Logo
Prev
Bookmark
Rotate
Print
Next
Contents
All Pages
Related Articles
Browse Issues
Help
Search
Home
'
National Geographic : 1974 Nov
Contents
sour. It is a small part of Skye's nearly half million acres, and here, as in the southern area called Sleat and a few northern regions, crofters can eke out a partial living. Yet even in the dark central moorland there is no place more than five miles from some point on the island's thousand-mile coastline. Ocean is everywhere, intruding in long sea-lochs far into the realm of land. Most of the 7,400 islanders (there were 23,000 in 1841) live in crofting "townships," usually a small group of houses arranged in a row between hill and sea. Almost everyone depends on wages, but works his croft a bit as well. Said Mrs. Euphemia Macdonald of Skinidin, "No one would think of not using the land. I have sheep, and my sons come from away to help when help's needed." Said her daughter: "Here everyone has Gaelic. No one would think of cutting peats and speaking English at the same time. They don't go together. Yet Gaelic's going. Children are taught it in school, but at home they'll answer in English. The old culture passed down to us may vanish." "Yes," said her mother, and the word was a sigh, "and the TV has replaced the ceilidh." Despite the TV, Skye is devout and Sab batarian, to the distress of the tourists on whom it depends. On Sunday there's many a smokeless chimney, and "Bed and Breakfast" signs with cloths over them. Most petrol stations are closed. Yet tourism is the industry. Farming con tinues, but the only fine, productive farm I saw was Lawrence MacEwen's, on the little island of Muck. There are few others. Skye no longer fills even its own demand for pota toes, hay, and milk. Fishing is a bright pros pect, and growing, but it has just begun to Gentle countenance of a pastel street reflects the quietness of a Friday morning in Islay's Bowmore (above). In a more boisterous mood, neighbors on Eigg gather in the kitchen of red-sweatered Donald Kirk (right, center) for a ceilidh of dancing and singing. Familiar through the centuries with poverty and the sting of winters on the Atlantic's edge, islanders retain a faith in their world-having, in the words of one modern Gaelic poet, "a sprinkling of pride in their hearts, keeping them sound." National Geographic,November 1974 714
Links
Archive
1974 Dec
1974 Oct
Navigation
Previous Page
Next Page