Clanlands

by Sam Heughan

There is also a ghost protecting the castle – possibly from other binge-drinking guests – called the Night Watchman, a haunting figure that has been seen in this very room, a lantern in his hand. He apparently loves music and during a recital some years ago, he appeared suddenly, walking through the wall, much to the distress of some Spanish tourists. Now covered by a large grandfather clock, the old passage leads to the guardroom, which is bricked up. John told us he hears the Watchman some nights, walking up the spiral staircase, past his bedroom, with very distinct footsteps. Just as he was speaking and we joked about the panicked tourists, the door behind us slowly opened, then slammed shut. Clearly the Watchman wasn’t interested in our conversation, or lack of musical ability.

  John told us about another experience in which he was hanging three pictures, one of a man and the other two of ladies. The first couple was up and he was happy with his handiwork. As he placed the second lady next to the couple, he felt a pair of hands firmly push him directly off the ladder. Lying on the ground, unscathed, he looked up and the picture he was trying to hang now had a large diagonal tear right through it. Clearly the couple didn’t want her near them – some ancient love triangle or love tiff?

  We admired many of the pictures and history involved. The last one was a painting by George Watson (1767–1837) of a young man (John Hay MacKenzie, aged thirteen) with impressive calves, wielding a shinty stick – the earliest painting of someone playing a sport in Britain. I can see Graham stiffen, his sporting loss still raw after our fictional uncle/nephew battle on the shinty field in Outlander (Season 1, Episode 5). Never one to miss an opportunity to wind the weary codger up, I have arranged with Michelle’s help a surprise for Graham in the castle grounds.

  ***

  On the empty playing field, in sight of Castle Leod, we are joined by a group of polite, quiet, yet fearsome-looking girls – the Local Inverness Shinty Club. The game of shinty is a cross between field hockey and lacrosse, with some barely contained fighting thrown in. Half our height and my age (a quarter of Graham’s), the Inverness lasses seemed shy of our cameras. Graham isn’t happy at all. He asks them the question of the year . . .

  Graham: Is it called shinty because they used to smash each other in the shins with sticks?

  Scots are good at two kinds of sport. Either the type they can do drunk/in the pub – snooker, darts, curling, golf [Graham: You can’t curl or play golf in a pub!] – or sport that requires the participant to be fearless, e.g. rugby, shinty, fighting. Back in the day, Highland clans would get together in a mass chaotic frenzy. Entire villages would gather to play hundred-a-side games. Wooden sticks in hand, they’d battle for the ball (bit of wood, sheep vertebrae or even cow pat, whatever they could find). The game has progressed a little since then and possibly become even more dangerous with the addition of a solid leather ball. Many current players have lost teeth, eyes and been knocked out. Players can hit the ball into the air, volley it, smack it up the field and you can shoulder into people to try and push them off the ball. The only thing you can’t do is kick it.

  In Outlander, we recreated a shinty game with Jamie and his Uncle D playing on opposite sides. Apparently, Dougal taught Jamie to play; no doubt he cheated a bit, and Jamie was ready to teach his uncle a lesson. I too wanted to see if Graham would keep up. During shooting, Graham was ruthless, aggressive and dominant. For a take. Then he pulled a hamstring or was it a tendon? Maybe a migraine? He then sat and watched from the comfort of his chair, latte in hand, snack bag discarded as he finished the last cereal bar, as his stunt-double ran, wrestled, fell and played ball, over and over. I even had to pick him up and throw him over my shoulder and onto the hard ground. So today, after visiting Castle Leod, I was looking forward to really putting him through his paces.

  As the ladies take to the field the beast is unleashed. They charge at us, stealing a ball (I brought another just in case), and fire a rocket shot at the poor goalie. She doesn’t flinch and fires it straight back at Graham and me. We duck and begin to realise we are out of our depth. This isn’t acting; the Inverness Shinty Girls are the real deal. ‘Maybe I should feign an injury?’ Graham pants, but I am determined to win.

  I charge the pack. A third ball appears at Graham’s feet, definitely safer to attack him than these crazed teenagers. We grapple for the ball, much like the scene in Outlander, and it’s exhausting. After only ten minutes of running around we are done and, while the girls are distracted taking pieces out of each other, we sneak off to the camper for a coffee (and Graham’s mid morning snack).

