Notes from Storytellers' Cottage

Notes from the Storytellers' Cottage.  A blog on the more obscure parts of Scottish history and culture by the oral-historian Scot AnSgeulaiche

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This is an excerpt from the first chapter in my new book Alasdair, the true story of a seventeenth century Collansay man from the west coast of Scotland caught up in what became the British Civil War, a man who became lauded by those he tried to protect as a supernaturally protected hero and to his enemies as the "Holer of Houses".

There's more of the book in audio and video format, and of course it can be purchased and posted internationally in paperback. Details at the page foot. Enjoy the excerpt.

Alasdair

The Irish Exile Years

Prologue - Colla's Isle

We are a great family for the storytelling, telling our MacDhòmhnaill history over and again, again and over, like a parable from the Bible. I can see the day in my mind clear enough, as if I was there myself, from the telling of it by my father and brother later, over and again, again and over.

On that day my half-brother Aonghus and my father Colla were returning across the close grassland of our island home. My father carried the long hunting gun balanced over his shoulder; the two hounds trotted a little ahead, their ears pricking interest to every distant bird in the dunes; my brother carried a small sack of oysters that they had gathered from the shallows.

He glanced discreetly at my father. ‘And would you no think about moving back to the house at Loch an Sgoltaire? Might the MacLeans raid again?’ In his thirteenth year, he looked to ask a good question.

My father gazed wide to left and right across a soft landscape populated by slow moving, docile Highland black-cattle. His land by sword; his cattle by cunning. Colla MacDhòmhnaill, my father, laird of Collansay. Colla Ciotach MacDonald, as he was better known, “ambidextrous” or “crafty” Colla.

‘I might,’ he answered eventually, ‘but I think Sabhal Bàn is all that we have need of now. The MacLeans are no as strong as they once were. We can move quick enough, and we have need.’ He cast a satisfied look across the land. Truth was, other clans hadna bothered with Collansay for some time. We had long been an obstacle in the expansion of the MacLeans from the north and the Campbells from the mainland east, but at that time, things were quiet enough.

Aonghus smiled but didna speak, the bond reinforced. Down by the shore, in the muran grass, the head of a heron popped up from her hiding place, sensitive to their passing. She gave one rasping, disgruntled shriek and winged slow and low along the strand, seeking quieter places.

The day was cold and bright, the flowerless heather sprang beneath their feet, the cattle were yet fat. A keen wind cut over the low-lying island and the shush in the muran played a thousand tiny whisperings of what was to come. The year was sixteen hundred and sixteen.

Father and Aonghus came in sight of our home, the tall, thatched Sabhal Bàn, the White Barn. As they entered the door-yard through the enclosing wall, there was a strange silence about the place. No servants were in the kale-yard. Even the animals were quiet. The two men stopped, listening into the stillness. The dogs looked curiously at the house, the heightened awareness of their masters perhaps affecting them. My father scanned out across the pastures and shorn in-by fields but nothing seemed amiss, save the unaccustomed silence. The narrow barn-windows of the house gave out no sign.

Slowly he pushed open the heavy oak door. The dimly lit main room seemed empty, no signs of struggle. Nola’s spinning wheel sat with the rush lamp burned-out beside it; a neatly filled creel of wool skeins stood by; wool was still on the wheel, part-spun. Aonghus followed father quietly into the kitchen. The table had preparations for a meal on it, broken eggs in a large mixing bowl, more yet in the basket beside. The fire glowed brightly in the hearth, its peats left unsmoored as if it were still being used to cook upon. Aonghus put the sack of oysters quietly on the table.

Muffled groans came through the floor from upstairs.

‘Màiri!’ blurted my father and the two of them ran for the staircase, bounding up in a few strides and throwing open the door to the bedchamber. Màiri, my mother, sat on the birthing chair, her face red with effort. She turned a baleful look upon my father, although she hardly seemed to see him through the pain of her effort. Around her the women of the house spoke quiet comfort, holding her hands, brushing sweat-matted hair from her face. She winced, pushing her head back. She had come early into labour: Bron Trogan, the Burden of the Earth.

My father crossed himself, wide-eyed for a moment, then turning, pushed Aonghus back out of the door. They would not be welcome or needed here.

They went down to the kitchen to await the outcome, forgetting all thoughts of Campbells and MacLeans. They sat at an uncluttered end of the large kitchen table, saying little for a while. Aonghus was as spare as any man at a birth, more so as he looked at our father’s anxious face. He could help neither parent. The younger sisters had evidently been sent off to a neighbour’s house for the duration.

Rising, he re-hooked the pot to the slabhraidh over the fire to warm the broth, poking the peats into life again. He might as well get some soup for father. Minutes passed. Intermittent groans came through the ceiling above, causing the two of them to steal furtive glances towards the stairs, each putting forward a face of calm that they did not feel. My father absent-mindedly fingered the hilt of his sword, his gun now stood against the wall with the other arms. A comforting thought came to him: Màiri had borne many children. This one would be no trouble. Still, she was older now and a prayer wouldna go amiss. He reached for his rosary and began to quietly request the benevolent intervention of Our Lord, covering the sounds of pain from above with his whispering.

Time passed, the fire began to hiss as the broth spat. Aonghus pushed a steaming bowl in front of father and was fetching a spoon when a different sound caused my father to look up. Around the walls of the kitchen, the swords in their scabbards began to rattle where they hung; the small round targes began to swing on their hooks. Then, one by one, the locks of the muskets in their rack began to click and cock into place of their own accord as if readying for battle. The two men paused in wonder at this strangeness, looking at the weapons, the ripples in the soup bowls on the table, then at each other. In a few moments, the rattling of the arms stopped and silence returned, to be replaced by an altogether different sound. Upstairs, someone very small, was none too pleased at the first view of his new home.

I was wailing in the midwife’s arms, chord still attached, when my father burst into the chamber.

‘Did you hear the rattling of the swords and shields as the child was born?! Is it a boy or a girl?’ He seemed unable to decide which of the two important questions to cram through his lips first.

It was my mother, Màiri, that answered. ‘It is a boy,’ she said from the birthing-chair,

The servant girl dabbed my exhausted mother’s face with a cold cloth; the midwife was already readying the chord to cut.

‘It is a portent!’ cried my father anxiously. ‘The guns below at the wall cocked themselves.’

Staring down at me he said, ‘It is an evil portent. Indeed it is! Swords rattling at the wall of this house while he was born. Get a bucket! Drown the child at once!’

He made a grab for me from the midwife’s arms and she dropped the chord-cutting knife in surprise, surrendering me to his assertive grasp. I have no doubt he would have killed me in that moment had not my mother spoken up.

‘You’ll do no such thing!’ she demanded, struggling to raise her limp body from the seat. She locked eyes with my father, then the midwife, one of the NicBhiocair women from the lower farm, perhaps expecting her to speak out or retrieve me from him.

‘There’s nothing evil in this portent at all,’ offered the midwife, hesitantly. She turned a knowing smile upon them, one after another, landing it finally upon my father, giving time to collect her thoughts.

‘Tis but the boy will grow to be a great warrior, just like his father. The arms know it well.’ She smiled, reaching for my bloody body wriggling in his hands, held up roughly like a half drowned and wailing cat.

‘Mmph!’ was his grudging acknowledgement after a moment. He thrust me back to the NicBhiocair woman.

