sax wemen that drew the red," were or two at a time; although we have occa doubtless hardened offenders of a particular sionally snow-storms of two, or nearly three class, upon whom every kind of church months' duration. A few years ago the censure, such as the jougs, sackcloth, and clergyman of Yell noted the following in his the cutty-stool, had been fruitlessly ex-memorandum-book on the 24th of Decempended.

ber:-"This day the turnips are as green As Edinburgh had then no bridewells as they were at Michaelmas; the rye-grass or houses of correction, it seems probable among bear-stubble measures from eight to that the magistrates, whose jurisdiction ex- ten inches of green blade; and among the tended even to hanging and drowning in the last year's rye-grass the daisy is every where North Loch, had tried the effect of public seen in bloom." Let the Carse of Gowrie, exposure in the manner stated above, by or the sheltered fields of Hampshire and employing these incorrigible culprits in Devonshire, match this if they can. Last "redding (clearing) the found" of the hos-Christmas, such was the mildness of the pital. But in Shetland, as I have said, for temperature, we could boast of our young a man or woman to do the work of a horse, gooseberries, and winter blossoms, as well is nothing more than a part of our agricul- as our more southerly neighbors. And tural system. Corn, peats, or other arti- then there are certain troublesome vermin, cles, are transported on the human back, abundant enough in more favored climates, in casies or cubbies—a sort of rude basket from which we are exempt. There are made of straw. Occasionally the pony is some of our islands to which neither the employed in carrying, and then the creels mouse nor the rat have yet found their way. or heather baskets are used, which are bal- The grouse or moorfowl is also a stranger anced one on each side, by means of the to us, though common in Orkney and the clibber and mazy. Highlands of Scotland; and the reason While our husbandry is in so primitive perhaps is, that the heather with us is too a condition, it may readily be supposed that stunted to afford them the shelter they rethe march of improvement has made but quire. It is not many years since justices indifferent progress with us. But to com- of the peace were as rare as mice or moorpensate for this drawback, we have advan- fowl, for except the sheriff-substitute, there tages which our richer neighbors in the was not a magistrate of any kind in Shetmore genial climes of the south do not pos- land. Nay, it would appear we must have sess. We have cheap land, cheap rents, had a visit of St. Patrick to scare away cercheap beef, cheap mutton, cheap bread, tain loathsome reptiles, for as an eminent cheap poultry, cheap fish, cheap every thing. living naturalist observes in his tour, "The What would an English or a Lothian farm- untravelled natives of Unst had never seen er say to getting a whole island to himself either frogs or toads, and indeed had no at the rate of eight shillings the statute acre, idea of the appearance or nature of these with plenty of women to labor it, at wages animals!" Our domestic cattle are abunof sixpence a-day! Nay, in some of the dant, but their diminutive size and price islands this rent would be deemed extrava- would astonish the dealers in Smithfield gantly high, 1200 per cent. too dear! In market. A good fatted cow ready for Yell, for instance, an estate of 73,000 slaughter weighs from one-and-a-half to acres, nearly one-half in pasture, the rest two-and-a-half hundred weight; so that a arable and inclosed grass land, only pro- flesher could tuck her under his arm; and duces an average rent of scarcely eight- an alderman at one of your civic feasts pence per acre! Surely here is scope for would not feel alarmed were one of them Lord Brougham's agricultural schoolmaster served up entire in an ashet before him. to look abroad, and instruct our landowners Beef is reckoned extravagantly high if it and husbandmen in the virtues of guano. exceed three-halfpence or two-pence the True it is, our soil is none of the best, par-pound. A whole calf may be purchased for taking more or less of the quality of moss, eighteenpence; and if the skin is re-sold mixed with clay or particles of the decayed it brings a shilling, leaving only sixpence rock on which it rests. The atmosphere, as the price of the carcass. A ewe fit for too, especially in winter, is uniformly moist, the butcher will sell for four or five shillings, but temperate beyond what will be credited and a male lamb for about a third part of by those accustomed to the cold prevalent the sum. The native race of sheep are at that season in the interior of the three small sized, and scarcely weigh more than kingdoms. Snow rarely lies above a day twenty or twenty-four pounds of mutton,

