On my return from that wonderful summer experience I spent time looking again at photographs and film of the last generation of St Kildans. The theme crystallised for me around one particular woman – I realised that Anne Mackinnon (née Gillies b. 1889) of Cottage no.1, where I had dined and enjoyed good company, appeared consistently throughout the span of available photographs: first as a single young woman; then knitting at her doorway; then with a companion in her churchgoing garb; and finally, footage of her with her young family of eight children just before the evacuation. Some photos are clearly set-up (for example, where she is showing off her knitted wares) but others capture genuine moments in her life, such as on her way up from the cliffs with some of her children, carrying a wreath of fulmar round her neck. And then another where she is sitting by the souterrain, working at her knitting while talking to a gentleman visitor.

These glimpses of Annie represent to me the heroic nature of all the women of St Kilda. Life for women of my grandmother’s generation in Lewis was particularly tough – the men did get some rest from daily and seasonal work, but women stopped only to sleep. But it is clear that life for St Kildan women was even tougher and more dangerous. As girls they climbed the cliffs to harvest eggs. They worked the land, tended the animals, hauled boats with the menfolk, bore children and were the main beasts of burden, carrying turf, birds and eggs up and down steep slopes.

They frequently looked like birds themselves, covered in plumage from their toil at feather plucking and, most spectacularly, wearing shoes of gannet-necks. It amazes me that they have inspired so few legends, but perhaps the answer to that notable void lies in an attitude behind the words of Martin Martin in his Late Voyage to St Kilda (c1695) where he casually dismisses the highly intriguing legend of a St Kildan woman who lived and operated a dairy in Gleann Mòr, known at the time as Gleann a’ Bhana-Ghaisgich (the Female Warrior’s Glen).

“... she is said to have been much addicted to hunting ... there are several traditions of this famous Amazon with which I will not further trouble the reader.”

He describes her house, Taigh na Bana-Ghaisgich (the Heroine’s House), as some hundred years old yet still extant and inhabited in the summer months. It is very telling that he is not interested in recounting anything further about this significant place or its legendary inhabitant, and he describes her hunting prowess as an addiction, as though it were a weakness, whereas the same prowess in men is invariably noted as masterful and heroic.

Most film scripts have a “log line” that reduces the potential movie to a single sentence. The log line for this project has crystallised in my mind as –

To celebrate the heroic lives of all the women of St Kilda, real and legendary, with suitably spectacular costumes made in the same medium through which they expressed their own creativity.

To this end, I am designing and making wearable art that will match the visual drama and intensity of the gannet slippers those women wore on their feet. The costumes will embody all aspects of their lives and legends, lived out in intimacy with their surroundings. My daughter Jade will design and make fabric and clothing to complement the costumes and will photograph them on location using a Hebridean models. Our aim is to create a section on our Virtual Yarns website that will showcase the project to the world at large.