‘We’ll call him Alasdair,’ my mother said to my father’s retreating back. She had named me after his uncle, great uncle and great, great grandfather, knowing well, as a daughter of NicDhòmhnaill herself, the family pride that she could call upon for male flattery and manipulation. Having named me, she let out a sigh, closed her eyes and sunk against the hard wooden chair. There was another “Mmph” from my father and he withdrew from the room.

‘I was in great fear the master was for murdering this wee man,’ said the NicBhiocair woman while she cleaned me.

‘Mmmph,’ echoed my mother, her eyes still closed, ‘My husband is in great want of some nourishment in his head.’ She looked at me properly then.

‘Alasdair MacColla Ciotach Mhic Dhòmhnaill,’ she said, giving me my full name. ‘Well, mo bhalaich, you are after being given a warrior’s life. Will you take it?’

NicBhiocair looked up at the question, but it was not to her that my mother was speaking.

‘You’ll be needing it, my son,’ she said, closing her eyes. ‘The Lord and myself know how much you’ll be needing it.’

Anno Domini 1639

I awoke with a start from the grip on my shoulder.

‘Alasdair!’ came a harsh whisper. ‘Wake yourself! Your father is after sending me. He says you must away. Wake you Alasdair!’

The stranger shook my shoulder again as I tried to make sense of what he had said.

‘Wake you, Alasdair. I am to tell you “Remember the night at Smerby when you were a boy, and the game. The answer was ‘a sea pig’.” He said you’d know what that meant.’

The voice in the dark waited, perhaps for a response. I could see him dimly, but I didna think I knew him. I looked to my younger brother’s bed at the other end of the room, but it was silent and in darkness.

‘Aye?’ I croaked, not much awake, my mouth furred with last night’s ale.

‘He said to tell you that you must leave the island, tonight. Go to Antrim, Alasdair. You are in danger. That is his message. Go now.’

My head hurt from the quickness of waking, sleep draining from my blood, and I mumbled to the intruder to repeat his words.

‘Your father says you are to leave the island tonight. There is danger. Go to Antrim. He said you’d know the message was from him when I said “the answer to the riddle at Smerby was muc-mara.” Does it mean aught to ye?’

‘Aye. What has happened?’ I asked, the sense of danger rising in me to join the nausea of a rude awakening. ‘Who are you yourself?’ I could not see his face clearly in the gloom of the bedroom. He carried no light. I could smell the sea air on him though.

‘Just a friend, Alasdair, a friend to your father. Your father and brother have been taken prisoner.’

‘What! By whom?’ I pushed his hand from me and struggled back the covers, my wits sharpening.

‘By the Earl of Argyll. And there’s not a thing that you yourself can do for it and a host is being sent against this very house to take you while ye lie here. Get you up!’ He pulled the covers fully from me and put a hand under my oxter, hauling me upwards. ‘Your father sent a warnin’. Ye must away! Ye’ll know I speak for your father when I say the answer to the riddle at Smerby was muc-mara.’

‘Aye, I hear ye,’ I said. ‘I’m up.’

The shadowy face was close to mine, but still I didna know him, it seemed. He waited only a moment to satisfy himself that I had understood him, then he stepped from me. The quiet sneck of the closing door and his feet on the stairs told of his departure. I couldna imagine how he’d got into the house.

My head clearing, I began to pull on my clothes. The mention of the game we had played at Smerby when I was child told me the message was a true one, for no one beyond our family would have understood it. Muc-mara, a sea-pig, a whale as they cry it in English. I had a vision of my father louping around the drawing room of Smerby House under a big blue plaid, making the strangest noises. We, the young children were squealing with pretended fear and the older ones and the adults rolling about with laughter. The game was one where we had to guess what he was. He was fair worn out by the time we did, his hair matted to his head with sweat. His turn as a muc-mara became a thing often retold in our house, but few others would have known of it.

These memories came to me in my rapidly waking state as I searched darkness for clothing. Whatever reason he’d called that memory to mind, it was important that I believe the messenger to be true. For why had the messenger gone already?

I pulled back the heavy drapes from the small window. It was the middle of the night, but already the June dawn threw a pale ocean-blue light across the fields around the house. There was no sign of the messenger.

Still dressing, I went to the bed of my younger brother Ragnald that lay at the far end of the chamber. I threw back his drapes and as quickly a possible instilled a sense of urgency in him. I gave Ragnald only the simplest knowledge that we had to leave the island and that father had been imprisoned. With no answers to his questions, we gathered some of his belongings by a dim light.

‘Go you and check outside,’ I said to Ragnald as I filled a bag. ‘See if there’s any person about. Go quiet, mind.’ He closed the dorlach he was packing and threw it across his shoulder.

In the kitchen a few minutes later I was grabbing some food supplies with the help of a house-servant that I had wakened.

‘You know what to do?’ I asked of the woman-servant. ‘The valuables, the deeds?’

‘Aye, Master Alasdair. We’ll take care o’ things afore this hour’s passed,’ she confirmed.

‘And the cattle?’

‘I said so,’ she answered with impatience, stuffing a wrapped cheese into my bag.

Ragnald came in the front door, closing it quietly.

‘I can see no one,’ he said. ‘Are ye to tell me what this is about?’

‘Soon as I know myself, brother. For now we must away.’

Ragnald handed me my sea-cape, we took the bags and made for the boatman’s house.

Click or scan the QR code to be taken to the website or use this link to visit Bandcamp for the paperback. The first two chapters can be heard as an Audio Book via the next post on this Tumblr page.

Alasdair - The Irish Exile Years from Scot AnSgeulaiche

Alasdair - The Irish Exile Years from Scot AnSgeulaiche

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Carlisle Castle

The photo is a quick drive-by that I took of Carlisle Castle when I was down in the English border town the other day. Rather like the character in the following true story, I don't get down to England too often - don't like to cross the border.

There were, in the 16th century, six border "marches", or border land territories between England and Scotland, three on each side of the rough line that divides the two countries, "west, middle and east marches". Each had a "march warden" appointed by the respective crowns, to keep the peace of this lawless region between the two countries. Indeed, the Scottish and English West Marches, were termed the "Debatable Lands" as none could agree where the border actually lay.

One of the peculiar conventions of this area and time were the "truce days" when ordinarily antagonistic families and officials could come together in a kind of fair, leave weapons behind, deal with disputes and perhaps conduct trade (possibly of prisoners).

In 1596 the Scottish west march warden positon was vacant, but as the leading family of the area, the Scotts of Buccleuch ("bucklew") sent a posse to the Kershopefoot Truce Day gathering, to represent any issues concerning the Scottish West March. As the day concluded, one of their number, a well known 'borrower of English cattle' by the name of Kinmont Willie Armstrong was riding home along the banks of the Liddlewater, on the Scottish side (a moot point, as this area was in the Debatable Lands). A patrol of English were riding along the southern side of the river, under the English deputy warden, Salkeld or Saukeld.

They crossed the water and arrested Kinmont Willie, against the convention of the Truce Days. They bundled him off to Carlisle Castle. As he entered he warned Salkled, "I never had a night's lodging but that I paid the worth of it."

When young Scott of Buccleuch heard of the arrest of Kinmont Willie, who was acting as his deputy or representative that day, he was furious. He wrote to the English warden Scroope at Carlisle Castle, complaining of the illegality of such arrest. Scroope stood by deputy Saukeld, writing back to Scott that the matter was none of his business.

Some weeks went by, during which Scott laid his careful plan and picked his men. Late on the Saturday night, eighty riders set off in three troops. In the first were the trumpeters, the second bore arms, the third carried ladders. All had blackened armour, muffled horse-tack and there was to be NO RAIDING along the way. They were off to "break the corbie's nest".