finds it takes care of it for a year and a day. Proclamation is then made at different churches in order to discover the right proprietor; and if after that no one appears to claim it, it is sold, one-half of the price being allotted to the person who took charge of it, the other half to the poor of the parish in which it was found. The neighbors whose sheep pasture together are called scat-brither; and those who have a few pasturing in any place at a distance from their residence, or perhaps not in the parish, are called out-scatholders. A lamb may be grazed at the rate of one shilling and sixpence per annum; and a cow or ox for eight or ten shillings during summer: in winter the sum demanded for fodder is about the same. Pigs and ponies compose a material part of our domestic animal stock. Almost every family keeps one pig, many have two; and several keep large herds of swine, which are sent off to the hill or common pasture in summer, where they contrive to shift for themselves, their principal food being earth-worms and roots of plants; but occasionally they fall in with

carrying a fleece of from one to one-and-a-The customs regarding the feeding and half pounds of wool. They have small ownership of this animal are curious. When tails; and it is rare to see a ewe with horns. a stray sheep is found, the individual who The practice is now getting in, where it can be safely adopted, of crossing the native breeds with black and white-faced rams, and where the pasture is sound, either of the crosses answer very well, as both mutton and wool are improved in quantity. But wherever the pasture is deep and wet, they are invariably found not to be so hardy, or to thrive so well, as the original breed. In some parishes their number is very great, and they form a sort of common property, or at least, the proprietor cannot always distinguish his own; for as all the tenants in these cases exercise an unlimited right of pasturage on the hills, or "scathold," as the tenure is called, except the few who drive their sheep into the same cruive or pound, no other person can possibly know the exact number belonging to each individual. My friend, the minister of Sandsting and Aithsting, whose parish, spiritually as well as pastorally, contains one of the best flocks in our islands, is very learned in his description of the character and habits of this animal, although the terms which it is necessary to employ may, perhaps, sound oddly to those whose know- a more savory morsel in the shape of a ledge of the English tongue is drawn exclusively from Johnson's Dictionary. In his account of his parish, he tells us, the sheep are of various colors, white, black, grey, as Shakspeare's goblins; catmogged, brown, or moorit, black and white in equal proportions, or shilah and piebald. Every neighborhood has a particular pasture, or scathold, on which his sheep are fed; and every person knows his own by their lugmark, that is, one has a hole in the ear, another a slit or rift, another a crook or piece cut out of the ear behind or before, &c.; and it is a rule in the parish that no two persons are allowed to "lug-mark" their sheep in the same way. Each neighborhood has also a cruive into which they drive their sheep, for the purpose of smearing them, taking off the wool, marking the lambs, and keeping them tame. The mode of sheep-shearing here is rude and cruel, for the wool is not clipped off as in other places, but is torn from the animal's back by an operation called rooing. For the most part two, and sometimes more persons, tear the wool from the poor tortured beast at one time; and though it may not sometimes occasion much pain, in general it is a troublesome and savage process.

young lamb or a sickly ewe, or birds' nests, of which they are as fond as a Chinese, or any other Oriental gourmand. The native breed is very small, with short, upright ears, and a long cartilaginous nose, with which he commits sad havoc when he steals a raid into the potato-field or the farmyard, digging, and ploughing, and committing every species of destruction. When he puts on his winter clothing, an uglier animal cannot be conceived to exist. Next his body is a close coating of coarse wool, above which rises a profusion of long stiff bristles, "like quills upon the fretful porcupine," and presenting a most formidable, noli-me-tangere appearance to every assailant, human or canine. Of the bristles and wool elastic ropes of great strength_are made for tethering horses and cows. But, in spite of his revolting appearance, a Shetland pig, when well fed, would not discredit the board of an epicure. His pork is delicate, his ham delicious, and might contend for the premium of the old glutton monarch who proclaimed a reward for the discovery of a new pleasure. A considerable improvement both in appearance and size has been made on the native race in conse quence of the introduction of a better spe

ed to its destination by a voyage across the Pentland Firth. Now, thanks to James Watt and the gallant Sovereign, tout cela est changé. We are, at least nine months in the year, within reach of civilization and fashion once a-week.