  SHINTY FACT FILE

  * An ancient Scottish Sport brought over from Ireland in St Columba’s times.

  * It was used as a way of practising sword-play.

  * The ‘caman’ (stick) is traditionally made of ash (now a mix of ash and hickory). Any piece of wood could be used if it had a bend or was crooked (‘cam’ – Scottish Gaelic for crooked).

  * A game was said to have been played the night before the Glencoe massacre.

  * An annual game is played between Scotland and Ireland (slightly different sticks are used by both sides, the Irish playing a game called ‘hurling’; the rules are changed for the game).

  * The game can be mixed gender – women in Scotland are hard.

  * The ‘Ronaldo of the glens’, Ronald Ross, scored 1,000 goals and played for Kingussie Camanachd, the most successful sporting team of all time, winning twenty consecutive league titles.

  GRAHAM

  Sam: I want to win. Come On!

  He is so pathetically competitive, running around like a sugar-spiked six-year-old.

  Sam: Come on, Graham!

  The ginger Duracell bunny is roaring up and down the pitch, barging into me, pushing me, roughing me up.

  Sam: Come on, girls, I’ll show you how it’s not done!

  He’s like Lord Flashheart on speed.

  Shinty is – by the standards of most sports – exceptionally violent. When we were training for the shinty scene in Outlander, Sam and I were tutored by a Highland shinty player who confided that hacking ankles and shins was completely normal. Historically, there were no rules for shinty until 1848. Every community had their own team. Some games were friendly, but some between communities with a long-standing enmity would descend into mass brawls often resulting in severe injuries (as there was no protective padding for players). Back in the day there were no rules on numbers either.

  So while today we are restricted to twelve on each side and a regulation-sized pitch, it used to be that up to fifty people would play on each team.

  One rule was that no hands could be used (apart from the goalkeeper, but they weren’t allowed to catch the ball). They were also not allowed to hit the ball with their head. Considering the ball used to be made of solid wood (not the leather-covered cork of today), you would think this rule would be redundant and unnecessary, but clearly some particularly violent players thought nothing about heading a solid wooden ball travelling at speed towards them.

  I suspect Sam Heughan would have been such a man. Any opportunity for rolling around, shoving, grappling and general brawling is welcomed by the head of ginger. When we filmed the shinty game, I made sure I tried to act as well as I could with the violence and fighting. However, I couldn’t help suspecting that if the director had uttered the immortal words ‘Just go for it’ (words that I have heard uttered more than once before a fight scene), Sam would have gone completely berserk and attacked everyone, including the camera department, catering, and costume girls. You could see him barely struggling to contain his rising rage during each take.

  As for shinty today . . . I’m out of puff, Heughan’s thwacked my ankle bone and I have groin strain. I’ve always preferred tennis myself.

  SAM

  After shinty, we drive up to the Prickly Thistle pop-up mill, just outside Inverness, and walk inside. Not a single comment about my driving. Suspicious. He asks if he is kickboxing this afternoon. No. He is surprisingly chatty, I expect him t
o moan about ‘shinty aches’ but he is positively happy. There is even a hint of a smile under that proud beard. It has a character of its own, bristling when angry, drooping when tired. I suspect he uses beard oil and combs it every night. Maybe the opportunity to let out some aggression and fight some teenagers on the pitch has perked him and his beard up.

  A former accountant, Clare (owner of the Prickly Thistle pop-up mill) had no idea how to make tartan, let alone assemble the vastly complex ancient machines she had just purchased. Some months before, I had promoted her appeal to help fund the refurbishment and creation of a traditional woollen mill. Outlander fans are so generous and passionate, they could see what she was doing was preserving an ancient craft. Within a matter of days they helped finance her project and the Prickly Thistle mill was in business. Clare and I spoke about creating a tartan, the real challenge being not the weaving of wool or the design and colour of the plaid, but the official registry of tartans. We wanted to call it, you guessed it, the Sassenach. The officials thought it a derogatory name; we convinced them otherwise. Due to Outlander and Scotland’s progressive nature, the word had taken on a new meaning. It was a term of endearment, ‘the Outsider’, of which we are all one. We wanted to create something using ancient skills, crafted with natural fibres, sustainable and which would provide employment for the community in the Highlands. Clare was very excited and we set out to make a new tartan.