The rain poured heavily as they came to Carlisle Castle. They soon found that the ladders were too short, so they went to the small postern gate of the castle and, one assumes with an inside man, they were let inside.

They knew in which house to find Willie because his wife had visited him in the castle since his arrest. The raiding party easily took him from the cell with scarcely a dunted head of the guards.

As they put Willie on the spare horse and rode quickly for Scotland, the trumpet troop sounded their horns to make sure that Scroope knew he'd lost his prize prisoner.

Scroope was furious at this 'lifting' of a prisoner and immediately wanted to know how the raiders had just walked in and freed Kinmont Willie. Scroope's intelligence gathering about the plan was fabulous AFTER the prisoner had been sprung. He soon found that he and his deputy were in a small club of people that DIDN'T know in advance about the plot to free the prisoner. He spent the next year gathering all the evidence to provide for his excuses to Queen Elizabeth, his boss. In his report, the 80 raiders were 500 and the postern gate had been breached by digging beneath it (through solid rock, in one night, it seems). He even claimed that two guards had been killed.

Queen Elizabeth too was furious, mostly with the young Scott, whose head she wanted. Nothing came of that however.

Three years later the young Scott was in London and suggested he'd like to kiss the hand of the queen. The tall and handsome Borderer went in to the chamber and bowed low. She asked "How do you dare to break my castle?" He gave her a charming smile and replied "What is there that a man will not dare?" He bowed low and swept out of the chamber. Queen Bess remarked to one of here aids "If King James of Scotland had ten thousand like him, there is not throne in Europe could he not shake."

Carlisle Castle, "the corbies' nest" is still very much there, although I did not care to step inside the other day. Perhaps if there were 79 other Scots with me…

This piece of Borders' history is just one aspect of border culture that still resonates today, adding interest, personality and a sense of independence to the people of the region. This trait is just one reason why the Borders offers such interest to me as both a tour guide and visitor. We'll be back touring there in 2023, but I guess we'll go mob-handed, with longer ladders.

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Celtic Spring

I was thinking about Imbolc, a quarter-day in the Celtic calendar that has just passed on February 2nd or thereabouts. It is a celebration of the water element, of wells, springs and the birth of lambs.

Have you ever considered why in the English language we use the same word for the first season of the year and for places where water issues forth from the earth?

What is the connection between the change in the season and the waters flowing?

To the Celtic mind the "breaking of the waters" that happens when both the ewes give birth and the ice melts on the wells and springs are mirrors of each other. The Celtic mind sees connections that have been forgotten in the modern, Western mind.

We have a deity of the waters and the wells and indeed of birthing in general, her name is Birgit. In the understanding of the Celt, the human is also breaking forth at this time of the year, gearing up to the planting season, to the coming summer.

I would think that this idea doesn't seem much of a revelation to your modern mind too. There is a logic, a flow, a correctness that one can feel in the lengthening of the days and the expansion of ones own mind, mood, body, spirit.

We also have the concept of Spring Clean. For those familiar with the energy concept of Fung Shui, clearing the house also effects a similar clearing of mental clutter, precipitating a lightening of the spirit.

To the Celts, one way to focus, to encapsulate this general concept of breaking out, of refreshing, of de-cluttering the house and the human was the festival of Imbolc, one of the four quarter-day, elemental festivals of the year, celebrated around the second of February.

This image is of an Imbolc well clearing, where the leaf-filled well beneath the strange, instructional headstone, is emptied of fallen leaves, the mud removed until the water flows clear and the site generally beautified with clouties (strips of cloth that carry a prayer for health), until next year, when it is done again. The clearing of the well not only provides drinking water, but for the participants it marks the turn of the natural and human cycles. The mud-filled activity is a small ceremony, putting things into rightness.

A friend once said to me when I discovered a rather inconvenient temporary spring of water gushing up in the middle of my access track, "We must always revere the places where Mother Earth chooses to issue forth her waters". Indeed.

Some ancients springs are still very much revered and cared for. The image below is in a remote part of the Borders. It is a place I like to visit on the Borders Tour each year whenever possible.

The water magically appears at one end of what is now a pool, created as such by generations of Celts, then the Romans, then the Saxons, right through to the 20th century when various 'stakeholders' from the local village and beyond have made efforts to keep this place clean, calm, beautified. In short, to make it a sacred well.

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The Lost City of Roxburgh

This edition of Scottish Curios comes in the form of a film. Roxburgh was one of Scotland's five principle cities in the medieval period. Where did it go?

[18 minute watch]

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[3 minute read]

If you read Scottish stories gathered from the oral tradition you might come across mention of the "kail yard". Inference will tell you that it equates to the modern word "garden" or if you're from the Americas, "the yard". Here is a true story, translated from Gàidhlig, taken from the Dewar Manuscripts. As the story opens, Tearlach Stewart of Ardsheil, Jacobite leader, is pursued to his home in the aftermath of Culloden (1746) by the British Army under Captain Scott:

"The laird of Ardsheil thought that because the soldiers were within the wood, he might rise and flee the other way. He rose and went for fleeing, but when he was only a short distance from the barn he heard a whistle and got warning that the soldiers were returning and were but a short distance away. The laird of Ardsheil was a heavy man and could not run fast, consequently he knew that it was useless for him to try to flee. He went into the kail-yard and lay down among the large kail which was there. The lady of Ardsheil rose and not knowing where her husband was hidden went into the kail-yard. Captain Scott went into the garden [and questioned Lady Ardsheil]. [The captain] went out of the garden and the soldiers that were searching did not enter the garden at all and this saved the laird of Ardsheil from being taken."

But surely this "kail" can't refer to that fashionable, Italian leafy vegetable super-food, can it? Even if it did grow in Scotland, how could a large man hide amongst two foot high plants? In fact it does refer to the same plant. For centuries it was a staple for human and animal alike in the Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland. It was pretty much the only green thing we grew in our Scottish gardens. Scots had a limited diet, even into the 20th century in some places, but as modern dietitians will tell you, kale ticks many boxes on the nutrition and fibre fronts.

A few years ago I discovered that the kale of the historical "kail-yard" was not the curly-leafed Italian kale found in your market, but what I now call "Scottish Kale", a tall, small-leaved, paler green variety. Having grown it now in my raised-kale-bed for a few years, a local farmer confirmed that he recalled it forty years ago grown in the fields as a seven foot high crop used for cattle fodder.

In the photograph of the plants above, the left is the "Scottish Kale", the right is "Cavolo Nero" type that you may well see in the shops. All the yellow flowers are kale, so you can see the height Scottish kail can reach.

The plate-up is Scotch Pie and steamed Kale. A balanced Scottish diet and I'll fight any dietician that says it's not.

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If you'd enjoy seeing some new footage from the beautiful Scottish Highlands, then this ten minute short film is for you.

Click the link to see the film.

Background: in covid lock down 2021, I gathered nine musicians to remotely create a piece of music to celebrate our area of Strathearn, our culture and most importantly our local arts venue, Strathearn Arts. They liked the piece and commissioned a short film to accompany it. This is the result.

The audio track can be purchased for download on https://scotansgeulaiche.bandcamp.com/track/crieff-fairs-kiss-and-a-rose

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The Language of the Gael

[5 min read] 

Native to the western fringe of Europe are Celtic languages.  I have always been fascinated by the way a language allows you to see intimately into the mindset of a people.  It is often quoted that the Inuit have 40 words for snow, but I doubt people think deeply about how that works in practice and whether the Inuit would cope with describing the colours of trees and grass. It's not just about words to describe, but what can apparently 'see' without a word to describe the thing.

