George Stewart
Shetlopedia - The Shetland Encyclopaedia
George Stewart 1825-1911, author, most famously of "Shetland Fireside Tales: or the Hermit of Trosswickness" (1879).
Stewart was born in the parish of Sandwick in 1825. He was the great grandson of a ‘Dr. Stewart of Rothesay’ who appears in Lerwick in the late 18thC., supposedly having fought with ‘the Bonnie Prince’ at Culloden. The writer’s father, Andrew Stewart, also an author, married Christian Mouat of Nether Levenwick, and it was there that the family lived when George was a child, at least as long as the census of 1841.
He was appointed, at age 15, as teacher to the school at Vatchley, the class swelling with adult fishermen in the winter from approximately thirty to sixty. Afterwards he spent three years in Leith, before a teaching vacancy appeared at Dunrossness school, and he moved north again, to South Moull in that parish. However, he was soon back in Leith where, after working as a clerk and a draughtsman, he and his brother began 'J & G Stewart, provision merchants of Leith', an import/export concern that thrived for thirty years (their own imported rum continues to be a favourite drink among the cogniscenti in Shetland today).
George Stewart settled at Over Gogar House and engaged in philanthropic activity, donating to parish schools in Shetland. However failing fortunes saw him emigrate, in 1892, to British Columbia where his oldest son had a town named after him. Here he took up wood carving, producing ‘beautiful artistic’ work, including a lifesize statue of William Wallace. He died on Vancouver Island on 18th January 1911 at the age of 86. Stewart’s ‘Fireside Tales’ were first published in Edinburgh in 1877, and ran to a second edition within a few years. This is generally credited as being the first substantial work in Modern Shetlandic Scots. It hasn’t been reprinted since 1923.
Peter Jamieson writes, in 'Letters on Shetland', (London, 1949), that "The Fireside Tales contain perhaps the most complete narrative of many aspects of Shetland crofting and fishing life and work, with descriptions of the people's amusements, songs, tales, superstitions and beliefs ever written. The ballads in the Tales are Stewart's own work, but they were based on the old ballad form and are fine examples of such poems as were popular among Shetlanders before the days of newspapers and wireless. The ballad, or "fugitive" rhyme, was the "broadsheet" or newspaper of the time ... As most folks had retentive memories, the ballads and tales were 'minded upon' and recited around the firesides during the long evenings, or outside at some work where a lot of folk were gathered ... In this way the material was handed on, often with additions and alterations as people added or adapted to suit their fancy. Stewart's ballads were among the first of the local "rhymesters"' (and each neighbourhood had its rhymester) work to be written down and presented in literary form."
See: 'Shetland Fireside Tales or The Hermit of Trosswickness', George Stewart, Edinburgh 1877 (1882, 1923), 239p
