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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 28

The Old Man of Hoy

page 72

The Old Man of Hoy.

The town of Stromness forms excellent head-quarters for tourists who like to lead an amphibious life during the summer and autumn months. Excursions may be made by land and sea to all points of the compass, and visitors who have heard about the Dwarfie Stone, the Old Man of Hoy, the Kame Echo, and the Enchanted Carbuncle generally select the first clear and settled day for a run to the most romantic of the Orkney Islands. Clear weather and a good start in the morning are absolutely necessary to make the trip enjoyable. The sail between Stromness and Salwick Little—the usual landing-place in Hoy—gives us an opportunity of admiring the dexterity with which the boatmen handle their craft in order to take due advantage of favourable currents. So capricious is the wind in the vicinity of Hoy that some of the crew almost invariably sit with the ropes of the sails held firmly in their hands, ready to spring the sheets should any sudden emergency arise.

About three miles from the landing-place we reach the meadow of the Kame, which is haunted by a mocking spirit that gives back song for song, shout for shout, yell for yell. There is something absolutely eerie in the awful distinctness of this unseen mocker's hollow peals of laughter. The sound is fitted to recall the description in Guy Mannering of Dominie Sampson's dreadful and ogre-like "ha! ha! ho." From the echo-haunted plain we strike of in the direction of the Old Man, scaling the western slope of the steep hills with labour dire, and bathing our hot brows at last in the cool delicious breeze that comes streaming over leagues of sunny waves. Our course now lies due southward along a "path sublime"—the summit of a colossal wall of precipices that rise one thousand feet from the sea in sheer ascent. Grasp the ledges with firm hold, and looking over the face of the cliffs, try to fathom with your eye the dizzy depth. The crows and choughs observed by Edgar from the summit of Dover cliff, "showed scarce so gross as beetles," and hero you see the gulls, that wing the midway air, diminished to the size of butterflies. There is no samphire-gatherer hanging half-way down to assist your estimate of the depth—no fisherman walking on the beach—no "tall anchoring barque diminished to a cock, her cock a buoy;" but you see the billows far below breaking at the foot of the rocks, and the low voice of the sea is like the sound in the cavities of the sea-shell when

"Pleased it remembers its august abodes,
And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there."

The rock called the Old Man of Hoy is a huge primeval pillar, standing out from the lino of cliffs, like the stacks of Duncansbay, in solemn and solitary grandeur. It has a singularly wild and majestic appearance, and forms a conspicuous object in the seaward view from the Caithness coast. Malcolm, the soldier-poet of Orkney, has likened the insulated cliff-pillar to

"A giant that hath warred with Heaven,
Whose ruined scalp seems thunder-riven."

Deaf to the sea-mew's plaint and the sullen plunge of the waves in the arches below, blind to the beauties of sunset and moonrise, heedless alike of calm and storm, the Old Man of the Sea, like a grim and veteran sentinel at his post, keeps silent watch and ward amid the lonely waters.

From "Summers and Winters in the Orkneys," by Daniel Gorrie.

page 73
The Old Man of Hoy

The old man of Hoy

Looks out on the sea,

Where the tide runs strong and the waves ride free;

He looks on the broad Atlantic sea.