Bait Holes in the Hebrides, and beyond

Toll sollaidh: man-made holes in rocks on the shore where fishermen would pound their bait. Carmichael writes about them on Carmina Gadelica ii, 361:

 

Sola, soladh, food, broken food – whelks, cockles, limpets, mussels, and other shell-fish broken and thrown into the sea to attract fish. The Lady Amie, wife of John, Lord of the Isles, sent men round the islands to make hollows in the rocks in which the people might break shell-fish and prepare bait. Such pits are called ‘toll solaidh,’ bait holes. These mortars resemble cup cuttings, for which antiquarians have mistaken them.

 

The original for this information is possibly to be found in a long excursus about Teampall Chàirinis in North Uist, recorded from John Mackinnon in Càirinis itself on 18 January 1871. The church was said to have been constructed on the orders of Amy MacRuairi, fourteenth-century heiress to the Lordship of Garmoran and supposed builder of Caisteal Tioram in Moidart and Caisteal Bhuirgh in Benbecula. She is misremembered here as Nighean MhicDhùghaill, ‘MacDougall’s daughter’:

 

Ni[gh]ean Mhic Dhuil used to send mason[s] to the gribeachun on the point to make pollagan sollaidh for fishing for the poor people. These are still seen. [CW116 fo.54]

 

Grìob or grìoba is explained in Dwelly’s dictionary as a ‘coast precipice, part of seacoast where it is rocky and difficult to land.’ We presume that this is the same as Cnip near Bhaltos in Uig on the west coast of the Isle of Lewis.

 

But there is more than one place with tuill sollaidh in Uist. Doubtless prompted by Carmichael, Mackinnon returns to the subject a couple of pages later:

 

Places where holes for Soll (soul) are each side of bun L[och] ephort Ru heva (?) [= Rubha  Heabhal] [?,] at B[aile]vanaich below Nunton ? & out at the baigh on east side B[en]becula. [ibid. fo.56]

The implication here is, of course, that these bait holes are important or interesting enough to be noted at specific sites – the best sites for rock fishing – around the coast. This reminds us that there was a time when creagaireachd, rock fishing, was not just something you did to pass the time of an evening; especially in times of dearth, it was an important source of food for the community.

 

Carmichael makes further vocabulary notes in his notebook CW108, possibly connected with a visit to Siolaigh Mhór in the Sound of Harris on 31 May 1877:

 

Sóll = Broken shellfish w[h]elks limpets
sgilleach-fionntrain thrown out for bait.
Slugag = The broken little hollow in this tis [sic] pounded. [CW108/68]

 

‘Sgilleach-fionntrainn’ is either a dialectal variation, or Carmichael’s misunderstanding of, gille-fionntrain or gille-fionn, glossed by Dwelly as ‘large periwinkle, white buckie, whelk’. Again in Dwelly, slugag just means a small pool.

 

As so often, Father Allan McDonald’s Gaelic Words and Expressions from South Uist and Eriskay adds even more. Soll is ‘pounded shellfish’; as for solladh: ‘pronounced like tolladh, the throwing of the soll into the sea to attract fish.’ Pollag is ‘a little hole in a rock in which shell fish is pounded to be thrown out into the sea to attract fish to the Carraig [fishing rock] or into the tàbh [hand net].’ A note added by John MacLean, headmaster in Dunoon and a native of Barra, records that cnotag is the word still used in that island; it is also the word used in Tiree. Usually in Gaelic, however, cnotag refers to a hollow stone or mortar for husking corn. One final evocative description for those of us who spent happy evenings doing creagaireachd or rock-fishing: snaomh, ‘swimming slowly along edge of shore, lake or river. Tha ’n saoithean a’ falbh air an t-snaomh.’ ‘When saithe or cuddies are on the snaomh, no soll [pounded bait] or maorach [shellfish] is required to entice them into the tàbh or bag net.’

 

In the journal Scottish Studies, 17 (1973), there is a wonderful little article by the late Sandy Fenton about ‘craig-fishing’ in the Northern Isles. It was reprinted in his The Northern Isles: Orkney and Shetland, which readers can (mostly) find on Google Books here.

