The Second Queen of Hirta

Chapter 6: Glasgow

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Nevertheless, there was room for doubt. Every Sunday I was told about such people as Jesus and Mary and Joseph and Paul and many others, but I had never met them. Nor did I know where the Holy Land was, or Nazareth or Galilee or Jerusalem. I knew that they existed because the minister said they did, but where were they?

I do not recall being troubled by this in the days when the world, for all I knew of it, started at the hills behind the houses and ended in the open sea beyond Village Bay. After Mary had taken me to the top of Conachair, however, I realised that what I had seen offered an explanation, and for a time I was satisfied with it. Jesus and the others, I decided, lived at the far end of Hirta, or perhaps on Soay or even Boreray, and since only the men ever went to those places it was natural that I would not have met them. Perhaps the men knew them well, and told the stories about them to the minister, who repeated them in church each week.