Inner Hebrides, Scotland
There is a melody from a distant past that won’t let go. Only a fragment remains. The music is soothing like a lullaby but the words portray a longing, a yearning to return home from a place far away. “Carry me back across the sea, over the sea to Skye.” That is all we can remember, a brief haunting refrain from a song from long ago. Who wrote it? Where had he gone? Why had he left a land that seemed to be so much a part of him?
The Sleat Peninsula projects from the southwest corner of the Isle of Skye somewhat like an elongated thumb. Loch Eishort sits in the gap between the thumb and fingers. There, where a freshwater stream trickles, cascades and finally falls to meet the tidal flow, a village called Boreraig once stood. The cottages were small but the walls were sturdy and thick, built of the local stone. They were roofless now and no doors remained to shut out the cold and wind. Those near the shore, the cottars homes had been renovated since the days when kelp was pulled from the intertidal zone, a cash crop for these inhabitants. Crofters had lived on the higher slopes, nearer to their cultivated fields. Ribbons of fencerows painstakingly piled stockades of stone, radiated off into the mountainous terrain. Where the stream dissected the earth into a lush green valley, the sloping hillsides were striped with strange lines, with peculiar parallel furrows. Acres and acres, as far as the eye could reach, told of the diet of the three hundred men, women and children. Potatoes were plucked from these runrigs once a year. Once a year for decades upon decades the harvest continued, that is until 1851. Times changed. No longer was it profitable for large landowners to collect a tithe from tenant farmers. The people were cleared, were forced to leave, to go wherever they could find shelter and jobs. Was our songwriter one of these? Did he miss the dozens of colors of green that speckled the hillsides and dotted the cliffs? Did he miss the spiked peaks of the Cuillin Range and the glacially carved valleys were waterfalls were as plentiful as the raindrops that fell?
The sun shone brightly as we followed the edges of the Loch and crossed to the Isles of Canna and Sanday. It shone just long enough to reach the shore. Everywhere in the world claims the title to having weather that is the most changeable. Very few places could rival the whims of Scotland’s isles. Sun alternated with showers, again and again as the hands on the clock ticked off the hours of our visit. Here life was vibrant, the local folks were all hard at work. The cottages were quaint and white. Hedgerows bust with robin’s song. Eiders drifted in the inner harbor where the water was a mirror of glass. Wildflowers were scattered in wild array; delicate pink thrift at the tidal edge, deep magenta orchids on the hills and yellow iris lining the road. All the colors of the rainbows were scattered on the land.
There is a melody from a distant past that won’t let go. Only a fragment remains. The music is soothing like a lullaby but the words portray a longing, a yearning to return home from a place far away. “Carry me back across the sea, over the sea to Skye.” That is all we can remember, a brief haunting refrain from a song from long ago. Who wrote it? Where had he gone? Why had he left a land that seemed to be so much a part of him?
The Sleat Peninsula projects from the southwest corner of the Isle of Skye somewhat like an elongated thumb. Loch Eishort sits in the gap between the thumb and fingers. There, where a freshwater stream trickles, cascades and finally falls to meet the tidal flow, a village called Boreraig once stood. The cottages were small but the walls were sturdy and thick, built of the local stone. They were roofless now and no doors remained to shut out the cold and wind. Those near the shore, the cottars homes had been renovated since the days when kelp was pulled from the intertidal zone, a cash crop for these inhabitants. Crofters had lived on the higher slopes, nearer to their cultivated fields. Ribbons of fencerows painstakingly piled stockades of stone, radiated off into the mountainous terrain. Where the stream dissected the earth into a lush green valley, the sloping hillsides were striped with strange lines, with peculiar parallel furrows. Acres and acres, as far as the eye could reach, told of the diet of the three hundred men, women and children. Potatoes were plucked from these runrigs once a year. Once a year for decades upon decades the harvest continued, that is until 1851. Times changed. No longer was it profitable for large landowners to collect a tithe from tenant farmers. The people were cleared, were forced to leave, to go wherever they could find shelter and jobs. Was our songwriter one of these? Did he miss the dozens of colors of green that speckled the hillsides and dotted the cliffs? Did he miss the spiked peaks of the Cuillin Range and the glacially carved valleys were waterfalls were as plentiful as the raindrops that fell?
The sun shone brightly as we followed the edges of the Loch and crossed to the Isles of Canna and Sanday. It shone just long enough to reach the shore. Everywhere in the world claims the title to having weather that is the most changeable. Very few places could rival the whims of Scotland’s isles. Sun alternated with showers, again and again as the hands on the clock ticked off the hours of our visit. Here life was vibrant, the local folks were all hard at work. The cottages were quaint and white. Hedgerows bust with robin’s song. Eiders drifted in the inner harbor where the water was a mirror of glass. Wildflowers were scattered in wild array; delicate pink thrift at the tidal edge, deep magenta orchids on the hills and yellow iris lining the road. All the colors of the rainbows were scattered on the land.
