I Long To Read This:

Taken from the Orkney Herald, April 1916.

Sooth Mooth Woe: My Hot Sex Story

It is sometimes difficult manning the phones at an Island library & archive when you are not a local. There are all kinds of strange author names and book titles and sometimes mistakes are made.


Here in the archive, we take our turn to receive the incoming calls from the public for the whole building. It was my turn last Friday morning:


ME: (brightly, courteously and terribly professionally) Good Morning, Orkney Library and Archive, Archiver speaking!


CALLER: This is a very broad-accented aulder gentleman here looking fer a book!


ME: (brightly, courteously and terribly professionally) Just a moment *brings up screen on pc* What is the title of the book?


CALLER: Hot Sex.


ME: Em... pardon?


CALLER: (clearly and carefully) HOT. SEX.


ME: (thinking) Is he saying hot sex? Is this a rude nuisance call? Is he saying hot sex to me?
         Emmmm..... what is the author's name?


CALLER: Welsh man.


ME: (thinking) A rude Welsh man? Is that a euphemism?? *looks up Welshman, Welschmann,  Welchman etc. on system*


I'm afraid we have no books by that author's name.


CALLER: Hid's no matter....hid's aboot codes.


ME: What?


CALLER: The book's aboot codes.


ME: (thinking) Rude codes? Is that a euphemism?


 I'm sorry that I couldn't help.


CALLER: Hid's no matter. Ch'o noo.


ME: (primly) Good bye. *frantically googles*








Dear readers, this was the book:

William P. L. Thomson

William P. L. Thomson, OBE, MA, M.Univ., Dip.Ed., FSA Scot.

It was with great sadness that we learned of Willie Thomson's death last week.


A former rector of Kirkwall Grammar School and greatly respected author of many books on Orkney's  history, Mr Thomson was a regular researcher here at the archive and we hold all of his works in the Orkney Room.


His books include The History of Orkney (1987) which was revised in 2001, The Little General and the Rousay Crofters (1981), Kelp-making in Orkney (1983), Orkney: Land and People (2008), and Orkney Crofters in Crisis (2013). There is a small display of these in the Orkney Room today.


We also hold some of his essays and lectures in the archive as well as a recorded interview which covers the kelp-making process.


We have turned to his tomes time and time again when answering enquiries on Orcadian history. Mr Thomson was always a pleasure to speak to and we will miss him very much.


His funeral is today.

Oh Daddy, My Daddy!

This week in 1858 saw the birth of E. Nesbitt, author of many wonderful books including 'Five Children and It', 'The Railway Children', 'The Treasure Seekers', 'The House of Arden', 'The Story of the Amulet' and 'The Enchanted Castle' to name but a few.

In celebration, here are some examples of the magnificent Minervian library, a collection of nearly 100 stories and plays written by contemporaries of Nesbitt; Maria, Clara, Malcolm and Alfred Cowan. London born, but Orkney residents in 1865 when they began to write their tales as children, the Cowans wrote in notebooks, sheaves of paper held together by pins and handmade jotters. The Minervian library became a functioning lending library between friends and aquaintances.

(Orkney Archive Reference D98)


Instead of a Friday afternoon boogie, let's have a Friday afternoon weep as Bobbie greets her long lost, beloved father at the train station.(sob!)

Call The Midwife! (The Orcadian Edition)

Well this is an interesting book. Jannet Mowat of Victoria Street Kirkwall kept a midwifery account book from 1830-1855.

She started as a nurse and so the first few entries are for 'giving ingections' and 'attending you as a sick nurse', but soon the entries list the boys, 'lasses' and 'girrels' that she has delivered across Orkney. (Kirkwall, Evie, Sanday, North Ronaldsay and PapaWestray are all mentioned.)

Sometimes the baby's name is listed and sometimes they are listed as still born or 'to be a still child.' Prices seemed to vary from customer to customer with most paying about 5 shillings for Jannet's services but the rate rises to £2 or even £3 for some customers.

Does anyone have an idea of why this would be? (It's not inflation as it happens throughout the whole book and it doesn't look like some were paying in installments.)

P.S. She wrote her married name more than once on the back page of the notebook like girls do with boys they fancy at school!

P.P.S. We NEVER did this.

Texts In The City

Today in 1911, the New York City Main Library building was dedicated and opened to the public. Orkney was a couple of years earlier as you can see here on our handy history page.

