North Uist in History and Legend

By Bill Lawson

Like all the Hebrides, North Uist has a fascinating history and a landscape scattered with historic sites, from Neolithic burial chambers, Iron Age forts and medieval churches to battle-sites and townships forged in the days of kelp trade and deserted during the subsequent traumas of clearance and emigration.

In this informative book, Bill Lawson writes about the island and its people, drawing on recorded history and also the rich tradition of story and song in which the informal history of the people was passed down. He also incorporates many personal reminiscences of his travels through the island.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Origin
• Release date: May 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781788852746

Bill Lawson

Bill Lawson founded the genealogy centre Co Leis Thu? and is genealogical consultant to Northton Heritage Trust, which now runs this research service. He has written over 36 books on the genealogies and history of the Western Isles and has an unrivalled knowledge of the history of emigration from the area. He regularly researches and lectures in North America and Australia. He lives in Northton, Harris.

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PROLOGUE

On a slight hillock, near the road between Baile Loin and Scolpaig, is an ancient cross, mounted on a more recent pedestal of rock. This is the cross of Cille Pheadair, all that remains of the church-site of that name. The prefix Cille- usually points to an origin before the days of the Vikings, so the church-yard probably dates to between 500 and 800, though the present site of the cross dates back only to about 1820, when it was re-erected on its pillar by Dr Alexander MacLeod of Baile Loin.

The cross has watched over much of the history of North Uist, but it is conscious that it is a relative youngster in this area. A few miles to the north, at Foisigearraidh, near Griminis, there are shell-middens with pottery shards which go back to the time of the Beaker people, who made their homes on the island about 5,000 years ago. Then came the Bronze Age, and after it the Iron Age – the time of the building of the duns, or forts. Some of these duns are on headlands, where a fire message could be passed from dun to dun in times of danger. But in North Uist duns were typically built on islands in lochs: Dun an Sticir at Baile mhic Phail, Dun Aonghais at Ath Mhor and many other examples – indeed there are few lochs of any consequence which do not have their island dun.

Illustration

1. View from Cille Pheadair Cross

The cross’s own day came with the arrival, somewhere about the year 500, of the first Christian missionaries, who made their way up the west coast from Iona and Lismore. Cille Pheadair, Cille Mhuire and Cille Chalamain on the shore near Huna are all names that bear witness to churches set up at this time.

The peace of the churches did not last long; from the north and west swept the raiding galleys of the Vikings. The clerics of the Hebrides had no shelter against them except the sea, which at its wildest could daunt even a Viking. There is a marginal note in a Gaelic grammar preserved in the monastery of St Gall in Switzerland:

Is acher ingaith innocht fufuasna fairge findfolt

No agor reimm mora minn dondlaechriad lain us lothlind

Sharp is the wind tonight, and white tresses rise on the ocean; / I need not fear the calm sea, bringing the fierce warriors of Norway.1

The Vikings did not settle the Uists as completely as they did the islands farther north, but they ruled them for long enough to give their names to the most important hills along the west coast – Cleitreabhal, Unabhal and Craonabhal – and to islands like Boirearaigh, Orasaigh and Bhalaigh. The churches in particular were the subject of the Viking raids, and there are many stories of church treasures being hidden on the approach of the raiders – and of gilded letters from missals and psalters appearing as ornaments on the Norse women when their menfolk returned home.

Though the Vikings had destroyed the church buildings, the sanctified ground still remained, and new churches were built on it; Speed’s map of North Uist in 1610 shows St Patricius, presumably a rebuilding of the older Cille Pheadair.

In 1266, after the Battle of Largs, the islands were formally ceded to the Scottish crown, and a half-Norse, half-Scottish lordship arose there under the leadership of Somerled macGhillebrighde – the Lordship of the Isles. The Lordship had its own court and its own judges and bards; it became a centre of Gaelic power and culture separate from the Scottish court, and often in conflict with it. As the Scottish kings consolidated their power in their mainland possessions, they were unwilling to allow too powerful and independent a Lordship. When the then Lord of the Isles entered into the Treaty of Ardtornish, by which he and the English king were to divide Scotland between them, the struggle for power between the Scottish Crown and the Lordship entered its final stage, resulting in the downfall and destruction of the latter.

