There are many stories which could be told about this land.

There is 'The Magic Kumara', which tells of an old woman, a digging stick and a pair of magic gumboots. Of an enchanted flock of sheep, frozen on a hillside, and a kumara that sings and dances as it jumps from the old woman's frying pan:

    Peel me, slice me, pop me in the pan,
         Fry me, salt me, eat me if you can!

This story asks the questions we are always asking, the questions which haunt us: 'What has been lost? And what has been stolen?' But like most such tales, it hugs its answers to its chest.

Then there is the story of the girl whose mother drowned herself in a wash-bucket. The water from the wash-bucket spread out and covered the land, and saved it from drought. But the girl went out into the world in search of her mother and received strange gifts: a needle, sharp as a rapier with a smooth, oval eye to carry the thread, an inexhaustible skein of yarn ...

It is said that my great-grandfather, who was a descendent of pirates, was also a collector of stories. 'Myths and Legends of the Tartan Isles', 'The Magic Kumara and other stories', 'The Trembling Isles: a personal record of the Seismological Crisis of 1907'; these are some of them. But mostly, he collected words. He collected them wherever he went. The lists grew longer and longer until, many years after he had first begun, they became a book, his Dictionary of the New Shetland Vernacular.

Once, I possessed copies of all my great-grandfather's books. But a few weeks ago, I noticed that some of them had disappeared. I searched for them all over the house, but I did not really expect to find them. You see, it is a familiar pattern in our history. first the earthquakes and then the thefts of language. Straightaway, I knew that it was happening again.

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