Nollaig Chrìdheil - 1872

Tha e coltach gu robh bàl Nollaig air a chumail le daoin’-uaisle Uibhist a Deas air 25 Dùbhlachd 1872, ’s dòcha ann an Taigh Mór Àisgeirnis. An cupall a bha a’ fuireachd anns an taigh, bha iad air ùr thighinn dhan eilean a’s t-samhradh: fear Seumas Drever á Arcaibh a bha a-nis ag obair mar bhàillidh na h-oighreachd, eadar Beinn na Faghla agus Barraigh, agus a bhean. Gu mì-fhortanach, chan eil sinn buileach cinnteach fhathast gu dé a b’ ainm dhi. Choisinn Drever deagh chliù bho na h-eileanaich, gu h-àraid an taca ris a’ bhàillidh roimhe, William Birnie a bha ’na chùis-ghràin aig móran de’n tuath.

Am measg muinntir Uibhist a thàinig air chéilidh orra, math dh’ fhaoidte le aon sùil air ‘preusant’ Nollaig bho’n fhear-taighe, bha boireannach bochd á Staoidhligearraidh air an robh Catrìona Nic an Tòisich. Rinn ise òran beag dha na Drevers, a-réir coltais an ìre mhath ás a seasamh – air uaireannan tha briathran, ciall, agus meadrachd a’ dol tarsainn air a chéile – air fonn ‘Càit’ an caidil an rìbhinn a-nochd?’ Bha Alasdair MacGilleMhìcheil an làthair aig a’ bhàl cuideachd, agus sgrìobh e sìos na facail. Feumaidh gu robh e airson na rannan eadar-theangachadh dhan chupall as déidh làimh – ach faodaidh teagamh a bhith againn an robh e buileach cho fosgailte ’s a bha a’ bhana-bhàrd fhéin mu bhòidhchead Bhean-Phòsda Drever. Dh’ fhaodadh e bhith nach robh nòsan na sean bhàrdachd mòlaidh a’ freagairt air modhalachd linn Bhictòria!

A-réir Alasdair: ‘The bard is 40 y[ea]rs and at poetry all that time & she is greatly oblig[ed] to Mrs Dre[ver] for her munificence & kindness’. Tha seo car àraid: ann an da-rìribh, tha e coltach gu robh Catrìona Nic an Toisich a’ teannadh ri 70 bliadhna a dh’ aois aig an àm – chan eil fhios nach robh i a’ tarraing ás a’ ghàidsear air an oidhch’. Co-dhiù, thill Alasdair air ais thuice ann an 1875, agus chruinnich e bhuaipe grunn òrthachan a chaidh a chlò-bhualadh ann an Carmina Gadelica, leabhar far a bheil e a’ cuimhneachadh oirre mar chuideigin aig an robh ‘much occult lore’.

Fàilte dhuibh a chòmhlain thàinig
Faisg a chòmhnaidh:
Mr Drever ’s fhir na mara,
’S an leadaidh àlainn còmhl’ riutha.

’S tric a thug mi treis ’am thàmh
’S a chuir mi dàin an òrdan,
’S gun dèan mi fear do dhan lànail [i.e. lànan]
Òg a tha air pòsadh.

’S nuair ràinig mise taigh a’ bhàla
Far an robh pàirt dha m’ sheòrsa,
Bha’n còmhlan uasal air an ùrlar
’G ùmhlachadh dhan cheòl ann.

Ghléidh iad urram air na Gàidheil,
[?Gach] leadaidh is bean òg ann:
An cas siùbhlach ’s an ceum lùthmhor,
An troigh nach lùbadh feòirnean.

’S nuair a thàinig iad ás an ruidhle
O rinn iad m’ fheòraich
Dh’ fhaighnich iad gu ciùin ’s gu sìobhalt’
An gabhainn fhéin dhaibh òran.

Thuirt mi gur e mise nì siud
Fiosrach cinnteach eòlach.
A’ cheart mhion[aid] rinn mi sguir dheth
Shìn iad ginidh òir dhomh.

