Life in the Isles

From The Scotsman 06/07/1938

“You need to have a good courage to live in the Isles” said Mrs Ella Munro this week. Mrs Munro, district nurse of Foula from 1920 to 1922, and of Fair Isle from 1922 to June of this year, attends to-morrow’s ceremony at St James’s Palace, where she will be invested with the M.B.E. by His Majesty “for devoted service”. Mrs Munro was describing to me, not without a chuckle, the difficulties attendant upon leaping from one boat to another in the wild seas that rage about Fair Isle. She had been asked to go out to a trawler to see a man who was ill, and whose condition was giving the skipper anxiety. Off she set in a small boat, and you can imagine the scene in a choppy sea when the moment came for transferring herself to the trawler. She landed safely but with such emphasis as to topple over the man waiting to receive her. He fell behind a coil of rope – “and all you could see of him was his heels!”. The patient, barely recovered from an attack of ‘flu, proved to be more in need of a rest than anything. Somehow he was transferred to the little boat, and thence to the nurse’s cottage, whence he was collected in a few days by a grateful skipper on his return trip.

A Cow That Did Not Die

On Fair Isle, where Mrs Munro worked for so many years, she never once heard voices raised, so happy and friendly were the people. The women, of course, have always that wonderful knitting of theirs to do, and the men their fishing for a few months of the year, and their land and the beasts. Moreover, they read a good deal. As an instance of the spirit of the islanders, she told me of a family that had lost their cow – a very serious blow in their position. The islanders “sent round the hat” and collected enough to provide a new cow. But there was one cow that did not die, for Mrs Munro saved its life. Its owner had come to her in dire distress. Her cow was sick and she in despair, for the man who should have attended it was away. Mrs Munro was her one hope, yet she hardly dared ask the nurse to come to it. But the nurse knew just how much the fate of that cow involved. She had no serious cases on hand at the moment, and to the cowshed she repaired. The cow was indeed in trouble, but great were the rejoicings when, in due course, Mrs Munro was able to announce to an anxious island that “mother and child were doing well.”

When Epidemics Come

Epidemics of ‘flu, measles, and the like have to be coped with single-handed by the district nurse hardy enough to go to the Isles. Neither on Foula nor on Fair Isle, of course, is there a resident doctor. He comes when there is a serious case, if the seas are not too rough for a crew to bring him. The nurse on the spot has to rely upon her own judgment and experience, although on Fair Isle she could always get in touch with the mainland by telegraph. Mrs Munro tells how on one occasion she had to cope with the death of an elderly woman and the birth of a baby in a single night in one house, all the rest of the household being ill, together with most of the island. To make matters worse, one of the worst snowstorms she had ever seen was raging. She attended the families of the lighthouse-keepers, and seems to have thought nothing of drawing a tooth. “It is not nice keeping watch with a raging tooth,” as she says. Her patients often came from the sea, trawler coming in with boils or poisoned fingers.

And Houses Are “Shufted”

Her passage to Fair Isle from Foula in 1922 was one of the worst that Mrs Munro can remember, although she did not realise its danger at the time. But it was on Foula that she met the worst of the gales. When she went there in 1920, she says, there was no communication with the outside world except by the little mail boat, a practically open boat with a hold only large enough for the mail bags. They were usually drenched before the 23 mile crossing was accomplished, but the men were splendid seamen, and she was never afraid. They knew all the signs of the sky, and could make a pretty accurate estimate, without even the help of the B.B.C.. There were five or six weeks before Christmas when they never looked for a mail on Foula, when the seas rolled mountains high and the wind gathered behind the hills in the west. For a few moments there would be an eerie calm, then the gust came through gullies in the rocks, first soft, then growing in intensity until it reached a terrific ferocity, which swept away anything that lay in its direct line. Mrs Munro soon found that the advice given to her to lie down on these occasions and grip the heather was no joke. And she remembers the day when Mrs Trail’s house, in her man-of-work’s pithy phrase, was “shufted.” She saw the gale raise the house 20 feet in the air, shaking out the furniture, as she put it, “as we would shake out a bag of feathers in a breeze.” The house was carried some distance before it dropped with a crash, everything being broken in pieces, and the nurse having some ado to dodge the flying kettles, pots, and pans. And that was what Tammy called “shufted!” When Mrs Munro asked him if he had advised Mrs Trail of the disaster, that is what he said he had told her, and when she expressed some doubt as to whether the unfortunate lady would grasp that it was “clean away.” Tammy seemed annoyed at her. “I told her it was shufted!” he said.

Mrs Munro intends to spend her retirement in Edinburgh, where she is now living with two of her daughters, both graduates of Edinburgh University and teachers in the city.