EDITORIAL

It is both pleasant and encouraging to think that quite a few homes on Coll, and elsewhere, reserve a small corner of their bookshelves for their copy of the Coll Magazine. Not only does it give us a reason to continue producing it, it also reflects on one of its most enduring qualities: timelessness. There is no finite shelf life for a publication that is a unique mixture of contemporary news, historical articles and 'little bits and pieces'.

A community publication such as this can, to a certain extent, capture a community in time; an interesting ‘snapshot' of a time and a place. As with the photograph however, where the picture does not always tell the whole story, so it is with the magazine - we cannot claim to reflect every aspect of island life

Yet, those few copies that do manage to survive the ravages of time will no doubt be pounced upon by historians of the future with each annual edition further documenting the changes that have occurred on Coll. But we can only hint at the ongoing dramas... one wonders what will be made of us all as they sift through the pages in an attempt to unravel the many interwoven strands of community life. Perhaps, in the end we will have fooled them because, of course, the printed word can never be guaranteed to be wholly true.

History is also important to many who visit Coll. This year we have included two articles from people whose ancestors left Coll for the New World during the nineteenth century. For both writers a visit to the land of their ancestors had the feeling of a pilgrimage, the tales of the emigration had been a part of family lore for so long.

For them, the search ends here because they know that their families were deeply rooted on Coll. The modern family is more mobile and in time, fewer people will be able to claim that their roots are on Coll. Today's islanders are from all over Britain, who knows if their children will ever settle here to produce a new dynasty of Collachs. Then, will our children's children come back to Coll feeling the ancestral pull? Who knows?

The historians of the future might be able to tell us as they peruse the .100th edition of the Coll Magazine. If only we could talk to them now.

The present editorial committee includes:
Mairi Hedderwick; Mike Taylor; Alison McVey (Secretary) and
Fay Anderson (Treasurer).
Thank you to Martin Lunghi and Barbara Jones who have assisted in previous years and have now left the committee.