Selected items from the St. Andrew's Society of Ottawa Newsbulletin -
Fall 2005 - Vol 159 #4 - ISSN 1492-4439 (Online)
- updated 06 March 2006   other News bulletins  go to St Andrew's Society of Ottawa Page 

Tickets are now available from members of the Executive for our Annual Dinner and Gala, at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Saturday 19th November 2005. David Martin has again kindly agreed to be Master of Ceremonies, and the 78th Fraser Glengarry Garrison Pipe Band will be on hand. The Guest of Honour will be Ontario MPP Jim Watson. The Crowne Plaza is on Lyon St., Ottawa with garage access off Albert St. We are once again in the Panorama & Pinnacle Rooms, Penthouse Level; this requires a change of elevator in the lobby from the parking garage. Times are: 6 pm - cash bar in Penthouse Foyer; 7 pm - Dinner & Gala. 9 pm - Dancing. Two dance floors &endash; Virtronics' Larry Hines will be DJ for the Ballroom Dancing and Charlie Inglis will lead dancers through the Scottish Country and Ceilidh Dancing; a programme for this should be available mid-October. Dress: Formal, Scottish or Business Suit. Tables of 10. Underground parking with elevator access. Valet parking available by prior arrangement. Tickets - $85

Numbers have ranged between 4 and 12 at our recent pub nights; different locations are preferred by different people, with ease of access and travel time being given as the main reasons for deciding to come. On 20th July, all in attendance managed a meal discount discount at the Black Bear, downtown, for wearing a piece of tartan. Our first-time visit to the Fergus Pub, Bank near Sunnyside, had some out-of-town guests. On 17th October we are at The Tartan Pub, Wellington St (opposite the Herb & Spice Shop) and on Monday 7th Nov at The Glen, Kanata. On 12th December, some Christmas shopping and a view of the Rideau Street coloured lights can be incorporated into your Scots pub supper at The Highlander. In January we'll again be at The Tartan Pub on Wellington St. All pub nights are 6.30 for a 7pm supper.

Keep the date free; our Annual Burns Supper will be held on Saturday 28th January, 2006. Full details will appear in the Winter 2006 Newsletter, out in early January.

Visits to the Glengarry and North Lanark Highland Games, with a Society booth, have produced some new members. Many questions were asked at our booth on a range of topics; one of the most interesting was: "what is the surname of my forebear, the Earl of Selkirk"? The Canadian Encyclopædia produced the answer - Douglas. The Earl of Selkirk was very involved in the early settlement of the Red River, which became the nucleus of Manitoba.

We welcome new members: William Burke of Ray Brook, NY USA; David Keenan ,Jeannette Fraser, Ian Ruyton, Hugh MacMillian, Patricia Muldrew, all of Ottawa and Lois Bain, of Richmond Ontario. This newsletter is being mailed to some who have not renewed for 2005; a note to that effect is written on the back of the envelope. Please take a moment to review your situation. If you wish to resign, please let Bob Bhan know; contact details at the bottom of this page.Why not renew for 2006 right now?

Once again it has been decided to support the St. Andrew's Day Ceilidh, to be held at St. Matthias Church, 555 Parkdale, run by the Sons of Scotland Pipe Band on Saturday December 3rd - from 6 pm onwards.

Our Society had two tables for the event last year. The evening starts with a home-style dinner, followed by pipe band and highland dancing displays. Cash bar, silent auction. Tickets, $20, are now available at the band practice sessions on Monday nights at the church from 7.30 pm - from Pipe Major Beth Bisaillon. You may wish to order via Hugh Reekie - 728-5343, by 13 November.

Border writer James Hogg wrote many novels -- as well as poems. Recent painstaking research by Gillian Hughes from her Edinburgh office has established that some of Hogg's manuscripts are stored in North America. Ms Hughes reported her findings in The Scotsman newspaper recently. The Collected Works of James Hogg was re-published this summer in a new Stirling/South Carolina Research Edition. There have been a number of pale blue paperbacks &endash; with 19th-century paintings on the front covers &endash; published by Edinburgh University Press in recent years. Hogg's novels are readily available in second hand bookstores.

