Diary of a Shopkeeper, 28th December 2023

The weather of the past few days has been severe, even by midwinter standards: gales from the east, slushy snow, torrents of rain. No sensible person would leave their fireside. Not unless they had an important event to attend, like a family Christmas dinner at The Lynnfield last night. We got there and back safely, if slowly, and a splendid time was had by all.

A sadder winter journey was brought to my attention a couple of years ago by Dan Lee, Outreach Archaeologist at UHI. It popped into my head last night as the windscreen wipers pushed the freezing rain aside. The story dates to February 1849, and is preserved in the archives of the John O’Groats Journal, Orkney not having its own newspaper at that date.

I should make it clear that what follows is entirely true, and not at all embroidered with the filigrees of fiction, as some recent Victorian narratives have been in these diaries. Let the Journal take up the story:

A young couple were lately contracted for marriage, the one party residing in Walls, the other situated in a place over the hills of Walls called Rackwick. The relatives and friends were invited to attend, and three of the bridegroom’s sisters, another girl and the bridegroom’s brother-in-law, set out for Rackwick on the wedding eve, which happened to be a day so stormy that travelling was considered dangerous.

Notwithstanding, the party proceeded, but they had not gone far before the females became so exhausted that the bundles they had with them, viz. a change of clothes, were lost on the road, and, finally, when they had come in sight of their place of destination, the two sisters were unable to go further.

There was no alternative but for the man to go for assistance, leaving his helpless companions on the hill adjacent to the village. In his progress he met the bridegroom and two men, looking for his guests, and they were soon informed of the deplorable state of the party.

Two of the females least exhausted had ere left the other two in a dying state. They were immediately taken and assisted to the village, and the bridegroom went to render assistance to his sisters. He attempted to carry one, but, melancholy to relate, she died in his arms. He then laid her down, and tried the other, but she too died on the spot.

I was able to confirm the veracity of this tragic tale by consulting the old Walls and Flotta Parish Records. They note the following deaths for February 28th:

Helen & Elizabeth Bremner, natives of Stroma, but resident in this parish, on their way to Rackwick, became so benumbed with cold which so enfeebled them that they were not able to proceed, the snow lying deep on the ground, it blowing a severe storm from the Eastward at the time.

Dan believed that the wedding party had taken the ‘old road’ over the hills from near Rysa Mill to Runcigill on the south side of Rackwick. The word ‘road’ is used by John Bremner in his book Hoy: The Dark Enchanted Isle, but it would likely have been a rough path at best – and quite possibly nothing but a series of marker cairns indicating a route.

Whatever it was in 1849, when Dan and I and two Hoy friends went looking for the ‘old road’ one summer’s day, there was nothing to be seen. Piles of weathered stones that might have been markers were scattered at random and provided no useful guidance. Even on a sunny day, which had been warm down in the valley, the wind blew cold and strong 1,000 feet up on Mel Fea and Withi Gill. With a snow-laden easterly gale it would have been arctic.

In the margins of the newspaper photocopy Dan gave me, an unknown hand had written in pencil, ‘so mutable are all human events, that often, as in this case, is the season of joy and festivity turned into sorrow and mourning.’ I hope your festive season was free of sorrow. And I give thanks for windscreen wipers, central heating, and warm welcomes, wherever they are found.

This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 3rd January 2024. A new diary appears weekly. I post them in this blog a few days after each newspaper appearance, with added illustrations., and occasional small corrections or additions.