The piece is illustrated with a lovely picture by Frank Barnard from his Picturesque Life in Shetland of 1890. Here it is, from the Shetland Museum and Archives website. Note that in the Northern Isles – a phenomenon also recorded in Tiree – bait-holes are often found in threes: two smaller ones in which the bait was pounded (for instance, with the end of a fishing rod), and a larger one used for storage.

 

In the Northern Isles, mashed bait is called soe, clearly cognate with our soll. The word must have its roots in Old Norse. Our Norwegian isn’t the best, but we’ve found in the dictionary soll, ‘flatbread crumbled in milk, a mixture of cheese and milk’; and søl, ‘dish water, slop, mire, mud, slush’. Any help or suggestions would be most welcome.

 

The fascinating Canmore site of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland records a number of bait holes from all over the country. Many are in Tiree, and described in articles in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland by J. Sands and Ludovic Mann. In a more recent article in the Proceedings, Ronald Morris has suggested that the holes are ‘probably between a hundred and several hundred years old, but in some cases, in western Argyll, they may be older.’

 

Any further information, or sightings of bait holes by our readers, would be gratefully received!

 

Many thanks for Mark Hall at Perth Museum and Art Gallery for suggesting this subject to us.

Sources:
Ludovic MacLellan Mann, ‘Ancient Sculpturings in the Island of Tiree’, PSAS, lvi (1921–2), 118–26.

Ronald W. B. Morris, ‘The cup-and-ring marks and similar sculptures of Scotland: a survey of the southern counties, Part II’, PSAS, c (1967–8), 47–78.

J. Sands,‘Notes on the antiquities of the Island of Tiree’, PSAS, xvi (1881–2), 459–63.

 

Image:

A toll sollaidh in Easaigh, Sound of Harris, from the Canmore website.

A keening for Roderick MacPhee - 2

The mysterious drowning of a seaman as skilful and well-known as Roderick MacPhee clearly gave rise to a whole host of rumours and speculations in the islands. This was especially the case at a time of the year when Barra was bursting at the seams with outsiders – fishermen, coopers, and gutting women – involved in the rapidly expanding herring industry, then newly established in Castlebay. An item in the Inverness Advertiser on 14 June states that nearly 900 fishing boats were in the area at the time, with at least 40,000 barrels of herring despatched from the island during the week ending 11 June, conveyed on twenty steamers to Glasgow, Liverpool, Leith, and other ports (incidentally, the Glasgow Herald on 18 June states that 19 cargoes of herring had been despatched from Stornoway that week ‘for various parts of the Continent, chiefly Stettin, Hamburg, and St Petersburg’). The Inverness Advertiser article declares that ‘20,000 strangers’ were employed in the fishing: we’re not entirely sure about this number, but there certainly must have been more than 2,000!

The Glasgow Herald’s article of 4 June drew the following immediate response:

The Boat Accident off Barra Head.

                                                4th June.

   Sir, – I am astounded to see the loose statement, copied in your paper of to-day, with regard to the Barra Head Accident. It is evident that the writer, whoever he may have been, was not aware of the circumstances, or he would not have made misstatements which can only cause anxiety to relatives and friends. To show how ridiculous the whole paragraph is, allow me first to state that the gentleman who hired the boat was safely landed at Pollockawe [‘Pollacharra’ must have been the original] in South Uist, that it was on the return journey that the crew of two men and a boy were lost. The statement of ‘a few hours afterwards … the boat was found,’ is totally without foundation, as it was not till the following morning (Sunday[ 29 May]) that the accident was known to have taken place. The last sentence of the paragraph only makes confusion worse confounded. I may further state that Rory MacPhee was not the lighthouse keeper, but only the man who had charge of the Lighthouse Commissioners’ boat. A little reflection might have shown that a lighthouse keeper could not be cruising about in a boat and attending to his duty at the same time.

   And now, Sir, to justify my remarks on this subject, and to show that I have good cause to be annoyed at the blundering account given in your paper, allow me shortly here to state that I was one of the gentlemen who crossed in Rory MacPhee’s boat on the day of the accident, and am acquainted with the particulars. – I am, &c.,     B.

