The West St Kilda Area

KILDA WAS NO SAINT !

Various theories have been proposed for the word Kilda’s origin, which dates from the late 16th century. No saint is known by the name.

Haswell-Smith (2004) notes that the full name St Kilda first appears on a Dutch map dated 1666, and that it might have been derived from Norse sunt kelda (“sweet wellwater”) or from a mistaken Dutch assumption that the spring Tobar Childa was dedicated to a saint. (Tobar Childa is a tautological placename, consisting of the Gaelic and Norse words for well, i.e., “well well“.) Scottish writer Martin Martin, who visited in 1697, believed that the name “is taken from one Kilder, who lived here; and from him the large well Toubir-Kilda has also its name.”

– Wikipedia on St Kilda

There’s Never Been A St Kilda
Music & Video by Mal Webb, James Cattell, Dominic Hook, Kylie Morrigan

There’s never been a Saint Kilda
That suburb by the bay was named for a sailing ship named after a lady
Jailed on an island by her husband… way to the west of Scotland

And that St Kilda archipelago’s dodgy etymology may well well involve a two-tongue tautology
Doubly dubbed in Gaelic and Norse, Tobar Childa, is where Martin Martin sought the source
But the main island and another further afield translate as Deathly, Westerly, Shepherd or Shield
That’s Hirta and Skildar, which led, for sure, to a helter skelter of nomenclature
Through decades of maps, names morphed and swapped spots, Skildar lost an R, but it gained a dot
After the S and thence folks must’ve surmised that someone called Kilda had been canonised
Beatified with the power to bewilder

But there’s never been a Saint Kilda
That suburb by the bay was named for a sailing ship named after a lady
Jailed on an island by her husband… way to the west of Scotland

Rachel Chiesley was ten years old when she saw her father hung
Hanged, for the murder of the judge who has settled his divorce, thus Rachel, too, was highly strung
But she found a beau in James, Lord Grange, and their marriage produced nine kids
But as her looming gloom consumed her groom, their doomed union was soon on the skids
Yeah, but James was Jacobite rebel and Rachel had threatened to expose his sympathies
So he faked her death and had her forcibly transported westerly through the Hebrides
For eight years she’d languish, she didn’t speak the language, the arctic gales they chilled her
Then she was moved to Skye, again to falsely die, another three years mustn’t’ve thrilled her
’Til her third death sadly stilled her heart

But There’s never been a Saint Kilda
That suburb by the bay was named for a sailing ship named after a lady
Jailed on an island by her husband… way to the west of Scotland

Sir Thomas Acland’s wife was touched by Lady Grange’s tragic tale
So Thom named his schooner the Lady of St Kilda and soon for Melbourne it set sail
And there on the north-east Port Phillip shore, it was moored for more than a year
So, rather than Punk Town, Green Knoll or Fareham, the faux holy handle did indelibly adhere
Indeed, on the whim of the wife of a boat builder

There’s never been a Saint Kilda
That suburb by the bay was named for a sailing ship named after a lady
Jailed on an island by her husband… way to the west of Scotland

Hmmm, but was the lady, in truth, Hirta’s Female Warrior?
And what of the monk and the spring? Forsooth, the mystery history of the moniker donned upon this Hobson Bay foreshore’s a convoluted thing
And the city name blame game aim of this little ditty’s now pretty fairly fulfilled, aahh…

But if there were a Saint Kilda
Then maybe they’d be named the patron saint of hardy hot-headed women
Hard-done by cagey cold-hearted men
Of crazy etymology crossing geography and canonising cartography, but then again

There’s never been a Saint Kilda
That suburb by the bay was named for a sailing ship named after a lady
Jailed on an island by her husband… way to the west of Scotland