The Celts have a group of about six related languages. They divide into two groups: there are the languages of Scottish and Irish Gàidhlig and Gaeilge which are alike to one another; then there are Cornish, Cymraeg (Welsh), Brezhoneg (Bretton) and Manx which share a lot.  In fact, linguistically, all six sit in a camp of "Goedelic" and share traits and indeed many words in common.

They are quite old languages, perhaps about 4000 years, in comparison to say German, French and English which are only about 1000 years old.

Let's talk about colour.  We are very familiar with how a westerner describes colour:  There are the three primary colours of RGB and in addition we can all agree on what yellow, orange, kakhi, rust, bottle-green and about ten other colours would look like.  We also would agree how to group colours such as lapis, sky-blue, cobalt and turquoise into a camp called "blues". This is not the same across the world.  

The Gaels do not group colours as being alike in the same way as those whose mother tongue and constructs are English.  I'll give you just one example.  A person with blonde hair has the same colour-name as a white cow's fur (bàn); yet the 'white' of the cow is a different colour-name to the 'white' of a celestial angel (geal); and further a very pale blonde-haired person has a different colour-name again (fionn).  These words and colours are not related in the mind of a gael. They are different colours.  They are not all "whites".

OK, just one more example:  To the Gael (and to a degree the Manxman, Cornish woman etc) the colour that is grass in the fullness of a rich wet summer growth is the same as the colour of someone who has "blue eyes".  Both are rich and warm colours, that's the link.

There are other linguistic curiosities to the non-Gàidhlig speaker's mind. There is no word for "yes" or "no" in Gaeldom; there is no verb "to have".  Yes and no are easily handled by answering the question by simply repeating the asked verb in the positive or negative e.g. "Will you take a dram, Scot" to which I will always respond "Will take", unless I am driving in which case it is "Will not take". As to the verb "to have", how on earth does a Gael get by without being able to say "I have a coat lying around this pub somewhere. Who has my coat?"  A Gael must say "The coat that is at me is lying around this pub somewhere.  At who is the coat at that is at me?"

Interestingly, this "at me" construction is used for and implies that said object is not "mine" in any permanent or ownership way but is only temporarily at me and can be lost (see the coat above).  However, some things can be "mine" and permanently so:  My name, my fingers and legs.  These are described by "mo" meaning "my" such as "mo fhalt, mo lamh" meaning "my hair, my hand". They are mine permanently in Gàidhlig.  The spousal concept of "my wife" can be formed using either construction "the woman at me" or "my wife".  I leave you to draw conclusions there.

During covid lockdown and with anticipation of the ability to tour the western linguistic fringe of Celtdom again, former and future tour guests and myself have been having some fun with investigating the Gàidhlig language. I have been gearing them up and equiping them with words, concepts, stories and most importantly a little of the Gael's mindset for their coming journeys into the heart of Gaeldom.

www.ansgeulaiche.co.uk

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Celtic Introverts

I was listening to adventurer and explorer Ben Fogle speaking about why being alone in nature offers us a personal challenge.  It got me thinking about the Celtic hermetic tradition of the first millenium AD where monks would isolate themselves in very remote places, frequently alone, and I wondered if Ben and the monks share a motivation.

Humans are a social animal, meaning that we would not enjoy the survival our species has had were it not for the way that we group together and work collectively.  The tasks of food gathering, rearing children, developing tools and technology, all of these require more than one of us to progress.  Going off alone into the wilderness presents a real risk.  And it's not just a matter of skills, experience or training, but a matter of mind, of spirit, of fear and resolve.

In early Medieval Scottish Christian history there was a proliferation of Cille:  Stone cells where early Irish Christian monks lived in remote areas of the Scottish west coast, sometimes in small communities, but apparently founded by solo hermits.

[Photo: Aileach an Naoimh, just half a mile long and 200 yards wide, by author] 

In the middle of the Firth of Lorn, in the Southern Hebrides, lies a short chain of four islands rendered more remote than the few miles of sea around them by whirlpools, tidal gates and surges.  They are collectively called Na Garbh Aileach - the rough stony place.  One of them is known as Aileach an Naoimh - the saint's stony place.  Here in about 525 AD an early Irish missionary created a monk's cell (some of which still survives).  You might be familiar with the more famous Skellig Mhicheal of the west of Ireland.  These two communities were very similar in religion, purpose and the 'Beehive’ dwellings.

[Photo Skelig Mhicheal by Philip Kosloski]

Many spiritual traditions have this hermetic tradition:  you go into the wilderness and come up against yourself, against your fears.  You step into risk.  As Ben Fogle said in his interview "The wilderness strips you of any bravado".  That is an important tenet in Celtic Christianity at least. Ben explains "Using risk helps me to grow".

In the late 20th century a Londoner and his girlfriend decided to re-inhabit the largest of the Garvelach islands.  They rebuilt a broken down dwelling with the materials they could find and foraged food.  There was a boat that came very infrequently, in passing, and could bring items.  Apparently "Have you brought chocolate?" was the girlfriend's most pressing question of the skipper.  She didn't stay too long on the island.  He lasted two years. (See scans of the article.)

I heard a lovely definition of introvert / extrovert personalities recently:  an introvert can recharge themselves while alone; an extrovert needs to be around other people to rest, relax and recuperate.  In practice this would mean that an introvert can bring themselves back to balance by a solo hill walk, while an extrovert needs the Friday night out with the girls. Does this play a part in the need for wilderness for some, but not all of us?  Is this part of the root of the Celtic hermetic tradition?

I have managed to visit Aileach an Naoimh twice (by chartered boat) and seen the cells where monks lived more than 1000 years ago.  I really would like to include it on the new Pilgrimage to the Inner Isles tour that I am hosting.  It’s a thought provoking place.

[Photo Eithne’s Grave, mother of Saint Columba, by author.]

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The Dead Day - December 22nd

Over time and place, the various Celtic peoples have had a number of calendars and ways to shape into human terms the solar year.  Today, the calendar used across the western world and for the world wide web and space exploration is Roman.  It has had a few changes from Pope Gregory to the current Pope Julian's calendar, but it's a weird political hash of 12 unequal divisions which they still call "moonths" even though they don't adhere to their namesake of the moon cycle of 28 days.

In the ancient Celtic and Scandinavian areas (to give them useful but inaccurate labels) the people had various ways of dividing the year.  There is the agricultural calendar with its pivot points close to May 1 and October 31, these being the start of the planting season and the end of the harvest.  Vestiges of this calendar are found in our modern one as May Day and Hallowe'en.

The druidical priest class perhaps measured the year from winter and summer solstices.  It's hard to tell: the Romans did a really good job of exterminating that branch of thought.  From this priestly calendar comes a tradition that I still celebrate.  I may be the only one and may have made up half of the tradition myself, but I call it the Dead Day.  It is the day after the winter solstice, usually December 22nd or 23rd.

       ~~ Dawn of the Dead (Day) from our house, 2009

What is the Dead Day?  It is what Robert Graves the poet described as "an intercalery day" where the solar year has ended and we must wait to see if the days begin to lengthen again.  That happens TWO days later.  There were 364 days in the druid calendar and one intercalery day that is, as the name suggests, outside of, between calendar years. To the Celts, anything that exists between being one thing and another is a place of the Wee Folk, of spirit, of magic.

