From Tudor
"A lonely isle
'Twixt Hetland and the Orkneys there looms forth,
Uprearing high to Heaven its bold, proud head.
The Fair Isle - to Shetland appertaining,
And of like origin, and by like race
Inhabited at first. A mere insect
It seemeth, front a thick swarm disjoined,
And here alone into the wave cast down.
Scarce to one hundred count the souls who dwell
Upon the south side of this desert spot,
Like earth's last habitants, or like to men
Forgotten by the world, strange to the age,
Unmoved to other change than the raindrops
Of birth and death which variation make,
And grave themselves into their life's hard soil"
- "Fair Isle", from the German of Jensen.
Fair Isle, the Fridarey of the Saga, belonged to the Sinclairs of Quendale till somewhere about the middle of last century, when one of them, according to tradition, lost it at cards to the then Stewart of Brugh. The great historical incident connected with Fair Isle, and which furnished the theme for Jensen's poem, was the wreck in Sivars Geo, of one of the ships of the Spanish Armada, El Gran Grifon, the flagship of Don Juan Gomez de Medina, who was in command of the eighth division, consisting of 23 transports, hulks, and storeships, and which was termed the "Armada de Vrcas". The event occurred on the 17th September 1588. One of his officers, a Captain Patricio, is buried in St.Magnus' Cathedral. The shipwrecked Spaniards paid the Islanders for all supplies, but the latter, at last fearing a famine, began to conceal their stock. So a boat was sent to Shetland to Andrew Umphray of Berry, then tacksman [leaseholder] of the Island, requesting assistance. Umphray responded by despatching a small vessel he possessed to bring the survivors to Dunrossness, where they were landed at Quendale. Here they were hospitably treated whilst waiting till Umphray got a vessel ready to convey them to Dunkirk. On landing at Quendale, Don Gomez (imagining the people did admire him) made his interpreter ask Malcolm Sinclair whether he had ever seen a finer man ?. To which Malcolm replied, "Farcie in that face, I have seen many prettier men hanging in the Burrow-moor". From Shetland Andrew Umphray carried them in his shallop to Dunkirk, for which the Don rewarded him with 3,000 merks.
[Monteith]
A silver cup with heraldic shields, given by Don Gomez to Malcolm Sinclair, is now in the possession of Mr. Balfour, of Balfour and Trenabie, into whose family it came through a marriage of one of the Sinclairs to a Balfour.