*6 ^ £^ ^v H •I\^ / Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from Microsoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/descriptionofsheOOhibbrich DESCRIPTION OF Till-. SHETLAND ISLANDS. J&1. (>articular dialects first became objects of imitation. It has thus been justly remarked, that if the Court of Great Britain had, since the union of England and Scotland, been held at Holyrood instead of St James's, the fashionable dialect of this kingdom might have been * See Pamphlets, entitled " Oiset7l Low's MS. Tour through Shetland, A.D. 1774. ITER I.] DUNROSSNESS. 2 1 medium for the blowing-sand, by which means, in a subsequent year, it was rendered cap- able of yielding a crop of oats, or fit for the reception of proper grass seeds. The sand- inundations of Dunrossness are, however, evidently on the decline, since their origin was less referable to repeated accumulations of sand thrown up by the sea during heavy gales, and afterwards dispersed, than to the existing nature of the subsoil of the country, which, by improvident removals of the binding herbage that had long restrained its escape, was allowed to devastate all the estates to which it was blown in any considerable quantity. Mr Ogilvie's excellent management of his farm has had a powerful effect among the smaller tenants, in stimulating them to similar exertions. In the year 1818, when the Agricultural Society of Shetland offered to three parishes a premium for sowing turnips, all the competitors were of Dunrossness. One small tenant had a fifth of an acre of good turnips, drilled and very well cleaned ; another had a full quarter of an acre covered in the same manner, the ground having been thrice ploughed over 3 but the crop of the third competitor failed. Several small patches of ground, belonging to individuals who had not contended for the prize, attracted the particular attention of the Committee who adjudged the rewards. The numerous cottages occurring in the vicinity of Quendal are of a better construction than is to be generally found in Shetland, although they still retain much of their ancient Scandinavian character. The oldest Shetland dwellings are built of rude stones, with a cement of clay, or they are still more coarsely formed of stones and clods. After the wooden rafters have been laid, they are roofed with what are provincially called flaas, or, in the absence of these, with pones. Flaas are compact vegetable layers, consisting of the short fibres of mossy or heathy roots closely interwoven with each other. The removal of a layer of this description from the surface of dry moss land, is never accomplished by cutting, but by tearing away ; and this manual operation is so like what Dean Swift, in his description of the mode of collecting Irish scraws, calls " Flaying off the green surface of the ground," that it is probably to the Scandinavian word flaa or flae, we must look for the etymology of the Shetland wordy&ww.* When layers composed of flaas are doubled, they are considered to be impervious to rain, and in this state are placed upon the rafters of the houses. It has been also remarked, that, instead of flaas, the Shetlanders frequently substi- tute what they call pones. These last mentioned materials for roofing are nothing more than swards of earth cut very thin, upon the surface of which grows a short grass. They differ from another species of turf, recognised in Shetland as well as in Scotland, under the name of Fails, in the following respect : Fails are the thickest portions of turf that are cut, being used for the construction of walls and dikes : Pones have always a covering of grass ; they are thinner than fails, and they are never used for the construction of dikes, but for the sole purpose of roofing, f A roof formed of thin turf has long been considered as * See Johnson's Dictionary for the word Flay. t Fails is said to be a Suio-Gothic word, signifying a siuord, (solum herbidum). The derivation of Pones is obscure ; it does not occur in I)r Jamieson's Etymological Dictionary ; but this learned antiquary defines a Poiner (Q. dealer in Poins or Pones .') to be " one who gains a livelihood by diggingyia/, divots or clay, and selling them for cmiering houses and other purposes." It is needless to observe, that the true Shetland or Scandinavian word Flaas can scarcely be confounded with the Scotch Flaw or Flow /tat, as described by Dr Jamieson, the distinction between them being so very evident. 2 2 DUNROSSNESS. [ITER I. the peculiar characteristic of the Scandinavian cottage. Bishop Pontoppidan says, that the Norwegian peasants lay over the rafters of their dwellings the sappy bark of birch trees, which they cover again with turf three or four inches in width. Probably, then, in a country destitute of wood, like Shetland, the natives might have been first induced, in the place of a supply of other materials for roofing, to have adopted the Scotch method of thatching ; btt they appear to have still retained the use of pones or flaas, since over these they lay the straw, and afterwards secure the whole with simmonds or bands formed also of straw. In most of the Shetland cottages the fire-place is in the middle of the room, and the smoke ascends through a large aperture in the roof, after the usual manner of the hovels of the Scotch Highlands. Windows are become much more general than they were some years ago ; for, among some of the oldest habitations, no other light is received than through the aperture which allows an egress to the smoke. To this opening is given the Scottish name of lumb, but in the obsolete language of Shetland, it was called the livta, — a word resem- bling the ancient liuren or light-hole of the Norwegians. Yet many old Shetland houses are not destitute of that notable improvement of domestic architecture known by the name of chimney ; for by the Scandinavians its invention was ascribed to royalty itself, which had previously condescended to hold its courts within the sable, fuliginous walls of Rog-Stuerne, or smoke rooms. It is recorded in Norwegian annals, that so early as the eleventh century, King Oluf Kyrre was the first who removed fire-places from the middle of rooms, and ordered chimneys and stoves to be erected.* The byre or cow-house generally adjoins the dwelling, and is frequently entered by a common door, that introduces the stranger first to the cattle, and afterwards to the apartment devoted to the use of the family. In most of the Shetland habitations a partition of turf runs across the room, which is occasionally carried up to the height of the house, being intended as well for the purpose of storing up victuals as for a separate dormitory. But generally the beds, which consist of a few coarse blankets or straw, are placed in any convenient angle of the cottage. One or two cumbrous wooden chairs, designed for the heads of the family, with the addition of a few benches constitute the heavy part of the furniture. — Such is a specimen of the ancient cottage of Shetland ; but in the vicinity of Quendal dwellings of this kind are more rarely found than in other parts of the country ; and the antiquary will be often chagrined in observing such provoking modern improvements as slate roofs, regular windows, and detached cow- houses, all of which have been introduced into the country by that foe to archaeological sources of pleasure, ever stimulating to innovation, — a sense and desire of encreased com- fort. Quitting, therefore, for the present, the habitations of the Shetland peasants, we may briefly glance at the numerous rude dykes which are constructed around them :— These observe great irregularity in their direction, sometimes inclosing only one cottage, and sometimes uniting many which are distant from each other. Such are the general remarks, that may suffice for the present, regarding the humble dwellings of these islanders : ample opportunities will be afforded in the course of this * See Pontoppidan's " History of Norway, Translation," vol. ii., p. 278. jTER L] DUNROSSNESS. 2$ itinerary, for examining more in detail their rural economy. Our attention may now be turned from the contemplation of Shetland cottages to the inhabitants within them, whose general physiognomy may by this time have become sufficiently familiar to us. The natives of these islands are rarely very tall ; they are of the middle size, remark- ably well proportioned, light and nimble. It is true, that all these characters are less observable among the females of the country ; for the male sex, in relinquishing most species of domestic drudgery for the adventurous occupation of fishing, cause a more than ordinary portion of labour, fatal to the preservation of a delicate and symmetrical form, to devolve upon the poor females. The features of the Shetlanders are rather small, and have nothing of the harshness that so peculiarly distinguishes many of the Anglo-Saxon provincials in the north of England, or in some of the lowland districts of Scotland. The constitutional temperament of the Scandinavians is generally conceived to be sanguine, and since its characteristics are supposed to consist in a florid complexion, a smooth skin, and hair brown, white, or slightly auburn, the natives of Shetland give satisfactory tokens of their national descent. The elder Linnaeus's description of the Northern Europeans well applies to them : " Gothi corpore proceriore, capillis albidis rectis, oculorum iridibus cinereo-ccerulescentibus." But Principal Gordon detected a peculiarity among the Scandinavian natives of Orkney, who are of the same race as those of Shetland, that is too curious to pass unnoticed, since it must have wholly escaped the penetrating glance of the great Swedish naturalist. This antiquary dis- covered that there was not a human eye to be found in Orkney that was not of the colour of sea-green. These are his words : " The inhabitants are generally strong- bodied, and remarkable for the flava caesaries, and the oculi, csesii, assigned by Tacitus as distinctive peculiarities of German nations. That sea-green colour of the eye, which I take to be the meaning of the word easily is so common in Orkney, that / never met with any person whose eyes were of a different colour."* This is a sweeping assertion, that ought to go far towards removing the scepticism of a French writer, Monsieur Le Grand, who, being as little aware of the modern existence of green eyes, as that they were familar marks of discrimination among the ancients, endeavoured to amend the reading of the "yeux vers" or green eyes of the early French poets, by converting them, with a slight change of one or two vowels, into "yeux vairs" or gtey eyes. Hanmer also, equally uninformed, proposed, by the substitution of a letter, to change the "green eye," of Juliet, which he conceived to be a typographical error, into a "' keen eye."t But Mr Francis Douce, in objecting to such overstrained alterations of Shakespeare's text, has pointed out the ancient familiarity of the expression, by directing the attention to the "oculi herbei," alluded to by Plautusj, to "the great eyes with a green circle," which * Journey to the Orkney Islands, by Principal Gordon of the Scots College of Paris, Transactions of the Scottish Anti- quaries, vol. i., p. 256. t " Nurse. an eagle, Madam, Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye." Romeo and Juliet, Act iii., Scene v. J " Qui hie est homo Cum collativo ventre, atque oculis herbeis?" Curculio of Plautus. 24 DUNROSSNESS. [ITER L Lord Bacon affirmed to be significant of long life ; and to a Treatise of Villa Real, a Portuguese, who selected " Green eyes " for his theme, in which they were most mar- vellously lauded. This able commentator of Shakespeare then arrives at the conclusion, That it is certain green eyes were found among the ancients, though there is a scarcity, if not total absence, of such visual organs in modern times ; — adding with a sneer, " For this let naturalists account, if they can."* Surely Mr Douce could not have been acquainted with Principal Gordon's surprising discovery in Orkney, that a British province was entirely peopled with green-eyed natives ! It is true, that the residents of these islands may be willing to confess to any description of eyes rather than the " oculi csesii " of Tacitus ; and it will be no wonder, if, by these individuals, a suspicion may arise of some defect in the learned traveller's own vision, whereby the blue, black or hazel eyes of the inhabitants have been transmuted into the outre tint of sea-green, f If such an affection there really be, it must have frequently attacked the scholars of "olden times," being perpetuated at the pre- sent day among a few modern antiquaries. Its symptoms must have been analogous to those which a celebrated natural philosopher recently detected in his own sight ; the tint of pink being found to impress the retina like the sensation of sky-blue, and the colour of red sealing-wax like that of a green field. If any disease, then, can be well made out, capable of imparting to a scientific mind the illusion of a green-eyed race of Scandinavians dwelling in the Ultima Thule of the British Isles, it well deserves a place in Nosological Systems, under the name of the Paropsis Archaeologica. Certes, there must be some distemper, the bane of learned clerks, which o'er the realms of sense, Oft spreads that murky, antiquarian cloud, Which blots our truth, eclipses evidence, And taste and judgment veils in sable cloud." Chatterton's " Epistelle to Doctoure Myites." The dress of the Shetland peasants differs little from that of the inhabitants of the sea-coast of Scotland. To men whose chief occupation is fishing, the common sailor's jacket is a favourite attire. The red cap, which is a distinctive badge of the master of a family, merits particular attention. It is made of worsted, somewhat resembling in form a common double night-cap, but much larger, and gradually tapering to a point, whilst it hangs down the back, after the fashion of the head dress of a German hussar. It is also dyed with numerous colours. Frequently the men wear on their feet rivlins, which are a sort of sandals, made of untanned seal-skin, being worn with the hair-side outwards and laced on the foot with strings or thongs of leather. Their lightness is particularly adapted for tramping with velocity over the soft heaths or scattholds of the country. The dress of the women merits little attention, since it does not differ materially from the fashion of the * Douce's illustrations of Shakespeare, vol. ii., p. 193. t In a marginal postil, appended to Principal Gordon's Journey to Orkney, now before me, are the follow-in? observations, written by a gentleman, a native of these isles. " Black, blue, and hazel eyes, are to be met with in Orkney as elsewhere ; the eyes of the natives are, in truth, any colour but green." ITER L] DUNROSSNESS. 25 Scotch peasantry. The woollens which are worn are generally imported from Lanca- shire or Yorkshire, while some few are the manufacture of the country. We have now lingered sufficiently long among the cottages in the vicinity of Quendal ; for, as the Bard of Morven would intimate to us, — Night comes rolling down, and wreaths of mist begin to robe the white cliffs of Fitfiel. — The annunciation of a fine Shetland evening is always expressed by numerous boats covering the surface of the bay, the crews of which are engaged in angling for the small fry of the coal-fish, or Gadus carbonarius. These swarm in myriads within the numerous creeks and sounds of the Shetland Archi- pelago. They first appear in May, scarcely more than an inch long, and in comparatively small quantities, but gradually encrease as the summer season advances, when about Aug- ust they become very abundant, measuring from 6 to 8 inches in length. During this time the fry are distinguished by the name of Sillocks.* About the month of May ensuing, they are found to have grown from 8 to 15 inches, acquiring during this period of their growth the name of Piltocks.f Afterwards they thrive very fast, attaining the ordinary size of the cod-fish ; a profitable fishery then takes place of them in deep tideways, under the name of Sethes. Although the fry of the coal-fish frequent all parts of bays, yet the fishermen have in- formed me, that their favourite resort is among the constant floods and eddies which occur near sunken rocks and bars, that are alternately covered and laid bare by the waves. The fishery for Sillocks or Piltocks is, therefore, occasionally fatal to the more adventurous boats, which, in quest of them, angle in such perilous situations. But, besides frequenting tide- ways, and. currents of all kinds, these small fry appear to covet the security of thick planta- tions of sea-ware, within the shelter of which they are protected from the keen look-out of their natural enemies of the feathered race. There is, probably, no sight more impressive to the stranger who first visits the shores of Shetland, 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 evening advances, innumerable boats are launched, crowding the surface of the * Known at Edinburgh, (says Mr Neill,) under the name of Podleys, and at Scarborough of Pars. t Synonimous with the pollock, of the Hebrides ; the glassock of Sunderland ; the cuddle of the Moray Firth ; the g?cy podley of Edinburgh ; and the billet of Scarborough. See Nell's Tour, p. 209. The Piltock of Shetland is the kuth of Orkney which the following year is distinguished in the latter place by the name of harbines, or two year-old kuths, but they are large and coarse, and not much sought after. Acquiring their greatest bulk, they are called Sethes. Low's Fauna Orcadensls, p. 194. Mr Neill remarks, that the full grown fish is also in different places termed a Sey, a. grey ling, a. grey lord, &c. Mr Noel de la Moriniere, Inspector-General of the French Fisheries, observes, that the name Sey or Sethe is frequently given by Scandinavian fishermen to the full grown Gadus virens. X Gawin Douglas, the beautiful early Poet of Scotland, has described a scene somewhere similar. " For to behold it was a gloire* to see The stabled windis, and the calmed sea, The soft season, the firmament serene, The lounS illumin'd air, and firth ameneX, The silver-scalded fishes on the grit, Oerthwart clear streams sprinkt lland\\ for the heat ; With finnis shinand brown as cinnabar, And chizzel tailis stirrand here and there." * Glory. \ Calm. X Pleasant plain. || Darting with a tremulous motion. D 26 DUKROSSNESS. [ITKR I. hays, and filled with hardy natives of all ages. The fisherman is seated in his light skiff, with an angling rod in his hand, and a supply of hoiled limpets near him, intended for bait A few of these are carefully stored in his mouth, for immediate use. The haited line is thrown into the water, and a fish is almost instantaneously brought up. The finny captive is then secured ; 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 same manual and labial routine goes on with remarkable adroitness and celerity, until a sufficient number of sillocks are secured for the fisherman's repast. But, in any season of the year the limpet bait may be superseded by the more alluring temptation of an artificial fly. The rod and line are then handled with a dexterity not unworthy the freshwater talents of a Walton or a Cotton.* Frequently, also, instead of launching his light yawl on the ruffled surface of the bay, a small basket is strung across the shoulders, and securely on shore, " Some rock the fisher climbs, whose hanging brow Threatens the waves that lash its base below. A slender twig his trembling hand extends, The waving horse-hair from the top descends : Its fraud immerst with equal joys elate, The shoals pursue, and snatch the lurking fate."f So easily are captures made of these small fry, that whilst active manhood is left at liberty to follow the'more laborious occupations of the deep water fishery, or to navigate the Greenland Seas, it is to the sinewless arm of youth, or to the relaxed fibres of old age, that the light task is resigned of wielding the sillock-rod. The lavish abundance in which the fry of the coal-fish visit the inlets of Shetland, afford sufficient matter for contemplation to the reflecting mind. Among islands, the severe climate of which is too often fatal to the labours of husbandry, — where the reduced rate of labour, resulting from the debased political state of the country, precludes the purchase of meal at a cost much above the usual price in commercial districts, — under such circum- stances, what is there, that can possibly render a few insulated rocks capable of supporting a population of more than 20,000 souls ? The reply is not difficult. That kind Pro- vidence, " who pours his bounties forth With such a full and unwithdrawing hand. Thronging the seas with spawn innumerable," It may be of some interest to " brothers of the angle," as Isaac Walton calls his companions, to learn that the Shetland fly, tii which Sillocks rise, is rarely intended to represent any particular species observed in Nature. The Shetlander assures us con- fidently, that two wings are necessary for the insect, — the fish distinguishing nothing more. The inference is, that there is an intellectual gradation among the finny tribe, and that the fry of the coal-fish are not so clear-sighted as the more wary and know- ing inhabitants of pellucid trout-streams. For the construction of the bait, the white feather of the common gull, or of the goose, is sometimes used. But the fibres of the tail or back fin of the dogfish, which, when cleaned, shines like silver, is preferred to any other kind of material, being considered by the fishermen as particularly enticing. The fly is attached to a white hair line, and when this cannot be procured, to a brass wire. t Tianslation of Oppian's Halietiticks, by Jones, &c, p. 138. Oxford, 1722. NOTES TO ITER I. 2J has not neglected the obscure shores of Hialtlandia. Amidst the occasional visitations of famine, the severity of which overwhelms in despair the commercial population of the South, prompting to every act of civil insubordination, the Shetlander has only to launch his skiff on the waters which glide past his own dwelling, and he finds that a bounteous supply of food awaits him at his very door. A late visitor of this country, whose anxious inquiries into the condition of the lower classes of its inhabitants, were creditable to his humanity, has related, that in a period of scarcity, when many of the natives had not the means of purchasing oatmeal for five months, the fry of the coal-fish formed the breakfast, — the dinner, — and the supper of the Shetland peasant.* Brand, the honest Scottish Missionary, recorded about a century ago, a similar fact, upon which he has commented in an inimit- able strain of simple and unaffected piety. " In the late years of great scarcity," he remarked, " the poorer people lived upon this fish almost as their only food, they not enjoying a crumb of bread for many weeks. So our Good God, on the shutting up of one door, opened another, in his holy and wise providence, for the relief of the poor." NOTES TO ITER I. NOTE I. Paae i. In my statement of the latitude and longitude of Shetland, I have been in some degree guided by the remarks of Mr Arrowsmith, in his Memoir relative to the construc- tion of the Maj) of Shetland, by the longitude of Eressay Island which is given in Captain Ross's voyage to Baffin's Bay, and by the latitude and longitude of Balta Sound, which were accurately determined when observations were made in Shetland on the Seconds Pendulum. But it is probable that a proper chart of the country, sanctioned by Gover- ment, will be soon published, when the errors which have been frequently made in determining its situation will be rectified. NOTE II. Page 4. Fair-Isle. This is the only isle of Shetland, which, from its little communication with the rest of * " In the course of the last year, when scarcity prevailed in Shetland to a most distressful degree, till partly relieved by the bounty of Government, these Piltocks, or coalfish, formed the principal food of the poorer inhabitants. Even in September 1804, when, in some of the meanest cottages, I inquired what they had generally for breakfast '! They answered, 'Piltocks.' What for dinner'.' ' Piltocks and cabbage.' What for supper? ' Piltocks.' Some of them declared they had not tasted bread for ii\ c month*." Neill's " 'lour through Orkney ami Slictlami," p. 92. V y 28 NOTES TO ITER I. the group, and from its remoteness, I had no opportunity of visiting. In order, therefore, to complete my account of Shetland, I must be indebted for information regarding Fair- Isle to the testimony of other visitors. Fair-Isle, which is about twenty-five miles S.SW. of Dunrossness, has been stated to be about two miles in length, and about three quarters in breadth. A very intelligent naturalist, Dr Fleming, who visited this island in the year 1808, found that it consisted chiefly of sandstone. He remarked that " in a mineral precipice of this rock, upwards of 300 feet in height to the northward of Naversgill, and directly exposed to the westward ocean, is^a vein of copper. It intersects the strata in a perpendicular direction, and its line of bearing is nearly from north to south. Both sides of the vein seem to be composed of greenstone. Between these layers of greenstone, and in the middle of the vein, there is a stratum of soft decomposed rock, containing much clay, and fragments of compact heavy- spar. The principal ore is the copper-glance, or vitreous copper-ore. There is also a small quantity of copper-green, and malachite disseminated through the copper-glance. The vein of ore appeared to be only about six inches in breadth." Dr Fleming again observes, that since copper-glance is known to afford from 60 to 80 per cent, of metal, it is an object of considerable importance to ascertain the true size and extent of this vein.* The following account of Fair-Isle, is an abstract from a MS. Journal, in my possession, of a Mr James Robertson, (I believe of Edinburgh,) who, about the year 1770, visited this place. " Fair-Isle rises in three high lands, known by the following names : The Coasthill to the north-west, Sheepcraig to the south-east, and Setterness to the north-east. The whole island is naturally fenced with perpendicular rocks, except on the north-east end, where there are two bays, where boats can conveniently land ; the one on the north side, being a tolerable harbour for vessels not exceeding 60 tons. It is, however, to be observed, that two or three only can lie here with safety. The anchoring ground is in the inside of a small rock called the Stack, which lies nearly in the middle of the entry. Ships always go in and out by the west side of that rock ; and if it chance to blow hard from the north, which leads straight into the harbour, it will be proper to make fast a rope to a stake, and ride under its lee. The number of inhabitants is about 170. The men are employed in catching fish, which they salt and sell to their landlord. The women knit stockings and gloves, or spin lint and woollen yarn. The natives speak the English language with the Norse accent. Their food is mostly milk, fish, wild-fowl and wild-fowl eggs, which they tak^ from among the precipices, by climbing, or going down the rocks by the assistance of a rope." In the next place, Mr Sherriff, who, in his survey of Shetland in the year 1808, visited Fair-Isle in company with Dr Fleming, remarks, that the arable land is situated on the south-east side, and is of moderate fertility. There is a good deal of meadow, tolerably pro- ductive of herbage. The high grounds are in general grassy, and yield tolerable pasture for the sheep and little horses. The latter are kept solely for carrying home peat, which is dug in a vale towards the north end of the island. The inhabitants depend much upon fishing, and catch annually about 30,000 cod and coal fish, with a few ling and tusk.f Biand, in 1701, found about ten or twelve families in the island, but he observed, that the small-pox had swept away two-thirds of the inhabitants.! In Sir Robert Sibbald's time, the inhabitants were noted for their baldness, induced no doubt by Tinea capitis. It was a common expression when speaking of these islanders, to say, That there was not a hair between them and heaven. § In 1700, Fair-Isle was united to the parish of Dunrossness, the minister of which re- mained with them annually for six weeks. There was also a little church, with a person appointed every Sabbath-day to read the Scriptures ; and it was said to be regularly and orderly attended. " And it is worth the marking," adds Sir Robert Sibbald, " that fornica- * Dr Fleming's Report in Sherriff's Agricultural Survey of Shetland, p. 128. t SherrifFs Agricultural Survey of Shetland, p. 7. X Brand's Brief Description of Orkney and Zetland ; Edinburgh, 1 701. § Sir Robert Sibbald's Description of Zetland, fol. p. 25. NOTES TO ITER I. 29 tion, and other such escapes, (frequent in other places), are very rare here." But, more lately, the Islands of Foula, Fair-Isle, and Skerries, were united in a separate ministry under one clergyman. From the remoteness of these places from each other, this was found an inconvenient arrangement. Fair-Isle was therefore again attached to Dunrossness. Divine service is now performed by a schoolmaster, and the island is visited by the minister annu- ally for a week only. It may be lastly observed, that Fair-Isle is celebrated for the immense number of the feathered tribe, which abound on its rocks. Mr Bullock of London visited this island a few years ago, and added some rare specimens of birds to his museum. In Brand's time, a.d. 1700, Fair-Isle was noted for hawks, affirmed to be the best in Britain. These feathered marauders were said to have visited Orkney and Shetland for their prey, carrying away from the former place moor-fowls, and flying with them over forty or fifty miles of sea, to bring them to their nests. NOTE III. Page 8. Traditionary Narrative of the Duke de Medina's Shipwreck, Commander of the Spanish Armada, a.d. 1588. The Duke de Medina, who figures away so admirably in the Shetland tradition, is described after the following manner by Strada, the Jesuit : " Igitur Alphonsum Peresium Ousmanum, Medinse Sidoniae Ducem, militias quidem haud ita peritum sed clarum genere divitiisque per Hispaniae regna praepollentem, pro Sanctacrucio rex substituit, classe non aspernante, ferreo Duci aureum suffectum : quod et primarii milites ampliorem sui usum a. novo inexpertoque imperatore sibi promitterent : et reliqui pecuniosum Ducem tanquam obsidem acciperent stipendii non defuturi." It is proper also to state, that on examining Strada's account of the disaster of the Spanish Armada, I had, at first view, conceived that the narrative of the Jesuit was fatal to the authenticity of the Shetland tradition ; since he mentions, that after the tempest of the Scottish Seas, the Duke was driven to St Andero in Spain. These are the historian's words : '' Medinae Sidoniae Dux ad Sanctandreanum veteris Castellae portum appulsus cum paucis navibus, iisque sauciis mutilatisque et velut in magno naufragio collectis male cohaerentibus tabulis, ut erat animo aeger pariter et corpore, domum permiss.u regis, cura- tionis causa concessit."