Island Of Mingulay On Visit To The Outer Hebrides Of Scotland

Tour Scotland travel video, with Scottish music, of the Island of Mingulay on visit to the Outer Hebrides. Mingulay, Scottish Gaelic: Miughalaigh, is the second largest of the Bishop's Isles, located 12 miles South of Barra. The islanders' livelihood was based on fishing, for white fish, herring and lobster, crofting of arable and pasture land fertilised by wrack on which sheep, cattle, ponies, pigs and poultry were kept and very dependent on the bounty provided by seabirds. For example, rent was payable to The Clan MacNeil in fachaich or fatlings, that is shearwater chicks. The Barra estates of MacNeil, including all the Barra Isles, were sold to Colonel John Gordon of Cluny Aberdeenshire in 1840 whose lack of consideration for his tenants during the potato famines was matched by his zeal for evictions to create sheep farms. However, the Highland Clearances seemed to have the effect of increasing Mingulay's population for a while as families evicted from Barra sometimes chose to re-settle there rather than take the emigrant ships to Nova Scotia, Canada. In this regard Mingulay's remoteness was probably an advantage and rents were reduced from 1840 to 1845. In 1878 Lady Gordon Cathcart inherited the estate and visited but once during her fifty four year period of tenure. In 1764 the population of the island was 52. Later census records show that there were 113 residents in 1841, 150 in 1881, 142 in 1891, occupying 28 houses, compared to the 1841 total of 19, and 135 in 1901. Families were often large, and ten or more children was not uncommon, with three generations sometimes sharing a single small house. There were numerous reasons for the evacuation. In 1897 a boat from the neighbouring island of Pabbay was lost off Barra Head with its crew of five: more than half of Pabbay's male population, and this did not encourage confidence amongst the fishermen of Mingulay. The lack of a sheltered landing meant that the island could be unreachable for weeks at a time, and loading and unloading goods was at best strenuous and at worst hazardous. By 1910 there were only a dozen fishermen in six families living there, and in summer 1912 the island was finally abandoned. Some may have wished to stay, but by now the population had been reduced below a viable number and the lack of a school, which had closed in April 1910, would have been a factor. There is also no doubt that the parish priest, Donald Martin, encouraged the desertion. It is claimed that neither did he like travelling there, nor did the church receive much in the collection box on his visits. After the island was evacuated it was first tenanted and then purchased in 1919 by Jonathan MacLean from Barra. In 1930 it was sold to John Russell who had experience as a sheep farmer in both Australia and Montana. Russell was clearly a man who liked his own company, choosing to live on the island alone all autumn and winter with his pet ferrets and cats, and joined by two shepherds for the spring and summer only. After seven years he sold up to Peggy Greer, a farmer from Essex who visited only rarely and let the grazings out to local farmers. The Mingulay Boat Song was composed by Hugh S. Roberton, the founder of the Glasgow Orpheus Choir, in 1938, and first recorded by the Francis McPeake family of Ulster. Hill you ho, boys; Let her go, boys; Bring her head round, now all together. Hill you ho, boys; Let her go, boys; Sailing home, home to Mingulay. All photographs are copyright of Sandy Stevenson, Tour Scotland, and may not be used without permission.

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