Bait Holes in the Hebrides, and beyond

Toll sollaidh: man-made holes in rocks on the shore where fishermen would pound their bait. Carmichael writes about them on Carmina Gadelica ii, 361:

 

Sola, soladh, food, broken food – whelks, cockles, limpets, mussels, and other shell-fish broken and thrown into the sea to attract fish. The Lady Amie, wife of John, Lord of the Isles, sent men round the islands to make hollows in the rocks in which the people might break shell-fish and prepare bait. Such pits are called ‘toll solaidh,’ bait holes. These mortars resemble cup cuttings, for which antiquarians have mistaken them.

 

The original for this information is possibly to be found in a long excursus about Teampall Chàirinis in North Uist, recorded from John Mackinnon in Càirinis itself on 18 January 1871. The church was said to have been constructed on the orders of Amy MacRuairi, fourteenth-century heiress to the Lordship of Garmoran and supposed builder of Caisteal Tioram in Moidart and Caisteal Bhuirgh in Benbecula. She is misremembered here as Nighean MhicDhùghaill, ‘MacDougall’s daughter’:

 

Ni[gh]ean Mhic Dhuil used to send mason[s] to the gribeachun on the point to make pollagan sollaidh for fishing for the poor people. These are still seen. [CW116 fo.54]

 

Grìob or grìoba is explained in Dwelly’s dictionary as a ‘coast precipice, part of seacoast where it is rocky and difficult to land.’ We presume that this is the same as Cnip near Bhaltos in Uig on the west coast of the Isle of Lewis.

 

But there is more than one place with tuill sollaidh in Uist. Doubtless prompted by Carmichael, Mackinnon returns to the subject a couple of pages later:

 

Places where holes for Soll (soul) are each side of bun L[och] ephort Ru heva (?) [= Rubha  Heabhal] [?,] at B[aile]vanaich below Nunton ? & out at the baigh on east side B[en]becula. [ibid. fo.56]

The implication here is, of course, that these bait holes are important or interesting enough to be noted at specific sites – the best sites for rock fishing – around the coast. This reminds us that there was a time when creagaireachd, rock fishing, was not just something you did to pass the time of an evening; especially in times of dearth, it was an important source of food for the community.

 

Carmichael makes further vocabulary notes in his notebook CW108, possibly connected with a visit to Siolaigh Mhór in the Sound of Harris on 31 May 1877:

 

Sóll = Broken shellfish w[h]elks limpets
sgilleach-fionntrain thrown out for bait.
Slugag = The broken little hollow in this tis [sic] pounded. [CW108/68]

 

‘Sgilleach-fionntrainn’ is either a dialectal variation, or Carmichael’s misunderstanding of, gille-fionntrain or gille-fionn, glossed by Dwelly as ‘large periwinkle, white buckie, whelk’. Again in Dwelly, slugag just means a small pool.

 

As so often, Father Allan McDonald’s Gaelic Words and Expressions from South Uist and Eriskay adds even more. Soll is ‘pounded shellfish’; as for solladh: ‘pronounced like tolladh, the throwing of the soll into the sea to attract fish.’ Pollag is ‘a little hole in a rock in which shell fish is pounded to be thrown out into the sea to attract fish to the Carraig [fishing rock] or into the tàbh [hand net].’ A note added by John MacLean, headmaster in Dunoon and a native of Barra, records that cnotag is the word still used in that island; it is also the word used in Tiree. Usually in Gaelic, however, cnotag refers to a hollow stone or mortar for husking corn. One final evocative description for those of us who spent happy evenings doing creagaireachd or rock-fishing: snaomh, ‘swimming slowly along edge of shore, lake or river. Tha ’n saoithean a’ falbh air an t-snaomh.’ ‘When saithe or cuddies are on the snaomh, no soll [pounded bait] or maorach [shellfish] is required to entice them into the tàbh or bag net.’

 

In the journal Scottish Studies, 17 (1973), there is a wonderful little article by the late Sandy Fenton about ‘craig-fishing’ in the Northern Isles. It was reprinted in his The Northern Isles: Orkney and Shetland, which readers can (mostly) find on Google Books here.

The piece is illustrated with a lovely picture by Frank Barnard from his Picturesque Life in Shetland of 1890. Here it is, from the Shetland Museum and Archives website. Note that in the Northern Isles – a phenomenon also recorded in Tiree – bait-holes are often found in threes: two smaller ones in which the bait was pounded (for instance, with the end of a fishing rod), and a larger one used for storage.

