BirdJ- Nesting Season. 5 1 



We leant against a corn tub with a roughly chipped 

 disk of stone for lid, which might have passed muster 

 in a museum as a relic of prehistoric days, and chatted 

 with a kindly old lady, wearing " revlins," the most 

 primitive form of shoe known, made of untanned cow- 

 hide with the hair on, fitted to the foot while " green," 

 to the use of which, writes Professor Mitchell, " John 

 Elder referred in his famous letters to Henry VIII. of 

 England (1542-43), when he wished to show the 

 extent of barbarism of the ' Wilde Scotes.' " 



We had surprised her by expressing a wish to see 

 a quern in working order, and she took us through 

 a gate, swinging on a stone socket, into an outhouse 

 to see one belonging to her uncle and herself. The 

 door was so low and the walls so thick that we had 

 to stoop almost to " all fours " to get in, and having 

 done so, found ourselves in the dark until our hostess 

 had found her stick a precious possession where 

 there is no native grown wood and opened the 

 shutter by knocking off a sod which covered the only 

 window, a slit in the turf roof. The sun at the 

 moment being clouded, and the light, even when the 

 shutter was down, not very brilliant, our friend left 

 us to fetch a lamp. We were quite prepared to see 

 her return with a Shetland " Collie " the double iron 

 pan with pointed spouts like a jug (the one to carry 

 the melted blubber and wick, the other to catch the 

 drip) which, until whale oil gave way to paraffin, was 

 the common lamp of the country and were almost 

 disappointed when, instead, she brought a contrivance 

 of scarcely less primitive design, not unlike a battered 

 tin teapot with a twist of unspun wool in the spout 

 for wick. In spite of the cloud of smoke it threw up, 

 and the rather troublesome attentions of a small calf 

 which had been shut up in the room to keep it from 