cies, brought to our islands in some of the coming over and bartering linen for ponies; Greenland ships. A pig, in its different but this practice ceased when a regular stages of existence, has almost as many packet communication was established bedistinctive names with us as a lion or a tween Lerwick and Leith. At that time, camel among the Arabs. When sucking, and until the introduction of steam-navigaor in a state of infancy, he is known by the tion connected us with the rest of the world, name of a runny or grice; one fed about we had less intercourse with our neighbors the fire-side is a patty; one with young a the Orcadians than with any other part of silik; a boar is called a gaat. The most Great Britain. A letter or parcel to the prevalent distemper to which they are lia-nearest of these islands had generally to be ble is the gricifer, which deprives them of sent to Edinburgh, and thence was returnthe use of their hind legs, and is seldom curable. Of the pony little need be said. He is well known, for he is almost the only live inhabitant, except the fisherman, that visits foreign parts. He is of every color, white, black, brown, grey, dun, cream, chestnut, piebald, and of every size on a Having said a few words about cows, it limited scale, between twenty-eight and would be an unpardonable omission to pass forty-four inches. He is hardy, docile, and over the diary and its management, which capable of showing high mettle. Like the are always important matters in a Shethog, he undergoes a marked transition in lander's household economy, and have even the annual aspect of his "outer man," for been sung in poetry and regulated by anwhen the shelty (as Dr. Hibbert remarks) cient laws. In the article of milk we have "is in his winter or spring garb it is diffi- nothing to complain of; it is good in quality cult to suppose that his progenitors were and yielded in greater quantity than could the same animals which travellers have de- be expected from the size of the cow, which, scribed as prancing over the arid tracks of when put on good feeding, will give thirArabia. The long shaggy hair with which teen or fourteen quarts per day, being more he is clothed has more the appearance of than Burns's "dawtet twal-pint hawkie" a polar dress, or of some arctic livery spe- gave in the rich pastures of Ayrshire. It is in cially dispensed to the quadruped retainers the proper management of the milk that we of the genius of Hialtland." Instead of fail; and here our want of cleanliness, espethe sleek skin and handsome appearance cially in the olden time, not only compelled which he displays with so much spirit in the interference of the magistrate, but afford the summer months, in winter his exterior ed a theme for the sarcastic wit of the travelis uncouth, his symmetry disappears, all his ler and the poet. In the parish of Sandsting motions are dull and languid. The general the excellent and respected minister states torpor of nature seems to freeze up his en- that those farmers who keep four or more ergies and paralyze his whole frame. His cows churn once every day in summer; food is coarse and scanty; bu, notwith- but the quantity of butter is not in proporstanding the privations he endures, he fre- tion to the frequent churning, for the cream quently lives to a good old age. I have is never properly gathered. An old but known them live thirty years and more, and abominable fashion prevails, greatly injurieven at that age able to travel a pretty long ous to the reputations of our housewives, journey in carrying feals from the hill to for when the operation of churning is admix with manure for composts. No at- vanced to a certain stage a heated stone is tention is paid to the breed, which conse- dipped into the churn, and by this means quently is degenerating; and this is to be the labor is shortened and an addition is regretted, for the best proportioned is al-made to the quantity, though not to the ways the one first sold, and fetches the best quality of the butter. Part of the curd thus price. They might easily be improved, and becomes incorporated with the butter, were due care employed, I am convinced there would nowhere be found a finer race of animals. Their value is from twenty or thirty shillings to six pounds sterling; and their yearly export to England and Scotland forms a considerable traffic. At one time the Orkney traders were in the habit of

