More Strange Scotland

INTRODUCTION

A few years ago, I wrote Strange Tales of Scotland, a collection of stories that included folklore, history, ghosts, monsters, castles and various strange and, I hope, interesting anecdotes. Since the book’s publication, some people have castigated the book as nonsense while others have asked for more of the same. Until recently, I managed to avoid the temptation, for I thought I had finished writing about strangeness, having added Wales, England and Ireland as well as the sea to my strange series. However, last year my wife-woman and I moved house from Moray in the north east of Scotland to Angus, in the old Pictish heartland. In this region, it is impossible to turn a corner without finding history or a strange happening.

For instance, within a two-mile radius of our present home, we have an old toll house, a Pictish fort, a haunted cottage (that we nearly bought), a reference to a temple I am unable to trace and a farmhouse named after an alleged cannibal. Add another few miles, and we have a battlefield where the Scots defeated the Norse, a castle that was heavily involved in the Rough Wooing and a fairy legend. When I spoke to a local tractor man, Graeme Ritchie (who also happens to be my son-in-law), born and bred in Angus, he told me a couple of local legends that were too good to ignore.

And so I thought I’d include them in another strange book. I will put the first of Graeme’s stories here as a taster of the strangeness to come. At present, we live in a small village a few miles outside Dundee, surrounded by the fields of Angus. Behind our house, a path strikes north and east. It is an ancient path, which has probably been in use for hundreds if not thousands of years, connecting several cottages, an old smithy and a couple of farms. One of these farms has the name of Denfind, and herein lies the story.

In Scotland, a den is a small dip or a valley, often wooded, and not far from Denfind Farm there is such a place. The modern road passes this wooded valley, which to my strange mind, may well be the scene of the following events.

A few hundred years ago, travel within Scotland was difficult. The roads were rudimentary at best and often infested with bands of sorners – outlaws. For variety, add reivers in the Borders and caterans (Highland raiders) in the lands immediately south of the Highland line. To make matters worse, in this corner of Angus, north east of Dundee, travellers began to go missing. History is vague about the date, but probably some time in the 15th century.

According to the legend, a family lived in the wooded den just south of the village of Monikie, and they kidnapped travellers, murdered them and ate them. Not surprisingly, the area became notorious, so the name Fiends’ Den or Den of the Fiends was coined for the cannibals’ location. The cannibals seem to have been very similar to the better-known Sawney Bean’s family, or perhaps were an echo of that notorious clan. The cannibal clan at the Fiends’ Den were said to have a taste for tender meat, so preferred younger victims, but as fewer travellers passed by, they began to raid the local villages, ferm-touns and cottages for children and young adults. The Angus people soon worked out what was happening and marched en masse to the Fiends’ Den to mete out summary justice.

The authorities, or perhaps just the local population, executed the entire cannibal family except for the youngest, a mere baby. The locals spared her as she could not yet have tasted human flesh. This child was adopted by parents who did not tell her from where she came. However, within a few years, the girl displayed alarming signs of having the family trait, attacking children and licking blood from open wounds. It seemed that the cannibal genes were also present in her.

Her adoptive family observed the young cannibal, giving her advice and as much help as they could but, as the girl grew into young womanhood, it became apparent that she also was a cannibal. When she was 18, the local authorities executed her at Dundee’s Seagate, and her last words were said to be: If ye had tasted human flesh, you would think it so delicious that ye would never forbear it again.

Today, only Fiends’ Den or Denfind Farm recalls the legend, and possibly the name of the farm suggested the story. However, that gruesome little tale started me off on my investigations again, searching for anecdotes new and old to compile into another book about the strange myths, legends and possibly even facts in Scotland. Some I have previously published as stand-alone articles, others I found recently, and many people have told me tales over the years that I have stored away for future use. Here is the result and I hope you enjoy them!

Jack Strange

PART 1

STRANGE PLACES

THE STRANGE ISLAND OF SKYE

There was no bridge the first time I travelled to Skye. It was a real island then, with a short ferry journey from the mainland and a thousand legends waiting in the glens and hills. From the ferry, I could not see much of the island; I could not see much at all, for a thick white mist covered everything, from the Cuillin Mountains down to the Kyle of Lochalsh.

