest detailed
‘anthropological’ studies of a small community anywhere in Britain. Martin also wrote
a section on St Kilda in his A Description of the Western Isles of Scotland (1703). His
                                                   183
0305–7488/99/020183+18 $30.00/0                                                   1999 Academic Press

184                                     A. FLEMING

Figure 1. The St Kilda archipelago (inset) and the main island of Hirta, including places
mentioned in text (for general location, see Figure 2). This map marks the 1830 head dyke in
Village Bay, enclosing the 16 crofts instituted by Neil Mackenzie. Contours at 90, 150, 210, 270
                                            and 330 m.

account of St Kilda represents the dawn of written history for this island group, whose
prehistoric past survived until the early thirteen century.[4] Almost four centuries of
protohistory stand between the first written reference and the Voyage. Martin’s account
thus forms the starting-point for any archaeologically-based investigation of St Kilda’s
prehistory. A further objective of this article is to provide a baseline study of St Kilda
as it emerged into history.
  At first sight, the Voyage is especially valuable because it pre-dates the re-population
of Hirta from Skye and Harris, after the smallpox epidemic of 1727, which was survived
by only seven adults and thirty-four children.[5] Martin’s account of Hirta is sometimes
read as a vision of the island ‘uncontaminated’ by this fresh influx of people. In
fact, anecdotes from post-1727 sources provide excellent illustrations of the customs

EARLY HISTORY OF ST KILDA                                        185

Figure 2. Map to show the modern distribution of main seabird colonies and breeding grounds
of the grey seal in north-west Scotland, and the locations of places mentioned in the text. B=
Barra, Be=Berneray, H=Harris, L=Lewis, NU=North Uist, R=Rodil, Sk=Skye, SU=South
  Uist. Source: J. M. Boyd and I. L. Boyd, The Hebrides: A Natural History (London 1990).

documented by Martin. The smallpox survivors, few as they were, seem to have passed
on a good deal of the pre-existing Hirta culture. The situation is potentially confused,
however, because life on Skye and Harris was quite similar to life on Hirta. All three
areas were part of the MacLeod chiefdom and the respective environments had a good
deal in common. But the evidence of place-names is telling. According to Coates:

    most of the larger islands of the St Kilda group have names of Scandinavian origin,
    despite a lengthy period of Gaelic-speaking there since the period of Nordic dominance.
    Numerous small features have names that show every sign of having been formulated
    in a Nordic language, rather than to contain elements of Nordic origin (which might
    have been borrowed and used by Gaelic speakers and thus not prove Scandinavian
    occupation).[6]

186                                   A. FLEMING

These names survived the 1720s re-population of Hirta as well as the resurgence of the
Gaelic language. In the long term, disastrous events may almost wipe out the populations
of small islands like Hirta. Yet if the will exists to re-populate them, it may not require
many survivors to transmit detailed cultural information to the new settlers. The impact
of disasters upon long-term cultural continuity may be smaller than one might at first
imagine.
   The St Kildans of Martin’s time formed a community which managed its economic
affairs according to a strict code of rules. They lived within the MacLeod chiefdom,
which was based on Skye and Harris, and every summer saw the arrival of the ‘steward’
(a sub-chief from a cadet branch of the MacLeods) and his retinue.[7] Martin, who was
factor to the paramount MacLeod chief (based at Dunvegan on Skye) and who later
trained as a doctor in Leiden,[8] romanticized the St Kildans, characterizing them as
“much happier than the generality of mankind”.[9] His ‘noble savage’ passages are brief,
however, and clearly defer to contemporary literary conventions. In most respects
Martin was a shrewd observer of the Hirta scene.

St Kilda and its neighbours
St Kilda has an extensive literature.[10] Commentators have usually dealt with the
archipelago in isolation, emphasizing its people’s adaptation to a set of peculiar and
challenging conditions. But a comparison with Martin’s Description of the Western Isles
(1703) demonstrates just how similar were the St Kildans’ lifeways to those of their
neighbours. The St Kildan dress, apparently, was “much like that used in the adjacent
isles” only coarser.[11] Visited every summer by the MacLeod retinue, the St Kildans
indeed had little excuse for being unaware of changes in Hebridean fashion. On the
feast of All Saints they held a ‘cavalcade’, riding their horses from the beach to the
village guided by a simple straw rope[12] and eating a large triangular cake before the
next day.[13] Martin recorded the presence of this Michaelmas–All Saints cavalcade,
with varying degrees of detail, in other parts of north-west Scotland.[14]
   The beliefs and customs of the St Kildans resembled those of their neighbours in
various interesting ways. These members of the Reformed Church fancied “spirits to
be locally in rocks, hills or wherever they list”.[15] Macaulay says that on the road to
Gleann Mór was a stone where “formerly” (pre-smallpox) they poured “libations” of
milk to the gruagach; a kind of stone which existed “in almost every village throughout
the western isles”.[16] A little above this was liani nin ore, the “plain of spells”, where
the “old” St Kildans “sanctified” their cattle with salt, water and fire “every time they
were removed from one grazing place to another”.[17] The St Kildans shared an interest
in the sacred and medicinal aspects of wells and springs with many other Hebrideans.[18]
They also shared with the people of North Rona a belief that the rarely-heard cuckoo’s
call indicated the recent death of the clan chief. On St Kilda, this might also portend
the arrival of some notable stranger.[19] They knew that sea-weed ash was a good
preservative and to some extent a salt substitute, knowledge which they shared with
the inhabitants of North Uist and Berneray (south of Barra).[20] The St Kildan harrows
with wooden front teeth in front of bundles of sea-weed or heath were comparable
with those which Martin recorded on Lewis.[21]
   Only their thin beards and notable strength set the people of Hirta apart physically
from “those of the Isles and Continent”.[22] Like their fellow Hebrideans, the St Kildans
evidently liked poetry, music and dancing; they had a piper who could imitate the
piping of the gawlin.[23] Like other Hebrideans,[24] they much enjoyed alcoholic drinks