which presents a white and yellow spotted appearance, resembling mottled soap or the grease-butter of Sir Robert Peel's tariff, with which the House of Commons was made so merry by the premier during the great corn-law debate. It must be confessed that by very few is attention paid to the

stones

in this

vary

The edge of this rough satire was, doubtless, whetted by the strong national English prejudices of the time. But whatever proximity to truth there might have been in it at the middle of the seventeenth century, the description is totally inapplicable now, and nothing, even in Shetland, comes near the overcharged picture of loathsome filth which this morose critic has drawn.

Before quitting the subject of our

dairy, so that one of the ancient local acts | This grease (for soe they trully call it) pleases would still require to be enforced, which The eye, the taste, the smelling, &c. ordains, "That no butter be rendered for They use a charme, too, with three heated payment of land-rent, or for sale, but such Nine Ave Maryes, and seven ill-far'd groans, as is clear from hairs, and claud and other To fetch their nasty butter upp, which when dirt." It is the custom for landlords to They're done the witches conjure down againe have part of their rents made payable in Through their own whems. Their punishment butter; and probably this regulation, added Is well proportion'd to their wickednesse. to the want of proper milk-houses and due Then of the aforesaid butter take and squeeze attention to the milk-vessels, may help to A parcell 'twixt two rotten boards-that's cheese. account for the sad neglect of cleanliness Judge, then, my friends, how much our lime-pits in this department. Very little butter is In smell, taste, color, from an Orkney dary." sold; and no wonder, seeing our peculiar style of manufacture is no recommendation to the foreign market. The butter-milk is called bleddick, and into this is poured a quantity of boiling water, by which means the curd is separated from the whey or serum. The former is named kirn, and eaten with sweet milk; the latter is called bland, and used as drink instead of small-beer. It will keep for several months, when it acquires a strong acidity. The stigma of untidiness in regard to the dairy attached" hearths and homesteads," there are one in former times to the Orcadians as well as to us, although our neighbors have now completely wiped it off (and why should not we?), for their butter is the finest that can be eaten, and commands a high price wherever it is known. The case, however, was not always so; and I have in my possession a curious poem entitled The Character of Orkney, printed in 1842 from a volume of miscellaneous verses in manuscript, preserved in the library of the Faculty of Advocates at Edinburgh, wherein the author indulges his humor with more severity than justice, I am inclined to think, on the slovenly habits of the people in their persons, as well as in their food. On the articles of butter and cheese his coarse ribald wit is not surpassed by that of Butler, whose quaint style he seems to imitate, although he wrote in 1652, when Cromwell was in the north of Scotland. I shall give a short quotation slightly modifying the antiquated spelling:

or two other customs which ought not to pass unnoticed. Our principal articles of food are oats, bear (or big), and potatoes. Wheat has been attempted, but does not succeed; turnips, carrots, cabbages, and other esculents, are not cultivated to any extent in the open fields, although they thrive well enough in the gardens, Some families will plant as many as three thousand cabbages, which they use as food both for man and beast.

In raising the potato-crop, a different mode of culture is adopted here from that which prevails in other parts of the kingdom; and, as we wholly escaped the mysterious rot of last year, probably we may owe this fortunate exemption to our peculiar manner of husbandry. When preparing the field for the seed, the manure is not laid in the furrow and the cut seedling stuck into it. It is spread on the surface of the ground, and delved in with the spade. Sometimes the potato is planted in the furrow thus prepared, and covered up; and sometimes the earth is first delved and the seed dibbled in afterwards. The plan of spreading the manure on the surface instead of burying it in the drill, is recommended, I observe, by some of the thousand and one potato-doctors or agricultural theorists, as they are called, as an antidote. to prevent the recurrence of the disease; and certainly the experiment is worth trying, and may plead our example in its favor. The oats in general use here are the old

other districts of the kingdom. In general they are mere huts. The landlords show an aversion to building farm-steadings, or if they have erected them once, tenant after tenant must be content to occupy them as they are, and when they become ruinous, he must either repair or build anew for himself.

