On the shore. whatever the weather, cups of people stand patiently waiting to welcome arriving friends. It is a handshaking isle. People who one another daily shake hands at meeting and parting. There are always a few traps and gigs about the pier to convey goods and passengers to the outlying crofts and farms. But there is no haste: most of the homeward-bound vehicles will hang about until the mail is sorted out so that the post girl may be spared a few miles en her round.
That is, indeed, not the least of the charms of the island, and one of the habits that pertain to a past age rather than to this. The communal feeling of the inhabitants induces them to take for granted that everyone should help his neighbour. A great deal of the work of the crofts and smaller farms is. carried on in common. The same reaper or harrow will serve several households, two neighbours will supply a horse apiece to do their ploughing in turn, families fish together, dividing the catch, and no home stricken by illness or misfortune need fear that its few acres of land will go untended. ously as it was two centuries ago.
The twentieth century has hardly Jaid a finger upon the island. Daily newspapers come by po: at a time when the steamer calls—half a dozen houses; wireless sets ihave made an appearance but sparsely owing to the inconvenience and expense of sending batteries to the mainland for charging; there is no telephonic communication except be-the post office and the "big Baptist minister's motor cycle is the sole representative of the internal combustion engine; there is not a single unemployed person on the island.
On the crofts work proceeds as it as proceeded for untold generations. Reaping is done with the scythe, women and children turn out to the binding of corn and stacking of hay Highland cattle roam about the unfenced fields, looking much fiercer than they really are as heir suckling calves follow at heel. The more conrvative crofters still milk their cows on the hillsides instead of bringing them home. Lobster fishing is carried on as perilously as ever about the rocks and skerrie:
For the majority of the families time has stood still. It is true that the MacPhees who once owned and populated the isle are now represented by one family only—a brother and sister with no one to carry on the name in Colonsay—and that the MacNeifls who followed the MacPhees are not numerous, but it is not ur common to find a family that been domiciled here for upwards of 200 years. The island custom of referring to individuals by the patronymic, og. Uilleam Jain Lain Bhan (Fair John's John's William) or Hain Chaluim Alasdair (Alasdair's Calum's Mary), telescopes the years and binds generation to generation in popular memory.
Colonsay is an island of crofters and fishermen. It has few large farms and no industry—not even weaving no or a distillery... In twenty-odd square miles there is not, properly speaking, a town or even a village. Scalassaig, close by the Janding stage, can muster a small but excellent hotel, with a farm attached that provides much of the guests' food, a parish church, a smithy, two general stores, a post office (as hereditary in control the chieftainship of a as clan), and some four or five houses; Be wise, take care of your eyes... have them examined reg-delight to listen to; but the normal speech of young and old is still Gaelic, The manners, the custofns, the occupations and interests, {he whole economy of life on the island, Gaelic.
History has somehow or other passed Colonsay by. According to legal tradition, well supported by guidance, St. Columba after leavin Ireland made his first landing Oronsay, which at high tide is sepa ated from Colonsay by a narrow strand but becomes one with it at each ebb, Here he built a priory, the ruins of which, partly reconstructed, are still to be seen. But the somewhat temperamental missionary, who had taken an oath never to settle within sight of his native land, one day climbed Beinn Orassa; and there in the distance, dim but unmistakable, were the peaks of Donegal. Gathering his companions bout him, he put off to sea and, sailing by the Torran Rocks and past the Roos of Mull, reached, unpeopled Lena and bestowed on it undying Glasard. a row of modern stone houses built by Lord Strathcona to house the tenants cle dilapidated clachan of numbers sbout 30 souls; ularly for great: comfort and health. on the other side of the island, has the school, the Baptist church, a mill now discused, snd nine or ten cuttered houses; and around Colon-say House in Kiloran there a cottages, tenanted mostly by arkers on the estate and farm. a consequence of this diffusion e populace organised—amusements are few. The annual regatta and the sports bring the whole population together twice a year, and on fast days most people visit Scalasaig. But there is tio football team, no bowling green, no cricket, no. pictures. A golf course exists at Machrins, but is not patronized by the islanders, and a critical visitor has been heard to remark that a ferret would be more useful than a caddy. Barn dances are frequent in the winter, and piping has had a recent brisk revival. But the characteristic form ere
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.