IN THE SCOTTISH ISLANDS AND HIGHLANDS. 87 
barter their handiwork for tea, sugar, tobacco, hardware, and crockery. 
Money payments are scarcely known. I visited Stornoway towards 
the close of the season, in May, when the produce of the preceding 
annual fair may be supposed to have been dispersed and disposed of. 
Nevertheless I had no difficulty in meeting with abundant specimens 
of stockings (specimens of which were shown in the Exhibition of Art 
and Industry in connection with the British Association at Dundee in 
September last) in the shops of a few of the older-established merchants. 
The cost of the longer stockings was about 1s. 2d. a pair, and of the 
socks 5d. to 7d. per pair; they are coarse and inferior in this respect 
to the produce of Shetland; but it must be remembered that they are 
the remnants of the season, and as such the most unfavourable speci- 
mens I could exhibit of the handiwork of the Long Island peasantry. 
Whether it is that a sensitive nationality or provinciality inspires me 
with the feeling, I am not prepared to confess ; but the coarse Lewis 
stockings referred to have, in my eyes and nostrils, a peculiar interest, 
in so far as they exhale a delightful fragrance of the “ Peat-reeke " of 
old Seotland, and exhibit the warm colours of its native heather ! 
Harris and Lewis stockings are also largely sold in Glasgow. 
While indigenous Lichen-dyes are so widely used in the Long Island, 
it is of interest to record that Orchill is unknown in Stornoway, as are 
also the modern aniline and allied dyes. But Cudbear is kept by 
every grocer in that seaport, apparently of one shade and quality sup- 
plied from Glasgow, but manufactured necessarily in some of the 
English towns (e.g. London); there being now no manufactory of 
either Cudbear or Orchill, so far as I am aware, in Scotland. Cudbear 
is used for dyeing blankets and shawls a crimson-red, and for mixing 
with Crottle, or other native dye-stuffs. 
In some parts of the Long Island, Ramalina scopulorum, under a 
Gaelic name, which signifies “ Goat’s Beard,” is also used to dye 
yarn yellow without a mordant. Its use, however, is greatly restricted 
and very local as compared with Crottle. My informant, Mr. Macrae, 
did not know of its use in the Uig district, which is one pre-emi- 
nently characterized by the primitiveness of the customs of its inha- 
bitants. I subsequently found that the same species, under the 
name * Old Man," was at one time used in Shetland to yield a 
yellow dye. : 
I found Sutherland and Caithness a duplicate, on a minor scale; of 
