Martin Martin, in his Description of the Western Isles of Scotland (1695) gives an account of the use made of the Flannan Isles at the time and the superstitions that attended a visit. (photo: Murdanie Macdonald)

The inhabitants of the adjacent lands of the Lewis, having a right to these islands, visit them once every summer, and there make a great purchase of fowls, eggs, down, feathers, and quills. When they go to sea, they have their boat well manned, and make towards the isalnds with an east wind; but if before or at anding the wind turn westerly, they hoist up sai, and steer directly home again. If any of their crew is a novice, and not versed in teh customs of the place, he must be instructed perfectly in all the punctilioes observed here before landing; and to prevent the inconveniences that they think may ensue upon the transgression of the least nicety observed here, every novice is always joined with another, that can instruct him all the time of their fowling; so all the boat’s crew are matched in this manner.

After their landing, they fasten the boat to the sides of a rock, and then fix a wooden ladder, by laing a stone at the foot ofit, to prevent its falling into the sea; and when they are got up into the island, all of them uncover their heads, and make a turn sunways round, thanking God for their safety. The first injuection given after landing, is not to ease nature in that place where the boat lies, for that they reckon a crime of the highest nature, and of dangerous consequence to all their crew; for they have a great regard to that ver piece of rock upon which they first set their feet, after escaping the danger of the ocean.

The biggest of these islands is called Island More; it has the ruins of a chapel dedicated to St Flannan, from whom the island derives its name. When they are come within about twenty paces of the altar , they all strip themselves of their upper garments at once; and their upper clothes being laid upon a stone, which stands there on purpose for that use, all crew pray three times before they begin fowling; the first day they say the first prayer, advancing towards the chapel on their kneews; the second prayer is said as they go round the chapel; the third is said hard by or at the chapel; and this is their morning service. Their vespers are performed with the like number of prayers. Another rule is that it is absolutely unlawful to kill a fowl with a stone, for that they reckon a great barbarity, and directly contrary to ancient custom.

It is also unlawful to kill a fowl before they ascend by the ladder. It is absolutely unlawful to call the island of St Kilda (which lies thirty leagues southward) by its proper Irish name Hirt, but only The High Country. They must not so much as once name the islands in which they are following by the ordinary name Flannan, but only the Country. There are several other things that must not be called by their common names, eg visk, which in the language of the natives signifies water, they call burn; a rock, which in their language is creg, must here be called cruey, ie ‘hard’; ‘shore’ in their language, expressed by claddach, must here be calle vah, ie a ‘cave’; ‘sour’ in their language is expressed by gort, but must here be called gaire, ie ‘sharp’; ‘slippery’, which is expressed bog, must be called ‘soft’; and several other things to this purpose.

They account it also unlawful to kill a fowl after evening prayers. There is an ancient custom by which the crew is obliged not to carry home any sheep suet, let them kill ever so many sheep in these islands. One of their customs is not to steal or eat anything unknown to their partner, else the transgressor (they say) will certainly vomit it up; which they reckon as a just judgement. When they have loaded their boat sufficiently with sheep, fowls, eggs, down, fish, etc, they make the best of their way homeward. It is observed of the sheep of these islands that they are exceeding fat, and have long horns.

I had this superstitions account not only from several of the natives of the Lewis, but likewise from two who had been in the Flannan isles the preceding year. I asked one of them if he prayed at home as often, as fervently as he did when in the Flannan Islands, and he plainly confessed to me that he did not; adding further, that these remote islands were places of inherent sanctity; and that there was none ever yet landed in them but found himself more disposed to devotion there, than anywhere else.

If you’d like to try any of this, Seatrek do daytrips and Island Cruising takes it in too.

We’ve looked before at the remarkable Angus of the Mountain. The little stories surrounding his life and faith are numberous – here are a few more abridged from Macfarlane’s Men of the Lews (1924):

His mental constitution was not of gun-metal. It was weak and of the wool-gathering order. People said he just mooned around. When the great Revival came to Uig (1824) it embraced Angus, and he was cast into the deepest spiritual concern. Then he went back to his native hills and spent days and nights there in prayer… He started the new life and continued in it on an extraordinarily high level, and became as fixed as if melted into it in a liquid state.  The regard and affection that were poured out on him were more than ordinary.

