More Strange Scotland

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More Strange Scotland - book excerpt

Section One

Strange Places

The Strange Island of Skye

There was no bridge the first time I travelled to Skye. It was a real island then, with a short ferry journey from the mainland and a thousand legends waiting in the glens and hills. From the ferry, I could not see much of the island; I could not see much at all, for a thick white mist covered everything, from the Cuillin Mountains down to the Kyle of Lochalsh.

I am not sure what I think about Skye. For those with the ability to feel the “power”, as Bowed Davie of Peebleshire’s Manor Valley called it, Skye has an indefinable something that lingers in the atmosphere. For others, it is merely an island of dramatic scenery or a place to settle to escape the rat race of the south. I find it an unsettling island, more disturbing than any other part of Scotland, as if the island is waiting to reclaim itself, and the hills and mountains were watching, brooding, aware that all is not as it should be.

To some, Skye is Eilean a’ Cheo, the Island of Mist, yet that is a modern name, coined when misty scenery was deemed romantic. A reverend gentleman by the name of JA MacCulloch made the nickname famous in 1905 with the publication of his book The Misty Isle ofSkye. There certainly is mist on Skye, as there is on any island with hills, but probably no more than average. What there is on Skye is a plethora of folklore, myth and legend.

Skye: Of Names and Castles

Every hill, every loch and village in Skye has its stories, with each often interlinked with others on the island. Take, for example, Beinn na Cailleach, a mountain that overlooks Broadford. The name means the Hill of the Old Woman, although nobody is sure which old woman it honours. One theory is that it refers to the strangely named Saucy Mary, who allegedly stretched a chain from Kyleakin in Skye across the Kyle of Lochalsh to the mainland, to make any ships pay a toll before they could proceed. In common with many Scottish hills, Beinn na Cailleach has a cairn on the summit.

More is known, or conjectured, about the 16th-century Castle (or Caisteal) Uisdean. This battered ruin sits beside Loch Snizort Beag, or Little Loch Snizort, just north of the Hinnisdal River mouth in Trotternish. Castle Uisdean means Hugh’s Castle and the builder was said to be Hugh MacDonald of Sleat, a son of the 10th Lord of the Isles. Castle Uisdein would have had a single gate, reached by a ladder, which the occupants of the castle would haul inside for security. There is nothing picturesque about this square tower house, while its surroundings can be rather bleak in foul weather. However, there is a strange little story.

Hugh, or Uisdean MacGillespig Chleirich to give him his correct, Gaelic, name, had a notion of becoming chief of the clan. Hugh was not a man one would care to have as a neighbour. Indeed, a song of the time asked why his foster-nurse did not crush him to death when he was a child, to prevent him from growing into such an unpleasant adult.

At that time, the chief was Donald Gorm Mor, Sir Donald MacDonald of Sleat. The fact that Donald was Hugh’s uncle seemed not to concern Hugh, who planned a neat little murder. Hugh’s idea was to invite Donald Gorm to Castle Uisdean and have a few handy lads around to thrust a dirk through his ribs, direct and straightforward. To that end, Hugh wrote a couple of invitations; one to Donald Gorm, asking him to come to the castle, and another to the intended assassin, giving details of the plan. However, the letters crossed in the post, and Donald Gorm was very interested in reading all about his forthcoming murder. He asked his followers to bring Hugh to him to discuss the matter in person.

Not surprisingly, Hugh fled Skye and holed out at Dun an Sticir on North Uist in the Outer Hebrides. The name means Fort of the Skulker and it is a 16th-century building on an Iron Age broch, ruined now but still worth a visit. However, Donald Gorm sent out search parties and, in 1601, Donald’s warriors hauled Hugh back to Skye. Donald Gorm ordered him to be interred in a dungeon at Duntulm Castle, with a hunk of salted beef to eat, and a pewter water jug. Hugh ate the salt meat but when he went to drink the water, he realised the water jug was empty. And then the stonemasons began to seal the dungeon door, leaving him to a lonely, agonising death by thirst. According to the legend, Hugh went mad inside his terrible dungeon.

