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Twelve Light Years
 | Price: £6.99 Supplier: Birlinn Ltd |
Jimmy Aitken was a lighthouse-keeper on Stroma and at Buchan Ness in Aberdeenshire between 1954 and 1966 and his wife Margaret wrote this account of a way of life, lost forever. All the lighthouses are now automated and Stroma, sitting in the middle of the Pentland Firth, is uninhabited.
When the Aitkens arrived, there were eighty people living on the island and this is an interesting account of the life of a lighthouse family on a small island in the 1950s which has become a poignant elegy to a vanished past.
Paperback, 156 pages
First published 1988, re-printed 2002
ISBN 1841582239
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Margaret Aitken found much to interest her on Stroma and writes of its history,its flora and fauna and the old school log-book.
“In 1840 the teacher was paid £10, with £4 to his wife for teaching females to knit and sew. The subjects taught were English, reading, writing and arithmetic. “All between six and fifteen years of age can read, but the females are not commonly taught to write.”
There were many unofficial holidays. On 8 August 1871, there was no school because both teacher and pupil teacher had to man a boat and fetch a midwife. There was no other able-bodied man on the island. They were all away fishing or piloting ships. The next day the services of the teacher alone were called upon to ferry home the owner of the biggest farm, Mains of Stroma.
An inspector of 1874 remarks, “the Compulsory Clause is a dead letter in the island.” When there were jobs to be done, or anything of unusual interest afoot, the children were simply not sent to school. When fish were plentiful the boys were kept at home to catch them. In April the crops of oats and bere were sown, the gardens planted, the potatoes put in, and the children were employed in all these activities. Some of the bigger boys became herds for the summer and girls took posts in domestic service. Throughout May and June they cut and prepared their peats over on the Caithness mainland and took them home, and every pair of hands young and old were needed.”
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