Once eighteen men of St. Kilda answered a distress call from the starving islanders of North Uist. In attempting this mercy mission all eighteen died. As the Kildan poem has it `It Was No Crew of Landsmen` (Thompson 1970, 61). The economic relationship between places, so often perceived as the only relationship, does not suggest that men risk their lives to help others. Kilda was never as isolated as romance would like it to have been.

©Graeme Warren 1997

©assemblage 1997