oral history and folklore — Spirit of Beyond : The Shiant Isles

oral history

Excerpt from JH Dixon: Gairloch and Guide to Loch Maree 1886:

“About midsummer 1878, I went in an open boat from Poolewe to the Shiant Isles, to observe the birds which breed in such numbers there. It was after 11pm when I landed on the largest island of the group. About a mile distance was a shepherd’s house, the only human habitation in those islands. I thought of going to the shepherd’s to beg shelter for the night, but my servant, a Gairloch lad, dissuaded me. On my pressing him for a reason, he told me there was a fairy in the house, as he had been informed by a Gairloch fisherman who had spent a night there not long before.
The fairy was said to be a mischievous boy, ‘one of the family’, who, when the rest were asleep, appeared in the rafters of the roof and disturbed the sleepers by bouncing on them. The night was so fine and the way to the shepherd’s house so rough that I decided to sleep in a plaid on the beach and so I missed the only opportunity that ever presented itself to me of observing the peculiarities of a fairy imp.”

Ailein Duinn (Brown-haired Alan)

Ailein duinn ("Dark-haired Alan") is a traditional Scottish song for solo female voice, a lament that was written in Gaelic for Ailean Moireasdan ("Alan Morrison”) by his fiancée, Annag Chaimbeul (“Annie Campbell”).

Alan Morrison was a sea captain from Stornoway, on the Isle of Lewis and was betrothed to the beautiful, young Annie Campbell, from Scalpay. In the spring of 1788 he left Stornoway to travel to Scalpay, where they were to be married. Unfortunately, his boat sailed into a storm and was dashed onto the rocks. The entire crew perished and Alan’s body drifted until it reached the Shiant Isles, where the tides washed it ashore.

As the story goes, Annie was devastated and lost the will to live, wasted away and died not long afterwards.

Her body was being taken by boat by her family to Rodel. for her burial, when a storm arose without warning. The boat seemed dangerously unstable due to the presence of her coffin and it was decided by those onboard to bury her at sea.

Her body was washed ashore on the very same beach on the Shiants, as had Alan’s not long before.

This is the lament she composed, just after his death:

Ailein Duinn

Gura mise tha fo éislean,
Moch 's a' mhadainn is mi 'g éirigh
Séist
Ò hì shiùbhlainn leat,
Hì ri bhò hò ru bhì,
Hì ri bhò hò rionn o ho,
Ailein duinn,
ò hì shiùbhlainn leat.
Ma 's e cluasag dhut a' ghainneamh,
Ma 's e leabaidh dhut an fheamainn
Sèist
Ma 's e 'n t-iasg do choinnlean geala,
Ma 's e na ròin do luchd-faire
Sèist
Dh'òlainn deoch ge boil le càch e,
De dh'fhuil do choim 's tu 'n déidh do bhathadh Sèist

Brown-haired Alan

How sorrowful I am
When I rise early in the morning

Chorus:
Ò hì I would walk with you. Hì ri bhò hò ru bhì,
Hì ri bhò hò rionn o ho, Brown-haired Alan, Ò hì,

I would walk with you
If the sand be your pillow,
If the seaweed be your bed

(Chorus)

If the fish are your candles bright, If the seals are your watchmen

(Chorus)

I would take a drink, though everyone would be scandalised, Of your heart's blood after you were drowned.

(Chorus)

a curious story…..

“The Shiants are nowhere near Uig, but there is a curious story attached to them regarding an Uigeach. The late Willie Matheson, historian and genealogist, related that Iain Dubh Chraidhig (Smith), personal attendant to Domhnall Cam (ca 1600) in Uig, was fishing in the Sound of Shiant and had taken his elderly mother along. Unfortunately the lady died, but as the fishing was a matter of urgency and he could not leave it, he embalmed her in a cave, in a manner not dissimilar to the drying of fish, before eventually returning to Uig with her body for burial. Tradition maintains that this Iain Dubh is an ancestor of the Smiths of Earshader, Valtos and Laxay.”

(from Uig Historical Society, Isle of Lewis)

<http://www.ceuig.co.uk/the-shiant-isles-with-the-islands-book-trust/>

“From “Sea Room”:

“The Gaelic word probably lies behind the Shiants. ’Si’ in Gaelic is pronounced ‘sh’ and ‘sianta’ transliterates as ‘shanta’. The ‘i’ in the modern spelling of the word is a mistake. Either ’Siant’ or ’Shan’t, not ’Shiant’, is the way it should be spelled and pronounced.Only those reading from maps ever say ‘’Sheeant’. The old Irish word sén, meaning a blessing or a charm, derives eventually from the Latin signum, meaning a sign of any sort, especially the sign of the cross. From that comes the verb sénaim: ‘to bless’, ‘to make holy’. Its passive participle in Old Irish is sénta, a word which evolved in modern Irish Gaelic into séanta, meaning consecrated, ‘hallowed’, or ‘charmed’, with a haze of meanings hovering around its outer edges meaning ‘haunted’, ‘spooky’, ‘otherworldly’. This is the word which is often spelled in Scottish Gaelic sianta…..

The Shiant Islands, full of magnificence and strangeness, protected by the Stream of the Blue Men, standing out in the Minch tall, mysterious, and beautiful, a challenge and an invitation to any man with a boat and a modicum of courage along hundreds of miles of coastline from Sutherland to Skye and from Ness to Barra, said, as so many of these islands are, to have been the hermitage of a Celtic saint in the Dark Ages: these are the Holy Islands of the Minch.”...................”

— Adam Nicolson

(excerpt above from Adam Nicolson’s “Sea Room”, his remarkable book depicting his deep and passionate connection with the islands)

the blue men of the Minch

The body of water between Lewis and the Shiants has long been known to be treacherous but also as the home of the “Stream of the Blue Men”, ‘Sruth Nam Fir Ghorm’ in Gaelic.

The Blue Men of the Minch sleep in their deep, underwater caves until the winds rise and they can venture forth to see whether there is any sailor foolhardy enough to be in their home waters in The Minch. The leader of the Blue Men will challenge the captain to a rhyming duel, and unless he is well prepared, and can complete a rhyming verse to their liking, the boat will face a watery grave as the Blue Men seize the keel and drag it under the waves.

“The Blue Men wear blue caps and grey faces which appear above the waves that they raise with their long restless arms. In summer weather they skim lightly below the surface but when the wind is high they revel in the storm and swim with heads erect, splashing the waters with mad delight. Sometimes they are seen floating from the waist out to sea, and sometimes turning round like purposes when they dive.”

(from Donald Alexander Mackenzie‘s “Wonder Tales from Scottish Myth and Legend,” published in 1917.)

Most likely, these mythological creatures mark a long folk history reminding all sailors that these waters are strewn with shipwrecks and are to be treated with caution at all times.

jottings…

The isles are far beyond all that I imagined them to be, having spent 13 years gazing at them from my home on the mainland and of course reading Adam Nicolson’s compelling book “Sea Room”. It was a glorious, hot, blue-and-cream mackerel sky day, which is not how I expected to experience them, but still they embodied an idea I’ve always had, as a Canadian, of ‘The North’, in their austere, rugged, uncompromising beauty. I worked with my camera alone, shooting mostly in black and white, as that seemed a better way of capturing their ‘bones’ and their essence. My time that day was very limited.