Scotch or grey-bearded kind, which is [neatness and accommodation to be found pleasant enough to the taste, but dark-col- in the dwellings of the same class in the ored, and from the very imperfect way of dressing it, the meal is never entirely freed from the chaff and dust. The way in which corn is here prepared for meal is accurately described by my reverend friend last mentioned. Every family has a small oblong kiln built in their barn, called a cinny, which will dry about a half barrel of oats at a time. This kiln, instead of an iron-plate floor, is furnished with ribs of wood; and these are covered with layers of oat-straw, called gloy, upon which the grain is laid. In an opening about a foot square in the end of the kiln, like an oven or boiler, a gentle fire is kept up till the grain is sufficiently dried. It is then taken off the ribs, put into a straw basket made for the purpose, called a skeb, and while warm, well rubbed under the feet, an operation which is intended to separate the beard and dust from the grain. It is next winnowed betwixt two doors, or in the open air, if there be a slight current, put into another straw basket called a buddy, and carried to the mill to be ground. When brought home from the mill, two sieves are made use of, a coarse and a finer, to separate the seeds from the meal; and it is twice sifted carefully before it is fit to be eaten. The larger seeds taken out with the coarse sieve in the first sifting are given to the cows; and the finer seeds taken out with the smaller sieve are reserved for sowens, a sort of pottage made from the sediment of the meal that rests at the bottom of the vessel in which the seeds are steeped or soaked in water. This is or was a kind of national food in Scotland, when foreign luxuries were not introduced in such abundance; and it is still prescribed to invalids, from its lightness of digestion. Sometimes corn is dried very hard in a pot; the meal prepared from this is called burstane, and is generally ground in the quern or hand-mill, a simple, primitive instrument, but now rarely found except in Shetland and the museums of antiquarian societies. It consists of two hard flat stones, hewn into a circular shape, the one laid above the other, and perforated with a large hole in the centre, through which the grain slowly filters, and is ground by the rapid motion of the upper stone, into which a wooden peg, sometimes a long shaft, is fixed and turned by the hand.

Our houses and cottages, it must be confessed, are poor and mean, without the

Dr. Maculloch, when he visited the Western Isles, declared that he often could not distinguish the cottages in the remoter Hebrides from heaps of rubbish. He mentions that when conversing with one of the natives, he had supposed the interview took place on a dunghill, and was not a little surprised to learn that they were standing on the top of the house. Cottages in Shetland are not much in advance of those in the Hebrides, and have something of the Irish economy about them, contrived, like Goldsmith's chest of drawers, a double debt to pay," by harboring the quadrupeds as well as the bipeds of the family. They are in general of a rude, comfortless description, being usually built of stone and turf, or with dry mortar. The rafters, joists, couples, &c. are nearly in their natural state, being chopped and moulded to fit by a hatchet. The luxuries of slating and ceiling are unknown. Over the bare rafters is laid a covering of pones or divots (sods), and sometimes flaws; and above these is a coating of straw, which is secured by ropes of the same material, or of heather, called simnins. The floor is the hardened earth, without carpets, boards, or any other artificial manufacture; and if the weather be wet, which it frequently is, the access is somewhat difficult, especially to those who have any regard for keeping their feet dry and clean. This becomes a difficult matter even in the interior, from the moistened compounds that strew the floor. The dunghill occupies a place as near the door as possible, that it may be enriched by the accumulations of every fertilizing substance; and frequently, before the door of the mansion can be reached, a passage must be made through the byre (cow-house), and perhaps other impediments unnecessary to specify. The furniture is homely, and contains nothing superfluous. It is generally so arranged as to supply the want of partitions, or divisions into rooms, the only apartments being a but and a ben, that is a kitchen and parlor. In the kitchen end of the house, in