# Talk:Shieling

Greetings @Chiswick Chap,
there is a "citation needed" tag in the Etymology section which I won't be able to fix (concerning "particularly those used by shepherds, and later coming to mean a more substantial and permanent small farm building in stone."), since I don't have the book(s); I skimmed some of the online sources and couldn't find the info there. Could you help cite that sentence? –LordPeterII (talk) 16:42, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Well since it isn't even etymology, and grazing was by cattle as well as by sheep, the claim is doubtful anyway, so I've removed it. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:33, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

The only source for the DYK claim seems to be the Cooper book. Cooper is not a historian, he was a food journalist. And the book used as a source, Skye, is described as this:
Part guide, part gazetteer, part anthology, Cooper presents a comprehensive picture of the west coast of Scotland's magical Isle of Skye, past and present, in this new and updated edition of his classic and authoritative bestseller.
I unfortunately can't access the pages sourced in the citation on Archive.org, but nothing I have seen so far makes me think this is anything but wild speculation from a non-expert. The cursory Google searches I've done hvae not turned up any similar claims, so I'd love another source from an actual expert to verify this DYK. 71.11.5.2 (talk) 17:17, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Well, I've looked through the book, and you're absolutely right. It's interesting and kind of fun, but it freely mixes fact with local lore, and cites no sources for anything. Here's the pertinent passage:
Before the young people of Skye took to going to Spain for their holidays they had to make do with a change of scene nearer home ... Although not so warm as the Costa Brava the lone sheilings provided just as much opportunity for sexual experimentation. In fact at one time the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland seriously debated the necessity of sending missionaries to the sheilings to try and persuade the misguided young that fornication was bad for them.
"Well", I hear you cry, "it might be true." Yeah it might, but it might also be just local lore, there being no citations or sources. And in discussing a loch named "Sneosdal", it tells us with a completely straight face that ...
One of its claims to fame is its resident water-horse which frequently appeared dressed in immaculate black with a white linen shirt. A young woman up on a nearby sheiling met him disguised in this way and they sat down in the heather for a chat. She was very much surprised as she ran her hand through his hair ... to feel grains of san among his jet-black locks. After a while the water-horse (whose libidinous drives must have been marginal) fell aslepp. The woman managed to steal away and as she fled heard his infuriated neighing behind her. It is said the people of the hamlet, two miles away, heard it too.
Obviously the reader isn't supposed to take that completely weird bestial fantasy seriously, but it leaves us wondering what in the book we are supposed to take seriously. The fact that there's a moor named "The bothy of lovemaking" doesn't tell us what actually goes on there any more than a place being called "lover's leap" tells us that actual lovers actually leap there. I've removed the passage.  EEng 03:49, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
Nice work EEng, thanks for doing the leg work! 71.11.5.2 (talk) 21:50, 15 December 2022 (UTC)