SUPERSTITIONS GENERALLY.
In the hill country of every land superstition and credulity are met
with. Here in Gairloch the supernatural is suggested on all sides. Weird
mountain forms often veiled in murky mists, frantic ocean waves
thundering in gloomy caverns, hoarse rumblings of rushing waters,
startling echoes from terrific precipices, curiously gnarled and twisted
trees, tangled jungles in green islands, black peat mosses, wild
moorlands, bubbling springs, dark caves, deep lochs, moaning winds,
lonely paths, long winter nights,--such are the surroundings of man in
this wild country. Can we wonder that the Gairloch Highlander has always
been superstitious and credulous?
Superstition is still rife here, but with the march of education it is
gradually decaying, and, partly from this cause, and partly from the
disinclination of the superstitious to tell strangers about their doings
and fancies, it is difficult to obtain descriptions of present
instances, so that the notices which follow will often relate to
circumstances of the past, though not indeed of the remote past. They
are all local cases.
Amongst the older superstitions of Gairloch were the sacrifices of bulls
at Isle Maree, the resort to the oracular stone with the hole, and the
rites for the care of insanity mentioned in the presbytery records
(Appendix F, section iv.), and more particularly described in the two
last chapters.
Some other notions of a superstitious kind are hinted at in other parts
of this book. In the old presbytery records there are notices of marches
round "monuments," charmings, libations, and midsummer or Beltane fires
in the neighbouring parishes, and no doubt there were similar practices
in Gairloch but most of these are forgotten now.
There was a superstitious belief, scarcely yet dead, that a draught of
the waters of Loch Maree was a certain cure for any disease,--a notion
akin to that which prompted the friends of the insane to take them to
Isle Maree. The modern advocates of hydropathy might have thought this
belief in Loch Maree water was far from being superstitious, had it not
been for the established fact that the water drinker used always to cast
his offering of small money into the loch at the time he imbibed its
waters. The Fox point was the usual--perhaps the only--place where the
Loch Maree water-cure was practised. They say that when the loch was
very low, coins used often to be found among the pebbles in the water
surrounding this point. I have been told that a man found five coins
here not many years ago, but I have been unable to get a sight of them.
In connection with this superstition it may be mentioned, that within
recent years invalids have had bottles of Loch Maree water sent to them,
with a firm belief in its curative qualities.
Local names are often evidences of superstition. In Gairloch we have
Cathair Mhor and Cathair Bheag,--names applied to several places,--and
the Sitheanan Dubha on Isle Ewe and on the North Point. There is Cathair
Mhor at the head of Loch Maree, and Cathair Beag (the Gaelic name of the
place) at Kerrysdale. These names mean respectively the big and little
seats of the fairies. There are no stories told now-a-days of these
fairy seats, but their names testify to the belief in fairies which was
universal not long ago.
The name Sitheanan Dubha signifies the black knowes or hillocks of the
fairies. It is applied to two places in Gairloch, viz., to the highest
hill tops at the north end of Isle Ewe, and to a low hill and small
round loch a full mile due north of Carn Dearg house; both are shown on
the six-inch ordnance map.
There is a tradition of a Gairloch woman having spent a year with the
fairies; a tale founded on this story is given in the _Celtic Magazine_,
vol. iv., page 15. About midsummer 1878 I went in an open boat from
Poolewe to the Shiant Isles, to observe the birds which breed in such
numbers there. It was after 11 P.M. when I landed on the largest island
of the group. About a mile distant was a shepherd's house, the only
human habitation in these islands. I thought of going to the shepherd's
to beg shelter for the night, but my servant, a Gairloch lad, dissuaded
me. On my pressing him for a reason, he told me there was a fairy in the
house, as he had been informed by a Gairloch fisherman, who had spent a
night there not long before. This fairy was said to be a mischievous
boy, "one of the family," who, when the rest were asleep, appeared in
the rafters of the roof and disturbed the sleepers by bouncing on them.
The night (it was but two hours' twilight) was so fine, and the way to
the shepherd's house looked so rough, that I decided to sleep in a plaid
on the beach, and so I missed the only opportunity that ever presented
itself to me of observing the peculiarities of a fairy imp.
