Tales from Barra Read online

  TALES FROM BARRA

  ________

  TOLD BY THE CODDY

  Tales From

  BARRA

  TOLD BY THE CODDY

  JOHN MACPHERSON,

  NORTHBAY, BARRA, 1876–1955

  Foreword by

  Compton Mackenzie

  __________

  Introduction and Notes

  by John Lorne Campbell

  This edition first published in 2018 by

  Birlinn Origin, an imprint of

  Birlinn Limited

  West Newington House

  10 Newington Road

  Edinburgh

  EH9 1QS

  www.birlinn.co.uk

  First published by Birlinn Ltd in 1992

  Reprinted 2001, 2004, 2008, 2014

  Copyright © the Estate of John MacPherson 1992

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN 978 1 91247 617 6

  eBook ISBN 978 0 85790 977 0

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Typeset by Geethik Technologies, India

  Printed and bound by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

  Contents

  FOREWORD, by Compton Mackenzie

  PEDIGREES

  INTRODUCTION, by J. L. Campbell

  TALES OF THE MACNEILS OF BARRA AND OTHER LAIRDS:

  *The Family Tree of the MacNeils

  MacNeil who Fought at the Battle of Bannockburn

  *MacNeil’s Raiding of Iona

  *MacNeil of Barra, the Widow’s Son and the Shetland Buck

  *MacNeil of Barra and Mackenzie of Kintail

  *MacNeil’s Return to Barra from the Isle of Man

  MacNeil and the Coming of Prince Charlie

  Coddy’s Great-grandfather Neil MacNeil and the Prisoners of the Napoleonic War

  MacNeil of Barra and the Butler, the Gardener and the Groom

  THE MACLEODS OF DUNVEGAN:

  Dunvegan Castle

  MacLeod of Dunvegan and the Duke of Argyll

  THE LAIRD OF BOISDALE:

  *The Laird of Boisdale and the Bag of Meal

  STORIES OF OLDEN TIMES:

  *The Weaver of the Castle

  The Life Story of the Little Weaver

  The Emigrant Ship Admiral and the Barra Evictions

  Inns and Ferries, and MacPhee the Ferryman’s Daughter

  The Shebeeners of Kintail

  The Drowning in Barra Sound

  Tráigh Iais

  ECCLESIASTICAL TRADITIONS:

  Saint Barr

  Saint Brendan

  Father Dugan

  PLACE NAMES:

  Bogach na Faladh

  Cnoc a’Chrochadair

  Creag Gòraich

  Gleann Dorcha

  Port Chula Dhubhghaill

  Tobar nan Ceann on Fuday

  Arms on Fuday

  TALES OF TREASURE:

  The Dutch Ship Wrecked off Ard Greian

  *The Tacksman of Sandray and the Crock of Gold

  TALES OF LOCAL CHARACTERS:

  Alexander Ferguson the Drover

  John’s Sail to Mingulay

  More About John

  Alastair and the Tenth of May

  Alastair and the Pigs

  The Story of the Thrush

  The Betrothal and Wedding of John the Fisherman

  John the Fisherman’s Christmas Homecoming in a Blizzard

  William MacGillivray and the Bagpipes Found at Culloden

  STORIES OF THE POLITICIAN:

  Medicine from the ‘Polly’

  Hiding the ‘Polly’

  Transporting the ‘Polly’

  Another Tale of the Politician

  STORIES OF SEA MONSTERS:

  The Capture of the huge Basking Shark

  The Sea Monster

  Another Sea Monster

  FAIRIES, SECOND SIGHT AND GHOST STORIES:

  How Time was Lost in the Fairy Knoll

  John the Postman and the Fairies

  The Fairy Wedding on Hellisay

  The Man taken from Canna by the Sluagh

  MacAskill and the Second Sight

  William and the Second Sight

  Second Sight in Uist

  The Frìth or Divination

  The Manadh or Forewarning

  The Mermaid

  Crodh Mara - Sea Cattle

  *The Water-Horse

  Uaimh an Òir, the Cave of Gold

  The Story of the Giant’s Fist at Bagh Hartabhagh

  The Story of the Ghost and the Plank

  *Mary and George

  How Donald met the Ghost of Alexander MacDonald, the Famous Bard

  WITCHCRAFT:

  *The Witches who went Fishing with a Sieve

  The Little Witch of Sleat

  *The Barraman who was Bewitched by the Woman to whom he gave Grazing for her Cow

  NOTE ON THE SECOND EDITION

  GAELIC TEXTS:

  Mac Nill Bharraidh, Mac na Banntraich, agus am Boc Sealtainneach

  Fear Shanndraidh Agus an Guirmein

  Na Tri Snaoidhmeannan

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  ________

  *Wire recordings of these stories made from the Coddy by the editor are in existence.

