Fraser's Magazine Observations (1874)

Shetlopedia - The Shetland Encyclopaedia

An account of Shetland from an unidentified author comparing the sobriety of the Shetlanders to the residents of Sussex:

"I remember observing the effects of the absence of opportunity in Shetland. In walking from Lerwick (the most northern British town, and the only one in Shetland) to Sumburgh Head, a distance of twenty-two miles, I could not but observe, in passing through the villages, that the inhabitants are an exceedingly sober race of people. Every village in Shetland is a fishing place, situated on some part of the broken and indented coast, close to the water, and every fisherman is a little farmer. They live extremely well, as to the amount of nutriment, but not according to the notions that prevail in the villages of Sussex, for their food, won alternately from sea and shore, consists mainly of fish fried in cod-liver oil, milk and meal, with tea as the prevailing beverage, and tobacco as the only indulgence. The children are exceedingly robust and numerous, and they are educated as well as in Scotland, and succeed in life far better, as a rule, than village children in Sussex, migrating almost invariably and rising to very superior positions, such as none can attain without careful training. The preliminary training begins at the village school, and is frequently completed on board some great ocean steamer and rewarded by a certificate from the Board of Trade. The youth born in a Shetland hut becomes a qualified seaman and rises perhaps to the command of a ship. In Sussex the training of a child begins, or will begin, at the village school too; but if it is to be continued, as may be feared, in pot-houses and public-houses, he will never become qualified for any superior occupation, though he may answer the prayer of the brewing corporation daily muttered by their priests in numerous temples of misrule: 'Lead him at every corner into temptation, and bring him day by day to this place.'

The Shetlanders speak better English than the villagers of Sussex. There is a little Norse left in remote islands, bat generally the Shetland tongue is purer, better educated, and more pleasantly modulated than in Sussex, because the people associate more with their numerous teachers and ministers, and do not learn the vile and senseless cunning talk of pot-houses and public-houses. At Sumburgh, a laird and magistrate whom I visited explained the sobriety of the fisher-farmers, who brave the dangers of a most troubled sea in their six-oared boats without any propping or sustaining by alcoholic liquors. The secret of this abstinence is that Shetland is not overrun with pot-houses and public-houses. The fishermen seldom see strong liquors, except when a keg of whisky comes ashore, and then, I am sorry to say, an 'escape,' as it is called, occasionally takes place in honour of Neptune, when the country side assembles and empties the keg. The laird informed me that there was once a half-way public-house between Lerwick and his residence at Jarlshof, and around it was an area where intoxication sometimes cropped up. He therefore closed the house and shunted the tipplers upon Lerwick, where I am bound to say, however, that during a week's residence the only case of drunkenness I observed was that of a Dutch sailor. The people are sober, moral, and happy in Shetland because the pot-house nuisance does not prevail there, for the lairds and magistrates are so scattered over the hundred isles that even if the conjunction of hops and barley - neither of which are produced there, as they are in Sussex - gave existence to brewers, I do not believe it would be possible for them to get the lairds and magistrates together at dinner partiea and so forth, and to bribe them pleasantly with champagne and shooting, though I have heard of such things occurring in Sussex. It is delightful to reflect on the consequences of sobriety, and I cannot quit these northern islands, of stern aspect and rude climate, peopled by a brave and gentle race, without noticing the general absence of crime and the morality of Shetland. Cases of bastardy are exceedingly rare, notwithstanding certain primitive usages as to familiarity; and in the neighbouring Faroe Islands, where the habits are very similar, there has been no such case for two generations, I believe. There is a manly sentiment prevailing on this subject and a delicacy of feeling which conld not possibly exist in villages that were contaminated, as so many Sussex villages are, by the vice engendered in pot-houses."^[1]