Nature and Art, December 1, 1836.] 
BARRA, IN THE OUTER HEBRIDES. 
197 
milk, which they can generally get, and whisky 
always. 
One sensible man told us that potatoes were the 
ruin of Barra : and he is right. Without this 
information, we should have thought it had been 
whisky. “ If,” said he, “ there were no potatoes, 
the men would take to fishing regularly. As it is, 
they don’t give their minds wholly to either. 
When the potatoes ought to be planted, the men 
go away on some sort of fishing in a half-hearted 
manner ; and when the herring fishery is on, and 
they ought to be hard at work at that, they run 
away home in a body if they hear that the potatoes 
are ‘seeding.’” It is the old story of the donkey 
between two bundles of hay. But the way in which 
potatoes are the ruin of the island is, that a cottar 
can get a hut (or stye) to live in with his family and 
animals, and a small patch of ground for potatoes, 
for £1 a year ; and in such small holdings hundreds 
are packed where there is room only for tens. If 
the potato crop could be depended on, these wretched 
people might exist ; but, as it cannot, the suffering 
is severe. Eggs are plentiful in the spring and 
summer ; but they are mostly shipped South. 
Chickens and ducks are numerous ; but beware of a 
Barra chicken or a Barra duck. We remember our 
attack on one, and our ignominious defeat. They 
are too valuable to kill, as long as they can be 
induced to lay. They are looked on as egg-pro- 
ducing machines ; and it is not until they are worn 
out and run dry, and the combined efforts of 
nature and art fail to concoct another egg, that 
they are sacrificed. 
“ Boldie ” ( query whether this is quite the right 
name*) is a term applied to sheep who go mad 
from various causes, e. <j. maggots on the brain. 
Boldies are caught and are put into an asylum, where 
they are made to take food. They are incurable ; 
but they rally and get somewhat fat sometimes, 
between the attack and a relapse. In this state 
they are shipped off, or are killed for ships wanting 
meat and ready to pay for it. At all events, they 
are sold if they can be, and if not they are killed 
and eaten ; but it vexes sore the heart of a true- 
born Hebridean cottar to kill his own sheep. To 
eat anything of his own that will sell, is, according 
to his political economy, a false step. 
The law of meum et tuum has not yet been 
clearly expounded in Barra : it is not therefore sur- 
prising that it is not acted on. To steal, and kill, 
and eat the sheep of other persons, is a differeat 
matter altogether from killing and eating their 
own. That this is not uncommon, is shown by 
the proprietor, Colonel Gordon, who complained to 
the Treasury that certain of the islanders had lost 
“ from sheep-stealing alone, from 2,000 to 3,000 
sheep.” The Highland Relief Fund investigated 
this allegation, and reported that while there had 
been sheep-stealing to some extent, Col. Gordon’s 
statement was exaggerated. They admitted, how- 
# It is not always easy to catch the correct term in this 
outlandish place. Boldie, or Bawldie, or something like it, 
is perhaps near enough. 
ever, that out of a stock of 6,190 sheep, 1,132 had 
disappeared ; and after allowing for casualties, this 
left a great number as misappropriated. As a 
chicken is looked upon as an egg-producing machiue, 
so a sheep is looked upon as a wool and mutton 
producing machine. The quantity of wool exported 
from these islands is enormous. A sheep does not 
in the ordinary eou rse of nature live more than 
three years upon them. After that term the wet 
climate tells on him, and he gets the rot. His 
owner, therefore, makes wool of him for three years, 
and sells him for mutton the next. 
Although a Barra man prefers to sell his sheep 
rather than to eat it, he takes care that if any die 
from natural causes they are not often wasted. 
“ Brachsie ” is a term applied to sheep that die on 
the hills from natural causes, such as inflammation 
of the bowels, &c. Of course they do not have the 
professional attendance of a surgeon or a butcher, 
and die with the humours and blood in them. They 
are picked up when they are found, i t may be a day 
after their decease, or it may be a month, but when- 
ever it is they are carefully taken home by the 
finder. The skin is used for bladders for fishing 
floats, the offal goes to the ducks, and the flesh 
is eaten by the men and women. We wanted 
mutton and might have got “ brachsie,” but as 
one of our party had resided on the island in 
the depth of winter and knew the peculiarities of 
the dainty, we declined it on his advice. The 
colour, what with the disease and blood, is that 
of our boots ; and the smell, faint and indescribably 
disgusting. 
The fish salted and eaten is either cod, ling, 
skate, or hake. They do not eat much fresh fish. 
On the rocks are a few oysters ; and there are 
cockles, scallops, and mussels in abundance, and in 
the sands razor fish. The cockles alone saved many 
families in the potato famine. The other shell-fish 
they never or rarely eat. In the streams and lakes 
are trout, plentiful but small ; and in the sea are 
lobsters, crabs, eels, and almost all sorts of fish. 
The natives of Barra do not seem to care about 
trout, as far as we could learn ; and they would as 
soon think of eating scallops and other shell-fish 
(except cockles on emergency) as we should of eat- 
ing “ brachsie.” Eels are forbidden to be touched as 
food. The reason assigned is, that they are a 
part of one’s own economy, springing from human 
hair ; and when a Barra man gives this reason it is 
not, as would at first sight appear to be the case, an 
evasion on his part : it is really a belief. This super- 
stition about eels and snakes coming from hair is 
not confined to the Hebrides, although there the 
story is more generally current than elsewhere. A 
somewhat similar superstition exists in the Orkneys 
and Skye as to the hair of cows and horses. In 
Essex it obtains as regards the hair from the tail of 
a horse. In “Antony and Cleopatra,” act i., scene 
ii. , the following words occur : — 
# * # “ Much is breeding 1 , 
Which, like the courser’s hair, hath yet but life, 
And not a serpent’s poison.” * * * 
In “Ovid” we find the following allusion to a 
