IN TilE^HIGHLANDS • 95 



fresMy laid. From their answers we inferred they ate 

 a lot of eggs that had been more or less sat upon, for 

 they said : * Of course, if you don't like the young bird 

 you can throw it away, and just eat the rest/ 



" On our return to Uist to land the pilot at Lochmaddy 

 we noticed that he had a large washing-tub on deck full 

 of guillemots' and razor-bills' eggs, most of them 

 evidently quite hard set, and we asked him what he was 

 going to do with them, and he said they were to be given 

 as a present to Lady Hill, who was so fond of blowing eggs ! 



" The return voyage to Gairloch was uneventful 

 and safely accomplished, and the trip to St. Kilda was 

 most thoroughly enjoyed by every one of us." 



Thus ends my mother's story, but just to show the very 

 primitive manner in which not only the St. Kilda 

 islanders, but also more or less the whole population of 

 the Long Island, lived in the early fifties, I must tell the 

 story of a visit I paid as a boy to a typical house in 

 South Harris on our way back from St. Kilda. 



We reached Bun an t-struidh (Stream End) or, as it is 

 now more often called, Ob (the Pool), on the Sound of 

 Harris, late on a Saturday night, and having no milk for 

 our Sunday breakfast porridge, I was landed, accom- 

 panied by our faithful butler Sim Eachainn (Simon 

 Hector), to try and get some from one of the many 

 crofters' houses which were dotted about among the 

 rocks opposite to where we were anchored. The habita- 

 tion we selected for our visit was, like most of the native 

 houses, very long, considering its height and its width 

 inside, because these Hebridean houses have to contain 