 

In the Northern Isles, mashed bait is called soe, clearly cognate with our soll. The word must have its roots in Old Norse. Our Norwegian isn’t the best, but we’ve found in the dictionary soll, ‘flatbread crumbled in milk, a mixture of cheese and milk’; and søl, ‘dish water, slop, mire, mud, slush’. Any help or suggestions would be most welcome.

 

The fascinating Canmore site of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland records a number of bait holes from all over the country. Many are in Tiree, and described in articles in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland by J. Sands and Ludovic Mann. In a more recent article in the Proceedings, Ronald Morris has suggested that the holes are ‘probably between a hundred and several hundred years old, but in some cases, in western Argyll, they may be older.’

 

Any further information, or sightings of bait holes by our readers, would be gratefully received!

 

Many thanks for Mark Hall at Perth Museum and Art Gallery for suggesting this subject to us.

Sources:
Ludovic MacLellan Mann, ‘Ancient Sculpturings in the Island of Tiree’, PSAS, lvi (1921–2), 118–26.

Ronald W. B. Morris, ‘The cup-and-ring marks and similar sculptures of Scotland: a survey of the southern counties, Part II’, PSAS, c (1967–8), 47–78.

J. Sands,‘Notes on the antiquities of the Island of Tiree’, PSAS, xvi (1881–2), 459–63.

 

Image:

A toll sollaidh in Easaigh, Sound of Harris, from the Canmore website.

Objects in Focus: Wool Carding Combs

The production of wool was an important craft in the Highlands and Islands in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the Carmichael notebooks there are plenty references to its manufacture: the different types of wool, fleece being pulled, baskets and even fairy lore associated with wool.

In the Carmichael Collection, at the West Highland Museum, there is a pair of wool carders that were used to make yarn. These carders are made of wood and rectangular in shape, there is a pad of leather on each with fine teeth protruding through. This particular pair was manufactured in Glasgow by R. McIntyre.

The entire process of wool-working from the raw material to the finished cloth was known as calanas. This pair of carding combs would have been used in the production of ordinary cloth, a different comb was used for very fine cloth. 

At what stage in the production of yarn were the carding combs used? Here is a breakdown of the various stages:

• The fleece was sheared.

• The fleece was washed, dyed and dried. CW120/320 is a list of native dyes from South Uist. 

• The wool was separated and straightened by using the carding combs. A handful of wool was placed on the teeth of one carder and the other carder brushed the wool repeatedly in the one direction.

• Once the wool was brushed thoroughly, the carder was brought in the opposite direction to remove the wool from the fine teeth. This created a sausage-like shape, called a rolag, and made the wool easier to spin.

• The wool was then made into yarn by using a spindle and whorl. This method was carried out by hand and was later replaced by the spinning wheel.

© School of Scottish Studies. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk

The end result was a continuous length of yarn that could easily be worked with.

The carding and spinning was carried out by women, often in pairs to keep a steady production line going. Carmichael notes in Carmina Gadelica iv:

The industry of these women is wonderful, performed lovingly, uncomplainingly, day after day, year after year, till the sands of life run down. The life in a Highland home of the crofter class is well described in the following lines:-

Air oidhche fhada gheamraidh

Theid teanndadh ri gniamh

A toir eolas do chloinn

Bith an seann duine liath,

An nighean a cardadh,

A mhathair a sniamh,

An t-iasgair le a shnathaid

A caramh a lian.'

© School of Scottish Studies. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk

In the long winter night

All are engaged,

Teaching the young

Is the grey-haired sage,

The daughter at her carding,

The mother at her wheel,

While the fisher mends his net

With his needle and his reel.

The School of Scottish Studies Archive has some amazing images in their collections, some of which are included here.

References
Carmina Gadelica, iv, 294-5.
CW1/56folio 22r, line 8 to folio 22r, line 15
CW89/173folio 35v, line 7 to folio 35v, line 19
CW111/82folio 18r, line 17 to folio 18r, line 25
CW120/320folio 92v, line 1 to folio 95r, line 19
CW126f/90folio 207r, line 10 to folio 207r, line 13
Images
Kissling Collection, School of Scottish Studies, University of Edinburgh.
Carders copyright Carsten Flieger



Donald Lamont: his Life and Work

Thousands of pages of undiscovered Gaelic prose – unread for many years, but now brought to light by the National Library of Scotland. The volumes in question are the Gaelic Supplement to the Church of Scotland magazine Life and Work, and they come from the collection of the Rev. Donald Lamont (1874–1958), who edited the Supplement between 1907 and his retiral in 1950. As Lamont states in the handwritten introduction to the first volume, any unsigned contribution was composed by himself.
 
