Diary of a Shopkeeper, 26th April

The last delivery of the day took me along the Ootertoon road, west of Stromness.   On a cloudless, windless evening, with the sun sinking towards the horizon, the views were magnificent.  I stopped to unload a box of supplies at a house near the end of the road, placed them on the doorstep, knocked, and stepped back.  Nothing happened. 

So I turned and gazed out, noting the black hulks of Ben Hope and Ben Loyal to the south, and the way the low sunlight threw the gullies and geos of Hoy into sharp relief.  Every detail of the cliffs was etched clear and crisp, sandstone-red and shadow-black.

‘I ken what you’re thinking, beuy.’  Mr K had come to his door and was studying me and the view.

‘There’s your cheese and oatcakes,’ I said.  ‘I hope you like that coffee too: freshly roasted on Tuesday.’

‘You’re asking yourself,’ he said, ‘What about the folk who couldn’t just leap onto a horse and ride for their lives?’

Due to the three metres of social distancing between me and Mr K, it was hard to read his face, and whether he really thought I knew what he was on about.  I didn’t.  ‘What about them indeed,’ I replied.

‘History does not record,’ he said.  ‘As it fails to record much about the ordinary folk of these islands,’ he said.  ‘But the Laird o Breckness, we ken about him.’

Mr K stepped down off his doorstep and I had to retreat towards the van.  He pointed at the ruin of the old palace by the shore, then swept his arm out westwards.

‘It was a Saturday in November,’ he said.

‘Last year?’

‘1755.  The fishermen far out at the haaf were enjoying a flat calm – not unlike today - when suddenly the water about them turned white and drublie, like milk in a kirn.  What that portended they could not tell, but back on land, at Yesnaby, a herdie boy saw a vast wall of water racing towards Orkney.  He let out such a cry of terror that the workers in the millstone quarry down by the banks came racing up to see what the matter was.  And so their lives were saved.’

‘Ah, the Great Lisbon Earthquake,’ I said.  ‘The tsunami went all the way up western Europe, even to Greenland and across to Brazil.’

‘Down there at Breckness,’ he pointed, ‘The laird was yarning with one of his servant men, when he noticed a mountain of water bearing down on them from the southwest.  “Fetch my best horse and saddle up!” cried the laird, and with that he rode like the wind, inland and uphill along that track to Stevand.  But even at speed he could not escape the great wave entirely, and as he passed Billia Coo the water came rushing over the banks and chased him up the track – till it washed the belly of his horse, and the soles of his boots if he hadn’t lifted them clear of the stirrups.’

‘What about the servant man, and the other folk working along the shore?’

‘As I said, history makes no note of their fate.  All we know is that the laird rode his drookit horse up to Feolquoy, home to fine folk then as now, and cried for a dram to soothe his nerves as he surveyed his drowned estate.’

‘That is some story!’

‘It’s not a story.  It’s true.  And it reminds me: you better put a bottle of 12 year old in next week’s messages.’

This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 30th April. Other diaries will appear weekly as long as the Covid-19 crisis goes on. I intend to post them in this blog a few days after each newspaper appearance, with added illustrations. This one was taken by Cara McLean, as the fog rolled in through the Flow, like a great wave from the south.