John, the last Lord of the Isles, submitted to James IV of Scotland in 1494, but the MacDonald descendants of Somerled, who had been the main family in the Lordship, remained the most powerful grouping on the west coast. Had they been able to pull together, as they had under the control of the Lordship, the history of Scotland could have been very different, but the Scottish kings followed the old policy of divide and rule, setting the clans against each other and fomenting inter-clan feuds; this fatally weakened the Gaidhealtachd. The MacDonalds and the MacLeods, in particular, were set at loggerheads by the Crown grant of each clan’s lands to the other in Trotternish and other parts of Skye, leading to raids like that which led to the Battle of Carinish in 1601.

The MacDonalds did not have to contend only with outside foes; there was plenty of dissension among their own numbers. Domhnall Hearach was throttled by a trick at Dun Scolpaig, and avenged by Aonghas Fionn at the sanctuary of Cille Mhuire; Uisdean mac Ghilleasbuig Chleirich hid in the dun at Loch an Sticir at Baile mhic Phail; Siol Mhurchaidh were drowned at Hosta – there were plenty of examples, and the cross remembered well the tread of heavy feet and the clash of swords. But gradually the feuds were settled, and the farmers had been able to cultivate their lands in peace, more threatened by calamities like the great murrain or cattle disease of 1720 than by armed forces.

As there was less threat of outside danger, the clan chiefs came to place less value on the armed men they could raise from their tenants; they came to look on the tenants more as a source of income. The main farms then were along the north and west coasts, where the machair was easy to cultivate. Each township, along with its arable lands, had its common grazings, running into the foothills behind the machair. There the small black cattle which were the main produce of the land were raised. In the hills of the east was MacDonald’s deer-forest, and the long sea-lochs which provided summer fishing.

In the mid 1700s, a new industry came to the Hebrides, which led to sudden prosperity, and eventual ruin. This was the period of the French Wars, when there was an unprecedented demand for minerals, some of which, those used in the production of soap and glass, could be derived from the ash of kelp. Gathering and burning kelp was a very labour-intensive process, and more and more people were encouraged to settle in the shore townships. The land could not possibly feed them all, but that did not matter so long as the market for kelp was good. The landlord, of course, got most of the profits, but there was enough left over to buy food and pay the rents, even though these were increased to take account of the value of the kelp.

The whole system of land tenure was changed to accommodate the maximum number of potential kelp-workers on the land, and the crofting system was brought in to replace the older joint-tenancy farms.

The cross remembered when the whole machair coast of the island had been under a mist of acrid smoke as the kelp was burned in kilns. On the rocky coasts of the east, the sea-weed was cut from the rocks. So valuable was this that MacDonald fought a court-case for many years with MacLeod of Harris about the ownership of little rocks in the Sound of Harris – a case which ended with the boundary drawn so close to the Uist shore that almost every island in Caol na Hearadh was assigned to Harris.

After the wars came the inevitable crash. With continental markets open again, cheaper and better sources of minerals were available, and the price of kelp plummeted. Landlords and tenants alike lost their main source of income. Many tenants had been able to gather a little capital during the boom years, and they now used this to pay their fare to Cape Breton in Canada, and to buy land there.

Those who remained in Uist soon found themselves in financial trouble. There was no longer any serious income from kelp, though the business continued for a time, with less and less chance of any return. There was no income to pay the rents which had been increased in the boom years, and the land itself was impoverished through the diversion to the kelp-kilns of much of the sea-ware which should have been used as fertiliser on the crofts.

Illustration

2. Kelp-burning

The landlords offered some reductions of rent, for example in 1827, but these were not sufficient to solve the problems of the crofters. MacDonald himself, like most of the Highland chiefs, had entered into heavy financial commitments, and was unable – and unwilling – to cut back his expenditure to any great degree.