Ms Hughes' first American stop was at New York University's Fales Library: she had gone to see a handful of letters and literary manuscripts by James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd (1770-1835). In the libraries' archives, a pencil note, written on a storage box, mentioned Hogg's Border romance, The Three Perils of Man, with a further cryptic reference "See bottom shelf".

Mike Kelly, the library's assistant curator, had already done some probing. At Ms. Hughes' request he produced an undisturbed box with papers all overwritten in what was clearly Hogg's clear and distinctive handwriting. It turned out to be a manuscript of most of the novel. Hogg had originally assigned the name for his Border chieftain in his novel as Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch, but the real Sir WalterScott of Abbotsford complained and Hogg changed the name to Sir Ringan Redhough &endash; a clearly ficticious knight. Hogg's writings &endash; buried for more than a century and a half in scattered periodicals, song-sheets, hand-written manuscripts, and rare first editions &endash; are now coming to light. Sixteen volumes of the new edition have now been published in hardback, and eight paperbacks have followed.

Altrive Tales by James Hogg, edited by Gillian Hughes - pub July 2005
Paperback: £8.99 - Edinburgh University Press - http://www.eup.ed.ac.uk/ The James Hogg Society is at - http://www.cc.gla.ac.uk/hogg/

You get a chance to see St Kilda from the air, if you fly from from Canada to Glasgow; the route often flies over the island. Your editor had his first look on a back-packing holiday to the Outer Isles in 1968. When camped near Tarbert, Harris, our hill walk to see St Kilda was first delayed by rain and mist, but on the final evening the weather cleared up. Not owning a fancy reflex camera, I had performed some back-garden experiments to figure out how to take pictures through a pair of binoculars with a Box Brownie. The hill was duly climbed and St Kilda was seen some 50 miles away. Although the setting sun was directly in the centre of view, the Box Brownie did its job!

The final journey to the mainland was recorded by Commander Pomfret, RN, Captain of the sloop HMS Harebell. He had been ordered, after many detailed communications, to take the entire population off Hirta, the only inhabited island in the St Kilda group. Commander Pomfret wrote cryptically in his log "At 0700hrs all the people were taken on board. Contrary to expectation they were very cheerful throughout; soon after the separation came the first signs of emotion, with some weeping unrestrainedly, as the farewell took its course. Soon after, we landed at Oban and the evacuation was complete".

Papers at the Scottish Record Office became available for inspection under a 30-year rule and The Scotsman newspaper looked up the dossier. The documents recall that the landowner, The Macleod of Macleod, had waived his rent for 13 years. For the evacuation, the Admiralty was determined to keep costs under £500.

There had been regular annual police visits from Tarbert, Harris. There were also very occasional visits from well-off tourists since the 1870s, but the annual trip from Skye, by the factor to collect the rent, had ceased. With no harbour or jetty, making a landing on the only beach, even during the summer, was very much a hit-or-miss affair. It is believed that the population was between 150-200 for centuries; an Australian emigration in the 1850s continued a decline in the 19th century. The annual police visit in 1920 reported 73 inhabitants. By May 1928, the numbers were down to 37. A Fleetwood trawler who visited with supplies produced a report which was later printed in The Scotsman . . . the islanders had been "reduced to living on meat, water and salted sea birds". This, together with oatmeal, had been their staple diet for over a thousand years.

Consequently, in April 1930, the government asked for a proposal "at the earliest possible moment, on the possibility of bringing the inhabitants of St. Kilda off the island, and settling them on various vacant holdings which the Department of Agriculture controls." T B W Ramsay, the local MP, reported in a letter to Tom Johnston, the Under Secretary of State for Scotland, noting remarks from the island Missionary, Rev Duguld Munro, that "the islanders are uncertain as to the future. Many hope to be assisted in leaving the island this year, as the unsatisfactory conditions which prevailed throughout last winter have left them very unsatisfied".

With an earnest simplicity Mr. Munro also explained: "the reasons why assistance is necessary, is that for many years St. Kilda has not been self-supporting: with no facilities to better our position, we are therefore without the means to pay for the costs of removing ourselves and furniture elsewhere". The note listed those who concurred &emdash; the surnames included MacDonald, McKinnon, McQueen and Gillies.