The New York building cost $9 million to build and from laying of first stone to stamping of first book took 9 years to build. It was the largest marble structure in America at the time.

Incidentally, a precursor to the building was the Astor library. The First President of the board of that library was none other than Washington Irving, son of Orkney lad William Irving. The Irving family came from Quholm on the island of Shapinsay.

We shall be celebrating our sister library's birthday today by eating enormous pastrami sandwiches, blasting Frank Sinatra's 'New York New York and shouting "HEY! What are you lookin' at? You talkin' to ME?" every time a customer catches our eye.

A Chance For You to See What We've Been Banging On About For So Long...

Films and talks about Margaret Tait?

Films by Margaret Tait?

Yes Please!

See you all there. We'll be the ones at the back with bells on.

Save Our Libraries Day

Today is save our libraries day and I had planned to post scans of our collection of old library cards, application forms and stamps etc. but the computer connected to my scanner has died! Booooooooooooooooooo.

I expect that downstairs is a heaving throng of sweaty activists who are emptying the shelves of books, using the computers and picking the brains of our gorgeous and impossibly well-informed library assistants.

You can keep up to date with the various events taking place across the country here and there is still over an hour left to pay us a visit.

Anyone who thinks that libraries are not relevant in the digital age should remember that it is not just the books on offer but a sense of community, a quiet place to study, a shelter from the rain, free internet access as well as free computer/internet tuition, expert advice on books/archives/local knowledge, the occasional home bake, an excellent opportunity to ogle comely librarians, magazines, cds, dvds and space to explore your interests and stumble upon new culture.

SOL! SOL! SOL!

Surf While You Sail

A lot of Orkney dwellers dislike boats and are bad sailors. The Northlink ferries are often filled with recumbent blanket dwellers whose low chorus of groans make a trip South complete.

Sometimes, when one is meeting friends from a North-bound boat, they emerge green gilled and spattered, the unmistakable whiff of vomit enveloping them like a cape.

The ferries can be trying. But look! You can now read Orkney Archive's blog whilst aboard which can only improve your ferry experience:

Onboard internet access now available

People travelling on the Aberdeen-Lerwick-Kirkwall route can now surf the internet and check their e-mails while onboard, after the two vessels serving the route were fitted with satellite communication equipment enabling the ships to provide internet facilities in all public areas.

Coffee and tea making facilities are also shortly to be installed in most cabins.

Regular readers will know how strongly we approve of coffee and tea-making facilities in all areas of life.

We are currently cataloguing a large collection of books which was gifted to the library and found this copy of Patrick Neill's A Tour Through Some of the Islands of Orkney and Shetland published in 1806. As you can see, it is very overdue to be returned to Darlington Circulation Library whose lending period was two weeks with a fine of tuppence per day thereafter. If we assume that the book was borrowed around its publication date, then the fine would amount to £1489.20. In today's money that would be £50,574,93.

Not too shabby. Perhaps this retrospective fining is the answer for library budgets in these cash-strapped times. Sadly, our library does not exercise a fine system. Yes, you read that correctly, no fines at Orkney Library and Archive. Aren't we good?

Rant For A Reverend

Whilst perusing our D10 collection, which is a box full of miscellaneous papers collected by a Kirkwall cabinet maker James Tait (yet another example of a useful collection pulled together by an amateur historian), I found a letter addressed to the Procurator Fiscal by a South Ronaldsay minister named John Gerard regarding the way that unwanted pregnancies were being dealt with in his parish.

Some of the ministers who we read about were very kind and understanding to unwed mothers in their Parish. Thomas Kay of North Ronaldsay, for example, allowed a young mother to baptise her illegitimate child in 1873 and persuaded the rest of the session that she was to be treated decently. Gerard, or "Old Gerard" as he was known begins his letter "Queen Anne put unmarried women to death who concealed their pregnancy - What is now the punishment, if any?"

Gerard was described as a passionate man, or, as my boss put it when I showed her the letter, 'crazy.' There is a lot of underlining and exclamation marks in the letter as he lists examples of abortions and illegitimate births in his Parish and tells of the young couples whom he has forced to marry, one girl whom he has dragged "politely"straight from her birthing bed.

There is one somewhat amusing tale of a girl who, Sonia-Eastenders-style did not realise that she was pregnant, took to her bed with pains, got up when the "curmurring in her guts" had stopped and then angrily demanded to know who had put a baby in her bed.