  Foreword

  I met the Coddy first at the Inverness Mòd in 1928 and made up my mind immediately that I must lose no time in visiting Barra in order to enjoy more of as good company as I have ever known. This collection of his tales with which my old friend John Campbell has put us in his debt needs no bush of words from me to proclaim the quality of such a vintage: it is evident. There are happily still many who will read these tales and hear the voice of the Coddy telling them, but I am sadly aware of my own inability to evoke him on the page for those who knew him not. His wit was constant, and, though usually inspired by the humour of the moment, he was able to retain it in his correspondence. The briefest letter from the Coddy had always a phrase to make it memorable, and I never received a letter from him but I wished I were with him, and that is a precious rarity in my correspondence today.

  The Coddy had an infallible sense of a man’s worth. I never knew him ‘put his money’ on an impostor. The socially pretentious, the bore, the sponger, the sentimentalist, the romantic liar never misled him into accepting their own opinion of themselves: he had a deadly objectivity. He possessed a remarkable gift which he shared with the Cheshire Cat of being able to disengage himself from present company while apparently he was still there. In his case what remained was not a smile but a pair of intensely blue eyes of which those who were familiar with them knew that the owner was no longer there.

  Self-possession was one of the Coddy’s characteristics, but it had not been granted to him by a good fairy at birth. We were driving round Barra once, and at Allt the Coddy stopped the car.

  ‘I want to show you something,’ he said to me when we alighted. ‘This was the very spot where I made up my mind when I was young that I was as good as other people. I had always felt awkward when I was selling the fish and I said to myself, ‘You can sell fish against anybody, and you must understand that and not feel awkward. And I went on my way to Castlebay and from that moment I felt I was as good as anybody.’

  Yet there were moments when that self-consciousness of youth he conquered once upon a time would assert itself. I remember a Corpus Christi procession in which he and I were taking part. The Coddy was to carry the crucifix at the head of the procession, and as he came out of the sacristy in
cassock and cotta he noticed that Ninian, his youngest son, was laughing with another altar-boy.

  The Coddy was not prepared for me to see him an object of mirth for the youth of Northbay. He must laugh at himself first.

  ‘Direct from the Vatican,’ he said to me, in that voice of mock solemnity which those who ever heard it will so much regret that they will never be able to hear again.

  One of the innumerable pleasures of the years I lived in Barra was visiting with the Coddy the small isles about it that were no longer inhabited, because he was able to conjure up from the past those who within his own memory had been the life of them, Fuday, Fiaray, Hellisay, Sandray, Pabbay, Mingulay, Berneray ... every name like the gnomon of a sun-dial records for me only the sunny hours, and on every one of them it is always a blue summer sky with the machair in fullest flower and reminiscence from the Coddy flowing like the tide.

  One curious vice the Coddy had (I do not apologise for the strength of the word), and that was to suppose that whisky was improved by diluting it with fizzy lemonade. I recall a visit to Barra by Lochiel, Charles Tinker and Alasdair Fraser of Lovat as repre sentatives of the Inverness-shire County Council of which the Coddy was the Member for the north end of the island. Hospitable always but on this occasion anxious to be particularly hospitable, the Coddy pressed upon them the suitability of the moment for refreshment. None was loth, and the Coddy retired to prepare the drams which he was determined should be drams de luxe. I can see now the expression of horror and incredulity upon the faces of his three prized guests as they tasted the liquor.

  ‘My God, what’s this?’ Charlie Tinker gasped.

  And the Coddy, raising both hands in a sursum corda of devout benison, said proudly: ‘Whisky and lemonade.’

