No 49. Maas Eggs on Midgarth Holm .

No 49. MAAS EGGS on the HOLM.

Maas Eggs. Month of May and the early days of that month. There was one weekend which was high on our boyhood calendar when we had our annual trip to the Midgarth Holm, called Linga Holm and now owned by the R.S.P.B.. Early in the month the gulls in all their varied kinds turned their gull minds to thoughts of love and nest building. Almost human they were. So with mounting excitement we packed a picnic lunch and gathered pails for the trip. The Holm of Midgarth belonged to and was farmed by Dod and Alex.Tait, brothers of our father’s mother. About 150 acres, or thereby, as lawyers describe any property they are selling to obviate and prevent any claims on mis-measurement. Half a mile off shore from Midgarth, low lying, with low cliffs on the south side, rocky banks or shingly beaches on the rest. The fertile Holm had been lived on in days gone by with empty houses still there in our day, though I do not know what has happened to them since. Our father’s first cousin John Tait, Professor of the Physiology Dept., McGill University, Montreal, Canada, having come home to visit his native Orkney in 1939, was caught there by the outbreak of War in Sept. of that year. The sinking of the passenger ship Athenia with heavy loss of life on the very first day of War on 3rd September, 1939, was no encouragement to hasten back to Canada. He lived on the Holm like a hermit in summer in one of the houses, communing with Nature, the winters of his maroonment he spent in the warm house of Lower Midgarth. Not till 1944 did he brave the U-boat infested North Atlantic crossing back to Montreal in Canada, where he died at his home on the 21st October of that year. He taught us how to shoot with a .22 rifle, a good trainer; as well he should have been as he served as a doctor throughout the First World War. He was also a wonderful guide to all the birds and beasties around us, a profound zoologist and ornithologist. He smoked a pipe with an infernal and pungent mixture of herbs, never to be forgotten. Where or how he got it I do not know, perhaps he made it himself from the abundant vegetation around, on which he really was a Professor. We thought he knew everything.
The Midgarth men had a beautiful former German powered launch, possibly off the Hindenberg, wonderfully built with the finest of timbers, teak and mahogany. All the launches survived the Scuttling of the German Grand Fleet in 1919 as the crews left their sinking ships, or most of them anyway as a few were shot. Most of the boats found their way to many an Orkneyman’s boat noust. The Taits also had a big flat bottomed boat for taking sheep and Shetland ponies off the Holm, towed across by the Hindenberg. On the Midgarth shore they had a large corrugated iron boat shed for winter storage of the boats. Smelt of tar and petrol and oil and linseed and tarry ropes and wood shavings and sea weed and all things magical to we boys. Dod and Alec would have farm work to do on the Holm but we were on holiday, maybe we helped to chase some sheep into pens or some ponies but otherwise the day was ours for Maas Eggs.
. We were always sternly warned of the dangers of falling overboard on the crossing, told to sit there and don’t move, not a lot anyway. But on the way over through the clear pale green water we could see the shallow underwater scene, fish, scuttling crabs moving sideways as crabs do, a blue lobster or two, many varied and wonderful seaweeds, patches of sand and rocks, seals on occasion underneath us or popping their heads up to have a look at us, then splashing down out of sight. Sometimes Dod would drift the boat for a few minutes to let us have a better look. Getting to the Holm, the flat boat was tied next to the small stone jetty ready for loading some livestock, and the Hindenberg beside it. Usually Dod and Alec had some farm men or neighbours to help them, and they had good old fashioned sturdy dogs too, real bowferts.
Father took us off around the shore of the Holm, always going clockwise with the sun, superstitious maybe but an inviolate rule. The beaches were usually of small shingle, good nesting for black and white oyster catchers which we called skeldros with their piping cry, sitting tight on their eggs later but we there early enough to see their new laid eggs in their scrapes. Above the beach we would find dunters - eider ducks - with their nest hugely covered in fluffy down and thus seen a mile away, which still gives us eiderdowns on our beds, but who now knows the origin. Though all too easy to see the nests, we did not take the dunters’ blueish eggs, nor the skeldro. A full dunters clutch could be a dozen eggs or more, prolific layers.
Different parts of the Holm were favoured by different species. Terns favoured a small reedy loch, clouding over it, diving furiously on our heads close enough to part our hair and feel the wind of their passing, yelling the while. A few curlews favoured that spot too. Kittiwakes clamored as we came near, they clamor anyway. Various gulls, herring gulls large and small kinds, black-backed gulls, also large and small, but not too many of these, black-headed gulls. On the cliffs on the South side of the Holm a few very visible crows nests, hugely made with seaweed and small tangles off the beach, easily seen but impossible to climb to. They were infinitely crafty in that regard. Still, we saw them, and could sometimes get above them on the cliff edge to see their eggs
There were in those far off days just a few fulmars, called locally by the old Viking name “mallimac” for evil gull. Do not get too close, they could spit-vomit desperately smelly oil with great accuracy and any clothes hit by them were best left on the Holm, quite impossible to wash away the smell. Father once had a favourite hat targeted; it is still lying on the sea under Rothiesholm Head!!!. We did not take their eggs!!.
So we filled part anyway of our pails with wonderfully mottled gulls eggs, herring gulls the favourite. Thin shelled so take care with them, easily broken. Sometimes we put a layer of dried grass between layers of eggs to cushion them a bit, we had a long way to go home. There our mother fried them lightly and quickly in butter, breaking the yolks to let them run as they were quite strong tasted but when spread thinly we loved them. Certainly a different taste from hen eggs, the white better tasting, a bit oily and fishy, sharpish. I do not think we would have liked them every day, though of that we had no risk. Some people hard-boiled them but again that was too strong for our tastes.
There were other places in Stronsay to get gulls eggs, Rothiesholm Head or Burgh Head among others. Sometimes we had to wait on top of the cliff while our father went down for some eggs, but it was not cliff climbing as such, rather a more gentle slope but take care anyway, the sea was below. He had lived in Rothiesholm Farm anyway so knew every place there worth visiting for gulls eggs. We were allowed to gather eggs on easy places above and back from the cliffs where some gulls would lay among the scrubby heather or on bare patches of ground, possibly beside a small pond or lochan here or there. There were some places we were allowed to go on our own, safe, especially around the beach and shore below Whitehall Farm or down on The Ness, no cliffs but less gulls.
But Midgarth Holm was our favourite, the sea and the sky and the wind, the space, the flavour of Robinson Crusoe about it, and we could let our vivid imaginations run wild.