There are some very horrible tales within his letter, however, of infanticide and children being abandoned which I shall not share as they really are distressing. Gerard seems to have no sympathy for these girls who must have been terrified to find themselves in such a situation and whose fear of exposure drove them to terrible, previously unthinkable acts.

I took a look at Goodfellow's Two Old Pulpit Worthies of Orkney which contains a biography of Gerard. Chapter titles include 'His Hasty Temper and Passionate Nature', 'His Ideas of Women', 'His Strange Antics',and 'His Scathing Rebukes.'

Goodfellow claims that Gerard "had a warm and kindly heart." Examples of his kindness include, warning men to marry a woman who is not "an old hag as ugly as sin", who has a good inheritance but to choose Prudence over Piety as, although a pious woman is ideal, you don't want to be stuck with a "regular Tartarean" (OED definition: 'a vixen or shrew.')

Gerard further demonstrated his warmth of heart when a neighbour's pig wandered onto his lands. Gerard shot it with his gun and then demanded that his neighbour collect his pig. He did not tell the poor man that he had shot the animal, however, and the farmer was confronted with a carcass when he was expecting to pick up a live animal.

When Gerard found the sheep of another neighbour grazing upon his lawn what do you suppose he did? Why what any reasonable man would do, of course; he whipped out his pocket knife, slit the poor sheep's throat and hung the livid remains upon his fence to warn others against repeating the neighbour's mistake. Sensible, measured and not at all weird.

He also congratulated a woman of his acquaintance for having a big mouth saying " I dinna like wee bits o' prim prinket mouths. Commend me to a leddy wi' a mouth could swallow a cod." Charm personified. She must have been thrilled.

The only thing I like about Gerard is that his funeral addresses used to have "Greet here" in the margin at sections where he wished to move his audience with a well-timed tear.

Information taken from Two Old Pulpit Worthies of Orkney by Alexander Goodfellow, 1925 and Orkney Archive Reference D10/20.

Burny burny burny...

We like to keep things topical for you and so quite often use our good friend Wikipedia to see if there are any interesting Birthdays, Festivals or events that we can celebrate on the days that we post.

At approximately 2.55pm yesterday, if the wind was blowing in the right direction and your windows were open, you may have heard a high pitched screech coming from the general direction of Junction Road.

Today, in 1986, a fire broke out in Los Angeles Library and they lost 20% of their stock. That is 400,000 books! To put this into perspective, Orkney Library has about 80,000 items, the photographic archive holds about 60,000 original photographs and the archives hold about 30,000 documents. The thought of an entire Orkney Library and Archive's worth of material, doubled, going up in flames was too much to bear and the final two hours of the day were spent stroking books and whispering consolingly to glass negatives and maps.

Archivists spend an awful lot of time thinking about worst case scenarios simply because of the priceless nature of most deposits. Part of our Assistant Archivist's job is to maintain an up-to-date 'Disaster Plan' which details our course of action should there, shudder, be a fire, flood or infestation of some kind.

Bearing in mind the possibility that we may have to save an archive from fire, water or vermin, we spend any downtime holding our breath in buckets of water, thrusting our hands into flames and thinking up cutting insults to shout at beasties. You're welcome Orkney.


Disclaimer: After posting this yesterday afternoon, I was accosted by members of staff from both Library and Archive and told that I had gotten the estimates of our stock levels wrong. They were totally hassling me! They were all up in my grill!

Apparently the Library holds nearer 145,000 items, but this includes Stromness and the Mobile Libraries. I suppose it is possible for a fire to consume Kirkwall library, spread across the West Mainland, gobbling up Mobile 1 as it goes, ravaging the whole of Stromness' main street on it's way to set the Stromness library ablaze, before leaping across the water and catching Mobile 2 on Hoy. Not

I took my number of archives from those catalogued on the database, but we do have entire room full of uncatalogued items which I forgot about. What-ever.

St Magnus Day

Today is also St Magnus day and we can see the two Orkney Flags flying from the Town Hall and the Bishop's Palace.

Margaret Tait was born on Armistice Day and died on St Magnus Day 1999.

George Mackay Brown died on the 13th of April 1996, but his funeral was held in St Magnus Cathedral, on St Magnus Day, 14 years ago. St Magnus was one of the great inspirations to George Mackay Brown's writing and he saw the Earl's execution on Egilsay as one of the most important episodes in Orkney's rich history.

Margaret Tait - 1918-1999

11 years ago today, Margaret Tait passed away at the age of 80. She left behind one feature film, several shorts films, short stories and three collections of poetry.

