Mingulay

Early Christianity influenced Mingulay (for example the nearby islands of Pabbay and Berneray both have cross-inscribed slabs) but no direct evidence has yet been found. From circa 871 onwards Viking raids on the Outer Hebrides gathered pace but similarly the Viking graves found on Berneray and Vatersay are not replicated on Mingulay and whilst there are no definite indications of Norse settlement, their presence on the island is confirmed by the many features they named.

Kisimul Castle, Barra, the ancient seat of Clan MacNeil

Acknowledged by Malcolm III as part of the Kingdom of the Isles, a Norwegian crown dependency, from the 12th century onwards Norwegian power in the Western Isles weakened. By the 1266 Treaty of Perth they reverted to the Scottish crown control under the tutelage of the quasi-autonomous Lordship of Garmoran (ruled by the MacRory, a faction among the rulers of the Kingdom of the Isles). In 1427, following violence between the MacRory heirs to Garmoran (Clan Ranald, the Siol Gorrie, and Siol Murdoch), Garmoran was declared forfeit.

That same year – 1427 – following the forfeiture, the Lords of the Isles (the remaining MacRory heirs) awarded Lairdship of Barra (and its associated islands) and half of South Uist to Clan MacNeil of Barra. They adopted the cliffs of Builacraig as part of their traditional crest and used the name as a war-cry.[19] However, following acts of piracy by the MacNeils, king James VI transferred ownership of some of the southern archipelago (including Mingulay) to the Bishop of the Isles[note 1], hence those islands became known as the Bishop's Isles .

The islanders' livelihood was based on fishing (for white fish, herring and lobster), crofting (with up to 55 ha (0.21 sq mi) of arable and pasture land fertilised by wrack on which sheep, cattle, ponies, pigs and poultry were kept) and very dependent on the bounty provided by seabirds. For example, rent was payable to The MacNeil in fachaich or ‘fatlings’ – shearwater chicks.[1]

The Reformation never reached the south of the Outer Hebrides and Roman Catholicism held sway from the 12th century to the early 20th. The lack of a resident priest meant that services were often organised by the lay community, but the local culture and traditions of songs and story-telling were rich and varied.[4] As Samuel Johnson observed when lamenting his failure to reach thus far on his 18th-century Hebridean journey:

Popery is favourable to ceremony; and among the ignorant nations ceremony is the only preservative of tradition. Since Protestantism was extended to the savage parts of Scotland, it has perhaps been one of the chief labours of the Ministers to abolish stated observances, because they continued the remembrance of the former religion.[20]

Some of the local beliefs were perhaps less welcome to the practitioners of organised religion. An each-uisge was thought to live in a bottomless well near the summit of Macphee's Hill, and faery sidhes and their associated music were taken for granted, if generally avoided. The curative powers of the seventh son of a seventh son were assumed to be sufficient for the treatment of diseases as serious as tuberculosis. Yet the old ways themselves were dying.

Mingulay village in 1888.[21]

The Barra estates of MacNeil (including all the Barra Isles) were sold to Colonel John Gordon of Cluny Aberdeenshire in 1840 whose lack of consideration for his tenants during the potato famines was matched by his zeal for evictions to create sheep farms.[22] However, the Highland Clearances seemed to have the effect of increasing Mingulay's population as families evicted from Barra sometimes chose to re-settle there rather than take the emigrant ships to Nova Scotia. In this regard Mingulay's remoteness was probably an advantage and rents were reduced from 1840 to 1845. In 1878 Lady Gordon Cathcart inherited the estate and visited but once during her fifty-four year period of tenure.[4]

In 1764 the population of the island was 52.[4] Later census records show that there were 113 residents in 1841, 150 in 1881, 142 in 1891 (occupying 28 houses, compared to the 1841 total of 19), and 135 in 1901.[1] Families were often large, and ten or more children was not uncommon, with three generations sometimes sharing a single small house. Life was co-operative with fishing, waulking, peat cutting and landing the boats all being communal activities. The island is remote but was by no means cut off. In the 19th century fishermen sold fish in Glasgow and Ireland, both men and women worked on the east coast herring fishing industry, and food was brought in from mainland Scotland on a regular basis.