Ge brith chall a chuir siud orra
’S bu chuid[eachadh] dhomhs’ e
Gum bu làn a bhios an spòrs
’S gum bu pailt’ an stòras.

[?Tric sibh tarraing iall a chluaise
Toirt rud uaibh gach lò ás]
Gum bu sona saoghal réidh
Bhios sibh fhéin ’nur còmhlan.
’S gum fada bhios an Drever.
’Na bhàillidh aig Iain Gòrdan

A chuile taobh a nì e gluas’d
Beannachd nan uaislean ’na chòmhdhail.
’S ann mar ri beannachdan na tuath'
’S gun robh a’ bhuaidh r’a bheò dha.

O na bheachdnaich mi gu glan
Air do chéile pòsda,
Chan fhaca mi[se] fhéin ’s a bhàl
Leithid bean ur còdaich.

Fàinneachan òir air a meuran
’S deise an t-sìod’ an òrdan
Air a seang shlios fallainn
Gineil banail [slios] mar chanach mòintich.

Cìochan corrach air a brollach
’S broitseachan an òir oirr',
Muineal is gile na’n fhaoileann
No’n sneachd air taobh nam mór-bheann.

A dà ghruaidh cho dearg ris na caorainn
No gàradh chraobh nan ròsan,
A sùil[ean] meala fo’n chaol mhala
Cridhe glan gun mhórchuis.

’S buidh’ an Drever rinn a buannachd
’S e fhuair an stòras
Bean bhanail chiallach a ?dhearbhas
Fiosrachadh is còiread.

Chan iongnadh pròis bhith air a h-athair
’S air a càirdean móra
Bho chionn a’ mheas a ghléidh i dhaibh
O thàinig i air bhòidse.

An leadaidh uasal a bha leibh
Mo dhùrachd i bh’ air pòsadh
’S tha mìle beannachd a’ bhàird chuagaich
A-nis ’s gach uair r’a beò dhuibh.

A song composed by Catherine Mackintosh, Staoidhligearraidh, South Uist, to the wife – unfortunately, we don’t yet know her name – to the recently arrived James Drever, factor to the Long Island Estate, apparently when the young couple were holding a Christmas ball at Àisgeirnis House on 25 December 1872. The poem was preserved by Alexander Carmichael, who must have attended the ball with his wife (and his field notebook!) to be translated for the Drevers later. Carmichael’s translation may not have been so frank concerning Mrs Drever’s physical charms as the poetess, working in the traditional idiom of Gaelic panegyric.

Thanks to Ray Burnett and Angus Macmillan for their kind help and assistance.

Tagairtean
LS CW 106 fos.42–43v.
Ìomhaigh:
Taigh Àisgeirnis

Cornwall and the Cornish

Going to the most south-western tip of England was a prospect that Alexander Carmichael wrote about with some amount of relish. It was a post that could afford him the opportunity to explore a different but not too unfamiliar area of folklore. His romantic persona shines through his brief note of his impending transfer to Cornwall:

In the early spring of 1862 when it became
known to me that I was coming to Corn-
wall I own that I was much pleased. I
was pleased at the prospect of coming
to the land of the good and gallant
King Arthur pleased at the prospect
of coming to the land of ancient song
and story and above all pleased at
the prospect of learning an additional
language and that language the language
of the ancient South Britons.

What Carmichael did at Wadebridge in Cornwall, other than attend to his duties as an exciseman, remains rather unclear for it seems he collected next to nothing nor does it seem that he ever realised his ambition of learning the Cornish language, something that he had shown so much enthusiasm for before he set out. The two years spent in Cornwall may not have been fruitful but it did allow Carmichael to ‘enjoy’ a distance from his own native culture and from his activity of collecting folklore which allowed him to gain a better perspective for his return north in 1864.

References: CW 463, fo. 17.
Image: Wadebridge, Cornwall.

