Like rainbow pathways

    "Wool is the industry for Scalpay's tiny village - wool for dyeing, weaving, and spinning on the island; no great flocks here, but single individual sheep on tether, tended with as much care as the milch-cows that are tethered in the same way on the short flower-covered turf. Swathes of brilliantly dyed wool hang drying in the sun, and on the hillsides one may see hundreds of yards of bright woven tweed stretched like rainbow pathways. There must have been many colours of dye, but particularly I remember one of a vivid sky-blue, and the warm red-brown crottle that is made from rock-lichen. The scents are of wool and wool dye, mingling with the smell of the sea and the heather and peat smoke. Here the old women do not drag their spinning-wheels from the house for the attraction of the tourist; they sit there naturally in the sun, with a shy and suspicious glance for the stranger."

    That is Gavin Maxwell, writing of the 1940s, in Harpoon at a Venture.

    For beautiful, atmospheric pictures (by David Wilson) of the neighbouring islands in the present day, see Peter May's new book Hebrides.

Comments

[elaine]

What a beautiful picture he paints - I'm wondering whether he would be able to write the same passage these days.

[Cornflower]

I doubt it, Elaine. I've been in Lewis/Harris and seen the processing of the wool at the mill, and the weaving of the tweed at a croft, but sadly no 'rainbow pathways' on the hillside.