RAF Corporal Technician Pete Davis and his wife Hilary spend the first 18 months of their married life Lewis after he was stationed to RAF Aird Uig. They lived in Linshader and Aird. This is an engaging account of their time in Uig.

Angus nam Beann was a well-known figure in Uig at the time of the Revivals, and ever since.  The following is from John Macleod’s History of the Church in Uig. Angus MacLeod’s father was a shepherd in the hills of Uig towards the border with Harris, and this is where Angus was born. So it is not difficult to understand why everybody in the area knew his as Aonghas na Beann, Angus of the Hills. Angus was caught up in the great Revival in uig [ » read more ]

The renowned naturalist William MacGillivray was born in Aberdeen in 1796 and studied and worked most of his life there or in Edinburgh, but he had a Harris connection through his father and spent much of his childhood at Northton in South Harris (where the MacGillivray Centre now bears his name). As a young man, he returned to spend 1817-1818 there, and his diaries of that period have been published as A Hebridean Naturalist’s Journal (Acair 1996). In October of 1817 he and a party [ » read more ]

The Reverend Aulay Macaulay was born in Brenish in 1669, son of Dugald, grandson of Angus Beag Macaulay, he of the big stone and the critical wife, and brother of Donald Òg.  Aulay started his career in Tiree and Coll and was minister at Scarista, Harris from 1712 until his death in 1758.   He was married to Margaret Morrison, daughter of Rev Kenneth Morrison of Stornoway, and they had fourteen children; one of them, Rev Kenneth Macaulay, Ardnamurchan, wrote an account of St Kilda, [ » read more ]

By long and solid tradition in Uig, the spot where the Uig Chessmen were found in 1831 is held to be the Bealach Ban, a hollow in the dunes in Ardroil. In November of last year, a paper by Dr David Caldwell et al in Mediæval Archaeology proposed that, on the evidence of the Ordnance Survey Place Names book compiled by contractors from local information in the 1850s, the findspot may have been a few miles away at Mealista. Anna Mackinnon, Ardroil, wrote an initial [ » read more ]

Rev Norman Morrison, with his wife, sister (behind him) and children.  Rev Morrison was minister at Baile na Cille from 1931 to 1950. He wasn’t the first of that name in Uig; the third known minister in Uig was also Norman Morrison, 1742 to 1777, who was a grandson of John Morrison, tacksman at Bragar – known in the archives as Indweller.  He studied at Aberdeen and St Andrews and from his ordination in 1742, spent his whole working life in Uig.  His church was [ » read more ]

Rev Alexander Macleod arrived in Uig 1824 and evidently had a powerful influence on his congregation.  In the first years of his ministry a number of stories arose demonstrating the (new) piety and upright behaviour of the people of Uig – perhaps exaggerating somewhat the change that had been brought about. In any case Uig was one of several places in the Highlands and Islands that became celebrated for the revival around that time.  The following account comes from the History of Revivals of Religion [ » read more ]

Hugh Munro was minister at Baile na Cille for 46 years, until his death on 1 May 1823.  He was replaced the following year by Alexander Macleod, but there was nearly a different minister in Uig, which, given Rev Macleod’s strong attachment to and leading role in the evangelist movement that was just beginning to spread throughout the island, might have made for a very different history of the church in Lewis.  The following notice appeared in the Edinburgh Gazette on 2 July 1823: The [ » read more ]

This rare picture was taken inside Baile na Cille Church (1950s?) and contributed by Peter N Macdonald.  The minister is Rev Angus Macfarlane and the precentor (top left) is Peter Macdonald 5 Crowlista.  Can any of the others be identified from the backs of their heads? Edit: immediately identified, thanks to Pat.  See comments for detail.

From the Stornoway Gazette, May 1951. An event of outstanding interest took place in the Parish of Uig on Wednesday, 16th May, when the new Free Presbyterian Church at Miavaig was opened. The Ref JA Macdonald, Applecross, the former minister of Uig, conducted divine worship and preached an able discourse from Matt xxi, v13. The church was packed to its utmost capacity. Nine buses carrying nearly 300 friends from the different congregations in Lewis and Harris attended the service. Uig hospitality on a generous scale [ » read more ]

We don’t do much editorialising here but please allow an aside.  Yesterday, after years of argument, debate and mudslinging and a last-minute breakdown, was the first scheduled Sunday ferry from Stornoway to Ullapool (BBC video here) taking people away after the Heb Celt Festival but also now a permanent fixture.  Several hundred people turned out to cheer its departure, and a group also demonstrated against it.  It’s generated a lot of press coverage of course, and amongst the stories is this one from Ben McConville [ » read more ]

From Lewsiana (1874, 1886) by W Anderson Smith.  The school referred to seems to be the old blackhouse school in Islivig, which was replaced in the 1880s by the new public school at the north end of Brenish – but Smith’s passage seems to come from the earlier edition of the book. A mile or two from the terminus of the road [at Brenish] there is a wayside school, attended by about fifty scholars. It is conducted in that ordinarily fatal way of an absentee [ » read more ]

From Martin Martin’s 1697 account of a voyage to St Kilda. (Photo by Scotproof) The inhabitants are Christians, much of the primitive temper, neither inclined to enthusiasm nor to popery. They swear not the common oaths that prevail in the world; when they refuse or deny to give what is asked of them, they do it with a strong asseveration,which they express emphatically enough in their language to this purpose, You are no more to have it, than that if God had forbid it; and [ » read more ]

A very strange tale of the death of a Hebridean woman in Iceland,  and the subsequent supernatural problems that ensued when her hosts failed to fulfill her dying wishes. This comes from Folk-lore and Legends: Scandinavia, by various authors, published London 1890.  The tale originates in the Eyrbiggja Saga and was also given a treatment by Sir Walter Scott, and by Robert Louis Stevenson who called his version The Waif Woman (published posthumously). The Saga sets the story in the year of the coming of [ » read more ]

Donald Òg, younger son of Dugald Macaulay of Brenish and himself tacksman of Brenish and Ardroil ca. 1740-1762, left, like many of the Macaulays, a lasting impression on the oral tradition of the area.  Among his characteristics were a taste for swordfighting, and a certain delight in the vastness of his herd:  evidently when his cattle were being driven over Ard Bhreinis, the tail end of the procession was still at Cas Bhraighe. Rev William Matheson continues his account of Donald’s life in his history [ » read more ]