Losaid na Gaoithe a Tuath – The Trough of the North Wind

A rather intriguing piece of lore that Alexander Carmichael collected when he was, in all likelihood, in Iona concerns Losaid na Gaoithe a Tuath (‘The Trough of the North Wind’). This trough-like red gratite stone, according to oral tradition, was in the door of Iona Cathedral and was used in order to aid a ship in gaining a fair wind through divine intervention by supplicating St Columba (Calum Cille). The maiden - whose ancestors are said to have arrived from Ireland along with the ostracised Irish saint - in question is said have thrown three handfuls of water (presumably of the holy variety) into the stone and then in the name of the Trinity asked for as much wind as she desired:

Losaid Na Gaoth a Tuath =
Sgeip na Goath a tuath. The
Losaid is a stone of red granite of the cathedral
door Iona. The stone has a hollow
this hollow was cleaned out when
a boat was absent by a maiden
of the name of Nic
ille dhuibh daughter of the son of
Black in name of Father and
Son and Spirit the maiden
would get any wind she wished
from Calum-cille. Her progenitor
came over from Eirinn with Calum
cille Hence the claim of a maiden
of the name of Macilledhuibh o’n
Calum cille.
Losaid na Gaoth tuath – Losaid
of the north wind. Losaid, losad, a
trough, a kneading trough a vessel
for holding food, a table
full of food, a rich well laid out feed.
Gheobh maighdeann a Chlann
ic ille dhiubh gaoth air bith a dh iarr-
as i an Calum cille an ainm Athar
agus Mac agus Spioraid ach i a ghlan
adh a mach na losaid – losaid lon
ach na gaoth a tuath – the foodfull
trough of the north wind.
The maiden threw air tri boiseagan
uisge as an losaid in name of the
Trinity Gheobhadh i gaoth air bith
a dh iarraidh i duair a dhean-
amh i seo.

References:
CW 230, fos. 189–90
Image: Cloisters at Iona Cathedral

Duncan Cameron - Policeman and Seanchaidh

Some years after Alexander Carmichael had collected the various material that comprise his fieldwork notebooks, he would, in moments of reflection, take the time to reminisce about the characters from whom he had met and taken down material as well as having had the opportunity to share both their interests in oral tradition. One of Carmichael’s informants was Duncan Cameron, born probably in or near Lochaline, Morven, around 1818. Having spent much of his life as policeman in Tiree and Mull he passed away in Tobermory in 1900, aged around eighty-two. Duncan Cameron’s marriage certificate of 1856 reveals that his father-in-law worked for the Excise just like Carmichael and they may have shared a few anecdotes about illicit stills as they both had the duty of upholding the law.

Duncan Cameron was for over fifty(?) years
a Police Constable. He was a native of Morvern
but spent most of his long life in Mull and
Tiree. He had a distinct talent for
old lore and much he knew of the more valuable of old lore of
the people of Mull and Tiree among whom
he lived so long and was liked so much.
He was a man of quiet kindly tact and heart
and much liked by all. He had much old
lore of much excellence most of which died with
him when he died at Tobermory in 18[ ] at the age of eighty-
[ ] Mr Campbell of Islay mentions
Duncan Cameron. Duncan Cameron had
excellent versions of many things of great excellence
far superior to other versions that I have heard.
His version of the robing of Murdoch, the
son of Brian was much the best and fullest
and most poetic and pictury
version I have ever heard

There are quite a few items that were recorded from him that were later published in Carmina Gadelica: Coisrigeadh an Aodaich (‘The Consecration of the Cloth’) twice; Sian a Bheatha Bhuan (‘Charm of the Lasting life’); An Tuis (‘The Incense’); and a tale set in Mull entitled Mairearad Bhòidheach (‘Beautiful Margaret’).

References:
CW 365, fol. 84r
Carmina Gadelica i, pp. 306–09
Carmina Gadelica ii, pp. 26–31, 186–87
Carmina Gadelica iv, pp. 96–97
Carmina Gadelica v, pp. 360–63
Image: Lochaline, Morvern.

