Near the crest of Oiseaval, there are a cluster of three distinct and unusual rocks. Known as the Mackinnon, MacQueen and Gillies stones, they all have their own legends; the tales of the latter two linked closely together. They stand parallel to each other a metre or so apart. Nearest to Village Bay, MacQueen’s Stone is mainly covered by moss and lichen, but if the observer looks closely, they can see that there are two bare spaces on its crest, roughly resembling footprints. The Gillies Stone is largely flint, though it appears to have dark, scorch marks at its base as if it has been burnt by flames. Both these rocks feature in a legend that has formed the postscript to the entry in the diary of Mrs MacLachlan, wife of the schoolmaster and missionary Peter MacLachlan, who was based on the island from 1906 till 1909.
‘Friday September 27 1907
Went into William’s House where there was an assembly of women. There I heard the astounding intelligence that Annie MacQueen, daughter of Finlay, is to have a baby in a month or two, and that the father is our friend Donald Gillies, son of poor Finlay Gillies. We are awfully sorry about it and would never have believed it of the latter. Saw Annie MacQueen (one of the culprits) in bed in William’s house, as her father put her out of the house last night and says he will never allow her to darken his doors again.’1
It is the days and hours which follow that lead us to these stones. Apparently, surrounded by the entire congregation, young Annie was forced to stand on the rock that bears her surname, clinging to it so firmly that the prints of her prehensile toes appeared to have dug their way into its surface. Alongside her was her boyfriend, Donald Gillies, perched on top of the large flint stone. Together, they faced the wrath of MacLachlan’s words. His finger flayed in their direction; words spat from his lips.
‘By your sinful actions, you have cast a blemish on this community. You have sullied both the names and reputations of your family with this wicked deed you have done.’
It is said that the foot of the Gillies Stone began to grow black as the sermon progressed – whether through the heat of MacLachlan’s words or the foul nature of the sin the young couple had committed, no one can be certain. The islanders were all, however, aghast at the change that had taken place in the colouring of the rock.
‘It’s as if it’s been on fire,’ one of the older Mackinnons declared, examining it.
Beside that rock, of course, there was the Mackinnon Stone. Its dark and ominous story will be told later…
1 This extract is from Bill Lawson’s essay, ‘Hiort in Pre-1930 Writings’ in Rewriting St Kilda, ed. Bob Chambers (The Island Book Trust, 2011).
Swearing Stone
Curses chip;
oaths obscure,
obliterate;
swears wear away
the face
of that monolith
till the day
it
topples,
sways,
disintegrates,
brought low
by foul mouthed rages,
ill-tempered displays
that grey stone
accrues
from years
it stands
accumulating
the ill-feelings
emanating
from the mouths of
those who lived for centuries
in their homes in Village Bay.
Spinster’s Stone
She always occupied the steepest camber,
as if she recognised the danger
of making herself a stranger
to the ways and lives of men.
And women, too, for she had never sensed the strong urge
of flesh, that blood-surge
the others talked about, its mysteries divulged
in these moments when
there was time to speak, when fatigue
made them falter in their labours, when the beaks
of puffins had stilled and hands were no longer streaked
with feathers, blood.
She’d grow still then, a basalt pinnacle
that stood out beyond the others on that hill,
gazing on these women who imagined their arms filled
with children,
while she became inflexible,
unmoved by the flow and tangle
that seemed to make their lives
both fertile and fulfilled.
Emigrants’ Stones
Each was as small
as the chance of seeing
loved ones again.
Hammerheads
hidden within walls
with thumb and finger grooves
worn away by ancestors,
left behind
the evening they moved
from home that final time.
White pebbles
decorating cleits or cairns
as testimony
they would not remain
there any more.
Boulders their fingers shoved
or rolled
as witnesses to houses
left empty in the cold rain
of their parting.
But most of all,
these sea-smoothed stones
they laid
within the ashless grates
of vacant homes,
Inscribed with date
to create reminders of the grieving done
when the ones who were left behind
bowed their heads with knowledge
they might one day be alone.
Bachelor Stone
There used to be a slab of flint they called the Bachelor Stone,
where Ewen lay for long nights and always on his own;
while other men went hunting for fulmar flesh and bone,
he’d contemplate star patterns in the sky above his home
and shout unto the heavens, grind his teeth and groan:
‘Why among grass and heather that each year sheds its seed?
Why among the seabirds bringing nestlings their feed?
Why, when even rams and ewes are stirred by blood and heat,
does my flesh lie chilled as flint-stone, unmoved by human needs?’
