St Kilda and the St Kildians Author:Bob Connell Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: under whose beneficent guidance the St. Kildians appear to have put forth some energy to improve their condition. That, however, was in the good old days of cake... more »s and ale, before the Disruption, when whistling was not as yet a sin, and when fiddling and piping, and even dancing, were not unknown in St. Kilda. CHAPTER IV. ABOUT THE PEOPLE. Thanks, mainly, to the paternal rule of the Rev. John Mackay, the St. Kildians of to-day, after a good many years regular intercourse with the world, are still in many ways a "peculiar people." When five-and-twenty years ago, one of Her Majesty's gunboats anchored off the island, it was accounted a curious fact, illustrating a singular phase of human nature, that the St. Kildians expected to be paid for their trouble in accepting the captain's kind invitation to go on board and look at the vessel's machinery and armaments. It is said they actually refused to leave the vessel unless they got payment. To-day, Mr. Mackay's lengthened ministrations notwithstanding, the people have notions about the laws of wages and property quite as crude, if sometimes a little more cunningly disclosed. Only last summersome of the people declined to sit to a photographer without being first paid for their services. Their notions on this subject often take an aggressive form. Every strange vessel that enters the Bay of St. Kilda is expected to pay toll to the islanders, and a hamper for the minister is never reckoned out of place. If you are ignorant of the custom, or do not feel disposed to comply with it, you are speedily beseiged with beggars who remind you of it, and have no compunction in proposing to relieve you of everything you are simple-minded enough to part with, from a smoke of tobacco or a lead pencil to a hamper of wines. When you go ashore th...« less