which was already in long-term decline, fell by 1,000 people in the ten years between 1911 and 1921. The number of children under the age of 14 in North Uist, Benbecula and South Uist dropped by a precipitous 17 per cent, from 1,750 to 1,452, between 1921 and 1931. The men who did not return in 1919 would be forever revered in Uist memory as the islandsâ greatest generation: the best, the bravest, the biggest, the strongest, the wittiest, the wisest â and the heroic embodiments of a lost future.
For all its bereavements, its epidemics and its emigrations, South Uist always had grace and joy. The MacPhee family returned to an island easily recognisable to an exile from 30, 50 or even 100 years before. The Gaelic language had retreated hardly at all since the nineteenth century. Its associated oral culture â the songs and fabled stories of the Hebrides â was still heard in every village. Its subsistence crofting and fishing lifestyle dominated the self-sufficient local economy. Government grants enabled many people to move out of the old blackhouses, which they had shared with livestock, into better dwellings. But the technological developments of the twentieth century evaded most people in the Uists. On the west coast machair and beside the rocky east-coast inlets they had no electricity, no telephones (there were not even, until 1939, public telephone kiosks anywhere in the islands), often no running water and certainly no motor cars. They had their land, their language and each other.
A young woman from Pennsylvania in the United States stayed in South Uist for six years between 1929 and 1935. Margaret Fay Shaw lived in a remote southern corner of the island, over 20 miles from Iochdar. She found there the kindof life which Angus MacPhee was living in Balgarva. It was a seasonal round of outdoor duties which had been honed over centuries. The ground was furrowed by hand-ploughs or by horses; potatoes were planted and raised and stored; grains sown and harvested; cattle and sheep walked to market; the cottage thatch mended or replaced. Much of the work was done communally. The annual fuel supply, in the form of peat, was cut from the ground at the same time every year. It took, estimated Margaret Fay Shaw, six men two days to cut a yearâs peat for one home. People worked together at âthe lamb marking, the sheep clipping, when the men used to shear and the women fold the fleeces, and the dipping to control sheep scab, which was required in Uist by law four times a yearâ.
Margaret Fay Shaw was entranced by the humour and hospitality of the people of South Uist, and captivated by their traditions. She diligently collected their songs and customs, sayings and stories. One day her friends Peigi MacRae and Angus MacCuish gave her a remarkable verse which had been written by a man called Allan MacPhee from Carnan, the township close to Balgarva in the district of Iochdar at the other end of the island. â
O mo dhuthaich
,â they sang . . .
. . . âs tu thâair mâaire,
Uibhist chumhraidh ur nan gallan . . .
Tir aâ mhurain, tir an eorna,
Tir âs am pailt a h-uile seorsa . . .
âO my country,â Fay Shaw translated,
I think of thee,
Fragrant, fresh Uist of the handsome youths . . .
Land of marram grass, land of barley,
Land where everything is plentiful . . .
The Pennsylvanian was also an expert photographer. She took a portrait of an old man, a celebrated stonemason called Iain âClachairâ Campbell. Campbell was sitting outside his crofthouse that day in the early 1930s, smoking a pipe. To his left a tangle of rough picked heather lay against a wall. To his right were coils of thick, strong rope. In the middle, in his big bare hands a sheaf of the heather was being expertly woven and extraordinarily converted into neat lengths of the rope.
Iain âClachairâ Campbell was plaiting heather into rope because he lived on the east coast of
For all its bereavements, its epidemics and its emigrations, South Uist always had grace and joy. The MacPhee family returned to an island easily recognisable to an exile from 30, 50 or even 100 years before. The Gaelic language had retreated hardly at all since the nineteenth century. Its associated oral culture â the songs and fabled stories of the Hebrides â was still heard in every village. Its subsistence crofting and fishing lifestyle dominated the self-sufficient local economy. Government grants enabled many people to move out of the old blackhouses, which they had shared with livestock, into better dwellings. But the technological developments of the twentieth century evaded most people in the Uists. On the west coast machair and beside the rocky east-coast inlets they had no electricity, no telephones (there were not even, until 1939, public telephone kiosks anywhere in the islands), often no running water and certainly no motor cars. They had their land, their language and each other.
A young woman from Pennsylvania in the United States stayed in South Uist for six years between 1929 and 1935. Margaret Fay Shaw lived in a remote southern corner of the island, over 20 miles from Iochdar. She found there the kindof life which Angus MacPhee was living in Balgarva. It was a seasonal round of outdoor duties which had been honed over centuries. The ground was furrowed by hand-ploughs or by horses; potatoes were planted and raised and stored; grains sown and harvested; cattle and sheep walked to market; the cottage thatch mended or replaced. Much of the work was done communally. The annual fuel supply, in the form of peat, was cut from the ground at the same time every year. It took, estimated Margaret Fay Shaw, six men two days to cut a yearâs peat for one home. People worked together at âthe lamb marking, the sheep clipping, when the men used to shear and the women fold the fleeces, and the dipping to control sheep scab, which was required in Uist by law four times a yearâ.
Margaret Fay Shaw was entranced by the humour and hospitality of the people of South Uist, and captivated by their traditions. She diligently collected their songs and customs, sayings and stories. One day her friends Peigi MacRae and Angus MacCuish gave her a remarkable verse which had been written by a man called Allan MacPhee from Carnan, the township close to Balgarva in the district of Iochdar at the other end of the island. â
O mo dhuthaich
,â they sang . . .
. . . âs tu thâair mâaire,
Uibhist chumhraidh ur nan gallan . . .
Tir aâ mhurain, tir an eorna,
Tir âs am pailt a h-uile seorsa . . .
âO my country,â Fay Shaw translated,
I think of thee,
Fragrant, fresh Uist of the handsome youths . . .
Land of marram grass, land of barley,
Land where everything is plentiful . . .
The Pennsylvanian was also an expert photographer. She took a portrait of an old man, a celebrated stonemason called Iain âClachairâ Campbell. Campbell was sitting outside his crofthouse that day in the early 1930s, smoking a pipe. To his left a tangle of rough picked heather lay against a wall. To his right were coils of thick, strong rope. In the middle, in his big bare hands a sheaf of the heather was being expertly woven and extraordinarily converted into neat lengths of the rope.
Iain âClachairâ Campbell was plaiting heather into rope because he lived on the east coast of
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