The day is one of holding one's breath, not literally, but in emotion or spirit.  It is a day of introspection, of expectation, of observance in the truest sense of the word: to watch, to observe to await the outcome.  Perhaps it is a day to pray that the sun will return tomorrow, for there is some doubt about that.

It is an appropriate day for things which in the self need a lack of noise so that they can bubble up and be heard. It is a time to reivew the year, one's past trajectory, and because there is no expectation of accomplishing anything on this day, to throw away any parts of the master plan and redirect our focus a little into the coming year which will hopefully begin on the following day.  Perhaps another vestige of this tradition is making New Year's resolutions.

For many years I have marked this day, usually beginning before dawn.  I recall hosting a day in one large beautiful room of an Irish retreat centre with half a dozen friends.  It was a confined day of silence, of undertaking simple, contemplative activities: journalling, sleeping, dreaming, drawing out symbols of focus. So attuned did I become to the movement of the sun that I swear I could feel (although could not see) the moment the sun set. I broke silence to complete the ceremony with the words "A few moments ago, the sun set and something new began".

A few years later I felt the need to return to the practice of clearing the spirit, so it was a day spent sat alone in a forest in contemplation with a only campfire to keep me company until the sun set and I could return to a warm house and waiting wife.

    ~~ A day of contemplation, Dead Day 2003

Three winters later was a time of "big decisions" in our life and we spent two days in a neighbour's empty house making ceremony using tools for decision-making.  From that, we moved from the West Coast and came to live in central Scotland, changed how we express our working life and let go a few norms of our previous 'habit'.

    ~~ A Wisdom Council, Solstice 2006

Seven years ago we had a gathering of friends at our home, told stories and one of our guests piped the sun down while we all stood in the snow watching and listening.

~~  Piping out the old and in the new as the sun sets

This year, to mark the Dead Day I am writing this article, looking out on the brightest, clearest sky we have had for at least a month.  Perhaps as the new year for me begins tomorrow, the sun is saying that 2021 will be brighter than 2020.  But that is as far as I am prepared to go in offering some bon-mot with which to end this article.  Is there some grand generalisation I am going to extrapolate from the Dead Day to illuminate our current times?  No.  It's for you to decide if the Dead Day has any relevance in your year.

    ~~ Dead Day 2020, our garden

[scottishhighlandtraditions]

Scot's Gàidhlig Lessons for Visitors.  I have been hosting lessons in this most ancient of European languages for a couple of months now.  It’s time to open it to new students!  

The classes are particularly aimed at those wanting to visit the Highlands of Scotland or to simply gain a deeper understanding of this Celtic culture through its native language.

A new course will begin soon.  To show interest, find out more, join, you will need to be on the email list.

http://eepurl.com/dtkwCj

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Brigit and Imbolc

These are Bride’s Crosses or Saint Brigit’s Crosses. They are part of the spiritual traditions of the Gaeltachd (Gàidhlig speaking areas) particularly the west of Ireland and the Western Isles of Scotland.

The three pictured crosses are for my wedding couples this coming year as “Brides’ Crosses”. They were woven during the storms around Imbolc this year, the beginning of February.  With flooded roads and driving rain outside, sitting by the fire and catching up on Bride’s Cross making seemed appropriate.  In hindsight, my timing may have been more of an archetypal response than I realised.

Who or what is Bride or Brigit?

Brigit is the only Celtic pre-Christian deity to be canonized and brought into Catholic Christianity as Saint Brigit. The reason she was ‘permitted’ seems to be that they could not get rid of her!  In the Celtic culture she is / was the Goddess of so many aspects of daily life that she could not be substituted for another saint.  She was almost as omnipresent and the Christian God.

Perhaps a further reason that she retained her status was that she is so very like the qualities associated with Mary, Mother of Jesus.  Indeed, within the Gaeltachd, the two women are often interchangeable, as found in this blessing collected by Alexander Carmichael in the Western Isles in the 1800s.

Brigit of the Mantles, Brigit of the Peat Heap, Brigit of the Twining Hair, Brigit of the Augury.

Brigit of the White Feet, Brigit of Calmness, Brigit of the White Palms, Brigit of the Kine.

Brigit woman comrade, Brigit of the peat heap, Brigit woman helper, Brigit woman mild.

I shall not be slain, I shall not be wounded, I shall not be torn asunder, I shall not be despoiled.

Nor sun shall burn me, nor fire shall burn me, nor beam shall burn me, nor moon shall burn me.

I am under the keeping of my Saint Mary, My companion beloved is Brigit.

And again in this blessing, also found within Carmichael’s collection (which is available online in sacred-texts.org)

As an annotation to the text , Carmichael writes:

“The nun referred to is Brigit, of whom Broccan's Hymn says, 'She was not a milkmaid of a mountain-side; she wrought in the midst of a plain.' ”

On name

She has a number of name-versions, many found in Ireland as names for women, such as Bride, Bridie, Brìd (pron. Breej), Birgit (in Germany) and Brighd. If you know of anyone of these names, then it is for Her that she is named.

Calendars

February 1st or 2nd is Imbolc or Oimelle in the pagan calendar.  It is one of the four cross-quarter days of the year (the quarter days are the equinoxes and solstices; the cross-quarters sit between these dividing the year into eight parts).

As anyone who lives above 50° latitude will know, the middle of winter is not December 31st, but Imbolc, February 1st or 2nd : the coldest winds, the deepest snow, the drivingest rains are in February.  This is the time when we stay indoors; this is Brigit’s time.  It might perhaps be an appropriate day to sit making Bride’s Crosses

February second is also the “Purification of Saint Mary the Virgin” in the Catholic calendar. Yet again, making association of Mary with Brigit.  

Brigit’s Blessings on the Home

In the Gaeltachd, Brigit’s Cross is often placed in the home to bring in her blessing.  Small three or four armed crosses are placed above the door, above the fireplace, or tucked into the eaves.

It is for this purpose that some brides at weddings request a cross from me. Those whom I have married, and who received a cross during the ceremony, will know that there is a blessing or two that go along with it, requesting the inspiration, the qualities of Brigit (“Brigit of the Mantles, Brigit of the Peat Heap, Brigit of the Meal Chest, Brigit of the Hearth Fire...”)  I always give the Cross to the Groom of Bride, reminding him of his role and responsibilities in the domestic arrangement.   At this point you might have noticed that a woman about to be married is called Bride, just like the Goddess. This is not a coincidence.  On that day, the woman is the daughter of, the acolyte of Brigit, the personification of the the Goddess.  You could call the bride a “Domestic Goddess”, literally.

Brigit’s Shrines 

There are many sites in the west dedicated to Brigit (and a few to Mary) which are clearly pagan, Celtic Christian or Catholic (and probably all three).   In Scotland there are just over 300 known about today, from wells to churches. Cille Bhrìde, Kilbride and Kirkbride are all variations on the name.

This picture from the national monuments record is of St Bride’s Chapel in a somewhat remote part of Argyll, not far from where I used to live.  Little is known about this church, but it is speculated to be from the 1300s and to have fallen into disuse when the national religion changed from Catholicism to Protestantism in the reformation of 1560.

A theme of interest from my tour guests over the years, particularly the women, has been “the Goddess in the Landscape”, meaning the earlier venerations of female deities found in the grander canvas of Scotland’s west coast.  Brigit strikes one as being the last expression of a feminine-centred appreciation of mountains, rivers and glens.  I have and will continue to take pilgrims to tucked-away shrines to the Goddess / Saint in our ventures into the remote parts of Scotland (Western Isles, Inner Isles and so on).

