Sometimes it seems like Quakers, or the Society of Friends, is rather like a secret society. Outside the Society, not many people know much about Quakers at all. We’re people who go about the religious, or spiritual, side of our lives quietly … and even though Quakers are involved in, and support, all sorts of good works we don’t hear much about Quakers in the media.
I suppose it’s because of this inconspicuousness that I get a sense of excitement when I read or hear in the media, anything about Quakers or their activities.
Just recently I was reading an article in my Archaeology magazine: it was about house names through history: ‘Sunnyside’ has apparently been used as a house name since the year 1200 … initially to distinguish between the sunny side, and the shaded side, of cultivation plots.
There is apparently an equivalent term in Old Norse: ‘Solskifte’, meaning ‘sun division’, which describes the prehistoric practice of dividing up land according to the position of shadows.
The thing that intrigued me was that the name ‘Sunnyside’ was still in use in the 18th century by non-conformists, especially Quakers, who took it to America.
Probably what surprised me most was that ‘Sunnyside’ became a metaphor for counter-establishment values and was also used as a sign of being blessed or saved. The use of ‘Sunnyside’ became restricted to a network of Quakers, who used the name as a coded signal to other Friends … which apparently persisted into the mid nineteenth century.
Ann Galbraith, Skye Local Meeting