Ten past midnight on a Sunday morning in Stornoway, and the Sabbath had begun. But nobody seemed to have told the 300 partygoers in the Sea Angling Club, a sweaty music venue squeezed between fish-processing warehouses on the harbour front. Stornoway’s best rock band, Our Small Capital, had cranked up the noise and launched into a version of You Will, You Won’t, the foot-stomping hit by the Zutons. Their lead singer belted out the second verse . . .

Well the devil’s standing tall on the top of the hill, Pointing down his fork and betraying your will, You gotta make decisions whether old or new, Then God comes from the heavens and he’ll say to you, You will, you won’t, you do, you don’t.

Nobody seemed the slightest bit worried about flaunting the fourth commandment by drinking and dancing into the small hours of the Lord’s day. Even here in the most God-fearing Presbyterian corner of Europe, respect for the Sabbath was not what it was.

The latest calumny against Sunday observance came on April 9, when the CalMac vessel Loch Portain became the first Sunday ferry to sail to Lewis and Harris. The one-hour journey from Berneray in North Uist to Leverburgh in South Harris happened in the teeth of opposition from strict Free Presbyterians, who saw it as an affront to God.

Campaigners such as the Rev Andrew Coghill were still angered that the sailing coincided with the twice-yearly communion service of Leverburgh’s nearby Free Presbyterian church. That, he said, was like “driving a convoy of British National party supporters past a mosque in the middle of Ramadan”. He added: “If we had been any other religious minority, the government would move heaven and earth to make sure our religious sensitivities weren’t trampled over.”

For the devout, the ferry was nothing short of a provocation. To local councillor Morag Munro it would “devastate a way of life”.

Three months on, have the traditionalists’ fears been realised? Has island life on Lewis and Harris been devastated by the ferry, and has the day of rest been disrupted? Or are the unique traditions able to survive a cultural sea change that opens up the Stornoway Sunday to the outside world?

IN Lewis and Harris, the word “ecumenical” has a curious definition. It means a choice in how severe you like your hardline Presbyterianism. In ascending order of severity there is the Church of Scotland, the Free Church of Scotland, the Free Presbyterians and a number of smaller sects founded as a result of ecclesiastical schisms down the ages.

The choice is similar to the one Henry Ford once offered buyers of motor cars — you can have any colour as long as it is black.

Lewis and Harris are the northernmost part of the Western Isles and although they are talked about as two separate places they are in reality one island. To the south are a string of smaller islands — the Uists, Benbecula and Barra — that have a strong Catholic heritage. But in the north a particularly rigid and Calvinist Protestantism has long dominated, having taken hold in the 1930s. Its grip has been kept tight by the power of the minister in close-knit communities, and the physical and cultural isolation provided by the cold, stormy waters of the Minch.

Famously, Lewis was where playground swings were chained up on Sunday, as children were not allowed to play outside. Food had to be cooked on a Saturday and could only be reheated on the Sabbath. There were arcane rules that allowed washing to be dried lying flat on the ground, but not on a washing line. The reason? The flapping of the clothes in the wind offended the Lord.

The Lewis Sabbath these days is memorably described in The Stornoway Way, a novel published last year by local writer Kevin MacNeil. A Trainspotting for the Hebrides, it chronicled how the young people of the island dread the “greyish-black, doleful” prospect of the Sabbath. “It is like falling into someone else’s grave,” wrote MacNeil, “week after week after week.”

This particular Sunday morning, walking through the town centre with all the shops closed and the buses halted, Stornoway was eerily silent. Even the seagulls seemed quieter than usual. Guests in some hotels were left to fend for themselves with continental breakfast and nobody on reception. The swings in Stornoway’s park were unchained but nobody was playing on them.

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