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).
Tales from Barra Page 1