Hugh Miller, in "My Schools and Schoolmasters," mentions that, when he
was voyaging down Loch Maree in 1823, the boatmen told his companion in
Gaelic, "Yon other island (Eilean Suainne) is famous as the place in
which the good people [fairies] meet every year to make submission to
their queen. There is a little loch in the island, and another little
island in the loch; and it is under a tree in that inner island that the
queen sits and gathers kain [tribute] for the evil one." "They tell me,"
said Hugh Miller's companion, "that for certain the fairies have not
left this part of the country yet."
It was as recently as 1883 that several boys got a great fright when
they actually saw (as they narrated) the fairies at the Sitheanan Dubha,
at the north end of Isle Ewe. The people at Mellon Charles, on the
mainland opposite that end of the island, still assert, with all the
earnestness of conviction, that they often see lights and hear music at
the Sitheanan Dubha of Isle Ewe, which they believe can only be
accounted for by the supposition that they proceed from the fairies. I
give these statements on the authority of Mr William Reid, J.P., the
lessee of Isle Ewe.
The township of Ormiscaig lies to the east of Mellon Charles, in the
heart of this fairy-haunted district. It was at Ormiscaig that William
Maclean, a celebrated performer on the bagpipes, was born and brought
up. As a boy he was employed in herding cattle on the hill. One evening
he returned home with a bagpipe chanter, on which (though he had not
previously tried the bagpipes) he could play to perfection. He said he
had received the chanter and the power to play it from the fairies. He
emigrated some years ago to America, and is now living at Chicago. He
has won many prizes for pipe music at competitions in America. His
nephews, the three young Macleans, now at Ormiscaig, are all excellent
pipers, and are included in the list of living pipers given further on.
Similar incidents are related in other parts of the north-west
Highlands, where pipers have attributed their talents to the powers
conferred upon them by fairies, and in every case a chanter was given
along with the faculty of performing on it.
The best known Gairloch fairy of modern times went by the name of the
Gille Dubh of Loch a Druing. His haunts were in the extensive woods that
still cluster round the southern end of that loch and extend far up the
side of the high ridge to the west of it. There are grassy glades, dense
thickets, and rocky fastnesses in these woods, that look just the places
for fairies. Loch a Druing is on the North Point, about two miles from
Rudha Reidh. The Gille Dubh was so named from the black colour of his
hair; his dress, if dress it can be called, was of leaves of trees and
green moss. He was seen by many people on many occasions during a period
of more than forty years in the latter half of the eighteenth century;
he was, in fact, well-known to the people, and was generally regarded as
a beneficent fairy. He never spoke to any one except to a little girl
named Jessie MacRae, whose home was at Loch a Druing. She was lost in
the woods one summer night; the Gille Dubh came to her, treated her with
great kindness, and took her safely home again next morning. When Jessie
grew up she became the wife of John Mackenzie, tenant of the Loch a
Druing farm, and grandfather of James Mackenzie of Kirkton. It was after
this that Sir Hector Mackenzie of Gairloch invited Sir George S.
Mackenzie of Coul, Mr Mackenzie of Dundonnell, Mr Mackenzie of
Letterewe, and Mr Mackenzie of Kernsary, to join him in an expedition to
repress the Gille Dubh. These five chieftains together repaired to Loch
a Druing, armed with guns, with which they hoped to shoot the
unoffending fairy. They wore of course their usual Highland dress, and
each had his dirk at his side. They were hospitably entertained by John
Mackenzie. An ample supper was served in the house; it included both
beef and mutton, and each of the chieftains used the knife and fork from
the sheath of his own dirk. Knives and forks were not common in Gairloch
in those days. They spent the night at Loch a Druing, and slept in John
Mackenzie's barn, where couches of heather were prepared for them. They
went through all the woods, but they saw nothing of the Gille Dubh.
There are a large number of notions or fancies common in Gairloch that
are plainly tinged with a superstitious character, such as that
unaccountable noises and moving lights predict a death; that trees and
shrubs planted when the moon is waning must die, whereas if the moon be
"growing" at the time of the removal they will live and thrive; that
there are several classes of undertakings that will succeed if commenced
when the moon is growing, but will be failures if it be waning; that a
walking-stick cut from the bird-cherry prevents the bearer of it being
lost in the mist; that whales attack new boats or boats newly tarred;
that the bite of a dog is rendered innocuous if the saliva (literally,
"water from the teeth") of the dog be immediately applied; that a pledge
to give something to a soft person or an idiot, will enable any one to
discover a lost article, or will bring good luck; and that if a stocking
be accidentally put on wrong side out it must not be altered, or bad
luck will follow. And surely the idea illustrated in some of the stories
in Part II., chap. xxv., and which is still current in Gairloch, that
Sabbath-breaking brings immediate retribution smacks strongly of
superstition.