Donald Lamont was a native of the island of Tiree. Like many able young Highlanders at the time, he was educated at Rainings School, Inverness, before going to the University of Edinburgh. Ordained minister in Glen Urquhart in 1902, he transferred to Blair Atholl in 1908, the parish where he remained, with the exception of a spell as a forces chaplain in World War I (he served at Gallipoli in 1915–16), until he retired from the pulpit in 1946. The Prose Writings of Donald Lamont, full of pithy, lively writings by a master of the Gaelic essay, was published as a volume for the Scottish Gaelic Text Society in 1960. His fellow Tirisdeach Professor Donald Meek sums up Lamont’s work as follows:
 
Under Lamont’s ceaselessly provocative pen, the Gaelic Supplement became the main vehicle for thematic and stylistic experimentation in Gaelic; it carried sermons, essays and short stories. Lamont had a particularly lively imagination, and was not afraid to create ‘factional’ characters and scenarios, and to use these to carry the message he wanted to communicate. He was obviously aware, to a remarkable degree, of the opportunity he had, as a clerical writer, to contribute constructively to the well-being of the Gaelic language. His concept of a Gaelic Supplement was not one that ran in the rails of ecclesiastical convention, restricted by doctrinal rigidity and enslavement to purely homiletic styles.

Here is a list of the Gaelic Supplements online:

 

1907–1911

1912–1918

1919–1924

1924–1927

1928–1931

1932–1935

1936–1940

1940–1947

1948–1950

 

Donald Lamont graduated M.A. from Edinburgh in 1898. Among his fellow classmates was none other than Alexander Carmichael’s daughter Ella (1870–1928). A small notebook, numbered CW22, is, according to the cataloguer the Rev. John Mackechnie, in Lamont’s hand. It contains a poem to Ella, about whom Donald Lamont was to write so movingly in Carmina Gadelica iii, xxi–xxiv, beginning:

 

Ella Carmichael was my friend for more than thirty years, my first sight of her being in the Quadrangle of Edinburgh University, when she came to attend Professor Mackinnon's Celtic class, and my last when I went to see her a few days before her death ; and in all these years she was one of the half-dozen friends that I liked best in the world. She was one of those people with whom it is easy to keep one's friendship in good repair, even though one does not see them often. There were fairly long periods of time within these thirty years when I had but few opportunities of meeting her, but that did not matter — the door of her heart and home always remained unlatched, and one could enter without formality or apology and take up the threads of intimate talk where they had been dropped years before.

 

She seemed to me to have changed less between young womanhood and middle life than any other woman I have known, so that one's first impression of her never had to be revised even in small details. This applies even to her physical appearance, as well as to her mind and character. In the middle 'nineties Ella Carmichael was a very beautiful young woman, singularly gracious and dignified, with an air of distinction and charm. …

 

For our Gaelic readers, we give a transcription of the poem’s contents below

 

To

Ella C. Carmichael

this poem

is

respectfully dedicated.

 

/

 

Och! och! ’s truagh mar tha mi

’S mi smuainteachadh ort

’S mo cheann ann an tuaindeal

’S mo chridhe cho goirt.

 

O na faighinn mo dhurachd

’S mi shiubhladh air falbh

’S cha bhithinn na ’b’fhaide

Ri obair cho searbh.

