Wiktionary
n. (context Scotland English) A stone storage hut or bothy.
Wikipedia
A cleit is a stone storage hut or bothy, uniquely found on the isles and stacs of St Kilda; whilst many are still to be found, they are slowly falling into disrepair. There are known to be 1,260 cleitean on Hirta and a further 170 on the other group islands.
The outlying island of Boreray has the Cleitean MacPhàidein, a "cleit village" of three small bothies used on a regular basis during fowling expeditions from Hirta. As a result of a smallpox outbreak on Hirta in 1727, three men and eight boys were marooned on Stac an Armin, near to Boreray until the following May. Cleitean were used to store a wide variety of produce, such as:
- cured fish
- eggs (which were buried in peat ash)
- feathers
- fishing gear
- grains such as wheat, barley and oats,
- hay
- manure
- peat
- potatoes
- ropes
- salted lamb
- salted seabird carcasses
"The wind beats down upon the walls, lifting the thatch, prefiguring a storm. Crabs, fieldmice, Horniegolachs, creeping and crawling things seek shelter in the cleits, abandoned cottages and kirk." Norman Bissett, Leaving St Kilda, 1999
Usage examples of "cleit".
The crofts of the Old Village, the roofless church, the cleits dotting the slopes of Tarsaval high above me - none of it was real.
I crawled to the shelter of a cleit and with my back to the ruins of its dry-stone wall, I focused the glasses on Sgeir Mhor.
They changed in the bird-oil stench of an old cleit, and then we climbed, strung out across the slopes, climbed until we met the clouds, gasping wet air.
If ye die first, which I know bloody well ye'll never do, I'll take your body to Laerg and dump it there in a cleit to be pickled by the winds.
Looting probably, and if Iain had landed in Shelter Bay he'd have hidden himself away in one of the cleits or amongst the ruins of the Old Village.