The "St. Kilda mail" - a message with a sophsticated bottle arrangement - had been running for centuries. This had relieved distress in years past, by bringing in urgent supplies - but only when the bottle was found, which was not too often. The Department of Health noted that public funds had been used for postal, educational and medical services - with up to £600 per year spent in the 1920s.

As the islanders were taxed by their Laird on the number of animals they owned, it was not surpising that this May 1930 report was found in the archives: "The islanders are very reluctant to state the number of sheep they possess. If the question asks about means, the number is low; if the question is about compensation, the number is higher". The local sheep breeds provided wool for the main export, a portion of which was allocated as rent to the Laird. The weaving looms were busy all winter, and the visiting nurse calculated that the net annual household earnings from the sale of woollen goods (with seabird eggs, as well) was about £26.

There was considerable government correspondence on both the process and merits of taking off the island's sheep; there is no mention of the additional sheep on the uninhabited island of Soay nearby. Perhaps government officials did not know - or care - about this. When the difficulties of catching the wild Hirta sheep were added to the expected prices at auction - the West Highland Auction Mart suggested less than 15/- per head - only a limited early-summer evacuation was attempted and many were left behind. Perhaps it was not realized that these animals, similar to the then-extinct Hebridean sheep (also an ancient breed) needed winter protection to survive.

The Scottish press made many attempts to witness the evacuation and were pushed aside by the government in various ways. Christine McQueen, a former islander, had asked for a last look at her island community. On being turned down, her reply letter noted "the whole business from start to finish has been the work of despairing Sasunnachs". Another family member, Donnal McQueen, had written a letter from his Clydebank home, wishing to witness the event; "Existing on seventeen shillings a week, I cannot manage home to my people, to fair Eilean mo Graidh - "Isle of my Heart".

The final notes in the dossier are personal letters. John MacDonald complained that he had no home and no money. "In St Kilda I had my own home. I was a thousand times better off". Finlay McQueen wrote from Strome Ferry: "I am put to a worse place than St. Kilda". McQueen later suggested that he would be writing to the press. Forever wishing to twist events, the government's Tom Johnston managed to obtain letters of appreciation from McQueen and eight others. A government staffer delivered the letters to Johnston on Christmas Day, 1930 -- they were later passed on to the press.

Postscript: The University of Ottawa, Department of Celtic Studies ran an International Colloquium on Celtic Studies in 1986; about 150 attended. One of the special guests was a retired church minister - Donald Gillies - who travelled from British Columbia. He left St Kilda as a teenager in 1930.

more information: http://www.lonely-isles.com/ - with thanks to Bob Bhan

re-written fom an article by Brian Sheppard, Week-end Scotsman, 13 January 1968.

Knitting in remote farms and villages was a major source of income in many parts of the UK until Victorian times. Garments from the Yorkshire Dales went to Liverpool by pack horse; the Welsh knitting trade, to the London Home Counties, was immense, with special wholesale fairs for the selling-on of woolen goods. Home knitting remains strong in remote districts, especially in Ireland (e.g. Aran styles) and in Scotland. One can purchase Sanquhar-style gloves and jerseys from a small shop in the upper Nith Valley, Dumfriesshire. The Scottish store chain Highland Home Industries is familiar to many, and the word "homespun" helps sell specialist wool. Mail order packages of garments on approval from Lerwick, Shetland, remain a method of sale for specialized knitted items.

Before the introduction of new sheep breeds into the highlands in the 1700s, as part of the clearances or enclosures, there were two general types of sheep in North-west Scotland, very different from each other. The older generic breed, derived from neolithic stock, produced a fine wool and did not require shearing: in the spring the long fleece could be just pulled off the animal. One particular breed, the Hebridean Sheep, is regarded as extinct from the mid 1700s; they were not hardy, and had to be kept indoors during severe weather; so a section of the crofter's black houses were full of sheep in wintertime, with perhaps the odd dairy cow, too. In a similar manner to Swiss-style farmhouses, the animal's warmth provided a heating supplement to the human section of the building. This fine wool is still available in the northern isles, where the Orkney sheep are now known as "North Ronaldsay"; they are illustrated in various sheep breed books and posters. Orkney baby shawls, made from this fine wool on very fine needles, can usually be pulled through a ladies wedding ring.