 

’S ged tha mi n’am shuidhe

Ann an cuideachd cho math

Far bheil iorghuill is cabhag

Am meag fhear agus bhan

 

/

 

Tha duin’ ionnsuichte seolta

A comhpairteachadh sgoil

Ach ’s mor m’fheagal gu bheil ‘Seoras’

Le mor fhoghlum air bhoil’

 

Ged tha mise ’s an ait’ so

Ann an cruth ’s ann an dòigh

Tha mo smuaintean ’is m’aire

A ghnàth air an oigh

 

Tha i maisach ’is sgiamhach

Agus cùinn [ciùin] anns gach dòigh

Ion-ghradhach ’is coimhneil

Neo-dhàn’ agus còir

 

/

 

B’e mo dhurachd bhith dluth dhi

Ri comhradh ’s ri ceòl

’S cha ’n iarrainn a fàgail

Fhad sa bhitheas mi beo

 

Ach tha n’uine dol seachad

Le cabhag ro-dhian

’S ann a seachduin no dha

Cha’n fhaic mis’ a fiamh

 

Se ni tha g’am fhagail

Cho bronach ’s cho truagh

Bhi caithibh na h-ùine

Cho fada so uait

 

/

 

O nach bochd nu[a]ir tha ’n samhradh

A nis a tighinn cho dlùth

’S an geamhradh dubh dorcha

A tionndadh a chùl

 

Gu feum mis’ mar an ceudna

Bhi fagail Dhunèdin

’S dol air imrich leam fhein as

Gu tìr a tha céin

 

Cha’n e bhith fagail Dhunèdin

Le mhaise ’s le sgèimh

A tha cho cràiteach ’s cho duilich

O ’s fhada ma ’s e

 

/

 

Ach tha ’n tìm gu bhith seachad

’Is feumaidh mi sgur

Bho’n tha fhios agad fhein air

Mo thinneas gu túr

 

Gach sonas ’is solas

Gu robh gu brath na do sheilbh

’S gu ma fada fada beo thu

Ann a slaint’ agus foirm

 

Leig leam so a ràdh ruit

Gu càirdeil ’s gu fior

Gu bheil agamsa gràdh dhuit

A tha domhain agus sior

 

/

 

Slàn-leat ma tha ’n drasda

’S gun deanadh gràdh agus seirc

Thusa leantainn a’n comhnuidh

‘Gach la chi ’s nach fhaic’

 

Feumaidh gur e Seòras MacEanruig no George Henderson (1866–1912) a th’ ann an ‘Seòras’. Thoiribh an aire mar a bha an Laomainneach ag obair mar Examiner ann an Cànanan agus Litreachas Ceilteach ann an Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann eadar 1903 agus 1906.

 

Sources:

Donald Meek, ‘The Gaelic literature of Argyll’, Association for Scottish Literary Studies

Donald Lamont about Alexander Carmichael, here and here.

 

Image:

Eaglais Sgìre Bhlàr Athall/Blair Atholl Parish Church

Applecross: The Sanctuary

 Last week I was over in Applecross visiting the Heritage Centre and learning about the area from the curator Gordon Cameron and especially about the great work being done by the Historical Society. The peninsula is breathtakingly beautiful and that is why I thought it deserved our first pictorial blog entry...

The world-famous Bealach na Ba



The view from the top, looking over Loch Kishorn

 

A majestic stag

 

Ob nan Lurach  CW117/36

    

Gordon Cameron at the Applecross Heritage Centre

          

St Maelrubha's chapel



The burial place of Maelrubha



The supposed burial spot of William Hare (of Burke and Hare fame)



Looking over to Raasay and Skye in the distance







Highland cattle on the coastal road north of Applecross





Loch Torridon and Loch Shieldaig



It's not a chapel. It's a rock.

Sometimes we get things wrong. The rectangle pictured here, from fo.15 of notebook CW111 and referring to a site in the Isle of Barra, looked like any number of archaeological sketches Alexander Carmichael was compiling at the time. The accompanying words should have given us a clue:

Clach Mhor nan Gleann

4 Mar[ch] [18]74. Wednesday ev[en]ing.
Averag[e] height 22 ft – or thereby.
Projects at north end 8 ft fr[om] ground. [CW111/63]

The drawing is surely none other than a sketch of Clach Mhór nan Gleann (or Clach Mhór nan Gleannan) itself, a monstrous glacial erratic with a nice big overhang, five hundred yards up the north-east slopes of Beinn Eireabhal, just above the road at the south end of the Tràigh Mhór.

How did the Big Rock of the Glens come to be there in the first place? Carmichael explains it all in another notebook:

Clach mhor nan Glean[n]an was thrown by a L[och]lan[n]ach [Viking] fr[om] Fuidey on his at his sweetheart who was aft[er] a buidein sheep. The stone struck her & drove her into the ground. Boulder stuck in the earth. Large. He didn’t wish to kill her but just threw this as a spitheag [pebble] at her. [CW90/105]

This piece of information was recorded on 24 September 1872 at a céilidh in Ceann Tangabhal, Barra, with two of Carmichael’s favourite informants there, John Pearson (1814–85), Iain Peusan, and his sister Catrìona (c. 1807–80). As described in an earlier blog, in island tradition the island of Fuideigh is particularly connected with the Vikings, and is supposed to have been their last redoubt from the MacNeils. We don’t know yet what a ‘buidein sheep’ might be – any ideas from Barraich gratefully received!

