Chapter III: Extracts From Letter From Rev. Mr. Arthur,

UYEA SOUND, UNST.

UYEA SOUND, 1<st Feb>. 1872. I have yours of the 26th Jan. '72, making inquiries about the price and quality of provisions, etc. in the Fair Isle. When I arrived there in summer '70, my furniture and provisions I had brought with me from Edinburgh had not arrived, through the gross misconduct of Mr. Bruce's skipper; so I had no alternative but to get provisions from his store, the only shop in the island. Tea, equal to 2s. or 2s. 2d. a pound in Glasgow, which I had tried from curiosity, was sold to me for 4s.; sugar (East India brown) worth 31/2d. a pound, cost 7d.; soap, the same; coarse biscuit (the only bread), 4d. a pound. All these articles were, I conceived, about 100 per cent. above the ordinary selling price, or profits, in other places. I afterwards bought other articles, but I forget the price, and could not tell the profits.

Meal is the great demand of the island, besides tea, tobacco, etc. I heard great complaints of the price of the meal, but I needed none. They said the bere-meal cost about 20s. a boll, but they did not know the precise price till settling day, once a year or two years. Then they had to pay whatever Mr. Bruce chose to name, after it was all eaten. He kept off the price from that of their fish; and there too, they had to take whatever he named. I found from an Orkney newspaper that bere-meal was selling there at 13s. a boll. As the meal was bought with their own money, and the price of their own fish of last year, I suppose a penny letter could order 100 bolls, shipped at Aberdeen or Kirkwall; the price of carriage to Lerwick would be, say 6d. a boll; then conveyed to Fair Isle in Mr. Bruce's own vessel, with a reasonable freight would clear about one thousand per cent. on the actual outlay or he would pocket £30 for a penny letter.

The people 'were restricted (as you say you have been informed) to buy from any one else, both by word and writing, and by the fact that they had nothing to pay it with till July last from 1869-1871. Mr. Bruce tried to establish a complete monopoly, but he did not altogether succeed. Others came and undersold him vastly, though even they were VERY DEAR, and would not sell above high- water mark. Every time any one came to the island to sell tea, sugar, coffee, soap, etc., it was reported that any one buying from such would get their warning to leave the island--the grand and only punishment known there. Of course, they all bought more or less secretly or openly and none were turned away I was at first astounded to find they did not believe a word I said, and I soon learned not to believe a word they said. I don't mean all were liars alike, but only a stranger can't tell whom to trust.

One seller came three times to the island that summer(1870) and took away a good deal of money and goods each time. I bought bread, sugar, fowls, etc, for Mr Bruce's laws did not apply to me Good sugar 6d. a pound, would have cost 5d. and 51/2d. in Glasgow. Soap equally cheap, I was told. Bread 2d. above Kirkwall price, <e.g.> a 4 lb. loaf 8d. instead of 6d. at Kirkwall. This man and his boat's crew of two or three men remained six days on one occasion in good weather selling and collecting accounts, and took away cattle, etc. It was in regard to him that the notice was stuck up in the store window <signed> by Mr Bruce that he advised his tenants not to deal with strangers, nor to receive them into their houses.

As to the fish, the people complained that they got 9d. a cwt. less than those at Sumburgh for the same fish; their prices varying from 2s. 6d. to 3s., about 25 per cent. below the same article twenty-four miles distant, so that £75 would pay as much fish there as £100 at Sumburgh. If the Sumburgh fishermen complain you may guess what the islanders will do if they dare speak out. I am told the Unst fishermen have got this year 8s. a cwt. for cod and ling -- the cod-fish of Fair Isle are bought at half-price. When I was there for my furniture in July last I asked for curiosity, what they got for their fish as Mr. Bruce was there settling. They said 2s. 9d. and 3s. that would be 5s 6d. and 6s. for cod. Now 6s. is to 8s. as £75 is to £100. If the fish are not paid till a year or two after they are delivered, the only capital required is the outlay for salt; and I should think £20 of salt should serve £200 of clear profit on the fish -- equal to 1000 per cent. on the outlay as

