The last half-century has seen a complete transformation of life on Eigg, as it has over much of the west coast and the islands. Fifty years ago the island was almost entirely gaelic speaking, and up until the 1970s it was not unusual for children to know no English before they went to school. Crofting still produced most of the food and there were no tractors, except on the estate farms. Much of the farmland was still arable. Now there are very few native gaelic speakers left on the island, although a determined revival is under way. The arable is limited to a few garden plots and small potato patches, and cows have not been milked since the 1980s. The ferry has become essential for almost all supplies. Changes have been so rapid that it is easy to forget what life was like such a short time ago. Recording the disappearing evidence is important for the island if it is to maintain its sense of tradition and an understanding of the past. There are few contemporary documents from the crofting years, except for census returns and the registrations of births, marriages and deaths. Almost the only sources we have are oral tradition and old photographs. For both of these we are now looking at a closing door. With the death of Angus MacKinnon in May 2000 we lost one of our last tradition-bearers, although fortunately his father had been tape-recorded at length by the School of Scottish Studies in the mid 1960s.
A remarkable number of books have already been written about Eigg (see Publications about Eigg). The authors have drawn extensively on oral evidence, and made sporadic use of old photographs, but until recently there has been no systematic attempt to find and record the old pictures. Now, and only just in time, a project is under way to search out, copy and study this most important record of island life and island traditions. This has been made possible thanks to two generous grants of over £4,000 each to the Eigg Historical Society from the Scottish Millennium Festival "Awards for All" fund. The society has already been able to locate and copy about 3,000 old photographs from about 50 different collections, and more pictures are still coming to light. The collections can be as small as one or two pictures or very large: a collection of over a thousand has recently been found and recorded. The photos include a rich diversity of material on buildings, people, social history and farming and they feature the landowners, crofters, farmers and visitors. The earliest pictures go back to the 1880s, and they can be as recent as the 1970s.
Barbara Barrie sorting through a recently discovered collection of old photos showing life on Eigg & Muck in the '30s. Barbara is the daughter of Jimmy Greig who was Head Forrester for the Runcimans and she now lives in Glasgow. She has been able to interview several old people with memories of island life. On the right is Susanna Wade-Martins who has written a history of the island called 'Eigg, an Island Landscape' (now out of print).