Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-gtxcr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T21:51:01.268Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Hebrides: a Cultural Backwater

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

E. Cecil Curwen
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In our efforts to reconstruct the life of vanished peoples and cultures we often find ourselves making comparisons with the implements and customs of modern primitive peoples. This practice seems, with due safeguards, reasonably sound, for similar cultural conditions may produce similar cultural phenomena. Our comparative material is usually sought among the backward races of the tropics, less frequently in parts of Europe that are off the beaten track; but it is not generally realized that we have in Britain itself a populous region which, owing to its remoteness, did not emerge from the Iron Age until the end of last century. By ‘the Iron Age’ we mean that simple state of culture that is found in peasant communities in southern Britain between, say, 500 B.C. and A.D. 1000, extending in a variable degree into the Middle Ages. This stage of cultural development is distinguished from more advanced stages by the prevalence of selfsupporting communities which are necessitated by difficulty of communications, and in this respect the culture of the Hebrides as late as the middle of the nineteenth century was more like that of the pre-Roman Iron Age in southern England than any succeeding phase.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 12 , Issue 47 , September 1938 , pp. 261 - 289
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1938

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 This is a general statement, and does not necessarily apply to the households of the chiefs and landed proprietors. Even today, of the 30,000 (odd) inhabitants of Lewis and Harris, the majority have probably never seen a train.

2 In the case of one house at Woodend, near Portree, the present occupant could The house is obviously an old account for its past occupants for200 years. one and less carefully built than most, but has been recently modified internally.

3 Proc. SOCA. nt. Scot., 1870, 7, 153–60.Google Scholar

4 I have only seen one instance of a house consisting of as many as four parallelchambers ; this is in the township of Fivepenny Borve, and is illustrated in a recent photo by Aage Roussell in his Norse Building Customs in the Scottish Islands (1934), 13,fig. 3 (‘Mealahost’).Google Scholar

5 For the arrangement of the quern see ANTIQUITY, 1937, 11, 144–5, fig. 39 and pl.III;Google Scholar Arthur, Mitchell, The Past in the Present (1880), 33–8.Google Scholar

6 Proc. SOCA. nt. Scot., 1870, 7, 155–6.Google Scholar

7 Ibid. 159.

8 Roussell, Aage, Norse Building Customs in the Scottish Isles (London, 1934).Google Scholar

9 ANTIQUIT1Y, 1937, 11, 162–73.Google Scholar

10 proc. SOC. Ant. Scot., 1935 LXIX, 265–88.Google Scholar

11 Proc. SOC. Ant. Scot., 1873 10, 156.Google Scholar

12 Thos. Pennant, , A Tour in Scotland (3rd edn. 1774) 11, 277;Google Scholar Bornell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (Heinemann, 1936), 137–8.Google Scholar

13 Thos. Pennant, op. cit., 11 229 and pls. XV, XVI.Google Scholar

14 Proc. SOCA. Ant. Scot., 1905, 39, 401–2.Google Scholar

15 Martin, M., A Description of the Western Isles of Scotland, apud Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, 1809 3, 667.Google Scholar

16 For a knowledge of this, andfor much other valuable information, Mr Crawford is indebted to Mrs Margaret Campbell, of Barra, whom he wishes to thank for her generous help.

17 Boswell’s Journal 99–101, 103.Google Scholar

18 Proc. SOCA. Ant. Scot., 1905, 39, 508–9 (anonymous journal of 1791-2).Google Scholar

19 Pennant, , op. cit., 1 209.Google Scholar

20 Ibid. 11, 315.

21 Ibid. I, 117.

22 Cf. Martin, 649; Pennant, , 2, 214.Google Scholar

23 Cf. Martin, 649; Boswell’s fournal, 107 (Glen Moriston);Google Scholar Pennant, , 1, 108 (near Glen Tilt).Google Scholar

24 Skene, W.F., Celtic Scotland (1880), 3, 385–8.Google Scholar

25 Proc. SOCA. Ant. Scot, 1862, 3, 127–44; 1870, VII, 161–4.Google Scholar See also DrMitchell, Arthur, The Past in the Present (1880), 58–72; Google Scholar Skene, Celtic Scotland (1880), 3, 385–8.Google Scholar

