Isle of Skye: Latest Posts — Folklore

It is unclear why the two cairns were built together, but local folklore provides its own interpretations. One tale is that one of the mounds is the burial place of a great chief who owned the surrounding land. Each summer he went on a raiding mission with his men, bringing back gold, cattle and slaves. One summer he did not return when expected, but in the autumn the ships sailed slowly into the bay. The body of the chief was carried ashore on his men's shields to be buried in a huge grave, while in the bay below, his galley was ritually set alight.

Another legend holds that the mounds are built on the site of the last battle between the MacDonalds and the MacLeods, two rival clans in Skye. A thick mist descended during the fighting, resulting in carnage so complete that only women and old men were left to bury the dead. All that could be done was to make two piles of bodies, one for each clan, and cover them with stones.

Everywhere, in the Highlands, the red-deer are associated with the Fairies, and in some districts, as Lochaber and Mull, are said to be their only cattle. [...] In other parts of the Highlands, as in Skye, though the Fairies are said to keep company with the deer, they have cows like those of men. In Skye, Fairy cattle are said to be speckled and red (crodh breac ruadh), and to be able to cross the sea.

It is not on every place that they graze. There were not above ten such spots in all Skye. The field of Annat (achadh na h-annaid), in the Braes of Portree, is one. When the cattle came home at night from pasture, the following were the words used by the Fairy woman, standing on Dun Gerra-sheddar (Dun Ghearra-seadar), near Portree, as she counted her charge:

"Crooked one, dun one,
Little wing grizzled,
Black cow, white cow,
Little bull black-head,
My milch kine have come home,
O dear! that the herdsman would come!"

[...] the faery cows that once came ashore at the Great Rock of MacNicol, on the farm of Scorribreac, in Skye. On this occasion, the entire herd was intercepted in its attempt to return to the sea, by the scattering of earth on the strip of land separating it from the water. In the Highlands and Western Isles it was held that a sprinkling of earth taken from a burying-ground was most efficacious in such circumstances.

Toward the evening of the day on which the faery cattle came ashore at Scorribreac, a voice from the sea was heard calling them back by name. And the names by which they were called were taken down at the time. These names, of course, were in the Gaelic; and the Gaelic rhyme by which they are remembered is still known among those interested in these matters. The rhyme illustrates, moreover, that these faery cows varied considerably in colour. One was brown; and another was black. There was a red one, and a brindled one, and so on. In response to the voice from the sea, the whole herd ultimately returned to its watery element.

The top of Beinn na Cailleaich is flat and smooth, surmounted in the centre by a cairn. Tradition tells that beneath these stones there rest the bones of the nurse of a Norwegian princess. She had accompanied her mistress to "the misty hills of Skye," and eventually died there. But the love of home continued strong with her to the end, for it was her last request that she might be buried on the top of Beinn na Cailleaich, that the clear northern breezes, coming fresh from the land of her childhood, might blow over her grave.

A midwife of Flodigarry was attending a confinement, when, one day, a message came for her to go some distance away. She [agreed to] the summons and found herself inside a fairy mound. She begged to be allowed to go, but the fairies refused to let her till she had performed two tasks. She was provided with a spindle, some wool, and some meal in a girnal. When the wool was all spun, and the meal made into bread, she might go. She toiled very assiduously to get all finished up, but it was of no avail. The wool and the meal remained undiminished. Despairing of ever seeing her home again, she begged of a fairy who was alone with her to tell her what to do. The fairy was moved by her prayers and told her to spin the wool as the sheep eats grass.

[Here the writer says This instruction has no meaning, so I suspect there has been some mistranslation from the Gaelic, which is of course, the language in which all these stories were originally told. Thus she misses the point entirely, because it's
surely a riddle the midwife has to solve? She continues..]

At all events the midwife understood, and soon finished that task. As to the meal, the fairy told her that she must take some of the dough and form a cake with it. This cake she must bake in front of (before?) the others, and eat it entirely herself. [Again some critical point has been missed, as she says:] In this way the task was done.

The fairies saw she must have had help from one of their own number, but she stoutly refused to tell. They were therefore forced to allow her to go. Joyfully she sped back to her "case," and on arriving at her patient's house she found it full of music and merrymaking. Astonished, she asked a bystander what it all meant. "A wedding," was the surprised answer.
"Whose wedding will it be?" she queried impatiently. What was her surprise to find it was the wedding of the very child she had helped to bring into the world, for she had been absent more than twenty years.