The Guga Hunters

Donald S. Murray

• Publisher: Birlinn
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780857907653
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia británica

This Scottish Highlands history celebrates the traditional Gaelic bird hunt undertaken each year on the island of Sula Sgeir north of the Outer Hebrides. Every year, ten men from Ness, at the northern tip of the Isle of Lewis, sail north-east for some forty miles to a remote rock called Sula Sgeir. Their mission is to catch and harvest the guga; the almost fully grown gannet chicks nesting on the two-hundred-foot-high cliffs that circle the tiny island, which is barely half a mile long. After spending a fortnight in the arduous conditions that often prevail there, they return home with around two thousand of the birds, pickled and salted and ready for the tables of Nessmen and women both at home and abroad. The Guga Hunters tells the story of the men who voyage to Sula Sgeir each year, capturing their way of life and the drama of their exploits. They speak of the laughter that seasons their time together on Sula Sgeir, as well as the dangers they have faced. Delving deep into the social history of Ness, local historian Donald S. Murray also reveals the hunt's connections to the traditions of other North Atlantic countries. Told in his district's poetry and prose, Murray shows how the spirit of a community is preserved in this truly unique tradition.

1

Port in Calm and Storm

WIDOW-MAKER

The sea makes widows too many mornings,

compelling women to be trapped in black

through days when storm-clouds come without warning

and nets tugged tight turn loose and slack.

The sea makes widows too many mornings

when time and tide permit no turning back

and out of stillness, waves come storming,

strong men shivering before their attack.

The sea makes widows too many mornings.

For all the crew switches sail and tack,

there is no relief from weight of mourning

that storms pile thick upon mens’ backs.

The sea makes widows too many mornings,

when daylight opens with a skyline crack

of sun too weak to give much warming

to homes aware of life they lack.

The sea makes widows too many mornings

when boats are wrecked on reefs or stacks,

when quays fall hushed and quiet, transforming

coloured threads into shades of black.

‘What mean ye by these stones?’ – Joshua 4: 6

‘When people look at Port these days, it’s impossible for them to imagine what it looked like at the tail end of the nineteenth century. It was an extremely busy place. There were 400 people directly employed there. Five thousand lives dependent on the fishing industry. Thirty-seven boats there in 1892. Six men to every boat. Mostly catching ling. Ten thousand ling at one time, for instance, in one day. In 1900, there were 12,500 hundredweights of ling caught there during the year. Imagine that. And other fish too. Cod, skate and halibut. A whole array.’

As Norman Smith – the man most people know in the community as Tormod Sgiugs – talks about the northern end of my home-district, I think of the Port of Ness I am familiar with today and visited often in my youth. To be honest, nowadays his vision of its past glories is more than hard to imagine. The only remnant of their existence seems to be ‘A’ Ghlainne’, the meeting point for the men of Port. Loaned to the district’s fishermen by the Met Office in London in 1836, it is a barometer set into a stone pillar at a sand-coloured bungalow standing across from the road leading down to the quay.

Otherwise, it’s a sleepy little village, only disturbed by an occasional collie padding from house to house, a vehicle full of locals or visitors making their way down to its glorious stretch of sand, or – sometimes at night – the boy-racers revving their cars along the road in one of the machismo rituals performed persistently within its boundaries for decades. And then there were the evenings men and women would queue along the breakwater in order to obtain a clutch of gugas, slipping them into plastic bags bearing legends like ‘Lewis Crofters’, ‘James MacKenzie’ or – more exotically – ‘Marks and Spencer’ or even ‘Harrods’. Other than that, its stillness would only be broken by the cries of seagulls, harassed, perhaps, by a skua visiting the harbour, dipping and rising over the breakwater wall.

