The Second Queen of Hirta

Chapter 14: As the animals do

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Not long after California left Hirta for the last time, my future husband Callum frightened me terribly by reviving a tradition which had been almost entirely abandoned many years since. This was to climb to the top of Ruival, a hill overlooking the island of Dun and very close to where Callum had asked me to marry him, and there stand on one leg on what was called the Mistress Stone.

To stand on one leg was not in itself a great achievement, but according to the tradition it had to be done with only half the foot of the leg in question on the Stone and the other half hanging off its edge, and it was an act of the utmost danger because of the great fall to the sea that would result if one were to slip. In past times a young man was considered worthy of taking a wife only if he performed this ceremony, but the practice had fallen into disuse on account of the risk of death, which would take from us someone who would otherwise have been able to play his part in hunting for food.

I could not stop Callum from doing this thing, which I thought very stupid, for he did not tell me about it until he and his friends came running back to the village, laughing loudly. The older men called him a fool and said he should have known better, and the minister went out of his way to speak harshly to him, and to explain why putting one's life in danger was an offence to God, though he did not seem wholehearted about this, and Callum suspected, as I did too, that the minister was in a mood to do some shouting and had merely taken advantage of the first available opportunity.