  One more story. On a glorious June morning the Coddy and I had gone down to greet Eric Linklater’s arrival with his bride for their honeymoon in Barra, and on the way down to the pier I was beckoned to by a citizen of Castlebay with whom the Coddy was not on the most cordial terms. I went into his shop, and later joined the Coddy on the pier.

  ‘Well, Coddy,’ I told him, ‘I’ve just been given something you were never given by X–Y–.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Two drams, It’s his birthday.’

  ‘A Dhia!’the Coddy exclaimed in sombre marvel. ‘Fancy a man like that to be born in the month of June!’

  I shall not hear again the gurgle of the Coddy’s pipe nor see the ritual of expectoration that concluded the lighting of it, but as I write these words he is sitting on the other side of the fire as vivid and as much loved a figure in memory as he was in my life. He rests now by the Oitir Mhòr which he loved so dearly, and it is my hope that one day I shall rest near him and other old friends in the last cèilidh of all.

  COMPTON MACKENZIE

  MACNEIL OF BARRA PEDIGREE

  N.B. – There is a Barra tradition that Gilleonan was older than Roderick but was passed over. In a similar way it appears that the MacNeils of Vatersay are descended from Niall Uibhisteach who lost the succession to a usurping illegitimate brother around 1615.

  CODDY’S FAMILY TREE

  Angus MacPherson had brothers;

  Cathelus, grandfather of Roderick MacMillan, Gerinish.

  Donald, who lived at Griminish, and had a daughter Catherine, mother of Lachy Bàn, the famous piper.

  Introduction

  My first meeting with the Coddy – a nickname bestowed in boyhood and persisting, like so many Barra nicknames, throughout a lifetime – was a brief one in August 1928. Later the same year I had the pleasure of travelling with him by bus on the old Loch Nessside road from Fort William to Inverness, where we were both going to attend a Mòd, and Coddy, who represented the northern half of Barra on the Inverness-shire County Council, was also to attend a Council meeting. An invitation to return to Barra for the purpose of studying colloquial Gaelic was warmly extended. My only regret now is that I was unable to take advantage of it until 1933.

  Coddy was in appearance rather short, thick-set and Napoleonic; he had an extremely fine-looking head and was quick of movement – and of speech, whether in English or Gaelic. His MacPherson forebears came originally from Benbecula. Sixty years ago the late Fr Allan McDonald of Eriskay recorded a South Uist saying, ‘Geurainich Chlann Mhuirich’, ‘Geuraineach, a smart-tongued fellow. The MacPhersons or Curries or MacVurichs are considered sharp on their tongues and apt scholars.’ This was very true of the Coddy, one of whose chief characteristics was aptness of speech, both in Gaelic and English, and a talent for both anecdote and diplomacy which might, as I have heard it said, have made him Mayor of a large American city, had he been a citizen of that republic. As it was, his talents did much for his native island, and delighted a very large circle of friends.

  There is considerable interest in Coddy’s family tree. It belies completely the popular notion that the inhabitants of the Outer Hebrides formed isolated and inbred communities. On the paternal side his people came from Benbecula and South Uist, on the maternal from the Island of Mull, both sides eventually marrying into Barra families after settling on the island, so that both the Coddy’s grandmothers, Mary MacNeil and Flora MacPhee, were Barra-born. But perhaps his descent can best be described in the words of his eldest daughter, Miss Kate MacPherson, into which I have interpolated some dates and other information obtained from the Barra Baptismal Register and from Mr Roderick MacMillan, Gerinish, South Uist, one of Coddy’s cousins.

  Miss Kate MacPherson writes: ‘My father’s maternal grandfather, Robert MacLachlan, was gardener at Aros Castle in Mull and came from there to be gardener for Colonel MacNeil of Barra at Eoligarry. When telling this, my father always said that his grandfather came to Barra ‘after the Napoleonic wars,’ but apart from that I regret I cannot give a date. Robert MacLachlan became a Catholic and married Flora MacPhee’ [daughter of Alexander Macphee, Vaslain, and Flora Maclnnes, Greian, his wife, born 6th September 1815. The marriage took place at Eoligarry on 10th March 1834 and was performed by Fr Neil MacDonald]. ‘Robert and Flora subsequently moved to Talisker in Skye, but later returned to Barra and settled on a croft at Buaile nam Bodach. My great-grandmother brought her children from Skye to be baptized at Craigstone.’ [Of the five youngest children of Robert MacLachlan and Flora MacPhee, Archibald was born on 3rd April 1840 and baptized on 23rd August of the same year; Janet was born on 4th November 1841 and baptized on 22nd June 1844; and Margaret born on 15th April 1843, Ann (Coddy’s mother), born on 11th November 1845, and Neil, born 12th June 1848, were all baptized together on 21st June 1848. It therefore looks as if Robert MacLachlan and his family left Barra not long after the sale of the estate to Colonel Gordon in 1838, when Eoligarry ceased to be a laird’s residence, and returned to Barra in 1848, when the potato famine may have made things difficult on Skye.]