Yet if Tormod tells me it was an extremely busy place, it must be so. For all that he claims he is uneasy upon salt water, it only takes a few moments in his company to make clear he has a head more than full of the lore of sea. One can hear it in his conversation, bright and sharp and knowledgeable about the waves and its effects on his native island. One can even see it in his study. A filing cabinet in the corner is crammed with documents relating to the boats and businesses of Port of Ness, the village which his community of Lionel borders. There are papers, too, in what he jokingly refers to as his ‘banana boxes’. There are a number of them – the word ‘Fyffes’ printed on the sides of quite a few – stacked against one wall. No doubt, even though he does not disturb them on this occasion, there are similar contents squashed inside – all part of his vast knowledge of the community to which he belongs.

A fit and slender man for his 80-odd years, his hair still thick and silver, he pauses for a moment to catch breath and thought before continuing the conversation.

‘And that meant there were buildings that had to deal with these catches, preparing them for the Continental and Irish markets. You know where Beirgh is?’

I nod my head, having just learned where it was the other day. For most of my life, a single house called ‘Bay View’ has stood there, occupying a bare headland above the breakwater, much of it – as my friend, Dods, notes later – scored with folds in the land, called either lazybeds or run rig. I remember being told that this had been built by the brother of the entrepreneur and benefactor Murdo Macaulay, who made a fortune in Rhodesia, the country now known as Zimbabwe. Later, he established a Trust which had helped in the creation of the Ness Hall at my end of the parish and assisted the fishermen of Lewis in the purchase of boats. He had made, too, the education of those a decade or more older than me possible, providing Nessmen of that time with a bursary to go to university.

‘There used to be shoals of fish left to dry out on its southeastern tip, the flat ledges of rock that lie there . . . It was the women who brought the fish there, carrying them on their backs in creels the half-mile or so from the curing stations. One of them was where Harbour View is today, just beside the road that goes down to the beach. They would be split there and salted in vats. After that, families would have the task of drying the catch, spreading it out on the rocks for the weather to do its work. And then, within a fortnight, the fish would be ready for the market, which was mainly Ireland, as for most of the fish cured on Scotland’s west coast.’

He pauses again, drinking from the cup of tea his wife Cairstiona has just brought in.

‘And you know where Bàrr a’ Iàirrd is?’

‘No . . .’

He tells me. It’s on another point of land not far away, overlooking the beach and the inner harbour. For most of my life, it’s been occupied by a peatstack and a Portakabin acting as a public toilet. Nowadays, they’re building a small restaurant there, where visitors will be able to eat and enjoy a glass of wine while looking at the sands and sea below. It will be a welcome change from being blown about by the gale force wind on the summit as I was so often in my youth.

‘You know what used to be there? And also in some of the croft houses close by? Storehouses. First of all they were used in 1895 for the material to build the harbour. Even wooden buildings to accommodate staff, the engineers and such like. Later they were used for fishing gear. The lines and sails that they needed. Where the Portakabin is used to be an old smithy, Henderson’s place. All behind four thick walls. There’s no doubt it was a thriving place. Depending on the direction of the wind, there would always be a group of men gathered there, viewing everything that was going on. And, of course, they would be a different sort of men from the ones that are around here nowadays.’

He tells a story to illustrate this. Sipping as he does so, he speaks of a time when some of the men were spending their evening fishing from some of the rocks that form part of the jagged shoreline of the district. A young lad, Angus, fell in. Gasping and heaving, spitting mouthfuls of salt water, he was eventually hauled out. Instead of gaining sympathy for his plight, all he received was one man jerking his head in his direction.

‘Aonghais, am faca tu cudaigean . . . Did you see any cuddies while you were down there?’

‘Smaoinich,’ Tormod laughs, sipping his tea. ‘What kind of men were they?’

If any man had the ability to answer that question, it would be Tormod. He possesses knowledge of many matters relating to the community he comes from. His life since he was a child has been caught up in it. His father, for instance, returned home in 1893 from Glasgow, where he was employed as a baker, opening a bakery at that time in Port.

‘He used to spend all his time baking ship-biscuits for the men in the boats that were tied up here.’

