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Highland (Mainland): Latest Posts |
Previous 10 | Showing 11-20 of 7,355 posts. Most recent first | Next 10 
Durcha (Broch) — Folklore |
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Like other parts of the British Isles, but perhaps more especially the Highlands, Sutherland has its tales of the disparity between mortal and fairy time. Despite its title, Henry Bett's English Myths and Traditions (1952) includes a characteristic story set near the south-east end of Loch Shin, He writes that a man returning from Lairg sat down to rest on the Hill of Durcha, near an opening in the ground: He heard sounds of merriment from below, and went in. He was not seen again, and another man who was in his company was accused of making away with him. He asked for a year and a day's grace, and solemnly promised he would vindicate himself by then. He watched the opening in the hillside, and finally saw his companion come out with a troop of fairies. All of them were dancing. The man who had been accused seized his friend and held him. The rescued man said peevishly, 'Why could you not let me finish the reel, Sandy?' He could not believe that he had been with the fairies for a twelvemonth until he had reached home, and seen his wife with a child in her arms a year old. The man's holding on to his friend when he came out of the hill is not a throwaway detail it may seem: this was the traditional way to redeem someone from the fairies, used for instance by Sandy Harg of New Abbey (Dumfries & Galloway) to rescue his wife. Other stories of the supernatural lapse in time are set at Bruan Broch, Maiden Castle (Central & Perthshire), and at Tomnahurich (Southern Highlands). The 'hill of Durcha' was clearly a fairy mound in which the fairies had their dwelling. Often these were ancient cairns, but which of the many prehistoric sites around Lairg this one may have been is open to question. As well as brochs, stone circles, hut circles, and odd mounds, the parish contains numerous cairns and chambered cairns, any one of which might qualify as a fairy dwelling. The Lore Of Scotland - A Guide To Scottish Legends Westwood & Kingshill |
Posted by drewbhoy28th January 2024ce |
Smoo Cave (Cave / Rock Shelter) — Folklore |
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Even after he had escaped from the Black School at Padua, as told at CREAG MHOR and CREAG BHEAG, Donald Duibheal MacKay was still pursued by his old master. One day MacKay went to explore the great Smoo Cave, a huge limestone cavern near the north coast, south-east of Durness - but the Devil got news of his intentions and was waiting for him there. Some say MacKay fled, leaving his horse's footmarks by the cave's entrance. In Otta Swire's 1963 account, however, MacKay had reached the second cavern when his dog, who had raced ahead of him into the third and innermost chamber, came back 'howling and hairless' warning MacKay who he could expect to see if he went further. Just at this moment, dawn broke and the sound of cockcrow was heard. The Devil and the three witches who were there with him realised their time on earth was up, blew holes inn the roof, and escaped: this is said to be the origin of the holes through which the Smoo Burn runs into the caverns. The unfortunate dog's expereience that of the piper's hound at CLACH-THOLL (Argyllshire & Islands), whose master set out to explore a subterranean passage and was never seen again. in many such stories the dogs alone escape but with all their hair singed off, a sure sign of a fiery diabolical encounter. It is interesting here the Devil, like the ghost of Hamlet's father is dismissed from the world by: the bird of dawning, the cock announcing the end of the night. Nor is this the only Shakespearean echo sounded: the 'three witches' accompanying the Devil are probably an addition with literary inspiration. The Lore Of Scotland - A Guide To Scottish Legends Westwood & Kingshill |
Posted by drewbhoy 26th January 2024ce |
Lynchat (Souterrain) — Folklore |
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The Cave Of Raitts, a little way off the main road near Lynchat, is a horseshoe-shaped and roofed with large slabs of stone, and is sometimes claimed to be an Old Pechts (Picts) House. The semi-subterranean low-roofed souterrains or earth-houses, probably once used for storage, are often popularly identified as having belonged to the Pechts or Picts, sometimes equated with fairies. The structure may look low from the outside, but as its other name An Uaimh Mhor (The Great Cave) implies, it is actually quite ample, and another tradition more suitable to its size is that it was built by giants. According to Alexander MacBain, writing in 1922: The women carried the excavated stuff in their aprons and threw it in the Spey, while the men brought the stones, large and small, on their shoulders from neighbouring hills. All was finished by morning, and the inhabitants knew not what had taken place. The Lore Of Scotland - A Guide To Scottish Legends Westwood & Kingshill |
Posted by drewbhoy 13th January 2024ce Edited 14th January 2024ce |
Clava Cairns — Folklore |
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A little way east of Inverness are three circular chambered cairns of an unusual type, each surrounded by a stone kerb and a ring of standing stones. While the passages of most chambered tombs in Scotland face approximately east or south-east, those at Clava face south-west towards the mid-winter sunset, an alignment which may have had symbolic significance. Although archaeological evidence dates them back to the third millennium BCE, tradition connects the tombs with a later period. They have been said to mark the burial place of the family of the sixth-century Pictish king Brude, and Otta Swire suggests in The Highlands And Their Legends (1963) that this theory may have been inspired by the digging up of a gold rod during drainage operations near the site. She does not mention when this discovery was made, but in any case the area had pre-existing associations with King Brude, whose castle is said to have been at nearby Craig Phadrig. Brude himself was one of St. Columbas' most important converts to Christianity, and was reburied on Iona, sacred to the saint. The Lore Of Scotland - a Guide To Scottish Legends Westwood & Kingshill |