Mr Alexander Macleod, the minister, had so high a regard for Angus [although he refused to allow him to become a communicant, on the grounds of intellectual capacity -Ed.] that he engaged a teacher to teach him to read. The teacher could make nothing of him. His memory for the alphabet was hopeless. He could repeat A; with much labour he succeeded in adding B, but there was no room in his mind for the third letter. With effort after effort to get C in, he had to abandon the task. Angus met all endeavour to instruct him by affirming that he did not see Christ in these letters. HE would rather be out of the hillside with Christ than filling himself up with this kind of learning.

On one occasion in Stornoway there met him a man who was gomeril enough to say to Angus, “Oh, aren’t you the Uig fool?” Angus fell aboard ofhim with the reply, “The Bible says the fool is he who trusteth to his own heart,” which the Stornoway man was evidently doing.

Angus was much in request for public prayer. His gift was remarkable, and when he prayed it felt as if the heavens opened and the Bethel Ladder came down. He did not always respond when called. “Angus! you lead us in prayer,” said the minister. “Oh no, minister, I cannot to-day.”  ”Certainly Angus, you can and you will.” “Not to-day, minister; I cannot do it.” “Yes, rise, Angus, Jonah prayed when he was worse off that you. He prayed when he was in the whale’s belly.” “Ah! but I have the whale in mine today!” When Angus rose he was like a ship in the trade-winds, he sped on with unvarying triumph, with everything right alow and aloft.

Herding cows was thought to be a simple service which Angus could easily fulfill. Again and again he failed. Once his father was angered by his letting the cattle into the corn, and he chased Angus with loud threatening. “Lord, cause my father to stumble” rose from the lips of the son, and sure enough down when the father, and Angus escaped.  The minister entrusted Angus with his cows, and the same straying into the cornfield happened. When someone said to him, “Why, Angus, did you not pray that the cows might be kept from the corn?” he replied, with an injured look, “It would never do to put cows into the prayer.”

Angus was given to soliloquy. Many of his words fell on ears in the passing, and were rehearsed eagerly through the parish. Here is a specimen: “Oh, my Saviour, the Black One came to me to-day. He was going to trouble me. Fire was in his eye. I told him You were coming and I expected You soon. Oh, You should see how he took to his heels.”

There was one bit of soliloquizing that raised many a ripple of laughter. The banns of marriage were in his time all proclaimed in church.One day he was overheard going over his own banns. “There is a purpose of marriage between Aonghas ___ and Margaret ___, etc.”

Although Angus was not one of those who spoke on Fridays of Communion, he ranked as one of the forces in the Island of Lewis. His faith, his simplicity, his warmth of love gave him rank. He found God in everything.

Some Uig men were out fishing around the Flannan Isles, and a Viking longboat came along and asked for a local person to guide them through the treacherous Sound of Harris. Murchadh Ban was chosen to go and be their pilot. He was married in Crowlista and all were anxiously awaiting his safe return to the village. However he didn’t return that year to Crowlista and thinking that some ill had befallen him, his wife assumed the status of a widow in the village. Two years after his departure, a foreigner dressed in strange clothes appeared in Uig. He walked past Murchadh Ban’s mother, who was breaking down manure with her hands in the potato plot, and remarked to her: “Haven’t you the filthy job?”

This was Murchadh Ban returning and his mother didn’t even recognise him. The longboat was hit by a gale when it reached the Sound of Harris and the Vikings were so wary of the area that they turned into deeper water and eventually returned to Gothenburg, where Murchadh Ban stayed for two years before he could obtain passage back to Lewis. It is said of him that once he returned that he wouldn’t eat any kind of fish because he was so sick of eating dried fish on the longboat, or because the fish in Gothenburg had not been as good as that in Lewis.

