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Forest Heritage Scotland webpages - Cochno Shielings
Date 2009
Event ID 588127
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/588127
The website text produced for Cochno Shielings webpages on the Forest Heritage Scotland website (www.forestheritagescotland.com).
Introduction: No one at home!
In the summer of 1786, the famous traveller and writer John Knox, tiring from his journey, came across a township in the Highlands.
"…MacDonald and myself bent hither, as if certain of a good reception of comfortable lodging, and a whole budget of news."
Knox (1787) in "A Tour through the Highlands"
Instead of a warm welcome, however, they found it empty. They were informed by another passerby that "the village had gone to the shielings".
This annual movement of people and their animals was an essential part of a farming community's life-cycle. In the winter they lived in the glens but in the summer they moved to huts built high in the hills. This was to allow their animals good grazing, while removing them from the land near the township, where the crops were now growing. The shieling is the area of land given to each family for their animals to graze.
The term shieling comes from a Norse word. In Gaelic there are several words that are associated with this practice, the most common being "airidh". While both terms refer to the use of the land, it is the ruins of the huts where the people live that remain as evidence of this practice.
High on the slopes of Cochno hill you can find the traces of several shieling huts, the summer home for a farming township.
People Story: Heading to the hills
The movement of the village to the hills was quite an event. On the island of Lewis, where the practice continued well into the 20th century, people still speak of it as the highlight of the year.
The men would go up in advance to repair any damage to the huts. The boys would take any animals not still needed at the farm. The youngest boys' job was to collect heather, which
"….when packed close; standing right and uppermost within boards, or borders of stone on the beaten clay floors, was good to lie on as a spring mattress and far more fragrant."
Campbell, D. (1895-99) in "Highland Shielings in the Olden Time"
The women brought the milk cows once everything was prepared. They came carrying bedding, dairy utensils and oatmeal. They would lift their long skirts and tuck them into their belts for the walk up, knitting while they walked.
Away from the village did not mean a holiday; the summer would be spent making cheese and butter and teaching their daughters how to prepare and spin wool for weaving during the winter.
After the fires were lit and a meal eaten the men returned home. They did not spend the summer at the shielings but back at the township; without the animals to care for they could tend and harvest the crops, and undertake the essential repairs to their houses for the coming winter.
