Caption dating to 1800s: Scene in the Hebrides: Return from the Shieling. In the Hebrides, during the summer months, the cattle are transferred from the low pastures near the villages to more distant and higher ground. During this period. the women live in shielings (huts built of turf on the hillside) tending the cattle; each day, however, returning to the villages with the milk. This they carry in large cans which are placed in their creels wicker baskets and covered with a flaky moss which serves for future store of litter. Acreelis a wicker basket usually used for carrying fish or blocks of peat. A shieling is a hut, or collection of huts, once common in wild or lonely places in the hills and mountains of Scotland and northern England. The Hebrides is an archipelago comprising hundreds of islands off the northwest coast of Scotland.