It was decades before the wall was broken down during alterations to the castle and Hugh’s skeleton was discovered. He was said to have chewed on the empty pewter jug before he died. Another story claims that Hugh’s skull and thigh bones decorated the window of the church at Bornaskitaig until as late as 1827.

Donald Gorm was not the most pleasant of men, either. According to another legend, he married a sister of Rory Mor MacLeod, the MacLeod chief who lived at Dunvegan Castle. Donald’s wife was a good woman but unfortunately had only one eye. When Donald Gorm took a fancy to another woman, one of the daughters of Mackenzie of Kintail, on the mainland, his present wife had to go.

Finding a one-eyed horse, Donald thrust his one-eyed wife on top, scoured the island for a one-eyed boy to lead the horse and a one-eyed dog to follow, and sent the whole sorry procession to Dunvegan in a calculated insult. Naturally, Rory Mor retaliated, and the two clans began, or probably resumed, a feud that spread as far as the MacDonald lands of Uist and led to the deaths of men, the ravaging of women and burned homes. There was little romance in the old days of clan warfare.

Donald Gorm’s Duntulm Castle stood powerfully on a promontory above the sea but is now a total ruin. According to legend, the MacDonalds of Sleat abandoned Duntulm in the 1730s when a nursemaid dropped the chief’s son on to rocks below the castle. In revenge, Sleat thrust the nursemaid into a boat and left her in the Atlantic without oars or sails. The nursemaid’s ghost, and that of Hugh, are said to haunt the ruins of the castle, both screaming. They are not alone, for Donald Gorm also remains, apparently spending his death in battling other, unknown spectres, while his one–eyed wife looks sorrowfully on. The legend of the nursemaid dropping a baby is not unique, for Findlater Castle on the Moray Firth has the same tale.

Despite Duntulm’s stories and ghosts, of all the castles of Skye, Dunvegan is arguably the most famous. The ancestral home of MacLeod, it sits proudly beside a loch of the same name. It is a castle with a long history that includes comedy as well as tragedy. One episode occurred during the American Revolutionary War, when the owner, General MacLeod, was fighting in North America.

The Scottish-born United States seaman John Paul Jones was known to be prowling the seas off Scotland, pouncing on ships and raiding on shore, so Dunvegan’s factor decided to remove any valuables from Dunvegan. He had hardly begun when Bon Homme Richard, Jones’s ship, sailed boldly into Loch Dunvegan with her cannon manned and the flag of the newly proclaimed United States flying at her masthead.

For a moment it seemed that Jones was about to send his crew to ravage Dunvegan, until the sound of bagpipes floated across the loch. It is easy to imagine the tension, with the people in the ancient castle watching the modern warship creeping across the dark water. Her star-spangled flag would be challenging all comers and the black mouths of her cannon threatening the defiant civilians – and then the pipes wailed.

Every eye swivelled to the head of the loch, where a lone piper led a long procession of men that marched slowly towards the castle, two by two in formation. Guessing that Clan MacLeod had risen to repulse him, Jones decided that discretion was far better than valour, weighed anchor and sailed away as fast as his ship would take him. If he had waited another five minutes, he might have learned that there was nothing martial about the newcomers.

Donald MacLeod, the Swordale tacksman had died a few days earlier, and the piper was leading the funeral procession on its way to Kilmuir Graveyard.

Dunvegan, naturally, has older tales. There is a cave on Loch Dunvegan, near Borreraig, known as the Piper’s Cave, that has at least two legends attached. The first is the common cave-story about a piper who entered playing his pipes and subsequently vanished. In this instance, the piper was one of the famous MacCrimmons, whose piping college was not far away. As so often, the piper entered with his dog, and the music of his pipes became fainter and fainter until the dog returned alone. According to legend, people can still hear the piper sometimes, trying to find his way home. One version of the legend says that MacCrimmon’s piping enthralled the fairy queen, so she kept him enchanted underground, and that is how the famous pipe tune, MacCrimmon’s Lament, was composed.