(Pic: A roadside shrine to Mary in Ireland, from RoaringWaterJournal)

Depictions of the Goddess

Much of this description of Brigit sounds historical, but the resilient nature of this feminine force means she is alive today.  

This is Brigit depicted by Hamish Douglas Burgess, Celtic artist and piper.   Some of you have had the benefit of his artistic perspective on our tours recently as a co-guide.  In writing about this artwork, Hamish says

“Tradition has it that she walks the earth Imbolc eve, and the portrait shows Bride with her white wand and open mouth said to “breathe life into the mouth of dead Winter, and bring him to open his eyes to the tears and smiles, the sighs and laughter of Spring” (Carmina Gadelica Vol.1).”

and

“Brigid is the triple goddess of Smithcraft (with Celtic warriors invoking her protection before battle) represented here by the hammer and tongs; Healing represented by the serpent (still seen on the medical staff of today); and Poetry and the Arts represented by the smoke coming from the fire of inspiration on her head.”

You can find more about Hamish’s art here:  http://mauiceltic.com/gallery.htm

At this time of year, I particularly like the temporal notion of Brigit that Hamish describes here

“Another symbol of Brigid is the Serpent, who at this time of year was said to come out of her hole, like the badger, to see if the warming weather will affect her winter sleep.  A fine frosty day forbode more winter ahead, but a cloudy day meant the quick end of winter. This tradition continued in the Americas, with European settlers seeing this habit from a new animal, and is now Groundhog Day.”

May Brigit hold you in the palm of her hand this spring.

(Pic: St Bride’s Kirk, Atholl, from Undiscovered Scotland)

(Pic: gathering luachar for making Bride’s Crosses.)

[scottishhighlandtraditions]

All in a photograph

It’s quite a poor-quality photo (actually a few photos) that I took 17 years ago on my first digital camera, then stitched them together to give a panoramic image, but... there’s quite a lot in it.

It was taken in a remote area on the west coast of Scotland, (Mid Argyll to be specific) where I used to live.  The image looks west into the Atlantic, across what you will agree is a fractured coast line.  

I’m just about to host my first long public tour into this area, so I was looking for images that show some of the area’s interest.  This one is a beezer.  

Not that you can tell by looking at the photo, which is pretty enough, but there are so many place-stories within it, invisible to the eye of the viewer, which is kind of the point about having a guided tour - to get to the less obvious stuff.

Let’s dive into the photo, from left to right.

The area circled is on the north end of the Isle of Jura (reaching to the left).  It’s a remote farm by a bay of seals, called Barnhill.  This is where Eric Blair in 1949 completed his novel “Nineteen Eighty Four”, under his pen name George Orwell.  There are still stories about Eric told by the islanders.

Between the north of Jura and the next island north (Scarba) is Coire Bhreacan, the third largest whirlpool in the world.  When the tide is strong and the whole Atlantic is trying to get through that gap, you can hear the whirlpool roar from where this photo was taken, four miles away.  There’s many a mystical legend and ship-wreck concerned with the Coire.

On the north side of Scarba is another passage of the sea, like the Coire, but much narrower.  It is wide enough for a fairly large ship to come through, at a couple of hundred yards, but it is the only piece of water around the British Isles deemed by the Admiralty as “un-navigable”, due to it’s sunken rocks and a tidal race, like the Coire, of six knots in the full of the flow.  That’s enough to stop most boats in their tracks.

The isle of Scarba, between these two dangerous tidal races, is uninhabited but it has a house on it and did have a somewhat isolated population in the past.

Lying inside the almost-wall of these islands are a couple of small islets called Rèisa Mhic Phaidean and Rèisa an t-Sruith.  When sailing once out there with a rather taciturn skipper, he did say a few words, enough to tell me that there are is a type of water vole that is found on the islands, presumably dropped there by some ancient boat, but that these voles have evolved to be a digging species and are genetically different to mainland populations due to long term isolation.

If you could see it in the above image, then you would behold the girt force of Craignish Castle, at least 600 years old and a Campbell stronghold that held out against Alasdair MacColla in our civil war.  He said of it, while giving up the siege, “Only stone and lime and the Campbells of Craignish remained loyal to the Marquis of Argyll” (against whom he and the king were fighting).  The castle is also the home of someone with whom I used to do Tai-Chi.

Twenty-odd miles away as a backdrop to this vista is the mountain of Beinn Mòr on the Isle of Mull (also part of the new Inner Isles Pilgrimage tour).  It is the tallest mountain in the area, as you can perhaps just see in the picture.  In the 1500s, Doideag, a powerful witch lived on this mountain and sometimes helped the chief of Clan MacLean win his battles.

Just visible beyond the foreground is Eilean Righ, the King’s Island.  It lies just a couple of hundred yards off the near shore, but is is fairly remote as there is no easy access to it as it sits in Loch Craignish, a sea loch.  In 1938 it was bought by Reginald Johnson as a retirement home.  He needed an easier life.   Never heard of him?  He was the tutor to Puyi, the last Emperor of China (you remember the film with Peter O’Toole?) and was one of the few westerners to enter, and indeed live, in the Forbidden City, Beijing.  He left there when the Emperor himself was expelled during the 1924 Chinese coup.  He served as a China ambassador until he moved to Eilean Righ, where he built a Chinese garden and raised a flag pertaining to the last Emperor.

I have just touched on the above few stories contained in this picture and there are more that I have left out.  It’s a rich area.

I’m really looking forward to going back to this old homeland of mine and showing new visitors (and old) both areas that I have taken guests to for many years and areas where I’ve waited 18 years to take people, enthusiastic, willing and intrepid, to experience its beauty.  That’s what makes it a pilgrimage.

Dates for the tour will be published next week, and as usual subscribers to the Mailchimp email list will get advanced notice.

[scottishhighlandtraditions]

The Killing of Colin Campbell

This is a story you might be familiar with.  The great Scottish author, Robert Louis Stevenson in his book Kidnapped made use of it as a sub-plot.  The fictional character in the book, young David Balfour, meets the real-life person of Alan Breck Stewart.  They accidentally witness and are suspected of the murder of a King’s agent, Colin Campbell.  Their pursuit as suspected murderers makes Alan Breck’s position as an illegal Jacobite agent even more dangerous.

While three parts of RLS’s work is a marvel of fiction writing, one part is true story.  Colin Campbell really was killed by an unknown gunman in 1752, just a day before he was due to evict tenants of the Crown.  His plan to clear a dozen Stewarts from Glen Duror and put Campbells in their places was well known in the spring of 1752.  James Stewart, a leading campaigner for the community, was the first man that the authorities suspected of the murder plot.  The Georgian government came down hard on him, panicking that this killing might be the start of the 5th Jacobite uprising, just six years after the last and most famous rebellion.

On the afternoon of May 14th, Colin Campbell crossed the loch by the Bail’ a’ Chaolais ferry.  The one-eyed ferryman, Archibald MacInnes*, had the second sight.  Archibald advised Colin that it would be better not to go by the coast road to stay in Glen Duror that evening.  It would be safer for Colin to take the hill route and go home instead.

Colin scoffed at this advice, saying that he would be perfectly safe, despite entering a land held by families of Stewarts (at Bail’ a Chaolais House and Ard Seile House).  Archibald, countered with “Well, if you must go to Glen Duror, go by boat, not land, and have the boat go down the middle of the loch out of reach of a ball”, meaning a musket. Colin was not persuaded.