And he’d lie there for so long that they’d forget he was
ever once among them, far less had now been lost,
his clothes transformed to lichen, skin becoming moss
until the wind would shake bone and he’d cry out like a ghost,
voice echoing across cliff-tops, booming round its coast:
‘Why when tide and ocean shifts each day without fail,
why, when there is movement both in grey slug and snail?
Why, when even seed and grass-stalk dance high into the air,
do I lie upon this flint-stone like a fulmar in a snare?’
There used to be a slab of flint on the edge of Village Bay,
which once was white and shining, but now’s a shade of grey
for it bears Ewen’s shadow, which has long faded away,
though – if you listen – you can hear his voice on cloud-filled nights and days,
with its chorus of questions, the disturbing words he says:
‘Why, when gulls and gannets need partners to bring warmth,
why, when other men can admire the sweep of woman’s form,
does my blood take on the wind’s chill, my breath become like loam,
my bones decay and perish, become part of this flint-stone?’
Needle Rock
The tailor took his inspiration from
the sharpness of that skerry in the bay
and how that guano glinted on its rock
like a sharp edge of steel
with shags and cormorants dipping
thread within the weave
wrapped tight around the island,
binding human life within
that shoreline where he stitched,
marvelling at how the master tailor made
this world with all the dedicated care
he tried his best to imitate
while practising his trade.
Cobbler’s Stone
It used to stand before the house of Seoras,
the rock that looked just like a human foot
on which they’d stretch out gannetskins
and shape them into sturdy shoes or boots
which men would wear on their Sunday sermons,
with extraordinary style and zeal,
believing they resembled the god Mercury
with a tuft of wings above each heel.
Confession Stone
This is the rock that Murdo told
how he let slip Neil’s hand
one midnight hunting razorbills
upon an edge of land.
This is the rock where Iain confessed
of the wrong he’d done,
stealing Finlay’s store of guillemot eggs
and sacks of gannet down.
This is the rock where Angus admitted
how he came by Morag’s house one night
to scoop up a jar of fulmar oil
to fuel his dying light,
or how Murdo’s weak heart fluttered
upon the afternoon he dared
to step near Murdag’s washing line
and steal her underwear,
until that monolith exploded
because of all the words within.
Layers of gneiss combusting
with their thunderous load of sin.
Mackinnon’s Stone
It was first given that name in 1846, when Iain Mackinnon of the Great Silvery Beard used it time and time again to tie his rope around when he clambered down the cliff at Oiseaval to gather and harvest fulmars. One time, however, the knot frayed, chafing against rock before he tumbled, his body shattering against waves. The next day, a crow was found on its crest, cawing out a long, discordant message to those who lived on the island, each sound a blasphemy or curse. No bird was recorded to have rested on top of the stone again till some 22 years later, when young Rachel Mackinnon stumbled on it when making her way home through a dense, impenetrable mist to her home in Village Bay. Head over toes, she plunged into the sea, not surviving her fall. Again, a crow was perched on its summit, the gneiss below its claws forbidding as a pulpit as it preached its dark, cruel sermon.
The next time an event of this kind occurred was when Lachie Mackinnon sat on the stone after he had guided a group of visitors to the edge of Oiseaval on a mild summer’s day. At one moment, he was entertaining the group with his tale of how a member of the Bonaparte family had once landed in Village Bay, claiming the island for France. The following minute, he was clutching his chest and choking for breath, unable to stand. Again, a similar ritual occurred. The crow landed, both its stillness and the black sheen of its feathers contrasting with the speed and whiteness of gannets as they dived for food nearby. It was on this day that Angus Mackinnon warned his family that no one who bore his name was ever allowed to go near that stone again.
‘Death waits for anyone who goes there,’ he declared, his voice as dark and compelling as any minister. ‘It has happened too many times in that place for those of our kin.’
For the most part, this warning was obeyed by the generations who came after. However, there was one exception. It is recorded that one member of the family ignored his words a few years after the island was evacuated.
Lover’s Stone
The true story of the Lover’s Stone is not the one usually told. Instead, that pinnacle of rock was first clambered upon by Aonghas MacQueen, who was found perched on it the day his son left for the mainland, balancing till his vessel disappeared over the grey horizon. He was followed soon after by Lachlann MacQueen, who built a small cairn of stones on its crest, standing there on the tips of his toes for hours on end. He would lean over, trying to see if the remains of his son who had fallen from the cliffs were still intact deep within the blue…
Or he would stretch out his fingers, desperate to sense the fluttering of his lost child’s soul somewhere above his head.
