Now the day of the funeral came and it was the biggest funeral that was ever seen at Barra, three coffins going down the road. I clearly remember seeing my mother weeping and wailing as the crowd went past, and during my own career I happened to be ferrying a lot of people in the 1914 war across there, but she never ceased to advise me to keep it hot in my ears – the disaster that occurred – and always be careful in my boat. I am proud to say that I did follow her advice, with the result that I am still alive and did not meet such a fate.
Everyone was buried in his own section with the exception of the fourth man, and it was six weeks before his body was recovered, and it was found at a place called Kilbride in South Uist, about a mile from Polacharra, the place they started. And his remains were taken to Barra and also buried in the same cemetery where his forefathers were. In the history of Barra, now, I am safe to say that the like of this drowning never before was heard of, and never since did happen.
Tràigh iais
Once upon a time there was found on Tràigh Iais the remains of a beautiful lady. A long period passed and after numerous enquiries it was discovered that it was the body of the daughter of the King of Norway, who last saw her alive whilst bathing on a beautiful beach in that country.
One story is that she is buried beside the schoolhouse at Eoligarry, and that her father sent out a party to erect a memorial and you could see the memorial there to this day. This is, of course, a traditional story which nobody could say whether it is right or wrong.
* * *
About the Tràigh Iais I am proud to say that it is the finest beach for professional bathers, or any other bathers, in the whole universe.
The softness of the sand, where you can walk with safety – it is as soft as velvet. If you were, on the other hand, a capable surf swimmer I have seen people surf bathing who have been round and round the world, on the various beaches of Africa, Australia and New Zealand, and they came to a decision that not in any part of the universe did they bathe on a beach equal to Tràigh Iais.
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1 i.e. the Gigha in Barra Sound
2 Alasdair according to the Baptismal Register. See Coddy’s family tree.
Ecclesiastical traditions
Saint Barr
St Barr was one of the followers of St Columba and he came to Barra and found that we were all heathens, so much so that a missionary came before him and the Barramen got hold of him and they kindled a fire and roasted him and ate him. But St Barr did not meet this fate. He began to go round the island trying to select a spot where to build a church and, going north, it was said that he found a place on the shore of the Tràigh Mhór not far from the stance where the Eoligarry school is today. Then he went still farther north and after going round Kilbar he decided on building the church on Cnoc Chillebarra, where the remains are still to be seen.
He got on very well among his people and they truly loved him and obeyed him, and were very faithful in every way, and particularly as far as the Christian faith was concerned. For many years it was a monastery there, more or less, and priests and bishops were ordained in the church at Kilbar.
When his toil in Barra was over and the day came that he had to leave, he, along with the whole of the islanders went on their knees and he prayed that God would always protect and always support his flock. He gave his blessing to every individual that was standing on the soil of the island, and then to every beast that was standing on the island, and he prayed hard that the sources of the sea would be plentiful, and he blessed the very rocks. And he finished by saying that the last wish that he was praying to God was that the light which he had kindled on Barra would never go out. (And from another story I have told it appears he got a hearing – the day that MacNeil thought the whole island would walk out after him.)
After he left, there was a statue of the saint put up not far from the church, and going in you had to pass round it deiseil, sunwise. One night the statue was mysteriously removed and never seen again.
Barramen of that day used to celebrate a day in honour of St Barr and it was mostly spent in shinty-matching, horse-racing, jumping and so on. And none turned a sod of Barra soil the day they were holding a feast in honour of St Barr. Up to maybe a hundred years ago this custom was carried on. Even today people who have friends buried at Kilbar keep up that part of the custom that they do not do any tilling of the ground on that day.
[See Introduction for an account of St Barr or Findbarr of Cork. His day is on 25th September. His image, which is said to have been covered with a linen shirt on that day, had been removed from the church before the time of the Old Statistical Account (1794). Martin Martin, who did not see it himself, says that the statue stood on the altar; but statues of saints are not kept on altars in Catholic churches. Fr Cornelius Ward says that the statue was in the church at Kilbar when he visited Barra in 1625, although the church was then roofless. The roof would have been of thatch. Fr Ward appears to have got the impression that St Barr himself was buried at Kilbar, but I have not heard any tradition to this effect.
The horse races and other celebrations connected with St Barr’s day were still going on as late as the time of the New Statistical Account (1840) but were tending to die out, probably owing to emigration, the growing poverty of the people and the influx of Protestants into Barra which had taken place during the ownership of General MacNeil (between 1821 and 1831 the population of Barra had fallen from 2303 to 2097, while between 1813 and 1840 the number of Protestants, all incomers, had increased from 60 to 380. See Book of Barra, p. 179). The custom probably died at the time of the evictions, when misery was widespread.
Like many local saints in Celtic countries, whose reputation for sanctity and strength of character has endured in the memory of the conservative race for many hundreds of years, St Barr, who of course lived long before the process of canonisation was systematised, is not actually upon the Roman Calendar.]