EARLY HISTORY OF ST KILDA                                    187

when they could make or get hold of them.[25] The ‘Parliament’ of later fame is mentioned
once, and described as “a general Council, in which the master of every family has a
vote”.[26] Judging by the numerous occasions on which it was necessary to draw lots or
seek the headman’s arbitration, the council must have met quite frequently.[27] There
were also what Martin calls women’s “assemblies” which took place in the middle of
the village, to the accompaniment of singing, poetry-making, and work.[28]
   From Martin’s account it appears that fowling and its associated customs were fully
established in 1697. The St Kildans practised the basic techniques of rock climbing,
including ‘leading’ climbs and roping climbers together. When they climbed Stac Biorach
in Soay Sound they belayed a rope from the top.[29] They knew enough about the
natural history of the gannet, for instance, to time the harvest of their eggs carefully,
as between Stac Lee and Boreray.[30] There were several corbelled store-houses, the
famous cleits or cleitean, what Martin calls “pyramid-houses”, on Stac an Armin, about
40 on Boreray, and a bothy on Stac Lee.[31] Eggs were preserved in the cleits in beds
of turf ash, and birds were dried in them for up to a year. Gannets’ feet might also be
cut with distinguishing owners’ marks.[32] Martin’s map makes it clear that two major
hills—Conachair and Oiseval—were already festooned with “stone pyramids” and he
suggests[33] that there were over 500 of them (the present-day figure is about 1200 on
Hirta, and some 170 in other parts of the archipelago).[34] Given that the population
was in decline after Martin’s time, it seems likely that most of the small, old-looking
cleitean outside the area of the village pre-date the late seventeenth century. Sir Robert
Moray noted their existence two decades earlier than Martin’s visit.[35] The cleits would
certainly have been in existence by 1549, when reistit (dried) mutton and sea-birds were
part of the local diet.[36] St Kilda’s ‘bird culture’ did not set the archipelago apart. Most,
perhaps all bird-covered stacks in north and west Scotland were targetted by local
communities.[37] The skills known to the St Kildans, and the dangers which they regularly
faced, were to be found wherever gannets whitened a stack.
   The relative isolation of St Kilda in the late seventeenth century did not mean that
it was ‘old-fashioned’. Martin recorded that “both sexes have a great inclination to
novelty”.[38] By Martin’s time they had taken enthusiastically to tobacco.[39] Despite the
complains of Buchan[40] about popery, ignorance and the shortcomings of religious
leadership in the earlier seventeenth century, Martin records that the St Kildans were
“of the reformed religion . . . neither inclined to Enthusiasm nor to Popery”.[41] They
kept the Sabbath and regularly attended open-air services, as the church was too small
to hold them all.[42] A school was established on St Kilda in 1711.[43]
   In the context of the contemporary lifeways of the Hebrides, late seventeenth century
Hirta was ordinary enough in most respects. In regional terms, Hirta was part of the
MacLeod chiefdom, which covered much of Skye and Harris and was centred at
Dunvegan on Skye.[44] The St Kildans had to maintain the retinue of the sub-chief
during its annual visit. In Martin’s time, the ‘steward’ lived on Pabbay in the Sound
of Harris.[45] He collected tribute in the form of “down, wool, butter, cheese, cows,
horses, fowl, oil, and barley”.[46] The late seventeenth-century retinue contained 40 to
60 persons, according to Martin.[47]

The community of St Kilda
The community of 1697, numbering 180 to 200 people, ran a very carefully-managed
economy, with strict rules governing the distribution of resources and the avoidance of
conflict.[48] One of the most valuable aspects of Martin’s account is that it allows the
reconstruction of a commons in the ‘regulated’ state in considerable detail.[49]

188                                   A. FLEMING

   Martin reported that St Kilda’s arable land was “very nicely parted into ten divisions,
each distinguished by the name of some deceased man or woman” which echoes Moray’s
reference to ten “families”.[50] This would produce an average of about 18 to 20 persons
per “family”—arguably a small lineage of siblings, with their spouses and children,
plus survivors from the older generation. A small number of “poor” were the joint
responsibility of the community.[51] The reference to both male and female ancestors
may suggest that the history of Hirta had encompassed both patrilineal and matrineal
descent, and that, in the past or the present, the people were able to take advantage
of the flexibility of a bilateral kinship system. The ten-fold division of land and people
should have facilitated the monitoring and control of food supplies, work allocation
and family recruitment at a realistic scale, without generating costly community-level
disputes. According to Martin, there were about 90 cows, up to 18 horses and perhaps
2000 sheep on the island: “the richest man hath not above eight cows, eighty sheep,
and two or three horses”.[52] If all adult males were potentially livestock owners, and
there were 40 of them, or if there were about 30 (presumably nuclear) families or
households at this time,[53] the average household would have owned 50 or 60 sheep
and two or three cows. One household in two would have owned a horse. Within a
predominantly egalitarian distribution of resources, there was a potential for short-
term accumulation for exchange or payments made at marriage: “if a native here have
but a few cattle, he will marry a woman, tho she have no other portion from her friends
but a pound of horse-hair, to make a gin to catch fowls”.[54]
   Control of other resources must be taken into account. Martin claimed that the
previous year’s gannet harvest amounted to 22 600, a bad year, apparently.[55] This
figure is regarded as a gross exaggeration by Nelson who suggests that a cull of only
2000–3000 adult birds and 5000 gugas (young ones) would have meant that the
population could not have held its own without immigration.[56] Gannet-hunting was
associated with masculine prowess and ability to win a wife. Martin records that the
plucked carcasses of the fattest fowls were taken home from the stacks “to their wives,
or sweethearts, as a great present, and it is always accepted very kindly from them,
and could not indeed well be otherwise, without great ingratitude, seeing these men
ordinarily expose themselves to great danger, if not to the hazard of their lives, to
procure these presents for them”.[57] This present was known as the “rock fowl”.[58]
Women did most of the agricultural work on Hirta, using “a kind of crooked spade”.[59]
On the basis of later accounts, it seems likely that females were also responsible for
dairy work and were involved in puffin-snaring expeditions.[60] Moray wrote that “the
most service of their women is to harrow the land, which they must do, when their
husbands are climbing for fowls for them”.[61] As we have seen, there were male and
female ‘assemblies’ echoing this gendered division of labour.
   The Hirta community divided responsibility equally between ‘families’ for the main-
tenance of collective property, drawing lots to randomize exposure to risk, to allocate
resources which could not be split into ‘equal’ shares, and to establish a rota for access
to a facility which could only be used by one family at a time. For instance, lots were
drawn for the use of the common corn-drying kiln.[62] The island’s boat was “very
curiously divided into appartments proportional to their land and rocks” and when it
was beached in summer each “partner” had to supply “a large turf to cover his space
of the boat”.[63] It seems that “lands, grass, and rocks” were frequently re-allocated
under the leadership of the headman or maor, the “officer” as Martin calls him.[64] The
three long climbing ropes, made of horse-hair, were communal property and were “not
to be used without the general consent”. Lots determined the time, place and persons
using them.[65] The risks taken by particular individuals were thus consigned to chance

