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Going to the Shieling

Emily and Effie at the Shieling

From left, Emily Macdonald Gisla, Effie Maclennan 36 Cliff, and two visitors, visiting a shieling.

From Emily’s Twenty Years of Hebridean Memories (1939) – observing from Gisla Lodge the girls going to the shielings at Airigh an Fhorsa and Bo Nighean Mhuirich.  The ones Emily mentioned visiting near Loch Coirgeabhat may be at Airigh an Uisge. 

Crogabhat, one of our fishing lochs, is a mile from the bungalow, and there we constructed a concrete boathouse which is useful as a lunch hut too when it is cold or wet.  About a mile beyond it are two shielings to which we occasionally make an expedition.  Shielings are small huts of stone and turf, where girls live for six weeks in the summer while herding the village cattle, brought there to feed on the fresh hill grass of the surrounding moor.  This serves a doubt purpose, as it gives the grass round the village a chance to grow, while at the same time the cattle are getting the benefit of moorland feeding.  The shielings are often as far as ten miles from the villages, and the day of migration thence is full of excitement.

Of course, we at Gisla can only guess at all the bustle of preparaton that must have gone on since the early morning, but any time after midday the first of the precession begins to pass the bungalow.  Groups of cattle of various sizes pass by, accompanied by old women and young girls, and dogs anxiously helping them with the herding.  These all turn on to the moor just beyond the boundary of our garden, and there the humans sit down to rest and await their friends still on the road, while the cattle begin to browse, and the dogs fuss around and interest themselves in canine affairs. 

After a while, a couple of boats can be seen coming up the loch, and we rush down to the shore to see the unloading.  In them are the men, with a miscellaneous collection of bedding, stools, milking pails, churns, meal bags, pots, kettles and all the paraphernalia required for a stay of some weeks on the moor.  Also a number of calves too young to walk the whole distance with their mothers and of course more dogs.  After leaving the boats, the men load the good into creels which they carry on their backs, and joining the women folk who have already arrived, the whole procession starts off for the distant shielings.  There are four lots in Uig [by this stage, when they were falling out of use], and these people I have just described have a much longer way to go than those occupying the sheilings we sometimes visit.

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The Lewis Colony in Duluth, Minnesota

A large number of Lewismen settled in Duluth, Minnesota in the 1870s and 1880s, many becoming prominent citizens in the town. The first was William L Maclennan (1834-1888), son of Donald Maclennan. This family seems to have originated in Kintail or Lochalsh; in 1841 Donald was a shepherd in Bunavoneadar, Harris, and soon thereafter became a small tenant at Kinlochresort, Uig. The family emigrated to Bruce County, Ontario in the 1850s. The following appeared in the Stornoway Gazette in the 1940s:

It is uncertain who were the first Lewismen at the Head of Lake Superior or when they came. It is a well-known fact that in the early days of the Hudson Bay Company, they preferred to recruit men for their service in the Isle of Lewis, as Lewismen were found to be very hardy and able to carry on in the severe work of trading, and it was also found that they were more capable of making friends with the Indians of Northwest America than was any other group of people. It is known that Morrison County, in the central part of Minnesota, was named for a descendant of the last Brieve of Lewis.

However, the first Lewisman who made his permanent home in Duluth was William L Maclennan, whose home in Lewis was near Loch Hamnaway. His family emigrated to Ontario in the ‘fifties. After a short period there, Mr Maclennan conceived the idea that there might be better opportunities for a young man in the United States, so he moved to Duluth in the late ‘sixties. Duluth was then only a small pioneer town on the outskirts of civilisation. He went into several lines of business in the new town, principally contracting and real estate. He was the builder of the breakwater in Lake Superior that formed what was then the outside harbour of Duluth before the canal was opened to the main harbour.

After settling in Duluth, he brought Miss Julia Macleod to this country in 1872 to be his wife. She was a daughter of Roderick Macleod, a well-known builder in Stornoway at the time. Shortly after they were married, Mr Maclennan became one of the organisers of the first bank in Duluth. After organising the bank, the promoters were looking for a capable man to manage the new bank. Mrs Maclennan suggested Mr AR Macfarlane who at that time was in a bank at Toronto, Ontario. Mr Macfarlane, a native of Stornoway, got his early training in the banks there. Mr Macfarlane accepted the new position, and under his guidance the American Exchange Bank of Duluth grew to be one of the largest in the Northwest. Mr Alexander M Morrison of Stornoway, an acquaintance of Mrs Maclennan and Mr Macfarlane, moved to Duluth in the early ‘seventies. He entered the grocery business and made a success of it.

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