St Michael's Font

  

Baptismal Font 

One of the larger items in Carmichael's collection is this baptismal font, on display at the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh. St Michael's font came from St Maelrubha's chapel, Eynort, Syke and is really spectacular. The carvings depict Christ on the cross, the Virgin and child (above), a bishop 'in full pontificals and crozier' and St Michael slaying a dragon. If you get a chance do pop into NMS to see it.

There is a reference in the notebook to the font (CW104/27), and in a blog entry from April 2010 the account of how Carmichael came to have the font is available. But recently I came across another account of how he came to receive the font and thought it would make a great blog! Otta Swire, from Skye, records in her book Skye: The Island and Its Legends:

Near this same burial-ground there was once a small chapel dedicated to St Maelrhuba, patron saint of Bracadale. Like all old Skye churches, it has become a ruin; but on one night of storm towards the end of the ninteenth century a fishing boat from south Uist found itself in danger and ran for shelter to Loch Eynort. The fishermen landed and went up to the little ruined church to return thanks for their safety and to pray for good weather. There they found the old stone font with its beautiful antique carvings. They were Roman Catholics and thought it sacrilege to leave a consecrated font exposed to the weather, and, still worse, in Protestant hands, so they carried it carefully on board their boat and, the gale having dropped, put to sea. But at once the wind rose again, mountainous waves pounded the boat, and back to Loch Eynort they ran. Again the storm dropped, again they put to sea, again the wind rose and drove them back. This time it occurred to them that perhaps St Maelrhuba wanted his font and did not wish for them to remove it, so they returned it to the ruins and had a calm and pleasant voyage to Glasgow, their destination. But the font worried them. On the return journey they called again to Loch Eynort. This time they went ashore and prayed to St Maelrhuba for a sign. Did he, they asked, wish them to carry his font to south Uist as a gift to their priest and for its proper use, or to leave it in the ruins? The sun came out, a favouring breeze arose, and the fishermen took heart again and, lifting the font with great reverence, carried it once more on board their boat. This time the weather favoured them and the font was soon safely in the hands of their priest. After his death his successor gave it to the Celtic antiquarian, Mr. Carmichael, and he presented it to the Society of Antiquaries in Edinburgh, in whose museum it now rests in peace.

Quite a tale! And it is always interesting to read variations of the same story.

References
Carmichael, Alexander, 'Donation of baptismal font from Chapel of St maelruve, Lochaoineart, Skye', Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries for Scotland, vol viii (1868-1870) pp. 237-239.
CW104/27
Swire, Otta Skye: The Island and its Legends (Edinburgh; Birlinn Limited, 2006)
Image
St Michael's font from SCRAN.ac.uk

Carmichaels in the Census - I

The blog ‘a’ spaidsearachd agus a’ meòrachadh’, by ‘Direcleit’, is a constantly expanding treasure-house of information about the people of the Outer Hebrides in the nineteenth century. A recent entry on Alexander Carmichael has inspired us, for our hundred and first post, to take a closer look at how the folklorist and his family were recorded in the censuses and other official documentation. We shall begin with Carmichael in his bachelor years, before his marriage to Mary Frances Macbean in January 1868.

Alexander Archibald Carmichael is relatively easy to track down. He was born on the 1 December 1832 to Hugh and Betty née MacColl in Taylochan, Lismore, and baptised a week later. A marginal note, ‘Ex[amine]d A.C.’, shows that Alexander must have looked up his own baptismal record during one of his visits to Lismore as an adult! The 1841 census has Alexander, recorded as seven years old, living with his tenant father, his mother, and his 20-year old brother Donald at Killean on the island. Ten years later, having finished his schooling, he is working as a ploughman at his parents’ house – a reminder of the strength and stamina Alexander Carmichael would need both for his career as an exciseman and for his avocation as a folklorist.

In 1861 Carmichael, recorded as 27 years old, is staying in Talisker at the foot of Glen Òraid in Minginish in the Isle of Skye, where he worked as an exciseman at the Talisker Distillery, actually nearly five miles away at Carbost, from September 1860 until March 1862. He is a visitor – that is, a lodger – in the substantial household of the owners of the estate, the 80-year old sheepfarmer from Kilmonivaig, Ewen Cameron (1780–1863), and his son Donald Colin (1827–83). Ewen Cameron’s father, Donald Charles, was born in 1745, his middle name deriving from the fact that among those attending his baptism was the newly-arrived Prince Charles Edward Stuart.