* An attentive examination, however, of this passage may shew, that nothing more might have been meant, than that St Andero was a mere rendezvous, for the purpose of collecting together the dispersed remains of the Armada. To this port, therefore, the Duke, on being landed at Dunkirk, might have immediately speeded, where the purpose for which he chose this station would have justified Strada's general narrative. Besides, it was not the historian's object to inquire into personal adventures, but into general historical events. On this account, we are not entitled to expect, that the Duke's particular hardships at Fair-Isle would appear in a summary view of the Wars of the Nether- lands. The tradition of Shetland, besides being so current at the present day as to have afforded me much of the matter which I have related, was collected by Sir Robert Sibbald a century ago, from the written communication of Mr Umphrey, a descendant of the worthy Shetlander who landed the Duke de Medina at Dunkirk. Brand, in 1701, received the tradition " from an old gentlewoman," as it was communicated to her when a child, by the country people who saw the Duke. In page 5 some explanation may be perhaps required, for attributing to Queen Elizabeth an expression usually ascribed to king James of Scotland. Oldmixon, for instance, remarks. " That the Scots nation were very sensible that the danger which threatened England concerned them very nearly ; and that, as King James said himself, if the Spanish * Famiani Stradae Romani, e Soc, Jes. de Bello Belgico ; Dec. Sec. Ed 1648, p. 559. 30 NOTES TO ITER I. enterprise succeeded, he could only hope for the fate Polyphemes menaced Ulysses with, to be the last devoured." Strado, however, in his usual eloquent style, gives a different account of the matter. " Non cessabat ilia [Elizabetha] Uteris, legationibusque placare juvenem regem [Jacobum], et communione periculi in partes attrahere, subinde admonens, caveret sibi a consiliis Hispanorum, quibus decretum esset, post devictam Angliam, con- tinenti opera Scotiam subjugare, nee majus ab Hispano beneficium Scoto expectandum, quam quod Ulyssi promississe dicitur Polyphemus, nempe ut casteris devoratis, ultimus ipse deglutiretur." — But if James was reluctant in embarking in the Protestant cause, it was evident that such lukewarm sentiments prevailed nowhere in Scotland but in Holyrood- House. "The rumour of the great Spanish Armada," says an old author, '' being blazed abroad, frequent were the prayers of the godly in Scotland, powerful and piercing were the sermons of preachers," &c. The Spaniards who were cast away upon the Scottish coasts, are also said, in the spirit of the times, to " have begged from door to door, proclaiming aloud the glory of God's justice and power." NOTE IV. p. 13. Roman Antiquities found at Dunrossness. Mr Ross, (late of Lerwick,) was at considerable pains to collect all the remains of antiquity which fell in his way, that were found in Shetland. In his possession I have seen, among other coins, a copper medal, bearing the inscription of Ser. Galba Imp. Cass. Aug. ; another of Vespasian, and a silver coin of Trajan. Mr Pennant, in his Arctic Zoology, has stated, on the authority of the late Reverend George Low, that a medal of Vespasian had been formerly found at Dunrossness. I possess a note to the same effect in Mr Low's handwriting. "In Dunrossness parish was some time ago found a copper medal of Ves- pasian, the reverse Judaea Victa. It was turned up in plowing the ground." In the Plate of Antiquities given in the Appendix, marked Fig. 2, a copper medal found in Shetland, bears on one side the name of L. /Elius Csesar, and on the reverse " Pannonias Curia A E L ;" in which /Elius is figured as receiving from a native of Pannonia a cornucopias and a household-god. Below are the letters S. C. (senatus consulto.) /Elius was the Roman whom Adrian in his old age adopted as his successor, being better known by the name which he bore prior to his elevation, — that of L. Aurelius Verus. He was created Prastor, and sent to govern the provine of Pannonia, in which employment he acquitted himself with a reputation. He was sprung from a noble family, was well versed in most branches of learning, particularly in poetry, and is described as preserving a digni- fied manner amidst habits of extreme dissipation. His constitution was weak and infirm, and he did not live to attain the high dignity which was intended him as Adrian's successor. See Univ. His., vol. xv., p. 174 to 176. NOTE V. p. 19. Remarks ox the Dark Period of the History of Shetland. I have stated that it is impossible to investigate the earliest annals of Shetland to the exclusion of those of Orkney. In giving a concise view of what is recorded on the subject, I have avoided much of the apocryphal matter which has been collected on the occasion by Torfseus. Any antiquary who may possess a relish for the occupation of sifting truth from falsehood, will find abundant materials for his purpose in Buchanan's Account of King Belus of Orkney, in the information of Bede and Boethius that Claudius carried to Rome King Gaius of Orkney for the purpose of gracing his triumph, or in Geoffry of Monmouth's assertion that King Gunfasius of the Orkneys paid a tribute to King Arthur. The same antiquary may also, like the learned Whittaker in his History of Giant Tarquin of ADDITION TO ITER I. 3 1 Manchester, plunge at once into the regions of pure romance, where, in " La Morte d' Arthur," printed by Caxton, he will find " how Lot, Kynge of Lowthean and of Orkney wedded the sister of Kyng Arthur ; — how Pellinore smote hym a grete stroke thorow the helme and hede unto the browes, and then all the hooste of Orkney fled for the deth of Kynge Lot, and there were slayn many moders sones." On the subject of the dark period of the history of Shetland and Orkney, I have only to add, that the account of Claudius having, a.d. 43, added Orkney to his government, rests on the authority of Eutropius (lib. 7.) The statement is not corroborated by the testimony of other Roman authors, although it implies the common belief, that about the Christian Era Orkney was inhabited. The narrative of Eutropius is indeed directly opposed to the assertion of Tacitus, who affirms that the Orcades were unknown to the Romans until the visit of Agricola. — See Tacitus, in Vit. Agric. c. 10. ADDITION TO ITER I. Sillocks. — I neglected to state in page 27 that the livers of the sillocks are converted to an important use ; being collected in a tub, they are boiled for oil, while the overplus is sold. " Thus," says a female writer of Thule (Miss Campbell) with much eloquence, " the two articles most required in a climate like that of Shetland, have been abundantly provided by the eternal and ever-wise Governor of the Universe, — these are fire and light. The natives have, for their labour, as much fuel as they can consume. Whatever wants may be in a Zetland hut, there is seldom or never a good fire wanting. The fish which they catch, almost at their doors, supply them with the means of light. The cold and darkness of their long winters are thus mercifully robbed of their terror; and in the mud-walled cottage of the Zetlander, the providence of God is as conspicuous, and as surely felt, as in those favoured lands which flow with milk and honey, and where the sun shines in all its glory." stn M. SOUTH-EAST DISTRICT OF SHETLAND. " And all the Chamber filled was with flyes, Which buzzed all about, and made such sound That they encombered all men's eares and eyes ; Like many swarm es of bees assembled round, After their hives with honny do abound. All those were [Geognostic] fantasies, Devices, dreames, opinions unsound." Whom Alma having shewed to her guestes, Thence brought them to the Second Rowme, whose wals Were painted faire with memorable gestes Of famous wisards, and with picturals Of magistrates, of courts, of tribunals, Of common wealthes, of states, of policy, Of lawes, of judgmentes, and of decretals." Spenser's Fairy Queene, Book ii., Canto 9. UPON first landing on the shores of Shetland, we were induced to consider, as objects of no little interest, the habits of the people with whom we were to mingle, as well as the memorials which serve to elucidate the early history of the country. It was indeed requisite that there should be some relief of this kind from the monotonous labours of the hammer. For it would be the most irksome of avocations to be condemned for a length of time to toil unremittingly among primitive rocks,— to pore incessantly over mineralogical specimens, — or rather, like Shakespeare's dull solemn foresters, to seek for " sermons in stones."* * " And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in Stones." Duke, in " As you like it." l> 34 UDALLERS. [ITKR „. In the examination of the south-east district of Shetland, the objects inviting particular attention, are the Burgh of Mousa, which forms no insignificant monument of the military arts of the Northmen by whom the pile was reared ; the Castle of Scalloway, built by Earl Patrick Stewart, which recalls to mind the period when Hialtland first became a Scottish province ; and the modern town of Lerwick, sufficiently indicative of the commercial spirit that has been imbibed from the kingdom to which Shetland was last annexed. These objects, which, in the route we are taking, arrest the notice of the traveller in a sort of his- torical succession, suggest, at the same time, an inquiry into the causes that have led to the present political state of the country. But this history would be imperfectly understood, without an accurate conception of the state of landed property during the period when Shetland was subject to Norway, and of the changes which Scandinavian tenures under- went, from the introduction into the country of Scottish feudalism. This preliminary infor- mation, therefore, I now propose to give. HISTORY OF THE UDALLERS OF SHETLAND. Norwegian poets relate, that in the 9th century, Harold Harfagre, or the Fair-haired, hearing of the transcendant beauties of the Princess Gida, credited the rumour to its full extent, and, without ever seeing the damsel, commissioned a Lord to make her an offer of his hand. " The name of Harold is not sufficiently renowned," said the ambitious fair one, " never will Gida esteem the noble suitor worthy of her love, until he has reduced all Nor- way under his power." The hero was not disheartened by these severe conditions, but vowed to neglect his fine golden locks until the subjugation was accomplished.* Harold was successful. Most of the petty princes of Norway yielded to him absolute submission : others, less patient of the yoke, sought with their retainers a voluntary exile in Iceland, Feroe, or the islands contiguous to the north of Scotland. Among the remote and steril tracts of Orkney and of Shetland, valiant Norwegians, whose deeds of arms had been so lately sung in their own country, were only solaced by the opportunities of revenge which the earliest breezes of the spring afforded to their piratical barks. Thus did numerous summers attest the devastation and slaughter with which the coasts of Harold were visited. The monarch was at length roused from his contemptuous disregard of these daring hordes, and, having collected a fleet, immediately put to sea. Shetland, Orkney, and the Hebrides, which had ever afforded shelter for the objects of piracy, fell before him. The liberation of the seas being thus accomplished, Harold offered the provinces of Caithness, Orkney, and Shetland, as one earldom, to Ronald, Count of Merca. But this nobleman being more attached to a Norwegian residence, resigned the donation in favour of his * Torfteus, Reruin Oread. Ifist., c. 6. Mallet's North. Antig. (Translation by Percy), vol. i. ITER II.] UDALLERS. 35 brother Sigurd, who was accordingly elected the first Earl of Orkney.* During a period of three centuries from the time of Sigurd, the events immediately connected with Shetland deserve little regard, with the exception of the state of landed property, and the admirable system of civil polity by which a small community of colonists was firmly linked together. In order that the islands and coasts which Harold had subdued, might no longer be a refuge for his foes, it was necessary that they should be peopled by individuals firm in their allegiance to the Crown of Norway ; and in a partition of the vanquished territories among the first colonists, the magnitude of shares would be regulated by military or civil rank.f But in measuring out allotments in proportional shares, it would be necessary to resort to some familiar standard of valuation. The Norwegians in the time of Harold, appear to have scarcely known any other than what was suggested by the coarse woollen attire of the country, named Wadmel. Eight pieces of this description of cloth, each measuring six ells, constituted a mark. J The extent, therefore, of each Shetland site of land bearing the appellation of Mark, was originally determined by this rude standard of comparison ; its exact limits being described by loose stones or shells, under the name of Merk-stones or Meithes, — many of which still remain undisturbed on the brown heaths of the country. The Shetland mark of land presents every variety of magnitude, indicating, at the same time, that allotments of territory were rendered uniform in value, by a much greater extent of surface being given to the delineation of a mark of indifferent land than to soil of a good quality. It was some time after the Norwegian colonization of Shetland, that it became necessary to reduce each measurement of ground into still smaller allotments. But although the division was into eight parts, its correspondence to the similar one of a mark of wad- mel, was not immediately derived from this measurement. A newer standard of comparison had succeeded to the wadmel, formed of a certain weight of some inferior metal. The division, therefore, of a Mark- Weight of this substance into eight Ures§ or ounces, appears to have suggested a name for the same number of portions into which a mark of land began to be resolved. || * Johnson's Antiq. Celto-Seandiae. Torfa;us, Rcrum Oread. Hist., c. 6. t It is certain, from Norwegian Historians, that the largest division of property in the Earldom of Orkney, was originally possessed by the Earls themselves. * " In Iceland and Norway all crimes were rated at a certain number of marks. The mark was divided into eight parts, each of which was equivalent to six ells of such stuff as made their ordinary cloaths. Consequently, a mark was in value equal to forty- eight ells of this cloth. Now, a mark consisted of somewhat more than an ounce of fine silver. A cow commonly cost two marks and a half. See Arngtim. Jon Crymog, lib. i., p. 86." Mallet's Northern Antiq. (Translation by Percy), vol. i., p. 276. It may be observed, that in Shetland, Wadmel continued to be paid in lieu of coin for scat, feu-duties and rent, down to a very late period. In the seventeenth century, however, the name of a mark of wadmel became entirely obsolete, owing to the custom introduced of converting it into money. It was then rated as equivalent to a Zealand Zullen, or to two shillings English. The eighth part of a mark of this coarse cloth then acquired the name of a shilling of Wadmel. But notwithstanding this innova- tion, the eighth part or shilling ever continued to retain its ancient extent of six ells. See GifFord's Description 0/ Zetland, p. 64. — Published in the Biblioth. Topogr. Brit. § An Ure is said to signify a denomination of money, either coined or reckoned by weight. In Iceland, — the Scandinavian colonization of which took place nearly at the same time as Shetland, — the term Auri, from which Ure is said to be derived, is the eighth part of a pound or mark. For the original authorities respecting the word Ure, See Jamieson's Etymological Dictionary. II " An ure is the eighth part of a merk. The dimensions of the merk vary, not only in the different parishes, but in different towns of the same parish." Statist. Account 0/ Scotland, vol. xxi., p. 278. — The division of a mark of land into Ures, appears to have been first introduced into the Earldom in the year 1263. Hacon, King of Norway, in an expedition against the Scots, bad 36 UDALLERS. [ITER „. Such is the simple detail of events, over which an air of mystery has ever unnecessarily hung, relative to the distribution of territory among the early Norwegian possessors of Shetland ; all the leading circumstances attending the partition amounting to no more than this brief statement : — that the standard of valuation to which each divided allotment or mark of land bore reference, was a simple mark of wadmel, consisting of forty-eight ells ; that in limiting the area of equivalent allotments of ground, and in adjusting to this simple standard each various quality of soil, every mark of land throughout Shetland would mani- fest corresponding differences of extent ; also, that in the course of time, each mark of land, whatever might have been its area, was supposed to be divisible into equal portions, named zires, the term being arbitrarily derived from the eighth part of some inferior metal. Before the reign of Harold, Scandinavian lands had been held unfettered by any tax or impost. The hardy Northman, after discovering that a soil could be so improved by labour as to afford to the cultivator a subsistence less precarious than that which depends upon the resources of fishing or hunting, would inclose a piece of ground around the cabin he had erected, to which he would affix some unlimited notions of property. Harold is supposed to have been the first monarch of Norway who oppressed his subjects by levying a tax or skat upon land.* But in whatever mode the tax might have been exacted in Nor- way, it appears, that, in the colony of Shetland, the inclosures designed for cultivation were ever considered as property that was sacred to the free use of the possessor ; these were never violated by the unwelcome intrusion of a collector of scat. Each mark of land bounded by mark-stones or meithes, naturally contained very little soil fit for tillage. It was, therefore, from pastures, and from the produce of the flocks which grazed upon them, that the scat, or contribution for the exigencies of the state of Norway, was originally levied.! The patch of ground which the possessor had inclosed, being rendered exempt from every imposition to which grazing-lands were liable, it is possible that the uncontrolled enjoyment of the soil destined for culture, first suggested to the early colonists of Shetland such a term as odhal or udal, expressive in the northern language of free property or possession ;\ whilst occasion to quarter his men on the inhabitants of Orkney. That they might be billeted with a regularity worthy of modern times, he divided the islands into Eurelands or Ouncelands, each of which was the eighth part of a mark. Torfajus thus describes the fact : " Ipse rex (Hacon) in superioribus aedibus accubuit, insulasque in uncias describi curavit ( Eyrhland habetur, continet au- tern qutelibet tnerca terrcc octo eyrer sue uncias,) satrapis et nobilitati, eorumque turmis, per singulos unciarios agros sustendan- dis." — Torfasus, Rerum Oread. Hist., p. 169. * "When King Harold had suppressed all the petty kings, his power extended itself likewise to the Odels-bonden, (free landholders,) and they were obliged to pay him a tax, which was without doubt the origin of the Odels-skat or tax, which is still imposed upon them, though King Hagen Adalsteen afterwards promised that it should be taken off." Pontopp. Arat. Hist, of Norway, vol. ii., p. 290. t " The Scat was originally the tax or rent paid for pasturing-ground. This scat was ths only land-rent payable to the Crown out of Zetland at first ; but in process of time, some of the arable-land which was at first the pi-operty of the improver, came also to the Crown by forfeitures and donations." — Gifford's Description of Zetland, p. 54. To be in perfect correspondence with the foregoing information, the mark of land ought to have originally included both arable and pasture ground. The following; is the reply to a Query submitted by Mr Shirreff to R . Hunter , Esq. of Lunna — " When merks of lands are spoken of, is it the land within the Hill-dikes only that is meant to be identified, or is the Scattald or hill-grazings included?" — Answer: " In the legitimate sense, in sales and in charters, it is the whole arable and pasture-land, sea-weeds, minerals, &c. unless particular exceptions be made." — Shirreff s Agric. Survey, p. 32., Appendix. X This is the etymology proposed by Scheffer and sanctioned by Pontoppidan. Blackstone, the English Judge, also conceives it to be the best which has been given. " Schefferus autumat ab Adel et Odel, oriundum es.-,e, quod proprietatem omnimodam, scilicet ab odh proprietas, et all totum omne denotavit ;" — (Pontopp. Nonuay, vol. ii., p. 290.) Lastly, With regard to the term, odhal or udal, it has been imagined, that, by a transposition of these syllables, the term allodh would convey the true etymology of allodium or absolute property. See Blackstone's Comment., Ed. 1803, vol. ii., p. 44. ITER II.] UDALLERS. tf to pasture-land which was held by the payment of a tax or scat, the distinctive, appellation was awarded of Scattald.* Thus the Shetland mark of land originally included pasture or scattald, as well as in- closed cultivated ground free from scat, and hence named udal. Accordingly, when a mark of land was transferred by sale or bequest from one individual to another, or was even let to a tenant, the proportion of scattald remaining after the patch of free arable ground had been separated from it, was always clearly expressed.! It is difficult to form an accurate judgment respecting the amount of the scat which was paid by Shetland to the Crown of Norway. When arable ground was inclosed, and subtracted from scattald, becoming by this means udal, or free from the impost of scat, various assessments, for the purpose of equalizing the tax, would be required ; and the population of the country encreasing, land would become more in demand, and conse- quently more valuable. In reference, therefore, to a fixed standard of value, marks of land would be multiplied. At the time when Shetland was separated from the Kingdom of Norway, there are reasons for supposing that the number of marks might be about 13,000 or 14,000, being the same that is recognised at the present dayj", these having been rated for their proportion of the scat due to the King, according to the extent of pasture-ground or scattald which they respectively contained.^ In the days of Harold, the scat was paid in wadmel.|| In a later period an equivalent of butter or oil was accepted. U There is also reason for supposing, that, instead of scattald having been considered as liable to an impost of one or more ells of wadmel, the assessment was made in some rude description of coin, bearing the name of Pennings or Pennies.** The relative value of the penny acknowledged in this - - * This distinction is evidently implied by Mr Gifford of Busta, in his excellent Memoir of Shetland, drawn up eighty years ago, which displays a degree of research that would do credit to the topography of any province. He expressly says, that it was the arable-ground (which he had elsewhere shewn to be not liable to the levy of a scat,) that bore the name of Udal. The follow- ing are his words : " The arable ground being all at first the property of the immediate possessors thereof, went to their success- ors by a verbal title called Udell Succession." (Clifford's Zetland, p. 37.) From this and other passages in Mr Gifford's work, it is apparent that the word udal was merely meant in Shetland to distinguish free arable land from pasture-land, which last was liable to a scat-duty, and was hence named scattald. Thus were the terms scattald and udal-lands originally opposed to each other, however confounded these distinctions might have been in later times, owing to the innovations of a feudal nature that had been introduced into the country, when it became annexed to the Crown of Scotland. t This will be fully illustrated when I have to treat of the law of Udal Succession. J Since the time that Shetland was annexed to the Crown of Scotland, several causes have conspired to prevent the introduc- tion of any innovation in the measurement of the lands of the country ; and the ancient land-marks, as they have existed from time immemorial, are still recognised in all transfers of property. As far as I can collect from the description of the different parishes of Shetland given in Mr Gifford's Description of Shetland, the number of marks are supposed by him to be 12, 611. Mr Hunter of Lunna has recently supposed them to bz about 14,000. — App. to Shirreffs Survey of Shetland, p. 32. § The amount of the tax paid to the Crown of Scotland, before the oppressive government of Earl Robert Stewart, is supposed to have been the same that had previously been exacted by the King of Denmark and Norway. Mr Gifford says, that before the accession of this Earl, "the Crown rent of Zetland was farmed at 500 marks a-year." — Gifford s Zetland, p. 63. I5ut no informa- tion of the Crown's revenues is conveyed from this circumstance. Tacks of Orkney and Shetland were ever enjoyed by court- favourites, who paid for them an annual consideration, much beneath the real amount of the profit which they derived from these islands. || Money was then unknown. In Pinkerton's History of Medals, (vol. ii. p. 35.) may be found the following quotation from Crantz, regarding the ;tate of Scandinavian commerce prior to the nth century. "Ilia vero tempestate nulla erat in terra moneta ; sed rebus res commutantes, vetustissimo more mercabantur." IT Gifford's Zetland, p. 62. ** Four penny, six penny land, &c, originally denoted the proportion of scattald contained within the mark. In elucidation 3§ UDALLERS. riTKR n. country, when compared with silver, appears in the course of time to have varied materially. But whatever encrease of value the coin might have sustained, either by an addition to the weight, or from causes not purely artificial, four of these pennies were ever demanded as the equivalent of an ell of wadmel, the cloth never having been exacted according to the ratio of its quality, but always in a fixed measurable quantity.* The inevitable conse- quence was, that, in course of time, the equivalent of an ell of wadmel for every fourpence charged on a mark of land, was transmitted to the government of Denmark in materials of the very coarsest description.! It may be also observed, that the amount of the scat exacted from each mark was within the limits of four and twelve pennings. Hence the designation of four penny, six penny, eight penny land, &c, recognised in Shetland at the present day, no mark having been rated under four pence, or more than twelve pence. During the period in which Shetland was subject to the crown of Norway, the Grand Foude, or Governor, strictly forbade all commercial intercourse with other nations. The poverty resulting no less from this prohibition than from the disproportionate amount of the tax to which land was subject, ever induced a considerable emigration from these islands.^ Thus oppressed, it is no wonder that Shetland and Orkney should have always yielded an unwilling submission to the Crown of Norway. Pecuniary mulcts were at various times imposed upon the inhabitants for their disobedience ; but these, as they increased the poverty of the country, only served to multiply the causes of irritation. It will now be proper to take a concise view of the relations in which the different ranks of men belonging to the Scandinavian colony stood to each other. Shetland being by nature constituted a province distinct from the other divisions of territory belonging to the Earldom of Orkney, had a separate governor appointed by the King of Denmark, as judge of all civil affairs, the country at the same time acquiring the of the origin of this and other terms of the like nature, Dr Jamieson has brought forward two quotations from Ihre, which at least shew the familiarity of the term among the northern nations. These are, however, more applicable to the division of the lands of Orkney than to those of Shetland, since the latter country, in the retention of many primeval customs, long after they were abolished in ancient Scandinavia, and even in Orkney, has never yet acknowledged such an innovation as a regular land measure- ment. Old meithes or mark -stones are still by the Shetlanders religiously preserved ; and the mark of land is at the present moment as indefinite as ever it was in the days of Harold Harfagre. * The ancient Penning of the northern nations was less than an ocre, and, according to one author, an oere was less than a farthing ; whilst another writer maintains, that a farthing was called halj-oere. The value, therefore, of the penning, must have been small indeed. — (See [amiesoris Ktym. Diet., word merk). But in the course of time, so much had the value of the penny increased, that a groat, or four pennies (the fixed price of an ell of wadmel) was, in the old rentals that were examined by Mr Clifford, rated at the sixth part of a Zealand zullen, or two shillings Sterling. — (Giffords Zetland, p. 61.) It has been before observed, that, in the early annals of Norway, forty-eight ells of wadmel were equal to an ounce of silver. (See Note, p. 178.) Bat in the old rentals of Mr Gifford it appears, that this commodity had so much increased in value, that the same quantity of silver was considered as an equivalent for no more than twelve ells ; so that the Shetlanders, who had been in early times assessed for their scattalds in a definite number of pennies, the equivalent for which was arbitrarily demanded in an unvarying number of ells of wadmel, were by this and other similar oppressions, rendered miserably poor. t Tradition has not been wholly silent with regard to the fabric of the wadmel. "The Shetlanders were wont," says [)r Siblxdd, " to make very coarse cloth, (called wadmiln), the threeds whereof, were as thick as fishers lines, and this they paid to the Danes as a part of their superiour duties ; but now they spin it small enough." — Sibb.ilds Shetland, p. 21. % " The poor Udellers were universally oppressed by the Governor or Fowd, and kept under, being forbidden all sorts of commerce with foreigners, as the subjects of that king are to this day in Fairo and Iceland ; so there was no such thing as money amongst them ; and what they had of the country product, more than paid the Crown rent, they were obliged to bring to the Governor, who gave them for it such necessaries as they could not be without, and at what prices he had a mind, wherewith they were obliged to rest content, having no way to be redressed. Kept under this slavery, they were miserably poor, careless, and indolent, and most of their young men, when grown up, finding the poor living their native country was like to afford them, went abroad and served in foreign countries for their bread, and seldom or never returned ; so that these islands were but thinly in- habited." Gifford's Zetland, p. 37. ITER II.] UDALLERS. 