![Village of Roy Bridge, Invernesshire - Blaracha is next to the Chapel House [left of photo]](village.jpg)
This article may start in lighter vein for those who read, but for the one who writes the aspect of the case is a different one. Not long ago the present scribe encountered an editor. It is unnecessary to say what editor. The scribe made a suggestion to the editor which received the editorial approval. Then came a crucial moment. The editor suggested that the first experiment be made by the originator of the idea. There is a nasty Latin proverb concerning experiments and vile bodies which is apposite, but at this juncture most unpleasantly so. This is the result of the experiment. The suggestion was a series of articles for Home and Country dealing with local history in various parts where the Institute holds sway. The idea is not a new one. Miss Grace Hadow has already exploited it in connection with the English Institutes and village histories, and the inspiration in this case is derived from her suggestions. There is no doubt that much old lore can yet be preserved in this way, though there is also much that has been irreparably lost.
In the present instance the difficulty lies in too broad a canvas. Lochaber and the lower part of Inverness-shire, where most of the Institutes at present existing in that county are grouped, has a full and varied history impossible to compress into one article without being also compressed into the dry bones style of a gazetteer article which gives boundaries - geological data, height of mountains (if any), lakes, rivers, parishes, schools, post offices, county towns, banking facilities, churches - a compendium which leaves the reader impressed but chilly.
Then another thought came to the scribe - Scottish Women's Rural Institutes. Why not seek some prototypes of the outstanding women who form these? How disappointing is even a casual research into ancient history. The ladies of Lochaber in former days evidently believed that happy was the woman that had no history. No; the only really outstanding feminine figures in the Old Lochaber stories are the local witches. We might make an exception in favour of Lady Macbeth, but against that there is the fact that Shakespeare has so completely made her his own, and after him her identity is so lost in that of the tragediennes who have played her life-story that her real self has ceased to exist, or even to be of interest. We like Lady Macbeth - not as a model wife or mother, or potential grandmother; there is nothing to prevent this possibility having arisen in her real life - we like her as Shakespeare, Mrs Siddones, Ristori, Miss Bateman, Ellen Terry, and many another actress has portrayed her to a breathless audience. So the witches remain, or witches so-called: and whatever their attributes may have been for good or evil their individuality remains unquestioned.
Among these ladies the names of three occur who are prominent even at a witches' Sabbath. These are Cailleach, or Old Woman of Beinn a Bhric in Lochaber; the Glaistig, or Grey Witch, for want of a better name, of Lianachan; and Gormuil, the Blue-eyed Witch of Moy. All three are of local repute in their own district and even beyond.
First in order, not perhaps of merit, but of hoary tradition, is The Old Woman of Beinn a Bhric. This hill is situated at the end of Loch Treig, and the peasants from Achantore, long before the days of Fort-William, used to come there for the sheilings in the summer. Though the grazings are some way from where Fort-William now is, the mountain paths rendered them capable of access, and it is here in the lonely corries of the hill that the witch or carlin (it is hard to find a name for her) had her abode. She appears in various stories, and is also noted in a song very popular in Lochaber called by her name. It takes the form of a dialogue between the Old Woman and the hunter, who is by no means complimentary to her personal appearance, and has a "down on her", in modern phrase, for interfering with his hunting. For the Cailleach drives always a herd of deer with her in lieu of goats or cows, whom she milks and for whose welfare she is naturally solicitous, seeing that her living depends on their wellbeing. One seems to see here a touch of Lapland and the quaint inhabitants of those regions, who also use or did their reindeer for dairy purposes. In the song the Cailleach speaks of the desire of the deer to go to the shore in search of salt, no doubt, and says that she prefers they should haunt the high hills and drink of the high springs and the cool cresses that grow round them. Tradition has it that near the summit of Beinn a Bhric there is a well; round it grows cress, and its margins are soft, fine sand. This spring, such was the popular belief, used to be cleaned mysteriously every season by unknown hands - echoes in a way of the Mexicans and the secret devotees at the snake shrines. Old cults and old traditions die very slowly, and their echoes carry on even when the original source has no more life in it. Unquestionably survivors of some very old race were perpetuated in remote parts of the country, and the very fact that they were regarded as supernatural and uncanny preserved them in some sort of underground existence in some cases, or caves in others, or even as the Cailleach of Beinn a Bhric in the lonely corries of the inaccessible hills. One wonders how winter was spent, and if a sort of hibernation were possible to such beings. At best it could have been no more than existence of a most ascetic type.