  ‘One of their daughters, Ann, married Neil MacPherson – Niall mac Iain ’ic Aonghuis ’ic Caluim ’ic Iain. I am sorry I cannot go further with the sloinneadh, but my father’s cousin Roderick Mac Pherson tells me that my father could go back fourteen or fifteen generations. Ann and Neil settled with my great-grandfather, Robert MacLachlan, on the croft at Buaile nam Bodach, and there my father was born on 26th December 1876.

  ‘Now as to the MacPhersons. Iain and his father Angus were both joiners and came from South Uist to work on the priest’s house at Craigstone, Taigh a’ Ghearraidh Mhóir (the house of the big wall).’

  [The priest in question was Fr Angus MacDonald, who was in Barra from 1805 to 1825, when he became Rector of the Scots College at Rome. Some of his correspondence is printed in the Book of Barra. His account book shows that Angus MacPherson came in April 1819 to start work on his house, bringing his wife Mary MacIntyre and his son Iain with him. Another son, Lachlan MacPherson, was born on Barra and baptized on 3rd April 1820, when his parents were described in the Barra baptismal register as ‘natives of South Uist, now residing in this parish,’ and the godfather was Allan MacArthur of the sloop
Maid. Angus MacPherson, besides being a well-known joiner, was a bard. Here are two of his best-known songs, as taken down by Fr Allan McDonald in 1887 and 1897:

  ‘The following comical song was composed by a carpenter of the name of McPherson, commonly called Aonghus mac Caluim ’ic Iain:

  Tha Siosalaich is Griogalaich tric ’ga mo bhòdadh,

  Iad trom orm uile, ’s mi umhail gu leòr dhaibh,

  Air son siochaire botuil bhith ’ga chosg’ san taigh òsda,

  ’S mi fhin bhith ’ga chosnadh le locraichean gròbaidh,

  Mo chailin donn òg.

  Chuir mi fios air an t-sagart bha stad anns an Iochdar,

  Bho’n a bha e n’a dhotair gu socair dhomh dhianamh;

  ’S nuair bha e ’gam shealltainn, bha mo cheann-sa gun riaghailt,

  ’S ann thuirt e ‘Tha’m bàs ort, cha n-fhàg e thu ’n dìochainn,’

  Mo chailin donn òg.

  ’S tric tha mi smaointinn na daoine nach maireann

  A dh’òladh ’s a phàigheadh ’s nach fhàgadh mi falamh

  Nam biodh fios agam fhìn nach eil sìth aig an anam

  ’S e ’n obair nach fhiach a bhith dianamh an drama,

  No idir ’ga h-ò1.

  Tha mo bhean-sa air a marbhadh a’ falbh feadh an fhearainn,

  A’ tional ’s ag iarraidh gach sian dhomh gu fallus,

  A dh’aindeoin a pianadh ’s a riasladh ’s a caithris,

  A dh’aindeoin a saothair, tha ’n saor gu bhith thairis,

  Mo chailin donn òg.

  Ach ma leighiseas mo shùilean, bheir mi ’n ionnsaigh so fhathast,

  Null far a’ chaoil far bheil gaolach nam fearaibh,

  Far bheil ceannard na cléire nach leubhadh a’ ghainne,

  ’S beag iùnadh do threud gun dhol ceum ann am mearachd,

  Mo chailin donn òg.’

  Translation

  ‘Chisholms and MacGregors are often putting me under the pledge, they are all hard on me, though I am obedient enough to them, because I consumed a trifling bottle at the inn, which I earned with grooving planes – My young brown lass (chorus).