39 name of a Foivdrie* The Fowdrie of Shetland was divided into five, and subsequently into a still greater number, of districts, to each of which was allotted an inferior foude or magistrate. The foude of a district had only the power of deciding in small matters, his office being intended for the preservation of good neighbourhood : he was assisted in the execution of his duty by ten or twelve active officers under the name of Rancilmen, and by a law-rightman, who was entrusted with the regulation of weights and measures. Cases of importance were, at stated periods, tried by the Grand Foude, and at an annual court, at which all udallers were obliged to attend, new legislative measures were enacted ; appeals were heard against the decisions of the subordinate foudes ; and causes involving the life or death of an accused individual, were determined by the voice of the people. The colonists of Shetland never acknowledged any legal civil authority but that with which the Grand Foude or Lawman was arrayed, who was the King of Norway's representa- tive. To the Earl of Orkney was granted the power of a military commander, but that it was never to be exerted in wresting from the udaller the free possession of his national laws, rights and privileges.! When the native force of the country was required for the protection of its own coasts, or when, for the purpose of embarking in some piratical excur- sion to the coasts of Scotland, the Earl unfurled the black banner of the raven, crowds of eager warriors repaired to the signal. That the Scandinavian chief had frequently the power of controlling the legislative decisions of the community, is undeniable ; but this influence was ever considered as illegal. From his greater wealth, he was daily enabled to. spread out a plenteous table, by which means a numerous band of retainers became attached to his household, who knew no other stipend than the liberty of carousing at the banquets of the great hall.J Rendered thus powerful, he was frequently tempted, from unworthy motives of ambition, self interest, or resentment, to commit unjust aggressions on the civil liberty of the community. Christianity was introduced by King Olaus of Norway into the earldom of Orkney in the year 1014, when the colonists became liable to new burdens. In addition to the scat of wadmel obtained from the produce of the flocks which grazed upon the pastures, tithes of wool were required for the Pope.§ The freedom of the soil, which the Shetlander had inclosed for culture, became, for the first time, invaded by the united authority of the bishop and the priest of the parish. These dignitaries divided between them in equal shares the tenth part of the corn that was inclosed within the udal fence. For the purpose of partition, the lands of the parish were assessed with the utmost exactness, and the dominion over the * It is so named in all old charters, as, for instance, in the grant of the Earldom of Orkney, a.d. 1381, to Lord Robert Stewart: " Totas et Integra* terras de Orkney et Shetland ac cum officio vice-comitatus de lie Fowdrie de Shetland," &c. — Memorial against Sir Lawence Dundas, signed Hay Campbell. \ That a responsibility of this nature was attached to the relation in which the Earl stood to the Udallers, is evident from the whole of the History of Torfseus ; and when Lord Sinclair of Scotland received the Earldom of Orkney from the Crown of Den- mark, it formed a leading article in his investiture. t Mallet's North. Antiq., vol. i., p. 303. § The Pope's tenths in Shetland, were, in the year 1328, very considerable, and said to amount to " 22 cwt. of wool less than 16 pounds, according to the standard of Hialtland, being 36 span Hialtland weight of wool." The growth of Shetland wool, as well as of the Pope's power, seem to have diminished about the same period. — For the original authority regarding the Pope's tythes, see the Biblioth. Topogr. Brittann. Dr Edmondston has transcribed the document in his History of Zetland. 4-0 UDALLERS. [ITER 1L tenth part of the produce of the husbandman's labour was reduced, by a demarcation of soil, to equal shares. In ord^.r also to effect with a still greater nicety, a fair allotment of these temporalities, and to obviate the possibility that the partition which fell to one mem- ber of the hierarchy, might not be more lucrative than that which was enjoyed by the other, it was resolved that an annual interchange should take place in the respective shares of the tithe-lands, and that the same ground which belonged in one year to the priest, should be transferred in the following year to the bishop ; hence the term umboth, that was given to the corn-tithes, intended to express, in the northern language, such an alternate possession.* Three districts of Shetland, namely, Tingwall, Whitness, and Weesdale, were formed into an Archdeaconry, the tithes being the exclusive emoluments of the ecclesiastic to whose care it was committed. But besides these compulsory contributions, superstition dictated one burden on the lands that was gratuitous.! A venerable female was introduced into Shetland, recommended by the Bishop as a personage of extraordinary sanctity, that if she slept but one night in a parish, the inhabitants would ever afterwards be blessed with plenti- ful harvests and fisheries. But the orisons of the matron could scaicely be expected with- out some pecuniary acknowledgement. Accordingly, the simple natives were easily induced to allow the holy dame, as an annuity for life, a penny for each mark of land. Notwithstanding all the encroachments of the Church on the free tenure of udal lands, they were prevented from growing into excess, owing to the jealousy with which they were regarded by the Crown of Denmark and Norway. A writer, evidently well versed in Scandi- navian literature, has recently observed, that the hierarchy never became so deeply engrafted in the northern commonwealth as in the other countries of Christendom.! A proof of the mistrust with which the Bishop of Orkney was viewed by the Danish monarch, is to be found among the conditions under which Lord Sinclair of Scotland received his investiture in the earldom. There was a special stipulation, that he should enter into no engagements to the king's prejudice with the Bishop of Orkney, nor should he be a party in any contract with the Church, that was not ratified by the royal consent.^ During the period when Shetland was a Norwegian province, there was no incident of udal tenures more remarkable than the law ascribed to King Olaus, known by the name of Udal Succession, to which the lands of the country were subject. By this law, the arable ground, which, having been separated by inclosure from the scattald, was the free property of the cultivator, went to all the children of the proprietor, male or female, in equal shares. In order to obviate any evasion of this rule of inheritance, no one could dispose of an estate without the public consent of his heirs. Even the property of the Earls of Orkney was often partitioned out in nearly equal shares among descendants. The annals of the country present a copious detail of conflicting interests arising from this cause, together with the civil discords which they occasioned. It appears that the kingdom * See Gifford's Discription of Zetland, p. 64. " Umboth is a Danish word, signifying to change about." t This burthen was originally but a temporary one ; feudal injustice subsequently rendered it permanent. \ See Edin. Review, Article on the Ancient Laws of Scandinavia, No. lxvii. § Torfaeus, Rerum Oread. Hist., p. 175. IIKK IL) UDALLERS. 4 1 of Harold Harfagre was divided in the 9th century among male successors, in nearly equal proportions. Before that part of our narrative be closed which appertains to the early state of udal tenures in Shetland, the inquiry, Whether or not the landed property of this country was ever fettered with any kind of feudal restrictions, cannot be devoid of interest. It is well known, that the feudal system of Europe arose from a migratory people, who, in the course of their continued invasions, could not retain land, and therefore returned it to the use of the vanquished, annexing to the tenure the service of arms. But when the military tribes of Europe chose to settle in the country which they had subdued, the chiefs parcelled out the lands among their favourites or retainers, under the obligation of a warrior's oath of fealty. These original possessors dealt out in like manner their lands in lesser divisions, requiring from sub-feudatories the same allegiance which they themselves had been pledged to give to the liege-lord. Lands were thus made accessory to military subordination. But in Scandi- navia and its colonies, tenures of this nature were unknown. On the soil of the Northman, " Feudality," as a writer has elegantly remarked, " never expanded beyond the germ."* When soldiers were required to be raised, a popular convocation was held, and the levy was made by fixing the number of men which each village or town could conveniently furnish, f Accordingly, when one of the Earls of Orkney, by impressing soldiers and forcibly carrying them off, had assumed an illegal authority, a meeting of the Udallers was held, and a re- monstrance, though ineffectual at the time, was pronounced against the unjust proceeding. | Abundant proofs may, indeed, be adduced, that the Earls of Orkney never possessed the uncontrolled power of a feudal lord over the personal services of the community. When Harold Harfagre was indignant at Einar Earl of Orkney and his adherents for the slaughter of his son, he imposed upon the country a fine of sixty marks of gold. The Chief furnished the sum from his own coffers, and in security for that part of the amount which was the pro- portion due from the Udallers, received in pledge all the lands of the country. But history sanctions not the supposition, that the Earl was enabled to convert the alienated property into feudal tenures ; for in a later period, when Earl Sigurd, a descendant of Einar, was desirous to levy troops, in order to ward off a Scottish invasion, he was compelled, before the natives would take up arms in his defence, to offer a free restoration of the impignorated lands. § This historical event sufficiently proves, that the soil for which the udaller fought was discharged of all personal obligations incidental to feudal tenures. In short, the Earl stood in no other relation to the people, than that of a military chief, who was responsible at the same time to the king, that his influence should be exerted in such a manner as was calculated to preserve to the country its accustomed rights and privileges. At length it has been shewn, that the lands enjoyed by the udaller originally owed nothing but a contribution to the commonwealth, exigible from the produce of the flocks * Edin. Review, No. Ixvii., p. 177. t Mallet's North. Antiq., vol. i., p. 234. • t Torfeus, Rerum Oread. Hist., p. 47. § Torfasus, Rerum Oread. Hist., c. 7. & 10. Johnson's Antiq. Celto-Scandicae, p. 11. 42 UDALLERS. [ITER If. that grazed on the wild and uninclosed pastures of the country ; that the soil destined for culture, was for a long time sacred to the free use of the encloser, — the udal fence being first broken by the bold hands of the tither, delegated with irresistible power from the Pope, the Bishop, or the Vicar. The causes may now be investigated which led to the annexation of the earldom of Orkney to the Crown of Scotland, and eventually to such a change in the state of udal property, that it became in the course of time almost completely feudalised. In the fourteenth century,* there was a failure of the male line of the Earls of Orkney, when Henry Sinclair of Scotland, who, from an alliance by marriage, had the best right to the earldom, received an investiture of it from the King of Denmark, on conditions that left undisturbed the ancient laws of the Scandinavian colony, and preserved entire the alle- giance due to the mother country.! The earldom of Orkney for a century afterwards con- tinued in the hands of the Sinclairs, when certain events took place, by which it devolved as an appendage to the Scottish Crown. The Crown of Denmark and Norway had endeavoured to enforce with threats the annual payment of ioo marks, which Scotland had agreed to give for the cession of the Western Isles. The penalties accruing from the non-fulfilment of the contract, had at the same time amounted to a sum little less than ten millions Sterling. A long controversy ensued, the result of which was, that the claim might be conveniently cancelled, by a mar- riage between the Scottish monarch and the Princess of Denmark. The alliance took place when Orkney and Shetland were pledged to James III. for 58,000 florins, as part of the maiden's dower : — -a leading condition of the treaty being, that the natives of the Islands should retain their ancient laws and customs. The right of redemption has not since been resigned by the Crown of Denmark. The historians of Scotland maintain, that the King of Denmark waved his claim to Orkney and Shetland, in joy for the birth of a grandson, the deed of gift being subsequently confirmed by the monarch's successor. The Danes, however, shew that the right of redemption was never surrendered, being formally urged at several distinct periods, the last of which was no longer ago than the year 1667 ;$ but it is often an unsatisfactory labour to reconcile the diplomatic contracts and secret understandings of high-contracting parties. A few years after the impignoration of Orkney and Shetland, Lord Sinclair bartered to James III. his whole right and title to the earldom, in exchange for the castle and lands of Ravenscraig in Scotland ; when the first proceeding of the king was, by a formal statute, to annex these islands to the Crown. We now enter upon the Scottish period of the history of udal tenures. From the year 1470 to 1530, the estate and revenues of the earldom of Orkney, that had devolved by ex- change to the Crown, were let out to lease : the civil government was committed to lieu- tenants and viceroys ; and to the Archbishop of St Andrew's was assigned the jurisdiction of the church. The estates were now possessed by the King of Scotland, the hierarchy, and the udallers, when, for the first time, feudal tenures became known to the islands. 4 * A.!). 1379. t Torfa;us, Rerum Oread. Hist., p. 176. X See Sir Thomas Craig, on the one hand, who advocates the Scottish right ; and, on the other hand, Torfanis ITER II.] UDALLERS. 43 The feudal system of Scotland was not introduced into the Earldom of Orkney, until it had made a considerable progress towards a civil establishment. Feudatories had formed attachments to particular sites of ground ; — lands were not recalled at the mere caprice' of the superior ; they were granted for a term of years, — they were even extended to the life of the possessor, — or they were retained by hereditary succession in particular families. When the King of Scotland, in consequence of his marriage with the Princess of Denmark, had acquired the dominion over Shetland and Orkney, becoming also by dint of a subsequent treaty with Earl Sinclair, the sole disposer of the estate and revenues of the earldom, his first care was to annex the property he had acquired to the Crown, not to be given away except to a lawful male descendant of the royal stock. The next object of the Crown was to derive from the property a pecuniary revenue, and to obtain a rent in money or kind, upon terms as little revolting as possible to the prejudices of a people unacquainted with any possessions that entailed upon the inheritors military or servile obligations. In the earliest tenures, therefore, of the crown-lands that were granted to the natives of Shetland, the asperities of feudality were so softened down as to be scarcely perceptible. Leases of the king's property were granted in small divisions for a term of three years ; and when the tenant entered into the possession of the soil for which he had stipulated, a sum for entry of 24s Scots, equal to 2s of English money, was required for each mark of land ; the payment being ren- dered in butter and wadmel. This duty to the king was named a Grassum, being a term of Danish or Anglo-Saxon derivation, importing a compensation*. In addition to this fee for entry, an annual tribute or rent was paid, known by the name of Land-mail f; but in each year where the soil was not under tillage, the acknowledgment of land-mail was altogether remitted. In order, also, to insure to the tenants of the Crown a perfect freedom of settle- ment, triennial leases were renewed for an indefinite period, without any variation in the amount of the grassum ; or, on the terms of a feu, the possessor enjoyed the lands which he held from the King free from grassum, whilst the conditions of his tenure were rendered the subject of bequest to his most distant posterity. In this attempt to assimilate the tenures of the crown-lands to the unshackled nature of allodial possessions, an unsparing sacrifice was made of all the slavish fetters of a strict seigniory; yet a shadowy form of feudality still remained, which was not overlooked by the keen glance of the suspicious udaller. He still perceived that there was the retention of a feudal principle, which re- garded rent in money or kind as nothing more than the substitute for personal service ; and consequently, that crown-lands, on the death of a tenant, naturally reverted into the hands of a superior. For in no other light than as the acknowlegement for possession due to a feudal grant, could he explain in connection with the annual compensation of land-mail, the new investiture required before the son could inherit the soil of his fathers. From this * See Dr Jamieson's Etymological Dictionary. • The word Oersome (whence Grassum) is supposed to be from the Danish dorsum, and A.S. Gaersuma. The Norwegian word Gersemar, simply denotes treasures. In the course of time, the tenants did not be;ome very exact in these triennial payments. Accordingly, the grassum became converted into an annual duty, a third of which, or 8d Sterling, was exacted each year. Under this form it appears in the Shetland rentals of the present day.— See Giffonfs Zetland, p. 64. t A.S. male; Isl. mala, tributum, vectigal.— See Jamieson'i ■ Etym. Diet. 44 UDALLERS. [ITER II. period, therefore, the udallers began to distinguish themselves by the name of Rothmen or Roythmen, the import of which term has been most emphatically explained by one of their descendants : "The heritage of the udalman," boasts this Orcadian, "is so entirely his own, that neither homage, nor rent, nor service, is due for it. And the reason is, he owns no seigneural superior, but holds de Deo et sole, — of God and heaven only. For this reason, the udalmen were likewise called Rothmen or Roythmen ; that is, self-holders, or men hold- ing in their own right, by way of contradistinction to feudatories, who hold derivatively, or by a dependance on others. And hence their udals, at this day, are not transmitted like other lands, but with the Roth always, or Royth, and the Roet, Aynim and Saymin ; that is, with the very or sole right and dominion, the very or compleat propriety and demesne of the subject."* We now find, that in the earliest period, when the Norwegian colonies of Orkney and Shetland were pledged to the Scottish Government, three descriptions of tenants occupied the lands of the latter country. Of the first were the udallers, naming themselves Rothmen, whose enclosures destined for culture were free from civil imposts, no authoritative intruder having yet entered them, save the haughty churchman. For their pastures or scathold, they paid to the Scottish Government a scat or tribute. The second description of landed possessors, consisted of triennial tenants, who, for their inheritance, paid scat, church-dues, annual land-mails, and, along with these, a contribution on entry. Of the third were the feuars, in whose favour the grassum was remitted. A number of wealthy Scottish natives were now induced to settle among the udallers, from whom they found no difficulty in purchasing lands. For, although udal possession was secured to families, by sales being rendered illegal that did not obtain the consent of heirs, and although the power of redeeming paternal lands was allowed to descendants even to the second and third generation, yet, from political causes, the poverty of the inhabitants was often irretrievable, so as to preclude for ever the chance of udal redemption. The first endeavour of these strangers was to set aside the old law of descent, ascribed to St Olaus, by which an estate was divided among all the children of the possessor, male or female, in equal shares, the house of the parent excepted, which was added to the share of the young- est. Since it was indispensable, by Virtue of the national treaty subsisting between Denmark and Scotland, that the laws of the country should be purely Scandinavian, the Scottish settlers were enabled, whenever they chose, to supersede the old law of udal succession, in favour of another, derived from Norway, and probably of a more recent date. The newer rule of inheritance was less revolting to Scottish feudality, since it afforded the means of perpetuating family wealth and power, by concentrating them in one individual. It as- signed the principal mansion and estate of the parent to an elder son ; whilst to the youngest children equivalents from other estates were given. As for the portion of the poor neglected daughter, it was peremptorily ordained, that she should have her lot in the most remote and uncontiguous lands. If equivalents for the younger children could not be thus furnished, lesser shares were awarded either from soil, from moveables, or from some yearly * General Grievances, &c, of Orkney and Shetland (by Mr James Fea), p. 105. ITER II.l UDALLERS. 45 income, secured on the estates of the chief heir. Such was the later precept of succession that was introduced among the udallers : it was enforced by the Scottish settler; but among the Scandinavian natives never became general.* In the year 1530, King James V. was induced to make an hereditary grant of the estate of the Crown in Orkney and Shetland to his natural brother James, Earl of Moray. When the islanders saw that a feudal superior was intended to be interposed between them and the sovereign, they were alarmed that the ancient laws of the country were about to suffer a corresponding change. Headed by Sir James Sinclair, the Governor of Orkney, they arose in arms, to resist the arbitrary innovation. The Earl of Caithness, and his kinsman Lord Sinclair, were sent out against them : the udallers met their opponents on the confines of Stennis, and, in a sanguinary engagement, defeated them with great slaughter. The Earl of Caithness, and 500 of his followers, were slain ; the rest were taken prisoners. When the King heard of the result of the contest, so far from taking vengeance on the udallers, he appeared, in his subsequent conduct, to be sensible of the justice of their cause, and that they had only resisted the intended dominion of a mesne lord, and the undue attempt to transfer them from the hands of the Sovereign of Scotland, to whose immediate protection they had been committed by their former king. Accordingly, the promoters of the insurrec- tion were pardoned ; the Governor of Orkney was not only restored to the royal favour, but he also received various gifts and honours ; and at length a complete reconciliation took place between the King and the udallers. f It appears that the Sovereigns of Scotland, as well as the Bishops, granted various feus of their lands ; and since the tenants of the King were, by the Scottish law, subject to taxation, they had opportunities, which it is probable they did not at first embrace, of being represented in Parliament. Kirkwall in Orkney was also erected into a Royal Burgh. J We now arrive at the period when a new and great change was beginning to take place in the state of the landed property of Orkney and Shetland. In the. year 1565, Queen Mary made an hereditary grant of the Crown's patrimony in these islands-, and of the superiority over the free tenants, to her natural brother Lord Robert Stewart, the Abbot of Holyrood, in consideration of an annual payment of ^2006 : 13 : 4 Scots. The Reformed Religion had then been introduced into the islands, and a Scottish act of Parliament had passed, declaring that the third of all Popish benefices should be set apart for the support of parochial ministers, who had been always ill remunerated for their duties. Lord Robert, therefore, was entrusted with the controul over the churches of the bishopric.§ But it does * The authorities regarding the old laws of inheritance, will be given on another occasion. t The cause of this insurrection is narrated by some writers in very mysterious terms. I am indebted for the present explana- tion of the fray, 10 the very learned Memorial against Sir Laurence Dundas, in 1776, signed Hay Campbell, (afterwards Lord Pre- sident of the Court of Session.) t When Orkney and Shetland were under the immediate government of the King, the estates and revenues of the Crown were farmed out for the following sums, viz., From a.d. 1478 to 1502, for ,£486 13s 4d Scots ; from a.d. 1502 to A.D. 1540, for .£433 6s 8d ; and in 1541, the duties of the King's rental were let for ,£2000 Scots, with the rights of Admiralty in addition. — See Shirreff's Agric. Survey of Orkney, Aj>p. p. 29. § The words of the grant are ; " Omnes et singulas terras de Orkney et Zetland, cum tota superioritate libere tenentium, advocatione, donatione ecclesiarum, ac cum officio vicecomitatusde Orkney, et vicecomitatus de lie Foudrie de Zetland tenen., reddendo inde annuatim summam 3010 mercarum." — See Memorial for Dundas, A.D., 1776, p. 7. 46 U DALLE RS. [ITKR II. not appear that this division of ecclesiastical power met with the cordial approbation of the Bishop of Orkney. We may now consider the exact relation in which the Scottish Government stood to Denmark at this period, with regard to the possession of these islands. It must be kept in view, that, by virtue of the national treaty betwixt these two kingdoms, the ancient laws of Norway, by which udal lands were then held, were to remain undisturbed.* But when King James III. by a subsequent treaty with Lord Sinclair, had acquired the landed pro- perty of this nobleman, he assumed the prerogative of creating, on the new estates of the Crown, a number of immediate vassals, who should hold their lands according to the usage of Scotland. On this occasion, the law of udal succession was waved in favour of the Scottish conditions of primogeniture! ; and since Kirkwall was erected into a Royal Burgh, by which means an opportunity was afforded of sending representatives to the Scottish Parliament, an indirect declaration was intended to be made, that the Crown-vassals cf Orkney and Shetland were in every respect to be considered as holding their lands agree- ably to the tenor of Scottish laws. These proceedings were in evident contradiction to the general terms of the national treaty with Denmark, by which no new conditions of landed tenure could be introduced into the Norwegian colony, that were in opposition to its ancient statutes. But the Danish Government having been precluded by its poverty fiom doing more than declaring the right of redeeming the islands as the pledge of a royal marriage- dower,! it was perfectly useless to insist upon the subordinate points of a treaty, the essen- tial article of which could not be enforced. For, on the supposition that the redemption by Denmark had been successfully urged, Scotland must either have abandoned her right of considering the Crown-tenants of Orkney and Shetland as maintained in their possessions exclusively by Scottish laws, or the country would have reverted into the hands of Denmark, with the strange anomaly presented, of a population composed in part of Scottish and of Danish subjects. But it is sufficiently evident, that a resignation of the sovereignty of these islands was very remote from the contemplation of the power into whose hands they had fallen. The sentiments of Scotland on this point became gradually unfolded ; and when, in the year 1567, Queen Mary, with her usual caprice, chose to revoke the grant which she had made to her natural brother of the Crown-estates of Orkney and Shetland, in order to erect them into a Scottish dukedom for the use of the Earl of Bothwell, it was impossible any longer to doubt, that the ultimate intentions of the Scottish Government were unfavour- able to Denmark's just claim of redemption. The atlainture of the Earl of Bothwell having occurred soon after the grant, Lord Robert appears to have been immediately afterwards reinstated in the enjoyment of the * " De lu.ptiis facile cum Dano transactum omni jure, quod in omnes circa Scotiam insulas, majores ejus sibi arrogarant, dotis nomine remisso ; tantum ut privatis agrorum possessoribus caveretur, ut agros, quos ibi haberent uti ante possederant, ita tener- ent. '— Buchanan, Hist., &c. See also Torfa:us, Rerum Oread. His., p. 195, 196. t Anno 1566, King Henry and Queen Mary grant an estate in the Orkneys to Gilbert Kalfonr of Westra, and his heirs-male, " Sic quod omni tempore afifuturo, unicus ha;res masculus successor post alium quamdiu vixerit, possideat et gaudeat hasce terras, secundum consuetudinem Scotiae, non obstantibus legibus patria; Orcaden. eandem gavisionem sen possessionem recusantibu-..' See Fea's Grievances, &c, of Orkney and Shetland, p. 5, where two other illustrations of similar grants appear of the date of JS87 and 1 59 1. J See Torfams, Rerum Oread. Hist., c. 3. ITER II.] UDALLERS. 47 Crown-lands of the revoked dukedom. His first object was to obviate the necessity of par- ticipating with anyone in the dominion over the islands of which he was about to take possession ; for this purpose he effected an exchange of his Abbey of Holyrood for the tem- poral estates of the bishopric of Orkney. The Church of Scotland was then under a Presbyterian form of Government. Lord Robert, therefore, left to a Superintendant the spiritual concerns with which he was entrusted, being himself content with the immense temporal influence which the estates of the Crown and of the bishopric gave him, when subsisting under one undivided feu. The free tenants of the Crown were now intended to be under the sway of a mesne lord, from whom they were to receive investitures. The superiority over them was distinct- ly expressed in the royal grant ; but that such a design was illegal, there can be no doubt ; for it is properly argued, " that no act of the Crown could, in law, be effectual to raise up an immediate superiority, which had no existence prior to the grant; that the issues and profits of the dominium directum might indeed be assigned, but that the right itself must remain with the Crown, as incapable of alienation, — it not being in the power of any superior to place an intermediate person over the vassal without his consent."* Lord Robert, however, found no difficulty in assuming the superiority over the free tenants, which was awarded by the Crown ; and, by issuing out at the same time new investitures of the crown-lands, he materially increased his revenue. But the chief design of this tyrant was, to wrest, by oppression and forfeitures, the udal lands from the hands of their possessors ; to retain the poor natives who might be forced out of their tenements as vassals on his estates, and to entail upon them the feudal miseries of villein-service. This he was enabled to accomplish, by establishing a military government throughout the islands, which was intended to impede all avenues to judicial redress. The complaint, drawn up by a Lowland inditer, which eventually reached the ear of the Scottish Government, was, that the udallers were " heavily troublit, hereit [robbed] and oppressit be companies of suddartis [soldiers], and others, broken men [vagabonds], now remaining in the countries, dependars upon Lord Robert Stewart. They are so halden under thraldom and tyranny, that they can have na passage, neither be sea nor land, to repair to thir partis, to complain heirupon, and sute redress and remeid be the course of justice, nor yet to do others their lefull errandis and business. — The ferris and all other common passages are stoppit be the suddartis [soldiers] and others, bearand charge of Lord Robert, quhairthrow the countries and inhabitants thairof is able to be all utterly wrakit and hereit for ever."f After having established a military force of this kind, Lord Robert, by the good aid of his '' suddartis and others, broken men," found it to be a labour of little difficulty to rule in all matters, civil and ecclesiastic. To remove every source of information that might benefit the ends of strict justice, he stormed the charter-chest of the good town of Kirkwall, and did " away put, cancel, burn, and destroy, all the said town's papers and evidents." He received his rents in produce : and the weight named a matk, very conveniently multiplied * Memorial against Sir Laurence Dundas, A.n. 1776, p. 17. + Petition to the Privy Council of Scotland, dated January 31, 1575, quoted in Fea's Grievances, &c, of the Isles of Orkney and Shetland, p. 35. 