Now in connection with this strange being it is curious that two or three other legends are connected which have something in common with the Lapland reindeer side of life. In Glen Roy, beloved by geologists because of its puzzle of the Parallel Roads, there are two stories told - both are localised by tradition. As a matter of fact, these are only two stories out of many, but these are quoted because they bear in a way on what has already been said about the Lady of Beinn a Bhric. About three or four hundred years ago there came to Lochaber a bride to one of the chiefs of Keppoch - whose people hailed from Ireland. With the little lady (she was small of stature - so, by way, was St. Paul) came retainers from Erin - the Boyles, Burkes, and O'Briens. These names are now no longer known in Lochaber, with the exception of the Boyles, and it is in connection with their name that this story is told. A tailor named Boyle was working in Glen Roy cutting hay. As he went up and down the field towards the river he spied in one of the pools a salmon resting. The temptation to secure him was irresistible. The tailor took from his garments a pike head, which many men in those days carried with them and fitted when required for use on to a pole or rod of some kind so as to turn it into a weapon of defence. The tailor adjusted his on to the handle of a scythe, came softly, softly down the field, and approached the pond. There still lay the salmon. Nearer he came to the river. Another moment and with a fine forward drive he made for the fish, but forgot that the blade of the scythe was not turned away from his head but over it, and in a moment the unfortunate man had executed himself. The scythe blade had inflicted a deadly wound on him who wielded it. Tradition says that there are graves by the river there, and that in one of them was found a skeleton with the neck cut through by some weapon. This we cannot vouch for, but the story of the tailor and his scythe has passed into a proverb, and with the name of the Boyle added to it for awkwardness or clumsiness - a reproach, by the way, quite undeserved by the rest of the tribe. But what is also curious is that a similar legend occurs among the Lapps. Again the place where the unlucky tailor met his doom is known as Achavaddy - the Field of the Wolf. The legend of this occurs in the delightful volume, "The Adventure of Baron Munchausen." He tells it in the first person, but in the Lochaber version it is told thus - A woman was in the wood with her child. Now at Achavaddy the country is singularly denuded of trees, but in those days the valley was thick with alders. They saw a wolf coming towards them, and were weaponless. The child started to cry, which was not unreasonable, seeing the alarming nature of the creature they had met, but the mother bade him be quiet. She wrapped her hand in her apron, or skirt, pushed her arm down the wolf's jaw, interfered seriously with the contents of his maw, and the animal died. This story is also known in Russia. In this tale, as far as I know, there has been no surname added to the incident as in the Boyle the tailor story.
Further up the glen, where Glen Turret joins Glen Roy, and where Montrose marched on his way to Inverlochy, comes a story of a woman stolen by the fairies in childbirth. This story has names attached, but bears a likeness to other tales of the same type. In the case it was the mother who was stolen and the babe left. The mother tried twice or thrice to return, and was heard weeping and wailing to get back to her babe. Finally, she told the dwellers that she might be rescued on a certain night when the fairies were riding away from the place they were in if her husband would make the attempt and stop her in the procession. She is said to have added that he did not care for her, and that she would not be saved. Nor was she. Whether from indifference or fear, the husband let the fairy troop go by, and his wife passed from him for ever. He married again later, and the boy who was in early life bereaved of his mother was Ronald MacDonald, always known as Ronald Glen Turraid. He was a young man in the days of the '45.
Now we come to the Glaistig, or Grey Witch of Lianachan. Here, again, we are on firm ground as regards names. Lianachan, it may be mentioned, lies by mountain passes not so far from Beinn a Bhric, and here also did Montrose pass on his was to Inverlochy. Well, on a day of days or an evening, for it was dusk, Big Kennedy the smith met the Glaistig at a ford. He was riding. She asked him to take her up behind him pillion fashion. But the smith was wiser, a man that worked with steel and iron, and always knew their value when dealing with folk of doubtful reputation. So he did take her up, and bound her hands with the girdle of St. Fillan (an obscure passage which we have never been able to clear up), and they fared together. Then the witch tried to bribe him, and promised him flocks and herds and wealth untold if he would let her go. At last she undertook to build him a house in a single night, and with this final offer he closed. She called up all the other fairies, and they came from miles around and worked all night passing the turfs and sods that formed the walls of the house from hand to hand - an old labour-saving method in the Highlands as well as in Japan; in the same way the rafters and the couplings; and when morning greyed there was the house complete and smoke coming from its roof and the forge in action. Then came in the witch to the window and begged to say farewell to the smith, holding out her hand for him to grasp. But he knew that he was still in danger, and into her scrawny hand he pushed the red hot coulter of the plough, so that the skin of her palm stuck to the blazing iron. Then she cursed him roundly, and one might say not without reason; bade him take warning that his race should die out from te place they were in; grow like the rushes and fade like the fern; that they should grow old prematurely (which is a characteristic of many of the Kennedys); and that their offspring should not grow old. Then she flew up the mountain side spitting blood three times as she went, and in a green flame vanished from view. There are still three spots where the witch, as she said, poured out her "heart's blood to be a mark till the day of Judgment." That the red patches are crimson sphagnum does not detract from the picturesque element of the tale. And there are now no Kennedys in Lianachan.