We are currently cataloguing her archive of papers, photographs, scripts and correspondence.

It is only in that last few years that Margaret Tait has been properly celebrated.

In 2004, LUX arts agency published a Margaret Tait reader names 'Subjects and Sequence', the name of one of Tait's poetry collections and a DVD of selected films from 1952-1976 followed in 2005.

The author Ali Smith is a fan of her work and included some of her poems in 'The Reader', an anthology of personal favourites published in 2006. Last year , to mark the 10th anniversary of her death, the Tate Modern screened a selection of her films and Ali Smith read some of her poems.

The rainbow is still a miracle

Even when we know what it's made of,

Or think we do.

Whether we really know, as perhaps we do,

Or just think we do,

As is very likely,

It's still magic.

It's just there.

Water particles, refracted light, curvature of space,

might all be a part of it

But it's still what it is.

It is still there.

It is irrefutably a miracle.

Extract from 'Cave Drawing of the Waters of the Earth and Sea', taken from the collection 'Origins and Elements' by Margaret Tait.

The Darling Buds

It was tough to decide what to commemorate today. Should it be St Patrick's day? The birthday of the incomparable Clare Grogan? The feast day of St Gertrude of Nevelles?

All the customers and staff have been talking about Spring today; how it is FINALLY here after a particularly cold winter and how lovely it is to see snowdrops, crocuses and the leaves of tulips and daffodils popping up all over Orkney.

F. Marian McNeill's Green Dumplings recipe is to be made only at this time of year. Make dumplings following your usual recipe, then add a touch of spring:

"Pick the green buds of hawthorn, the succulent tips of nettles, grass, and other green things - remember that in this condition nothing is poisonous. Include dandelions, leaves, daisy stems, shoots of young corn, and turnip tops, or anything that tastes sweet and harmless. Wash and chop finely and work into the dough until it is green through and through. Form into balls - small ones (one inch across) for soups, and larger for stews and meats. They go with almost anything, and play the part of a salad in wholsomeness."

I hasten to add a disclaimer to the 'nothing is poisonous' bit and the idea of dumplings being a substitute for salad is clearly absurd but this recipe is very appealing otherwise.

Recipe from 'Recipes From Scotland' by F. Marian McNeill

And the winners are...

Discovery Week is officially over. The balloons are down, the banner will soon follow suit and there is no baking or cooking going on anywhere in the building. We are a little morose. Prizes have been won, however, so let's look at the winners:

The winner of the Photo quiz and recipient of a year's worth of free DVD and CD loans is: Steven Smith!!!

The winner of the Archive World Traill (Traveller level) and recipient of 'The Seventy Great Journeys in History' and a year's worth of free DVD and CD loans is: Fran Flett Hollinrake!!!

And the joint winners of the Archive World Traill (Explorer level) and therefore winning a book each are: Chloe Barclay!!! and Kirsty Melrose!!!

Well done everyone and thank you for taking part. Chloe and Kirsty are pictured above with Michael Forsyth, who won the library cooks quiz, Chloe Rosie, the winner of the library scavenger hunt and our manager, Gary.

Other great news is that the wonderful soup for Haiti event raised over £360 pounds and the Coffee morning raised £125 for the same cause. Hooray!!!

Everyone agrees that Janice and Sandra did a fantastic job yesterday and thanks is due to our lovely volunteers for helping out at both events.

Stoopid budget cuts, booooooooooooo!!!

A bit of a worrying article from Guardian today on the future of British libraries. I know that we'll soon be able to carry every bit of information in the world around in a gizmo the size of a stamp in our pockets, and that's ace; but you can't use the internet or an i-pod as a safe haven from bustling shops, to get human contact if you live alone or as a quiet place to study when you're a teenager from a large, noisy family.

It's the building that's important, not just the stuff inside.

You only get one sale, so make it count... You might never get this moment again.

It is the second day of Discovery week today and the library book sale has begun in the Marwick room.

Eager faces were pressed against the glass first thing this morning and, unfortunately, one staff member was crushed by the rabid tidalwave of book-fanciers who surged through the foyer like a tsunami.

The Marwick room is currently a writhing sea of books and book-lovers. Come join us if you enjoy books, photos (photographic prints from the archive are also for sale.) or crowd surfing. It's like a JLS concert down there... Right guys?

It's the Final Countdown! Doo roo doo doo, Doo roo doo doo doo.