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 in the Rev Alexander Macleod‘s time. He was a simpleton who could not even count his fingers, yet when he engaged in public prayer hardly any trace of lack of intellect was noticeable. What was noticeable about him was the Spirit of reverence of one who practised the Presence and whose prayers surprised, affected and moved the hearer.

He was held in high regard by the minister who engaged a teacher to teach him reading – without success. Yet when he applied to the minister for the privilege of sitting at the Lord’s Table, he was refused on account of his lack of intellectual capacity. Angus must have been deeply hurt; and it appears that the minister and Kirk-session must have relented at a later date, for the tale is told that Angus at one time dropped his communion token and could not find it. Someone seeing him searching asked:

“Na chaill thu am comharra Aonghais?”

“Cha do chaill, ach chaill me am pios luaidhe thug iad dhomh!”

[Did you lose your token Angus? No, but I lost that piece of lead they gave me.]

Tales of Aonghas nam Beann remain in oral tradition and are still related in the Parish. At a communion season in Uig a visiting minister noticed Angus talking with a group of people at the church after the service. He told Rev Alexander that he was going over to the church to see what was going on, and was advised to stay where he was. However he insisted and he arrived to hear Angus, who had noticed his approach, say:

“Bha fios agam gu robh ni math againn ‘s nach fhada gus am biodh an Satan an torr oirnn”

[I knew we had something of spiritual worth and that ere long Satan would attempt to spoil it.]

The minister beat a hasty retreat to the manse, where he was was asked how he got on. He replied, “I was castigated as an instrument of Satan.”

Angus was a frequent and welcome visitor at communions, and it is probably that his death occurred during such a visit to a communion in Skye. There he was buried in the cemetery at Uig (Skye).

In The Skye Revivals, Steve Taylor reports that once Angus discovered Skye he was rarely away from it. He also gives further stories of Angus in Skye and Lochs:

On one occasion Angus was attending communion services in Snizort in Skye when the Rev Roderick Macleod invited him to the manse. During the meal Roderick said, “Angus, has not grace greatly honoured you when it brought you to my table?” Angus replied, “And did not grace greatly honour yourself, minister, when you invited me?”

The Rev Robert Finlayson of Lochs was interviewing three women on one occasion who were seeking admission to the Lord’s Table. One had been convertedas a result of hearingAngus in prayer, the second on hearing a neighbour repeating on of Angus’s private prayers, and the third under Finlayson’s own preaching. “I see,” said Finlayson, “thatI have only one share in this work.”

It was the testimony of Rev Murdo MacAskill [Dingwall, in 1885] when speaking of Angus that “this poor witless man could claim more spiritual children in the parish of Lochs than all the ministers who had preached there in his generation.” No one who met him was allowed to walk away without an answer to the question, “Do you love the Lord Jesus Christ?” All who came into contact with Angus were aware of an indescribably power and influence.

More tales of Angus nam Beann are here.

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, Donald Cam, which are revolting to humanity. It is told that Donald Cam had a foster-mother who used to go about the country begging for meal &c. She was at one time down at Ness, gathering meal in summer, and she was returning by South Dell, in which there then six tenants. The tenants, seeing a woman with a bag of meal on her back, agreed with her to let them have the meal till the following harvest, when they would pay it back, and more besides. To this the woman consented, yet when she returned to Uig, and Donald Cam asked her what success she had had at Ness, she complained that the tenants at South Dell had taken the meal from her without giving her anything in return.

Donald Cam went to Ness, and when he came to Dell these poor tenants were in the ebb (foreshore), seeking shell-fish for food, for those were years of great scarcity. He asked them no questions but ordered each to dig his own grave; and when they had done so, he killed all the six, and buried them there.

Another unpleasant Dòmhnall Càm story is here.