Ewen Cameron had come across from Beolary in Glenelg to take over Talisker from Hugh MacAskill in 1849, after the potato famine had devastated the latter’s finances. Both tacksmen left behind them a bad reputation for carrying out clearances, a charge forcefully put by John McCaskill or MacAskill, shoemaker, from the village of Fernilea (Fearann an Léith) on the tack, to the Napier Commission on 18 May 1883: ‘what the Assyrians left undone, the Babylonians finished.’

‘He [Ewen Cameron] got the tack thirty-three years ago, and when he came on he made up his mind that there should be nobody in the place at all, for McAskill had left remaining some of the people for his own convenience. When Mr Cameron came to Talisker he was not to do with any of the people, and as I have understood, he began to litigate with the landlord, holding out that the people being allowed on the tack was not mentioned in the lease. He would give us nothing, and he would keep nothing from us. The matter then came that he would have to take the tack as he got it, or leave it, and he stuck to it. He then deprived the cottars of the grazing which they had, and grazing for cows could no longer be got, not for twenty years or so. He took from us our peat mosses, and gave us a bog which neither man nor best made use of up to that time.’

MacAskill goes on to allege that Cameron cleared some twenty families from other parts of the estate into his own native township of Fernilea, using them as an enforced agricultural labour force for his farm.

MacAskill was probably related to another John MacAskill, cottar, Fernilea, who recited Carmichael a story about his ancestor Mac Iain Duibh mhic Thasgail on Hallowe’en Night, 1860, as well as to Kenneth MacAskill, one of the boys who recited the story Cigean, Cuaigean, is Boc Geal an Reubain on 30 January 1861.

Given his sympathies with the crofting cause, Carmichael’s association with the Camerons appears rather ill-starred. The connection, however, may have given Carmichael a first contact with the Outer Hebrides, a possible factor in suggesting to him the idea of working in Uist. It is likely that Ewen Cameron’s son Donald Colin was then already courting the woman he was to marry on 24 July 1863, Jane Macdonald (c. 1835–1915) of the Balranald family in North Uist.

Jane was the daughter of James Thomas Macdonald (d. 1855), the erstwhile factor of the North Uist estates known to the islanders as Seumas Ruadh. She was the sister of Alexander Macdonald of Balranald (d. 1901), Alick Bhaile Raghnaill, one of the most respected and popular tacksmen of his day in the island. Another of her siblings was Anne Margaret, wife of the Sheriff-Substitute at Lochmaddy, Charles Shaw W.S. (d. 1885), ‘An Siorram Glas’, to whom Carmichael would bring ‘strong recommendations from friends of the highest respectability’ when he arrived to take up his post in Lochmaddy in December 1864. The Shaws’ daughter Anne would marry Ewen Cameron’s nephew, Donald Charles Cameron, farmer of the neighbouring tack of Glenbrittle, in 1873. Yet another sibling of Jane’s was Jessie Catherine (d. 1895), the famous Seasaidh Bhaile Raghnaill whose romantic elopement with Donald MacDonald, the son of the tacksman of Monkstadt in Skye, had caused such a stir throughout the islands in 1850.

A playful love poem, Anns a’ mhadainn chiùin Chéitein, to Jane – ‘Sìneag uasal nam blàth-shùl’ – probably dates from the late 1850s. It was composed by the Rev. John Norman MacDonald (1830–1868), minister of Harris, in the name of the Rev. John Alexander MacRae (1832–96) of North Uist. Jane was MacRae’s first cousin.

References:
National Archives of Scotland GD1/126/8/1/90, Charles Shaw to W. F. Skene, 10 June 1869
National Library of Scotland Adv. MS 50.1.11 fos.365–6v
CW MSS 109 fo.37; 382 fos.50–5; 441

John Francis Campbell (ed.), Popular Tales of the West Highlands (Edinburgh, 4 vols, 1860–62), p. 454
Revs A. & A. MacDonald, The Clan Donald (Inverness, 3 vols, 1896–1904), iii, pp. 492–3
iidem, The MacDonald Collection of Gaelic Poetry (Inverness, 1911), pp. 141–2.
Napier Commission, vol. 1, p. 331

http://direcleit.blogspot.com/2010/09/alexander-carmichael-in-uists.html
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~coigach/altimack.htm
http://www.clan-cameron.org.au/descend_mdvp.php?personID=I18392&tree=cameron1

Image:
Talisker House

A Description of a Baptismal Font

Alexander Carmichael took a great interest in material culture, particularly archaeological remains and objects that had either a religious function or resonance. Book-ended, as it were, between two fairly long Fenian narratives, there appears a fairly detailed description, probably written around 1866, of a baptismal font as follows:

