The stories of the gradual depopulation of many of our islands makes sad reading, but still many can remain populated and, with modern communications, life can be as endurable, comfortable, and undoubtedly a lot less hectic than that on the mainland. Still, there is always a slight pang, as rock after rock is evacuated. It's a long time since St Kilda, that group of little, enormously high, stacks were finally left to the birds and such wild animals as could survive.
William Milliken in that distinctive publication Sherkin Comment, tells of a visit he made several years ago to St Kilda, even then long uninhabited, for the last of the population left for the mainland in the 1930's. It's a very, very far out place fifty miles into the Atlantic from the Outer Hebrides.
Stac an Armin, he tells us, is the highest searock in the British Isles. It was swathed, he writes, in gannets. And, indeed, gannets formed a considerable part of the life of the people - their eggs and flesh for food, their feathers for bedding and their corpses also for oil. Their shoes, even, were made from the skins of gannets. But that was, surely, far enough back in history. Nevertheless, it was a bird and fish economy. Plus a few sheep. The end of their lifestyle was marked out from Victorian times, when tourism began. Visitors brought disease, and many of the St Kildans died, Milliken tells us. Some of the visitors were missionaries who tried to drum out "the animistic components of the people's ancient Celtic Christianity." Further, charmed by the `noble savage' concept of the St Kildans, tourists spoiled them, or at any rate brought down their spirits, with money and gifts. Then, as tourist interest died off, perhaps, the St Kildans, having departed from their traditional bird and agricultural patterns, became disorientated; the young people left and the community gradually disintegrated.
Perhaps, writes William Milliken, we can learn from this. Modernday islanders need "viable occupations and sources of income which can realistically meet the expectations of modern day islanders." He worries about being too dependent on "an industry as fickle as tourism."