The dislodgement of Neil Macleod [natural son of the last chief of the Lewis Macleods] from his island fortress of Berisay may be said to signalise the conquest of Lewis by the Mackenzies. This was effected by a force led by Alexander Mackenzie of Coul in the summer or autumn of 1611; for it is stated that it was within a few months of the death of Kenneth, Lord Kintail, which took place in February of that year. The expedition to Lewis was under the command of Lord Kintail’s brother Roderick, better known as the Tutor of Kintail, and we are told that, after the execution of Neil Macleod in 1613, he “returned to the Lewis, banished those whose Deportment he most doubted, and settled the rest as Peaceable Tenants to his Nephew.” It is probably that it was about this time that Alexander Mackenzie was appointed chamberlain, and that he was the principal agent in these transactions.

Among the last to accept losses from the new chamberlain were the Macaulays of Uig. Their chief at the time was the redoubtable Domhnall Cam mac Dhughaill. It is greatly to his credit that he stood by the Macleods to the last. Even now, when all seemed lost, he was by no means in a yielding frame of mind, and apparently maintained his independence in Uig for a number of years. Eventually, Alexander Mackenzie and other officers were sent by the Tutor of Kintail to negotiate with him, but he rejected all their offers out of hand.

Their threats made no impression on Domhnall Cam, but it was otherwise with his son Angus. When the plenipotentiaries took their departur, Angus Macaulay had second thoughts, and set out after them. He overtook them as they were making their way from Valtos to the Uig Ferry at a place call Braigh Thais. There the conference was resumed, and the outcome was that Angus Macaulay agreed to accept lands from Lot Kintail.

To confirm the pact, it was arranged that he should marry Alexander Mackenzie’s daughter Ann.  This marriage was duly solemnised and Anna nighean Alasdair, as she was called, took up residence with her husband at Brenish, which was the tack he received in virtue of the treaty with his father-in-law. In Uig she is represented as having developed into something of a termagent; but it must be remembered that, whatever her disposition, she can hardly have been a welcome intruder among the Macaulay clan.

Anna was of course the one who sent her husband off to the battle of Auldearn with her scolding, and he stopped on his stone to consider his fate.  Rev Matheson goes on to indicate that the Mackenzie genealogies uphold the tradition of the marriage between Anna and Angus, giving Alexander a son-in-law by the name of Angus Mac Conil Vic Cowil, ie Aonghus mac Dhomhnaill mhic Dhughaill, and that therefore “the rest of the story may be relied upon in the main.”  Alexander himself was supposed to be a very capable man, but fell out of favour with the Earl of Seaforth and Matheson wonders if it was his alliance with the Macaulays that was the cause of it. Alexander is meant to have lived at Eilean Chaluim Chille in South Lochs, on the garden island.

Rev Donald Macaulay also tells this story, with a little more colour, 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 refuge in Vuia Mhòr after being cleared from the old village of Mangersta. Neil was married to Catherine Mackenzie of Kirkibost, Bernera and they had twelve children, ten of whom emigrated to Cape Breton between 1821-1826. Kenneth, one of the sons, emigrated in 1826 with his wife Ann Macleod from Balallan, and their child died on the long sea voyage across the Atlantic. They managed to keep the child’s death a secret so that the child would not be buried at sea.

A grandson of Neil Macleod, ‘An Og (John, son of John), lived on Vuia and was courting Ann Maclennan from Reef. It is said he swam across to Reef regularly with his dry clothing strapped to his head.

The islanders fished to sustain the families and paid their rent by harvesting the sea-kelp with the substantial profit from the sales going to the landowner. When the landlord’s greedy eye focused on sheep rearing the community was sacrificed and scattered to the four winds.

The land officer evicted the inhabitants from the seven homes and forty-six souls young and old came ashore in the village of Geshader.  The strong swimmer John Macleod married his Ann in 1847 and lived in Geshader, having been cleared from the island along with his mother and sister. They lived there as cottars and the ruins of the house can be seen to this day at No 2. The Martin and the Smith family became cottars on No 10 Geshader and later emigrated. The Mathesons went to Ungeshader, then some emigrated and others went to Brue. The MacArthurs settled south of Enaclete at a place still known as Buaile Mhic Artair.

