The Shetland Women. 223 



keistose, is used. It is shaped something like a 

 beehive, but longer, and is attached by a belt that 

 rests on the carrier's bosom. The peats, brought to 

 the town from a distance of one or two miles, are sold 

 at twopence a creel. The women fetch and carry 

 about four loads a day. When met with going or 

 coming they are always knitting. 



That they are hardy and willing workers may be 

 easily judged. One striking instance was seen in the 

 case of two women drawing a harrow in a small field 

 near the town. 



When the whalers are going to sea, the women 

 carry the chest or other luggage of their husbands or 

 brothers down to the ships. When asked why they 

 do not leave the men to do it for themselves, they 

 answer pathetically that they may never see them 

 again ; " it may be the last service we will ever have 

 it in our power to do them." 



There is, unfortunately, another side to this pleasing 

 picture. They have, like the rest of humanity, the 

 defects of their virtues. As the able-bodied men 

 mostly go to sea, and many of the young men go 

 south to seek employment, the female population is 

 in great excess of the male. Hence it comes about 

 that courtship, instead of being the chivalrous devotion 

 of the strong, degenerates into a slavish competition 

 on the part of the more numerous and weaker sex, 

 and, if morality does not suffer, there must be many 

 innocent persons wronged by injurious suspicion. 



That the Shetlanders were not, or, at any rate, till 

 recently had not been, very far advanced in the arts, 

 Mr. Robertson concluded from the character of their 