Saint Brendan
St Brendan was the Sailor Saint, and he did not stay so long in the Island of Barra as St Barr did. And though it is difficult today to believe it, he went out west as far as St Kilda in a coracle. He built a little chapel down at the seaside at Borve and it is called St. Brendan’s Church to this day, and the Barramen who live on the southern end of the island keep a holiday in honour of St Brendan and they too do not do any tilling of the ground on that day – it is in May, about the 15th. However, one particular man whom I remember myself – he had no belief in sitting at home and doing nothing on the day of the saint and started to plough in the morning. And what happened – not a grain grew, and the ploughing land was there and never yet did any grow, and never again on St Brendan’s day did he turn the ground or plough after that. And this man, he was disliked for doing such a thing, and the day is called yet Latha Murchaidh Bhig – Little Murdoch’s Day, for the reason nothing ever grew on the ploughing he did on St Brendan’s Day.
[St Brendan may have reached Iceland and the Faeroes in his coracle, as well as St Kilda. For a rationalisation of his voyages, see Vilhjalmur Stefansson’s Great Explorations. For the life of St Brendan, see C. Plummer’s Lives of the Irish Saints.]
Father Dugan
After the Reformation, when priests were not allowed to land on the island at all, Barra suffered to a great extent, so much so that they had to go to hear Mass in very peculiar corners. One corner I can describe to you is on the Rubha Mór not far from the village of Brevig. On the point of the road they used to meet and on Sunday attend the Mass service, and then disperse, each and every one going to his own home. On several other corners of the island the same was the case.
Latterly the priests were persecuted and not allowed to come to the island at all. That continued for many, many years, with the result that in the evenings people would collect together and say the Rosary. And even that itself faded out at last, and there were a lot of people on the island who were never baptized and a lot never married and still the population was increasing! And that was goi
ng on until one day it was learned that Father Dugan came over from Ireland in a coracle.
Well, no doubt the Faith faded out, but the feeling was there the whole time, and when it became known that Fr Dugan was a priest, he was surrounded by all the islanders and he went round and said Mass. Shortly afterwards, you could see the Faith spring up like a hill of heather on fire, and from all parts of the island would come people to the meeting houses (taighean pubaill). At one time Father Dugan said Mass right up on top of the hill between Castlebay and Borve, and the place where he said the Mass is still called Bealach Ui Dhúgáin.
Now he started to baptize a lot of people who were not baptized; he started to marry a lot of people who were not married, and so on. Now this was going on and then he had to go away, and he went to South Uist and from South Uist to Benbecula, and then he had to cross to the mainland, and whether he ever did go back to Ireland I am not in a position to say. But the day he was leaving Barra, when he announced he was departing, they all mustered round him and kissed his hands and his feet and urgently prayed to him to come back. ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘I would never go, I would never leave Barra,’ he says, ‘if I was allowed to remain.’
Now he was at Benbecula, and when he had been there some time he had to leave, and half the island only was Catholic. And to this day half the island of Benbecula are Catholics and the other half are Protestants.
And after that, another priest, Fr Fanning, came to Barra and he had no difficulty – the times were not so very pressing as they were when Father Dugan was there. Times were improved and the Faith was beginning to flower out again on the Island of Barra. And so the prophecy was fulfilled that St Barr made about Barra when he said that the fire of faith which he kindled in Barra, he was praying to God it would never go out.
* * *
Many years passed and now we go back and see the day when the Faith is very prosperous in the island. Only MacNeil, who was in the Army during the Napoleonic Wars, said, ‘I am going to become a Protestant because I will never get on without.’ And he became a Protestant. And he came home, and a few Sundays after he came he suggested to himself he would cause a row between himself and the priest. So he says to the priest, ‘I am going to church to-morrow and I am going to walk out (it was Sunday), and you will see that everybody in the church will walk out after me.’
The priest replied, ‘I am also going to the church, and,’ he says, ‘I don’t know and I don’t care whether you will walk out or not, but I am going to the altar to do my duty.’
So in the middle of the service MacNeil boldly walked out. But not a single soul that was on their knees made a move to follow him, and MacNeil went out very much disappointed, and he never came back to the church any more.
[The mission of Fr Dugan to the Hebrides is described by Louis Abelli in La Vie de St Vincent de Paul, Book I, Chapter xlvi, p. 224. Needless to say, Fr Dugan did not come to Barra from Ireland in a coracle. He was sent by St Vincent de Paul to minister to the spiritually starved Catholics of the Western Highlands and Islands in 1651, and travelled in a ship from Holland to Scotland disguised as a merchant. He was an extremely zealous, conscientious and hard-working missionary in the territories of MacNeil of Barra, Clanranald, MacLeod of Dunvegan and MacDonell of Glengarry and, except in Skye, his mission was a permanent success; but it could not have been nearly so easy if the ground had not been prepared by the labours of the Irish Franciscan missionaries, Frs. Ward and Heggarty in the same districts between 1624 and 1640, labour to which Fr Dugan himself gave rather scanty recognition. Fr Dugan died in South Uist on 17th May 1657, on the eve of what seems to have been a projected visit to St Kilda. (Pabbay is the place named but neither Pabbay south of Barra, nor Pabbay in the Sound of Harris fits the description given, whereas the latter was the residence of the Steward of St Kilda, at any rate not long afterwards in Martin Martin’s time). Fr Dugan never realised his hope of visiting North Uist, where he might have repeated the success of Fr Ward in 1625. The reason for the mixture of faiths in Benbecula is largely Protestant immigration.