There are only hours left until the first day of the rest of your life i.e. the first day of Orkney Library & Archive's Discovery Week 2010. Tomorrow is also World Book Day so those few non-Orcadians who read this blog (thanks guys) can celebrate by reading or dressing up as a book.

Downstairs in the library, sale books are being humphed, displays titivated and home-bake recipes pondered. But what is happening in the archives?

Lions... aeroplanes... skyscrapers... huskies & igloos... revolution... petitions...war....ritual charcoal and nudity related humiliation at the hands of South Sea islanders.... Our Archive Discovery World Traill has all these great things and more.

There are two levels to the Traill; Explorer and Traveller. The winner of the Traveller's prize draw will win this brilliant book. The triumphant Explorer will take home not only this awesome tome, but a book of Great Explorer themed pop up board games that is so amazing, we will not post an image of it for fear that it will BLOW YOUR MINDS.

Discovery week starts tomorrow with the Traill, Book amnesty, photo quizzes, children's stories and craft with Britt Harcus at 4.00pm and Tom Muir's storytelling from 5.30 - 6.30pm in the MacGillivray Room on the first floor.

Our manager shall be hanging the Discovery Week banners outside this afternoon in a death-defying, fathers for justice-style crawl along the front of the building. Come along to laugh/cheer/boo, whatever comes naturally.

Great smelly balls of fire...

We have just received a book; The Pseudo-Meteoric Events of The British Isles, from its author, James D. Robinson.

A couple of years ago, Mr Robinson got in touch asking if we knew anything about a supposed meteor falling in Copinsay in the 1670s. After much trawling of the archives, we eventually found a passage in James Wallace's Description of The Orkney Isles which was published in 1693:

"...some few years hence, some fishermen, fishing half a league from land, over against Copinsha, in a fair day, there fell down from the air a stone about the size of a football, which fell in the midst of the boat, and sprang a leak in it, to the great hazard of the lives of the men who were in it, which could be no other but some substance generated in the clouds. The stone was like condensed or petrified clay..."

This event sounds quite alarming until you read the terrifying entry for Widecombe in the moor. Here, the congregation of St Pancreas Church noticed the skies darkening so quickly and so completely, they could no longer read their hymn books. Suddenly, ball lightning entered the church through a window bringing with it a pungent smell described as 'brimstone.' The lightning proceeded to move about the church igniting hair, flesh and clothing and causing much distress. Lime and sand were torn from the walls and the pulpit was ripped asunder. One woman was so badly injured that she required an amputation and more than a few of the congregation died either after the event or during. Sir Richard Reynolds had "his scull rent into three pieces and his brains thrown entire backwards into the next seat behind him."

If you too enjoy reading about horrifying destruction caused by inexplicable natural phenomena, then this book shall be available to view once it has been suitably catalogued. Is there a Dewey decimal number for gory weather?

Friday the 13th

Feeling freaked out by the date? Be freaked out by a creepy story instead!

Orkney does not have many proper ghost stories, perhaps tough Orcadians don't scare easily.

Most of the folklore revolves around the sea. Sea monsters, selkies and phantom ships all make frequent appearances in our files of wonderful tales. This makes sense as many people relied on the sea for at least part of their living and the flat landscape sometimes feels dwarfed by the sea and skies, especially when it's stormy.

One creepy tale that keeps popping up in various forms is that of 'The Book of The Black Arts.' The basic story goes that there once existed a book full of charms and spells imbued with the requisite power to put said charms and spells into action. The book was said to be made up of black pages printed with white ink.

All of this was great except for one terrifying fact. If anyone died whilst still in posession of the book, he and it would be instantly claimed by its author, the Devil himself. The book was not easy to get rid of.

According to Ernest Walker Marwick's 'The Folklore of Orkney and Shetland', a man in Sandwick tried to get rid of the book by taking it far out to sea and throwing it over the side of his boat in a sack weighted with rocks. When he got home, the book was waiting for him on the kitchen table. Aaaaaaggggghhhh!!!!!

A girl in Sanday who had been tricked into accepting the evil book by a local witch flung it over Grunavi head but it was home in her bedroom before she was. Aaaaaggggghhhhh!!!

The story nearly always ends with a minister being appealed to and accepting charge of the terrible tome. The Rev. Charles Clouston is said to have buried the Sandwick copy in the manse garden and the Rev. Matthew Armour dealt with the Sanday copy.

The title page of the Book of the Black Arts is said to have read:

'Cursed is he that peruseth me.'