Posted by drewbhoy 12th January 2024ce |
Dalchreichart (Cairn(s)) — Folklore |
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A short way south-west of Dundreggan, before the A997 bends and crosses the River Moriston, there is a cairn said to have been built by visiting pilgrims who added to it stone by stone. They came to honour the memory of the itinerant Presbyterian preacher Findlay Munro, who was preaching here in 1827. His text was Amos 4:12, which catalogues the punishments visited on Israel for oppression and idolatry and threatens worse to come: 'Therefore thus will I do unto thee, O Israel: and because I will do this prepare to meet they God, O Israel.' In Munro's sermon, 'Israel' could easily be understood to stand for the Episcopalians in Scotland, and behind them the English government. Some local boys, possibly Catholics, challenged his words and called him a liar, to which he answered, 'As proof that I am telling the truth, my footprints will forever bear witness on this very ground on which I stand on.' Just as he said, on the spot where he had stood his footprints were left indelibly in the ground. It became custom for visitors to stand in the marks, and people claimed that the hair stood up on the back of your neck when you did so. Janet Ford, in Footprints in Stone (2004), reports that the prints were vandalised in the 1990s, but her latest information was that they were becoming visible again. The Lore Of Scotland - A Guide To Scottish Legends Westwood & Kingshill |
Posted by drewbhoy 11th January 2024ce |
Tomnahurich (Sacred Hill) — Folklore |
Below Craid Phadrie is the detached hill called Tomnahurich, or the Watchman's Hill, some of the fields adjoining being called Balliefearie, or the Watchman's Town, and which, besides being thus a "ward hill," was also celebrated in the olden time, according to local belief, as the favourite and chief resort in the north of the tiny race of fairies, and was further used by grosser mortals as a great moat, or gathering hill, on various occasions of public importance. The magistrates of Inverness used also in ancient times to patronise horse-races run round its base.Page 13 in volume 14 of the Statistical Accounts of Scotland (1845). |
Posted by Rhiannon11th January 2024ce |
Craig Phadrig (Hillfort) — Folklore |
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Some ancient forts, mostly from the Iron Age, had ramparts constructed from a double wall of stone with layers of wood and rubble sandwiched between. If the timber were set on fire as it might during an enemy attack, certain types of stone melted and fused other stones together. The great lumps of of heated, cooled, and solidified rock have patches that glitter like glass, giving rise to the term 'vitrified' forts. Folklorists used to speculate that these were the origin of the glass castles of tradition. David MacRitchie, in 1891, wrote: when one hears some wild story of a dreaded giant or ogre living in a castle surrounded with glass', one knows, that such a castle could not have existed, but that the real glass castles may have been vitrified forts. He cites the example of a famous glass castle said to stand on Tor Inis or Tory Island off the north coast of Ireland, but as castles of glass often appear in fairy tales in places where no vitrified forts exist, this seems no longer a workable proposition, however tempting such a rationalisation may appear. Craig Phadrig, a wooded hill west of Inverness, is crowned by a vitrified fort. Radio-carbon dating suggests that its ramparts were originally built in the fifth or fourth century BCE, although they may have been strengthened around 500-600CE. It has been proposed that Bridei or Brude, King Of Picts (c.555-84), lived here, as it is recorded that he had a royal palace near the River Ness. There is a King Brude Road on the way here from Inverness. Brude was visited by St. Columba, who wanted permission to continue his work of Christian conversion, but the saint and his companions were refused entry. Then says Columba's biographer Adomnan (627-704), Columba made the sign of the cross on the great doors, knocked and laid his hands on them and immediately the bolts shot back of their own accord. Brude is supposed to have been converted by this miracle, and he and his retinue in the fort were all baptised. A local tradition said that this baptism took place at the foot of a fir tree growing at the centre of the fort. In 1963, Otta Swire noted: This tree was still growing, one of the finest and largest Scotch firs that I ever saw, when Craig Phadrig was sold to the Forestry Commission in the 1920's and much strong feeling was aroused by their decision to fell it as part of a clearance scheme. The Lore Of Scotland - A Guide To Scottish Legends Westwood and Kingshill |
Posted by drewbhoy 9th January 2024ce |
Dun Troddan (Broch) — Folklore |