EARLY HISTORY OF ST KILDA                                   189

or fate. The lottery for fowling and fishing rocks would have randomized the distribution
of variable and often unpredictable resources and it also aimed to ensure even coverage
of fowling areas in different sectors of the Hirta coastline.[66]
   Where shared provision was impractical, individual families were rewarded for
supplying a critical resource. On expeditions to Boreray, for instance, the provider of
the steel and tinder-box was paid the ‘fire-penny’, and the provider of the iron cooking-
pot was paid the ‘pot-penny’ by each family. The duty to provide the pot rotated
between families. Good commons management also included payment by each family
of an amir of barley per annum to the maor, as also happened in the case of the
southern and lesser isles of Barra.[67] The role of the maor was crucial to the successful
working of the system. He was ‘speaker’ of the mod or ‘parliament’ and presided
impartially over the drawing of lots.[68] Martin makes it clear that he was traditionally
chosen by “the people”.[69] As his duties also involved leading the most hazardous
fowling expeditions, as well as rock climbs, he must have been selected largely on merit,
a natural leader combining physical skills, intelligence, knowledge and a personality
which inspired trust.[70] The community also shared the responsibility of welfare provision
for the poor, hospitality for guests and ship-wrecked sailors, and above all for feeding
and billeting the retinue of the MacLeod steward, during his annual visit.[71] Aspects
of this strict system of self-regulation were preserved until the very last days of the
Hirta community. In the 1980s, Lachlan Macdonald, who was 24 when the island was
evacuated in 1930, recalled how responsibility for feeding the bull in winter was shared
between the crofters who used an agreed rope measure to equalize the size of the
bundles of hay provided: “they never quarrelled about it”, he insisted.[72] It might be
suggested that the particularly difficult conditions of the St Kilda environment were
largely responsible for the development of such a comprehensive and rigorous system
of community regulation. However, Martin also recorded aspects of similar rules and
regulations in other parts of north-west Scotland.[73]

St Kilda and the MacLeod chiefdom
The MacLeod retinue had been paying its annual visit since at least 1549.[74] According
to Martin, by 1697 the numbers were “retrenched”, as were some of its “ancient
and unreasonable exactions”.[75] If, as Martin suggests, the late seventeenth-century
population of around 200 was visited by a retinue of 50 for two months, the islanders
would have to increase their annual output by just over four per cent to feed them;
rather more if considers that most, if not all, visitors would be adult whereas a relatively
large proportion of St Kildans were children. It is hard to know the size of the additional
burdens imposed upon the islanders by the tribute which they were obliged to pay.
They were obliged to produce a surplus of some kind to exchange for commodities or
materials produced elsewhere; as Martin states, they “barter among themselves and the
steward’s men for what they want”.[76]
   The visit of the sub-chief and his retinue was accompanied by various customs and
rituals: exchanges of presents, the obligation to provide the sub-chief with ‘a large cake
of barley’ at every meal, with mutton or beef for Sunday dinner, and the show of
resistance offered to the sub-chief by the maor, with its ritual acknowledgement by at
least three cudgel blows to the head.[77] How far were the St Kildans disadvantaged by
this arrangement and to what extent were they at the mercy of the chiefdom? Evidence
and argument suggest that the relationship between the MacLeod chiefdom and the
Hirta community was one of mutual benefit which partly transcended the calculus of

190                                        A. FLEMING

economics. Clan loyalty evidently impelled the St Kildans to “mourn two days in the
fields” when they heard of the chief’s death.[78]
   It was certainly in the interests of the chiefdom to look after its component resource
areas. Martin recounts how the islanders’ boat was “split to pieces” on Boreray, and
the crew saved themselves by their climbing skills.[79] He omits details on how the crew
were rescued and how the boat was replaced, as if there was nothing remarkable about
such an occurrence. When the island’s boat was lost, it was replaced by the chiefdom.
Harman records the purchase of new boats in 1712 and 1735, and her summary of the
evidence shows that there were two or three boats on Hirta in the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries, and more than one in the 1740s.[80] The chiefdom must also
have supplied Hirta with horses (or at least foals), if the written sources are correct in
stating that horses were absent in the late sixteenth century, but present in 1615.[81]
   For their part, the St Kildans may have been more independent and prone to take
initiatives than is sometimes recognized. They also resisted the chiefdom in some
circumstances. Martin records several instances of their ingenuity in emergencies.[82]
They were far from slow-witted, and their courtesy was not subservience. Martin
records how several years before his arrival, the sub-chief, claiming a precedent, had
attempted to “exact a sheep from every family in the isle”. The St Kildans refused,
explaining the special circumstances in which the alleged precedent had been set. When
the sub-chief tried to use force, the St Kildans armed themselves with daggers and
fishing rods, gave his brother several blows on the head, and told him they would pay
no new taxes—“by this stout resistance, they preserved their freedom from such
imposition”.[83]
   An argument broke out, apparently during Martin’s visit or not long before it, about
the measure used in payment of tribute which
      has been used these fourscore years; in which tract of time it is considerably fallen short
      of the measure of which it was at first, which they themselves do not altogether deny;
      the steward [sub-chief] to compensate this loss, pretends to a received custom of adding
      the hand of him that measures the corn to the Amir [measure] side, holding some of
      the corn above the due measure, which the inhabitants complain of as unreasonable.

