YULE-TIME. 123 



in those islands is now very different from what it was 

 some fifty or sixty years ago. 



But before giving you a little description of Yule in 

 Shetland, as we kept it when I was a boy, a few pre- 

 fatory notices of the circumstances and conditions of 

 life in the Ultima Thule of those days, may not, I 

 hope, be uninteresting. 



At the time I am speaking of there were no roads in 

 Shetland, and our remote northern island of Unst had 

 very little intercourse with the outer world, except by 

 a post-runner who passed, on foot, once a week between 

 us and our metropolis, Lerwick, taking two days to 

 traverse the distance each way. Two small trading 

 schooners, the Magnus Troil and the Noma, ran very 

 irregularly between Leith and the Shetlands, making 

 on an average five or six passages in the year. It was 

 a great advance when an old rickety little sloop of 

 some thirty or forty tons, which had been a cod-smack, 

 was put on the passage between Lerwick and the north 

 isles for a few months in summer; but during the 

 greater part of the year, if one required to go from these 

 north isles south to Lerwick, the only available means 

 at command — unless he chose the overland route, 

 which meant tramping over wild wet moorland hills 

 and crossing several dangerous ferries, where the tide 

 runs at the rate of six to ten miles an hour — was by 

 sea in a six-oared boat, which was expensive and often 

 very perilous. Mails from the South arrived at very 

 irregular intervals by the trading schooners, or some 

 chance smack that might be cominfr north. There was 



