Highland (Mainland): Latest Posts — Folklore

There are local traditions of a battle fought here by the Scots supported by cairns in Scotsburn Wood and by the name Lochan a' Chlaidheimh, sword loch.

The cave [..] is thought to have formed a refuge for persecuted worshippers at various times in its history. There is also an old legend that it was built by giants while giantesses carried the soil to the River Spey in their aprons.

In the time of the later Jameses, a noted freebooter of the name of Cumming, with his eleven sons, was the scourge of Strathspey and the more distant glens of Perthshire, and long baffled the feeble efforts of the law.

An artificial cave, the retreat of the band, is still entire, and is known locally as "Uamh Mor," the great cave or den. It is cut in the face of a green hill, about a mile and a half east from Kingussie [...]. The cave is crescent-shaped, and about fifty feet from end to end; and, as the soil is friable, it must have been formed with great difficulty.

At the centre, the width is about six feet, and the height about seven; but towards the western end, both height and breadth contract so much that, at the mouth, the space will only admit, by crawling eel-like, one man at a time. A few feet from this narrow entrance, the passage has been guarded by a strong door; and the boles built in the walls show that the bar must have been a tree of at least three feet in circumference: at the eastern end, the cave widens to a breadth of eight or nine feet, adn the roof is of about an equal height, so that a somewhat spacious chamber is formed. The walls of the cave are of large stones, rudely built together; the roof consists of a series of large flagstones stretching from wall to wall; and the floor is of earth or clay. To the centre of the cave there is a second entrance, by a flight of steps, that seems to have been concealed by a trap-door.

Cumming and his eleven sons were all, according to tradition, tall and powerful men; and the cave was formed by them in the night time; the earth, as it was thrown out, being carefully carried down the hill and cast into a deep dark pool of the Spey. The stones for the walls and the roof were brought from a higher part of the hill; and such was the strength of the sons, it is said, that only two of them were required to carry one of the great flagstones down the hill.

This is the story told by tradition, and I give it without attempting to prove its truth. I have, however, visited the cave; and the story was told to me as I sat within the dark, grave-like, chamber.

I may add that, to this day, according to the belief of the district, the descendants of the Macpherson who betrayed the Cummings are troubled with the disease, the pains of which were feigned by their predecessor.

Druidical Temples in Scotland.
Severeal of the Druids' places of worship are still to be seen in the Highlands. [..] In our own neighbourhood, above Dochmaluag, there is a pretty large one, the stones of which, it is maintained by many of the peasants in the district, are said to have been, at one time, human beings, which were overtaken with judgment for dancing on the Sabbath day, and that the position of the stones exactly corresponds with the different attitudes of the dancers. Hence the name Clachan Gorach, or foolish stones. -- Rossshire Advertiser.

Above the Inverness District Asylum, and immediately below the ascent to Craig Dunain, is "Fuaran a Chragain Bhric," or the Well of the Spotted Rock. This was in former times a place of great resort, the waters, among other healing virtues, being supposed to be strongly diuretic. The bushes around were adorned with rags and threads; while pebbles, pins, and shells might be observed in the bottom of the spring. We have seen one juniper bush close by so loaded with rags and threads as to be hardly distinguishable. This was also a fairy well, and if a poor mother had a puny, weak child, which she supposed had been left by the fairies in place of her own, by exposing it here at night, and leaving some small offering, as a dish of milk, to propitiate the king of fairyland, the bantling would be carried off, and in the morning she would find her own, and restored in health.

-Alex Fraser, Northern Folklore on Wells and Water, p. 17.

Fuaran a' Chragan Bhreic, or Well of the Spotted Rock,
which forms an apt description, as the spring is situatednear a mass of rock, spotted with various specimens of moss. The water is said to be strongly diuretic, and used to be as much thought of, and resorted to by the inhabitants of Inverness, as now are the wells at Strathpeffer. A juniper bush grows beside the spring, and the mossy hillocks about it afford a seat to the tired pedestrian, whence he obtains a panoramic view of Inverness and the Moray Firth, which well repays the fatigue of the walk and ascent from the town.

The last celebrated spring in Inverness, which remains for us to notice is
Fuaran Ault an Ionnlaid, or Well of the Anointing Burn.

This is situated on the estate of Muirtown, opposite the toll-gate, and immediately below Craig Phadric. Tradition states, that Montrose, while being conveyed a prisoner from Sutherlandshire to Edinburgh, on passing this well, begged of his guards to unloose him from the horse to which he was tied, and allow him to quench his thirst at this well. The request was complied with, and the noble prisoner expressed the great relief and refreshment which it afforded him.

Above Leaken, and between this well and the one previously mentioned, are the remains of a Druidical temple, and it is said the Anointing Well derived its appellation from the circumstance of the Druidical priests resorting to it to bathe and anoint themselves previously to engaging in their solemn religious rites. Like the other springs before specified, this fountain was celebrated for the wonderfully curative effect of its waters, until about 1730, when a soldier's wife is said to have therein washed her child afflicted with scurvy, since which the healing properties of the Annointing Well have forsaken the fluid. [...] The late proprietor, Colonel Duff, had inscribed upon the neat stone-work that protects the spot, the following words:--
Luci Fontisque Nymphis.

There is a tradition of this part of the country which seems not a great deal more modern than the urns or their ornaments, and which bears the character of the savage nearly as distinctly impressed on it. On the summit of Knock-Ferril, a steep hill which rises a few miles to the west of Dingwall, there are the remains of one of those vitrified forts which so puzzle and interest the antiquary; and which was originally constructed, says tradition, by a gigantic tribe of Fions, for the protection of their wives and children, when they themselves were engaged in hunting.

It chanced in one of their excursions that a mean-spirited little fellow of the party, not much more than fifteen feet in height, was so distanced by his more active brethren, that, leaving them to follow out the chase, he returned home, and throwing himself down, much fatigued, on the side of the eminence, fell fast asleep. Garry, for so the unlucky hunter was called, was no favourite with the women of the tribe; - he was spiritless and diminutive, and ill tempered; and as they could make little else of him that they cared for, they converted him into the butt of all their severer joke, and less agreeable humours. On seeing that he had fallen asleep they stole out to where he lay, and after fastening his long hair with pegs to the grass, awakened him with their shouts and their laughter. He strove to extricate himself, but in vain; until at length infuriated by their gibes, and the pain of his own exertions, he wrenched up his head, leaving half his locks behind him, and hurrying after them, set fire to the stronghold into which they had rushed for shelter. The flames rose till they mounted over the roof, and broke out at every slit and opening; but Garry, unmoved by the shrieks and groans of the sufferers within, held fast the door until all was silent; when he fled into the remote Highlands, towards the west.

The males of the tribe, who had, meanwhile, been engaged in hunting on that part of the northern Sutor which bears the name of the hill of Nig, -- alarmed by the vast column of smoke which they saw ascending from their dwelling, came pressing to the frith of Cromarty, and leaping across on their hunting spears, they hurried home. But they arrived to find only a huge pile of embers in which the very stones of the building were sputtering and bubbling with the intense heat like the contents of a boiling caldron. Wild with rage and astonishment, and yet collected enough to conclude that none but Garry could be the author of a deed so barbarous, they tracked him into a nameless Highland glen, which has ever since been known as Glen-Garry, and there tore him to pieces. And as all the women of the tribe had perished in the flames, there was an end, when this forlorn and widowed generation had passed away, to the whole race of the Fions.

There is a large and very ponderous stone in the parish of Edderton, which a giantess of the [giants'] tribe is said to have flung from the point of a spindle across the Dornoch frith...