It Is, At All Events, Remarkable, That The Traditions Of The
Country Should Ascribe To The Picts, The Early Inhabitants Of Shetland,
The Same Dwarfish Stature, And That The Numerous Remains Of Their
Habitations Which Still Exist, Should Seem To Confirm The Tradition.
The
race which at present possesses the Shetlands is, however, of what the
French call "an advantageous stature," and well limbed.
If it be the want
of a proper and genial warmth, which prevents the due growth of the
domestic animals, it is a want to which the Zetlanders are not subject.
Their hills afford the man apparently inexhaustible supply of peat, which
costs the poorest man nothing but the trouble of cutting it and bringing
it home; and their cottages, I was told, are always well warmed in winter.
In crossing the narrow strait which separates the Noss from Bressay, I
observed on the Bressay side, overlooking the water, a round hillock, of
very regular shape, in which the green turf was intermixed with stones.
"That," said the ferryman, "is what we call a Pictish castle. I mind when
it was opened; it was full of rooms, so that ye could go over every part
of it." I climbed the hillock, and found, by inspecting several openings,
which had been made by the peasantry to take away the stones, that below
the turf it was a regular work of Pictish masonry, but the spiral
galleries, which these openings revealed, had been completely choked up,
in taking away the materials of which they were built. Although plenty of
stone may be found everywhere in the islands, there seems to be a
disposition to plunder these remarkable remains, for the sake of building
cottages, or making those inclosures for their cabbages, which the
islanders call _crubs_. They have been pulling down the Pictish castle, on
the little island in the fresh-water loch called Cleikimin, near Lerwick,
described with such minuteness by Scott in his journal, till very few
traces of its original construction are left. If the inclosing of lands
for pasturage and cultivation proceeds as it has begun, these curious
monuments of a race which has long perished, will disappear.
Now that we were out of hearing of the cries of the sea-birds, we were
regaled with more agreeable sounds. We had set out, as we climbed the
island of Bressay, amid a perfect chorus of larks, answering each other in
the sky, and sometimes, apparently, from the clouds; and now we heard them
again overhead, pouring out their sweet notes so fast and so ceaselessly,
that it seemed as if the little creatures imagined they had more to utter,
than they had time to utter it in. In no part of the British Islands have
I seen the larks so numerous or so merry, as in the Shetlands.
We waited awhile at the wharf by the minister's house in Bressay, for Jim
Sinclair, who at length appeared in his boat to convey us to Lerwick.
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