Although only a small island (about 2+1⁄2 by 1+1⁄2 miles or 4 by 2.5 kilometres) Eriskay has many claims to fame that have made the island well-known far beyond the Hebrides. It is associated with a popular song still sung by Scottish traditional musicians, the Eriskay Love Lilt, which was collected on the island by Marjory Kennedy-Fraser with the assistance of the Gaelic Bard Fr. Allan MacDonald. The island is also associated with the Eriskay Pony and the Eriskay jersey (made without any seams).
There is a well-stocked shop in Eriskay and a community centre and local history museum.
History
The Jacobite rising of 1745
Eriskay is very important to the history of the Jacobite rising of 1745. On 2 August 1745 the privateer Du Teillay arrived there and temporarily put Prince Charles Edward Stuart and the Seven Men of Moidart ashore upon the island. The sandy beach where the Prince first set foot upon Scottish soil is still called in his honour Coilleag a' Phrionnsa ("The Cockel Strand of the Prince").
In 1995, a memorial cairn was erected at the site with an inscription that includes the first stanza of Scottish Gaelic national poetAlasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair's iconic song-poem Òran Eile don Phrionnsa:[6]
According to the Napier Commission testimony of local resident John McCaskill, the islanders of Eriskay had consisted as recently as the 1830s and '40s of only three families and less than 30 people. They had been radically multiplied, though, during the subsequent phases of the Highland Clearances. The estate Factors, who considered Eriskay "agriculturally worthless", accordingly used the island as a dumping ground for evicted tenants from the many other islands owned by Colonel John Gordon throughout the Sound of Barra and the southern Outer Hebrides. For the most part, however, the newly arrived islanders of Eriskay belonged overwhelmingly to the once strictly illegal Catholic Church in Scotland and had their family roots in South Uist.[9]
Even so, for decades after Catholic Emancipation in 1829, there was still no resident Roman Catholic priest in Eriskay, and the island's population was largely served by visiting priests from St Peter's Roman Catholic Church at Daliburgh, South Uist. Such priests had walk down to "The Priests' Point" along the south coast and kindle a bonfire as a signal for Eriskay fishermen to sail over and ferry them across the Sound of Barra.
According to Roger Hutchinson, the first St. Michael's Roman Catholic Church was built in 1852, "shortly after the arrival of hundreds of evictees from South Uist and elsewhere. It was no more than a big stone crofthouse, a single-storey rectangle, at first with a thatch and later with a corrugated iron roof."[10]
The current St Michael's Roman Catholic Church stands atop Cnoc nan Sgrath, a hill overlooking the main village on Eriskay. It was famously built with stones and homemade mortar by the local population under the leadership of the Bard Fr. Allan MacDonald (Scottish Gaelic: Maighstir Ailein).[11] Since the current church was consecrated by Bishop George Smith in 7 May 1903,[12] the site of the 1852 stone chapel has been marked by a Marian shrine with a statue of Our Lady of Fatima, overlooking the Sound of Barra.
Kissling's film formed the centre-piece of a "Hebridean Evening", hosted at the Marquess of Londonderry’s London residence, on Tuesday, 30 April 1935, in the presence of the Prince of Wales, Queen Mary of Teck, Prime Minister of the United KingdomRamsay MacDonald, Macleod of Macleod and Cameron of Lochiel. The funds raised were used to build Eriskay’s first major road, running from the old pier at Na Hann in the north to the harbour at Acairseid in the south. While the roads have long since been upgraded, part of the old road, which is named Rathad Kissling ("Kissling Street") in the filmmaker's honour, still survives near Acairseid.
The Politician Lounge Bar in Na Hann is named after the SS Politician which ran aground off the island's coast in 1941. The accident provided the whole island with a generous supply of free whisky in defiance of both customs duties and wartime rationing and subsequently inspired Compton Mackenzie's 1947 comic novel Whisky Galore! and it's 1949 film adaptation.
After a protracted campaign local residents took control of the island on 30 November 2006 in a community buy-out. The previous landowners, a sporting syndicate, sold the assets of the 372-square-kilometre (144 sq mi) estate including Benbecula, South Uist and Eriskay for £4.5 million to a community-owned organisation known as Stòras Uibhist, which was set up to purchase the land and to manage it in perpetuity.[17][18][19]
Comann Eachdraidh Eirisgeidh ("The Eriskay Historical Society") was established in 2010 and, as of 2021, had recently purchased the island's schoolhouse, which had been closed down since 2013, to turn it into a local history and heritage museum. In honour of Fr. Allan MacDonald, the Society has also established "Maighstir Ailein's Poetry Trail", a hiking trail where particularly scenic locations are accompanied by bilingual and laminated verses in boxes of the priest-poet's famous poem, Eilein na h-Òige ("Isle of Youth").[20]
Eriskay is traversed by a number of mountain paths and tracks, and has just a single motor road. The first stretch of that road was built in 1935, funded through proceeds from the first showing in London of the Werner Kissling film.