48 UDALLERS. [ITER II. under his hands from 8 to 10 ounces; whilst the lispund increased from 12 lb. to 15 lb. He learned that the compliment of an ox and twelve sheep from every parish had a few years before been granted to the Earl of Bothwell, in his visit to Shetland. Surely, then, as he marvelled, there could be no very sound reason why this handsome token of respect should not be continued for the support of himself, his suddartis and broken men. It was therefore easily converted into a perpetual tribute under the name of ox and sheep silver. This ruler, aided by his " broken men," was perfectly convinced of the salutary effects to be derived from the Reformed religion, and therefore introduced, with few preliminary argu- ments on the occasion, what he called the Presbyterian form. But, that the natives might not altogether forget their old Catholic attachments, he revived an ancient annuity, that had been paid to a holy matron for the benefit of her prayers, and inserting it into his rental con- verted it into a perpetual oblation to her manes. Yet the most illegal of all these oppres- sions was to increase the amount of the scat or tax which was levied from pasture lands or scatholds. This measure was in open defiance of the promise of Norway, with which the islanders had been lulled, that when their country was pledged Jlo Scotland, there should be no alteration of the terms under which their lands had been enjoyed. It is now time to inquire into the more immediate object which Lord Robert appears to have had in view, by the extraordinary pains which he took in desolating the country placed under his rule. By the latest law of udal succession derived from Norway, lands could not be alienated from their possessors, without the consent of the udal-born, or nearest of kin, who had long afterwards the power of redeeming an inheritance at the price for which it had been plighted ; neither could lands be sold, but on proof successfully ad- vanced in the Foude's court of extreme poverty. It had been, therefore, the flagitious policy of Lord Robert to create such an universal distress throughout the islands, that, by overwhelming the udallers in one common state of ruin, the poor landed possessor might be qualified, by the urgency of famine, to dispose of his inheritance ; whilst his nearest kindred, equally involved in misery, might be prevented from purchasing its redemption. This rapacious scheme was eminently successful ; the open violence which was committed on the property of the inhabitants, — the inordinate advance which took place of scat- duties, together with the audacious means to which Lord Robert resorted, of foisting creatures of his own into the Lawting, as judicial officers, caused an extensive tract of territory to fall within his grasp. These flagrant abuses became at length so notorious, as to attract the attention of the Scottish Government. An investigation took place, the result of which was, that Lord Robert was confined in the Palace of Linlithgow. After remaining a prisoner for six months, he was released, upon condition of giving a large pledge, to ensure his engagement that he would plead at any time to the crime for which he was chaiged. On the excuse that the accusation against him contained proofs of rebellious designs, the estates of Shet- land and Orkney reverted to the Crown. Lord Robert was withheld from the power of tyrannizing over the natives of Orkney and Shetland for three years, and the rents were paid into the Exchequer. But his interest at the Scottish palace, where his follies or vices were always forgiven, procured for him, in ITER II.] UDALLERS. 49 the year 1581, a reinstatement in his former possessions ; the feu being subject to the same annual payment to the Crown which had been specified in the previous grant. It had not escaped the attention of this court-favourite, that in his late dominion over the islands, one charge that had been successfully preferred against him was, for corrupting the judicial members of the Lawting, in his design against the lands of Nicol Randall, an udaller whom he had ousted out of the Island of Gersa. That he might be enabled, therefore, to controul the decrees of justice with less chance of detection, he had the address to procure for himself the heritable appointment of Justiciar,* by which he was not only entitled to convoke and adjourn the Lawtings, to administer justice in his own person, and to punish malefactors, but he might select any individuals to fill the various offices of the court, who could be prevailed upon to minister, by corrupt decrees, to the new plots which he was still hatching against the property of the injured udallers. Along with the office of Justiciar, King James VI. conferred upon Lord Robert the hereditary titles of Earl of Orkney and Lord of Zetland. But it does not appear, that the new Earl, in the resumption of the Crown estates, was equally indulged with the temporali- ties of the bishopric. The cause of this exclusion from them has not been explained. A Scottish act of Parliament had passed, directing the division of church-lands, for the purpose of securing on a third part of them the revenues which, by evasions and false rentals, had been too often withheld from the Parochial clergy. But in a country like Orkney and Zetland, where a regular land-measurement was unknown, and where the lands of the church were intermixed in the most confused manner with those of the Crown, the purport of the act could not well be carried into effect. It is probable, therefore, that the titular of the church-lands of Orkney and Shetland had readily fallen into the common practice of the day, by concealing the amount of his church rental, in order to evade the full demand of a third which was due to the clergy of parishes. If Earl Robert, from some such cause as this, was at first only entrusted with the appointment of ministers, and the donation of benefices, it was not long before he resumed his dominion over all or most of the tem- poralities of the bishopric. It was then that he began a new career of injustice, and that his command over the levy of the tithes was rendered subservient to a fresh scheme of operations which he meditated, with the purpose of wresting the right of soil from the ancient udaller. The tither was instructed to exact the dues of the church to the last tenth, and in a mode sufficiently harassing to induce the poor udaller, for the sake of a temporary subsistence offered him by his designing and merciless lord, to appear at the Foude's court, and, with no fictitious tale of woe, to confirm, by such a plea, the validity of his oppressor's purchase. t It is even questionable if the laws of udal succession were not occasionally superseded altogether, by Earl Robert's interpretation of the royal grant, wherein all lands, without limitation, were unjustifiably included within the dominion of the earldom of Orkney and lordship of Zetland. The Earl might consider himself, from this general clause, as gifted with the authority of a feudal superior; as entitled to receive resignations of udal lands, * See Charter of James VI., dated October 28, 1581. t It is affirmed, that when landholders fell under the censure of the Church, part of their property, by way of penance, was added to the lands of the bishopric. G 50 • UDALLERS. [ITER IL with the superiority over which, from the very nature of udal tenures, he never could have been invested. Reiterated complaints against Earl Robert's new acts of tyranny once more reached the Royal ear, upon which he was, for the third time, recalled from the exercise of a do- minion that he had so greatly abused. King James VI., however, did not altogether lose his attachment to his natural uncle, since he granted the earldom in joint shares to the Lord Chancellor of Scotland and to the Lord Justice-Clerk,* on some secret understanding, that the whole would be given up whenever required, in order to be again transferred, on some more favourable opportunity, to its last Lord. Accordingly, the old oppressor was soon afterwards reinstated in his former possessions, and he lost no time in renewing his attempts to wrest the right of soil from the poor udaller. But learning from experience the futility of open violence, he was now prepared to use more covert means, and to illegally support, by a new prerogative, the purchase of udal lands, in opposition to the consent of heirs. The designs of Earl Robert to gain the possession of the lands of the udallers, had been always impeded by the obligation imposed upon him to obtain a title for his acquisi- tions in what was called a Shynd-bill. Respecting the nature of this document, it may be proper to offer a brief explanation. The udal lands of Orkney and Shetland were originally considered as belonging to the community of Scandinavian colonists, among whom they were partitioned in various proportions. It was therefore to the. support of the common- wealth alone, of which the King of Norway was supposed to be the head, that the scat or contribution exigible from pasture-land was paid as a tribute ; and it was by the common laws which governed the community, that individual possession was secured. The right of soil was confirmed by the decree of those to whom the power of enforcing the laws of the community was entrusted. Whenever, therefore, an udaller was desirous to make his will, or whenever he died intestate, the Foude convened a regular court of judicature, for the purpose of partitioning the property among heirs, agreeably to the rules of udal succession. A court was also held, when, with the consent of heirs, any purchase of land was intended to be confirmed. Upon all these occasions, the parties applying for judgment produced satisfactory evidence of the legality of their claims. The decree of the court was then re- corded, and the authority for entering on the possession of lands conveyed in a shynd-bill : the term Shynd, being said to signify in the Norwegian language a court, and the familiar word bill, implying a document. This record of the court's decree, when signed and sealed by the foude, constituted the only legal title by which udal lands could be bequeathed to heirs, or could be disposed of by sale.f Such being the nature of the Shynd-bill, it is pro- bable that the formalities by which it was obtained, would not be agreeable to Earl Robert's views, since his contracts for land were not such as were calculated to bear the test of a strict scrutiny. But numerous complaints .having found their way to the throne of James, against * " The new rental amounted to 1535 meils of cost, 3001 meils of bear, 2281 meils of flesh, 72 barrels 12 lispunds of butter, 24 barrels 6 lispunds of oil, and ,£109 of money-rent, besides a separate rental for Shetland, which the Exchequer compounded at £400 Scots." — Shirreff's Orkney, p. 32. t See Gifford's Zetland, p. 54. ITER II.] UDALLERS. 5 1 the attempts that hrd been made to change the laws of the country, and these remons- trances having been followed in the latest grants that had been made of the Crown-estates, by provisional clauses in which the functions of the Justiciar of the Islands were rendered comformable to the proper pandects of the Lawting,* the Earl did not yet venture to oppose, in the most open manner, the statutes of the Foude's Court. He rather sought to evade the necessity of having recourse to a shynd-bill, as a title to his acquisitions of territory, by inducing the Government to sanction his pretentions, that the lands of the udallers had been held of the king as of a superior ; that the ancient scat or land-tax which was paid for them, was a real feudal acknowledgment ;f and, consequently, that udal possessions formed, along with the estates of the Crown, constituent portions of the earldom. Scotland, with little consideration, favoured Earl Robert's insidious designs, and, by specially including udal lands in the new grant, sanctioned, in direct opposition to the treaty with Norway, an infringement of the laws under which the lands of Orkney and Shetland had from time immemorial been held. The Earl of Orkney's charter was dated in the year 1589 ; and this may be reckoned the most fatal blow that was struck against the ancient rights of the udaller.J The little despot now conceived himself fully released from the unwelcome obligation of having recourse to a shynd-bill as a legal title to possession ; he had now the sanction of a Royal grant for considering his ill-acquired estates as being resigned or returned into the hands of a superior, thus proceeding on the false assumption that the lands of Orkney and Shetland had been originally dealt out by his predecessors in the earldom to a number of vassals, on terms that involved in them the feudal incidents of sasine, relief, escheat, scutage or homage. Earl Robert had now the power of superseding the shynd-bill as a confirmation of his own acquisitions ; but it was not his interest that it should be rendered inert with regard to the contracts of other powerful or wealthy settlers in the country, who in similiar designs on the possessions of the natives, might engage with him, on equal terms, in a course of sordid competition. In order, therefore, to obviate any interference of this kind, — the law whereby no purchase could be rendered valid that was not made with the consent of heirs, was retained in full force ; and it rendered difficult of confirmation any acquisitions of landed property that did not receive the sanction of the * In the year 1567, the Scotttish Parliament discussed it as a question, if Orkney and Shetland were to be subject to their own laws. Among their minutes are these words : " Quhidder Orknay and Zetland sal be subject to the common lawe of this realme, or gif thai sale bruike their awne lawis. — Findis thai aught to be subject to thair awne lawis." But in after times, the Government was more decisive on this point, as Mr Fea has well shewn : " In the grant made to the Lord Chancellor of Scotland and his colleague, anno 1587, besides their right of convoking and adjourning the Lawting, they have power likewise of appointing Fouds under them, and of administering justice, and punishing malefactors. — Also in the grant made to Earl Robert of Orkney, anno 1589, "Cum potestate (says the King) justitiarii et foudriae deputatos creandi justitiam partibus conquerentibus ministrandi, et jmnitionem super legum transgressoribus et malefactoribus, secundum leges et consuetudinem patriae Orcaden. et Zetlandias, exequendi et puniendi." And in the Reddendo, " Ac etiam administrando justitiam in dictis officiis, tenentibus et inhabitantibus dictarum terrarum, et allis quorum interest vel intererit secundum leges patriae Orcaden. et Zetlandiae, prout dictus comes, et nil prasdicti, Deo omnipotenti et nobis desuper respondere voluerint." — See Fea's Grievances of Orkney, &c, p. 4. & 5. t In a legal process which took place several years ago respecting the superiority of Orkney and Shetland, it was an important object to determine whether the Scat was ever paid as a feudal acknowledgment, consequently the primary signification of the word became an object of inquiry. Dr Jamieson has since produced 'atisfactory authorities for shewing that the term, in its oldest form, whether Saxon or Scandinavian, simply denoted money. \ The charter of 1589 runs thus : " Totam et integram terram praedict. comitateum Orcaden. et dominium Zetlandiae, terras firmas, insulas, lie Holms, &c, integras terras lie Udal lands nuncupat, &C, qua: nobis successoribus nostris pertinent, seu quovismodo, in iisdem pertinere dignoscuntur, reddendo summam 3110 merks." 52 UDALLERS. [ITER II. new self-elected superior of udal lands. If a purchaser of udal property could not confirm his possession by the means of a shynd-bill, which title depended on the consent of the nearest kindred of the inheritor, he could, by ministering to the Earl's avarice, obtain a charter of the lands, whereby they became converted into proper feudal holdings. As another consequence of these false pretensions to the superiority over udal lands which Earl Robert arrogated to himself, naturally followed the attempt to convert the Lawting into a tribunal of his own, whereby the faithfulness with which his newly created vassals, the udallers, had done their duty, was to be determined by the jurisdiction of a lord's court. Hence the power with which he immediately arrayed himself, of confiscating lands for criminal offences. Fresh complaints against Earl Robert's tyranny still reaching the throne, it was thought necessary to make his son a participator with him in the earldom. This experiment did not succeed ; the joint grant was recalled, and the Earl was again singly invested with the possession of the Crown-estates of Orkney and Shetland, the management of which was, however, subject to the immediate controul of the Scottish Government. But this unwearied persecutor of the udallers soon afterwards dying, the fruits of his iniquity only became fully ripened in the misrule of his successor. Such a scene of universal turmoil and dismay then ensued, as is perhaps unparalleled in the history of any other British province. Earl Robert Stewart was succeeded in his estates and title by his son Patrick,* " A fellow by the hand of Nature mark'd, Quoted and sign'd, to do a deed of shame."f When Earl Patrick was invested with the earldom, his own patrimony had been much wasted by riotous expences, and these he sought to redeem by fraud and violence. His first object was to supersede the ancient laws of the country, which Scotland had engaged to preserve inviolate, and to hold a court of his own, the statutes of which could be easily polluted by the influence which a feudal lord naturally possessed. The ancient law-book of Shetland, beheld by the Scandinavian colonist with awe and reverence, soon disappeared. The tyrant's newer code of punishment embraced con- fiscation of lands and property. The loss of soil awaited the crime of quitting the isles without the consent of the superior, or, in any other courts except his, of suing for legal justice. But the forfeiture of both lands and goods was attached to the unpardonable misdemeanour of concealing the amount of personal property, in order to evade or mitigate an impending pecuniary mulct. The feelings of humanity which, at the peril of life, might attempt the salvation of a vessel distressed by tempest, were considered in no other light than as an endeavour to frustrate the chance of lucre from the incident of a wreck on the * I find some difficulty in learning the exact year when Earl Patrick commenced his authority in the Islands. It is prohably about the year 1595. A charter in his favour was dated in the year 1600, by which the former grants were revoked, and a new one made, giving him the titles of his father, and the office of Sheriff, Justiciar, &C. ; his functions to be exercised according to the laws and consuetude of the country. The feu is subject to an annual payment of 3110 nierks. The Earl does not appear to have possessed the lands of the bishopric until A.u. 1600. t Shakespeare's King John. ITER II.] UDALLERS. 53 coast. The act was, therefore, visited, not only with a personal punishment, but with a fine that was of an unlimited amount. The Earl did not even like his father scorn the low, fraudulent act of clandestinely altering the standard weights and measures, in order to increase the revenues of the earldom that were paid in kind. The mark of ten ounces received an addition of a fifth ; and the lispund was advanced from fifteen to eighteen pounds. Another act of the Earl was to increase the rents in Shetland, in order to defray the expenses of the new castle which he was erecting at Scalloway. For this purpose the whole country was assessed in money, provisions, and personal labour. During this dominion of terror, wealthy Scandinavians are reported to have hastily sold to Scottish inhabitants their estates and interests in the country, seeking a refuge in the more kindly bosom of the parent region, from which their ancestors had originally emigrated ; whilst the recent occupants, who had acquired a settlement by purchasing udal lands from the natives, were fain to secure even a pracarious assurance of protection, by ad- ministering to the revenue of the Earl, in the conversion of their estates into regular feudal investitures. As free tenants they now paid to the Lord compositions on entry and annual land-mails. But the poor cottager, who could make feeble resistance against the views of the superior, easily fell a victim to his deep laid designs. Summoned to a court, the arbiters of which were the mere creatures of his will, vain was the plea against the secret plots prepared to ensnare him, or against charges hitherto unregistered as criminal in the revered pages of the lost law-book of Hialtland.* The remonstrance availed not : nothing could arrest the doom of confiscation, that exiled the udaller for ever from the ancient soil of his fathers, that rendered his family outcasts among the barren tracts of the country, or annexed them to the discontented list of menials belonging to the demesnes of the castle. Equity was a stranger in the land. The " udaller looked for judg- ment, but behold oppression ; for righteousness, but behold a cry." At length, the lamentations of Orkney and Shetland deeply pierced the ears of a Government, which had been ever too indifferent to the concerns of this remote extremity of the kingdom. Earl Patrick was summoned by open proclamation, "to compear upon the 2d of March 1608, to answer to the complaints of the distressit people of Orkney." The charges were fully proved ; the Earl had been authorised with the Royal power and commission, and, under colour of his Majesty's authority, had committed many great enormities and insolences " upon his Majesty's poor people." Certain acts had the character assigned to them of rebellion ; on which account the estates of the Earl became liable to forfeiture. The Secret Council then directed that the aggressor should be com- mitted in sure ward, until the royal pleasure regarding him should be signified. They also professed the humane intention of making such new enactments in favour of the suffering islanders, as were calculated to prevent a repetition of similar abuses. In the mean time, the government of Shetland and Orkney was entrusted to the humane Bishop of the • The Reverend Peter Barclay communicates the following curious information, which he derived from an inspection of some ancient records in Shetland : " Patrick, Earl of Orkney, in a disposition of the lands of Sand to Jerom Umphray, narrates, that he had evicted seven merks of that land from Powl Nicolson in Cullswick, for stealing a swine ; and that he had evicted six merks from in Cullswick, for stealing bolts from his Lordship's trood ; probably some piece of wreck which had been drawn into Cullswick." — See Statist. Account o/Scotland, vol. vii., p. 584. 54 UDALLERS. [ITER II. Province, by whose active means the charges against the Earl had been matured and successfully preferred. The Scottish Government did not immediately declare the estates of Earl Patrick for- feited, for reasons apparently creditable to its liberality. An ancient treason-law of Scotland was then in full force, the rigours of which had been originally directed to this important object : it was intended, that, in addition to the allegiance which sub-vassals owed for their lands to a mesne lord, the tenant should be always reminded that there was a permanent obligation of the same nature, that was due to the liege Sovereign. In order, therefore, to enfeeble that unlimited attachment of sub-vassals to a mesne-lord, by which, at the mere will of a subject, they had been often induced to assemble in arms against the King, it was enacted, that upon the discovery of a treasonable conspiracy, all the lands of sub-vassals, the tenures of which had not been previously ratified by the Crown, should, along with the sequestrated estates of the mesne-lord, be involved in one common forfeiture. And to obviate any evasion of the penalty, condemned estates devolved to the Crown, free from every incumbrance ; no fictitious claim could be advanced, since the prayer of the creditor was ever condemned unheard."* It was probably in anticipation of some illegal act which Earl Patrick might commit, whilst pursuing the same oppressive course for which his father was called to account, that Sir John Arnot, to whom the tyrant had pledged his basely-acquired udal lands,! was not satisfied with a charter or disposition from the Earl of Orkney, but also procured from the Crown a confirmation of his right, so as to enable him to hold of the King in capite.% But however construable into treason might have been the illegal proceedings of the Earl, it appears that from this imputation his immediate tenants were perfectly exempt. An ample opportunity was, therefore, allowed them of becoming the Crown's vassals, by which means their tenures would be preserved from the forfeiture of the superior. Of this indulgence some availed themselves before the confiscation was pronounced ; others had not their subaltern infeftments confirmed until long afterw ards.§ But it was doubtful if this was the only reason for not enforcing the treason law of Scotland. It must be remembered, that in the royal grant to Earl Patrick and his father of the superiority over the free tenants of the crown-lands, a feudal principle had been violated, which denies the right of any superior, whether the King or a subject, to interpose a person between himself and his immediate vassal. On this account, any subaltern infeftments which might have been granted by Earl Patrick to Crown-tenants, were null and void ; and they who might have been compelled to accept them, still remained the immediate vassals of the King, whom the treason law of Scotland could * It is remarked of later times, that " this law was considered a great grievance, and therefore it was remedied after the Re- volution by act 1690, cap. 33, by which the lirht and interest of creditors, vassals, and heirs of entail of forfeiting persons, were saved." — Memorial against Dundas, 1776, p. 20. t Gifford's Zetland, p. 41. J In implement of a contract entered into by Arnot and the Karl of Orkney, dated a.d. 1601, there is a charter granted by the latter, dated 1603, in which certain lands are held from his Lordship, his heirs and successors, of his Majesty, his royal heirs and successors, in feu-farm, for payment to his Majesty of the feu-duties and others contained in the Earl's infeftment. This charter was confirmed under the Great Seal, March 5, 1605. — See Mem. against Dundas, dated 1776, p. 18. § Memorial against Dundas, dated 1776, p. 19 & 20. ITER II.] UDALLERS. 55 not in justice affect.* But the discussion of this question was very prudently avoided : the Government did nothing more than declare, that those lands for which no charters from the Crown could be produced, were liable to forfeiture, but that under all circumstances, the King, in his clemency, was unwilling to enforce the execution of the law.f Three years had now elapsed, when the islanders, who were little acquainted with the deliberation and delay incidental to state affairs, began to manifest, by their impatient clamour, a strong suspicion of the sincerity of the promises with which they had been soothed. It now became necessary that these doubts should be removed : the Bishop was directed to exhort the people " to give no ear to the idle reports which they had heard of alterations and changes to the former condition of misrule, trouble and oppression ;" and soon afterwards the King and Council issued a proclamation, that the lands and earldom of Orkney and Shetland were annexed to the Crown, to remain perpetually and inseparably therewith in time coming."^ After the act of Parliament had passed in the year 1612, by which Orkney and Shetland were annexed to the Crown of Scotland, and erected into a stewartry, the Government released from mortage Sir John Arnot's security upon the udal lands, that had been so wrongfully acquired by Earl Patrick. The next step was to provide some remedy for the frays and even bloodshed that had resulted from the lands of the bishopric being in- termixed with these of the Crown, in every island, parish, and even township. Bishop Law, therefore, the new episcopal dignitary of the islands, received from the King's Com- missioners certain crown-lands in Orkney, the extent of which was well defined, in lieu of the scattered possessions from which the church had previously derived emolument. In consequence of this exchange, the Bishop of Orkney no longer possessed any control over the ecclesiastical revenues of Shetland, his share of them devolving to the Crown ; at the same time he succeeded to the King in the right of presenting qualified ministers to all the vicarages. * " It is plain, that such grant of intermediate superiority over the Crown's vassals was of an illegal nature, and could not have effect ; and therefore, supposing the fact to be, that these grantees did take upon them to exercise the rights of superiority, and that the Crown vassals were prevailed on to accept their charters from them, which must have happened through undue influence and concussion, yet the inference will by no means follow, that the persons accepting of such charters, and their heirs and successors in all time coming, are to be considered merely in the state of subvassals. The intermediate authority thus created, was null and void from the beginning, and could not be rendered better by the act and deed of the interposed superior in granting a charter, or of the vassal in accepting of it, this not being the proper feudal form by which a superiority and a subvassalage could be constituted ; for, as the pretended superior was not himself seised in the lands, he could not have a vassal in them." " No act of the Crown could in law be effectual to raise up an intermediate superiority, which had no existence prior to the grant. The only mode in which this can possibly be done, is by the Crown vassal's resigning his lands in the hands of his Majesty, or his I'arons of Exchequer, for new infeftment in favour of a third party, and afterwards accepting a subaltern right from such party. It is manifest, that a grant by the Crown in favour of a third party can carry nothing. The full property of the land is in the Crown's vassal, minus that right of superiority which is in the Crown jure coronee ; and as that right must necessarily remain with the Crown, so, it is plain, that any conveyance granted by the Crown to a third party, is a mere shadow, and can carry nothing real. The Crown may indeed assign the issues and profits of the dominium directum, but the right itself must remain with the Crown, as incapable of alienation, it not being in the power of any superior to place an intermediate person over the vassal, without his consent." — See Memorial against Dundas, dated 1776, p. 18 & 16. t " A charter of confirmation under the Great Seal, dated March 13, 1616, proceeds on the narrative of Edward Stewart and his brother being heritable vassals and tenants to Earl Patrick and his predecessors, in all and haill the eighteen penny land of Sellibuster ; that they were now in his Majesty's hands by the forfeiture of Earl Patrick ; and that his Majesty was not desirous to hurt Edward Stewart's right and title to said lands, but willing to grant a more ample security. The charter contains a novodamus in favour of Edward Stewart, ' to be holden of his Majesty and royal successors, in feu and heritage for ever, paying therefor the scat and other duties therein mentioned." — Memorial against Dundas, (dated 1776, p. 20.) J Extract from Registers of Parliament 1612, quoted in the Memorial against Dundas, dated 1776, p. 4. 