94 A HUNDEED YEARS 



" ' lomru illean, iomru illean, 



Robh mhath na gillean, robh mhatli na gillean, 

 Shid i, shid i, shid i, shid i.' 



A rougli translation of which is — 



" ' Row, lads, row, lads. 



Well done, the lads ! well done, the lads ! 

 There she goes, there she goes.' 



As we approached the Stacks the gannets came to meet 

 us in their thousands, and one could hardly see the sky 

 through them. There is no possible landing-place on 

 the Stacks where a boat can be drawn up, as they rise 

 sheer out of the ocean. At one place for which we 

 steered there had been an iron pin three feet long let 

 into the rock perhaps ten feet above high-water mark, 

 and from the boat a rope with a loop at the end of it 

 was thrown over this pin and the boat drawn in near 

 enough for some of the best of the St. Kilda climbers to 

 spring on to a small ledge. Then they ascended very 

 carefully and very slowly with their rods with the 

 nooses at the end, and soon they had caught and killed 

 a large number of the solans who were sitting on their 

 eggs. The Stacks and their feathered inhabitants were 

 a sight never to be forgotten. The gannets are the main 

 food-supply of the St. Kilda people. They told us they 

 caught the old ones when they first arrived in the spring, 

 and made their chief raid on them just before the fat 

 young ones leave the nests. They salt them down by 

 the thousand, and they told us they tasted like salted bull 

 beef. Of course, the natives live very much upon eggs 

 all through May and June, and we asked them whether 

 they were very particular as to the eggs being quite 



