Fair Isle (3 miles by 2 miles), Dunrossness par., Shetland, midway between Shetland and Orkney, 30 miles by sea SW. of Lerwick, pop. 214; P.O.; has some good sheep pasture. The men are chiefly engaged in fishing, and the women in parti-coloured knitting, an art which they are said to have acquired from the seamen of one of the ships of the Armada, wrecked on the Fair Isle in 1588.

(John Bartholomew, Gazetteer of the British Isles (1887))