56 UDALLERS. [ITER II. One of the last objects of the Government was to erect a court of Stewart ry, and to confine the civil judicial power of the church within the circuit of its own proper estate. The Bishop, in the jurisdiction of Commissaries, had the privilege of appointing clerks and other members ot court. The form of judicature thus organized, bore still less resemblance to the uncomplicated tribunal of the Foude. Causes were now tried in some hall of the castles of Kirkwall and Scalloway ; whilst the open space of the Scandinavian Law ting was devoted to legislative convocations. Here a little Parliament of udallers again began to meet, in order to replace with a fresh code of pandects the ancient law-book which Earl Patrick had destroyed. When, by the Earl's forfeiture, all the udal lands which had been wrested from their ancient possessors, by the fraud or open violence of the petty tyrants that had been unduly interposed between the Sovereign and the udallers, came into the possession of the Crown, it would have been an act of clemency worthy the exalted rank of the monarch who then held sway over the united realms of England and Scotland, to have instituted a commission, for the purpose of restoring the lands which had been the fruits of evaded laws, and of open rapine. But vainly did humanity intercede in the behalf of the poor udallers ; — vainly did justice urge the propriety of restitution. The King had now made a grant of the islands to Sir James Stewart, in the quality of a farmer-general. Earl Patrick's rental was recorded in the Court of Exchequer, and directions had been given, that it was to be the rule of every future exaction of the revenues of the Crown's estate. Of this cartulary, which is still extant, a late writer has remarked, " that it exhibits, in a strong point of view, the enormous quantity of gross and manufactured produce paid by the country, and affords a sufficient proof of the oppressive means that had been employed to increase the rental."* The money paid was little more than ^200 Scots, the rest being deliveied in the several species of bear, malt, meal, flesh, oil, or butter. And when the demands could not be answered in kind, the udallers and Crown vassals were subject to the payment of a price depending on the mere will of a rapacious exacter. This perpetuation of Earl Patrick's rental, has, in combination with parochial tithes, entailed upon the landed proprietors of Orkney and Shetland a burden, the oppressive nature of which the resources of the islands have not, for the last two centuries, been able to counteract."! It may be now remarked, that, in consequence of the resolution of the British govern- ment not to sacrifice the smallest abatement of the amount of the scat-duty which had been paid to Earl Patrick, a decisive change took place in the nature of udal possessions The * ShirrefFs Agricultural Survey of Orkney, p. 32. t Mr Shirreff remarks, in reference to that part of Earl Patrick's rental, which concerns the earldom and bishopric of Orkney, that " the scat-duties were more considerable than was generally imagined, consisting altogether of ,£117 14s 7d Scots of silver, 627 lispunds of butter, 53 lispunds of oil, 954 meils of malt, 1903 meils, or nearly 54 chalders of bear, 922 meils of flesh, 134 meils of cost, and 60 of oatmeal : but there is reason to believe, from some instances in the rental, that the scat itselt had in some cases been lately augmented." The entire rents of the earldom and bishopric amounted to ,£322 Scots of money, 132 barrels and 634 lispunds of butter, 3806 meils of cost, 4251 meils of bear, 3504 meils of flesh, 6 barrels and 127 lispounds of oil, 215 meil sof oatmeal multure, besides poultry and oysters to a large amount. — ShirrejjTs Agric. Sun immediate vassal*, for payment of sl.at and other duties, conform to their rentals, aye and while his Majestie conform their rights to the laws of this kingdom." t Genealogy of the Earls of Sutherland, p. 468 to p. 471. . I KR H.i UDALLERS. 59 Britain had been gradually introducing themselves into the country, by whom the state of udal tenures was in the progress of undergoing as great a change as had ever been effected under the last Earls of Orkney. It has been shewn that Robert and Patrick Stuart had, by claiming a dominion of a feudal nature over udal lands, removed from themselves the obligation of obtaining a title for their acquisitions in any other way than by accepting them as resignations to a superior ; and that the shynd-bill or written decree of the Foude's court, by which no purchase could be confirmed that was not made with the consent of the udal-born, had been preserved as an obstacle to the designs of new settlers in the country, who might be as desirous as the Earls themselves of taking advantage of the impoverished state of the udallers, by obtaining lands from them at a reduced rate. It was the object, therefore, of the Stuarts, to obviate any interference of this nature from the similiar inclination of others, by protecting, with the most anxious solicitude, the force of the shynd-bill, as the necessary authority for confirming every contract of land, but that in which they themselves were parties.* At the same time, the Earls had reserved in their own persons the feudal privilege of confirming any purchaser of udal lands by a feu-charter, which they rendered, by their influence, of a validity equal to the decree of the Foude's court. Such an unwarrantable pretension, therefore, hostile as it was to the ancient statutes of the country, the Crown, upon the forfeiture of Earl Patrick, perpetuated.! The king confirmed all the infeftments of the Earl that had been granted upon udal-lands, and retained the prerogative of issuing out new charters, and of feudalis- ing, if required, all the udal lands in the country. From this cause it was very easy for wealthy purchasers to evade the rigid terms which the Shynd-bill prescribed. The obstacle, therefore, which, in the time of the Earls of Orkney, prevented numerous inhabitants of Scotland from crowding into the country, was at length removed. By these new settlers, the native islanders are said to have suffered many undue encroachments on their possessions, to which the mixed state of the landed property of the country was calculated to give every facility. In the disputes respecting territory, the udaller was too frequently unable to contend against the influence of wealth and the unjust exercise of civil authority.! Notwithstanding the act of Parliament, by which Orkney and Shetland were to be inseparable from the Crown, excuses were still found to annul the decree, and to doom the * In the Law-ting of Shetland, on the 22a! of August 1604, a record under the Earl of Orkney, was made as follows : "Taking consideration of the great confusion, usit within the county of Zetland, anent the buying and selling of land thereinto, continually remembered be the complaints and supplications of the commons of the country, to the great hurt of the commonweal thereaf: therefore, it is statute and ordained, that no person or persons frae this forth, either buy or sell ony sort of lands with others, without the samen being first offered to the nearest of the seller's kin, according to the use and constitution of the country." -Grievances, Sfc., of Orkney, p. 8. t " From 1612 downwards, there are many charters from the Crown to different proprietors in Orkney, as well as infeftments upon precepts issuing from the Chancery." — Memorial against Dunias, A. D. 1776, p. 4. % There in an ancient statute in Orkney, dated A. D. 1632, " anent gripping lands." — " It is statute and ordained, that no man grip his neighbour's lands, under the pain of £,\o Scots." No act of this kind appears in the old country laws of Shetland, although Mr Shirreff and Dr Kemp have spoken of the habit as not having b^en unknown to this country. The latter gentleman has been called to a severe account for the assertion ; but, as I have no particular inclination myself to enter into a controversy with my Shetland friends, on the ancient custom of gripping lands, (which, by the bye, has not been wholly unknown among much more -southerly tracts of Uritain,) I shall preserve a cautious silence on the occasion. 60 UDALLERS. [ITER ,, islanders to a new change of masters. In the year 1641, the rents of the Bishoprick of Orkney had, upon the establishment of a Presbytery in the islands, been granted to the City of Edinburgh ; and two years afterwards, King Charles the First, on the fictitious plea of a loan affirmed to have been made to him by the Earl of Morton, procured from Parlia- ment the confirmation of a grant to this favourite of the lands of the earldom of Orkney and lordship of Zetland, subject to redemption by the payment of ^30,000 Sterling. The Earl of Morton had now power, during ihe mortgage of the islands, to enter and receive the heritable vassals and tenants of the land, and he had command over all the casualties of the superiority. But it is not evident, from the general tenor of the grant, that the Crown regarded the udallers as holding their lands by feudal tenures ; udal lands were, specially included in the earldom of Orkney and lordship of Zetland, on account of the scat and other duties which they paid. Soon after this contract the Earl of Morton died, and his son, on coming into posses- sion of the Islands, immediately endeavoured to sweep away every relic of udal tenures. He acted upon the principle that the Shynd-bill was an illegal infringement of the universal right of superiority which he claimed over the lands of the Province. This was a proceed- ing that even outstepped all that Earl Patrick had achieved in similiar designs to subvert the laws of the country ; for although the last Earls of Orkney had always acted as if they had an undubitable right of superiority over Udal-lands, yet the Crown had never retained these pretensions to any greater extent than by admitting the principle, that the validity of a ( 'rown-charter was equal to that of a Shynd-bill, and that it was optional to which of these two titles the purchaser or heir of Udal-lands might resort. But Robert, Earl of Morton, now held out the unjustifiable language, that the ancient laws of the country, which Scot- land had never verbally rescinded, imparted to udal possessions an imperfect tenure. The words that he used in his charters, when he converted udal lands into heritable feu-farms, were, " That he understood the party had right and possession of the udal land, — of [which] he noways was willing to prejudge him, but rather to grant to him and his heirs a more perfect right and security." He then, by a feu-charter, confirmed the udaller in his possessions, taking special care that for this indulgence there should be an augmentation of rental.* Owing to language such as this, which was promulgated as the tenor of the grant from the British Parliament,, the Shynd-bill of the Foude's Court began to be regarded with contempt by the wealthy settler, although it was still held in reverence by the ancient udaller, who was naturally tenacious of the laws by which his ancestors had for centuries held their lands undisturbed. The Earl of Morton, in order to raise a sum of money for the support of the un- fortunate Charles, now subjected Orkney to a subaltern and real mortage ; and at this time a scene of great confusion, from which, indeed, no part of Great Britain was free, began to take place in the Islands. Orkney and Shetland were seized upon by Cromwell, who sent over Deputies into the province. These new rulers committed many irregularities, particularly in the clandestine alteration of the weights ; but it is doubtful if they exceeded * An extract from the Charter of the Feu farm, granted to Jerome Fotheringhame, dated September 5, 1649, is the chiiif authority from which this information is derived. It is to be found in the Memorial against Dundas, A.D. 1776, p. 22. IIIKII] UDALLERS. 6 1 in oppression their predecessors in the Government. At this period, when the Earl of Morton was no longer enabled to grant feu-charters, when it was doubtful to whom the rights of superiority were due, when the superiority over udal lands was, as a question, still undecided, and when the original udal title of a Shynd-bill was, by the new settlers, regarded not only with distrust, but with dislike, the udaller granted to the wealthy purchaser, under the form of a Scottish disposition and sasine, a charter for his lands, by which they were held immediately from the disponer himself. " Whether," said a well informed historian of Shetland about a century ago, with much simplicity, " the purchases of these incomers were not always such as could admit of a judicial confirmation, or if they wanted to introduce the Scots laws and customs, or partly both, I know not ; — but they began to lay aside the Shynd-bill, and to use dispositions and sasines. And there- upon followed that long train of conveyances, filled with all the clauses and quirks that the lawyer and noter could invent, for lengthening the writing, and making it so intricate, that the true sense and meaning thereof might only be known to themselves. So that it came to pass, in a short process of time, that, instead of the honest, easy, and simple Shynd-bill, Zetland was stocked with rights and conveyances upon the lands, sufficient to find the lawyers and noters as much business as any place of its value in Scotland. Whereby the ancient simple udallers were turned out of their old inheritances, and obliged to improve that ground for others that they had foolishly neglected to do for themselves."* Upon the accession of Charles II. to the British Throne, in the year 1662, this monarch's first act with regard to these islands, was to restore Episcopacy, and to command that the rents of the church-lands should be paid to the Bishops. He was next inclined to restore the family of Morton to their possession of the Crown estates of Orkney and Shetland, subject to the same terms of redemption as had been specified in the former contract. This grant having been annulled by the general act of revocation that had been passed in the same year, a new mortgage was obtained in the name of George, Viscount Grandison, as trustee for the family of Morton, who were then in embarrassed circum- stances. The charter empowered the grant of heritable feus of any part of the Earldom, to be held of the trustees until the extinction of the mortgage, and afterwards of the Crown. Lord Grandison, therefore, appointed Alexander Douglas of Spynie, as factor to receive the Crown-rents of the Islands, and to grant feu-charters. The mission of this individual proved an important era in the history of Orkney and Shetland. Douglas of Spynie was instructed to dispute the validity of all the tenures in the Islands, which could not produce for them confirmations from the Crown. Most of the lands of the country were then in possession of the new settlers, who, in their avidity to purchase up the little patrimonial possessions of the impoverished udallers, had superseded the ancient security of a shynd-bill for a private deed of transfer, under the form of a Scottish disposition and sasine. This mode of conveyance was, in the first place, objection- able, on the principle that an udal inheritance was specially protected by the laws of the particular community among which udal lands had been originally partitioned ; and, that, * Gifford's Zetland, p. 57. 62 UDALLERS. ITER II. therefore, no title but a judicial decree of the Foude's court could properly transmit an udal right. The second objection to which a private deed of transfer was liable, bore reference to the fact, that prior to the protectorate of Cromwell, no Scottish forms of title for udal lands had ever been given but by the Earls of Orkney or by the King. When, therefore, the title of the Shynd-bill had, by the united influence of the new settlers in the country and the Earl of Morton, gradually fallen into disuse or contempt, the erroneous notion became more easily inculcated, that the King was the proper superior of udal lands, and that, therefore, no property purchased from an udaller could be legally held by a deed from the disponer, unless a prior one had been obtained from the granter's superior. But, as it has been before observed, although the Crown, in violation of the treaty with Norway by which the laws of Orkney and Shetland were to remain undisturbed, had consented to perpetuate the privileges first usurped by Earls Roberts and Patrick Stewart, of feudalizing udal lands, the absolute obligation of the udallers to hold in capite from the Crown, had never yet received a direct Royal sanction. The Scottish Govern- ment had not acted as if the King was the real superior of udal lands, but as if he might become the superior of them, whenever an inheritor was desirous to hold his lands by a charter, rather than by virtue of a decree from the Foude's court. But it is doubtful if any distinction of this kind was made by the poor udaller, who could see nothing more than that new landed tenures and new terms of possession, unknown to the lost statutes of the Law-ting, were intended to be introduced into the country, which it was in vain to resist. The udaller was easily intimidated with the hints which were promulgated, that he held his lands on a doubtful right, but that, in consideration of an augmentation of the sums he paid to the King for scat and wattle, he might receive a charter of confirmation, by which he would become, when the King had paid off the mortgage on Orkney and Shetland, an eventual Crown-vassal. This security the udaller gladly purchased, finding in it the sooth- ing words of promise which had been employed thirteen years before, but with less success, on the same purpose of feudalization, that Alexander Douglas of Spynie was no way willing to prejudge him for his udal lands, but to grant unto him, his heirs and assignees, a more perfect right and security of the same. As for the new settlers, whose purchases, as Mr Clifford has remarked, were not always such as would admit of a judicial confirmation, — they readily assented to the principle that the King was the superior of udal lands, and gladly embraced the opportunity of securing the possessions which they had obtained, in opposition to the strict terms of udal succession, by obtaining for them charters of confir- mation from the Crown. From this period, also, may be dated the complete subversion of the ancient laws of the country. The jurisdiction of the Islands had been given to the Earl of Morton's trustee, and the udallers now abandoned for ever the open space of the Law-ting, where, beneath no other canopy than the sky, their fathers had met to legislate for at least six centuries.* They were now required, as new vassals of the Crown, to give their suit and presence to the courts which were held within some covered hall at Kirkwall and Scalloway. * " The practice of making laws in the Law-tinj, subsisted till the year 1670." — Grievances of Orkney, d-^c, p. 4. ITER II.] UDALLERS. 63 The causes have at length been explained, to which the great success that attended Douglas of Spytiie's mission to Orkney and Shetland may be attributable. When the Shynd-bill, the ancient security of udal property, had grown into disuse, the feudalization of nearly all the lands of the country became an easy process. There 'were very few landed inheritors, with the exception of those who had formerly obtained charters of confir- mation from the Crown, that did not now hold from the Earl of Morton's trustee. " By granting of these charters from the Crown," remarks Mr Gifford, " Spynie raised a considerable sum of money of the heritors and feuars of Orkney and Zetland, as appeared by a particular account thereof for Zetland, amounting to the sum of ,£15,000 Scots, which was very heavy upon many of them. But the composition-money paid for the charters, and the great feu-duties payable yearly out of the lands, did, in a short time thereafter, sink many of the heritors so far in debt, that they were obliged to sell the lands for payment thereof. They were utterly incapable of being at the charge of the public securities and frequent confirmations required by law."* Douglas of Spynie was also commissioned to make long tacks of the Crown lands ; but, as he did not approve of the old country practice of enclosures paying no land-mails when not laboured, he required an annual rent for them whatever might be their condition. At the same time, he disposed in feu, of most of the King's moieties of the umboth or corn tithes. Orkney and Shetland now began to present a new aspect. Numerous allotments of territory, which had been the result of inheritances equally divided among the nearest kindred of possessors, were laid together so as to form an ample estate. In every part of the islands new settlers were to be found, who began to assume within their small demesnes, all the proud functions of the baronial lord. Each little manor afforded an epitome of the state of the Feudal System, when aided in its civil establishment by the necessity imposed upon feudatories, of resigning to a limited number of their dependents the care of cultiva- ting the soil. The little landlord of Orkney or Shetland demanded, along with his rent, the acknowledgement of a grassum or entry, and many of the menial services that were rendered to baronial lands, such as annual presents, casting the lord's peats, or labouring for him a certain number of days. It is remarkable, that when the last act of feudalising the udal lands of Orkney and Shetland took place, Denmark appeared to be more seriously bent than ever upon entering into an explicit understanding with Britain regarding her right of redeeming these islands, as the ancient pledge of a royal marriage-dower. But in what state could this ancient Scandinavian settlement have been then restored? The laws which Britain had engaged to protect, were totally subverted ; — udal lands were transmuted into regular feudal tenures, and were oppressed with the heavy duties, which had first found a place in the wicked rental of the Earls of Orkney, but were perpetuated by the Government to whose care the •udaller's rights had been entrusted ; — the ancient Scandinavian inheritor was ejected from his little patrimony, and was become a menial vassal to some wealthier settler, — some * Gifford's Zetland, p. 43 & 58. 64 UDALLERS. [ITKR II. stranger in the land ; — this suffering colony of Norway had been goaded to the quick, — its wounds were yet open. The British Government, therefore, seems to have acted with much less violence to its feelings, in again evading a definite explanation regarding Denmark's claim of redemption, than in restoring the colony in this lacerated state to its mother country. Denmark, not without marks of chagrin, has never since the treaty of Breda persisted in the claim, chiefly from the dread of being implicated on its account in an expensive war ; she has been content with transmitting to posterity, through the medium of her national historian Torfseus, the discussions that have at various times taken place with the British Government on the subject of the impignorated colony, together with the poignant disappointment she has felt at their unsatisfactory termination.* " In tanta igitur historiarum luce," concludes Torfseus, "etiamsi per tot obstacula rerum, cum veisati simus, nihil orbem latere potest, quod regum Daniae, Norvegiaeque jus in praedictas insulas ex naturae gentiumque corroboret pandectis, quibus Anglorum toties injecta, mora penitus adversatur. Necveritas usquam gloriosius tuetur locum, quam in re tarn lucida et con- testata, omnium oculis et judiciis exposita. Causam ideo coram amplissimo orbis terrarum tribunal] ulterius disceptare supersedemus, et confisi aequitati remedia a tempore speramus."t Soon after the conference with Denmark, the English Government was induced to inquire very particularly into the circumstances which led to the dissolution of Orkney and Shetland from the immediate protection of the Crown. The mode in which these islands were mortgaged by Charles I. to the Earl of Morton, became an object of strict investiga- tion, the result of which was, that the transaction was formally declared to be obtained by importunity and obreption, in the face of many acts of perpetual annexation, and without any previous dissolution of Parliament. A reduction of the grant immediately ensued ; but although the sum alleged to have been advanced to Charles I. for which the islands were mortgaged, was suspected to be a fictitious loan, the Morton family were satisfied for their claim, as if they had been real creditors of the Crown. These arrangements being completed, a new annexation of Orkney and Shetland took place, accompanied with the profession, that the islands were to remain inseparably with the Crown in all time coming. With the change of landed tenures introduced into Orkney and Shetland by the Morton family, and with the subsequent annexation of these islands to the Crown in the year 1669, the history of the udallers properly terminates. Some few of this ancient descrip- tion of landholders still remained unfeudalised ; and their descendants may now have the satisfaction of thinking, that, in their respective families, the hereditary transmission of udal rights has been for centuries successfully opposed to all the feudal obligations of charters, of precepts of infeftment, of casualties of superiority, of compositions for the entry of heirs and singular successors, or of renewals of investiture. The ancient udaller may at the present • * Rerttm Oread. Hist., liber iii. " De indefessis potentissimorum Regum Daniae, Norvegiaeque studiis jus suum in Orcades, adjectntemque Hetlandiam pacifice retinendi.'' At the end of the 2d Book of Torfseus, the assertions of Buchanan and Boethins, that the claim of redemption was surrendered, are ably commented upon. t Torfseus, Rerum Oread. Hist., p. 228. ITKR |L] APPENDIX TO THE HISTORY OF THE UDALLERS. 65 day contemplate his little patrimony with pride, although, alas ! his native land, " bound in with the triumphant sea, Whose rocky shore beats back the envious surge Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame With inky spots and rotten parchment bonds."* This narrative is not closed without the impression, that it is difficult to conceive, how a train of events such as has been recorded, could have ever taken place in a province placed under the protection of the popular government of Britain. But the British Legis- lature itself, in the manifesto that was published in the year 1669 on the occasion of the fresh annexation of these islands to the Crown, has given so complete a summary of the causes of the misrule, that it may, with the greatest propriety, form the conclusion to the present narrative. The act of annexation recites, " That the islands of Orkney and Shetland were so considerable a part of his Majesty's ancient kingdom, that, for divers ages, they had been the occasion of much trouble and expence of blood and money : That, being of great and large extent of bounds, and so remote from the ordinary seat of justice and judicatures, the inhabitants could not repair to the said judicatures without great trouble and expence, to complain when they were oppressed and grieved : That it is not only fit for his Majesty's interest, but will be for the great advantage of his Majesty's subjects dwell- ing there, that, without interposing any other lord or superior between his Majesty and them, they should have an immediate dependence upon his Majesty and his officers, being their greatest security against all foreign attempts, and oppressions at home. " That notwithstanding divers former Acts of annexation, yet, importunity prevailing with his Majesty and his royal father, their goodness and inclination to gratify their subjects, they had been induced to give away and part with so great a jewel of their crown, and to dispone and grant rights of the earldom of Orkney and lordship of Shetland, to the great prejudice of his Majesty, his crown and subjects, and contrary to law." APPENDIX TO THE HISTORY OF THE UDALLERS. A slight sketch of the political state of Orkney and Shetland from 1669 to the present period, may be properly appended to this history. After the act of annexation, the revenues of these islands were let out to different farmers, upon leases not exceeding five years. These tacksmen are said to have been not less scrupulous than their predecessors in the office of contributing to the distresses of the islanders. In 1697, the Presbyterian form of church-government was introduced into Orkney and Shetland. All lands belonging to the Church then returned to the Crown ; but since they * Shakespeare's Richard II. 66 APPENDIX TO THE HISTORY [ITER ,, were not annexed to it, they could be disposed of by the Sovereign at pleasure. Three years afterwards, in consequence of a commission being dispatched to these islands by the General Assembly in Scotland, nearly the whole of the ministers conformed to Presby- terianism. The Bishop's rents in Orkney were retained by the Crown, but the stipends to ministers were paid out of the church funds, though in a less proportion. In A.D. 1707, Queen Anne, notwithstanding the former solemn annexations of Orkney and Shetland to the Crown, yielded to the importunity of James, Earl of Morton, who had been one of the Commissioners for the treaty of Union, and made a new grant of the islands in his favour, but still in the form of a mortgage, redeemable on the payment of ^30,000 Sterling, and subject to an annual feu-duty of ^500 Sterling. The Earl had " full power," as the charter specified, " to enter and receive the heritable vassals who now actually hold of her Majesty and Crown, and their heirs, and to grant charters and infeftments." He also obtained a lease of the unappropriated part of the lands of the Church, as well as of those teinds which had devolved to the Crown, by virtue of the exchange, a century before, of certain lands of the King for others of the bishopric. The Earl of Morton was at the same time elected heritable Steward and Justiciar of Orkney and Shetland : he was authorised to appoint deputies for the administration of justice, according to the practice of Scotland ; and it appears that he retained a few of the subordinate forms of the ancient legislature of the country. He was made Vice- Admiral of Orkney and Shetland, with all the powers of judicature in the maritime affairs of the country, and with a donation of the rights of admiralty. Lastly, the Earl had conferred upon him the right of patronage to the kirks of Shetland and Orkney, which privilege was taken from the Presbytery, and reckoned a great grievance. A Commissary was retained, who was a judge in consistorial affairs. The revenue accruing from every source of emolu- ment enumerated was about ^3000 Sterling per annum. In the year 1742, the Earl of Morton, on the fictitious plea that the emoluments of his concerns in Orkney and Shetland, were not sufficient to pay the interest of the mortgaged sum, had influence enough with Parliament to obtain a discharge of the reversion ; an act was therefore passed, making the whole of the estates of which he was in possession, heritable and irredeemable. Five years afterwards, this Nobleman was deprived of the jurisdiction of the Islands, for which he received in compensation the sum of ^7200 Sterling. The country now enjoyed nearly the same state of laws as other districts of Scot- land. About this period the Earl of Morton became involved in suits at law, chiefly on account of the fraudulent increase of weights and measures that had gradually taken place, by the Earl of Orkney, the farmers of the Crown revenues, and his own ancestors ; and although he gained his suit, his property became so troublesome to him, that, in the year 1776, he sold it for the sum of ,£60,000 to Sir Lawrence Dundas. The new successor of the Earl of Morton in the estates and superiority of Orkney and Shetland that had formerly belonged to the Crown, appears to have entered on his acquisi- tions with little historical knowledge of the peculiarities of landed tenure which the Islands had enjoyed whilst annexed to Norway, and of the various changes which they had undergone, during their progress of feudalization. Sir Lawrence Dundas immediately ITKR II.] OF THE UDALLERS. 