I am not sure what I think about Skye. For those with the ability to feel the power, as Bowed Davie of Peebleshire’s Manor Valley called it, Skye has an indefinable something that lingers in the atmosphere. For others, it is merely an island of dramatic scenery or a place to settle to escape the rat race of the south. I find it an unsettling island, more disturbing than any other part of Scotland, as if the island is waiting to reclaim itself, and the hills and mountains were watching, brooding, aware that all is not as it should be.

To some, Skye is Eilean a’ Cheo, the Island of Mist, yet that is a modern name, coined when misty scenery was deemed romantic. A reverend gentleman by the name of JA MacCulloch made the nickname famous in 1905 with the publication of his book The Misty Isle of Skye. There certainly is mist on Skye, as there is on any island with hills, but probably no more than average. What there is on Skye is a plethora of folklore, myth and legend.

Skye: Of Names and Castles

Every hill, every loch and village in Skye has its stories, with each often interlinked with others on the island. Take, for example, Beinn na Cailleach, a mountain that overlooks Broadford. The name means the Hill of the Old Woman, although nobody is sure which old woman it honours. One theory is that it refers to the strangely named Saucy Mary, who allegedly stretched a chain from Kyleakin in Skye across the Kyle of Lochalsh to the mainland, to make any ships pay a toll before they could proceed. In common with many Scottish hills, Beinn na Cailleach has a cairn on the summit.

More is known, or conjectured, about the 16th-century Castle (or Caisteal) Uisdean. This battered ruin sits beside Loch Snizort Beag, or Little Loch Snizort, just north of the Hinnisdal River mouth in Trotternish. Castle Uisdean means Hugh’s Castle and the builder was said to be Hugh MacDonald of Sleat, a son of the 10th Lord of the Isles. Castle Uisdein would have had a single gate, reached by a ladder, which the occupants of the castle would haul inside for security. There is nothing picturesque about this square tower house, while its surroundings can be rather bleak in foul weather. However, there is a strange little story.

Hugh, or Uisdean MacGillespig Chleirich to give him his correct, Gaelic, name, had a notion of becoming chief of the clan. Hugh was not a man one would care to have as a neighbour. Indeed, a song of the time asked why his foster-nurse did not crush him to death when he was a child, to prevent him from growing into such an unpleasant adult.

At that time, the chief was Donald Gorm Mor, Sir Donald MacDonald of Sleat. The fact that Donald was Hugh’s uncle seemed not to concern Hugh, who planned a neat little murder. Hugh’s idea was to invite Donald Gorm to Castle Uisdean and have a few handy lads around to thrust a dirk through his ribs, direct and straightforward. To that end, Hugh wrote a couple of invitations; one to Donald Gorm, asking him to come to the castle, and another to the intended assassin, giving details of the plan. However, the letters crossed in the post, and Donald Gorm was very interested in reading all about his forthcoming murder. He asked his followers to bring Hugh to him to discuss the matter in person.

Not surprisingly, Hugh fled Skye and holed out at Dun an Sticir on North Uist in the Outer Hebrides. The name means Fort of the Skulker and it is a 16th-century building on an Iron Age broch, ruined now but still worth a visit. However, Donald Gorm sent out search parties and, in 1601, Donald’s warriors hauled Hugh back to Skye. Donald Gorm ordered him to be interred in a dungeon at Duntulm Castle, with a hunk of salted beef to eat, and a pewter water jug. Hugh ate the salt meat but when he went to drink the water, he realised the water jug was empty. And then the stonemasons began to seal the dungeon door, leaving him to a lonely, agonising death by thirst. According to the legend, Hugh went mad inside his terrible dungeon.

It was decades before the wall was broken down during alterations to the castle and Hugh’s skeleton was discovered. He was said to have chewed on the empty pewter jug before he died. Another story claims that Hugh’s skull and thigh bones decorated the window of the church at Bornaskitaig until as late as 1827.

Donald Gorm was not the most pleasant of men, either. According to another legend, he married a sister of Rory Mor MacLeod, the MacLeod chief who lived at Dunvegan Castle. Donald’s wife was a good woman but unfortunately had only one eye. When Donald Gorm took a fancy to another woman, one of the daughters of Mackenzie of Kintail, on the mainland, his present wife had to go.