Duan Callain – A Christmas Carol

Now that Christmas is drawing near it would not be inappropriate to mark it with a carol that was sent to the Highlander by Alexander Carmichael. This newspaper, which was produced between 1873 and 1882, was edited by his friend and fellow Gael, John Murdoch (1818–1903) and where Carmichael is described in his article as ‘our Uist Correspondent’. Also the correspondence sent along with the enclosed carol tells us something about what Carmichael thought regarding his contribution: ‘A. A. C. [Carmichael] expresses his regret that the fasts and festivals connected with Christmas have been to such an extent suppressed, that now there are many who do not know the origin of the very name. He thinks it would have been well to preserve those practices, as they led people to reflect upon the great Christmas events, and to benefit by meditation on the lessons inculcated.’ Carmichael wrote down the Christmas Carol from the dictation of Mr Angus Gunn, a pauper aged 85, who resided at Dail fo Thuath, Ness, on the northernmost tip of the isle of Lewis:

DUAN CALLAIN


Ho-Rí! Ho-Rí! Beannaicht E, beannaicht E,
Ho-Rí! Ho-Rí! Beannaicht thainig ’s am.
Ho-Rí! Ho-Rí!
Beannaich an taigh ’s na bheil ann,
Ho-Rí! Ho-Rí!
Eadar chuail ’us clach ’us chrann,
Ho-Rí! Ho-Rí!
Iomairst do Dhia e adar bhrat’ us aodach,
Slainte dhaoine gu’ ro’ ann.


Ho-Rí! Ho-Rí! Beannaicht E, beannaicht E,
Ho-Rí! Ho-Rí! Beannaicht E, beannaicht E,
Ho-Rí! Ho-Rí!
Gu ma buan mu’n tulach sibh,
Ho-Rí! Ho-Rí!
Gu mu slan mu’n teallach sibh,
Ho-Rí! Ho-Rí!
Gu mu slan ceann sguilb ’is taigh,
Daoine slan na bhuntair.


Ho-Rí! Ho-Rí! Beannaicht E, beannaicht E,
Ho-Rí! Ho-Rí! Beannaicht E, beannaicht E,
Ho-Rí! Ho-Rí!
Noc[hd] oi[dh]che Nollaige Moire,
Ho-Rí! Ho-Rí! Beannaicht E, beannaicht E,
Rugadh mac na Moir Oighe,
Ho-Rí! Ho-Rí! Beannaicht E, beannaicht E,
Rainig a bhonnach an Iar,
Ho-Rí! Ho-Rí! Beannaicht E, beannaicht E,
Shoillich Grian na’m beann ard,
Ho-Rí! Ho-Rí! Beannaicht E, beannaicht E,
Shoillich fearann, shoillich fonn,
Chualas an fhonn (am fonn?) eir an traigh.


Ho-Rí! Ho-Rí! Beannaicht E, beannaicht E,
Ho-Rí! Ho-Rí! Beannaicht E, beannaicht E,
Ho-Rí! Ho-Rí!
Beannaicht mo Righ,
Gun toiseach gun chrioch,
Gu sumhuin gu sior,
Gach linn gu brach!

A translation of the above carol, presumably by Carmichael himself, was also appended and which may be given:

Hail to the King! hail to the King!
Blessed is He, blessed is He who is come.
Hail to the King!
Blessed be this dwelling and all therein.
Hail to the King!
With its sticks, and stones, and staves.
Hail to the King!
With its covering and clothing.
And the health and welfare of all herein.


Hail to the King! hail to the King!
Blessed is He! blessed is He!
Hail to the King!
Long around this house be you!
Hail to the King!
Happy round this hearth be ye.
Hail to the King!
Many may the stakes in the roof-tree,
And joyous be all within.