A much hardier type of sheep was introduced to the highlands hundreds of years ago. These heavier animals, with curly horns, are very hardy and typically survive outdoors in severe winter storms. These sheep were common in the north-west highlands and on the Long Isles - the Outer Hebrides, where they are called Lewis Blackface ; the north-country Cheviot breed has taken over in many places, however.

The warmth of a woolen garment is attributed to two special charactistics of sheep's wool - carefully bred into selected species thousands of years ago. The first is the physical structure: hundreds of tiny hooks (visible under a microscope, like tree branches) protrude sideways for the entire length of each strand; these hooks permit the wool to be spun easily, and create a natural bulk, adding to the warmth with natural air pockets. The second feature is the chemical nature of the wool; in technical terms, wool is "exothermic": it produces heat when wetted, and a chemical reaction takes place. In the drying process heat has to be added to the wool, to change this reversible chemical condition. A woolen garment has to be laid out carefully for drying, as this chemical reaction can create an inappropriate shape, or set, to the fibres if inadequate care is taken; this set will be retained until re-wetted, and can often become permanent.

The Hirta Sheep were the only breed on the main St Kilda island until evacuation in 1930. These animals were light, nimble-footed and had medium-length slightly curly horns. They required winter protection, produced fine wool, and came in various colours, similar to the North Ronaldsay or Jacob sheep of today. Some were removed in the summer of 1930; those that remained did not survive the next winter; I wonder if flocks remain, anywhere. There is a report of Jacob-like animals, termed "St Kilda Sheep" on an estate near Edinburgh.

The hardy Soay sheep, on the other hand, survived on this remote island of the St. Kilda group for centuries, with natural processes maintaining a steady population. Like the hardier sheep in other parts of the Highlands, it is believed that they were introduced by the Vikings, and come in various colours; they are similar to the unique Herdwick sheep of the English Lake District, which are brown-only; they have a strong "hefting instinct": they will return to "their spot" if they are removed. Herdwicks are also of Viking origin - but that is another story. The St. Kildans arranged annual fleece-collecting expeditions to Soay, where landing was very difficult. Soon after the 1930 evacuation, Soay sheep were introduced to Hirta - where they exist today; various scientific studies - on numbers and characteristics - have taken place, annually. A flock of these sheep was kept for many years in Hyde Park, central London; they can now be seen in various estates, parks and rare breed farms around the UK - for example in Edinburgh Zoo, and at Woburn Park, Bedfordshire. Flocks are scattered around the world.

The wool of the Long Islands sheep (and no doubt the Soay sheep, also) have another interesting charctertistic: a small number of woolen hairs are abnormal; they do not have the "hooks" of regular wool, and are always without any colour pigment; they look like pig hairs. These white hairs are known as "kemp" and are usually present in Harris Tweed garments; they are a significant feature of some other coarse tweeds -- for example the "Hodden Grey" of the Borders, familiar to Robert Burns. From the early 1900s, breeders have made attempts to remove this kemp by selective breeding, to improve the "quality" of the fleece; I think these attempts are short-sighted. Until the 1970s one could purchase knitting wools with a visible kemp; it is very difficult to do so now; the writer of this article keeps trying!

A detailed illustrated lecture and practical highland knitting demonstration was given by Hugh & Frances Reekie at the New Hampshire Highland Games, Loon Mountain, around 1986, under the title "Scottish wool, Sheep Breeds and Knitting Styles." The presentation included descriptions of garments such as the Scottish Fisherman's Gansies, with their distinctive design variations from village-to-village, and Sanquhar-style garments, similar to Nova-Scotia style double knitting. Wool and knitting are very interesting subjects.

further reading: http://www.kilda.org.uk/soay-sheep.htm - http://www2.ebs.hw.ac.uk/edweb/edc/guide/cramond.html - http://www.soayfarms.com - Oregon, USA

©  D Hugh M Reekie - 2005