Residents of the remote island where Donald Trump's mother came from say he is ''feeding off his sister's name'' and ''the good she did'' there.

Locals in Tong on the Isle of Lewis off Scotland say the former President ''never gave us a penny'' unlike his sibling Maryanne Trump Barry.

They also recalled how Donald's mother left the isle for the US then returned wealthy and glamorous in a ''great big car''.

They were speaking to Katharine Hay, rural affairs correspondent for The Scotsman, who visited Tong.

She found some residents willing to open up about Donald Trump - and others less so and refusing to discuss him.

Mary gave donations to build a village hall there in the 1970s and Donald Trump's sister Maryanne also gave £155,000 for a care home and hospice in the area.

Some on the island say her brother Donald is ''feeding off her name and the good she did''.

Katharine Hay's piece on the island appears in The Scotsman. She writes:

*One month before the US General Election, Donald Trump stood before a roaring crowd in Pennsylvania, beginning one of his ebullient campaign speeches.

'He was standing in the exact same spot where his ear was mangled by a bullet in an assassination attempt just months before.

'On that very same 5 October, hundreds of miles away, I was sitting in a community hall in the small village of Tong, on the Isle of Lewis.

It is where Trump's mother Mary Anne MacLeod hails from, and from where she left as a 17-year-old in search for a new life in the US, pursuing the American dream.

I travelled to the village to find out a bit more about what the residents, some of whom are Trump's relations, think of the Republican presidential candidate today.

The mood couldn't have been more different to the scenes in Pennsylvania. Sitting at a "soup and pudding day", a popular occasion in villages on the island, residents were somewhat apathetic about the US election."

One resident told me everyone in the village knows that Mr Trump has close connections to the island, but that they're not particularly interested in him.

Another wished me luck trying to find the relations, telling me they have no interest in talking to journalists.

I tried the door of the Murrays, some relatives of Mr Trump who live in the house where Mary Anne grew up, but they said they had no comment to make about Domhnall Iain, as Trump would be called in Gaelic.

One of them said: "On behalf of the family, there is nothing to say," before closing the door fairly promptly."

I wasn't surprised about the lack of interest given Mr Trump's similar attitude towards islanders during his last and only second visit to the island in 2008.

Mr Trump, known as Donald John to islanders, apparently boasted of his Scottish-ness after landing at Stornoway airport in a Boeing 727 with "TRUMP" splashed across the fuselage in gold."

"I think this land is special," he told journalists at the time. "I think Scotland is special, and I wanted to do something special for my mother."

He stopped on the island for about three hours en route to give evidence at a public inquiry into his contentious inaugural Aberdeenshire golf course. He spent even less time inside his mother's birthplace, visiting for just 97 seconds for a photo, islanders said.

Earlier this month, however, more than a decade after his visit, the Trump team announced a new 18-hole golf course is set to open in Aberdeenshire next summer and will be named the MacLeod course, after his mother.

Lewis local Derick Mackenzie, who founded the ‘Isle of Lewis Supports President Trump' Facebook page, said he doesn't blame Trump for his fleeting visit to Tong.

"Trump's life is full of adrenalin, and he comes here to this backwater on the fringes of humanity, and there's not much happening," he told me."

"I am not surprised he didn't hang around."

"He's a big celebrity, and his relatives are very reticent and don't want to be in the spotlight. I actually felt sorry for him being put on the spot. His flamboyant personality doesn't go with Tong. The whole situation was just quite sad, and only worthy of being forgotten."

Mr Trump, however, seems to be a notable exception when it comes to the family's generosity towards the island with time and money.

His mother, who died aged 88 in 2000, gave a significant donation to build a village hall in the 1970s.

And in 2015, Trump's sister Maryanne, a retired federal appellate judge who has visited Lewis dozens of times over the years, gave £155,000 to the Bethesda care home and hospice, based in Stornoway.

Bethesda's chief executive Carol Somerville told me: "She [Maryanne] wanted something tangible on the island in memory of her mother - she didn't want any publicity and was very low key about it all. She was very down to earth."

"She really saw what we needed here. It's not Trump that deserves any accolade at all. He never gave us a penny, and he's feeding off her name and the good she did."

Back at the soup and pudding day, conversation over a coffee and some blackberry crumble dried up when I asked locals about their views on Mr Trump.

But what I did manage to find out was a bit more about Mary Anne from talking to the children of her friends growing up in Tong.

A child of a crofter and fisherman, Mary Anne came from humble beginnings. Her parents were Malcolm (1866-1954), and Mary MacLeod (1867-1963), and she was the youngest of their ten children.

She left in the 1920s, during a time that was common for young Scots to leave for the United States or Canada having suffered badly the consequences of the Highland Clearances and World War 1.

Mary Anne's life went from working the land to millionaire riches in New York after she met real-estate developer Fred Trump, and transformed herself from a domestic servant to suburban socialite in the Land of the Free.

Two sisters, who wanted to remain anonymous, told me of their memories growing up seeing Mary Ann, who was friends with their late aunt, on return visits to the island.

"This great big car would turn up and take up the whole road," one of them said."

"This was in the late 50s when she came back here on holiday and she would come and visit my aunt. They went to school together and were friends."

"She would step out the car and she was so glamorous. Money was no object to them. They stood out from us."

In an effort to get a political view from the island ahead of the 5 November election, I asked MSP for Na h-Eileanan an Iar, Alasdair Allan, what he thought of the aspiring US president.

"This week's election will have repercussions in Europe and elsewhere far beyond the shores of the US," he said."

"Speaking personally, I am even more concerned by some of Mr Trump's statements in the course of this election campaign than I was last time round."

On behalf of his constituents, he said: "Generally people in the islands have a very high regard for personal qualities like modesty, manners and tolerance. Sadly it is difficult to see any evidence of these characteristics in Mr Trump."

Curious to see the local paper's reaction to the last time Mr Trump took up seat as president, I found a 2017 January copy of the weekly Stornoway Gazette. Its front page downplayed the newly appointed president's inauguration, with a tiny caption above an unflattering photo of Mr Trump looking drab reading: "Man of Lewis descent takes control of the free world."

From my own visit to the island in 2024, I wouldn't be surprised if next week's edition takes a similar tone if he is to win.