18-05-2025
Writings of St Kildan who fought for island's survival revealed
For centuries, this remote cluster of islands in the North Atlantic sustained a hardy population, isolated for most of the year from the Scottish mainland. They lived by bird-catching, sheep-rearing, and weaving tweed – a resilient society shaped by the sea, seabirds and sky.
Despite enduring exploitation by absentee landlords, waves of epidemic disease, and tragically high infant mortality, the islanders persisted.
Yet after the First World War, modernity began to tighten its grip. Young people left in search of opportunity, and the population dwindled from 80 in 1911 to just 36 by 1930. Those who remained were either too old or too young to carry the community forward. Faced with the impossible, they asked the government for help – and were evacuated to the mainland.
READ MORE: Bohdan Tierokhin: Drones, data, and death points are reshaping war in Ukraine
The story of St Kilda has loomed large in Scotland's imagination ever since – a haunting emblem of depopulation, the loss of traditional life, and the bittersweet price of progress. It has inspired countless books, songs, and poems. But among the many voices chronicling the island's end, one has long gone unheard – that of Christina MacDonald MacQueen.
Born and raised on Hirta, MacQueen left the island in 1909 as a young woman, lured by the bright lights of Glasgow. She traded her father's hand-woven cloth for the fashions of the city and found work as a domestic servant before marrying a Lowlander named Robert Chalmers. Together, they built a life and raised children. But the glitter of the mainland faded over time. Nostalgia set in. And for MacQueen, St Kilda – its sea cliffs, birds, and communal songs – remained vivid in her heart.
In late 1929, Christina began writing newspaper articles about her childhood. At the time, there was a mild concern over the island's future, but no clear plan for evacuation. That changed in February 1930, when her sister Mary Gillies suffered complications in pregnancy. The resident nurse, Williamina Barclay, summoned mainland doctors, and Mary was taken to Glasgow. Tragically, she and her baby, Annie, both died on May 26.
Earlier that month, prompted in part by Mary's situation, the islanders – urged by Nurse Barclay – had written to the Secretary of State for Scotland, formally requesting assistance to leave.
Grieving her sister and fearing for her island's future, Christina continued to write. Her articles, once affectionate reminiscences, became increasingly urgent and impassioned.
She lamented the failure of successive governments to support the island and denounced the decision to abandon it.
While the remaining residents had asked to leave, MacQueen saw this not as consent but as surrender born of desperation.
MacQueen and her brother Donald, by then working in Glasgow shipyards, both asked to join the evacuation ship. They were refused. MacQueen's reply to the authorities is a searing document of heartbreak and defiance:
'I am anxious to tell my people something about mainland life that has not been told them, and further, to appeal to them to make Governments, of whatever colour, do their duty and save the home that was mine and my father's, rather than destroy it. The whole business from start to finish has been the work of despairing Sassenachs.'
After the evacuation, MacQueen wrote two final articles. The first described the men's fowling traditions – dangling from cliffs to catch seabirds – and the second paid tribute to Rachel MacCrimmon, an elder whose smoky blackhouse was a centre of storytelling.
In that piece, MacQueen imagines herself once again a girl, spinning wool beside Rachel, lost in memory.
She had hoped to write a book about St Kilda but never completed it. Perhaps family life intervened – or perhaps the sorrow was simply too deep.
READ MORE: Scotland Back in the Day: The high cliffs, deep seas and fathomless mysteries of St Kilda
Now, her collected writings have finally been brought together in a single volume, published by Birlinn.
MacQueen's work matters for three key reasons.
First, it offers a rare, first-hand perspective from a native St Kildan on the island's final days – most other contemporary accounts came from outsiders.
Second, her memories provide rich social history of life in the 1890s and 1900s, especially women's work – milking, plucking seabirds, waulking tweed.
And third, she was the only St Kildan woman known to have written extensively about her homeland, giving voice to a side of the island's life long overlooked.
It is astonishing, given the breadth of literature on St Kilda, that MacQueen's voice has been so neglected. Among her family's papers was a note she wrote in red ink, a quiet manifesto of longing and purpose:
'I have written these articles about far-off lonely Hirta; far away and lonely myself, a stranger in the lowlands, longing always, and dreaming of days and folk that are no more.
'I have written to care my heart and that my children may know and know of the kindly race and distant isle from where their mother came. Never before has a daughter of Hirta written of the island home in an alien tongue. I am in hope that besides my children others may read of these fond memories, of a lonely isle and my people who lived so happy.'
MacQueen's story is singular. Yet in many ways, it mirrors the experience of countless others – from islanders to Highlanders, from crofters to country children – who left their homes for the promise of the city, only to be caught between two worlds.
Her voice, finally recovered, reminds us all, wherever we come from or end up, what happens when what we once knew is lost.