At another céilidh a couple of nights later Carmichael records another rather gnomic reference:

The mark fr[om] which stone [del: at] Clach mhor nan Gleannan. [CW90/150]

The remains of the Vikings killed by the MacNeils in Fuideigh ‘are turned up now & again’ [CW90/107], including:

One skull as large as a pot of 2 gal[lons] bones as large in pro[portion]. At first you would think it was a human skull. This was found in Fuidey. Others ordinary size. [CW90/154]

Today Clach Mhór nan Gleannan has not been forgotten: we see that it’s been noted as a good site for Barra bouldering! We recommend comparing Carmichael's rough sketch with the excellent pictures in Adi Gill's flickr stream. Did Carmichael himself climb it to make his measurements for the field notebook sketch?

As for the chapel site we originally thought Carmichael was describing in his sketch, Caibeal Chrois É – well, we’ll leave that for another blog.

References:

CW90/105, /154; CW111/63

A busy week...

The team had an extremely busy week last week with Domhnall Uilleam in London, Kirsty in London and Guinevere in Dublin and Galway. This blog entry is a roundup of everyone's activities:

On Friday Domhnall Uilleam spent a very enjoyable day (as ever!) at the National Archives in Kew getting his fingers thoroughly filthy looking at old leather-bound War Office records. The mission: to see if there was any evidence in the army deserter lists concerning John MacPherson or Pearson (1814–85), Ceann Tangabhal, Barra. Known in island tradition as Iain Peusan, MacPherson and his sister Catrìona were two of Carmichael’s favourite informants. Local history relates that in his youth he had joined the army and had to be ‘sprung’ from the regimental barracks by his cunning sister. The authorities followed MacPherson back to Barra where, helped by a tracker dog, they gave chase. Just giving them the slip, MacPherson holed up in a cave on the slopes of Beinn Tangabhal for six weeks. The authorities supposedly gave up the pursuit on hearing from Catrìona that her brother had drowned while running away. One version has it that, just to make sure, MacPherson converted to Protestantism, thus allowing his friends to say, ‘Chaochail e ’bheatha’: either ‘he changed life’ or ‘he died’.


Unfortunately, no immediately obvious John MacPherson, or John Pearson for that matter, appears in the Highland regiment deserter lists. One of the names is recorded as enlisting with a friend in the 74th Foot at Kilmarnock on 26 December 1829; they both absconded the same day. Another John MacPherson, from the 93rd, deserted in July of that year, but was apprehended at Appleby in Westmorland, probably on his way back north, and was sent back to the regimental depot, then at Stockport. The information on these lists is, it has to be said, incomplete; on the other hand, Iain Peusan could have enlisted under another name (he was purportedly taking another man’s place); or it could just have been a good story.

Domhnall Uilleam then spent the weekend at the Popular Antiquities: Folklore & Archaeology conference at the Institute of Archaeology at University College London. His paper explored Carmichael’s engagement with the hydrographer and antiquarian Captain F. W. L. Thomas, how correspondence with the latter inspired him to begin a programme of archaeological surveying throughout the southern Outer Hebrides, especially of the island brochs which Thomas was investigating at the time. Unfortunately, the sheer size and difficulty of the task, and Carmichael’s lack of surveying skills, meant that in most cases he was unable to go much further than collecting basic information, and associated historical anecdotes and legends, from his informants.

As with the previous Popular Antiquities, the conference was lively, thought-provoking, and extremely enjoyable, with papers spanning the world from the Orkneys and the Borders to Kashmir and China. One highlight was learning that the very common motif in Highland folklore of a dog being sent into a mysterious cave and coming out miles away at the other end without its fur is told in Hampshire of a duck, which at last emerges at the cave exit without its feathers. Anyway, there is a feeling that at last folklorists and archaeologists can come together and acknowledge their shared antiquarian roots! Our thanks to the organisers Martin Locker and Tina Paphitis of UCL, and Caroline Oates of the Folklore Society.