67 conceived that his powers of superiority were too limited ; and in order to extend them involved himself in an expensive suit at law, in which he completely failed. Since the result of this action did not make the least difference in the relative situation of the various description of landed inheritors in the Islands to the King or to Sir Lawrence Dundas, any particular detail of the proceedings is unnecessary, being a subject less of historical than of legal interest.* Such are the principal events that have occurred in Orkney and Shetland since the year 1669, — the period when nearly all the lands were feudalised and annexed to the Crown. The Province then became in every respect subject to British laws. It was rendered liable to a land-tax, which was in vain disputed, on the plea that the scatt already paid was a proper equivalent, and that no other could in justice be demanded. Orkney has always paid two-thirds of the cess, the remaining one-third having been rendered by Shetland ; but the latter country having no valued rent, by which the right of individuals to vote can be ascertained, is denied any share in the election of a Member of Parlia- ment. Lord Dundas is the Lord Lieutenant of Orkney and Shetland : and, with regard to the internal legislation of the latter country, it may be briefly remarked, that the offices of Justice of Peace have been lately revived ; that the Sheriff-substitute holds a regular Court, and that there are separate Admiralty and Commissary jurisdictions. These islands have never been able to recover from the oppressions exercised by Earls Robert and Patrick Stewart, and the farmers and feuars of the Crown revenues, by whom they were succeeded. Of the lands of Orkney, it has been recently said, that " they are now of much less productive value than they were several centuries ago, and were it not for the comparative recent discovery of the kelp manufacture, many of the proprietors would be unable to pay for the total produce of the land, the feu and teind-duties which were paid by their ancestors several centuries ago."t Of Shetland it has been also affirmed, that, " were it not for the profits arising from the fisheries, a great part of the lands would long ago have fallen into the hands of the superior, whose interest in them, under the existing circum- stances, is in many instances far beyond that of those who are considered the actual pro- prietcrs."j But a brighter prospect is perhaps at this very moment opening to the country. The superiority of the Islands is vested in a truly honourable family, and if numerous litigations have occurred between the heritors and the superior, they have been in no less degree attributable to the distracted state of the country during the tyranny of the ancient feuars and farmers of the Crown revenues, than to the ignorance which has since prevailed among all parties of the real state of the tenures of the country, and of the extent of their respective rights. The supply of this deficiency has been the labour of the year 1820. A collection has been made of numerous interesting documents, lately discoveied in the charter-room of * I shall give a brief statement of them in the Notes to the present Iter. — See Note 6. t Memorial against Dundas, A.D. 1820, by R. Jameson, Esq., Advocate, p. 38. J Shirreft's Agricultural Survey of Shetland, p. 18. 68 APPENDIX TO THE HISTORY OF THE UDALLERS. [ITER II. Edinburgh, and their publication has been conducted with an ability and zeal that must entitle the industrious editor of them to the lasting gratitude of his countrymen.* Nothing remains to be added, but that Orkney and Shetland have a long account of arrears against the British Government. The admission into the King's Exchequer of Earl Patrick Stuart's enormous and unjust rental, and the repeated breaches of Parliamentary faith committed in disannexing the islands from the immediate protection of the Crown, are charges of such a serious nature against a free state, that, in justice to the perpetuated sufferings of the natives, ample reparation, even at the present day, is a duty. It is to be hoped, therefore, that an acquaintance with the natural advantages which these islands possess in regard to their fisheries, the manufacture of kelp, or other sources of emolument, may suggest some mode in which a liberal and enlightened Legislature may be enabled to atone for past injuries, and, perhaps, to add materially to the resources of the nation at large, t The history of Udal Tenures being investigated, the intervals of a Shetland traveller's geological pursuits cannot be better employed than in examining the state of a country which differs little from what it was about a century and a-half ago. Shetland is in the precise state that is calculated to afford much matter for delectation to the taste of some learned member of the Antiquarian Society, well clergyonned in the rolles of old Tyme's Historic The land of the country is still as unmeasured as ever it was in the days of Harold Harfagre. Collectors still come round for the annual duties of scat, wattle, ox-penny, hawk- hens, grassum, and land-mails. The tenant labours for his lord a certain number of days. Corn-teinds as well as vicarage-teinds, are severally paid in kind from the produce of cows, sheep, and fishing boats. The single stilted plough is yet in use, — the tusker, the quern and the cassie, — all genuine Scandinavian implements of husbandry, — the description of which can in nowise, without an offence to true Archaiological taste, be mixed up with proposals for introducing at the same time some new-fangled cart, plough, harrow, roller, box and stone wheel-barrow, even though recommended by the Shetland New Agricultural Society. The course which I intended to take had a reference to the geology of the country. There was consequently a necessity for proceeding in such a direction as would be best adapted for determining the boundaries and mutual relations of the rocks under examina- * There is at the same time no doubt but that the hopes held out by Mr Peterkin (the gentleman alluded to), will be fulfilled ; that by the publication of these documents, " the rights of all parties can be adjusted without litigation or expense ; that various obstacles to improvement which have checked its progress in Orkney, may be removed ; and the basis be established of a more prosperous state of society, in a region which has hitherto enjoyed but little of the beneficence of the British Government, but has been impoverished for centuries past, by a system of leasing the crown-lands and revenues to middle-men of all descriptions." — Preface to Mr Peterkin s Collection of the Rentals of Orkney, printed in the year 1820. t For a particular explanation of the various authorities to which I am indebted for my information in drawing up these memoirs of the udal system, see Note 6. ITER II.] HOLMS OF QUENDALE BAY. 69 tion. The result of the investigation forms the subject of a distinct Geological Treatise ; but the miscellaneous incidents attending the research constitute the proper details of an Iter. HOLMS OF QUENDAL BAY. When the geognost has got in readiness his ponderous hammers, — the well-tried steel of which -the strong-bas'd promontory Hath oft made shake," he cannot, perhaps, more conveniently commence his examination of Shetland, than by first visiting a small insulated rock in Quendal Bay, named Little-Holm ; for which purpose he must seat himself in a light Norway yawl, launched on the swelling surge of Dunrossness, whilst he is propelled by the toiling oars of four or six active Shetland boatmen. On approaching Little Holm, the attention is directed to a mural heap of stones, that, with few interruptions, encircles the island, and presents the appearance of a rude fortifica- tion. Upon landing, the mutilated remains may be observed of what antiquaries name Kist-vaens, or stone coffins. Each of these is formed by four flat stones, sunk edgeways into the earth, the upper margins of which do not rise many inches above the common level of the ground. The cavity of the most perfect coffin is about 4^ feet long by about 2 7 inches broad ; of the depth no idea could be formed, from the quantity of earth and rubbish which it contained. With regard to the origin of these stone chests, it is useless to offer any conjectures, as their contents have been removed, and as the use of receptacles of this kind for bones or urns was never restricted to any particular race among the ancient European tribes. It is however remarkable, that antiquaries should have con- sidered that all their speculations on the antiquities of Orkney and Shetland could only refer to a pure Scandinavian or to a Celtic people. It seems to have been lost sight of, that Orkney, and probably Shetland also, was frequented by Saxon pirates, who sustained a defeat by Theodosius. This is so important a fact connected with the earliest annals of the country, that it will be occasionally an object of inquiry, if a proper Saxon race, or even if a mixed people composed of Saxons and Scandinavians, did not inhabit the land prior to the occupation of it by the Norwegians, who had made it their abode after the usurpation of their country by Harold Harfagre. It was now evident, that the stones which encompassed the isle as a sort of defence, were derived from the dilapidation of sepulchral tumuli that covered the stone coffins. Probably this wall might have been hastily thrown up by the shipwrecked party belonging to the Duke de Medina's flag-ship ; for, in a different part of the country, where another galleon belonging to the Spanish Armada was cast away, an islet was fortified in nearly a similar manner. Little Holm is composed of epidotic sienite, and secondary rocks of a conglomerate JO FITFIEL HEAD. flTER II. and arenaceous structure; an interesting exposure here takes place of the junction of the two formations. In Cross Holm, a contiguous islet, nothing but sienite occurs. FITFIEL HEAD. In landing at the head of Quendal Bay, the sienite made its appearance close to the house of Mr Ogilvie, being no longer modified by the presence of epidote. In a north- westerly direction, therefore, being that in which the rock is said to have been occasionally exposed by the spade of the labourer, it was proper to proceed, until the granitic mass should become fully exposed on the western coast.— As the fine corn lands of Quendal, and the barren sand-hills to the east of them retreat from view, we become acquainted with the different inhabitants of the Shetland scatholds or commons. The diminutive fleecy tenants of the hills resemble in their form, their nimbleness and fieetness, the Argali or wild sheep of Siberia.* The scene is again varied by the occasional appearance of a little barrel-bellied broad-backed equuleus, of a brown or black colour, which Buchanan, the Scottish historian, has described as "asino haud major;" that is, not larger than a donkey. When the shelty is in his winter or spring garb, it is difficult to suppose that his progenitors were the same animals which travellers have described as prancing over the arid tracts of Arabia ; — the long shaggy hair with which he is clothed, has more the appearance of a polar dress, or of some arctic livery, specially dispensed to the quadruped retainers of the Genius of Hialtland. Another ranger of the hills is of a revolting kind ; he is a little ugly brindled monster, the very epitome of the wild boar, yet not larger than the English terrier : " His bristled back a trench impal'd appears, And stands erected like a field of spears." This lordling of the Shetland scatholds and arable lands ranges undisturbed over his free demesnes, and, in quest of the roots of plants or earthworms, hollows out deep furrows and trenches in the best pastures, — destroys in his progress all the nests which he can find of plovers, curlieus or chalders, — bivouacs in some potato field, which he rarely quits until he has excavated a ditch large enough to bury within it a dozen of fellow-commoners of his own size and weight.! Nor is the reign of this petty tyrant altogether bloodless. When a young lamb is just dropped, it is then that he foams, and, as Blackmore has pompously sung, " flourishes the iv'ry war ;" never quitting his ground until the grass is tinged with the red slaughter of his victim. Continuing in the same north-westerly course, the ocean at length appeared full in view, and near it the fresh-water lake of Lunabister, frequented by numerous web-footed birds. The Cliff Hills, which stretched out far to the north, presented the form of a long, bleak mountain-ridge, muffled up in wet, exhaled mists, and sloping on each side towards the wild superb waste of the Atlantic. For several miles the coast seemed broken into creeks, * To this race they have been compared by Mr Shirreflf in his Agriculture of Shetland. t See Low's Fauna Oread, for a description of the Sus Scrofa of this latitude. ITKR II.] FITFIEL HEAD. J I islets, and sea holms, and, in their pent-up channels, amidst the white foam of tilting waves, the poet might describe the sea-nymphs as keeping up a perpetual coil. In journeying along the west of the lake, the direction of this course was terminated by a little inlet of the sea named Spigga, where the sienite of Dunrossness became fully exposed, where it was in junction with the clay-slate of the Cliff Hills, and with interstrata of homblend-slate and quartz. After walking due south from Spigga for a distance of two miles along high banks of sienite, this rock had the appearance of reposing upon strata of gneiss and mica-slate. At this place commences the promontory of Fitfiel. The clay-slate of which this headland is composed, has so pearly a lustre, that when the rays of the sun shine fully upon it, a whitish appearance is produced, which seems to have suggested to the early Scandinavian settlers the name of Fitfiel, or the White Mountain. At some little distance from the place where the clay-slate begins, is to be seen a large vein of iron-mica, running from east to west, about 12 feet broad, which was discovered several years ago by a company of miners who worked in the vicinity. This ore is supposed to contain about 70 or 80 per cent, of iron, and by the miners of the continent would probably be considered of some conse- quence. Iron-mica is described in mineralogical works as melting better than common iron-glance, but as requiring a greater addition of lime-stone ; as affording an iron which is sometimes cold-short, but which is well fitted for cast-ware.* Dr Fleming several years ago very properly recommended this vein to the attention of practical mineralogists. From this point of fock, as we cast our eyes to the north, an extensive view of the country is exhibited ; yet nothing is to be observed but the most frequent constituents of Shetland scenery, — islets, holms, creeks, precipices, and a long line of ragged coast. Bear- ing off the most distant extremity of the Mainland is the island of Foula, supposed to have been the Ultima Thule which Agricola saw from Orkney. An inland survey of the country shews nothing but a trackless brown desert of hill and dale, which the Forest Nymphs have for centuries forsaken. Towards Fitfiel I found the ascent to gradually increase ; a few signs of cultivation appeared, and some cottages were interspersed among the hills. Still pursuing a course along precipitous banks, " where the murmuring surge That on th' unnumber'd idle pebbles chafes, Cannot be heard so high ;" a short walk led to the summit of Fitfiel Head, and to a view of the southerly ocean, — Fair Isle appearing like a speck in the vast expanse. On the easterly brow of this hill may be seen the estuary of Quendal, studded with sea holms ; at the head of the bay are fertile corn lands, a neat white farm-house, and various groups of cottages, around each of which rude dikes of stone or turf irregularly wind, and to the east of these a cheerless contrast of barren sand-hills. More remote is a straitened tongue of land, clothed with a green sward, jutting out far into the sea, and swelling out at its extremity into a bold promontory : — this is the Head of Sumburgh. The prospect in this direction is closed by the ocean, which, * Jameson's Mineralogy, 2d edit., vol. iii., p. 242. 72 GARTHSNESS. [ITER II. invading the low sandy beach that forms the easterly declivity of the sand-hills, channels out the shore into numerous meandring creeks. In unison with this highly varied, although woodless scenery, are the hoarse screams of the sea-fowl that build among the crags of Fitfiel. Occasionally the noble, generous falcon whom Isaac Walton's sportsman, in disdain of the Imperial Eagle, has dubbed " Jove's servant in ordinary," deigns to visit this proud eminence. GARTHSNESS. In descending the heights of Fitfiel towards Quendal Bay, I crossed the small ridge of Garthsness, composed of mica-slate and gneiss. Close to the sea there was a piece of ground approaching to a semicircular form, and naturally protected on the west by high banks, on the south by the ocean, and strengthened in other places by artificial embank- ments of earth. This fortification was probably the hasty workmanship of the marauding parties of Highlanders, who are said to have visited Shetland for a long series of years, and to have secured for themselves within temporary strongholds their booty of corn and cattle, until a sufficient freight of plunder was collected, with which they might sail away to the Western Isles. At the extremity of Garthsness there is a bed of iron-pyrites,'running north and south, of the width of 8)4 feet.* This mineral is not worked as an ore of iron, but is in Germany principally valued for the sulphur which may be obtained from it by sublimation, and for the green vitriol or sulphate of iron which it aflords by exposure to the air, either with or without previous roasting.! About thirty years ago, Shetland was visited by a mining company from London, who, by the suggestion of an unskillful, trading projector, under- took to work this bed of iron-pyrites, in the expectation that it necessarily contained a deposit of copper. An agreement was entered into with the owner of the estate, for the purpose of introducing a party of Cornish miners into the country, who immediately fell to work upon the mineral, and sunk shafts in various directions of the hill. In the mean time, the wise promoter of the scheme undertook, during the progress of the work, the labour of essaying. The iron-pvrites of Garthsness suffered (as the ancient chemists would say) all the vexations and the martyrizations of metals in the work : solution, ablution, sublimation, cohobation, calcination, ceration, and fixation. But the martyrization was in vain : it is doubtful if a single grain of copper was ever extiacted from the ore. At length, a Shetland wight, ambitious for a quiz against the Dousterswivel of the party, slily dropt among the contents of the crucible a copper penny. The effect which was produced exceeded his most ardent hopes of mischief. The crucible was taken from the furnace ; its contents were examined, and joy sparkled on every mining countenance. " I know not," said the deluded visionary, who, from his suggestion of the mining scheme, was allowed to have a * The account of the Garthsness vein is given in p. 143, of this Work ; [the Geological portion]. t Jameson's Mineralogy, 2d edit., vol. iii., p. 309. ITER II.] SUMBURGH. 73 proportion of its profits, " Whether I or Bedford's Duke, with all his immense estates, ought most to be envied." This vein of Garthsness " is the rich Peru, And there within, Sir, are the golden mines, Great Solomon's Ophir ! he was sailing to't Three years ; but we have reached it in ten months. This is the day, wherein to all my friends I will pronounce the happy word, Be rich." But the unfortunate company at whose expense this delectable comedy was got up, were left, notwithstanding the fine promising indications of the laboratory, to wait so long for a cargo of metal from the Shetland Ophir, that their patience was at length exhausted. An emissary from their fraternity was dispatched to Garthsness, sufficiently well qualified to judge of the probable success of the undertaking. He saw the vein, and all the labours of the experimentalist were dissipated infumo. " Why, now you smoky prosecutor of Nature ! Now, do you see, that something's to be done, Besides your beech-coal and your cor'sive waters, Your crosslets, crucibles, and cucurbites ? You must have stuff brought home to you to work on." (Probably alluding to the coppe? penny-piece dropt into the crucible!) " And yet, you think I am at no expence, In searching out these veins, then following them, Then trying them out. 'Fore God, my intelligence Costs me more money than my share comes to In these rare works."* SUMBURGH. Before quitting the parish of Dunrossness, I paid a visit to the Ness and Links of Sumburgh. After passing along the head of the Bay of Quendal, the rocks appeared to consist either of agglutinated fragments of quartz, granite and felspar, or of a very loose and arenaceous variety of sandstone. Upon crossing the hills east of Quendal Bay, a sandstone succeeded, which much resembled the most common species of primitive quartz rock. I now directed my course to an open inlet of the sea, smaller than that of Quendal, named West Voe. Here, it may be proper to explain a few provincial terms expressive of the different circumstances under which the sea invades the land. The name of Voe, from the Scandinavian vogr, is given to a narrow inlet of the sea of moderate extent ; but to an estuary of considerable width, the common English term of Bay is applied. An inlet of diminutive size is called a Gio or Geo, from the Scandinavian gea. Some idea, though certainly an incomplete one, may be formed of the comparative magnitude of a Voe and a Gio, by supposing that the former, if deep enough, is capable from its width, of affording a * Johnson's Alchymist. 74 SUMBURGH. [ITER n. harbour for ships, but that the latter is, from its narrowness, only proper for boats. There is still another small inlet of the sea distinguished by the Shetlanders as being more open than the Gio ; it is named a Bite, the word having been probably derived from the popular phrases of English or Scotch sailors, among whom I have occasionally heard it used. The Bite of the Shetland shores is nothing more than the latinised expression of indentation of coast, the low metaphor of both terms (morsu frangere) in nowise differing from each other. A keen etymologist, indeed, might be at little loss to justify the use of the term Bite, in its application to invasions of the sea on a coast, by citations of the highest classical authority : as, for instance, by a passage from Horace, " Non rura, qua? Liris quieta, Mordet aqua taciturnus omnis. Hnu at HORAT. I. 31. Francis, in translating these lines, was unwilling to give the closest translation of the term mordet, but it is questionable if he has got rid of all the vulgarity of the expression, by the following clumsy version : " Nor the rich fields that Liris leaves, And eats away with silent waves." The sand-hills which appear as we approach West Voe from Quendal, are agreeably contrasted with the grassy Links of Sumburgh to the east, and the green headland of Sum- burgh. On the confines that mark the devastation of the blowing sand, are to be seen the ruins of buildings, the foundations of which have wholly or in part yielded to the removal of the light arenaceous particles upon which they were improvidently built. An old, plain family mansion, seated in the middle of the green sward of Sumburgh, and erected by the Scottish family of Bruce, remains entire ; but at no great distance to the south, being close to the seat of the sand-flood, may be seen the shell of two or three rooms of an ancient house, built in a very plain manner, without any manifestation of a castellated style of architecture. The walls appear of a remarkable thickness, though sunk in several places by the dislodgment of the sand from beneath the foundations. This dwelling was erected by Lord Robert Stuart, the last and 27th Abbot of Holyrood, who was afterwards Earl of Orkney. He was for thirty years the indefatigable persecutor of the ancient udallers of Orkney and Shetland, in his endeavours to subvert their laws, and to wrest from them their landed possessions. Robert Stuart was the natural son of James V. by Euphemia, daughter of Lord Elphinston. He was generally addressed in the court of Queen Mary by the title of Lord Robert, and very early in life was appointed Abbot of Holyrood*. When the Popish.. dignitaries of Scotland were compelled, for the sake of securing their benefices, to join the cause of the Reformers, the pliant abbot readily fell in with the prevailing religious sentiments of the times, and probably yielded in zeal to none of those elect, * Chalmers's Caledonia, vol. ii. p. 753. " As the last corruption of a corrupt age," remarks this writer, " the King's bastards were introduced into the greatest bishoprics, and the richest abbeys." ITER II.] SUMBURGH. 75 " Who prove their doctrine orthodox, By apostolic blows and knocks." When the abbot had turned Protestant, he obtained in marriage the hand of Lady Jane Kennedy of the house of Cassilis ; and, in a short period, the Queen settled a hand- some annuity upon him, out of her thirds of the revenue of Holyrood, in support of his three legitimate children, as well as of two that were base born ; for, it may be briefly hinted that the abbot had not in his catholic days imposed upon himself the strictest rules of chastity which might have been expected from his religious order. In the year 1569, Lord Robert exchanged his abbey for the temporal estates of the bishopric of Orkney and Shetland, receiving at the same time a feu of the lands of the crown : it was then that he took possession of his estates in a mode sufficiently indicative of the arbitrary rule which he meant to exercise over the islands. It was the custom of the 16th century, for the nobility and gentry to attach to their retinue a considerable number of men, sometimes to the amount of 200, who were not kept constantly in the house, like other menial servants, but were dispersed over different parts of the lord's demesnes, giving their occasional presence for the purpose of ostentation. Lord Robert brought with him a great number of dependants of this description into Orkney and Shetland, who, from the arms which they constantly wore, agreeably to the fashion of the times, were occasionally named Suddartis or Soldiers, but they were also styled in these islands broken men,- — an epithet that stands in need of some explanation. Retinues of serving men were engaged, with this intention, — that besides giving their attendance for the sake of pomp, their weapons should be ready to decide the quarrels of their masters, or for the perpetration of any excesses or disorders in a country that might be required. It was, therefore, by no means necessary that retainers should be chosen from that class of society who were addicted to the most regular or honest occupations of life : — for, indeed, to no rank of people but of the lowest description, could the conditions of entering the train of a great man be agreeable ; such dependents were required to serve for little or no pay, to receive only the perquisite of arms and an uniform livery, and to be content with the chance of quartering themselves upon the country at large, without being made responsible for any dissolute habits to which they might be prone. It was on this account that the name of a livery or lithry, answering to a retinue of serving men, long became in Scotland the bye-word that was used to signify a despicable crowd.* Lord Robert Stuart's train of dependents that were introduced into Orkney and Shetland, appear to have been composed of individuals of the precise stamp described ; they acquired the appellation of broken men, a term of opprobrium that finds no synonym but in the more modern word vagabonds. It is probable that the moral qualifica- tions of Lord Robert's retinue were not very dissimilar to what might have been found in England about the same period among the kindred description of worthies whose habits This is the meaning assigned to Lithiy by Dr Jamieson, though he does not express the same opinion of the origin of the word as I have ventured to give. " In came sic a rangel o' gentles," says an old Scottish writer quoted by the learned etymologist, '' and a lithry o' hanyiel slyps at their tail, that in a weaven the house wis gaen like Lawren fair." Hanyicl, says Dr Jamieson, denotes something in a dangling and dcpemient state, and slyps, (from Tuet. sleflp), a train or retinue. Lithry or livery, is, there- fore, suitably associated with this expression. There is an excellent description in Mr Douce 's Illustrations of Shakespeare, of tke antient English Serving-men in livery, whose characters are well enough expressed by the Scottish idea of a Lithry. j6 SUMBURGH. ITER II. are so well related by early authors ; and that there was not one of these broken men that could not "rob a ripper of his fish, — cut off a convoy of butter, — or drive a regiment of geese afore him, and not a hiss heard, nor a wing of the troops disordered."