Lastly, Gormuil, the Blue-eyed Witch of Moy, in Lochaber. Her biography is fragmentary, but her powers among witches well accredited.
She appears as the counsellor in the story of Alan nan Creach or the Forays, when, his conscience at last smiting him for past misdeeds, he practised the Taghairm nan Cat, an invocation which consisted in roasting a cat alive on a spit. This proceeding, properly conducted, brought all the cats in the vicinity to hand, and at the end, could the invoker make his courage last out, the King of the Cats (understood to be his Satanic Majesty or representative) would appear and give his counsel on condition that the victim was liberated. Alan is reputed to have asked how he was to atone for his lurid past, and the answer given was that he was to build seven churches, and that speedily. On this the cats all left hell-for-leather and disappeared into a pool known as the Cat's Pool, on the River Lochy, near Torcastle. As to whether the tortured cat was able to follow its neighbour does not appear. Lochiel, however, built the seven churches, or, to be more correct, restored them on sites already known. Gormuil's connection with this tale appears to me obscure. The cat was very sacred to the witches, and it is unlikely she would advise Lochiel to torment one of her subjects, whatever information he wished to arrive at from this form of divination. It is more likely that the black magic practices had been of long continuance, as we hear of certain fairies who worked for one of the Cameron Chiefs, and who could only be summoned or dismissed by magic words he uttered for his purpose. Another version says that Alan started for Rome with the purpose of making a voyage to Palestine to atone for the misdeeds already alluded to, but, arrived in Holland, he dispatched his confessor, one MacPhail, to explain matters to the Pontiff, who in consideration of Alan's age and infirmities commuted the penance to the building of seven churches already mentioned. Gormuil appears again as the friend who warned Lochiel not to go to Athol unarmed on the occasion of his meeting the Duke to settle the boundaries of their respective territories. Lochiel took the lady's advice, went armed, but concealed his followers near the meeting ground, and was rewarded by finding that Athol had also an armed force in readiness and concealed. In this case the sceptical may wonder whether the fact that there were witches, and well-known ones in Athol, also may not have been the source of Gormuil's inspiration. Gormuil is also credited with having been present and assisted at the wreck of the "Florida" in Tobermory Bay, with other members of her trade. This belief was a very persistent one. It at all events dates Gormuil's career, as the "Florida" went down in 1588. In the end Gormuil is said to have met her death by drowning, and that the death was self-inflicted owing to her grief for the loss of her son, whose death she had inadvertently brought about.
This closes the tales of the Lochaber witches. But they are merely a fringe of a very interesting question. Story after story could be added to what has been said already, but space fails, and perhaps the patience of readers. In this question of the powers of witches one would like to agree with what Kenneth MacLeod says in his lately published "Road to the Isles". "Such as wish to understand the Scottish Gael, what he is, and what he is not, should study our witches of Gaeldom were not of the weaklings who are merely bad-hearted or tricksters in self-defence. They were rather highly gifted woman, who loved being alive, who won their place by force of character and by right of service. That supernatural powers were attributed to them by people makes one envy them: if they really possessed those powers, one envies them still more. The only vice in them which would perhaps have shocked the saints was their keen sense of humour."
Will the members of the Institutes in Lochaber be inclined to give Gormuil and the Cailleach of Beinn a Bhric (that prototype of dairy maids) a place among their honorary members?
The basis of Devenport's design - Blaracha, Scotland:
The Ryan Family of Blaracha (Blar-a-cha) - Blaracha, Scotland:
Inquiries are welcome at:devenport_estate@hotmail.com
Web Page Updated: 25th May 2008
