"We were based on Hoy, the second-largest island of the group and, incidentally, the hilliest and most beautiful of them all. Here we were housed in long wooden huts with thick hawsers fastened over their roofs at intervals to hold them down securely during the tremendous gales that sweep across these islands. As a defense against the wind, we always wore our hats tied on with woolen scarves.
Beyond the immediate surroundings of the naval base, Hoy was wild and very beautiful. As a watchkeeper I was often off duty in the daytime. So I was determined to explore as many of the islands as possible and bought a detailed map on which to plot my many trips...
Whenever one went on the islands there were seals and rare birds to be seen and luxurious masses of wildflowers which always seemed to be more brilliantly coloured than their counterparts elsewhere. There were also prehistoric remains, standing stones and buildings, and one marvelous Pictish village probably dating from about 500 BC...
Some years later these lovely islands helped to provide the settings for Secret of the Ron Mor Skerry and Mungo."
Note: The Secret of Roan Inish film was based on Fry's 1957, London-published Child of the Western Isles, which in 1959 was published in the US as The Secret of Ron Mor Skerry.
That's interesting. I knew she'd been in the area during the war, but hadn't seen any of her writings about it. She knew her history of the Hebrides as well. The evacuation of Ron Mor at the beginning of the book is very clearly based on the real life evacuation of St. Kilda, which happened in 1930. I've seen photographs of Village Bay on Hirta (the only occupied island in the St. Kilda archipelago), and she's pretty obviously based the bay on Ron Mor on it, although perhaps on a slightly smaller scale. Ron Mor was probably a blend of a number of places she'd seen.
ReplyDeleteA couple of weeks ago, I spotted a job lot of Rosalie Fry books on eBay. Needless to say, I pounced, as one of the books in it was a very beautiful copy of Child of the Western Isles. It is a first edition, complete with dust jacket, and unlike most copies which become available, is not an ex-library copy. It looks barely read. One of the other books in the job lot was The Mountain Door, also first edition with a dust jacket and is also in excellent shape apart from a small ink scribble on the dust jacket. I know that one was mentioned about three years ago in a previous post. I didn't pay anywhere near the three figure range for them, either. I'm still in a complete state of shock. For this book collector, Child of the Western Isles was that holy grail book I never thought I'd be lucky enough to get. (I did have a copy of the movie tie-in book, as well as a scanned PDF of The Secret of the Ron Mor Skerry.)
...and you just inspired me to purchase my own copy of Mountain Door from AbeBooks for under $10.00. No jacket but apparently an excellent first edition.
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ReplyDeleteNice!! I've got one too, my own holy grail, and I can tell you that the sheen never dims, the shock never lessens, etc! Enjoy!!
DeleteJust a heads up that for anyone who has never been able to find a reasonably priced copy of this wonderful book, it is being republished. I haven't been able to find out too much about it yet, but it is listed on Amazon.com already and can be pre-ordered, although it won't be out until Oct. 31, 2017. It will be available in both hardcover and Kindle editions. I haven't seen the cover yet, and don't know whether it will have the original illustrations or not, but I hope it does. It will be released under the American title, Secret of the Ron Mor Skerry, even in the U.K., rather than the original British title Child of the Western Isles. I'll probably grab myself a Kindle copy.
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