26 Mitchell, A., op. cit., 58–9.Google Scholar

27 Skene, op. cit., 3, 388 states that beehive huts were still inhabited in 1880.Google Scholar

28 Skene, op. cit., 3, 388.Google Scholar

29 Martin (late 17th cent.) says that he saw over 500 small huts of this type in St. Kilda, and about 40 in the neighbouring Borera, used for drying fish and preserving birds’ –eggs (Voyageto St. Kilda, apud Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, 3, 708,721).Google Scholar

30 Fournier, Pierre, ‘Les ouvrages de pierre skche des cultivateurs d’Auvergne,’ L’Auvergne littéraire, 1933, no. 68;Google Scholar also Bull. de la Soc. préhist. franç., 1921, 18, 338–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Gordon Childe, V., Skara Brae (1931), 182–4.Google Scholar

32 Martin, , loc. cit. 575, 660.Google Scholar

33 Mitchell, , op. cit. 25–32, 45–7, 236–7.Google Scholar

34 Mitchell, , op. cit. 121–2. (The sand-dunes of Glenluce are thickly strewn with cracked and broken pebbles, which can only have got there by human agency. The adjacent ‘floors’ contain fragments of beaker pottery, thus suggesting that the practice here described endured for perhaps three millennia.—O.G.S.C.).Google Scholar

35 Pennant, , op. cit. 1, 92–3.Google Scholar

36 Mitchell, , op. cit. 1–9.Google Scholar

37 Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., 1880, 15, 148–51.Google Scholar

38 ANTIQUITY, 1937, 11, pl. 111, f. p. 136, and fig. 39. For a general account of 39 For an account of similar mills in Shetland see Google Scholar Mitchell, , op. cit. 33–8.Google Scholar

39 For an account of similar mills in Shetland see Mitchell, , op. cit. 39–43 Google Scholar

40 Martin, , loc. cit. 592.Google Scholar

41 Stat. Acc. Scotland, 1793, 6, 288–9; Google Scholar Pennant, , 2, 288;Google Scholar Boswell, , 282.Google Scholar

42 ANTIQUITY, 1927, 1, f.p. 261; Google Scholar 1932, 6, 404–5.Google Scholar

43 Martin, , Zoc. cit. 575, 705;Google Scholar Pennant, 2, 288.Google Scholar

44 ANTIQUITY, 1938, 7, 147.Google Scholar

45 Roussell, Aage, op. cit. 48, 60–2;Google Scholar Antiq. Journ. 1933, 11, 121–5. See also note at end of this article.Google Scholar

46 Described by Martin, , Zoc. cit. 639;Google Scholar Pennant, , 2, 280–1.Google Scholar

47 Described by Mitchell, , op. cit. 46;Google Scholar

48 For the effects of drying and roasting before grinding see ANTIQUITY, 1938, 12, 151–2.Google Scholar

49 Pennant, , 1, 191, 362.Google Scholar

50 Martin, , loc. cit. 579.Google Scholar

51 Ibid. 583-4.

52 Mitchell, , op. cit. 271–4. This book contains a great deal of further information on kindred topics.Google Scholar

53 Anc. Mon. Comm. Inventory, Outer Hebrides, Rodil Church, Harris.Google Scholar

54 Pennant, , 1, 270.Google Scholar

55 Martin, , loc. cit. 637.Google Scholar

56 The suggestion was Prof. Gowland'sseeArchaeologia, 71,151–8. kilns seem to have been a product of Roman culture in western Europe ; they are mentioned by Ovid in two passages:Google Scholar seeFasti, 2, 313–4. As far as I know they do not occur in Britain before the latter part of the Roman period, though it is likely that previous to their introduction corn was dried on the domestic hearth as in DenmarkGoogle Scholar (see ANTIQUITY, 1938, 12, 151–2). Boswell saw corn dried in the living-room in Raasay (op. cit., 138).—E.C.C.Google Scholar