500 HISTORY OF THE OUTER HEBRIDES. 



Harris) sent his steward to the island once a year at Mid- 

 summer, with a chaplain to baptise the children ; in lieu of 

 a priest, however, the people sometimes performed the 

 ceremony themselves. When the steward paid his annual 

 visit, he used to brew ale, and the people were accustomed 

 to make themselves drunk by eating the refuse of the malt. 

 The rents were paid in meal, dried mutton, dried wildfowl, 

 and seals. 



The Flannan Islands are also described. It was 

 customary for Macleod of Lewis to send men at certain 

 times of the year, to hunt the ownerless sheep on the 

 islands. The mutton, according to the Dean, was too fat 

 for the food of " honest men," with a " wyld " flavour. 

 Rona, like St. Kilda, was inhabited by a race of simple 

 people " scant of ony religione." The inhabitants had the 

 right of keeping as many cows and sheep as the island 

 could support, and grass was so abundant, that from the 

 surplus stock, the people were enabled to feed themselves 

 and pay the greater part of their rent. Sula Sgeir was the 

 home of the eider-duck, which formed a useful source of 

 revenue to the Ness men, who used to stay on the island 

 seven or eight days at a time to collect the down. 



The principal islands of the Outer Hebrides are not des- 

 cribed by Dean Monro so fully as could be desired. Lewis 

 is called a fertile island, the chief crop grown being barley. 

 It had four parish kirks at Ui, Uig, Ness, and Barvas 

 and " ane castell callit Steornaway." Its principal salt- 

 water lochs, including Loch Stornoway, were noted for 

 their herrings, and it had eight salmon streams. Whales 

 abounded, twenty-six or twenty-seven of them having in 

 former times been reserved for the teinds of the priests. 

 Sheep were plentiful, but there is no special reference to 

 cattle. At the coast, peats were cut one year, and in the 

 following year, corn was sown in the same place and 

 manured by seaweed. The Dean mentions a certain cove 

 in the island, where it was customary for men, women, and 

 boys, to fish whitings and haddocks with rods. 



Harris is described as being fertile and fruitful for corn, 