Hail the King! hail to the King!
Blessed is He! blessed is He!
Hail to the King!
This is the eve of the great nativity.
Hail to the King, blessed is He.
Born is the Son of Mary the Virgin–
Hail to the King, bless is He.
The soles of His feet have touched the earth–
Hail to the King, blessed is He.
Shines the sun on mountains high–
Hail to the King, blessed is He.
Shines on the sea and shines on the land,
And loudly sounds the chorus of the strand.


Hail to the King! hail to the King!
Blessed is He, blessed is He1
Hail to the King!
This is the eve is the glorious nativity.
Hail! hail! all hail, O! King to Thee,
Through the limitless hounds of eternity.

The carol was later republished in Carmina Gadelica with only slight variations to the orthography made. Carmichael adds some detail about his informant:

Angus Gunn had been a strong man physically and was still a strong man mentally. He had lived for many years in the island of North Roney, and gave a graphic description of it, and of his life there. He had much oral lore which he told with great dramatic powers.

References:
A[lexander] A[rchibald] C[armichael], ‘Duain Challuin’, The Highlander, vol. II, no. 36 (17 January 1874), p. 3
Carmina Gadelica, i, pp. 126–37.
CW 115, fos. 1v-2r

A St Kilda Wedding - III

Who were the serious young couple whose marriage was described by Kenneth Campbell, schoolmaster on St Kilda in 1884–85? In the speech he delivered in December 1886 about his year on Hirt, Campbell says that he was present at two marriages while on the island: this tallies with official records. His description of them as ‘the young couple’ rules out the marriage celebrated on 27 April 1885 between the notorious ‘serial emigrant’ Ewen Gillies, then aged 59, and his second wife Rachel MacQueen (aged 31 according to the certificate, although in fact 33), who were shortly to leave the island for Canada.

This leaves us with the other marriage held when Campbell was on the island, which took place on 5 August 1884. The bridegroom on this occasion was none other than Finlay MacQueen (1862–1941), the nephew of Rachel MacQueen. By the time of the evacuation in 1930 MacQueen, by then a widower, was the recognised patriarch and best cragsman of the island. Perhaps rather unexpectedly from the glimpse we have of the solemn young man, MacQueen was also the (admittedly often rather cantankerous) guardian of St Kildan traditions.

Finlay’s bride was the slightly older Mary Gillies (1860–1906), of 12 Hirt. Mary Gillies is well-known in St Kilda lore on account of her middle names. The (perhaps slightly enhanced) story goes that her mother had a difficult childbirth, and was assisted by Jemima, the wife of Captain Henry Charles Otter (1807–76) who was there with a deputation, including the Free Church minister of Portree, in his paddle steamer HMS Porcupine. After a successful delivery, the child was christened Mary Jemima Otter Porcupine Gillies.

The new couple took over the croft of the groom’s grandfather John MacDonald (1807–92) at 2 Hirt, and it was there that Finlay MacQueen lived until the final evacuation of the island in August 1930. After an unhappy stay in Ardnarff in Lochalsh – the isolation was ‘worse than Hirta’ – he eventually moved to Tulliallan by Kincardine in Fife, where he lived with his daughter Mary Ann and her husband Neil Ferguson until his death in 1941. MacQueen, who only ever learnt a few words of English, did return to the island with a handful of other St Kildans between May and August 1938, for a holiday, a spot of recreational fowling, an opportunity to sell postcards and souvenirs to day-trippers, and apparently to help to dye and weave St Kilda tweed for the then owner the Earl of Dumfries.