As well as the lack of income, there was the pressure of overpopulation. The landlords had encouraged the growth of a potential work-force, and now there was no work for them. The population of North Uist had risen from 3,010 in 1801 to 4,971 in 1821. By 1832 it had dropped to 4,603, largely through the emigration of over six hundred people to Cape Breton in 1828. By 1851, numbers had again dropped to 3,918, but then they began to rise again, reaching 4,264 in 1881. After that, there was a loss of about three hundred every ten years until 1961, when the population was given as 1,925. Since then the rate of decrease has slowed, and at the census of 1991 the figure was 1,815.

The remedy, from the landlords’ point of view, was in the new sheep industry. Sheep-farmers on the mainland were running out of new land for their flocks, and could offer higher rents than the crofters could pay. In the 1820s and 1830s most of the district of Sannd in the northeast of the island was cleared to make sheep-farms; the former tenants were squeezed in among the already overcrowded townships elsewhere on the island, or sent to join the pioneers in Cape Breton. Whole areas of Cape Breton, around the River and Lake of Mira, were settled from North Uist, along with shore lands around Gabarus and Catalone. As these better lands were taken up, immigrants had to settle on the higher, poorer, land, in areas such as Trout Brook and New Boston.

Griminis had been cleared then too. The cross could remember the Griminis crofters coming past with their carts laden, making their way to the new lands found for them at Hosta, but they at least had been able to stay on in Uist. It was about this time too that the cross was taken from its ancient home in the old graveyard and re-erected in its present position – it was said that most of the other stones in the graveyard had been used in building the new farm-house at Cille Pheadair, but now that had crumbled into ruin as well.

In the 1840s disaster struck in the form of potato blight, wiping out in successive years the whole potato crop on which the overcrowded townships had come to rely as their main food source. What little cash there was was soon spent on food, and rent arrears accumulated, providing the estate with another excuse for evicting tenants from townships, such as Solas, which had potential as farms.

If potato blight was bad in Uist, it was just as bad in Cape Breton, so there was no longer any point in going there. Lord MacDonald arranged for some families to emigrate to Middlesex County in Ontario, but most of the emigrants of this period went to Australia, with the financial assistance of the Highlands and Island Emigration Society.

Eventually, the government was forced to pay attention to the distress of the crofters, and the Napier Commission was set up to take evidence on the causes and possible cures of this distress. The commission visited North Uist in 1883, and the evidence given before it is a valuable source for the history of North Uist. The commission recommended a limited degree of security of tenure for the crofters, and much of the potential for the harassment of tenants by the estate was removed.

There were still more people squeezed into the crofting townships than they could support, and, although the crofters now had protection, there was still the problem of the landless cottars. Gradually, under pressure from the government agencies, many of the farms were broken up once more into crofts, with the assistance of the Board for Congested Districts. Solas and Greinetobht were crofted again, and the villages in Sannd – and even Loch Portain grazings were made into crofts again, even if they were let mainly to strangers from Harris!

Illustration

3. ‘Golf Ball’ on Cleitreabhal

Communications improved: new roads and harbours were built – and the cross could remember the first time a plane had come low overhead, on its way to the new landing strip at Solas! Other things came too; barely two miles to the south and east of the cross, on top of the hill of Cleitreabhal, a huge ‘golf-ball’ was built, part of the radar installations for the base at Baile a’ Mhanaich in neighbouring Benbecula, and beside it a litter of masts and aerials.

Still, mused the cross, at least the hill of Carra Crom hid it from immediate view, and it was still possible to gaze to the sea and turn one’s back on the hill. And, just to the south of the top of Cleitreabhal there are the ruins of prehistoric cairns and a standing stone. They have almost disappeared, swallowed up by the peat and the centuries, and no doubt the ‘golf-ball’ will go too, to become just another chapter in the stories of the different townships which go to make up the history of the Isle of North Uist.

Illustration

4. Cille Pheadair Cross

Eilean Uibhist mo ruin,

Eilean cubhraidh nam beann

Eilean Uibhist mo ruin,

B’e mo dhurachd bhith ann

An Eilean Uibhist mo ruin.