At the height of village life there was a mill, a chapel house consisting of a church and a priest's residence, and a school. However, despite there being a continuous population on Mingulay for at least two thousand years, evacuations began in 1907 and the island was completely abandoned by its residents in 1912.[4]

The old school house

There were numerous reasons for the evacuation. In 1897 a boat from the neighbouring island of Pabbay was lost off Barra Head with its crew of five:[23] more than half of Pabbay's male population, and this did not encourage confidence amongst the fishermen of Mingulay. The lack of a sheltered landing meant that the island could be unreachable for weeks at a time, and loading and unloading goods was at best strenuous and at worst hazardous. This may have meant less at a time when possessions were fewer, but no doubt the population was also increasingly aware of their relative isolation. Writing about the collapse of similar populations in the Hebrides, Neat (2000) suggests:

one common thread would appear to be the unwillingness of even the most stoical and historically-aware communities to continue an existence based upon endless physical hardship when the opportunity of an easier livelihood elsewhere is there to be taken.[24]

Buxton (1995) tells the story of two men who left Mingulay together. One was visiting Barra, and the other intended to emigrate to New York. They said their farewells in Castlebay but it did not work out for the latter and he returned from the United States three months later. To his great surprise he met his friend in Castlebay again, who explained that he had been unable to return to Mingulay since they had last met because of adverse sea conditions. Similar difficulties experienced by visiting priests or doctors bound for Mingulay were a constant source of concern to the islanders.

The ferocity of the weather also created constant hardship. In 1868 a wave washed over the top of Geirum Mor, taking the sheep with it. The summit of the islet is 51 metres (170 ft) above sea level.[4] Fraser Darling and Boyd (1969) also speculate about the "quiet failure" of the populations of small islands like Mingulay to husband their available natural resources.[25] Certainly the population began to exceed the carrying capacity of the land. The Congested Districts Board installed a derrick to assist with the landings at Aneir at the south end of the Bay in 1901, but the design was flawed and its failure was a further disappointment.

In July 1906 grazing land on Vatersay was raided by landless cottars from Barra and its isles, including three families from Mingulay. They were followed in 1907 by eight more raiders from Mingulay led by Micheal Neill Eachainn. Lady Gordon Cathcart took legal action but the visiting judge took the view that she had neglected her duties as a landowner and that "long indifference to the necessities of the cottars had gone far to drive them to exasperation".[4] Vatersay has sheltered anchorages and was only 300 metres (330 yd) from Barra[3] (until the construction of a causeway in 1990)[1] and Neil MacPhee wrote "it is better a thousand times to die here than to go through the same hardships which were our lot" on Mingulay.

In November 1907 six more families consisting of 27 individuals from Mingulay squatted on Sandray, which has a sheltered beach. Meanwhile, the plight of the Vatersay raiders had been raised at Westminster. Despite considerable public sympathy they were eventually sentenced to two months in prison. Shortly thereafter the Congested Districts Board purchased the entire island of Vatersay with the aim of providing new crofts. By the next summer there were 14 Mingulay families living there. Only six families remained on Mingulay itself, and all of them planned to leave.

The ruins of the sand-encroached Village from the north

By 1910 there were only a dozen fishermen in six families living there, and in summer 1912 the island was finally abandoned. Some may have wished to stay, but by now the population had been reduced below a viable number and the lack of a school, which had closed in April 1910, would have been a factor. There is also no doubt that the parish priest, Donald Martin, encouraged the desertion. It is claimed that neither did he like travelling there, nor did the church receive much in the collection box on his visits.[4]

Mingulay bears similarities to the island of Hirta, which was also evacuated in 1930,[26] Mingulay is sometimes referred to as the "near St Kilda".[27] Mingulay is less than a third of the distance from "The Long Island" that Hirta is, yet a 19th-century visitor commented that the former was "much more primitive than St Kilda, especially as regards the cottars' and crofters' houses",[28] suggesting that the lack of a permanent landing was of greater import than sheer distance.

After the island was evacuated it was first tenanted and then purchased in 1919 by Jonathan MacLean from Barra. In 1930 it was sold to John Russell who had experience as a sheep farmer in both Australia and Montana. Russell was clearly a man who liked his own company, choosing to live on the island alone all autumn and winter with his pet ferrets and cats, and joined by two shepherds for the spring and summer only. After seven years he sold up to Peggy Greer, a farmer from Essex who visited only rarely and let the grazings out to local farmers. In 1951 she attempted to sell the island herself, but without success until 1955 when a local crofters' syndicate called the Barra Head Isles Sheepstock Company completed the purchase. The advent of motor boats made stocking the islands considerably easier and the company's ownership continued for the next forty years.[4]

In 2000 Mingulay was acquired by the National Trust for Scotland through a bequest by J. M. Fawcitt "to provide an area of natural beauty in memory of her parents and the courage of her late brother, Bernard."[29]

Only two buildings survive on the island: the schoolhouse and the chapel house, although the latter has recently lost its roof and front wall.[1]