A fortnight before he returned to his old home Finlay MacQueen, along with his fellow Hirteach Neil Gillies, had been presented to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in the St Kilda Cottage – where ‘St Kilda Tweed’ was heavily advertised – at the ‘An Clachan’ Highland Village exhibit at the opening of the British Empire Exhibition of 1938 in Bellahouston Park, Glasgow. Despite attracting some controversy, the plaster-cast cottages, castle, and cill of An Clachan, occupied by Gaelic speakers mending nets, making creels, and weaving, proved remarkably popular with Highland Gaels and their Lowland expatriate cousins alike, a fact grudgingly admitted by the exhibition manager Captain Sidney Graham: ‘While I have yet to be convinced of the desirability of displaying to the world at large houses of the type in which no human being should be expected to live in the year 1938, there can be no doubt as to the drawing power of the Clachan.’ Among scores of others on the Exhibition General Committee was Alexander Carmichael’s grandson James Carmichael Watson (1910–42). The Clachan’s Highland castle was decorated by mural panels depicting the story of Deirdre, the tale which Alexander Carmichael had been so influential in publicising to a wider Scottish audience.

It is interesting to think that even today a number of Glaswegians of a certain age will have seen, and perhaps even met (though maybe not talked to) the St Kildan Finlay MacQueen, an old man born in the middle of the nineteenth century who had spent the first seventy or so years of his life on ‘an island on the edge of the world’.

References:
CW MS 395 fos.21–25.
Alastair Borthwick, The Empire Exhibition: Fifty Years On (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1988), p. 20.
Bob Crampsey, The Empire Exhibition of 1938: The Last Durbar (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1988), pp. 54, 121.
Empire Exhibition of 1938: Official Catalogue, p. 42.
Empire Exhibition: Official Guide, pp. 121–2.
Bill Lawson, Croft History: Isle of St Kilda (Northton, Harris: Bill Lawson Publications, 1993).
W.R. Mitchell, Finlay MacQueen of St Kilda (Colonsay: House of Lochar, 1999 [1992]).
Michael Robson, St Kilda: Church, Visitors and ‘Natives’ (Port of Ness: Islands Book Trust, 2005), pp. 424–35.

Image: Finlay MacQueen talking to the St Kilda factor John Mackenzie, from Mitchell, Finlay MacQueen.

A St Kilda Wedding - II

Although apparently a native of Gairloch, Kenneth Campbell (1862–1929) was brought up and educated in Oban, before attending the University of Edinburgh as a medical student. Alexander Carmichael thus had plenty of opportunities to get to know him, whether during his own rather unhappy stay in Oban between 1878 and 1880, or else while at his summer house in Taynuilt, or indeed in Edinburgh itself.

Campbell left Skye for St Kilda, where he was to spend a year as a supply teacher, on Tuesday 3 June 1884. He travelled out on the proprietor MacLeod of Dunvegan’s boat the Robert Hadden, ‘a large smack’ (the ornithologist Charles Dixon who was on the same voyage refers to it as a ‘tight little smack of about eighty tons’) ‘with provisions receiving in return all the natives have to give in the way of cloth, oil, feathers, cheese, tallow & dried fish’. Kenneth Campbell’s description of St Kilda is rather unusual compared to most Victorian accounts, given that he spent a considerable amount of time on the island rather than just a few hurried hours, and, unlike most visitors there, he could actually converse with the islanders themselves rather than rely upon a translator. His islanders are much more of a community, more recognisably Gàidhealach, perhaps, than the dour or grasping caricatures sketched out by the tourist day tripper. But they were certainly strongly evangelical: when Campbell asked about religious remains on island, ‘the invariable answer is ‘Papanaich, a ghraidh, droch dhaoine, a ghraidh.’

In June 1884 a yacht party voyaged to St Kilda, among them Alexander Ross, who was helped by Campbell – ‘a very intelligent and obliging young gentleman’ – in gathering geological specimens, and David Whyte, the photographer from Inverness. Whyte took the accompanying photograph of the islanders: Kenneth Campbell is the man in the bowler on the left.

Campbell’s time on the island certainly affected him: his obituary states that he ‘was a delightful raconteur of his reminiscences of that period.’ It is noteworthy that in September 1885, after a catastrophic storm had swept away the islanders’ harvest and one of their boats, young Alexander Ferguson (1872–1960) was moved to write to his old schoolteacher, then working in Uig, Lewis, for help. Rather extraordinarily, the boy’s letter, placed in a wooden ‘St Kilda mail boat’, landed near Àird Uig, reached Campbell, was printed in the Inverness Courier, and, together with two letters of the same tenor from the island minister, caused a public outcry which led to a ‘relief expedition’ sponsored by the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland the following month.