For many years too, Tormod was the Ness correspondent of the Stornoway Gazette, writing the section of the ‘From Butt to Barra’ column that kept natives and exiles informed of what was going on in the district. Still an elder in the Free Church, the largest in the area, he takes the duties of that office very seriously. On the day we met, for instance, he travelled up to my own village to visit a woman there who had been largely housebound for a number of years. He was also for many decades a teacher in the Church’s Sabbath School; a fact that is recognised by the wooden carving of an open book on a cabinet. As Secretary to the Ness Cemetery Committee, he works hard to ensure that both the new and old cemeteries in the district are kept in order. He is the one on hand to answer visitors when they arrive in Ness from the distant edges of the world asking: ‘Can you show me where my ancestors are buried?’

In short, I am with a man who has a wide range of interests, a continual questioning of the world, that his wife Cairstiona gently chides him about. ‘Dè ’n diofar a th’ ann aig deireadh an latha?’ she asks, a half smile on her face as she does so. ‘What difference does it make at the end of the day?’

For all that he appears a serious-minded man, we share a similar sense of humour. A twinkle flashes behind his glasses when either he or I make a joke, sometimes even about the sea-sickness we share in common. Talking of a time he lay stretched out in the bottom of a boat leaving the harbour, he tells of how an older man responded: ‘Throw him into the waters! He’d make good bait.’

Yet in many ways I feel dwarfed by him. There is the scale of his war-time experience. Too young to be part of the early years of the Second World War, he was involved in the Battle of Anzio in the first half of 1944. Later he was captured by the Germans in Florence on a date he remembers only too well – 30 November 1944. From there, he was taken to a Prisoner of War camp near Munich. It is a time he recalls without bitterness or rancour.

‘The Germans knew they were losing the war by then. The guards in the camp were old men who did their best to treat us well, but they were as hungry as we were. After all, we had the Red Cross parcels they used to send. We used to give them bits of chocolate when the boxes arrived.’

I also feel awed by the immensity of his Christian faith. In this he reminds me of my father, prayer and the reading of the Bible punctuating the rhythm of his day. Central to his life, it is always evident in him, paradoxically both lifting him up and grounding him, for all that he only talks about it while saying grace over a cup of tea and scones. There is, more prosaically, the way he is able to place his hand on exactly the right piece of paper in the reams that surround him. His slight frame moves around the room, bending down to fetch a particular sheet or notebook from the bottom of the filing cabinet: a gift that fills me with envy when I consider the blizzard of white and scrawled paper that surround me in my own life.

And, of course, there is that detailed knowledge of the community, much of it gained while employed at the Decca Station in Lionel from the end of his war-service until his retirement. Some was gleaned, too, from standing behind the counter of the family shop. Near the crossroads in Lionel, it acted as the ideal location to garner news from Knockaird and Eoropie in one direction, the extremities of Skigersta and Cross Skigersta Road in the other. He displays the understanding he has gleaned from this again and again in my company, revealing an astonishing recollection of dates, names and figures. For instance, he tells me that Port was the centre of the hunt not just for fish and the guga – it was also a place where seals were harvested, taken from, among other locations, Sulasgeir’s nearest neighbour, North Rona.

‘In 1905, one of the boats returned with the corpses of 190 seals. The seal oil obtained from them was taken from Port to Stornoway.’

In the early days, these and other similar cargoes were shipped to Stornoway by trading smacks, former East Coast clinker-built Fifies with keels of between 40 and 50 feet. With names like Grace Darling, Village Maid and Jessie, they travelled sometimes to the Scottish mainland for goods such as timber. By the opening years of the twentieth century, this was changing, these boats becoming less and less required. One of the reasons for this was Port itself, its industry and existence justifying the outlay of expenditure needed to create a road to allow lorries to travel back and forth from Stornoway.

It was this, local historian Michael Robson told me later at his home in Port, that also explains much of the way the district is laid out, with houses shadowing the road between Port and the village of Barvas for much of its length. ‘It’s straight just about all of the way. A direct rout...