nd dispossessed the native
proprietors. This has neither been forgotten nor forgiven. Mr. Russell,
who lived for three years among them, says:--"They believe that the
present lairds are interlopers, and that they themselves have been
defrauded and despoiled. They speak of these things only among
themselves, and not openly; but those who have been in the country, and
have gained their confidence, know that there is a strong undercurrent
of feeling against Scotland and Scotsmen.... They conceive that they
have a claim even as things are, to dwell on the land, and that a
proprietor has no right to remove them from his estate." I was
dreadfully shocked to notice that in a volume of tales published by a
Lerwick author only four years ago, the leading villain was from the
mainland. "Scotland is nothing to us," said a Shetlander to an inspector
of schools. "What has Scotland ever done for us except send us _greedy
ministers and dear meal_?"

In the old days, when communication with the mainland was uncertain and
fitful, the luxuries of civilised life were quite unknown. In one
outlying district a box of oranges was washed ashore from a wreck: these
the natives boiled, under the impression that the orange was a novel
kind of potato. A cask of treacle, come by in a similar way, was used
like tar to daub the bottom of a smack. By and by a cow was seen to lick
the boat with evident relish, and this opened the eyes of the natives to
the real nature of the substance. Nowadays the natives are well in line
with modern civilisation, one of the most convincing proofs being that
they buy drugs and patent medicines of every kind. One has only to scan
the advertisement pages of the Shetland newspapers to note the
persistent way in which quacks of all shades bring their nostrums before
the notice of the islanders. Dyspepsia and rheumatism are the commonest
ailments; and to combat these, myriads of pills and numberless elixirs
are annually swallowed. Faith does a lot even when the drugs of a
legitimate practitioner are concerned: the fact that you have swallowed
something with a bitter taste is often a distinct aid to recovery. Mr.
Russell, whom I referred to above, says: "To my surprise, I learned that
some who were in extreme poverty, and had hardly enough food to eat,
were in the habit of sending South for pills and patent medicines."

A SHETLAND POET.

Long before I ever thought of visiting Shetland, I was acquainted with
the dialec