It seems rather probable that it was in fact from his friend Kenneth Campbell that Carmichael heard the account of the last great auk which has already been printed in this blog. Campbell’s interest in the bird may have been spurred by his acting as a translator for the ornithologist Charles Dixon during the latter’s visit to St Kilda. In the late 1890s Campbell appears to have given another speech in which he gave the story of the great auk much as Carmichael scribbled it down. The account was reported in the Westminster Gazette in March 1898, then reprinted throughout the world in newspapers as diverse as the New York Times and the Otago Witness. These years were a time of rocketing prices for surviving great auks’ eggs, mainly thanks to the apparent obsession (or was it canny publicity-seeking?) of H. C. Middlebrook, antiquarian and publican, whose Edinboro’ Castle Inn, Camden – like a number of London pubs at the time – had a free museum of curiosities on the side to attract customers. In all Middlebrook purchased four great auk eggs for vastly inflated prices – possibily fuelling the contemporary debate about the need to protect endangered wildlife.

References:

CW MS 395 fos.4–5, 21–25.

Anon., ‘The late Dr Kenneth Campbell, Oban’, An Gàidheal, xxiv, 7 (Giblein, 1929), pp. 105–6.

Charles Dixon, ‘The Ornithology of St Kilda’, Ibis, 5 (1885), pp. 69–97, 358–62.

John A. Love, A Natural History of St Kilda (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2009).

Michael Robson, St Kilda: Church, Visitors and ‘Natives’ (Port of Ness: Islands Book Trust, 2005)

Alexander Ross, ‘A Visit to the Island of St Kilda’, Transactions of the Inverness Scientific Society and Field Club, iii (1883–88), pp. 72–91.

Image: ‘Nurse Ann MacKinlay in a group with some St Kildans and the Schoolmaster of that year – Mr Campbell’: Robson, St Kilda, p. 572.

John MacLeod – Expert Swordsman

In one of his very last fieldwork notebooks Alexander Carmichael collected a narrative on 31 August 1909 about an expert swordsman called John MacLeod. Unfortunately, no dates are given but it may be assumed that the man commemorated on the tomb was a figure of note and was probably one of the Gaelic élite. It also shows that Carmichael’s tastes were truly eclectic and almost nothing it seems was too trivial not to be noted down.

John Macleod
Had been in the war cam[e]
home full of praise and
honour. He had been in the
beinn-sheilg and when
a snow storm came on and
he was smothered beside his
own garden wall close
to his house – He was
a famous swordsman
the most famous in his
day – He could cut the button
from the neck of his opponents
shirt. His tomb is in this
church at Rodail with the
figure of a man as with
sword in full length on
his stone. Hewed in Geo-
Crab Harris

It seems likely that this story forms the background to the tomb of a knight in armour that still can been seen at the southern transept of St Clement’s Church, Rodel, Harris. The tomb is believed to commemorate John MacLeod of Minginish (near Talisker in Skye), clan leader of the MacLeods from 1551 until his death in 1557. If this identification is correct, and there is perhaps no reason to dismiss it, then this John MacLeod was known as Iain a' Chuail Bhàin (John of the Fair Locks) who was embroiled in a leadership struggle for the headship of the MacLeods for the bloodthirsty chief, Iain Dubh MacLeod, massacred Iain a' Chuail Bhàin's descendants. The only one to survive was Norman, a nephew of the last chief, Iain Dubh, who was being fostered at the time in Harris by a cadet of his clan. John MacLeod was succeeded by the representation of the MacLeods of Waternish by his grandson, Norman MacLeod.

References:
CW 117, fol. 17v
Image: Tomb of John MacLeod, St Clement’s Church, Rodel, Harris