  Clare gives us a tour of the mill and looms as we nod politely and pretend to understand what is going on. ‘Yarns we use all start off their life on a very large cone,’ she says. ‘Depending on the design of tartan we’ve created for clients we break cones down into a particular order and number of threads.’ Using two looms from the 1920s and 1950s Clare and her team prepare yarns into perfect order building chains that are the ‘computer programme’ of the looms. It takes up to a week to prepare those elements alone before we even start to weave. One half of a tartan comes from a back beam of the loom called the ‘warp’. The strands of warp are held in tension by the back beam as the ‘weft’ is then drawn through and inserted over and under by the loom. Traditionally done by hand or foot pedal until 1785 when powered looms were invented, the engineering is amazing, so much happening at high speed. The shuttle flies back and forth almost invisibly and becomes a dangerous projectile if something goes wrong. Many early factory workers were injured and some even lost their lives. As we watch the cloth being made, I could see Graham’s eyes wander. He is looking at my scarf, my Sassenach tartan. I could tell we weren’t going to leave until he got one. He marches off to the storeroom to find the most expensive freebie he can. He still doesn’t realise I charged it to his room. [Graham: Fortunately, knowing Sam’s ‘Mr Gradgrind’ grasp on money, I had taken the precaution of charging my room . . . to his room.]

  On Outlander we also had a tartan created for us. Most current tartans and their colours are actually quite modern, a creation of the Victorians, fashionable and segregated into their separate clans and colours. In the past there would have been little or no unity. The only consistency or variation would have come from the various plants and berries used to dye the wool. Using the local vegetation or animal dyes surrounding Inverness, they created a brown and grey/blue pattern for the MacKenzie clan. Men would have lived in their kilts, exposed to all weather and conditions. So the colours were probably faded and less stark, with softer shades and hues. Obviously Jamie only had access to his MacKenzie colours but when he returned to his home at Lallybroch, we then were able to use his Fraser tartan (he is married to Claire wearing his family’s colours; I know Graham was secretly jealous of my glam threads and terrific hair). [Graham: If you’ve watched the episode, he resembles Liberace in a kilt.] [Sam: No one under fifty will get that reference, Grey Goat.]Nowadays, tartan manufacture is more regulated and many clans have a unique, formal pattern, also possibly a ‘hunting tartan’ used to blend into the woods.

  GRAHAM

  ‘Tartan was a form of identity where people used native raw materials from the land to create distinct colourways and fashion,’ says Clare.

  After the Battle of Culloden, the Act of Proscription (1746) was introduced to cut off the head of Jacobitism and neutralise the clans by the forced removal of weapons – a key part of a Highlander’s identity and a way of defending clan or property – and by banning the Highland dress or plaid, a symbol of Highland identity and clanship. Kilts were replaced by trousers and because people could no longer wear plaid, many traditional skills used in dyeing and weaving were lost in a generation, including various ancient patterns.

  Abolition and Proscription of the Highland Dress 19 George II, Chap. 39, Sec. 17, 1746:

  That from and after the first day of August, One thousand, seven hundred and forty-six, no man or boy within that part of Britain called Scotland, other than such as shall be employed as Officers and Soldiers in His Majesty’s Forces, shall, on any pretext whatever, wear or put on the clothes commonly called Highland clothes (that is to say) the Plaid, Philabeg, or little Kilt, Trowse, Shoulder-belts, or any part whatever of what peculiarly belongs to the Highland Garb; and that no tartan or party-coloured plaid of stuff shall be used for Great Coats or upper coats, and if any such person shall presume after the said first day of August, to wear or put on the aforesaid garment or any part of them, every such person so offending . . . For the first offence, shall be liable to be imprisoned for 6 months, and on the second offence, to be transported to any of His Majesty’s plantations beyond the seas, there to remain for the space of seven years.