Half an hour later, he was dead.  Shot in the back by assailants unknown.  Whoever it was, even the Crown admitted it wasn’t James Stewart, but they hanged him anyway for being, under Scottish law, “Airt and Pairt” of the crime - that is, an accomplice.

The location of Colin’s death is both known and still marked to this day. I have spent much time in the area and at the various scenes of the real-life drama over the years. In this video, I take you there.

* Incidentally, 250 years later, I preformed a marriage ceremony for one of Archibald MacInnes’ clan.

[scottishhighlandtraditions]

Days That Killed Our Ancestors

It's a beautiful, bright, sunny February day here in Scotland.  It's a balmy 6° in the shade (44°F) and warmer in the sun.  It's a day to give you hope and relieve some of the despair of winter.  It's a day to bring a bumble bee or a bear out of its burrow, seeking spring.  It's a day to enthusiastically head into the garden and plant the seed of the crops for this year, to get ahead of the curve and give them the longest possible growing season.  

Pic1: Our house today, bright and sunny with snow on the hills behind. A day to get ahead on the planting...

Unless you know it's February and that in planting your seed now, you might be signing your own death warrant: death by starvation.  Why? Because in these bright days we can get in February and March, the seed might germinate, sprout and then be killed by frost in April. By June you'd have little left to eat. 

Until our ancestors five to six thousand years ago could understand weather vs solar season, they ran this risk.  That is why they invented tools to measure the solar year.  

Pic2: The insurance policy.  A stone that can cast a shadow and be used as a solar measurement tool for the year (calendar).

Scotland is littered with standing stones that may have evolved into complex astronomical measurement devices, but in their inception, they were a year-sundial or calendar.

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www.ansgeulaiche.co.uk

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Big Law, Little People

In responding to Fred Blair's post in Scottish History and Culture on Facebook I made reference to the Passenger Vessels Act of 1803. I thought it might be worth expanding on that thought as this piece of legislation had a great effect on the poorest Scottish citizens and as Fred Blair pointed out, an effect on the settlement of the Canadian lands too – that Scots were debarred from taking up land grants from 1815. Why?

The Act is not available to view on line yet, but the essence of it was a welfare act to improve the health standards for passengers taking ship to the Americas.  These same ships came full to the UK with Canadian timber and such, returning with a human cargo.

Given that they were not fitted for human passage, no minimum standards of food, sanitation or accommodation were in place and passengers might die as a result.

That’s the official impetus for the Act, but it is interesting to note that the Law Lords did not take much notice of these unsavoury practices through the latter part of the eighteenth century, during the aftermath of the Jacobite rising when getting rid of impoverished Scots and making way for sheep was a state desirable all round.  It mattered little where Highland Scots went (or how) so long as they went (and without fuss).

After the 1789 French Revolution, war quickly followed.  The British were fighting the French in many fields: the Peninsula War in Spain, in Canada and ultimately at Waterloo and Trafalgar.  There was a need for sailors, soldiers and gunpowder.

A major source for the raw material of gunpowder was Scottish West Coast seaweed.  That needed those aforementioned impoverished Highlanders to gather it, however the rate of emigration from the Highlands at the turn of the 19th century became not a boon, but a problem.

I cannot profess to know the minds of the legislators who drafted an Act that in effect trebled the price of a passage to the Americas, but its passing into law certainly was convenient for a Government strapped for peasants to aid them in their war effort.

The cynicism deepens when one considers that the Passenger Vessels Act did not apply to slave ships, and it was repealed in 1826, just twenty three years after it was passed and eleven years after Waterloo, which had transpired to be the end of the war.

The economy of Britain was built on a policy of Mercantilism, which amongst other things sought to convert agricultural wastelands to production.  There’s not much you can grow in the Highlands but sheep and cattle, so after the end of the war, there was a return to the sheep farming of the Highlands.  This is no return to the bucolic idyll however: the sheep-farming was controlled by owners of huge estates, owners who rarely lived in Scotland.  Once again the lower classes were in the way of progress and their absence from the land was to be wished for.  The law was repealed.

This is the period when the second major wave of emigration happened, mostly to Australia.

Acts of Parliament are not my usual field of interest (and I am certainly no expert) but this act interests me for the human cost to people with whom I identify (West Coast Highlanders); for the apparently deliberate and cynical use of law to further war and profit; for the casting off of thousands of people no longer required without any sense of fairness or compassion in that.

This article was inspired by Fred Blair’s question as to why it might be that Scots were from 1815 debarred from taking up Canadian land grants.  According to Fred, this change in the law came at the request (or order) of Britain.  Again admitting my lack of expertise here, I suggest that Canada was an ally of Britain in the colonial period and that it might be seen as the British closing both the means of exit from Scotland and the means of entry into the new life.

Scot AnSgeulaiche

@Scottish.Highland.Traditions

www.ansgeulaiche.co.uk

[scottishhighlandtraditions]

Pilgrimage

Scotland has places to which visitors might speak of making a pilgrimage, even in this modern world, but what does the word pilgrimage mean?  

It is a common enough term to English speakers, no doubt, but how does the meaning of the word pilgrimage differ from what is understood in the words travel, journey, visit, tour or vacation. Is there a quantifiable difference?

     Pic: Temple Wood stone ring.

The Collins Gem Dictionary defines the word “pilgrim” as 

“one who journeys to sacred place; wanderer, wayfarer.” 

 The first part – to a sacred place – seams obvious and will perhaps accord with a generally understood idea of the pilgrimage, but what of the “wanderer, wayfarer”? The wanderer travels without a plan; does the pilgrim?

I was raised to believe the word pilgrimage referred to a religious journey. Places such as Mecca, Lhasa, the cathedral of St. James de Compostela were commonly mentioned, perhaps even the Canterbury Tales came to mind.

The Oxford Dictionary is even less specific about the nature of a pilgrimage:

 “A journey to a place of particular interest or significance”, 

However Chamber’s Dictionary has

 “a journey to a shrine or other holy place, or to a place celebrated or made special by its associations, undertaken in order to gain a greater sense of closeness to the religion, etc or as a means of affirming one's faith.”

Here, in Chamber’s, is the first mention of how the journey affects ones spirituality.  The Encyclopaedia Britannica gives a little more: 

“a journey undertaken for a religious motive. Although some pilgrims have wandered continuously with no fixed destination, pilgrims more commonly seek a specific place that has been sanctified by association with a divinity or other holy personage. The institution of pilgrimage is evident in all world religions and was also important in the pagan religions of ancient Greece and Rome.”

The word pilgrim derives from the Latin pelegrinus, meaning a foreigner or stranger, perhaps implying that a pilgrim is necessarily journeying far from home. The mystery deepens.

     Pic: offerings left at Doon Faery Hill

What seems to be missing in these authorities is the “how”.  How does a pilgrim travel? And perhaps even after these definitions a fuller understanding of “why does the pilgrim travel?”

Speaking to the “how”, many years ago I watched a pilgrim making her way to Lhasa, a journey of some hundred miles or more across Tibet from her home.  She had a short length of wood in her hands, about a foot long.  It looked like an off-cut of a fence rail, what was left of it, for it was much battered.   It had some thick string attached which she used as hand loops. The wood acted like handcuffs, her two hands bound close together on the upper face of the short plank.  Her method of travel to Lhasa was to repeatedly move from standing, to kneeling to lying prone, face to the ground, all the while muttering prayers to herself.  The wood was to protect the palms of her hands and her wrists as they slid along the stony ground into the prone position.  This repeated prostration made her progress to Lhasa painfully slow (literally).  On her knees, she wore heavy padding, much torn. Her wrists were wrapped in dirty cloth, her skin cut and bruised. Evidently, the piece of wood was a later addition to her journey. She was not the only one using this self-abasing method.  Others simply walked the stony road barefoot.