One can picture the scene: cunning, disingenuity, a contest of wills. In the end, the St
Kildans resolved to send the headman to Dunvegan to present their case. It appears
that it was not uncommon for embassies of this kind to take place, with the crew of
the boat, normally comprizing at least one representative of each family, accompanying
the headman.[84] Although Martin makes much of the local modes of baptism and
marriage when there was no permanently resident priest,[85] Sir Robert Moray claims
that 15- and 16-year-olds were brought to Harris by the headman to be baptized,
presumably in the church at Rodil.[86]
  One cannot leave the subject of ‘resistance’ without touching upon the gruesome
topic of the two murders mentioned by Mackenzie, writing in the nineteenth century.[87]
In one case, one of the sub-chief’s female servants married into the island and was
suspected of being her former master’s spy. In the temporary absence of her husband,
the women of the island persuaded her onto the shore to gather limpets. The men then
put a loop of rope around her neck and strangled her by pulling on each end: “all took
part in it, so that all might be equally guilty, and thus less risk of anyone informing”.
This story was recounted by a minister discussing the moral condition of his flock but
the actions of the participants sound very St Kildan, communitarian even in crime.
The other anecdote is about the murder of a male also suspected of compromized
loyalties. These stories remind us that members of the retinue may well have refreshed

EARLY HISTORY OF ST KILDA                                       191

the ‘breeding stock’, helping to lessen the extent of inbreeding.[88] Evidently the retinue
contained at least some women, including the sub-chief’s wife, who presented the wife
of the maor with a head-dress and an ounce of indigo.[89]
   So although Martin characterized the people of Hirta as exceptional—“the only
people in the world who feel the sweetness of true liberty”[90]—his account describes a
disciplined, hard way of life, not obviously dissimilar to the lifeways in other parts of
the Hebrides. The annual visit of the retinue, although predatory, was essential to the
continuing existence of the St Kildan community, and it kept the people in touch with
the outside world. It can be argued that the ‘strangeness’ of the people of Hirta became
more and more apparent in the post-Martin centuries, when the gulf between their
lifeways and those of other parts of north-west Scotland widened. St Kilda, after all,
saw no ‘clearance’, and its ‘improvement’ in the 1830s was by persuasion and communal
agreement. The people evidently saw Mackenzie’s reforms as an opportunity to redefine
their agrarian system:

    they wished to have the land (which they had hitherto held in common) divided among
    them, so that each might build upon his own portion . . . with some difficulty I got
    them at last to agree to divide the land themselves, and when they had made the
    different portions as equal as possible, then to apportion them by lot. This they did
    and were satisfied.[91]

This mode of community self-management—meticulous subdivision, followed by the
drawing of lots—is also very St Kildan. It precludes further discussion as well as
allowing the intervention of God, or fate.
   Later, more and more visitors came to Hirta as tourists. They wanted to see strange,
old-fashioned St Kildans, and the islanders duly obliged. There is a famous ‘Parliament’
photograph which is obviously posed, although long time exposures were of course
characteristic of photography in the late nineteenth century.[92] For the last hundred
years of St Kilda’s existence as an inhabited island, there was another mutually beneficial
relationship between the islanders and their visitors—collaboration in the cultivation
and perpetuation of an image of exoticism. As Connell put it in 1887: “the student
who allows himself to be sent to train the young St Kilda idea . . . is quite as entitled
to the gratitude of his church as the missionary who goes to Old Calabar or the
Cannibal Islands”.[93] In the post-1930 period, this perception must have been a powerful
influence on the production and sale of books about this tiny archipelago.

Demography and the economy
From the chiefdom’s point of view, Hirta was well worth the annual visitation. It is
not clear that the MacLeod would have concurred with Dodgshon, in leaving it off a map
of MacLeod domains![94] Dodgshon argues that gathering food-rents, with increasing
insistence and urgency, was the main concern of these chiefdoms.[95] The retinue’s long
stay on Hirta, and some of its activities, were almost certainly illegal. The early
seventeenth-century Statutes of Iona had banned sorning (the forcible extraction of
hospitality) and the forcible demanding of gifts. The size of the retinue may well have
contravened the spirit, if not the letter, of these statutes.[96] In all these circumstances,
it is worth considering the possibility that Martin’s Hirta had descended from a
reasonably prosperous, populous late medieval community, sustainable if not quite self-
sustaining.
   Such a claim must, of course, be weighed against our knowledge and understanding
of Hirta’s demographic history. Martin’s population figures of 180 or 200 are higher

192                                   A. FLEMING

than any recorded later, but the implied ratio between families (quoted variously at 27,
30 or 33 around this period) and absolute population numbers fits the norm for this
part of Scotland at that time.[97] Harman has described the dietary and health problems
of the St Kildans in the early eighteenth century, problems which supposedly made
them more vulnerable to the smallpox epidemic of 1727.[98] She argues that after the
epidemic and the re-population of Hirta, neo-natal tetanus kept population levels fairly
stable.[99] Numbers from the mid-eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries fluctuated
around 100. By the time the causes of these infant deaths were understood and the
infection could be prevented, in the final years of the nineteenth century, other factors
came into play. The community’s age and sex profile had changed drastically and
irredeemably after the emigration of 36 people to Australia in 1856.[100]
   How, then, are we to regard the relatively large population of the late seventeenth
century? Harman argues that Hirta had been re-populated earlier in the century, perhaps
in response to Coll McDonald’s raid in 1615, although she points out that if the re-
colonization had been substantial it would surely have been mentioned directly by
Martin.[101] But she also suggests that “180 was too great a number for the island to
support”.[102] However, this was the period of the Little Ice Age when climatic conditions
were creating havoc along the coasts of north-west Scotland.[103] On Hirta, Walker
interpreted zone GM-5 on his pollen diagram for Gleann Mór as demonstrating the
local effects of the Little Ice Age, with increasing amounts of salt spray leading to an
expansion of maritime plant communities.[104] Both crops and sea bird biomass would
have been seriously affected. Deficiency diseases and malnutrition, as Harman points
out, would have diminished the islanders’ economic performance and worsened their
conditions of existence.
   A population of between 180 and 200 may have been too high for the conditions of
the Little Ice Age but it is by no means clear that it would have been unsustainable in
the climatic conditions of the twelth and thirteenth centuries or comparable conditions
in earlier times. The MacLeod retinue had evidently been turning up annually on Hirta
and claiming cuddiche since at least the early sixteenth century.[105] It was suggested
above that in Martin’s time the St Kildans may have had to produce an extra four or
five per cent above their own requirements in order to feed the retinue, in addition to
the extra production represented by the goods and produce taken away by the sub-
chief. In Martin’s day, each of the 30 or so families had two extra persons to support
(and perhaps to accommodate). According to Martin, the late seventeenth-century
number of 40 to 60 persons was “retrenched” and their “ancient exactions” had once
been greater.[106] If this is true, the implication is that in earlier times the retinue had
expected to visit a relatively populous and prosperous island. If, as Harman implies,
St Kilda’s normally sustainable population was nearer to 100 than 200, with perhaps
16 families (the number of holdings which corresponded to these population levels in
the nineteenth century), and if we believe Martin’s statement about the traditional size
of the retinue, then the burden on the islanders in the sixteenth century appears hard
to sustain. In the early nineteenth century, the St Kilda population of 100 or so included
only 40 to 50 adults in the physical prime of life, ranged between 15 and 44 years of
age.[107] Would a population of around 100 really have been able to support a retinue
in which visiting adults outnumbered native adults by two to one?
   Other arguments are worth considering. I have suggested elsewhere that the ‘regulated’
stage of commons development should relate to a time when population is relatively
high in relation to resource availability and/or when there is a demand for greater
productivity.[108] In St Kilda, it is hard to imagine how the community could have
become more than mildly involved in the competitive generation or accumulation of

