Village people... Rachel Chiesley

Lady Grange on St Kilda

They say I'm mad, but who would not be mad
on Hirta, when the winter raves along
the bay and howls through my stone hut, so strong
they thought I was and so I am, so bad
they thought I was and beat me black and blue
and banished me, my mouth of bloody teeth
and banished me to live and cry beneath
the shriek of sea-birds, and eight children too
we had, my lord, though I know what you are,
sleekit Jacobite, showed you up, you bitch,
and screamed outside your close at Niddry's Wynd,
until you set your men on me, and far
I went from every friend and solace, which
was cruel, out of mind, out of my mind.

(Edwin Morgan)

Rachel Chiesley was kidnapped in Edinburgh in 1732 by her husband's men and held prisoner on St Kilda for a decade. Her letters pleading for a divorce are in the University of Edinburgh Archive. She died in 1745 - still married.

A history of Lady Grange >

The story goes that for those ten long years time her husband's trusted henchman sat on one side of the single wall and Rachel on the other. I thought this was amazing loyalty and diligence on the part of a hired hand. Duncan was more suspicious.

The video above shows a building that was constructed later on the same site. It also shows a clip from inside a tent from a previous Hebridean family journey in the rain. My wife has her own observations from that incarceration >