* Lord Robert employed an armed retinue of this description, who were dispersed over the islands, to guard all the common ferries, for the purpose of preventing complaints against his exactions reaching the Government of Scotland : in the mean time, he com- mitted what depredations he pleased, — making illegal exactions of rent, and (in the phraseology of the time) gripping lands from the udallers ; until, at length, a petition reached the roval ear, stating, "That the inhabitants were so oppressit be companies of suddartis and others broken men, dependers upon Lord Robert Steuart, that they were all utterly zvrakit and fiereit for ever." Lord Robert was then recalled from the islands, but was soon after reinstated in his possessions, with the title of an Earl ; " when," says a worthy prelate, "he found out ane uther way to doe his turne. He became Bischope in omnibus, and set his rentall of teynds upon these Vdellands, above the availe [value], yea triple above the availe." At the same time, all mortifications and penances for crimes, under the cognizance of the Church, consisted in loss of land ; and thus, as Bishop Grahame has added, " the Earl's lands grew daily, as adulteries and incests increased in the country :"f — for these oppressions he had frequently his grant taken from him, but had always interest enough at Court to get it leturned. — His Lordship built a palace at Birsay in Orkney, which was remarkable for nothing so much as the whimsical mottoes which adorned its walls. One was " Sic fuit, est, et erit," which the pious men of the time con- strued as blasphemous ; but this is perhaps a mistake ; the Earl might have meant nothing more in the expression than an allusion to the unchangeable nature of his moral habits : — Sic fuit, est, et erit ; that is, A man such as he always was, — such is he now, and such he ever will be. Another of the Birsay mottoes is said to have highly displeased the Monarch of Scotland. " When we entered the palace gate," said Brand, the Missionary, about the year 1700, " we saw above it that inscription so much talk't of, and reputed treasonable by King James VI. : — ' Robertas Stuartus, filius Jacobi Quinti Rex Scotorum, hoc sedificium instruxit :' which inscription could not but offend the lawful heir of the Crown ; for it cannot well be thought, that the Earl and all about him, were such blunderers in the Latin tongue, as to put down Rex instead of Regis, if there had been no design in \L"% The simple Missionary seems to have erred in his conjecture. A grammatical knowledge of Latin was by no means the indispensable acquirement of a courtier of the 16th century, even though he should have been created the merry Abbot of Holyrood. The Earl died at an advanced age, and though he was not sainted by the udallers of Orkney and Shetland, yet he was at least respected by his own posterity ; for when, in thirty years afterwards, an irreverend churl had erected his pew in the Cathedral of Kirkwall, immediately over Robert Stuart's revered remains, he was formally and publicly admonished by the Lord Bishop of Orkney, "not to incur the indignation of such noblemen as the Eatl of Carrick, and others * See the qualifications of the broken men of England in Beaumont and Fletcher's Beggar's Bush, Act v, Scene ist. t Peterkin's Ancient Rentals of Orkney, No. iii. p. 21. } Brand's Description of Orkney, p. 31. ITER II.] sumburgh. yy of the worthy name of Stuart ; for it would come to his Majestie's ears how such persone did sit there and trample upon his Hienes' graund-uncle's bellie."*— Such were the eventful features in the annals of Robert Stuart, once Abbot of Holyrood, afterwards a Protestant reformer, but whose latest amusements of life were concentrated in the act of monopolizing all the lands of Orkney and Shetland, whether they belonged to the Crown, the Church, or the unfortunate Udallers. After loitering a few moments near the ancient mansion of Earl Robert, his viitues not inspiring any extraordinary sensation for the walls associated with his memory, I ascended the adjoining promontory of Sumburgh, — a headland of considerable extent, the easterly side of which having yielded considerably to the ocean, is formed into a steep precipice. It is proposed upon this tongue of land to erect, without delay, a stately pharos, the accom- plishment of which is assigned to Mr Stevenson, whose execution of the Bell-Rock Light- house is a monument of skill so honourable to the architecture of Scotland.! It is to be hoped that other beacons, equally required on the north and west of the coast, may render these islands no longer the terror of the northern mariner, who, fearing to be benighted near their destructive cliffs, chuses to brave the elements of the open sea, rather than make the still more perilous attempt to steer for the security which the numerous harbours of Shetland are well calculated to afford. But the time is probably iiot very remote, when it may be said of this country as of other parts of Britain, -Lo ! ports expand Free as the winds and waves their sheltering arms, Lo ! streaming comfort o'er the troubled deep, On every pointed coast the light-house towers." Thomson. From Sumburgh Head we have a view of what is named the Roust, — this being a term of Scandinavian origin, used to signify a strong tumultuous current, occasioned by the meeting of rapid tides. J The sea being calm, there was the appearance of a turbulent stream of tide, about two or three miles broad, in the midst of smooth water, extending a short distance from Sumburgh, and then gradually dwindling away, so as lo terminate in a long slender dark line, bearing towards Fair Isle. The explanation of this appearance is, perhaps, to be given in connection with that wave of tide propagated from the great diurnal undulation of the Atlantic, which, in the progress of completing its circuit round Britain, is described by naturalists as passing to the west of Orkney, — from thence to the north of the British Isles, and then taking a southerly direction, so as to form a ridge that extends between Buchan and the Naze of Norway.§ The tides of Shetland appear to be induced by lesser currents, generated during the progress of the wave along the westerly, * Peterkin's Collections, Append, p. 53. t Sumburgh Head Light-house has been completed since I visited Shetland. A short description of it will be found in Note 7 to the present Iter. X Isl. roest, must, aestuaria, vortices maris, Verel, Ind. Supposed by one author to be synonimous with the A. S. rase, stridor, impetus fluvii. — See Jamieson's Etym. Diet, word roust. § See Playfair'* Outlines of Natural Philosophy, vol. ii. p. 338., and Young's Lectures on Natural Philosophy, vol. i. yS SUMBURGH. [ITER II northerly, and easterly parts of the country, and these set in nearly an hour sooner on the west than on the east coast of these islands. At the beginning of the flood, the tide in the Roust is directed to the eastward, until it passes the promontory of Sumburgh ; it then meets with a south tide, that has been flowing on the east side of the country ; when a divergement takes place to the south-east, and lastly to the south. At high-water there is a short cessation of the tide called the Still ; the ebb now begins, first setting north-west and then north, until the recommencement of the flood. The various directions of the tides of Shetland are no doubt owing in a considerable degree to modifications which take place from the number and form of the various headlands and inlets of the coast ; but since they are propagated at successive intervals of time, it is evident that at the northerly and southerly extremities of the Shetland Archipelago, they would be naturally opposed to each other. A gentleman informed me that he has been for five days becalmed in a sloop between Fitfiel Head and Sumburgh Head, which are only distant from each other about three miles, without being able to pass either point ; one current carrying the vessel into the eastern, and the other into the western ocean : the sloop was often transported by the tide very near the shore, yet another tide always carried her off again.* But although there is an opposition of currents from Sumburgh to Fair Isle, and no doubt from thence to Orkney, the Roust is that part of the stream lying at a small distance from the promontory, the. force of which is probably encreased by its proximity to the coast, and by the shallowness, of the water. Here there is always a heavy sea, bnt in a storm the waves are said to rise mountains high. Drayton has given a good description of the occurrence of similar phenomena at the Race of Portland, not however unmixed with a tolerable proport^n of poetic bathos : " Some coming from the east, some from the setting sun, The liquid mountains still together mainly run, Wave woundeth wave again, and billow billow gores, And topsy-turvy so fly tumbling to the shores." In the Roust of Sumburgh there is a considerable fishery for the Gadus carbonarius, or coal-fish, the fry of which, named Sillocks, have been already described as entering the bays in myriads. The Gadus carbonarius is known in Shetland by the name of Seethe, although in Feroe and Norway this appellation is given to the full grown Gadus virens. Naturalists have described the coal-fish as being of a very dark or black colour, — hence its name ; but this term is ill applied to those specimens of the fish that I saw in Shetland, which were rather of a lightish brown. The white lateral line with which the fish is marked, has been properly considered as a very distinctive character. The coal-fish, or Shetland seethe, is of a large size, and is said sometimes to attain the length of three feet. It is correctly represented as of an elegant shape, with a small head, sharpened snout, and a lower jaw exceeding the upper in length. I have tasted the fish in a fresh state, but it was dry and coarse. It is, however, cured for sale, and is then sent to a Scotch market, * I am indebted for my information on the direction of the tides at Sumburgh to the kindness of William Henderson, Ks- 37o. 86 BURGH OF MOUSA. [ITER n darts, and stones ; it is said to have even served the use of a tent, so as to afford a kind of shelter for the night, and when many of such bucklers were locked together in the form of a circle, they constituted a rampart. It may be, lastly, observed, that there is an allusion in the Teutonic Romance to the defensive Burgh, of which a noble specimen, probably built antecedent to the eighth century, is next to be considered.* BURGH OF MOUSA. I passed along the shore of the open bay of Sandwick, which has been the grave of many seamen, who, by mistaking it for Bressay Harbour, have suffered all the horrors of shipwreck upon its exposed shores. In crossing a headland to the east of the Inlet, a small low island, named Mousa, separated from the Mainland by a narrow strait, first rises to view : this spot is little diversified with hill and dale ; it contains one good house with out- buildings and cottages. But the most conspicuous object that lines its shores is the Burgh of Mousa, a circular building, which, if it did but taper towards its summit, would present no unapt similitude of a modern glass-house. This ancient fortress stands close to the water's edge ; by crossing, therefore, in a boat, a narrow channel, little more than half a mile in breadth, we are landed immediately under its walls. The Burgh of Mousa occupies a circular site of ground, somewhat more than fifty feet in diameter, being constructed of middle sized schistose stones of a tolerable uniform magnitude, well laid together, without the intervention of any cement. This very simple round edifice attains the elevation of 42 feet ; it swells out, or bulges from its foundation, and draws smaller as it approches the top, when it "is again cast out from its lesser diameter ; which singularity of construction is intended to obviate the possibility of scaling the walls. The door that leads to the open area contained within the structure, is a small narrow passage, so low that an entrance is only to be accomplished by crawling upon the hands and knees ; and in creeping through it, the wall appears of the great thick- ness of 15 feet, naturally leading to the suspicion of a vacuity within. On arriving at the open circular area included within this mural shell, I found the diameter of the space to be about 21 feet. On that part of the wall within the court, which is nearly opposite to the entrance, the attention is excited by a number of small apertures resembling the holes of a pigeon house. There are three or four vertical rows of them, having each an unequal pro- portion of openings, varying from eight to eighteen in number. It was now evident that the mural shell of the structure was hollow, and that it contained chambers, to which these holes imparted a feeble supply of light and air. Beneath the whole, at a distance from the ground, there is a door that leads to a winding flight of stone steps, of the width of 3 feet, which communicates with all these apartments ; I then discovered that the shell of the Burgh was composed of two concentric walls, each of about 4^ to 5 feet in breadth, and For additional remarks on the Ancient Weapons of Shetland, see Note S. ITKR II.] BURGH OF MOUSA. 87 that a space of nearly a similar dimension was devoted to the construction of the inner apartments. In ascending these steps, which wound gradually to the top of the wall, I observed that they communicated at regular intervals with many chambers or galleries, one above another, that went round the building. These were severally of such a height, that it was possible to walk within them nearly upright. The roof of the lowest chamber was the floor of the second, and after this manner seven tiers were raised. On reaching the highest step of the flight of stairs, there appeared no reason for supposing that any roof had ever protected the summit of the building, so that the Burgh of Mousa must have been originally nothing more than a circular mural shell, open to the top. The height of the inside wall was 35 feet, being 7 feet less than that of the outside ; this difference was partly owing to the accumulation of stones and earth, which had filled the inner court. The mode was now evident in which this Burgh had been intended to give security to the persons and property of the ancient inhabitants of Shetland against the sudden landing of predatory adventurers. The tiers of apartments contained within the thick walls would afford a shelter to women and children from the missile weapons of assaulters, besides being repositaries for grain and other kinds of property, as well as for the stores whereby a long siege might be sustained. The low narrow door within the court, which admits of no entrance but in a creeping posture, might be easily secured at a short notice by large blocks of stone. It has been remarked of the rude forts similar to these which occur on the shores of Scandinavia, that they were seldom taken by an enemy, unless by surprise, or after a long blockade : that frequently terraces and artificial banks were raised near that side of the wall, which was the lowest, and that the besieged were then annoyed with arrows, stones, boiling- water, or melted pitch, being thrown into the fort ; — offensive weapons which they did not neglect to return.* The history of the Burgh of Mousa confirms the correctness of this observation ; its high walls bulging out from their foundation, defied any attempt to scale them ; for, when they were encompassed by one of the Earls of Orkney, he had no hopes of inducing the fortress to surrender, but by cutting off all supplies of food, and then waiting the event of a long siege. Altogether the building was well adapted for resisting the attacks of the ancient piratical hordes of these seas, who, from the short summers of Northern latitudes, and from the incapability of their vessels to susta:n a winter's navigation, durst not allow themselves to be detained on the coast by any tedious operations of assault. Before quitting the Burgh of Mousa, I endeavoured to explore some of the chambers belonging to it, but owing to the ruined state of the floors, the attempt was too hazardous. A lively historian has remarked, that in Scandinavia, such recesses were often devoted in days of yore to the security of young damsels of distinction, who were never safe while so many bold warriors were rambling up and down in quest of adventures. It is also surmised, that galleries like these which ran winding around the walls, were, from the direc- tion which they took, not unfrequently distinguished by the name of Serpents or Dragons ; and hence the many allegorical romaunts that were coined concerning princesses of great beauty being guarded by such monsters. It is unlucky, however, for the historical interest * Mallet's Northern Antiquities, vol. i., p. 244. 88 BURGH OF MOUSA. [ITER H of the Dragon-fortress of Mousa, that within the dismal serpentine windings of its apart- ments, was confined a damsel past her prime of life, and as well entitled to be "shrined for her brittleness," as any of the frail ladies worthie of antiquity.* In the fourteenth century, when, by the rights of udal succession, there were joint Earls of Orkney, Dame Margareta, the widowed-mother of one of them, listened to the lawless importunity of the gay Brunnius. Harold, her son, became impatient of the family disgrace, and banished from the islands his mother's paramour, as well as the illegitimate offspring that were the fruits of the con^ nection. But, in the course of a short time, Dame Margareta's beauties attracted the notice of a more honourable suitor, who was no other than Harold's partner in the Earldom of Orkney and Shetland. Erlend profferred love to the Dame, which she returned, but as her son, from some cause, was averse to the nuptials, the parties entered into a tender engage- ment without his consent, and afterwards fled from his fury with all speed into Mousa. Then must Harold needs follow them, his hostile barks sailing in pursuit, as fast as if all the winds of heaven had driven them ; and then, anon, fled the Dame Margareta and Erlend into the fort, within the dark recesses of which they nestled like two pigeons in a dove-cot. The Burgh was beset with troops, but so impregnable was its construction, that the assaulter found he had no chance of reducing it, but by cutting off all supplies of food, and by this means waiting the result of a tedious siege. And now turn we to the gentle pair in the fortress, that we may speak of what pain they must there endure, what cold, what hunger, and what thirst. In such a dog-hole, — "a conjurer's circle gives content above it ; — a hawk's mew is a princely palace to it." — But Harold had powerful foes in other places wherewith to contend, and, on this account, he gave heed to the advice of his friends, that Erlend should be retained as a friend and not as an enemy, and that he ought not to despise the new family alliance. A reconciliation took place, and, then, with great joy, returned the parties to their several pursuits, well satisfied with each other. Such is the story chronicled by Torfseus, concerning the siege of Moseyaburgum and the loves of Dame Margareta and Erlend, her last leman.t On quitting the Burgh of Mousa, I felt no little regret at seeing the ruinous state to which some parts of it were reduced. The form of the low, narrow porch, which was nearly entire when Mr Dow saw it about fifty years ago, was much impaired. Mr Stevenson, the engineer to the Northern Light-houses, in visiting Mousa, had laudably interceded with the proprietor for the preservation of the structure. But it can scarcely be expected, that an individual, who may feel little interest in such buildings, should launch out into any expence, with the view of gratifying occasional visitors to the islands. It is from some public fund that repairs of this kind ought to be defrayed ; and certainly the integrity of the Burgh of Mousa deserves to be in Scotland of national interest, since a more perfect specimen of the earliest description of Teutonic fortresses does not perhaps exist in Europe. * Mallet's Northern Antiquities, vol. L, p. 243. The story of King Regner Lodbrog's Slaughter of a Snake, has been sup- posed to imply that " he had surmounted the winding and misshapen wall of the fortress, in which a lovely virgin was confined." Sir Walter Scott properly considers this explanation as forced. See his Notes on Sir Tristrem, p. 295. t See Torfaeus's Rerum Oread. Hist., p. 131. — For a Representation of the Burgh of Mousa, see Plate III., Fig. 2, and Plate of Antiquities in the Appendix. ITER II.] BURROLAND. 89 I am inclined to date the erection of these holds to an early period, long previous to the arrival of Harold Harfagre. Eccard, indeed, in a specimen of a Teutonic romance of the 8th century, has shewn that they were common at that time ; but from their simplicity of con- trivance, it is not impossible but that their date might have been some centuries before, and that some of them in Shetland might have been thrown up by the Saxons, who peopled the Orcades and were defeated by Theodosius. The name which the Scots gave to these buildings of Pictish, is scarcely entitled to the smallest degree of notice. The appellation of Pictish Burghs, or, indeed, the notion that a race under the name of Picts, inhabited Orkney or Shetland at a remote period, is not attributable to Scandinavian Historians, who were best acquainted with the history of these islands, but to Scottish writers. The Scots appear, for several centuries, to have given the name of Pictish to every building, respecting the origin of which the tradition was lost : hence, a famous Roman Wall in Scotland was named Pictish. But as another burgh appeared on the opposite shores, though rising a few yards only above "the surface of the ground, I deferred extending my speculations on the circumstances connected with the origin of these structures until I had made additional observations. BURROLAND. On sailing across a narrow channel to the Mainland, I arrived at Burroland, or the Land of the Burgh. This is a defence that seems to have been originally of greater extent than that of Mousa. The inside diameter of this circular fort is about 48 feet, and it is formed of concentric walls, each from 10 to 12 feet in width, between which are many chambers. The fort is situated on a point of rock near the sea, the land-side of which was originally defended by a stone rampart. Fifty years ago, Mr Low of Orkney detected, in a situation between the burgh and the extreme point of the rock, numbers of foundations of small houses, generally 14 feet long, and 6 or 8 wide, with a foot or two of the wall still standing. He supposed them to have been co-eval with the burgh itself, and to have formed a sort of huts, to which the inhabitants might fly upon any occasion of common danger, in order to be safe under the shelter of the burgh. It is, however, doubtful if this view be strictly correct. There is a greater probability that, buildings not temporary but in- tended for constant occupation were erected near the burgh, and that originally there was no small number of inhabitants collected in any place, that were not provided with a fast- ness of this kind. The name of Burgh or Beorg at first implied nothing more than what is explained from the Saxon dialect ; — i.e. a place of defence.* But from the circumstance that a beorg or fortress was an usual appendage to towns, is transmitted to us the name of Burgh, which, in more modern Saxon, stands for the town itself, f * Bairgs, a Northern word, and the A. S. Beorg, burg, are explained mons, acervus, munimentum. Thus, the name of Burg would be given to the site of any rock naturally defended, or to any circular mound or embankment of earth and stones, or to any regular built structure like the Shetland Burgh. t It has been properly remarked, that Burgh, as a modern Saxon term, signifies either a castle or market town. — Set Whittaker's Hist, of Manchester. M 90 SANDLODGE. [ITER II. The design of the burgh at length became evident. The imagination may easily figure to itself, on the site of Burroland or the vicinity of Mousa, the first rudiments of a fortified city. Instead of the stately collonades, the palaces, or the lofty fanes of some modern city, environed with regular bastions, curtains, ditches and out-works, we may fancy a few low huts, constructed from rude boulder stones, and protected by roofs of turf, dispersed in the vicinity of a small circular mural shell that forms the defence of this aboriginal garri- son town. As the beacon of the hill streams with fire, and an alarm is given that an enemy is off the coast, the inhabitants fly to secure within the fort the property of their dwellings, and to prepare for a vigorous defence, whilst the interior of the walls affords an asylum for helpless women and children. SANDLODGE. A short walk of about a mile leads to Sandlodge, the seat of John Bruce, Esq. of Sumburgh. This is a well built white modern mansion, situated close to the shore, adjoining to which is a pavement strewed over with the produce of some veins that were wrought a few years ago. Haematites and bog iron-ore have made the road as black as Erebus, and caused it to resemble the vicinity of a smelting furnace. The mineralogist will find some amusement in examining the ores which lie in heaps near the old shafts ; these have been by Mr Bruce judiciously preserved : — they present satisfactory indications of the contents of the vein, and may afford a criterion of the hopes to be entertained from any future prosecution of the mining operations of Sandlodge.* It is now upwards of twenty years since a party of Welsh miners wrought these veins, but without advantage ; some time afterwards, in the year 1802, another company under- took the working of them, who spent nine or ten thousand pounds in the undertaking, but were still unsuccessful. Brown haematite was a plentiful production of the vein, but copper- pyrites constituted the object of search : at the surface it was found much mixed with haematite, but towards the bottom of the mine disseminated in sparry iron-stone. The scarcity of the ore, when found imbedded in this matrix, and the difficulty of working it, were stated to be the principal reasons for the abandonment of the undertaking. The copper-ore, after being washed and dressed, was sent to England, where the best sold for ^70 per ton, and in the course of two years, 470 tons of copper-ore were exported from this mine to Swansea. Dr Fleming has remarked, that the captain of the mining party did not seem acquainted either with the composition or value of the sparry ironstone or haematite ; that the persons who were appointed to conduct the work were ignorant of the art of working mines, and of the nature and value of the ores they met with ; and that the mine appeared to deserve the attention of an enterprizing company, under the direction of an active and intelligent manager. The same gentleman has recommended, that the ore, * The carbonates of copper obtained from the vein were uncommonly fine ; they were in the form of capillary fibres, radiating from a centre. I was presented with a specimen of this ore by Mr Bruce, to whose polite attention to me when visiting this place I am much indebted. rITFRIL CONINGSBURGH. 9 1 instead of being exported, should be smelted near the mine.* CONINGSBURGH. Fiom Sandlodge, I proceeded along the banks of an open inlet of the sea, commanded by the Cliff Hills, and, after passing by the ruins of an old kirk, came into the parish of Coningsburgh. The name given to this district was probably antecedent to the conquest of Shetland by Harold Harfagre, having had an allusion to some Saxon or Scandinavian leader, bearing the Teutonic title of Cyning, and to some burgh, as of Burroland or Mousa, calcu- lated to afford, from its contiguity, a ready protection on the approach of an enemy. In course of time, as the term Burgh expressed a settlement or residence, the fortress being an essential part of it, the appellation of Conigsburgh would imply the residence of the chief. After tracing the banks of the small voe of Aith, and losing sight of the mansion of Sandlodge, a dreary prospect ensued, — -misty hills on the left, and, in perspective heaths without a shrub, relieved occasionally by groups of cottages, and surrounded with winding stone-dykes, that were intended to protect from the invasions of cattle, a few patches of lean and hungry earth, somewhat greener than the desart waste which appeared on every side. Nor is the hardy race of people named Coningsburghers, that inhabited this district, said to be less wild than the rugged soil from which they derived their support.! In their form we see few of the peculiarities of the Norwegian cast : they are less nimble and active than their neighbours, but they have a more muscular and robust form : they have a harsher set of features, resembling in this respect the Anglo-Saxons of the north of England, or of Lothian : they have also a dialect peculiar to themselves, that is more rough and guttural. A keen antiquary might amuse himself with the speculation, that this people are descended from the tiibe of Saxons that invested the Orcadian seas so early as the fourth century in the days of Theodosius ; that they are derived from the original race of warriors, to whom the erection of the burghs were in some part attributable, and that their district, in the name which it bears of Coningsburgh, may find a similar appellation in a town of the north of England contiguous to a Saxon burgh or fortress. But the Coningsburgher was, about half a century ago, distinguished by anothgr peculiarity ; — whatever social virtues he might evince to the inhabitants of his own district, he was to the natives of other parts of Shetland surly and inhospitable. The traveller who, in the close of evening, might be compelled to supplicate for a night's lodging, met with a chilling reception, and was awakened at the first dawn of day by a harsh-sounding warning to depart, expressed in the ancient Shetland language in a sort of formula : — This was, Myrkin i livra ; lurein i linnga ; timin i guestin i geungna. It is dark in the chimney, but it is light along the heath ; it is now time for the stranger to be gone. " It thus became a * I consider the information respecting these mines, during the period in which they were worked, as of such importance, that I am induced to give the report of them in Note 9 of the present Iter. t " The peopJe of this small spot," said Mr Low in the year 1778, "are a stout hardy race, by all accounts the wildest in Shetland." 92 FLADIBISTER TO SCALLOWAY. riTER lL custom," said Mr Low of Orkney, who has recorded this expression, "when any one wanted to dismiss a stranger from his house if he staid too long, to recite in Norse the Conings- burgher's phrase." The natives of this district are still proverbially quarrelsome with the inhabitants of other places ; for, as I was informed at Lerwick, there is not a fracas that occurs in the town, in which a Coningsburgher is not prejudged to be a party. If the archceologist, therefore, can persuade himself that there is sufficient of the blunt, honest, quarrelsome disposition in this people to identify them with the early Saxons, he has only to go a step farther, and to make the feud between the Saxon Coningsburghers and the Nor- wegian inhabitants of Shetland, of as early a date as the arrival in the country of Harold Harfagre. " Art thou willing to sell thy coat," said Styrkar Stallarius, a Norwegian in the nth century, "to an Anglo-Saxon churl?" " Not to thee," said the other, "for thou art perhaps a Norwegian." "And if I were a Norwegian," asked Styrkar, "what wouldst thou do to me?" "I would be disposed to kill thee," replied the boor.