EARLY HISTORY OF ST KILDA                                    193

‘wealth’. As we have seen, the level of mutual interdependence in economic production
was very considerable. But one could easily envisage a highly regulated system developing
in response to rising population numbers, or the demands of a predatory external élite,
whose perception of Hirta’s potential wealth had to be realistically grounded in the
longer term, or a situation of mutual feedback between these two factors, perhaps in
relatively favourable climatic conditions.
   This is where we must ask how ‘rich’ were the St Kildans, potentially and in relation
to their neighbours. According to Martin, Hirta grew the finest barley in the Western
Isles.[109] In the mid-eighteenth century, Macaulay commented favourably on the high
quality of the pasture and the quantity and richness of the milk, and on the potential
of the arable land which was “rendered extremely fertile by the husbandry of very
judicious husbandmen”. The barley, it appeared, ripened earlier than anywhere else in
the Western Isles. Macaulay also claimed that the island should be able to support
about 300 persons.[110] The availability of marine resources must have been a considerable
bonus. Their present-day Hebridean distribution displays some interesting patterns
(Figure 2). According to Boyd and Boyd, St Kilda is by some way the largest ‘seabird
island’, followed by three ‘medium-sized’ islands (Handa, Shiant, Rum) and a group
of lesser islands (still with over 20 000 breeding pairs) consisting of Sula Sgeir, North
Rona, Flannan, Mingulay and Berneray (south of Barra).[111] These colonies are quite
evenly spaced, and the distances between them are considerable. Boyd and Boyd indicate
that St Kilda is currently host to five-sixths (50 000 pairs) of the gannets in the Hebrides,
almost half the fulmars (63 000 pairs) and about three-fifths of the puffins (230 000
individuals).[112] Gannets and their eggs were at most times a prized resource, “a delicacy
at all Scottish banquets” according to Nelson.[113] The gannet seems to have been easily
the most exploited seabird in the region’s Iron Age (in the broadest sense).[114] As critical
locations for gannets, only St Kilda, Sula Sgeir and possibly the Flannans come into
consideration in today’s circumstances.[115] Writing of the fulmar, Martin recorded that,
as well as taking the oil, which had medicinal uses, “the inhabitants prefer this, whether
young or old, to all other; the old is of a delicate taste”.[116]
   Seal-breeding locations for the grey seal have a largely complementary distribution.[117]
Most are to be found in the central west zone of the Long Island—between Gasker
and the Monach Isles (Figure 2). The main seal islands and the main seabird islands
only overlap on North Rona and St Kilda. In Martin’s day, seals were an important
resource, though he usually states or implies that it was only the poor or the “vulgar”
who hunted them. The St Kildans certainly hunted seals. As far back as 1549, Monro
recorded that the sub-chief was fed with ‘reistit [dried] muttonis, wild reistit foullis and
selchis [seals]’ on his visits to Hirta.[118] George Buchanan also mentioned tributes of
seals and sea-birds.[119] Moray tells of seal-hunting in Soay Sound.[120] The number of
seals breeding in the archipelago, however, is constrained by the restricted number of
suitable sites, which would also have been limited in the past by the human presence
here. It is noteworthy that just before the arrival of the military in 1957, when Hirta
was unoccupied, seals were beginning to haul out in Village Bay itself.[121]
   If we may project the recent ecological situation in the Hebrides backwards into the
later Middle Ages, and if outlying rocks and stacks were generally claimed and defended
as the hunting and fowling grounds of the communities which were nearest, or could
reach them most easily, it appears that quite a small number of communities would
have had access to seal-breeding locations and major seabird colonies. The St Kildans
were apparently unique in controlling seal-breeding grounds and major seabird colonies
and a major gannet colony. The inhabitants of North Rona had access to birds and
seals, but North Rona is considerably smaller than Hirta and does not possess the

194                                   A. FLEMING

latter’s acreage of relatively sheltered agricultural land. Furthermore, St Kilda had no
near neighbour to compete for fowling and fishing rights. Of course, projecting today’s
ecological situation backwards in time may be unwise. Potential changes in coastal and
ecological conditions, as well as in inter-specific relationships, have to be taken into
account. There is evidence, however, that major gannet colonies have displayed con-
siderable long-term stability in recent centuries (human predators having been the main
threat to them). A major cause of such stability is the fact that young gannets returning
north in the spring are normally attracted to existing colonies as potential breeding
sites.[122] As Nelson says (his emphasis): “there are many islands and headlands that
gannets probably could use, but at present do not. Undoubtedly, traditional gannetries
could absorb many more thousands of pairs before major new ones became necessary”.
The critical point is that “dense nesting provides behavioural (social) stimulation which
enhances reproductive success”.[123] Choice of colonies is also restricted by the gannet’s
need for wind-assisted take-off and landing. Although gannets apparently can and do
colonize relatively flat sites, such as low islands, human predation is a major determinant
of colony survival and success. Given our knowledge of the vigour and ingenuity of
the human food quest over the past ten thousand years or so, and the attraction and
capacity of existing colonies from the gannet’s point of view, it seems likely that by the
Middle Ages the large and enduring gannetries will have been more or less confined to
the stacks which they occupy today.[124]
   These marine resources would have given St Kilda an advantage over many other
north-west Scottish communities. They were an extra source of food as well as a risk-
buffering mechanism when the cereal harvest was in trouble. Furthermore, the cleits in
which dried birds were stored were also available for the storage of dried mutton, the
use of which in the seventeenth century was recorded by both Munro and Buchanan.[125]
It would have been possible to store varying proportions of wind-dried birds and
mammals—seal as well as perhaps sheep—switching between them according to pre-
vailing conditions. These practices are reminiscent of Williamson’s description of the
Faeroe Islands 50 years ago, with wind-dried birds and mutton (roest kjøt) kept in
wooden-slatted hjallur.[126]

