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Title: HOLIDAYING IN HARRIS

Reference number: 0136

Date: 1938, August

Director: [filmed by Nat and Nettie McGavin]

Sound: silent

Original format: 16mm

Colour: bw

Fiction: non-fiction

Running time: 12.42 mins

Description: A look at life in Harris including its fishing industry and the making of Harris tweed.

Nettie McGavin (sister of Frank Marshall) both founder members of the Scottish Association of Amateur Cinematographers and prizewinners at several Scottish Amateur Film Festivals.

Paper records held relating to this film at the National Library of Scotland Moving Image Archive 2/3/85. Additional info. also held at 11/1/151 - review of film by Dorothy I. Kidd, Curator of Scottish Ethnological Archive.

This title featured in the "Island Tapes" project. To purchase the DVD go to the website at http://theislandtapes.com/cd_dvd.html [last accessed 16/07/2020]

Credits: Mr and Mrs N.P. McGavin present Holidaying in Harris August 1938.

Shotlist: Credits (0.08) We sailed from Kyle of Lochalsh for Stornoway, Lewis. a car is hoisted into the ferry's hold by crane at Kyle of Lochalsh, overseen by a bowler-hatted man. Brief shots of the coast from the ferry, showing Mr McGavin? hand-feeding gulls (1.16) Stornoway Shots of the harbour from the ferry. Stornoway street scenes. Herring fishing is the chief industry of Stornoway shots of fishing boats unloading at the quayside. gvs fish market. (3.16) fishwives bandaging their fingers before gutting the fish. (4.05) In the country are prehistoric relics such as Druidical stones and a Pictish Broch or Fortress. shots of standing stones and a broch. Shots of a turf roofed "shieling" (5.25) distant shot of Tarbert. Shots of old and new houses on Harris. The soil is shallow and boggy, so crops are grown in broad ridges. gvs same. (7.19) The modern croft where we stayed at Luskintyre [belonging the Marshall family's maid] . Shots as a Highland cow is milked, brief shot of Highland calf, and a lamb is fed from a flat glass bottle. Clothes are washed in the burn. Shots at the beach (9.23)Funeral cairns at the roadside. brief shots same. Home industries are peat cutting and tweed making. Gathering peat; stacking peat on a lorry (10.27) Wool dyeing is primitive. Crotal, a lichen from the rocks, gives a brown colour. dyeing wool with lichen to make tweed. Shots of yarn being spun (11.58) exts. at Glasgow Empire Exhibition 1938; a sample of tweed as presented to Her Majesty at the Empire Exhibition (12.20) Shots of Tarbert and the pier (12.42)