* It is, after all, not a little curious, that the Coningsburghers should have been traditionally regarded as a distinct race of people, since they are said to have formerly had many peculiarities among them, by which they were distinguished from the rest of their countrymen. Far be it, however, from me to speak of the hospitality of this people at the present day, but with the greatest respect. On arriving at Fladibister, where a quantity of limestone is burnt for the use of the Town of Lerwick, an offer of accommodation for the evening met me in the way ; and from the honest, blunt natives of the place I received a true Saxon Waes had. FLADIBISTER TO SCALLOWAY. From Fladibister to Quarf, the road leads for several miles over high banks much indented by the sea ; these are formed of conglomerate rocks and sandstone, from beneath which occasionally appeared the outgoings of primitive strata. The prospect was now, if possible, more dreary than ever. The range of the Cliff Hills still continued to the left, and below were rocks with a mere uneven surface, which shewed themselves in naked patches that rose from damp moors and swamps. Such are the too frequent constitutents of Shetland scenery, — -materials of description well adapted to the stanzas of some Northern Pastoral, where they may be conveniently mixed up with the sighs of a Shetland Damon : " O'er desert plains and rushy meers And wither'd heaths I rove ; Where tree,, nor spire, nor cot appears, I pass to meet my love." After a dreary walk of a few miles, I arrived at Quarf, at which place, avoiding the road to Lerwick, I followed the course of a deep valley, that divided the ridge of the Cliff * See this anecdote from Sturleson, in a paper by Dr Jaiuieson, in the Transactions of the Society of Antiquaries in Scotland, Vol. ii., p. 279. ITER II.] SCALLOWAY. 93 Hills in a transverse direction, so as to extend from sea to sea. This defile is a little more than a mile across, and it is rendered convenient for the transportation of goods by land, from one side of the coast to the other. Arriving at Western Quarf, there is a view of Cliff Sound, which is a channel of very uniform length that washes the base of the steep westerly side of the Cliff Hills, and is confined on the other side by the nearly parallel coasts of House and Trondra Islands. It runs parallel to the course of the strata in as straight a line as a canal ; and if the banks on each side were but clothed with wood, nothing could well exceed the beauty of the scene. Taking, therefore, a boat, and sailing along the sound, there being few objects to enliven the view in this leafless desert, I passed the Island of Trondra, and approached the stately turreted walls of Scalloway Castle. SCALLOWAY. The first view of this town in sailing to it from the south, is exceedingly picturesque. We come in sight of a fine semicircular harbour, around the sweeping shores of which numerous cottages, of a better description than common, are grouped. A handsome modern white house, and extensive garden walls, enliven the head of the bay. Towering above the whole is the castellated mansion of Scalloway, built in the year 1600. It is a square formal structure, now reduced to a mere shell, composed of freestone brought from Orkney, and of the fashion of many houses of a similar date in Scotland ; it is three storeys high, the windows being of a very ample size; on the summit of each angle of the building is a small handsome round turret. Entering the mansion by an insignificant door-way, over which are the remains of a Latin inscription, we pass by an excellent kitchen and vaulted cellars, whilst a broad flight of steps leads above to a spacious hall; the other chambers, however, are not large. Patrick, Earl of Orkney, was the founder of this building. He succeeded to his father, Earl Robert, in the enjoyment of the estates of Orkney and Shetland about the year 1595, but he only came into the possession of the Church-lands in the year 1600. Spottiswoode gives this account of his character: "This Nobleman having undone his estate by riot and prodigality did seek by unlawful shifts, to repair the same, making acts in his court, and exacting penalties for the breach thereof, as, if any man was tried to have concealed any thing that might inferre a pecuniary mulct, and bring profit to the Earl, his lands and goods were- declared confiscated ; or, if any person did sue for justice before any other Judge than his deputies, his goods were escheated, or if they went forth of the isle without his license, or his deputie's, upon whatsoever occasion, they should forfeit their moveables : and, which of all his acts was held most inhumane, he had ordained, that if any man was tried to supply or give relief to ships, or any vessels distressed by tempest, the same should be punished in his person, and fined at the Earl his pleasure."* About the year 1600, Earl Patrick commenced the erection of Scalloway castle ; and it * SpottiswooUe's History of the Church of Scotland. 94 SCALLOWAY. [ITER II. is scarcely possible to conceive of a more flagrant exercise of oppression than that which occurred during the execution of this structure. A tax was laid upon each parish in the country, obliging the Shetlanders to find as many men as were requisite for the building, as well as provisions for the workmen. The penalty for not fulfilling this requisition was for- feiture of property. The building was soon perfected ; its turreted walls rising from the naked shores of Hialtland with all the feudal haughtiness of a regular baronial mansion, — appearing to mock the humble habitations of the ancient udallers. It was then that Mr Pitcairn, the minister of the parish of Northmavine in Shetland, said to be a pious and godly man, came to pay his respects to the lord of the new mansion. After the usual greet- ings, the Earl desired the minister to compose for him a verse, which might be put upon the frontispiece of his house. This was an occasion of which the minister availed himself, to lay before the founder of the new castle of Scalloway the sinful enormity of that overbear- ing oppression which had enforced its structure. The Earl's wrath was kindled, and in his rage he threatened the devout pastor with imprisonment ; but afterwards coming to some composure of spirit, Mr Pitcairn said to him, " Well, if you will have a verse, I shall give you one from express words of Holy Scripture, — you will find that ' the wise man built his house upon a rock : and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it fell not. But the foolish man built his house upon the sand ; and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.' What think you, then, of this inscription : That house which is built upon a rock shall stand, — but built upon the sand it will fall ! " Strange to add, Earl Patrick heard with appearant composure the pious man's insinuation of the sort of foundation upon which his habitation was erected ; but pretending not to receive the motto in its moral sense, he applied it to his building in such literal terms as might express his disregard of the prophetic words of Scripture ; — for, with that happy effrontery which habituated guilt with ease assumes, he honoured the inscription with his approval, as denoting the reason why he had abandoned the house which he had possessed upon the sandy shores of Sumburgh : " My father's house was built upon the sand ; its foundations are already giving way, and it will fall ; but Scalloway castle is constructed upon a rock, and will stand." Mr Pitcairn was now required to convert the inscription, which in the spirit of zealous reproof he had proposed, into a suitable Latin distich, and this was immediately labelled on the lintel-stone of the gate : PATRICIUS STEUARDUS, Orcadian et Zetlandire COMES, I. V. R. S. Cujus fundamen saxum est, Dom. ilia manebit, Labilis e contra, si sit arena perit. A.D. 1600. iter II.] SCALLOWAY. 95 Many of these letters can be traced over the door of Scalloway castle at the present day.* Although the imprisonment of Earl Patrick, and the forfeiture of his estate, seem to have followed a representation to the King of his abuses, yet the disgraceful termination of his career is suspected to have resulted from the plots laid to ensnare him by the Earl of Caithness. An ancestor of this Nobleman had, in the year 1529, invaded Orkney, with the illegal design of interposing himself between the King and the udallers, as the superior of the lands of the country, in which attempt he was secretly countenanced by the Crown ; but being defeated and slain, an implacable enmity to Orkney, and to all who might sway that province, was perpetuated among the Sinclairs for several generations. On this account, the Earl of Caithness lost no opportunity to offer Earl Patrick ever)' indignity which, among those who profess the principles of chivalry, could not pass unresented, but at the penalty of dishonour. Some of the Earl of Orkney's servants, whilst navigating the Pentland Firth, had been obliged to land in Caithness, on account of contrary winds and stormy weather. The Earl of Caithness, with insincere professions of hospitality, invited them all within his walls ; — he treated them with the best cheer in his house ; — encouraged their carousals until they had drunk themselves into a state of intoxication ; he then ordered that one side of their beards, and one side of their heads should be shaved, and as soon as they shewed signs of returning sobriety, he forced them to again commit themselves to the storm which was unsubsided. "This was a cryme," said the genealogist of the Sutherland Family, "the lyk whereof I never heard or read of before ; onely one example I doe remember : the servants of David, King of Israel, were so intreated by Hannum, King of the Children of Amnion. The Earle of Catteynes thus farr exceided Hannum, that the Earle, not satisfied with what himself had done, he forced the Earle of Orknay his servants to take the sea in such a tempest, and exposed them to the extremitie of the rageing waves ; whereas Hannum suffered King David his servants to depart home quietlie after he had abused them." These poor men are said to have escaped the storms of the Pentland Firth, whicb, in the best of weathers, is rarely calm, with great difficulty. When the Earl of Orkney came to hear of this indignity committed against the servants of his house, he complained of it to the King ; — the King referred the transaction to his council ; — the council shewed an undisguised reluctance to the discussion of an affair which they might think required among men of honour the private satisfaction of the sword ; and thus, when the two Earls came to Edinburgh, ready to inform against each other, mutual friends intervened, so that the result of the mediation is said to have been, that the recriminators "agreed all their private quarrels, lest they should reveal too much of either's doings." About this time the distresses of the udallers became so insupportable, that, notwith- standing the strict guard which was placed over all ferries, so as to prevent any complaints of tyranny and oppression reaching the royal ear, a few Shetlanders made their escape, attired in the usual skincoat garbs of the country, and in this dress found their way to the * This inscription is copied from Mr Gifford's Zetland. Ihe story of Earl Patrick's interview with Mr Pitcaim will be found in Brand's Zetland. With the reason assigned by Earl Patrick for placing Mr Pitcairn's motto on his walls, Brand was not acquainted. 96 SCALLOWAY. [ITER II. Court of James, and submitted to him, with true native eloquence, the oppressed condition of their country. Their complaints met with attention ; and soon afterwards a representa- tion from the whole of the inhabitants of Orkney and Shetland was forwarded, through the Bishop of those islands, to the Monarch. King James directed a formal investigation, the result of which was, that the Earl was committed to the Castle of Edinburgh, where he lay for two years, and afterwards to Dumbarton, where he was imprisoned for three years longer. It was then that he heard of his castles in Orkney and Shetland being surrendered to the Sheriff, and that he was ready to commit any act of desperation for their recovery. In this mood, it appears that he resigned himself to the councils of a treacherous servant attending upon his person, of the name of Hacro, who, there is reason to suspect, was bribed by the Earl of Caithness to lay a snare for his master, by which he might be induced to commit some act of treason that would lead him to the scaffold ; for so deadly at that period was the enmity of the Sinclairs to the Earls of Orkney, that it was only to be satisfied by their blood. Earl Patrick, at the persuasion of his servant, directed his secretary to write a letter to his natural son Robert, urging him to raise a party in his behalf, for the purpose of regaining his castles. The youth, from an excess of filial duty, complied with the request, and, accompanied with the insidious Hacro, contrived to secure in his interest a few dissolute fellows, by whose means he surprised the Castle of Birsay, and placed in it a garrison of thirty persons. The surrender of Kirkwall followed. "When news of this transaction came to Edinburgh, the Earl of Caithness, who was then in that City, laboured much to obtain the command of the party proposed to quell it : assign- ing, among other reasons for volunteering the service, " that he might thereby be equal with such injuries as the Earl had done unto him before, and to revenge old quarrels upon the inhabitants of Orkney, for killing his great-grandfather." This Nobleman was entrusted with a few soldiers and some pieces of ordnance ; and setting sail from Leith, in company with the Bishop of Orkney, he landed at Kirkwall, where he was soon afterwards joined by a much larger force of his own men from Caithness. Robert Stuart was now deserted by all his followers with the exception of fifteen men, and his attendant Hacro, the same faithless wretch, who, after having instigated the Earl of Orkney to treason, was now urging the son to surrender at discretion. But the gallant youth resisted this importunity, and was determined to outbrave the large force of the Earl of Caithness drawn out against him in battle array. First, the steeple and church of Kirkwall were beseiged, which Robert Stuart had fortified : these he abandoned, in order to concentrate the whole of his small force within the castle. This fortress was now manfully assaulted ; many hundred shot were levelled at it in vain ; but so well directed was the fire of the Orkney Leonidas, that numbers of the Earl of Caithness's men are reported to have fallen ; one soldier was shot in the act of drinking a health in mockery of the besieged. But, unfortunately for Robert Stuart, Hacro, the Judas of the party, was secretly encouraging his comrades, by the hopes of reward and pardon from the Earl of Caithness, to betray their master into the power of his foes. The youth heard of the meditated treason ; and, sooner than be delivered bound by the hands of the wretch Hacro, he made a voluntary surrender of his person to the enemy. He was then conveyed to Edinburgh, in order to be confionted with his father, ITER ii.] SCALLOWAY. 97 who was suspected to be accessory to the plot. Afterwards both Earl Patrick and his son were brought to trial, and on the evidence of Hacro and the Earl's secretary, they were con- demned to suffer death. Robert Stuart was then conducted to the Market-cross of Edinburgh, and there executed. The similar punishment which was intended for the father, was deferred a little time longer, on the recommendation of the clergy, who had reported him as taking the sentence with great impatience, and as refusing all their proffered exhor- tations. At the expiration, therefore, of a month, when it was supposed that his mind would be better resigned to death, he was brought to the scaffold, guarded by the Magis- tiates of Edinburgh, and, in the sight of a numerous concourse of people, beheaded.* Such was the fate of Earl Patrick Stuart, and with him terminated the sway of the Scottish Earls of Orkney and Lords of Zetland. The misrule of this spurious brood from the royal stock of the Stuarts, remains traditionally current at the present day, and it is mentioned with no other sentiment than that of horror. What Orkney and Shetland were during the tyranny of the Stuarts, cannot be better depicted than in the great poet's descrip- tion of a similar lot, which had once befallen the country from which these oppressors, armed with illegal authority, had issued. -Alas, poor country ; Almost afraid to know itself ! It cannot Be call'd our mother, but our grave : where nothing But who knows nothing is seen once to smile ; Where sighs, and groans, and shrieks that rent the air, Are made not mark'd ; where violent sorrow seems A modern ecstacy : the dead man's knell Is there scarce ask'd, for whom ; and good men's lives Expire before the flowers in their caps, Dying, or ere they sicken."! Since the death of Earl Patrick, no regular inhabitant has ever dwelt within the walls of Scalloway Castle. The house was allowed to fall gradually into decay ; and thus the prophetical denunciation over the gate, indicative of the fate of that building which could not boast the solid basis of justice, was strictly fulfilled. For no longer a period than five or six years did these chambers resound with the licentious merriment of this worst of op- pressors j and now no revelry is heard within the castle but that which proceeds from the discordant screams of the foul birds of rapine, that build their nests upon its mouldering walls. The night coming on, I looked out for the small public house of the village, which having entered, I found my way up stairs with difficulty, through a passage darkened with fumes outbreaking from the kitchen. Here was a modest quadrangle, — a bed in the corner of it, — a chearful peat fire, — and a delightful view of the bay from the window : — the • Robert Stuart was executed on the ist January 1615, and Earl Patrick Stuart was brought to the scaffold on the 6th of February following. The narrative concerning this last Earl of Orkney is chiefly derived from the Genealogy of the Earls of Sutherland, p. 299 to 301, and from Spottiswoode's History of the Churrh of Scotland, p. 520 and 521. t Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 3. N 98 TINGWALL. [ITER II. bill of fare consisted of sillocks newly caught, of a hamrasher, tea and eggs ; whilst the attention of the family to their guests could not be exceeded. Such is the cheer which the weary traveller may expect from the comfortable hostel of Scalloway : " — — ■ — ■ It is none Of those wild, scatter'd heaps calPd Inns, where scarce The host is heard, tho' he wind his horn t' his people. Here is a competent pile, wherein the man, Wife, servants, all do live within the whistle."* Before leaving this vicinity, I was favoured by Mr Scott, the laird of the place, from whom I received many civilities, with a sight that was in this country a rarity ; opening the door of a high garden-wall, a plantation of trees burst upon my view. — I had not seen a twig before in Shetland. But so cutting are the winds of this climate, that no plant be- longing to the Hyperborean Grove of Scalloway could rise higher than the shelter of the garden-wall ; one tree, eighty years old, and five feet in circumference, was a sycamore ; another, of healthy growth, was fourteen years old ; there was also an elm well protected, that was 20 feet high j but planes afforded the best promise. TINGWALL. North from Scalloway, I entered the Valley of Tingwall, flanked on the east by the Cliff Hills, and by a less steep parallel ridge on the west. The first object that encounter the traveller's notice is a tall unhewn monumental stone, regarding which there are several uncertain traditions. It is said to have been erected in commemoration of a Danish General who was slain in this place, whilst endeavouring to reduce the Norwegian colonists of Shetland to some sort of obedience ; others have connected this stone of memorial with the story of a son of one of the Earls of Orkney, who having incurred his father's dis- pleasure, had fled to a strong-hold in the holm of a contiguous loch named Strom. The Earl sent four or five men to Shetland, charging them to bring back the fugitive to Orkney, dead or alive ; the party met with him in the Vale of Tingwall, fought with him, slew him, cut off his head, and laid it before the feet of his father, who, upon recovering from his wrath, was so little gratified with the implicit obedience which had been paid to his un- natural command, that he ordered the perpetrators of the foul deed to instant execution, and afterwards erected a stone upon the spot where the slaughter had been committed.! In the Vale of Tingwall there is a bed of limestone of considerable width, which has communicated to the soil above it a remarkable degree of richness ; and in this parish an improved state of agriculture has been introduced, chiefly through the exertions of the intelligent minister of the parish. I now approached the bank of a pellucid loch, which * Beaumont and Fletchers' Love's Pilgrimage. t Brand's Zetland, p. 122. lTER n#] ANCIENT JURISDICTION OF SHETLAND. 99 watered the valley, and soon arrived at the northerly extremity of it, where was the church of Tingwall, a plain modern building. Close to it were the remains of an old kirk, which was once ornamented with a steeple ; but little more than the foundation stones now remain. In the church-yard I observed several ancient monuments covered with lichens and moss. One inscription was very legible ; it was to the memory of a Foude of Tingwall, who lived at the period when the udallers were most oppressed ; but the stone records nothing more than that he was "An honest Man ;" and this is saying a great deal for a Shet- land judge, who lived in a period unparalleled for misrule and oppression.* The court where the Chief Magistrate of Shetland issued out his decrees, was in a small holm at the head of the adjoining loch, from which there was a communication to the shore by means of large stepping-stones. But this site of the ancient law-ting of Shetland will be contemplated with more interest, when associated with a knowledge of the Jurisdiction of the country, before this open law-court was removed to some covered hall at Scalloway. ANCIENT STATE OF THE JURISDICTION OF SHETLAND, DURING THE SUBSISTENCE OF THE LAW-COURT OF THINGVALLA OR TINGWALL. When, in the 9th century, colonists from Norway peopled Iceland, their first object was to erect at the place where they landed a temple to the God Thor, which served alike for religious and juridical purposes; but at a later period, when Christianity had forbidden the reverence that had been paid to the deified heroes of the Edda, legislative convocations were held at a place called Thingvalla, on the shores of a salt-water lake. It is not a little remarkable, that the same sequence of events took place at Shetland. Harold landed at a bay now named Haroldswick, situated at the Island of Unst ; and on the adjoining promon- tory appears a Scandinavian temple which the early colonists erected, that has from time immemorial been named the House or Seat of Justice ; but at a later period, the Provincial Assembly of Shetland held their meeting in a valley on the small holm adjoining the shore of a fresh water lake, which site, like the Icelandic place of convocation, had the appellation given to it of Thingvalla, now corrupted into the name of Tingwall. It is a character of the Scandinavians who, in the 9th century, colonized Iceland, Feroe, and the islands to the north and west of Scotland, that they had no sooner taken possession of a country, than they immediately proceeded to elect Magistrates, and to give their government a regular form ; the whole appearing, as Monsieur Mallet has emphatically re- marked, to settle as without any effort. After Harold Harfager had visited Shetland, and subdued the pirates that had infested the shores of Scandinavia, colonizing the country at the same time with subjects attached to his own cause, he extended his sway over the three provinces of Orkney, Caithness and the Hasbudae. There is reason to suppose, that to each of these four provinces a separate juridical establishment was allotted, and that the whole of these conquered tracts were, like Iceland divided into four quarters or Fiordungar.f * The inscription runs : — " Here lies an honest man, Thomas Boyne, sometime Foude of Tingwall." t Von Troil's Letters on Iceland, p. 71. IOO ANCIENT JURISDICTION OF SHETLAND. [ITER n Shetland was named for many centuries a Foudtie, this being a word that was probably the corruption of some term like that which the Scandinavians of Iceland used to denote one of their four prefectures. It was also not unusual among the Scandinavians to divide a Pre- fecture into five Bailywicks.* Accordingly, the same number of districts for the controul of an inferior foude or bailiff was formed in Shetland ; and whilst the court of Tingwall was devoted to the general jurisdiction of the Great Foude or Lagman, five other tings in different parts of the country were intended for the decision of district causes. But in the course of time, when Shetland became subject to Scotland, a Magistrate was appointed to each parish ; so that, instead of five districts of jurisdiction, there were in later years ten. The municipal laws that were directed to the good order of each district, were framed at a general convocation of the householders of the country, that was held in the law-ting ; and this practice of legislating in the law-tings of Orkney and Shetland subsisted so late as the year 1670. Besides this general assembly, each small district of inhabitants formed itself into a legislative community, and as no other kind of punishment was in- flicted for minor offences except fines, it was probably from this source, aided by taxation, that distress was removed, when arising from causes that were inevitable. Thus, in Scandinavia, when any man's house was burnt down, or when a stock of cattle was lost by contagion, the bailiff taxed each citizen according to his substance ; and, in order to prevent any abuse of such resources of indemnification, no man was entitled to a vote in the municipal assemblies of the country, who had failed in honour upon any occasion, or was too poor.f In the commencement of the 17th century, all the ancient law-books of Shetland were destroyed, and a newer municipal code, under the name of the Country Acts of Shetland, was passed at the general Legislative Meetings of the Law-ting, which was intended for the preservation of good and orderly neighbourhood (as it was called), in each district ; by these laws, punishments were inflicted on the dissolute, lands were preserved from trespasses, the equity of commercial dealings was protected, and means were provided for searching out or securing offenders, whose crimes it was necessary to submit to the proper tribunals of the country. When the householders of a district were assembled, they were empowered to select ten or twelve respectable individuals out of their number, to serve the offices of Rancelmen. The mode of election, which probably differs little from that which existed before the time of Earl Patrick, is to be collected from the ancient Country Acts of Shetland. The clerk of the court read a list of such honest men in the parish as were proper for the office, and these individuals were severally asked if they were willing to serve in it. If any of them, without assigning a sufficient reason, refused the appointment, he was liable to the penalty of ^10 Scots. The office of the Rancelman was of a very miscellaneous kind. In the first place, he was intended to be the guardian of the domestic morals of the district, being (as the act specifies,) entrusted with the power of inspecting the manners of others ; — he was to inquire into the lives and conversations of families, to prevent all quarrels and * Mallet's Northern Antiquities, vol. i., p. 174. t Mallet's Northern Antiquities, vol. i., p. 175. ITERII-] ANCIENT JURISDICTION OF SHETLAND. IOI scolding, and to levy penalties for cursing and swearing ; in every case he was to be an exhorter, and if the parties offending did not obey his recommendation, they were to become liable to judicial interference of a more serious kind. Secondly, The Rar.tdi.imn was to be the guardian of the religion of the district ; he was to narrowly inquire who sat at home from the kirk on the sabbath day, and from diets of catechising, and to )-evy ; accordingly. Thirdly, He was to be the guardian of the commercial dealings of the parish ; he was to see that all tradesmen made sufficient work, and did not impose upon their customers. Fourthly, He was made inspector of the agriculture of the parish ; he was to oversee the building of dikes, to punish for trespasses on land, to try the merits of sheep dogs, &c. Fifthly, He was to be a steward for landlords ; he was to report to them when tenants abused their lands and demolished their houses. Sixthly, He was to punish idle vagabond persons, and to take charge of the poor. Seventhly, He was to inform against all persons using any manner of witchcraft, charms, or any abominable or devilish superstitions, that they might be brought to condign punishment ; and, lastly, He was to be the general thieftaker ; he had the power of entering any house within the district, in quest of stolen goods ; which last office was named Rancelling. Along with the appointment of rancelmen, a Lawrightman was selected in each district for the regulation of weights and measures. " He was an honest man," said Mr Gifford, "whose business it was to weigh and measure the rent-butter and oil, and to determine its proper quality, and if found insufficient, to return it as not receivable : he was sworn to do justice, and to keep just weights and measures."* In ancient Scandinavia, and originally, perhaps, in its colonies, it was customary at popular assemblies to appoint a bailiff for each district, who was to be a person distin- guished for prudence, and possessed of a certain income in land, for fear his poverty should expose him to contempt or corruption. Judicial officers of this kind were chosen in Shetland, but when the country was annexed to Scotland, the appointment of them was given to some superior of the lands, or farmer of the Crown revenues. In early times, each bailiff of Shetland was known by the name of Foude ; this appellation being given to any law officer who presided at a court.! The foude of a division, or bailiff convoked, in later times, two courts in the course of the year, at which all the respectable householders of a district were required to be present. J Here the laws or Country Acts, which directed the foude's decrees, were first read over ; the foude or bailiff then proceeded to try such causes as were brought before him ; but, as Mr Gifford has remarked, " he was only a judge in small matters, such as keeping good neighbourhood, and could decern in no cause above ;£io value." It is difficult to collect the practice of the tribunals of Shetland at an earlier period than the close of the 16th, or commencement of the 17th century. It is evident, that the extensive yet dangerous authority with which the rancelmen were arrayed, had no other * For the ancient directions to the Rancelmen, see Note 10. t Dr Jamieson has observed, in his Etym. Diet, that he has seen no satisfactory conjecture on the origin of the word Foude, which is the same as the Su. G. fogde, praefectus, and Germ. vogd. t The periods at which they were held in later times were at Martinmas and Michaelmas. — Gifford's Zetland, p. 47. 102 ANCIENT JURISDICTION OF SHETLAND. [ITER II. object than to prevent many causes from coming in a regular shape before the court of the District-Foude or bailiff, and the law-ting of the Great Foude, that could be settled in a more private way. Each rancelman was considered as a domestic arbiter in all the disputes of his district; but when charges came before him in which he could not interfere, he reported