The existence of water-kelpies in Gairloch, if perhaps not universally
credited in the present generation, was accepted as undoubted in the
last. The story of the celebrated water-kelpie of the Greenstone Point
is very well known in Gairloch. The proceedings for the extermination of
this wonderful creature formed a welcome topic for _Punch_ of the
period. The creature is spoken of by the natives as the "Beast." He
lives, or did live, in the depths of a loch called after him Loch na
Beiste, or "the loch of the beast," which is about half way between
Udrigil House and the village of Mellon Udrigil. About 1840 Mr Bankes,
the then proprietor of the estate on which this loch is situated, was
pressed by his tenants to take measures to put an end to the Beast. At
first he was deaf to the entreaties of the people, but at length he was
prevailed upon to take action. Sandy M'Leod, an elder of the Free
Church, was returning to Mellon Udrigil from the Aultbea Church one
Sunday in company with two other persons, one of whom was a sister
(still living at Mellon Udrigil) of James Mackenzie, when they actually
saw the Beast itself. It resembled in appearance a good-sized boat with
the keel turned up. Kenneth Cameron, also an elder of the Free Church,
saw the same sight another day. A niece of Kenneth Cameron's (some time
housemaid at Inveran) told me she had often heard her mother speak of
having seen the Beast. It was the positive testimony of the two elders
that induced Mr Bankes to take measures for the destruction of the
Beast. The proceedings have been much exaggerated; James Mackenzie
states that the following is the correct version of them:--Mr Bankes had
a yacht or vessel named the _Iris_; James Mackenzie was a sailor in the
_Iris_, along with another sailor named Allan Mackenzie. For a long time
they and others worked a large pump with two horses with the object of
emptying the loch. The pump was placed on the burn which runs from the
loch into the not far distant sea; a cut or drain was formed to enable
the pump to be worked, and a number of pipes were provided for the
purpose of conducting the water away. The pipes are now lying in a house
or shed at Laide. James Mackenzie often attended the pump. He and others
were employed parts of two years in the attempt to empty the loch, or as
James Mackenzie puts it, "to ebb it up." It was after this that the
_Iris_ was sent to Broadford in Skye to procure lime. James Mackenzie
went with her. They brought from Broadford fourteen barrels of "raw
lime." They came with the lime to Udrigil, and it was taken up to the
"loch of the beast," and the small boat or dingy of the _Iris_ was also
taken up. The ground-officers would not go in the boat on the loch for
fear of the Beast, so Mr Bankes sent to the _Iris_ for James and Allan
Mackenzie, and they went in the boat over every part of the loch, which
had been reduced only by six or seven inches after all the labour that
had been spent on it. They plumbed the loch with the oars of the boat;
in no part did it exceed a fathom in depth, except in one hole, which at
the deepest was but two and a half fathoms. Into this hole they put the
fourteen barrels of lime. It is needless to state that the Beast was not
discovered, nor has he been further disturbed up to the present time.
The loch contained a few good trout above the average size when I fished
it in 1873. There are rumours that the Beast was seen in 1884 in or near
another loch on the Greenstone Point.
Here is a story of a mermaid; they say it is quite true:--Roderick
Mackenzie, the elderly and much respected boatbuilder at Port Henderson,
when a young man, went one day to a rocky part of the shore there.
Whilst gathering bait he suddenly spied a mermaid asleep among the
rocks. Rorie "went for" that mermaid, and succeeded in seizing her by
the hair. The poor creature, in great embarrassment, cried out that if
Rorie would let go she would grant him whatever boon he might ask. He
requested a pledge that no one should ever be drowned from any boat he
might build. On his releasing her, the mermaid promised that this should
be so. The promise has been kept throughout Rorie's long business
career; his boats still defy the stormy winds and waves. I am the happy
possessor of an admirable example of Rorie's craft. The most ingenious
framers of trade advertisements might well take a hint from this
veracious anecdote.
[Illustration: ANTIQUITY NO. 14.--TUYERE, FROM THE FASAGH IRONWORKS.
SCALE--ONE-FOURTH TRUE SIZE.]