A more accurate report was printed in the Inverness Advertiser of 14 June, and excerpted in the Scotsman the following day:

   Melancholy and Fatal Boat Accident at Barra. – A melancholy occurrence took place off Barra Head light-house on Saturday, the 28th ult., by which three persons were drowned – viz., Roderick Macphee, the light-house ferryman, upwards of 40 years of age; Donald Macneil, about 38 years of age; and John Macneil, about 16, both of the latter boatmen. On the return journey with two gentlemen tourists, who had crossed the sound between Barra and Vatersa, the boat appears to have foundered in the surf near the rocks, as it was found a few hours afterwards with keel up, and sail set, but no trace of the unfortunate occupants. Both of the deceased men have left wives and families, who were dependent on them for support. Some contributions have already been received in their aid; and it is to be hoped a generous public will not overlook this unfortunate case.

But who was the mysterious gentleman ‘B’ who had written the letter to the Glasgow Herald? His surname is given in the following report in the Inverness Courier of 16 June:

   The Boat Accident at Barra. – A correspondent sends us particulars of the sad occurrence at Barra, on the 28th ult. On that day the Barrahead lighthouse mail ferryboat, manned by the ferrymen – Roderick Macphee, Castlebay, Barra, aged 35 (an able and careful seaman, and a most obliging and respectable man); Donald Macneil, Island of Minglay, aged 38; and John Macneil, Elen [i.e. Glen], aged 16, with two gentlemen who had been visiting Barra-head, sailed from Castlebay by the east coast of the island, and across the Sound of Barra to South Uist. After landing the gentlemen there, the boat, with its crew, returned to Castlebay by the west coast of Barra, the wind blowing a stiff breeze from the east. Nothing further was heard of the boat until Monday, when some lobster fishers found it out at sea under water, with the sails set, about two miles to the west of the entrance of the sound, between Vatersay and Barra. They secured the sails and bowsprit, but as the day was stormy they abandoned the boat. None of the bodies have been found. It is believed that in sailing over one of the sunk rocks at the entrance of the sound, a sea broke, filling and capsizing the boat. Macphee has left a widow and five children. Immediately on hearing of the occurrence, Mr Brown, one of the gentlemen who had taken his passage in the boat from Barra, sent the widow and children £5. It is hoped that the public will not overlook this unfortunate case.

As we shall read in the next blog, the two gentlemen ‘had been on a scientific excursion through the Southern Isles of Barra’. ‘Mr Brown’ must be the well-known naturalist and ornithologist John Harvie Brown (1844–1916), who had not yet added a hyphen between his two surnames. His companion was Captain Henry Wemyss Feilden (1838–1921), 4^th King’s Royal Regiment, who led a rather extraordinary Victorian life worthy of (a heroic) Harry Flashman and who was later described by his friend Rudyard Kipling as ‘the bravest man I ever met’. On 27 September 1870 a paper by Captain Feilden was read to the Glasgow Natural History Society, ‘part of the journal of a tour in the Outer Hebrides made by Mr Harvie Brown and Captain Feilden during the summer [of] 1870. The paper contained many interesting ornithological notes, and descriptions of shell mounds visited by the author.’ Excerpts were printed in the Proceedings of the Natural History Society of Glasgow, ii (1869–75), 58–60. Embarking upon a paper about the antiquities of Uist, Alexander Carmichael would reminisce:

   In the summer of 1870 Captain Feilden of the [     ] made an ornothological [sic] tour through the Outer Hebrides. I had the pleasure of his acquaintance and his subsequent correspondence upon subjects of mutual interest. [CW429 fo.1]

Carmichael had also embarked upon a long-lasting correspondence with John Harvie Brown. Letters from Carmichael in the latter’s archive, now in the National Museums of Scotland, date back to at least March 1871, when the ornithologist asked Carmichael to prepare ‘a list of the Gaelic names of birds.’

References: CW429 fo.1.

Feilden, Capt. H. W. 'Journal of a Tour through the Outer Hebrides in 1870', Proceedings of the Natural History Society of Glasgow, ii (1869–75), 58–60.

Glasgow Herald, 6 & 18 June 1870; Inverness Advertiser, 14 June 1870; Inverness Courier, 16 June 1870; Scotsman, 15 June 1870.

