The Outer and Inner Hebrides lie off the west coast of Scotland and have for centuries exerted a hold upon the imagination with their history of saints' pilgrimages, Viking's invasion, wild and beautiful landscapes and strong Gaelic culture.

This exceptional book celebrates the unique cultural inheritance of these islands, gathering folk tales, songs poetry and reminiscences of childhood and school days, crofting and fishing, pastimes and customs, past and present. The photographs illustrate a way of life that has almost disappeared and complement this thoughtful evocation of Island life. In our Gaelic Poetry Nook you will find an example of the poetry from this book. Below you will find an example of the prose and photographs

Calum Johnston
Barra
On his mother

She was a very hard-working woman - never idle at all. At the time... well, she worked on the croft, of course milked the cows and attended them in everything, and in the evenings she carded and spun and made clothe. There isn't an idle moment at all in their lives. They were all the same the women at that time, they were all the same, working all the time. Of course, working - that kind of work - they treated as a recreation. They didn't consider it as work: it was pleasure to them. They took a pleasure in their work, especially the work of the cloth - the carding and spinning and all that. They had a pride in it, and they took pleasure in it.... The greatest pleasure that anybody can get is to see the completion of his work and then when they saw a beautiful piece for cloth or tweed after it had been made, well, that was their reward for the labour they had put into it....

All the clothe that the men wore was made by the women - by their wives and their mothers. And even the fishermen.... they always had to get blue cloth and that blue cloth that was made for the fishermen, it was so thick that they never wore an overcoat with it as no rain would go through it. It was waulked for a whole night. You know when cloth is made it has to be shrunk - what they call waulking. Well, for ordinary blankets and the like of that an hour or so waulking would be sufficient, but for fishermen's blue cloth it was whole night. They would start the waulking at perhaps... six in the evening and wouldn't be finished until ten at night, with songs going all the time they were shrinking it. And well, when that was shrunk to that extent, nothing would go through it. Oh, yes they had pride in their work... the praise of the neighbours, if it was forthcoming, was payment for all their labours.
from Tocher, 10

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