It cannot have been the MacNeil of Barra who was in the army in the Napoleonic Wars who walked out of the Catholic Church on Barra in the manner described. He was brought up as a Protestant in any case.
I have been told that it was Roderick, the heir to MacNeil of Barra, who was killed at the seige of Quebec, who left the Church. He must have become a Protestant before he could get a commission in the British Army at that time. It is said on Barra that when the news of his death reached the island, the people proposed to his father, the Chief, that a dance arranged for that day should be cancelled. ‘Let the dance go on,’ said the old Chief, ‘he has dishonoured me in life, and I shall not honour him in death.’]
Place names
Bogach na faladh
‘The Bog of the Blood’
There was a battle between the Norwegians and the MacNeils on Bogach na Faladh. It was a big battle and the Norwegians had to retreat, and never again did they come back to put up a battle on the shore of Barra, although they had several during the period of their invasion, including the last one on Fuday which I have described to you in another story.
Cnoc a’ chrochadair
The ‘Hangman’s Knoll’ on the north side of Bruernish, and it is always called, and will ever be called Cnoc a’ Chrochadair. When MacNeil of Barra had somebody to hang he would notify the crochadair to come up, and his salary was, I understand, this: he had a little dominion there at Cnoc a’ Chrochadair and it belonged to him. Hanging was his only job, and he got as salary a free croft for doing it.
Creag gòraich
In the evening, it was customary for the women to go out with pails and buckets of wood to milk the cows, and the fairies or sithichean were very common. And when this particular woman started to milk her cow, the creag beside her opened up, and from that creag came the most beautiful music and song she ever heard. So, the unfortunate part of the story, I cannot find any trace of the song. (If it so happens I will discover it, it will be made known to you.) But it was a very common song at one time on Barra, and the lady before finishing milking the cow had learned it from the fairies.
Many of the songs that were lost in the last sixty years were taken from the fairies – especially when the women of the day were milking the cows in the evening. The rocks or the knoll would open and the finest music that was ever known came from the rocks and the knolls. This class of music was far superior to anything else on the island and even today traces of the fairy music remain in the singing of the Orain Luadhaidh (Waulking Songs) and you can hear the difference.
Gleann dorcha
‘The Dark Glen’
This man I have mentioned already on more than one occasion, Farquhar MacRae, he used to go to the Gleann Dorcha late at night and see if he could manage to have the pleasure – if you would call it a pleasure – to meet any ghosts. Unfortunately for Farquhar, he never met any!
There is a story of a ghost that was seen many years before Farquhar’s time. There was a ship wrecked at Cliat and only two sailors came out. They walked together till they reached the market stance by the crossroads and then one man took the road to Northbay and the other went the road to Gleann Dorcha. And they both perished. And the one that perished in the Gleann Dorcha, it is said that his ghost was often seen where his remains were found. And his ghost was also seen many years before it happened.
Port chula dhubhghaill
The only information I can give regarding Port Chula Dhubhghaill is that there was a man there who lived very near the Port. He was a crofter and his name was Dougall. He was the only tenant at the Port there and hence the name (which means ‘The Cove of Dougall’s boat.’)
Tobar nan ceann on fuday
‘The Well of the Heads’
The Barramen and the Norwegians had the last battle and they met on the Island of Fuday – that is an island lying in the Sound of Barra between Barra and South Uist. And I will describe the island first as one of t
he most charming of the Outer Isles from the Butt of Lewis to Barra Head. And they had a big and a rough battle which ended in a loss of life of the three last Norwegians. And after killing them they were cruel enough to take off their heads and throw them into a well which was nearby. I know the well myself and in fact took buckets of water out of it. On the last day I visited the island I discovered that the well had closed and the water was escaping to the sea through another channel and you could not get a drop of water from it that day.
I remember clearly in the dead of summer you could see the water bubbling up there, but the mysterious point, what happened when it changed its course to the shore, I am not in a position to describe.
So the Norwegians’ dùn was left unoccupied that day and it has been the same ever since – the last three heroes were killed by the Barramen.
There was a hurricane one year which blew a lot of sand away on the west and north-west of Fuday, and during the storm there were exposed a whole lot of graves, stone-lined, and the skeletons could be seen. And in the morning, when the shepherd saw that, he hurriedly went home and took two of his daughters to help him and his wife to fill up with sand and close the graves, and put them back as near the original positions as possible. And during his long life on Fuday, the shepherd never saw anything like that storm.
Arms on fuday
Now as regards arms which it was rumoured that they were hidden on or after the ’45, the shepherd, who knew the whole history of the island, never mentioned to me any such matter.
Tales from Barra Page 9