Conclusion: interdependence within the chiefdom
The St Kildans should have been able to develop a broadly-based and sustainable
economy, whose products included relatively scarce, valuable resources which were well
suited to the redistributive character of a chiefdom. It was evidently well worth the
MacLeods’ time and effort to send a tribute-fetching retinue every year, long after
sorning had become illegal, and to repopulate Hirta after the 1727 smallpox epidemic
and apparently also in the seventeenth century.[127] Despite Hirta’s remoteness (and it
was not a ‘stepping-stone’ island like Fair Isle) any temptation to abandon it was
evidently resisted. In any case, Martin tells us enough, I believe, for St Kilda to be
convincingly reconstructed as a self-managing (though not independent) community
and a valued component of the MacLeod chiefdom.
  Interesting comparisons may be made with another domain within the MacLeod
chiefdom. The isle of Pabbay, just beyond the western edge of the Sound of Harris,
midway between Harris and North Uist, has almost exactly the same surface area as
Hirta. It has a good range of archaeological sites and monuments—a dun, a Pictish
symbol stone, cross-slabs, and the ruins of two churches.[128] Pabbay was clearly an
important component of the MacLeod chiefdom, being frequently mentioned in Grant’s

EARLY HISTORY OF ST KILDA                                    195

history of the MacLeods and described in the 1790s as “once the granary of Harris”.[129]
In the early sixteenth century, it was described as “ane maist profitable Ile . . . plentifull
of beir, girsing and fisching”. A later sixteenth-century report described Pabbay and
Hirta as each paying “60 bolls victuall”.[130] If a boll weighed a little over 156 lbs, 60
bolls represents about 4.25 tonnes, or 21.25 kg per head for a population of 200.[131]
These late sixteenth-century figures are comparable with the 1793 figure for Hirta of
43 bolls of barley paid by a population which numbered about 87 in 1795; in other
words, about 35 kg per head.[132] Macaulay, writing in 1764, gave a figure of 50 bolls
per year.[133] According to Martin, yields of barley were 16- to 20-fold[134] and there is
some reason to believe that a high proportion of the crop went to pay the ‘rent’.[135] It
looks as if Hirta, then, was a high input/high output zone for barley production, along
with Pabbay and also, apparently, Berneray and parts of South Uist.[136] With such high
yields, storage and distribution would be important considerations, and it would not
be surprising to find that these places were targetted by predatory chiefs.
   Much of Pabbay’s cultivable land is exposed to the Atlantic westerlies, as, of course,
are the machair lands of the Western Isles. In terms of its vulnerability to climatic
change or population crisis, Pabbay seems no better off than Hirta. Perhaps at some
times of the year grain could be imported more easily to Pabbay than to Hirta but on
the other hand, if crops failed on Pabbay they would probably fail in other parts of
the MacLeod chiefdom. At least the St Kildans had stores of eggs and dried meat close
at hand, under their own control. And if worsening storms and sea-spray were a serious
regional problem in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Hirta was
largely immune to the coastal erosion and massive sandblows which were affecting
many of the more productive parts of the Long Island.[137] Writing about Pabbay,
Groome put it succinctly: “it formerly grew very fine crops of corn, but it has in a
great degree been rendered barren and desolate. Sand-drift has overwhelmed its SE
side; the spray from the Atlantic almost totally prevents vegetation in the NW”.[138]
   It is at least arguable, then, that the homeland of the MacLeod subchief was actually
less productive than the distant island group to which he brought his retinue every
year, especially if one takes the harvest of sea-birds and their eggs into account, and
the product of the island sheep pastures of Soay and Boreray. The relationship of
interdependence was clearly complex, and may have been quite well reflected by the
role-playing which apparently formed part of the transactions between the sub-chief
and the St Kildans. In their geographical situation, the St Kildans were vulnerable to
predation by the retinue, but they also needed it to supply certain commodities which
they were otherwise normally unable to obtain. They were forced to supply the retinue
at levels which made it worth the latter’s while to return each year and re-invest in the
St Kildan economy, for example by replacing the islanders’ boat from time to time.
But given the comparisons made between Hirta and Pabbay (itself apparently one of
the more productive parts of what may be termed Greater Harris) one could turn the
equation round, and argue that the MacLeods really did need the product of the St
Kilda archipelago to supplement the clan’s food supplies, and/or to take part in more
socially and politically ambitious prestations. From the chiefdom’s point of view,
investment in the economy of St Kilda was worthwhile. The St Kildans, for their part,
had no problem in attracting the small external contribution which their economy
needed. Of course, these relationships must have been partly masked and mediated by
the ideology of the clan. It would be interesting to know how far they can be projected
backwards in time and how many other, different scenarios might be envisaged for the
long-term maintenance of comparable island communities.[139]
   I have argued that in many respects the culture of Hirta was not unusual. The

196                                      A. FLEMING

similarities recorded by Martin between Hirta and other north-east Atlantic communities
must be of absorbing interest to archaeologists and historical geographers, sup-
plementing and tending to confirm the rather coarse-grained evidence of monuments
and material culture on which we base the assumption that this was a fairly uniform
cultural province. In their daily lives, the men and women of Hirta took more risks
than most as individuals, but the long-term dangers to which their community was
exposed were no greater than those faced by many Hebridean communities. It does
not seem likely that St Kilda was more ‘marginal’ than other component parts of the
McLeod chiefdom. The archipelago was probably better buffered against the risk of
subsistence failure than many of its neighbours. Access to stores of dried sea-birds,
dried mutton and eggs, the opportunities for sealing, and the secure and interdependent
role of Hirta within the MacLeod chiefdom may have helped the St Kildans, with their
carefully-regulated economic system, to cope with short-term crises better than many
of their neighbours. In the long term, the risks which the St Kilda community ran were
more likely to have been genetic and epidemiological, and even in these areas we should
not necessarily assume that the St Kildans were more exposed than their neighbours
in the Long Island. In any case such risks are better understood from a historian’s or
an ecologist’s perspective than by members of communities which will eventually have
to face them.
   I have also argued that the St Kilda archipelago had characteristics which at certain
periods at least allowed its people to be relatively successful and prosperous by regional
standards. It is my contention that the history of St Kilda should be viewed within a
context of regional interdependence, rather than in the timeworn terms of ‘isolation’
and ‘marginality’. This is not to say that St Kilda’s history can be regarded simply as
that of a small component of a late-surviving Scottish chiefdom, just a special case of
a special case of an anthropologically-recognized phenomenon. On the contrary, as I
hope has been demonstrated, the history of the archipelago in itself is of absorbing
interest.