Gannet Shoes
The natives of St Kilda were reputed to use gannet skin as footwear.
They plucked the final feathers,
scorched vestiges of down,
till only stubbled skin remained;
a nine o’clock shadow engrained
in a poor man’s substitute for leather
fitting the wide-ankled foot
God had somehow cobbled, thrown together
to enable their long toes to weather
the savagery of spray,
help them, too, to clamber Stac a’Langa,
Connachair, the beak of Dun…
But these shoes fashioned from the flesh
of solan goose were designed
for a different purpose.
Not the skerry nor the crag.
The shimming down of cliff-face
to coax and catch the kittiwake or shag.
The stepping out for sermons.
The path home from a ceilidh
in damp or dewfall of the dark.
Instead, they stitched and laced
patchwork and scrag-ends left behind
from pan and plate
after they had feasted
in hope the skin retained
the buoyancy of that bird,
its speed of movement, turn and tilt,
the way it whirls its body
on a downward twist from Heaven,
all that might enable them to plunge
off the edge of arches, clefts and caves
to bring up from the dashing shades of water,
secret darkness of the waves
whatever might be salvaged:
the dark glimmering of petrels, shearwaters,
guillemots and puffins
that a dive might sweep
and lift up to the surface
take bird-flesh home to houses,
end the thunder in their stomachs,
keep life over the winter’s course
both secure and safe.
Cleit
According to the celebrated 18th century historian, Donald Donald, there is no doubt that the islanders were among the most sullen and sulky people ever to have existed in history. Each time they quarrelled with one of their friends and neighbours, they would march from their homes. Picking up two large stones from a nearby wall, they would head out beyond the boundaries of Village Bay, laying these rocks on the ground there, murmuring and muttering their resentments against those with whom they shared their world.
Over time, both the pile of stones and arguments grew. A wall of rock would form, accumulating from each fresh generation of family quarrels, layer upon layer, word upon bad-tempered word. They did this until they created thousands of cleitean or cleits, little stone outhouses which many later came to believe were created to store bird-flesh, eggs and feathers, all the things that were essential to a St Kildan’s life.
They did no such thing. Instead, they were employed to shelter the islanders from the lash of wind and rain, the consequences of their ill-will to each other, as they brooded on the wrongs that had been done to them, each word of hate and insult weighing them like stone.
Flight II / Sgaoth II
Feather Store
Walls of plumage
made to store and cage
their feathers
with pinions for foundations,
dug in deep
within a nest of rock.
Bricks, too, shaped from quills
with which men filled
and blocked off darkness,
labouring to reach heights
roofed with light, white
tufts of down.
Such a structure stood
upon the island
till the hour
people there took flight
when it soared and spread
its wingspan across Heaven,
a glorious annunciation
sparkling feathers throughout night.
The Gospel on the Island
Sometimes they saw wings
in the pages of the Bible
their preacher turned over in the pulpit,
each flow and flutter patterned
with the print of Scripture’s verse.
All different sorts of birds.
The gannet and the fulmar.
The slightness of the sparrow, rock-pipet
blown along the shore-front,
rising from that book
to flit across pews
and settle down among them,
make their mouths always hungry
for the sweetness of the word.
Albatross
They never expected the albatross to be
nesting with the gannets on Stac Lee.
But there it was among them – that great bird
alien to the others, preposterous and absurd
with its ungainly stretch of wings
which they felt a puff of wind could tip and fling
into the Atlantic, send it tumbling from the sky.
‘Such creatures,’ Ewan sniggered, ‘were not designed to fly.’
But Calum recognised it. He had heard
some hour in the classroom Coleridge’s words
telling of a curse, how lives were lost
when a mariner sought to kill an albatross,
and he restrained them, stopped the use of rod and noose
they’d brought with them to harvest the young of the solan goose.
‘We’d better not do that. It would be a grievous wrong.
Round our necks eternally, that great bird would be hung.’
Ewan did not listen. He only saw the feast
fate had set in store for them if they killed that marvellous beast.
Skin (which he imagined) if fitted on his foot
could be stretched into a fine pair of thigh-high boots,
the envy of his neighbours when he stepped out on Sabbath day
dressed in neat and splendid black as he made his prayerful way
to kirk. And then there were the feathers, down
which might tower over Conachair as it splayed across the ground.
The Guga Stone Page 7