This story comes from the end of the 18th century, but seems to hark back to an earlier time.  However it is likely that the Viking element was grafted on later – did Vikings pick up local pilots? And potatoes didn’t arrive in the islands until the middle of the 18th century, and even by the 1790s there was a resistance to growing them. However: Some Uig men were out fishing around the Flannan Isles, and a Viking longboat came along and asked for a local person [ » read more ]

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 ]

Another grisly story about our Uig hero, Dòmhnall Càm, who has a much less heroic reputation in other parts of the island. This is from Capt FWL Thomas’s Traditions of the Macaulays (1880) and he notes that “this tale is certainly mythical”. We ought in our own day to be very thankful to that Divine Providence which has dispelled the barbarous darkness and depression from our land, and shed upon it the light of the Gospel, for there are many things related of the hero, [ » read more ]

The Rev William Matheson, “Mac Gille Chaluim” and the pre-eminent Island genealogist of his day, gives the following account of the Macaulays resistence to, and eventually tentative alliance with, the Mackenzies who took ownership of the Isle of Lewis in 1610, after the decline of the ruling Macleods and the failed attempt at colonisation by the Fife Adventurers.  This is from his History of the Mackenzies, first published in the Stornoway Gazette in 1955. The dislodgement of Neil Macleod [natural son of the last chief [ » read more ]

The following was written by Maggie Smith for Hebridean Connections.  The genealogies of all the known inhabitants of the island of Vuia – uninhabited since 1841 – can be found here. Life on the island of Vuia Mhòr was hard, with little fertile land and no safe anchorage. The peats were cut and harvested in Drovinish and taken home by rowing boat or sail. Boats had to be beached after each fishing trip. Amongst the inhabitants were the family of Neil Macleod, who had found [ » 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 ]

This is the final section of an interesting and detailed piece on the Pygmies Isle (first mentioned by Dean Monro in 1549 as having been inhabited by “little people”) near the Butt of Lewis , published by WC Mackenzie in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquities of Scotland, 13 March 1905 (vol XXXIX, p257).  It’s of no particular relevance to Uig but see what you make of it, in spite of its rather dated tone (and for Lapp, read today Sami – the Sea Sami [ » read more ]

We do fairly harp on the heroic stories of Dòmhnall Càm, the local chieftain, warrior and cattle-plunderer, particularly ruthless in wars against the Morrisons of Ness, but there are some deeply unpleasant traditions about him too. The following is from Capt FWL Thomas’s Traditions of the Macaulays (1880). Donald Cam and the Gow Ban [the Smith of Kneep] were walking together at Kneep, close by a small bothy in which an old blind woman lived. Some of the tenants’ wives were sitting outside the bothy [ » read more ]

In December 1900, the lighthouse on Eilean Mor in the Flannan Isles, which had only been lit for the first time a year previously, was discovered deserted by its three keepers; their dinner table had been set with cold meat, pickles and potatoes, and a chair was overturned in an obvious urgent departure.  Two sets of oilskins and seaboots were missing, and otherwise the quarters and lamp were in perfect order.  The last record, on a slate ready for transferral to the log book, was dated 15 [ » read more ]

Cha robh cam, nach robh crosda. The following is an account of a familiar tale of the island – perhaps the most famous told of Donald Cam, the chief of the Macaulays in Uig, as given by Capt FWL Thomas in his Traditions of the Macaulays of Lewis (1880). In 1597 some degree of peace was enjoyed in Lewis under the government of Torquil Dubh Macleod, son of Old Rory. Torquil Dubh had been fostered in Uig under the guard of Donald Cam and twenty-eight [ » read more ]

The following comes from the Spring 1987 edition of Sanais, the Comann Eachdraidh’s quarterly publication under the editorship of Anna Mackinnon.  There are many tales about the Old Soldiers of Uig and this is another about the doughty Calum Olach of Valtos, serving with the Seaforth Highlanders as one of the Saighdeirean Mac a’Mhinisteir.  They were in Java in 1811. We return to Java, to the stronghold of the Sultan of Jogjakarta, one of the native princes who had helped the French against the British. [ » read more ]

From DDC Pochin Mould’s West over Sea, another telling of the familiar story of the ship’s boy who was murdered for the Lewis Chessmen by an Uig gillie.  The story as told by Rev Col AJ Mackenzie, brother of Roderick Mackenzie, the keeper mentioned below, is also given by Dolly Doctor in his Tales and Traditions, which suggests that it’s the Reverend who found the bones in the 1920s.  As we’ve just been to Tealasbhaigh, it’s worth having again.  The composite above shows the entrance [ » read more ]

James Shaw Grant, in one of his many books about the folk and tales of the Islands, reckoned that the evidence available does not support the idea that Mac an t-Srònaich was the vicious murderer of popular legend.  Mac an t-Srònaich was a native of Garve on the mainland, and is reckoned to have killed a girl (perhaps his sister) at his family’s inn in Ullapool before fleeing to Lewis, where he hid out in the hills of Uig and terrorised the population before being [ » read more ]

From Sanais,1988. There lived in Uig, before the advent of the policeman, a man of great physical powers and a wild, lawless nature, who robbed and plundered his neighbours with impunity.  To remove him, the crew of a boat to visit the Flannan Isles evolved a plan to maroon him on one of the islands.  They invited him to accompany them on their voyage, the last of the season.  He accepted their offer and set off, and landed safely on Eilean an Tighe.  When they [ » read more ]

Further to the Daily Express cartoon about the alien cause of the disappearing loch at Morsgail, here’s a summary of the international coverage, from the Stornoway Gazette, 29 Dec 1959. Few events in Lewis in recent years have aroused such worldwide interest as the “Morsgail Meteorite”. In addition to the planeload of British reporters, the Columbia Broadcasting system of America sent a team of cameramen to Uig to photograph the ‘hole’ for American TV, and we have received a cutting from the Bulaweyo Chronicle, which [ » read more ]