In 2009 the previous primitive quay facilities at the excellent natural harbour of Acarsaid Mhòr were extended and modernised, with improved vehicular access. Some smaller fishing boats continue—at least when the tides and weather are favourable—to use the shelving bay at Haun (from the Viking for 'harbour'—but scarcely with sufficient shelter to constitute a harbour in practice). Acarsaid Mhòr is also used by visiting yachts.
Crofting
Following the establishment of the first Crofting Commission in the 1880s, the whole of the island, together with the small adjoining Stack Island, was incorporated into the crofting townships:
Name of township
Numbers of
Crofts
Shares
Acarsaid Mhòr
14
10
Am Baile (Balla)
16
15
Bun a' Mhuillinn
10
10
Coilleag
10
10
Na Hann (Haun)
6
4
Na Pàirceannan (Parks)
4
4
Roisinis (Roshinish)
4
6
Rudha Bàn
9
5
Total
73
64
The Eriskay shore
The souming (a word originating in the Viking era) for each full share gives the right to put, on the common grazings (the high ground of Beinn Sgrithean and Beinn Stac), ten sheep, two cows and one Eriskay Pony (all plus their 'followers'—young up to one year old). Most crofts have one full share, but many have a half share, and a few have two shares, and one croft has as many as 3 shares.
The crofts are small (typically five hectares or less) and the land is rocky and exposed to harsh weather. These days, very few crofts are actively worked: there is little economic return in relation to the effort, and although there is a strong cultural attachment to the land, the demands and distractions of modern life leave little time for tending livestock and manual work. Much of the best grazing land, the machair of the north west of the island, has been compromised by house-building and the increasing opposition to the free-range grazing of cattle and sheep during the winter. Now, the most actively worked crofts are in the township of Bun a' Mhuillinn.
The island's common grazings, and the grazing of croft inbye land during the winter months, are regulated by the Eriskay Grazings Committee, the members of which serve a three-year term, supported by a Grazings Clerk, and according to the Grazings Regulations as provided for in the Crofting Acts.[21]
Emigration
Eriskay, looking north towards Easabhal on South Uist
Many Eriskay families have had to leave the island in recent years in search of work and some historic island families have few or no descendants left on the island. An example of these families is the MacInnes who were a prominent island family at the time of the Kissling film but now number just four members of the extended family dwelling on the island, and active in crofting, shell-fishing, building work, as well contributing to the community.
Many of those who leave for the mainland are young as—in common with remoter rural areas generally—there are few work opportunities and limited access to further or higher education.
The island's population was 143, as recorded by the 2011 census[2]—an increase of 7.5% since 2001, when there were 133 usual residents.[22] During the same period Scottish island populations as a whole grew by 4% to 103,702.[23]
Tourism
As of 2010[update] there were no hotels, two or three bed-and-breakfast establishments, and until recently few self-catering cottages or houses. Since the completion in 2001 of the causeway to South Uist and the inauguration of the vehicle ferry to Barra, a number of properties have been professionally renovated or purpose-built as holiday accommodation. The machair and beaches from Coilleag a' Phrionnsa to Rudha Bàn are increasingly popular with visitors travelling with their motor-homes.
The island is home to a herd of Eriskay Ponies owned and maintained by members of Comann Each nan Eilean – The Eriskay Pony Society, founded in 1972.[24] The ponies are bound by crofting regulations and are brought to the hill grazings in spring, and back down into the township for the winter. They graze and roam around the island to whichever part is most comfortable depending on the climate. Although the ponies have a laid-back temperament and are accustomed to humans, they should be approached with care and visitors should refrain from feeding them, as this can be harmful to the animals.
Wildlife
Sea bindweed, which is not native to the Hebrides, grows on the island. Its presence there is said to stem from the arrival of the "Bonnie Prince", who accidentally dropped the seeds when he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket.[25]
^Bilingual Inscription on Cairn
taken 15 years ago, near to Coilleag, Eriskay an Easgann & na Brugannan, Na h-Eileanan an Iar, Scotland.
^Bilingual Inscription on Cairn
taken 15 years ago, near to Coilleag, Eriskay an Easgann & na Brugannan, Na h-Eileanan an Iar, Scotland.
'^Edited by Eberhard Bort (2011), Tis Sixty Years Since: The 1951 Edinburgh People's Festival Ceilidh and the Scottish Folk Revival, page 206.
^ Roger Hutchinson (2010), The Life and Legacy of a Hebridean Priest, Birlinn Limited. Page 130.
^ Roger Hutchinson (2010), The Life and Legacy of a Hebridean Priest, Birlinn Limited. Page 136.
^Frederick G. Rea (1997), A School in South Uist: Reminiscences of a Hebridean Schoolmaster, 1890–1913, edited and with an introduction by John Lorne Campbell, Birlinn Limited. Pages 116–117.
^Edited by Ronald Black (2002), Eilein na h-Òige: The Poems of Fr. Allan MacDonald, Mungo Press. Page 172-185.
^Edited by Donald E. Meek (2019), The Wiles of the World Caran an t-Saohgail: Anthology of 19th-century Scottish Gaelic Verse, Birlinn Limited. Pages 24–31, 397–399.