The second legend is more prosaic and possibly more accurate, as it claims that pipers used this cave for practice. The piper I asked, a lassie from Inverness, told me sourly that the pipe-major would probably order the young apprentices to the cave until they could produce something that sounded bearable.

There is another cave in Skye, the Uamh nan Oire, the Cave of Gold where another piper vanished. He was a MacArthur, one of the hereditary pipers of MacDonald. That story was current in the 17th century, although the actual cave, near Bornaskitaig Point, is disputed. The Isle of Barra also has its Uamh nan Oire, with a similar legend, except that predatory sea-dogs, of the four-footed variety, seized the piper. Hebridean caves were dangerous places for pipers.

Skye: Ghost Light of Broadford

Sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century, an Edinburgh doctor was on holiday at Broadford in Skye. In the evening, he walked by the shore and saw a bright light out in the bay. He watched it for a while, unsure what it might be, and then decided it must be a fisherman showing a flare.

However, the light did not behave as a flare should. It travelled slowly above the water, coming towards the doctor, and then it disappeared. In its place, a woman stood, huddled in a long cloak and holding a child in her arms.

Convinced he had seen a ghost, the doctor asked the innkeeper, who confirmed that a boat had gone down a few years earlier, and the sea cast the bodies of a woman and child on to the shore where the doctor saw them.

Skye: The Water Horse

In Uig, a dark lochan sits serenely beside a mountain pass. The locals knew that the lochan, although small, was also dangerous, and avoided its calm waters, telling each other tales of the strange creature that lurked beneath the waves. Like most lochs in Skye, there are many rocks at its side and, laddies being what they are, one herdsboy lingered to throw stones in the water. Why do children do this? To see how big a splash they can make, perhaps, or just because they can.

On this occasion, the herdsboy got ambitious, throwing in larger and larger stones until he began to roll in the huge boulders that lay beside the banks. Eventually, he realised that the water was vastly disturbed even when he had stopped throwing stones. Suddenly scared, the herdsboy hid behind a rock and watched as a beautiful black horse emerged from the lochan. The laddie gazed on as the water horse looked around it before returning to the depths, where it probably remains.

Knowing how dangerous water horses can be, it is unlikely that the boy threw any more stones into that lochan.

In common with other parts of the Highlands, Bracadale in Skye had its water horses, which were – or are – dangerous creatures to cross. They usually disguise themselves as beautiful horses that live in lochs and rivers while, in reality, they are monsters that kill and eat people. When a group of young women were at the shieling high on the Trotternish Ridge, a voice called from outside.

Speaking in Gaelic, the woman’s voice asked to be allowed in, saying: “Let me in, you beloved children.”

When the women opened the door, they saw an old woman standing outside. “Where will sleep the little old woman, tonight?” the old woman asked.

“At the feet of the maidens,” the women said. The shieling had one communal bed, made of heather, on which all the women slept.

“Oh, the beast of the feet will take hold of me,” the old woman said, looking frightened.

“You can sleep at the back of the bed if you wish,” the kindly Skye women offered. Still, the elderly visitor was not happy, and only when the women said she could sleep in the centre of the bed was the visitor content. Soon the visitor and the Skye women were all in bed, with most sleeping. However, the Skye woman closest to the door was aware that the visitor was restless. The Skye woman looked around, to see the visitor had bitten a chunk out of another woman’s arm.

“The water horse!” the woman yelled, and ran out of the door, with the visitor, now in its proper form as a water horse, in hot pursuit. On most days, a four-hooved water horse can catch a two-legged human, but fear added to the Skye woman’s speed. She was still in front when she reached the burn that gurgled between Balgowan and Totarder, although the water horse was closing the gap.

As the woman leapt the stream, a cock welcomed the dawn in Balgowan. Like the Devil, the water horse cannot abide the crowing of a cock, and it shouted after its prey, “Duilich c, duillich c, alltan,” which means: “Sad it is, sad it is, stream.”

And that is how the Alltan Duilich, the Altan Streamlet, gained its name.

