Susannes Folksong-Notizen
[1975:] [In 1871 Ewen Gillies]
was welcomed enthusiastically by the islanders, but to a man who had
been round the world St Kilda offered little, and after only four
weeks Ewen and his children set sail for America. [Eleven years
later] he proved too much for the St Kildans, and after a short stay
he found himself no longer welcome. [...] He had, however, stayed
long enough on the island to fall in love with a local girl. His
second bride found the Australian climate little to her liking and
was homesick. Eight months later the couple were again on St Kilda.
The St Kildans, distrustful of his wisdom and overpowering
self-assurance, finally forced him and his wife to leave. (Tom
Steel, The Life and Death of St Kilda 35f) -
[1991:] Ewen Gillies (1825-?)
was born in the unlikeliest place for an adventurer - Scotland's
remotest island, St. Kilda. The St. Kilda archipelago lies a hundred
miles to the north west of the Scottish mainland, a beautiful but
inhospitable place of long winters and fierce winds. Its last
thirty-six inhabitants were finally forced to leave in 1930, after a
long struggle against bitter hardship and falling birthrate - but
for at least a thousand years before that, St. Kilda was Scotland's
most remote settlement. So remote, in fact, that even to use the
word 'Scotland' in the context of the place is almost an
irrelevance. For centuries the people of St. Kilda were
self-sufficient, living mainly on a diet of seabirds, almost free of
the outside world, taking an interest in it only as they needed to
and adopting its ways only when it suited them. Once a year, weather
permitting, the laird's factor would land and take his master's
share of their produce, but otherwise it was a place which history
had a habit of passing by. When a government expedition came
searching for the fleeing Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1746, not only
had the islanders never heard of him, they had never heard of his
opponent either, the Hanoverian King George in London; if only the
rest of Scotland had been as lucky ... And other so-called
'civilising' influences were just as tardy; the coin of the realm,
for instance, was only introduced after the industrial revolution.
No St. Kildan ever had to die fighting for his country. Crime was
unknown. When passing ships arrived, the first question was
inevitably, "Is there a war?"
All of which makes the history of
Ewen Gillies all the more remarkable. Ewen was 26 when he left St.
Kilda with his wife, bound for Australia - and within six months of
his arrival there, he was in the goldfields of Victoria, where,
remarkably, he found gold - enough to buy a farm, but not quite
enough to keep it going. Inside two years the property was gone, and
he was off to another goldfield, the New Zealand one, leaving wife
and children behind in Melbourne. This time, though, he returned
penniless, only to discover that his wife, convinced she'd been
abandoned, had remarried. Ewen's response was to take ship for
America. There, he joined the Union Army, fought in the Civil War,
and then deserted in 1861, again to look for gold, this time in
California - and this time he found enough to make his fortune. He
went back to Australia, reclaimed his children, and returned to St.
Kilda - and lasted just five weeks on the island before the
wanderlust took him again. Once more he headed for the United
States, and it was to be another eleven years before St. Kilda would
draw him back. On this occasion he only stayed long enough to marry
another St. Kilda girl, and then he was off again to Melbourne. When
his new bride didn't like Australia, however, he decided that it was
time to come home for good - but this time the results were tragic.
Instead of him rejecting St. Kilda, the islanders rejected him -
Ewen Gillies had become too worldly a man, too disruptive an
influence for such a small community to contain, and in 1889 he and
his new bride were forced to leave. Soon after, no one knows exactly
when, he died in Canada. (Brian McNeill, The Back o' the North Wind
21) [1999:] 7 April - the day in
1851 when John Lister and William Tom discovered the first viable
goldfield in Australia at Ophir near Bathurst. It attracted
immigrants from around the world. (Christopher Zinn, Observer, 11
Apr)
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