You may think their plots of ground are let cheap with a view to profit on the fish. The reverse is the fact. The price of land there is nearly double that of the lots I have priced in Sutherlandshire and the rest of Shetland The land is the source of the people's <loudest> and <bitterest complaints>. They say Mr. Bruce has doubled the rents since he got the island, four or five years ago and the tacksmen had overtaxed them before he got it. Many have left the island since then, on the plea of oppression voluntarily submitting to the only punishment they have to fear. ......................................... I received letters in October dated July, and none after till I came for them in March, although the people were fishing every month in the year, and we could speak the mail steamer going north twice in three trips. Going south, she is generally under night or very early in the morning. I have gone to the mail and spoken to the captain in October, November and December, and my letters and papers on board were carried fifty miles past me, to be obtained when anybody coming to the island chose to ask them; and thus I might obtain them in a few months, OR NEVER. And so of letters <leaving> the island. Now, a few pounds could establish a post-office in the island and the mail steamer could deliver a bag forty or fifty times in the year when going north; indeed always, unless she passed in a fog, or in the dark, or in a storm from a south or south-east wind. In a north wind, the harbour is perfectly calm, and the island shelters the steamer.

IV.--EXTRACT FROM LETTER BY WM. MOUAT, ESQ. OF GARTH, ADVOCATE, TO MACCULLOCH, AUTHOR OF 'THE HIGHLANDS AND WESTERN ISLANDS OF SCOTLAND' (DISCOVERED AMONGST THE GARTH PAPERS IN MARCH 1872).

<2d November> 1820. . . . With regard to the points in question, I think, if I can make myself understood, I should be able to satisfy you; but our mode of holding, or rather of describing property, is so different from anything practised either in England or Scotland, that I suspect it will be necessary to take a very elementary view before I can be sure of succeeding.

In the first place, then, there are no <Manorial rights>, or anything analogous to them, either in the person of Lord Dundas or of any other person. The reason why you have heard his Lordship spoken of as so universal a proprietor in the commons is, that although his is only a third or fourth rate property, it is so much scattered, that there are few commons (scattales or scattholes) in the country in which he has not something to say, <simply, however, as a proprietor>. The Crown is the universal superior, and all the land is freehold. It is true that Lord Dundas lately possessed over all the country, and does still possess over some few estates, the right to the Crown rents. These were the feu-duties exigible from the feued lands, and a payment called scatt, exigible both from Udal and feued land; but this was simply a right to collect the payments, and did not infer any right of superiority. Etymologically, scatt certainly seems to have some connection with <scattholds>, but practically it has none whatever, so far as the receiver is concerned, and is as to him simply a feu-duty. The opinion of the country, however, is so far in favour of the etymological view, that it is generally conceived that all towns (<i.e.> townships) paying scatt have right to a share of the commons, while those who do not have none; but this point has never been settled by any judicial authority.