Images: J. A. Harvie-Brown, one of the last two men to see Roderick MacPhee and his crew alive.

Trawling for Mullet in North Uist

Timetable issued by Martin Orme

Scraps of paper were often difficult to come by and so Alexander Carmichael would use anything that he could lay his hands on. Here, for example, is a wonderful piece of ephemera for the July sailings between Glasgow and the Highlands and Islands on the steamers “Dunara Castle” and the “Aros Castle” by Martin Orme, 20 Robertson Street, Glasgow. The timetable is dated 21st of June, 1880. On the reverse of this piece of paper Carmichael wrote an account in an execrable hand, it must be said, about trawling for mullet in North Uist where he describes how the mud was ‘tenacious’ and it was easy to sink down into it and where he also recollected an episode in which ‘the gaffer’ got stuck in the mud and after an hour and fifteen minutes was dragged out using heather.

Left aft[er] breakf[a]st with
Stoddart Ranald Rob[er]t[son]
Seoras Beag & Willie Davidson
across hill to [words omitted]
Telegram for Lord Dunmore
com[in]g to Newton to shoot seals.
Newton rem[ain]ing behind to go with
him.
Reach[e]d the place trawl[e]d
two ^two pools – got only a few
small flounders – No mullet
up to knees in tenacious
mud – on sea side of pools,
for many score y[a]rds. Dragged
ourselves & net to land as best we
could – we
raised the net thro[ugh] water & one
of men [sent] to up[per] pool –
Lower end of this full of stones.
We stone the fish to up[per] fr[om] this
& then throw the net across – 1 went
at each end – two to drag & one
to keep net in order & keep in fish.
But fish w[ou]ld not be kept in
& they flew over the top of
net like pheasants over
over battue net with a
spring & ^a whirr like a grouse
A young shep[herd] laid this
4 off these with stones as they
rushed down to lower end
Aft[er] much man[ou]vering we
got net ashore it cont[ained] 12
mullets and 2 flounders.
Those on my side narr[owly]
escaped stick[in]g in mud. [It]
was soft & nasty as mud c[ou]ld
be the accounts of those
of years & to the depth of many
feet – To stop was to go sink down
to the hip – I went down &
I could not come till our
gaffer stretch[e]d me his hand.
To stay myself out was very
diff[icult] – The mud was tena[cious] as strong
glue & my f[oo]t felt as if a ton
weight w[a]s hold[in]g it down
But what bet[ter] the gaffer[’]s
scold[in]g & help I got out
& dragged myself to shore
sat on a stone exhausted
to rest. And now it was
gaffers turn. He was going
fast along to keep from
sinking but down deeper
& deeper he sank in both
legs bey[on]d knee & then he stuck
He laughed as he struggled
floundered scolded & cajoled
all by turns. But what
between craw[l]ing & dragging
he got out. But 2 on the
other side were in stuck tho[ugh]
one with great exertion
struggled out. But the other
struck fast on only up to
hip – We could not app[roach] him
for if we did we too were down.
We decided then to exort him
& our gaffer fumed and
cautioned him with his
scathing tongue but to no
effect. He comp[lained] that cramp
was in his leg – gaffer ask[ed]
him to whom he was was leav[in]g his
property incl[udin]g his watch! After
vain sugg[estions] we fell upon
mak[in]g a foot path of long
heather over the mud to
where he was – We hailed
men who were pul[ling] heath[er]
for ropes & they came & help[ed]
We made a road way
some 50 or 60 y[a]r[d]s long to where
he was – A bundle of heath[er] was
pla[ce]d upon he pla[ce]d his chest
& so extract[ed] himself out after
being 1 hour & 15 min[utes] in.
It was not too soon for
the tide was rushing in
to the pool. The man sunk?
the foot path of heath[er] had
nothin[g] on but his shirt & cap
We all cramed [sic]
to the water & going in up to
our hips washed off the mud.
After which we dried ourselves
In the sun in walk[in]g home.
weary & worn over the hills.
The heavy [heaviest] got fish was
7 lbs.

Reference:
CW109, f. 80r.
Image:
Timetable issued by Martin Orme.