Tales of the eviction were repeated in oral tradition and are expressed in the poetry:

‘S iomadh athair agus màthair
Bha gu làr a ‘sileadh dheòir
Mar chaidh a fuadach as an àite
Far an deach an àrach òg.
Chuala sinn e bho ar cairdean
Mu’s do dh’fhag iad tìr nam beò
Gu’n ghabh mallachdan an àite
Air na dh’fhàsaich Bhuidha Mhòr

À Amhran Lord Lever
le Domhnall Donn, Donald Maciver Cnip

The land officer responsible for the evictions, Kenneth Stewart, tacksman of Hacklete, went to Canada after his wife diedand fell on hard times. According to tradition, he was a tramp and went to the door of a house and knocked. The girl who opened the door gave him a piece of bread and after he had eaten she enquired if he had enjoyed this morsel. He replied that he truly had and was very grateful. She then proceeded to tell him that he had been responsible for the eviction of herself and her family from Vuia Mhòr!

Cha robh dùil agad fhads a bha thu gam fhuadach à Bhuidha
Gum biodh tu lorg aoigheach orm ann an Canada.

Though she had only been a very young girl at the time of the eviction, she recognised the man at her door. She then urged him to leave before her husband came home. She believed he would murder, either he who carried out the evictions, or her for showing compassion to the man who had evicted the families so brutally years before.

Kenneth Stewart was born in 1781 in Skye and came to Uig – in fact to Bernera – with his relative, Rev Hugh Munro. He married Mary Smith, daughter of Farquhar the tacksman at Earshader, and lived at the farmhouse in Hacklete where they had nine of a family. Six of his children emigrated; five to Canada and one to Australia. He went to Canada after his wife’s death in 1851 (she is buried at Baile na Cille) and himself died before 1861 in Victoria County, Nova Scotia.

According to Capt FWL Thomas’s Traditions of the Macaulays “Maighstir Amhlaigh” was “much esteemed for his piety, benevolence and conduct” and very rigorous in his duties. Thomas relates several stories that include Norman Maciver, Tarmod Cleireach, who was his kirk-officer and a bard, and as another Uigeach, often accompanied Aulay on his journeys home, which would have been on foot over the hills. The following is from Thomas’s book.

When they were returning home to Harris [after a visit to Uig] they both got very tired with their long day’s travel, and towards evening sat down to rest by a spring on the hills of Luskentyre. They were both very hungry, and as Norman had some graddan [grain husked by briefly holding it in a flame, rather than in a kiln] with him in his bag, which his mother had sent to his wife, he mixed some with a little water and made two large lumps. They began to eat with much eagerness, and when Mr Aulay had made considerable progress with his cnap up jumped Norman and addressed some advancing travellers with “Your most humble servant,” and “How do you do?” Up sprang Mr Aulay in a hurry, throwing away the remainder of his cnap, but there was nobody there. Mr Aulay set off home as fast as he could, and the next day remonstrated with Norman about his tricks, but he excused himself by saying that he was afraid the minister was wasting time, and he wanted him to proceed on his journey.

There was a meeting of Presbytery at the house of Macleod of Bernera[y], Harris, which was attended by the Rev Aulay Macaulay and his faithful kirk-officer, Tarmod Cleireach. The ministers’ servants had a room to themselves and got beef and broth for their dinner. There was then the custom of Lettrimaid, that is, the beef and broth were both placed on the table together in the same large dish or bowl. It happened that Norman was one day late in coming to dinner and his greedy messmates had eaten all the meat, but they had not begun on the broth for it was scalding hot. Norman came in, and finding that his share of the beef had been eaten, he lifted the large bowl of broth and poured it over them. The screams of the scalded lads brought everybody to the spot, but Norman went off and hid himself under some hay in a barn. The next day Norman left his retreat, and defended himself before the assembled clergymen with so much spirit that he was excused. Mr Aulay was afraid he should still go on with his tricks, for, being born a bard, he was allowed to do almost anything he liked.