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T.M. Murchison was minister of Glenelg in the 1930s, and his mother's people had been shepherds in the area for many generations. His parish history was compiled partly from oral tradition gleaned from older relatives and older parishioners. 'The most famous antiquities in Glenelg' he records, 'are the two brochs or "Pictish towers" in Glenbeg.' At one time apparently there at least two more, but of these only 'a heap of jumbled boulders and stones' remained by this time. Dun Telve and Dun Troddan, however, still stand. It is said when the brochs were being built, stones were handed from the quarry along a chain of men. A broch or 'brugh' is an archaeological term for the late prehistoric round towers found chiefly in the Orkney and Shetland islands and the Western Isles and on the adjacent Scottish mainland. They are round stone-built towers, and are often popularly supposed to have been built by the Picts or Pechts. Here, however, the brochs are associated with Fionn mac Cumhaill or Fingal and his followers the Fianna, said to have lived in these brochs and resorted to Skye for their hunting. The women of the band, says Murchison, never took food in the presence of their menfolk, but nevertheless remained healthy and beautiful, and the men wondered how the women managed to live on so little nourishment. One day, therefore, while the other men went to Skye, a warrior named Gairidh (pronounced Gary) pretended to be ill and was left lying on his bed, intending to watch the women. He fell asleep, however, and the women promptly took strong wooden pegs and fastened Gairidh's seven locks to the bottom of the bed, to keep him out of the way, and they proceed to feast on the finest food that glen or river could produce. Gairidh suddenly awoke, was irritated to find he was fastened to the bed, leapt to his feet with a mighty effort, and in doing so left every lock of his hair and the skin of his skull on the bed. mad with pain, Gairidh rushed out, gathered brushwood which he placed around the locked door, and set fire to the dwelling with the women inside, so that none escaped. Over in Skye, Fionn and the hunters saw the smoke rising and knew that some terrible disaster taken place. They hurried back, vaulting on their spears over the narrow channel to the mainland. One of them named Reithe did not leap far enough and was drowned, and the name of the place from which he jumped, Kylerhea, is said to be derived from Caol Reithe, 'the Narrows of Reithe'. Fionn and his men found their women dead and Gairidh missing, but at last he was discovered skulking in a cave and was punished. An almost identical tradition was reported of Knockfarrel by Hugh Miller in 1835, and used by him to account for the name of Glen Garry, said to be where the murderer was torn to pieces. The tale is a better fir for Glenelg, much nearer to Glen Garry, and Murchison adds further local details: at Kylerhea, he says, you can see the marks made by the warriors' feet as they jumped the water, and at Bernera nearby is a site called Iomair nam Fear More ('the Ridge of the Big Men'), pointed out as the burial place of the 'Fingalians' (the Fianna or Fenians). It is said that once upon a time a bold man began ploughing up the place, in defiance of local warnings. He turned up a human skull, which was so big that it easily fitted over the biggest man present(alleged to be the Rev. Colin MacIver, minister of Glenelg from 1782 to 1829). Just at that point, however, a terrible storm of thunder and lightning arose, and the ploughing speedily ceased and the skull of 'Gairidh' or some other Fingalian was promptly buried again. The Fianna were commonly said to be of giant size, so the finding of an unusually large skull may have helped to associate them with the site. The Lore Of Scotland - A Guide To Scottish Legends Westwood and Kingshill |
Posted by drewbhoy 5th January 2024ce |
Granish (Clava Cairn) — Folklore |
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It is not surprising that the Grenish Stone Circle should be supernaturally protected, if it was truly the crowning place of the Pictish kings. This tradition was reported by Otta Swire in 1963: 'The last king to be crowned there was King Brude, so the old gardener we had at Kingussie told me.' He had been told this as a boy by his grannie who came from Aviemore, and she had heard it from her grannie, a noted wise woman or witch. Acording to the gardener's grannie, when a Pictish king died, all who hoped to succeed him gathered at the circle, where the Druids invoked the spirits who told them which claimant to crown and other things besides. When the spirit was summoned at the death of the forty-eighth king, he told them to cron King Brude but he would be the last they crowned. Thinking this meant the downfall of the Pictish kingdom, they asked more questions but only got an enigmatic answer: Living die, Dying live When the king was crowned it was customary to raise three spirits, and for the King to ask each a question, the first of which must be: What of my reign? When Brude asked this question, he couldn't understand the reply: the spirit was that of an Irish champion who spoke only Gaelic, while Brude only spoke the Pictish language. Fortunately a bilingual Druid was on hand to translate, telling Brude that one greater than he would come out of the sea, rule in his kingdom above him, and make him great. The prophecy referred to the coming of St Columba and his conversion of King Brude to Christianity. As with a number of Otta Swire's stories, it is uncertain if this is a popular tradition or a romantic fiction. In some respects it sounds suspiciously like the revelation in Macbeth of Banquo's royal descendants, although it is of course entirely possible that Shakespeare based his scene on a report of ancient Scottish custom. |
Posted by drewbhoy 4th January 2024ce |
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Stones from religious sites whether ancient or modern should not be removed. Such is the prevalent , recorded at Fyvie Castle (near Turriff) and the Hill O' many Stanes (Northern Highlands) among other places. C. G. Nash, in 1906, recorded that a stone taken from the circle at Grenish was once taken to be used as a lintel over the doorway of a byre, but when it was in place the cattle were afraid of entering. Consequently it was taken back to the circle and an ordinary slab used, which the cattle were happy to pass. The Lore Of Scotland - A Guide To Scottish Legends Westwood & Kingshill |
Posted by drewbhoy 4th January 2024ce |
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