Department of Archaeology
University of Wales
Lampeter
Ceredigion SA48 7ED
Wales

Acknowledgements
This article is a by-product of the St Kilda Stone Implements Project, which is supported
financially and in other ways by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, the National Trust for
Scotland, and the Departments of Archaeology at the University of Wales, Lampeter and the
University of Sheffield. I thank Mark Edmonds and Alex Woolf for discussing some of these
ideas, Ian Fraser and Richard Phillips for bibliographical help, and two anonymous referees for
helpful comments.

Notes
  [1] Expert commentary has been provided by A. B. Taylor, The name ‘St Kilda’, Scottish
      Studies 13 (1969) 145–58 and R. Coates, The Place-Names of St Kilda (Lampeter 1991).
      Taylor argues that the name ‘Skildar’ or ‘Skilder’, originally applied to the ‘shield-shaped’
      islands of Gaskeir or Haskeir Eagach, was marked on sixteenth-and seventeenth-century
      maps, and then understood to refer to Hirt or Hirta; Martin’s use of the name ‘St Kilda’
      was highly influential in spreading its use.

EARLY HISTORY OF ST KILDA                                       197

 [2] According to Taylor, op. cit., the names Hirt and Hirta derive from Old Norse hjörtr,
     meaning ‘stags’, which supposedly refers to the islands’ appearance in profile.
 [3] T. Steel, The Life and Death of St Kilda (Edinburgh 1965); C. Maclean, Island on the Edge
     of the World (Edinburgh 1972); M. Harman, An Isle called Hirte (Waternish, Isle of Skye
     1997).
 [4] The earliest reference to Hirtir occurs in a thirteenth-century Icelandic saga, linking the
     archipelago to events which took place in 1202; see A. B. Taylor, The Norsemen in St
     Kilda, Saga Book of the Viking Society 17 (1967–8) 116–44, and W. Sayers, Spiritual
     navigation in the western sea: Sturlunga saga and Adomnan’s Hinba, Scripta Islandica 44
     (1993) 30–42.
 [5] K. Macaulay, The History of St Kilda (Edinburgh 1974, facsimile of 1764 edition) 197–8.
 [6] R. Coates, op. cit., 5.
 [7] R. A. Dodgshon, Modelling chiefdoms in the Scottish Highlands and Islands prior to the
     ’45, in B. Arnold and D. B. Gibson (Eds) Celtic Chiefdom, Celtic State (Cambridge 1993)
     99–109.
[8] S. Lee (Ed.), Dictionary of National Biography (London 1893) 289.
[9] M. Martin, A Voyage to St Kilda (Edinburgh 1986, facsimile of 1753 edition, originally
     published 1698), hereinafter VSK.
[10] There is an extensive bibliography in Harman, op. cit.
[11] M. Martin, A Description of the Western Isles of Scotland (Edinburgh 1981, facsimile of
     1716 edition, originally published 1703) 284, hereinafter WI.
[12] VSK 44; WI 295.
[13] WI 287.
[14] The beach is mentioned for Harris and North Uist (WI 52, 79). In Lewis and on North
     Uist, women also rode in the cavalcade (WI 30, 79). A special cake was involved on Eriskay
     and at Eoligarry (north Barra) (WI 89, 100). There were also cavalcades on Tiree and Coll
     (WI 270, 271). The most complete account exists for North Uist (WI 79–80), where the
     cavalcade involved racing for prizes, with no harness except “two small ropes made of
     bent . . . The men have their sweethearts behind them on horseback, and give and receive
     mutual presents . . . the women receiving knives and purses, the men fine garters and wild
     carrots.”
[15] VSK 43.
[16] Macaulay, op. cit. 86–8.
[17] Ibid. 88–9
[18] VSK 16–7; WI passim.
[19] VSK 26; WI 25.
[20] VSK 58; WI 56, 94.
[21] The St Kildan harrow was “of wood as are the teeth in the front also, and all the rest
     supplied only with long tangles of sea-ware tied to the harrow by the small ends; the roots
     hanging loose behind, scatter the clods broken by the wooden teeth; this they are forced
     to use for want of wood” (VSK 18). The Lewis harrow had wooden teeth in the front two
     rows and “rough heath” in the third row (WI 3).
[22] VSK 37.
[23] WI 38, 47, 63, 72.
[24] For example, WI 106–7, 171.
[25] VSK 58; WI 299.
[26] VSK 49.
[27] VSK 52 and passim.
[28] VSK 63.
[29] VSK 20. Martin refers to Stac Biorach as Stac Dona. See Harman, op. cit. 24.
[30] VSK 23
[31] VSK 22, 24, 25.
[32] VSK 36, 59, 25.
[33] VSK 59.
[34] G. Stell and M. Harman, Buildings of St Kilda (Edinburgh 1988) 29.
[35] Sir R. Moray, A description of the island Hirta, Transactions of the Royal Society 12 (1678)
     929.
[36] R. W. Munro (Ed.), Monro’s Western Isles of Scotland and Genealogies of the Clans
     (Edinburgh 1961) 78.

