Saturday, February 20th, 2010
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 ...
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Friday, February 12th, 2010
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 ...
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Monday, January 19th, 2009
Donald Òg was the younger of two sons called Donald, born to Dugald Macaulay, tacksman of Brenish, in the late 17th century; he was the great-grandson of Domhnall Càm. Rev William Matheson's columns on the Macaulays, published in the Gazette in the 1950s, include several stories about Donald Òg drawn ...
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Sunday, September 7th, 2008
Dolly Doctor wrote in Tales and Traditions of the practice of performing the t-ainmean in the upper end of Uig - evidently the last man to carry it out was a Mackinnon, grandfather of Dolly Doctor's informant, so perhaps towards the end of the 18th century.
This offering was made to ...
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Thursday, August 14th, 2008
A letter from the Rev Alexander Macleod (formerly Established Church minister in Uig, who had taken his congregation to the Free Church in 1843 and left Uig shortly thereafter for Lochalsh) to Lady Hood, his previous patron. See also a letter from 1824.
Lochalsh
19th March 1844
My very dear and much respected friend, ...
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Sunday, August 3rd, 2008
After Rev Alexander Macleod and the entire congregation left the established Church in 1843 for the Free Church, the manse at Baile na Cille was vacant for nearly two years. In 1845, David Watson, a native of Croy, educated in Aberdeen, was received as a probationer and required to preach in ...
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Tuesday, July 29th, 2008
A further entry from the 1851 Diary of John Munro Mackenzie, enumerating his difficulties in getting the emigrants away. They sailed first for Troon, and thence for Quebec. It seems the Marquis of Stafford that took them to Canada was a steamer, unless the reference here refers to another boat that ...
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Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008
Further to the clipping from 1917 about Uig adopting summer time a year after it was officially introduced, it seems that throughout Lewis there were further difficulties with the concept. The following is from Eilean an Fhraoich of 1965, in an article looking back to 1925.
Summer time had ...
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Benbecula, UNITED KINGDOM