Far am faic mi luchd m’eolais

Sean is og dhiubh na th’ ann

Bhiodh coibhneas, bhiodh coiread

Pailt a dortadh mum cheann

An Eilean Uibhist mo ruin

Eilean Uibhist mo ruin,

Eilean cubhraidh nam beann

Eilean Uibhist mo ruin,

B’e mo dhurachd bhith ann

An Eilean Uibhist mo ruin.2

Angus MacLellan (Aonghas Lachlainn), Taigh Ghearraidh

PART ONE – NA MACHRAICHEAN (THE MACHAIRS)

Cille Pheadair (Kilpheder)

We can begin our historical tour of North Uist under the shadow of the cross of Cille Pheadair. We are in the north-west corner of the island; behind us are the rock promontories of Scolpaig, and before us the machairs of the west coast. Below us lies the farm of Cille Pheadair and below that again the site of the old church of Cille Pheadair itself, from which the cross was taken in the 1820s to be raised on its present pedestal.

This corner of North Uist is the least populated, and also has the least shelter. I must admit I have often, when walking through this area, had the same feelings that MacCulloch the geologist had when he was walking here in 1824:

There is one advantage in a shower on this country, that you are not kept waiting in a fretful expectation, wondering how long it will be before you are wet through. The business is completed in five minutes, and you are at peace for the day. After that, whatever falls is so much rain wasted!3

But I have been there on beautiful summer days too – and very beautiful it can be.

W. F. H. Nicolaisen in his Scottish Place-names4 points out that the church names with Cille- as a prefix are usually very early sites, certainly pre-Viking, whereas the later churches tend to use the Norse kirk- as a prefix. This would suggest that these Cille- church sites could date back to the early Christian missionaries, who made their way up the west coast from centres such as Iona and Lismore. It is unlikely to be a direct Columban settlement, as Argyll and the Great Glen were his main areas of influence, but there are many dedications to Maelrubha of Applecross in the Western Isles, and it may well be that the Uist churches were set up by his followers.

Cille Pheadair is one of the better agricultural areas of North Uist, and was occupied by tacksmen – tenants on long lease – who were often relatives of the clan chiefs – in the case of North Uist, the MacDonalds of Sleat. These tacksmen formed an ‘upper-middleclass’ in the community, both exploiting their subtenants and farm-workers and protecting them from the chiefs. Originally, the tacksmen had held their land in consequence of their ability to turn out with armed men to fight for their chief, but in the more peaceful days after the end of the clan feuds it was their relationship and social prestige which gave them claim to their tenure.

In the mid-1700s, all this began to change. The clan chiefs had been encouraged to become city gentlemen in London and Edinburgh, and the expense of this made them more interested in drawing cash from their estates than in maintaining family ties. The tacksmen’s rents were increased beyond what many of them thought their land was worth; and the loss of social prestige in changing from valued relative to commercial tenant was more than they could take. Numbers of tacksmen from both the Skye and North Uist estates decided to emigrate, and at that date the target of emigration was North Carolina.

The shorelands of Carolina had already been taken up by English settlers, so the Scots headed for the pine-clad sand-hills in the centre of the state, along the Upper Cape Fear River. There had been a settlement of Argyllshire Scots here in the 1730s, so there were plenty of plantations to purchase and new land to settle. Several of the North Uist tacksmen settled in this area, among them the tacksman of Cille Pheadair, who was a MacLeod of the family of MacLeod of Rigg, though there is some doubt about his first name. With him went his son, Dr Murdoch, who opened an apothecary’s shop in Cross Creek, later re-named Fayetteville. In the 1770s, Cross Creek had a population of about 1,500, and was very much the centre of the Upper Cape Fear River community.

It was a Gaelic-speaking community, and one of the earliest Gaelic songs we have from the Americas is in the form of a lullaby, written by John MacRae from Kintail, who had settled there:

Dean cadalan samhach, a chuilean mo ruin;

Dean fuireach mar tha thu, ’s tu an drasd’ an ait’ ur

Bidh oigearan again, lan beairteis ’us cliu,

’S ma bhios tu ’nad airidh, ’s leat fear-eiginn dhiubh.

