Tales from Barra

by John Lorne Campbell

  Tales of treasure

  The Dutch ship wrecked off Ard Greian

  Once upon a time a ship was wrecked north of Ard Greian, the most westerly point of Barra if not of the British Isles. The ship was coming back from abroad with a cargo of bars of gold, a Dutch ship she was, and there was a tremendous hurricane in the Atlantic and it was do or die for her and she made for the shore of Barra, and she could not make for a worse shore with the wind that was blowing and the sea that was running. And the ship became a total wreck on the reef of Mollachdag – that means in Gaelic ‘the cursed rock’ – unfortunately with the loss of all hands.

  Now a number of years passed and very little of the ship was saved and that same winter put her absolutely to pieces. And very little of the cargo or anything at all was saved – it being bars of gold, you understand, there was no salvation for it but to go to the bottom!

  Many years after, there were three women gathering whelks at a very low spring tide and they found bars of what they said to themselves was copper. And they took the copper bars home with them and they decided to show them to an Irishman who then was the only merchant on the island.

  The Irishman said to himself, ‘Well, I don’t believe that this is copper – this may be gold, and so I’d better go to Glasgow myself in the smack that is going (there were no steamers in those days), and take the bars with me and have them examined in my own presence, and see myself what is happening.’

  Now he went to Glasgow and consulted the man who was going to identify what was in his possession. And the man started to identify and examine, and, ‘What do you say,’ the Irishman says, ‘the bars are? I took the bars out here to you for you to identify them.’

  ‘Well,’ he says, ‘the bars are gold and you found them on the bottom of the sea – the gold shows it has been lying in the sea for a long time.’

  ‘I did,’ said the Irishman, ‘I found them at the bottom of the sea.’

  Then he weighed the lot and he told him what was the value and the Irishman had to take him at his word whether he was getting an honest or a dishonest deal. And I am sorry to tell you that I have not the foggiest idea how much he got for the gold, but he bought shawls, blouses and hoods for the ladies, three of each, bought them a box of presents – and I am sure he could well afford to.

  On arriving in Barra, he called the ladies who got the bars of gold. ‘I am very pleased,’ he says, ‘that I was very lucky with your copper bars, which I sold, and here is a present for you, Mary – that’s a shawl, a currachd, that’s a blouse and skirt. In case,’ he says, ‘you would be jealous of one another, I bought the same for the three of you.’

  And so the ladies were very pleased at his coming home with such beautiful presents. The dress of the day was two shawls – a small one on the head and a big one round the shoulders. And they all thanked him very sincerely for his very kind gifts, and he told them always to be watching the tide and try to find some more. And they made several attempts to find more of the ‘copper’ bars but they met no luck, although they got plenty whelks.

  Now, after that, the Irishman thrived well, and he put up a big house and he was dealing a lot with cattle. Well, one time he bought two cargoes of cattle and shipped them to the mainland; and he had a son called John and he sent John with them and John sold the lot and over and above squandered the whole issue and asked his father to send him more. And the poor man was sending more and trying to get him back home, until the fortune was exhausted and when the fortune was gone – what happened, John went to sea and became a sailor.

  Now he had been away from Barra many, many years and the Irishman died and to my knowledge he had nothing at the latter end.

  * * *

  Now I was on drill in Greenock in 1905 and I came across an old sailor and he asked me what part of the world I came from and I told him I came from the Island of Barra. And he says to me, ‘Did you ever hear,’ he says, ‘of a man named John M’G — in Barra?’

  ‘Well, no,’ says I, ‘I don’t know and I never heard of him but I heard of a man M’G — who was a merchant.’

  ‘Well, that’s his father,’ he says, ‘because he told me he was a merchant. And I was shipmates with John – one of the best sailors ever I came across, although he was very foolish for himself.’

  In the evening of his days John came home to Barra, as he could sail no longer owing to old age and infirmity. He started to buy sheepskins and rabbit skins and we had a pile just in front of the shop, just ready to make a deal. Well, at that moment I saw an Army officer landing down below the house and I could not identify who he was until he came very close. And who was it but the late Reverend [Monsignor] Canon John MacNeill, formerly in Morar, who was coming home on leave. Well, I was so pleased to see the Canon that I cancelled the bargain I was making with John and told him, ‘Take them away, John, I will see you again about the prices.’ So I took in Canon MacNeill. He was a co-age of myself and I entertained him as well as the times of the day could afford. And when he was after telling me many stories of the 1914 war he told me a story about Donald Johnston. He was killed and he gave him the last rites, and he had every praise of Johnston for being a brave man and a strong man, and a hero, and he was proud to be a Barraman. He returned and went to Castlebay, the Canon, to see more of his friends, and he called on me before he returned to Eriskay to go back to France again.

