Fungi of the Long Island. Supplement: The Barra Isles

Abstract

The Barra Isles are the small archipelago which forms the southern tip of the Long Island, separated from South Uist and Eriskay by the 2-3 miles wide Sound of Barra. They are all small and relatively low, the ring road on Barra is only 22 km [14 miles] round and the summit of its highest hill, Heaval, at 380 m [126O ft] is a mere half hour's walk from this road. Their windswept situation renders them almost treeless but native bushes, especially of Salix and Ulex, find shelter in a few gullies along the east coast of Barra and the deep narrow gorge of the stream from Loch an Duin shelters a small plantation of well-grown trees of several species, conifers and angiosperms. Extensive areas of windblown sand occur, especially at the north end of Barra and on Vatersay, which appears to consist of northern and southern gneissic hills united by an isthmus of dunes. On the east coast of Mingulay the sand has been blown high up the hill north of the village site. Though only the two northernmost islands, Barra and Vatersay, which between them enclose the harbour of Castlebay, are inhabited today, at least four others have been occupied in the past. Sandray has ruined houses and a chapel, Pabbay's name testifies to an ecclesiastical settlement prior to the Norse invasion and a Pictish symbol stone survives as testimony to this. Mingulay, the most fertile of the southern islands, was only abandoned early in the present century and the most exposed of all, Berneray, is the site of a famous hill fort demonstrating intensive occupation during the late Iron Age. Thus the present isolation and depopulation of the Barra Isles does not reflect their past status, and human interference on an extensive scale must be assumed here as in all other parts of the British Isles. In fact the secure harbour of Castlebay gave Barra at some periods an importance disproportionate to its size. From the sagas, notably that of Grettir the Strong, we learn that in the Ioth century the Barra Isles were a favourite Viking stronghold, a place for wintering and a secure base for summer raiding, and we read of intermarriages between powerful families in Iceland and the Barra Island 'kings'. Iceland in turn was in at least occasional contact with Labrador and Newfoundland (Markland and Vinland) by way of the Greenland settlements over a period of some 350 years. Contact between the Hebrides and Greenland is attested by the Greenlander's saga in which we are told that aboard the ship of the Landnamsman Herjolf in the first group of settlers, about 985, was a Christian man from the Hebrides. He receives mention merely as the author of a notable poem, Hafger6ingadrapa, the Lay of the Towering Waves, not because his Hebridean origin was unusual. The Greenland settlers seem to have visited Labrador and Newfoundland to