Kirsty was in London for an archives meeting and used the opportunity to go and visit The Fan Museum in Greenwich, the only museum of its kind in the world. Still hot on the heels of information about Flora MacDonald's fan the hope was that the museum or its curator could add a bit more knowledge to what we already know.

The Fan Museum, Greenwich

The museum has a pleasing and informative display on fan making and different types of fans from around the world. It is currently exhibiting a selection of fine, mainly ivory and paper, English fans. In the 18th century, the English became so adept at making exquisite and ornate fans that they were exported to France, which at the time was the home of quality fan-making.

Fortunately, the owner, Mrs Hélène Alexander, was in the museum, so Kirsty was able to show her a picture of the fan and ask some questions. She said that the fan might have been made in England, France or even Poland but its date, which fits in with it as having been given by Lady Primrose to Flora MacDonald, means that there would be no fan-maker's name on it, so we're unlikely to be able to trace it more precisely.

Interestingly, when a fan such as this one has three vignettes, it is quite common for the left and right hand side ones to have no connection to the central one, so the parents and child theory may well be bogus! Mrs Alexander was also of the opinion that the fan was fairly ordinary although clearly it is its association with Flora MacDonald and Lady Primrose which makes it special.

It was slightly disappointing not to be able to get more detail about Flora MacDonald's fan but it was reassuring to have what we do know confirmed.

Guinevere spent a few days over in Dublin and was at the National Archives of Ireland to investigate Duncan Cameron's wife's family. Mary Leonard is noted in the Scottish censuses as being from Westport, County Mayo and her father, Leonard, worked with the Inland Revenue. 

The afternoons were spent in the Irish Folklore Archive at University College Dublin. The archivist, Criostóir Mac Carthaigh, was extremely helpful and mentioned some good references that will be investigated, especially about people collecting objects for the Ard-Mhúsaem. She was researching the lore collected from Tory, an island off the coast of Donegal and had a quick look at some references to the Highlanders after 1798.

The next port-of-call was the National University of Ireland, Galway to attend the Comhdháil Roinn na Gaeilge, a two-day conference on Irish culture and literature organised by the Department of Irish. There was an impressive program in place with some great guest speakers from all over Ireland, and a paper about Seán Ó Suilleabháin and Seamus Ó Duilearga from the Irish Folklore Commission was of particular interest to Guinevere. It was exciting to be involved in the conference, go raibh maith agaibh Lillis agus John.

Phew, what a week!

Objects in Focus: Flint Arrowheads



Flint arrowheads can be dated to the Neolithic and Bronze Ages and were used very commonly throughout Britain and Ireland. The flint was shaped by knapping and pressure-flaking, both processes involve reducing the flint by striking the stone. The knapping would reduce the flint to the desired size and pressure-flaking would achieve the desired shape and refine the projectile point of the flint. A number of the examples in these photos are barbed and tanged making them easier to attach to a shaft.  

As well as their practical use, flint arrowheads were heavily associated with the fairies in Scotland and were called saighead shìth. It was commonly believed that these weapons were thrown at cattle and humans by the fairies in an effort to capture them. Any person or animal that was taken ill suddenly was thought to have been shot at and replaced with a changeling.

The flints were also used as protection against the fairies but, similarly to the St John's Wort Achlasan Chaluim Chille, they could only be found accidentally. Carmichael was informed that the fairies were always eager to get their arrowheads back and provides an account of his own experience in Carmina Gadelica ii:

The people say that a fairy arrow, especially the arrow of the fairy queen, cannot be safeguarded against the wiles of the fairies. The writer can confirm this in his own experience, having unaccountably lost, despite all possible care, the smallest and most beautifull shaped and coloured arrow-head he has ever seen, and that within a few hours after getting it!

As well as being used as protection, the flints were used in cures. Water in which the arrowheads were dipped would be given to a cow to remedy being shot at. Alternatively the water would be used to wash the wound inflicted or the stone itself was rubbed on the area.

 

The Carmichael Collection housed at the West Highland Museum has 18 flint arrowheads of various shapes, sizes and colours. If you happen to be in Fort William do visit the Museum, it's worth it!

   
Images
Copyright Carsten Flieger
References
Campbell, J.G. (2005) The Gaelic Otherworld, Edinburgh: Birlinn Press.
Carmina Gadelica ii, 346-7.