Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 175, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 July 1915 — CLING TO BLEAK LAND [ARTICLE]

CLING TO BLEAK LAND

NATIVES OF SHETLAND ISLAND LOV£ THEIR HOME. Have Hard Work to Coax a Living From Almost Barren Rock, But Leave It Unwillingly—Spot Has Figured in History. Fair island, 25 miles south of all the other Shetlands, has had a strange enough pageantry passing over its rocky surface. For not only was it the home of the Piets, and then of the Norse; and for the Norse, the signal beacon to give warning of the coming of the hostile sail; besides that, it supplied a chapter in the romance of the Spanish Armada. For here was wrecked the ship of Don Gomez de Medina, and that noble and his men were for a time most genOtpusly entertained by the islanders, writes Maude Radford Warren in Harper’s Magazine. But time passed, the Spaniards stayed, the meal and the mutton diminished. Then the islanders, wrapped in by the wild storms, unable to get to any other island, fearful of famine, hid their food. The forced guests grew weak, many died of starvation, and some, it is said, were pushed over the tall cliffs into the sea. At last one Andrew Umphrey took the Spaniards away in a ship, and since that day the name of Umphrey has been powerful in the Shetlands. The Fair island people show plain traces of Spanish blood, but they resent the suspicion of it, saying that the Spaniards were isolated when on the island. It is hard to conceive how isolation could well be possible 6n an island two miles square; besides, the Fair island people do not deny that the strange patterns and the lichen dyeing of the stockings and caps and shawls their women knit were taught them by the Spaniards, and indeed the same sort of handicraft is found to this day in country places of Spain. The Fair islanders were great smugglers in the old days, and they are still good bargainers. They are very intelligent, seeming to know instinctively how to read; and not so very long ago they would follow the mail steamers in their light canoeshaped boats, which none but themselves can manage, begging for newspapers and books. One of their terrors is of infectious disease; another is of the dogtax man, against whose coming they are said to hang and drown their dogs; another is of emigration, for they love Fair isle. Yet emigrate they must; about forty-five years ago a hundred of them went, unable longer to coax a living from their bare rock. Their greatest joy is the occasional visits of the minister, more frequently now than in the old days, when, he arrived but once in about two years to marry and christen. He preaches every day of his stay, and they prolong his visit on every possible pretext, using, when all else fails, the solemn prophecy of a storm.