Gur ann an America tha sinn an drasd’

Fo dhubhar na coille, nach teirig gu brath

’Nuair dh’fhalbhas an dulachd ’s a thionndaidh ’s am blaths

Bithidh cnothan, bithidh ubhlan,’s bithidh an siucar a’ fas.

Sleep softly, my darling beloved, / stay as you are; now that you are

in a new land / we’ll find suitors abounding in wealth and fame/

and, if you are worthy, you shall have one of them.

We are now in America, / in the shade of the never-ending forest;/

when winter departs and warmth returns, / nuts, apples and sugar will grow.5

My wife and I visited North Carolina recently and it was fascinating to find how Scottish the Upper Cape Fear community still was, and how conscious they were of this part of their history. Many of them can trace their families back to the original emigrants, including one family of MacKeithens, who claim a North Uist origin. Obviously their name has changed in transit, but what was it originally? MacKiggan perhaps, or even MacEachan, as pronounced by a person who could not manage the Gaelic ‘ch’!

Oddly enough, there are more of the descendants of the earlier Argyll settlers around there than there are of the later tacksmen, because so many of the latter fought on the British government side in the American Revolution. We shall return to their reasons for doing so, but the end result for Dr Murdoch was that he had to leave Carolina. After a short period as an army doctor with the Loyalists in Nova Scotia, he returned to Scotland, where he took on the tack of Cille Pheadair, probably paying for it with the meagre compensation he got from the British government for his losses while fighting for them in Carolina. It was at Cille Pheadair that Dr Murdoch’s son was born – Dr Alexander, or An Dotair Ban.

Illustration

5. MacRae Road-sign in North Carolina

An Dotair Ban was a well-loved doctor in Uist, as well as a noted land improver, whose work will be noted under Griomasaigh, Boirearaigh and Scolpaig. Unfortunately, he and MacDonald of Baile Raghaill, the factor, could never agree, especially in their cups, and they fell out so badly that the Dotair Ban eventually had to leave Uist for Skye, where he was doctor for the parishes of Strath and Sleat, along with Knoydart on the mainland. It was on a visit to Knoydart that he was killed in 1854, falling over a rock-face on his way home after delivering the child of a shepherd in a remote part of that country beyond Scotus – the rock still being remembered as Creag an Dotair.

It was An Dotair Ban who was responsible for the removal of the cross from the old graveyard of Cille Pheadair. According to tradition, the other remaining gravestones from the site were used at the same time in the building of his farm-house of Cille Pheadair. Dr Murdoch was buried in the churchyard of Cille Mhuire, as was his son; like most graves of the time, theirs are unmarked, unless by rough, uninscribed stones.

In earlier days, the doctors in North Uist had been of the family of Beatons, whose members were the hereditary physicians of the Lords of the Isles and their MacDonald successors. According to Clan Donald,6 Neil Beaton, the last of the Beaton physicians in North Uist, died in 1763. That they were learned people can be seen from the medical textbook Regimen Sanitatis – which would probably now be translated as ‘Life-Style’ – compiled by a Beaton, probably in the early 1600s. The book combines natural advice with classical learning:

It is better to rest standing, or to take a gentle walk after the meal; as Rufus says Modicus incessus post prandium hoc est quod mihi placet, that is, it is agreeable to me an easy walk after the meal. Nevertheless to make great exertion after eating by walking or riding will corrupt the food and will prevent the digestion. But after the meal take a moderate sleep as was said in this Canon Uentres hueme et uere that is that it is well to understand the extent to which the sleep helps the digestion. Still, the sleep and the non-sleep that goes beyond moderation is wrong, as is said in the second Particle of the Aphorisms; and let it be done in the night for Hippocrates says in the first Particle of the Prognostics Sompnus naturalis est qui noctem non effugit et diem non impedit, that is, the natural sleep which does not avoid the night and does not impede the day. Nevertheless many men make day of the