Skye: The Fairies

Naturally, in a place as uncanny as Skye, there was fairy lore. At one time a significant number of fairies lived in Skye – maybe they still do and are merely biding their time before they show themselves again. The people of Skye worked long hours at harvest-time, yet never laboured by moonlight. The moon was the fairies’ lantern and it was bad luck to work then. Was that some ancient folk memory of moon worship?

At any rate, one married couple either forgot or scorned the old legend and were out one moonlit night, gathering their corn by sickle, the traditional method. They were engrossed in the harvesting until the husband felt a sudden sharp pain on his hand. He dropped his sickle, aware he had offended the People of Peace, and the couple returned home. In the morning they found an elf-shot, or fairy dart, on the ground. Elf shots were the ancient stone arrow-heads that people sometimes dig from the ground.

One of the most mystical fairy places is Fairy Bridge between Dunvegan and Waternish, for here three roads and three rivers meet. The number three is a significant number in many cultures, from West Africa to Scotland to the Middle East, so having a double three would undoubtedly give the Fairy Bridge an added advantage.

The bridge is a modern addition to the area, whose Gaelic name is Beul-Ath nan Tri Allt, or the Ford of the Three Burns, although another, more romantic Gaelic name is “a Ford for the Fairies”.

The story predates the bridge by some centuries and refers to a time when the MacLeod chief wished to marry a local fairy girl. Such marriages were permitted to last only a year and a day, after which the fairy wife returned to Fairyland, or Elfhame, as we called it in Southern Scotland.

The couple parted at the Fairy Bridge, and the mother wrapped the son that had been born to them in a silk shawl. That shawl, known as the Fairy Flag, is still kept in Dunvegan Castle. The MacLeods can produce that flag to protect the clan in times of extreme trouble – but only three times. It has been flown twice, so the clan is saving the third time for some unspecified threat in the future.

Now, don’t be thinking that the fairies of Skye are a gentle breed for, in the old days, Skye was renowned for its fighting fairies, who could be as violent as the human population. An example is what they did after the clan battle of Harta Corrie, beside remote Glen Sligachan. The fighting began at dawn and lasted until dusk and the bloodshed ended only when the MacDonalds had killed every warrior of Clan MacLeod. Elated after their victory, the MacDonalds dragged the MacLeod corpses to a massive rock now known as the Bloody Stone, which the hardy can see if they don’t mind marching over rough terrain for miles. The Bloody Stone sits a mile or so north of Loch Coruisk. Anyway, for years after the battle, the Skye fairy folk visited the battle site to make arrows from the ribs of the dead MacLeods, which hardly seems like the action of a peace-loving people.

Other hill legends are less bloody, but still carry a bit of an edge. Take the Old Man of Storr, for instance. The Old Man of Storr is a rock formation, part of a ridge of hills that extends along the peninsula of Trotternish, the north-eastern wing of Skye. The Old Man of Storr, or Bodach an Storr as it is correctly known, is a basalt pinnacle that thrusts 160 feet above a hillside that is already some 2,300 feet above sea level. Scientists claim the Old Man is the result of a landslide aeons ago, which is probably accurate but not tremendously exciting. The legends give different accounts. According to one old tale, the Old Man is the thumb of a giant who is buried underneath the hills. He, or she, must have been some size!

However, there is also a story that the Old Man and one of his slightly smaller companions were two giants, man and wife. They were being chased by some unknown enemy and looked behind them, which turned them to stone in a scenario similar to when the Lord changed Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt.

Yet another tale involves brownies rather than giants. According to this version, a local man known as O’Sheen saved a brownie’s life without asking for a reward. The brownie never forgot, and when O’Sheen and his wife died, he sculpted the Old Man and the smaller rock in their honour.

And finally, there is the story involving the fairies, who had to get in on the act. This story again has a man and his wife as central characters. Every evening the pair climbed the hill until old age prevented the wife from making the journey. At that point the local fairies stepped in, saying they could ensure the couple stayed together. The husband agreed at once, and the fairies turned both into pillars of rock.

The moral of that story is – never trust a fairy!