198                                    A. FLEMING

[37] Martin (WI 94, 96) gave accounts of fowling on Berneray (to the south of Barra) and of
     climbers ascending the rock of Linmull (Mingulay) with the assistance of ropes, the climb
     being lead by the gingich. Gannets were taken from Ailsa Craig (WI 227–8). Martin also
     refers to dangerous fowling exploits involving ropes and a “cradle” at Noss (Shetland) and
     also on Foula (WI 375–6). The most absorbing account is of the summer visit by fowlers
     from Lewis to the Flannan Isles (WI 16–19). The enterprise involved numerous taboos,
     rituals and ‘superstitions’—“punctilios” as Martin called them. On arrival, the fowlers
     walked sunways round the island, bare-headed. On no account must they defecate anywhere
     near their boat, nor kill a bird with a stone or after evening prayers. They prayed, bare-
     headed, at the old chapel. They were not to speak the name of the Flannan Isles, and
     Hirta had to be called ‘the high country’.
[38] VSK 63.
[39] VSK 62; WI 299.
[40] A. Buchan, A Description of St Kilda (Aberdeen 1974; facsimile of 1752 edition; originally
     published 1727) 36–7.
[41] VSK 42; WI 287.
[42] VSK 43, 44.
[43] I. F. Grant, The MacLeods: The History of a Clan 1200–1956 (London 1959) 358.
[44] Dodgshon, op. cit., fig. 11. 1
[45] WI 48.
[46] VSK 10, 44–5; WI 289–90.
[47] VSK 48.
[48] Martin suggests a population of 180 in some places and 200 elsewhere. See VSK 51; WI
     284.
[49] A. Fleming, The changing commons: the case of Swaledale (England), in A. Gilman and
     R. Hunt (Eds) Property in Economic Context (Lanham and Oxford 1999).
[50] VSK 18; Moray, op. cit. 928.
[51] VSK 44.
[52] VSK 17; WI 295.
[53] Harman, op. cit. 124–6 quotes recorded figures of 27 (Martin), 30, or 33 (Buchan) for the
     pre-smallpox period
[54] WI 295.
[55] VSK 59.
[56] B. Nelson, The Gannet (Berkhamsted 1978) 286.
[57] VSK 60–1.
[58] WI 295.
[59] VSK 18.
[60] Macaulay, op. cit. 40, 186.
[61] Moray, op. cit. 928.
[62] VSK 53.
[63] VSK 59.
[64] VSK 50.
[65] VSK 54.
[66] D. A. Quine, St Kilda Portraits (Ambleside 1988) 152.
[67] VSK 49; WI 99.
[68] VSK 52.
[69] VSK 51–2.
[70] VSK 53.
[71] VSK 44–5.
[72] Quine, op. cit. 139.
[73] On North Rona, for example, hospitality involved each man killing a sheep (“being in all
     five, answerable to the number of their families”); on Berneray (or Barra?), each family
     took in one guest (WI 22, 95). When Martin’s party arrived on Hirta, “the inhabitants . . .
     by concert agreed upon a daily maintenance allowance for us, as bread, butter, cheese,
     mutton, fowls, eggs, fire etc. all of which was to be given in at our lodging twice every
     day; this was done in a most regular manner, each family by turns paying their quota
     proportionately to their lands; I remember the allowance for each man per diem, beside a
     barley cake, was eighteen of the eggs laid by the fowl called by them lavy, and a greater
     number of the lesser eggs, as they differed in proportion” (VSK 10). On North Rona (WI

EARLY HISTORY OF ST KILDA                                        199

        22) “they are very precise in the manner of property among themselves; for none of them
        will by any means allow his neighbour to fish within his property”. On St Kilda (WI 291),
        on the other hand: “one will not allow his neighbour to sit and fish on his seat”. There
        are references to shared maintenance of community officials in relation to the isles south
        of Barra (WI 99).
 [74]   Munro, op. cit. 78.
 [75]   VSK 48.
 [76]   WI 290.
 [77]   VSK 50–1.
 [78]   VSK 57.
 [79]   WI 293.
 [80]   Harman, op. cit. 269.
 [81]   Harman, op. cit. 194. If one takes the written sources literally, the horses must also have
        been replaced after Coll MacDonald’s raid of 1615, although as Harman points out (ibid.
        84) the source which claims that “all the bestiall” were killed on that occasion is likely to
        have been exaggerating.
 [82]   WI 285–6
 [83]   WI 290
 [84]   VSK 49, 51
 [85]   VSK 46–7
 [86]   Moray, op. cit. 929.
 [87]   J. B. Mackenzie, Episode in the Life of Rev. Neil Mackenzie at St Kilda from 1829 to 1843
        (privately printed 1911) 30.
 [88]   According to Martin, the seventeenth-century St Kildans were “nice in examining the
        degrees of consanguinity before marriage”. See VSK 38.
 [89]   VSK 50.
 [90]   VSK 66.
 [91]   Mackenzie, op. cit. 21.
 [92]   This image has been widely reproduced, perhaps most influentially in T. Steel, op. cit.
 [93]   R. Connell, St Kilda and the St Kildians (London 1887) 148.
 [94]   Dodgshon, op. cit. fig. 11. 1.
 [95]   Ibid.
 [96]   Grant, op. cit. 211, 236.
 [97]   W. R. Mackay, Early St Kilda: a reconsideration, West Highland Notes and Queries 27
        (1985) 17–21.
 [98]   Harman, op. cit. 128.
 [99]   Harman (ibid. 262) points out that Martin, despite his interest in medicine, does not
        mention infantile tetanus, but Macaulay (who visited Hirta in 1758) does. This leads her
        to argue that the bacillus probably arrived sometime in the first half of the 18th century,
        perhaps during the re-population after the 1727 smallpox epidemic, and (ibid. 129) that it
        was primarily responsible for the stability of population numbers from the mid-eighteenth
        to mid-nineteenth centuries.
[100]   E. J. Clegg, Population changes in St Kilda during the 19th and 20th centuries, Journal of
        Biosocial Science 9 (1977) fig. 2.
[101]   Harman, op. cit. 126, 128.
[102]   Ibid. 128.
[103]   S. Angus and M. M. Elliott, Erosion in Scottish machair with particular reference to the
        Outer Hebrides, in R. W. G. Carter, T. G. Curtis and M. J. Sheehy (Eds), Coastal Dunes:
        Geomorphology, Ecology and Management for Conservation (Rotterdam 1992) 93–112.
[104]   M. J. C. Walker, A pollen diagram from St Kilda, Outer Hebrides, Scotland, New Phytologist
        97 (1984) 99–113.
[105]   Munro, op. cit. 78.
[106]   VSK 48.
[107]   Clegg, op. cit. table 1.
[108]   Fleming, op. cit.
[109]   VSK 18.
[110]   Macaulay, op. cit. 29–30, 33–4, 196.
[111]   J. M. Boyd and I. L. Boyd, The Hebrides: A Natural History (London 1990) fig 26.
[112]   Ibid. table 11. 1