Tarmod Cleireach was retained as kirk-officer till Mr Aulay died [in 1758], and the minister on his deathbed desired that his much-beloved friend and servant should, when he died, be buried beside him; and the two rest together immediately within what was the door of the church, and on the right hand side as you enter.

The Island of Lewis offers a remarkably wide field of investigation to ethnologists in view of the marked diversity of types. Dr Beddoe, whose authority will be acknowledged, suggested that one of these types, “a short, thick-set, snub-nosed, dark-haired and even dark-eyed race” was probably aboriginal and probably Finnish. Have we here the descendents of the so-called Pigmies? The Laplanders or true Finns have certainly some physical affinities with the short and dark type of Lewisman (a type which is but sparsely represented on the island); while the gammar or huts of the Lapps, as described by travellers, bear a resemblance to the Luchruban [as the island is also known] structure, as it must have been originally designed. Customs lingered in Lewis as recently as the 18th century, or even the 19th century, which have elsewhere been regarded as peculiar to Lapland. And Professor Sven Nilssen (The Primitive Inhabitants of Scandinavia) shows convincingly I think that the pigmies of tradition and dwarfs of the Sagas belonged to the same race as the Laplanders of the present day. Moreover the well-authenticated traditions in Shetland about Finn-men apparently offer corroboration of the view that the “little men” of this island were of Finnish or Lapponic origin. The Firbolg, the short dark men of Irish tradition who were driven from Ireland to the Hebrides by the Tuatha de Danaan, represent, not improbably, the same race.¹ Dun Fhirbolg in St Kilda may be of some ethnological value.

It is a noteworthy fact that while Highland folklore is full of the Famhairean (the Irish Fomorians) or giants, there is an absence of complimentary Luchrubain or dwarfs. How is this to be accounted for? May it not be that they are represented by our old friends the fairies, who, by the way are sometimes called the Daoine Beaga, the ancient name of the Pigmies Isle?  It is impossible to elaborate this suggestion here, but I may mention one fact concerming the Lewis fairies. One of their names is Muinntir Fhionnlagh, translated as the Finlay people, a title which as applied to fairies baffles Lewis folklorists. I venture to suggest that this name means “the little Finn people” and that it unites the Finnish aborigines with the “good little people” of fairy lore who dwell in the bowels of green hills, like Luchruban, and practice uncanny arts like the Lapland wizards.

Note: 1. It may be observed that in Foley’s Dictionary one of the Irish names for pigmie is Leappacán. [hence Luchrubàn and Leprechaun]

A more recent examination of Eilean nan Luchrubain (with pictures) was carried out by the STAC project, 2003-5.

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 talking, and one of them remarked that they need have no fear of an enemy attempting to invade or plunder them, for there were few like Donald Cam and the Gow Ban in all the country. The blind woman from within asked who were they whom they were praising so much? On being told, she indignantly exclaimed: “Had you seen the men who fought the battle of Machir-house (a strand and level spot at Reef); I say had you seen those heroes who repulsed and killed a Danish pirate and crew, you would not say that either Donald Cam or the Big Smith is a man of such valour and prowess.” Donald Cam and the smith asked what the blind woman inside was talking about, and when the women told them, they fell to and blocked up the door of the bothy with stones, and threated with instant death anyone who should give food or drink to the old blind woman, so being left to starve she soon died.

The battle alluded to was fought by a Danish pirate who landed his men at Berry [Beirghe] or Reef, and who thought to have plundered the country with impunity; but the clans faced the Danes as they landed, and a bloody battle ensued, when all the Danes except three were killed on the spot, and of the three who ran to their boat to save themselves, one was shot dead by an arrow. It was the warriors in this battle to whom the blind woman alluded, and for which she was starved to death.

Thomas comments in a footnote: “Such an event as this has no doubt occurred, but it is hard to believe that it happened in the beginning of the seventeenth century”. (Dòmhnall Càm died before 1640.)