A lost St Kilda Gospel?

All sorts of unusual information and anecdotage lurk in murky corners of the Carmichael Watson Collection. Here is a piece relating to the Island of Boraraigh or Boreray in the St Kilda archipelago. A recent survey by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) has found evidence that the island, previously thought only to be home to many thousands of seabirds and a flock of sheep, may in fact have been inhabited by humans for many centuries, right up until the seventeenth century.

The undated item, CW170 fo.16, is written in Carmichael’s hand. It refers to the Rev. Lauchlan MacLeod (1762–1832), minister of St Kilda between 1788 and 1830 when he left his charge and retired to the Island of Berneray, Harris: perhaps a corroboration of part of the story given below.

Macleod, Lachlan Rev.

M.S.

Mr Lachlann Macleod was for many years minister in S. Kilda. After coming from S. Kilda, when dining with Macleod of Bearnaray in the Sound of Harris, he was choked with a piece of beef. He told Macleod of Bearnaray that boys – perhaps girls also – were digging in taigh an stallair in Boraraidh near S. Kilda and in their upturning they came upon a curious ‘stone’. They brought home the stone from Bororay to St. Kilda. The ‘stone’ was a parchment manuscript of the Gospels now become hard and solidified like stone. The minister said that  the letters were like Hebrew – old Celtic. What became of the M.S. no one knows. Probably the M.S. belonged to the anchorite who lived in [the] lonely spot.

When the team were up in Fort William looking at Carmichael’s material collections, one of them got rather excited when he found in a box of odds and ends a small lump looking like a stone on the outside, but apparently made from closely packed sheets with writing on them. Could this be part of the Rev. Lauchlan’s long-lost parchment manuscript? Unfortunately, probably not: the rock seems to be a papier-mâché one made for the West Highland Museum and once used as a perch for a stuffed bird or animal in their exhibition!

References: CW170 fo.16
Hew Scott et al. (eds), Fasti Ecclesiæ Scoticanæ vii, 194.

Image: The Island of Boreray, from the seaharris.co.uk website

The Loss of Captain MacNicol’s Gaelic Manuscripts

The Rev. Donald MacNicol (1735–1802), then a minister of Lismore in Argyll, is probably best remembered today for his Remarks on Dr. Samuel Johnson’s Journey to the Hebrides (1779), a work which totally dismantled the rather insulting and misinformed comments made by Johnson on the so-called poverty of Gaelic culture in his well-known travelogue A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775). This minister was the son of Nicol MacNicol, tacksman of Socach, Argyll, and the nephew of Alexander Stewart of Invernahyle. Perhaps less well known is that the good minister around 1766 wrote down around twenty-six songs (and possibly more) from the dictation of Duncan Bàn Macintyre himself for the first edition of his works that appeared in 1768. As Alexander Carmichael relates in this short passage extracted from a rather long lecture, entitled The Bards and Bardism of the Highlands, that he was preparing while resident in Cornwall and which he later wrote out, the minister throughout his life garnered a great deal of Gaelic MSS. These he bequeathed to his son who valued them so highly that they travelled everywhere with him which led to their loss. Those that were not lost at sea – surely one of the greatest losses to befall any collection of Gaelic manuscripts – made their way to the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh which still has the most outstanding collection of Scottish Gaelic manuscripts (not to mention rare books) to this day.

The Rev Mr Mac Nicol Liosmore who so power

fully annihilated many of the exaggeration

and extortions advanced by Dr Johnson

collected a great many Gaelic M.S.S.

and M.S.S treating of Gaelic matters.

One of his sons Captain [words missing] Mac Nicol
of the [words missing] Reg[imen]t added largely to his fathers
collection. These he so highly valued that
wherever he went he brought them with
him. Unfortunately his very care over
them proved their ultimate loss. In landing
at [words missing] in the W[est] Indies from the
transport ship the boat in which he and his
brother officers were was capsized in the surf
and all the luggage was immediately carried
away by the strong tide while the officers were
barely rescued from a water grave. Among
many valuables lost was Captains
MacNicols large portmanteau of
Gaelic M.S.S. His sister Mrs Cameron
told me that she often afterwards heard her brother
bitterly lament the irreparable loss of the
M.S.S. that although he lost
every thing also he had in the world he re-
garded the loss as nothing compared
with the loss of the M.S.S.

Reference: CW 107, fos. 2v–3r
Image: Letterhead from Carmina Gadelica