While this “how” of pilgrimage is found within Tibetan Buddhism, it is not the only religion or country where pilgrimage is meant to be difficult.  The Way to Santiago is long, hot, and must be covered on foot.  Your accommodation along the way is a rudimentary dorm each night, if you are lucky, with strangers.  As Paulo Cohelo writes, you are expected to find and to face your demons along the way.   Catholics climb the bare mountain of Croagh Patrick in western Ireland each year, many of them barefoot in the rain.  These are ordinary people from across Ireland, with day jobs as bank managers, teachers and bus drivers. Why do this?

       Pic: Craogh Patrick Pilgrims.  The Journal newspaper.

Last year, in the cold October wind and rain, I hosted a ceremony of marriage on the island of Jura, in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. The ceremony was to take place on a windswept beach over two miles from the hotel where the guests, bride and groom were staying.  The twenty or so guests were to be ferried by two cars back and forth from the accommodation.  I spoke to the groom before I too set out to make the ceremony space in a ring of flags on the sand.  He said that he would walk, alone, from the hotel to his wedding.  I asked if he was sure about that as it was very cold, windy and there had been frequent showers that morning.  “Yes,” he said, “I have noticed that things that are worth doing in life are meant to be difficult. And I have an umbrella.”

     Pic: Ceremony site, Jura, village in the distance

While his journey was not a pilgrimage, I think that his sentiments capture something that has been missed in the dictionary definitions of the pilgrim, something that the woman going to Lhasa understood well.  A pilgrimage is not a vacation, nor is the destination itself the real importance; It is not meant to be easy, but rather the opposite, for the daemons will not be found and challenged in an air-conditioned van that drops you off at St James’s Cathedral. 

Of course, you can visit Stone Henge, Lourds, Croagh Patrick, Mecca etc. in that way, but that would make you a tourist, not a pilgrim.

     Pic: a sacred site in Argyll for over 5000 years

Each traveller will find challenge at different levels.  For some it is simply making the journey while the mobile phone stays on the bedside table.  For others, they will not have “purged the soul” (to borrow a Christian notion) unless they have made the journey wearing a hair shirt, eating nothing but hard tack and walking barefoot on hot tarmac.

For all its outer coverage of distance and a final destination, the pilgrimage is actually an inner journey.  Those who have made a pilgrimage speak of discovering things that were not planned, of not really understanding when they started what they were expecting, of only finding out why they undertook the pilgrimage at the end of the journey (or perhaps even long after).  They are not referring to events and places along the way, but of realisations about the self. No pilgrim ever reported that their journey was easy.

The film The Way written and directed by Emilio Estevez shows this well.  A father makes the journey to Compostela on behalf of his son, only discover things about himself.  Along the way he picks up other travellers, including the non-religious.  Each one discovering why they are making the journey, which is rarely the reason they began it.

    Pic: Offerings left, at a Faery Hill, similar to Shinto religion of Japan

I have been taking groups to the western isles of Scotland for a number of years to the stones of Calanais, stopping at other interesting and beautiful places along the way.  It is only in the last two or three that I have changed the description of this journey from “tour” to “pilgrimage”, or at least a bit of both.  This change in terminology comes about from a change in the “how” and “why” I make the journey, for myself as much as for the guests. It has also affected what I choose to put on the itinerary and what I now leave out as a tourist-distraction.  

Fellow pilgrims on this journey are not expected to crawl bleeding through briers, but there are periods of challenge, of discomfort, usually in the form of climbing steep hills, weather and silence.  Perhaps the biggest area of challenge comes from fellow pilgrims.  This appears because there is a need for a deeper interaction with ones companions, more so than on a group vacation. The listening is there in part from the group being small, in part from the reflective nature in reviewing our day’s experiences and in part because at the furthest westerly point, the guests make ceremony.  This ceremony is not something that I lead, but is born of the wants of the guests.  After all it is their pilgrimage.

     Pic: Temple Wood, a place visited by tourists and ‘users’ alike.

Perhaps the dictionary definition of pilgrimage should contain some words of the motivation behind such a journey.  This human desire, to my mind, speaks to the spiritual aspect of the human, which may or may not be expressed by them through organised religion.  It speaks of clearing away the clutter, of tempering in the fire of challenge, of finding understanding, of truth of the self, of stilling the mind.  Perhaps a pilgrimage, for all the miles that it covers, is a return to the self.

Scotland has many places that have been pilgrimage destinations over the millennia.  Some are marked in an obvious way with a cathedral or stone circle.  A few are marked only by a natural beauty, a story that is attached and a sense of something ‘other’ when one is there.  These are my favourites.

My next pilgrimage to the Western Isles is in April 2019.  If you would like to join me, details are on the website.

Scot AnSgeulaiche, keeper of highland traditions.

www.ansgeulaiche.co.uk   

[scottishhighlandtraditions]

Clach nam Bròg

It's the small things in Scottish history that pull us in. Princes and Kings have their place, but who can relate to them other than other monarchs?

The picture is of Clach nam Bròg, Stone of the Shoes. The large boulder sits beside the road that drops down into the village of Gairloch on the north west coast. In times past, it was here that the women coming from the rural areas would stop and put on their shoes for the final mile to church in the village of Gairloch.

In this area, Clach nam Bròg is known about and the above story recounted, but to me the story of must surely engender in us some unconscious assumptions when we hear the story, assumptions that should perhaps be examined. It raises some questions, I think.

~ Did the women come barefoot, or did they in fact change out of their every-day shoes for their Sunday-best.  Does this tell us about socio-economic history of Highland women?

~ Were they in fact barefoot in the summer only, wearing working shoes in the cold winters?

~ Why did they stop a good mile from the village rather than simply walk all the way to church then don their shoes?  Did they feel separate from the villagers and thus wish to put on a good show before these relative strangers?   Did they put on good shoes (and do so out of sight) so as to avoid what the Italians would call a Bruta Figura, cutting a bad figure, before the judgemental cosmopolitans of Gairloch?

~ Did the women feel comfortable amongst one another in lesser footwear or barefoot at home and on the road, but felt the need to be at their best to be seen in a house of God, or perhaps more importantly to be seen before their peers. Does this tell us something about social station, propriety, social norms?

~ Local tradition has it that they "donned their shoes and stockings?" Is this true? Did the women have stockings or are we importing a modern sensibility that shoes require stockings to be worn? Were the shoes in fact worn without socks for reasons of stocking-poverty or because no-one would think to wear such a garment in the highlands?  My wife tells me that women in the 18th century Highlands did knit socks.

~ Why did the women gather together at one place to do this thing? Was there some other social aspect of meeting here before church, such as solidarity?

~ Almost certainly Clach nam Bròg tells us that there was no good road from the north into Gairloch at this time, a road that might keep good shoes clean.

~ What are we missing in our understanding of the practice at Clach nam Bròg?

As a historian, I am well aware that our interpretations of the story of Clach nam Bròg is open to unconscious modern projections, as indeed are the very questions that I have posed above.

The Stone of the Shoes is interesting, I think, because (assuming we have the story right) it tells us not about Princes, Kings and matters of State, but about real people, important who made up the bulk of the population, people like us, doing things that we all do everyday for sometimes reasons that might seem odd to other generations or cultures.

Be sure to give a wave to the Clach next time you are in Gairloch and pose some questions of yourself.