Font.
Sav[iour] and cross one side. On each side
of this beautiful celtic basketwork. On
another side Virgin and child. Another side
a bishop in full pontifical and
crozier – [del: old font old] and mitre
vestments. Holding crozier in left
hand. Another side A Knig[del: h]t in
kilt and full armour. In right hand
a sword and under sword a shield
in left is a cross. A palm like a
moss rose. Some plant often on
tomb stones. Another rose some
what different from the other. Time of
the Crusades. Inscriptions on two
sides and ro[u]nd the rim. Illigible now
Chirst cross legged and and hands
at right a[n]gles with the body

Unusually Carmichael was rather lax here and he makes no mention of the actual place that he saw this baptismal font. At first, the context is unclear whether he is describing the font from actually seeing it and taking down notes as he made observations; whether he is describing the font from a book illustration; or, indeed, whether he is writing down someone’s recollections of actually seeing the font. It seems, though, that as the detail is so rich that a tentative identification can be made for the description seems to match rather well with a baptismal font from Skye which is called St. Michael’s Font at Eynort in one of St Maelrubha’s Churches. The image of St Michael would seem to fit the description that Carmichael gave as well as fitting in with the rest of the details. There are two churches along the coast at a place called Borline, Eynort, Skye. The larger church is eighteenth-century, the smaller is undated and the baptismal font was discovered here and is thought to date to around the sixteenth-century. There the matter would have rested if it had not been for the fact that Carmichael had written about it and gives an even more precise description of the font which relegates the above description to note-taking perhaps with a view to publication. Interestingly enough, the back-story of how the font came to be in Carmichael’s possession is also provided:

Many years ago, a crew of South Uist fishermen, while on their way to Glasgow with a cargo of fish, were driven into Lochaoineart, Skye. Upon the north-west side, and near the head of Lochaoineart, stand the church and churchyard of St Malrube, the former a roofless ruin, and the latter a deserted wild. Here the fishermen saw an old Font, and deeming it too sacred to be left with the heretic Protestants of Skye, resolved to bring it to their priest, the late Rev. James MacGrigor. They accordingly carried it to their boat, and, the weather moderating, resumed their voyage. But before reaching the island of Canna, the weather again became boisterous, and again forced them back to Lochaoineart. Attributing their misfortune to their removal of the font, a debate arose among the fishermen whether or not they should restore it to its original position; but the wind becoming fair, it was decided by a majority of the crew to make another attempt, which was done accordingly. But the weather again became stormy, so much so, that when south of the Small Isles, they were in imminent danger, and unanimously concluding that the elements were conspiring against them for removing the font, they agreed to return, and replace it. Much angry recrimination now took place. The minority, who were against sailing with the font a second time, abused the majority in no measured terms, and told them that this was what they predicted, and the majority blamed one another. The gale increased, and with it the superstitions fears of the fishermen. Consequently, they returned to Lochaoineart, and, with much care, replaced the font where they found it.

The fishermen reached Glasgow, and disposed of their cargo. On their return voyage, they again called at Lochaoineart. They still cherished the desire to bring the font to Mr MacGrigor, and they accordingly placed it again in their boat, and, after much misgiving, ventured across the Minch, landed at Iocar, and carried the font in triumph to Mr MacGrigor, at Aird-Choinnich. There it lay in a corner of the chapel till a few weeks ago, when it was sent me in a present by my friend, the Rev. Donald Macintosh, the late Mr MacGrigor’s successor.

Reerences: CW104/27  ff.87v–86r

Carmichael, Alexander, ‘Donation of baptismal font from Chapel of St Maelrube, Lochaoineart, Skye’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries for Scotland, vol. viii (1868–70), pp. 237–39

Image: Detail of St Michael’s Baptismal Font

Visitors from Skye

This week we were delighted to receive visitors from the Isle of Skye to look at some of the Carmichael Watson papers. Four postgraduate students from Sabhal Mòr Ostaig’s MA in Material Culture spent a few hours with us looking at the resources available to them for their studies and seeing some of the work which we are doing to make these resources more widely available. The visit was arranged by our own Donald William, who is one of the lecturers in Material Culture and who was taking the students around various archives and museums, assisted by his SMO colleague Professor Hugh Cheape.

Pictured from left to right are: Andrew Wiseman, Gordon Cameron, Julie Fowlis, Donald William Stewart, Emily Edwards and Gillebride MacMillan.