  The law was repealed on 1 July 1782. After the repeal, tartan and clans, as we now know them, flourished and, even today, we are creating new tartans, such as the ‘First Love’ collection from Sassenach Inc. Sam is modelling yet another scarf. Lucky world.

  SAM

  It’s time to meet the Badenoch Waulking Group, a charmingly devilish bunch of ladies assembled around a table at the back of the mill. They first appeared in Season One, Episode Five of Outlander when Claire goes on the road with Dougal to collect taxes and joins in with some villagers ‘waulking the wool’, listening to their gossip and song. In the episode they ask her to pee on the cloth, a traditional technique to soften it up. She politely declines but downs a few drams of whisky, which probably made them all better singers!

  The ladies get waulkin’ the wool whilst singing a burst of the beautiful waulking song they sang on the show (Mo Nighean Donn – ‘my brown-haired girl’ – is one of Jamie Fraser’s pet names for Claire, alongside ‘Sassenach’):

  ’S Mithich Duinn Eirigh, Mo Nighean Donn

  (Time That We Awaken, My Brown-Haired Girl)

  ’S mo nighean donn,

  Bheir mi ó ro bha hó

  ’S mithich duinn éirigh,

  Mo nighean donn.

  ’S misde dhomhs’ bhith dol dhachaigh;

  Tha mi fad air mo chéilidh.

  ’S misde dhomhsa bhith gluasad

  Seachad buaile na spréidheadh.

  Bheir mi m’aghaidh air Muile

  Ged a’s duilich leam-fhéin e.

  Ged a’s duilich an-diugh e

  Bu ro-dhuilich an-dé e.

  A Dhòmhnaill ’ic Lachlainn bhon Bhràighe

  Chuirinn fàilte roimh cheud ort.

  Sheila Mackay explains to us that waulking is an ancient and traditional way of working the wool, shrinking the fibre and felting it. ‘When the cloth comes off the loom it’s a very loose weave and to render it wind and waterproof it has to be tightened and shrunk.’ (This can be done with sweaters at home on any cycle over thirty degrees in a third of the time!) It’s a laborious task, so to pass the time they sang. ‘There’s a lot of rhythm in the songs to match the task; as the wool got lighter and drier the songs got faster!’ There were work songs for most things back then: sweeping songs, milking songs, you name it. Helping to pass the time and make life a bit more enjoyable. The traditional songs were handed down orally, with some going back to the 1700s. Many are about lo
ve, sailing, going to war and local gossip.

  GRAHAM

  ‘Prickly’ Clare is a delight, the machines are indeed impressive and very loud, but when all is said and done, this ‘visit’ to the mill is simply the chance for an extended advert for yet another Heughan enterprise into which he’s stuck his murky corporate fingers. On a side note my great-great-great-grandfather came from the Highlands to Edinburgh in 1830 to find work. His occupation during the census of 1841 was listed as ‘basket weaver’. He had arrived, probably with Gaelic as his first language, bringing the only skill he could use in this urban environment. I try and imagine what Edinburgh would have seemed like to Alexander McTavish. Coming from the village of Achahoish in Argyll it would have seemed like another world. I’ve no doubt he was discriminated against because of his Highland origins, mocked for his accent and his rough ways. And yet he married and established a family in that city. They were illiterate up to 1870 for sure, as the ‘X’ for their signatures proves on marriage certificates. Only fifty-two years later my father was born, who then went on to be an airline pilot. Such is the journey of the Highland family over a period of less than a hundred years, which would be echoed by countless displaced Highlanders from across the country.

  And now for something completely different . . .

  Sam’s Scottish Slang

  Face like a well-skelpt arse – referring to someone with a face similar to someone’s gluteus maximus, which has been spanked repeatedly. Graham’s expression after I’ve pissed him off one too many times.

  Gie it laldy – give something a beating/give something 100%. The optimal speed at which to drive the camper van.

  Pure dead brilliant – exceptional. Like my whisky.

  Lang may yer lum reek – good health (may your chimney stink for a long time?!). Graham’s has reeked for a long time.

  Yer heid’s up yer arse – not physically possible but certainly a descriptive way to describe someone that doesn’t agree with you.