In the second place, you are mistaken in supposing that tenants pay no rent for the scattholds. Every township its own scatthold, the boundaries of which are, or ought to be, known. I say 'ought to be,' because I believe in many instances a knowledge of the marches has been lost. Any scatthold, therefore, is common merely as respects the township to which it belongs; and it is the exclusive property of the owners of that township, or, more strictly speaking, forms a part of the township itself. Each township consists of a certain number of merks. The following history of the origin of this term (which is our universal denomination of land, both in letting it to tenants and in conveying it from one proprietor to another) may help to explain its nature. It seems, then, to have arisen in the times when rents were fixed by public authority, each township being valued, <in cumulo>, at so many merks of money as it was considered worth. The share of each landlord was then naturally said to consist of so many merks, because the rent was in fact his whole interest, the farmer being, according to the old Danish law, the real proprietor, and the landlord only a sort of lord of the manor. The term, by a very easy change, came, with the changes of laws, to apply to that portion of land which had originally paid a money merk of rent, but did not, and does not to this day, denote any particular spot or measurement, but merely such proportion of the whole township as had been equivalent to one money merk of rent, when the whole was valued at a given number. This hypothesis, for I acknowledge it is little more, at least gives a result corresponding precisely to our present idea of a merk of land, and also accounts for the great variety of contents which we find in merk, since, to be equal in value, they must have been of very different extent in different situations. The number of merks in each town is known from old records and traditions, or, practically, from the sum of all the proprietors. Thus, if in the town of M. 40 merks belong to A., 30 to B., and 20 to C., then is M. a town of 40 + 30 + 20 = 90 merks. It is of no consequence here whether M. contains five acres or five hundred, 40-90ths of the whole belong to A., and 30-90ths to B., etc. And, on the other hand, the number of merks might be double, triple, or in any other proportion, without at all altering the extent or state of the property, except that the interest of each proprietor would be expressed by proportionally higher figures. A. would have 80-180ths, B. 60-180ths, and so forth. In these circumstances, if a landlord lets to a tenant any given number of merks, it is just giving him a fractional share, of which the total number of merks in the town is the denominators, and the number let the numerator. A tenant taking ten merks in the above supposed town of M., would just have right to 10-90ths of the corn land, 10-90ths of the meadow land, 10-90ths of the stinted pasture within the dyke, and 10-90ths of the unstinted pasture, or 'scatthold,' without the dyke. But the rent is charged at so much per merk -- <Ergo>, the tenant does pay rent for the scatthold, Q.E.D.!!

I do not, however, allege that the rent thus paid is anything like what it might easily be under a better system.

That the rents were anciently fixed by public authority, is, I believe, an established fact, and there is reason to believe that the practice continued long after the transference of this country from Norway to Scotland, when, of course, it ceased to be law. This practice, and the long period for which both rents and improvements were stationary, had produced so strong an impression upon our habits of thinking on this subject, that, at so late a period as to be distinctly within my own recollection, landlords, in general, had no clear practical confidence in their own right to demand a direct rise of rent, and, under this feeling, resorted, in many instances, to indirect methods of doing that which they had a right to have done openly and avowedly. The sight of this sort of thing, without an understanding of the circumstances and habits of thinking which lie to it, gave superficial observers an idea that much oppression and injustice was exercised towards the tenantry, and produced much of that obloquy (some of which may possibly have fallen in your way) which has been thrown upon the Shetland landholders.

This idea has now, however, completely vanished, and many Shetland proprietors have let their lands at a raised money rent, without reserving any further claim upon the tenants: and if all have not done so, it arises from other causes, and not from any feeling of the kind described above, or from any inclination to take undue advantages.

As to your question why the scattholds remain undivided, the general backwardness of improvement, and want of agricultural skill and capital, are the immediate causes. The present tenantry are so ignorant of the means of turning these commons to any proper account, that the fee-simple of most of them would, under the present management, hardly pay a common land-measurer for surveying them, far less could they bear any litigation. There are, however, many considerable scattholds at present the exclusive property of one or a few persons. Improved management has begun, and will probably take root, first in such situations, and afterwards, when its advantages are seen, and a sufficient number of people trained to practise it has arisen, it will spread over those lands where the difficulty and expense of divisions have to be previously incurred. Your alternative of levying a rent of so much per head of beasts pasturing, would not answer, because, as I have already endeavoured to explain, the tenants, in paying a rent per merk, pay for their scattholds as well as for their other ]and. Your other suggestion, however, numerically limiting the stock according to the rent, or, which is the same thing, according to the moths, would be highly beneficial both to tenants and landlords. If you ask, Why then is it not carried into effect? I can only answer that we have not long turned our attention the way of agricultural improvement, and have only begun to discover that what is difficult is not always impossible.