Finding a one-eyed horse, Donald thrust his one-eyed wife on top, scoured the island for a one-eyed boy to lead the horse and a one-eyed dog to follow, and sent the whole sorry procession to Dunvegan in a calculated insult. Naturally, Rory Mor retaliated, and the two clans began, or probably resumed, a feud that spread as far as the MacDonald lands of Uist and led to the deaths of men, the ravaging of women and burned homes. There was little romance in the old days of clan warfare.

Donald Gorm’s Duntulm Castle stood powerfully on a promontory above the sea but is now a total ruin. According to legend, the MacDonalds of Sleat abandoned Duntulm in the 1730s when a nursemaid dropped the chief’s son on to rocks below the castle. In revenge, Sleat thrust the nursemaid into a boat and left her in the Atlantic without oars or sails. The nursemaid’s ghost, and that of Hugh, are said to haunt the ruins of the castle, both screaming. They are not alone, for Donald Gorm also remains, apparently spending his death in battling other, unknown spectres, while his one–eyed wife looks sorrowfully on. The legend of the nursemaid dropping a baby is not unique, for Findlater Castle on the Moray Firth has the same tale.

Despite Duntulm’s stories and ghosts, of all the castles of Skye, Dunvegan is arguably the most famous. The ancestral home of MacLeod, it sits proudly beside a loch of the same name. It is a castle with a long history that includes comedy as well as tragedy. One episode occurred during the American Revolutionary War, when the owner, General MacLeod, was fighting in North America.

The Scottish-born United States seaman John Paul Jones was known to be prowling the seas off Scotland, pouncing on ships and raiding on shore, so Dunvegan’s factor decided to remove any valuables from Dunvegan. He had hardly begun when Bon Homme Richard, Jones’s ship, sailed boldly into Loch Dunvegan with her cannon manned and the flag of the newly proclaimed United States flying at her masthead.

For a moment it seemed that Jones was about to send his crew to ravage Dunvegan, until the sound of bagpipes floated across the loch. It is easy to imagine the tension, with the people in the ancient castle watching the modern warship creeping across the dark water. Her star-spangled flag would be challenging all comers and the black mouths of her cannon threatening the defiant civilians – and then the pipes wailed.

Every eye swivelled to the head of the loch, where a lone piper led a long procession of men that marched slowly towards the castle, two by two in formation. Guessing that Clan MacLeod had risen to repulse him, Jones decided that discretion was far better than valour, weighed anchor and sailed away as fast as his ship would take him. If he had waited another five minutes, he might have learned that there was nothing martial about the newcomers.

Donald MacLeod, the Swordale tacksman had died a few days earlier, and the piper was leading the funeral procession on its way to Kilmuir Graveyard.

Dunvegan, naturally, has older tales. There is a cave on Loch Dunvegan, near Borreraig, known as the Piper’s Cave, that has at least two legends attached. The first is the common cave-story about a piper who entered playing his pipes and subsequently vanished. In this instance, the piper was one of the famous MacCrimmons, whose piping college was not far away. As so often, the piper entered with his dog, and the music of his pipes became fainter and fainter until the dog returned alone. According to legend, people can still hear the piper sometimes, trying to find his way home. One version of the legend says that MacCrimmon’s piping enthralled the fairy queen, so she kept him enchanted underground, and that is how the famous pipe tune, MacCrimmon’s Lament, was composed.

The second legend is more prosaic and possibly more accurate, as it claims that pipers used this cave for practice. The piper I asked, a lassie from Inverness, told me sourly that the pipe-major would probably order the young apprentices to the cave until they could produce something that sounded bearable.

There is another cave in Skye, the Uamh nan Oire, the Cave of Gold where another piper vanished. He was a MacArthur, one of the hereditary pipers of MacDonald. That story was current in the 17th century, although the actual cave, near Bornaskitaig Point, is disputed. The Isle of Barra also has its Uamh nan Oire, with a similar legend, except that predatory sea-dogs, of the four-footed variety, seized the piper. Hebridean caves were dangerous places for pipers.

Skye: Ghost Light of Broadford

Sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century, an Edinburgh doctor was on holiday at Broadford in Skye. In the evening, he walked by the shore and saw a bright light out in the bay. He watched it for a while, unsure what it might be, and then decided it must be a fisherman showing a flare.

However, the light did not behave as a flare should. It travelled slowly above the water,