Village Bay, St Kilda, Scotland
St Kilda Has No Saint
Story and Photos By Linda N. Cortright
There is no saint in St Kilda. How utterly disappointing. Hence the spelling of “St” without a period at the end. Mind you, I am feeling a bit deceived that all these years I have been calling it St Kilda when I should really be saying “saint-less St Kilda.” Going forward, it’s going to be awkward for me to refer to St Kilda in conversation and then quickly add, “there’s no period after the “St”. I can’t in good conscience lead others astray.
So why do they call it St Kilda if there’s no saint? It rather depends on whom you ask. Some believe it is a cartographer’s typo. [To date, not a single typo in Wild Fibers has resulted in anyone being sainted.] The word ‘Kilda’ first appears on a map in 1588, but without the saint prefix. Then sometime in the 17th century while a Dutch cartographer was mapping the location of Hirta (the main island in what is now known as the St Kilda archipelago), it’s possible the island called “Skildar was mistaken Hirta for and that’s where the name is derived.
Map of St Kilda archipelago
And then there are those who believe the St Kildans themselves are responsible for the name, suggesting that the St Kildans often pronounced ‘r’ as ‘l’ thus when they pronounced Hirta it sounded like ‘Hilda.’ Frankly, not many people support this theory. Based on what little documentation exists about the earlier life of the St Kildans, they were an illiterate society and so nearly all records before the end of the 19th century are secondhand accounts, ‘Hilda’ to ‘Kilda’ is not what happened even if phonetically it seems plausible.
My personal favorite has a quasi-miraculous connotation, which both satisfies and justifies my desire to continue calling it St Kilda. The island of Hirta is just 2.5 square miles. One half of the island slopes gradually like the curve of a finger bowl; the other half precipitously drops into steep shredded cliffs. (Imagine dropping your finger bowl onto a stone floor.) Centuries ago, it was a common practice to name wells and springs after a saint. Understandably, people wanted to do everything possible to ensure their supply of fresh water continued to flow. There is a spring on Hirta named Childa, and the day I visited St Kilda it was spewing like a firehose.
The ascent on one side of Hirta is a gradual slope
The descent on the other side is anything but
Inevitably, we will never know for certain if St Kilda got its name through the slip of a cartographer’s pen, an error in elocution, or the canonization of an otherwise nondescript freshwater rivulet. We do know that none of that changes the history of what life was like on the island, which all too often meant death, if not a severed limb.
The peripatetic life on St Kilda begins with the initial fight for ownership. Whether its fact or fake news, the story goes that the MacLeods of Harris and the MacDonalds of Uist (think Hatfields and McCoys of the Middle Ages) had a wee dispute over the ownership of St Kilda. Rather than settle it with a duel, they decided to have a race. The two families would use boats of equal size. They would each begin from Long Island (an islet near the Isle of Harris), and then race 50 miles across the Atlantic. First person to reach land saint-less St Kilda wins!
Under glorious conditions, which are an anomaly in this region where winds blow at 130 mph and its either raining, getting ready to rain, or just finished raining, the passage to St Kilda in an open boat was nearly three days of endless rowing, and endless puking for some, as well. As the story goes, the MacDonald boat was a few lengths ahead as they pulled into Village Bay. The MacLeods could see their defeat on the horizon when young Coll MacLeod threw down his oar, leapt to the front of the boat, withdrew his sword, and severed his hand and proceeded to toss it over the heads of the MacDonald boat (with blood arcing though the air) and ultimately wining the race. (Why has no one ever made a movie about Coll MacLeod?)
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I may be willing to concede that St Kilda is saint-less, but in my heart, there will always be Coll MacLeod, the one-handed hero.
The last survivors on St Kilda,
Part of what perpetuates so much intrigue over St Kilda is rooted not in its origin, but its ultimate demise. On August 28, 1930, after centuries of blissful ignorance—as only one can living 50 miles out to sea—the St Kildans successfully petitioned the government to be evacuated from the island. Tourists had begun to arrive in the late 1800s bringing their fancy dress and their pockets full of pence, generously tipping the locals who offered to row them from ship to shore. In turn, islanders began visiting the mainland and for the first time they saw trees. Soon, they were carrying trees back to the island to use for fuel. A list of comforts and conveniences, many of which were entirely inconceivable, began to grow and with them so did the islanders discontent. The proverbial last straw arrived in January 1930 when Mary Gillies fell ill with appendicitis in and subsequently died. Despite everyone’s best efforts, they couldn’t get her off the island in time. And with that the St Kildans decided they had enough.
The wind was calm that August morning when the surviving St Kildans boarded HMS Harebell. There were just 13 men, 10 women and 13 children left. All of their cattle had been sold, and their sheep as well. They would need all the money they could muster for their new way of life; a life that would bear no resemblance to the one they were leaving. Things were so lean and so bleak, they even drowned all the dogs in the sea, much to the great protest of the National Canine Defence League. The only thing left behind were a handful of cats, and a lifetime of memories.
On the morning my modern, sturdy shipped pulled into Village Bay raindrops were falling hard from the sky. It is the first time I have ever wondered if, indeed, the heavens were weeping from above.
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