  One day I was in Castlebay and it happened to be a very hot day, very sunny. Well, I met John on the street in Castlebay and I said to him, ‘Mr M’G –,’ says I, ‘I have not seen you for a considerable time – what about the price of the skins – the sheepskins and the rabbit skins?’

  And he put his hand up above his brows as a shade between him and the sun, and he said, ‘I don’t know you.’

  And that is the way Mr M’G — paid the Coddy for the skins – he never did pay!

  The tacksman of Sandray and the crock of gold

  Once upon a time there lived a MacNeil on the Island of Sandray and he owned the island. He was also a fisherman and an all-round hard-working man, between fishing and working the Island of Sandray, and he didn’t want from any angle of the compass. During his stay on Sandray a ship was wrecked with a cargo of indigo not far from the Currachan.1 MacNeil discovered that the cargo was a valuable one, so he started to carry cargoes of it to Greenock, and he did this for a long time without anybody knowing that he was doing anything at all. For each cargo he took out he was paid in gold. Now he was carrying the gold with him home and put it in a peck measure. And he continued doing this for a considerable period, and the peck was getting well-nigh filled. Then it was discovered by the Customs that there was such a thing on the Currachan as this cargo and they came to rescue it, and so MacNeil was knocked out of it. At the same time, MacNeil had kept his hold until his keg of gold was full to overflowing.

  So hard-working he was that he wore a shirt going to the fishing that was knotted up nine knots in it, and he had a sheepskin instead of an oilskin whilst hauling the lines.

  He then made up his mind to retire and come ashore to Barra. And his choice was Beinn Sgurrival, being the most fertile bit of ground in Eoligarry.

  Now, he is there looking well after himself and at the same time getting old. In the evening of his days he made up his mind to marry, and he married a young lassie. He was always a very economical person and he would not go near the keg of gold, which was overflowing, except under very needful circumstances. He had the key of the girnal where the crock of gold was locked safely. It was the custom that a girnal was in every house at the time, one of those big chests about half the size of the room here. He was always manufacturing something, and this particular time he made for himself a pair of shoes of bent grass, which he was using to go out with when the days began to get fine in the spring-time.

  Times were going on and the wife was managing more or less about the farm. ‘Fear Sgurrival’ went out one fine day in April and it was the first day to use the slippers which he had made i
n the winter-time. Unfortunately, he forgot when he was getting up in the morning to put the key round his neck as usual. And the first thing he did when he got up was to put on the slippers. And when he got them on he walked at his leisure, with his stick in his hand, to the end of the house, where he would be exposed to the sun.

  Well, he was there now, feeling very comfortable, and suddenly it crossed his mind whether he had put the key round his neck as usual, and he found that he had not put it there at all. And, so as to make sure, he got on his feet immediately and crept silently with the slippers into the house and down to the room. And to his great astonishment he found his young wife up to her eyes in the girnal and in the crock of gold. And he crept very quietly up behind her and took hold of her by the wrist.

  ‘Eh, my dear lassie,’ he says, ‘you have got plenty.’ So she withdrew from the girnal and I don’t know how much she had.

  But he locked the girnal and sent for the minister, the priest and two elders and he made his will. And the following is the will he made: ‘As long as a black cow gives milk and the breakers of the Atlantic ocean break on the shores of Barra, I am giving you this money to see that in my absence, when I am dead, the interest on it will be equally divided among the poor of Barra.’

  And that was done. It is a good habit that died out. Information about the present circumstances I am not able to tell. After MacNeil of Sandray’s death, his widow lived comfortably at Sgurrival, though she never married again.

  [In the Old Statistical Account, 1794, it is stated that: ‘the number of poor is generally from 40 to 50; there are £400 sterling of a fund for them, £200 of which is a mortification by Archibald Macneil, late tacksman of Sanndray, and £100 by Roderick Shaw, tacksman of Alasdale, now living; they never go anywhere else to collect their subsistence.’

  So presumably MacNeil of Sandray lived about the middle of the eighteenth century. Tacksmen like himself were usually younger sons of the proprietor, who were provided for by being given a ‘tack’ of part of the estate, sometimes for life, sometimes for the lifetime of the succeeding proprietor, sometimes for a definite period of years. The tendency was, as time proceeded, for old tacks to be superseded by new ones in favour of younger sons of the proprietor of the next generation, so that eventually the descendants of tacksmen were likely to merge with the people in the same way that descendants of the younger sons of peers revert to commoners. but there were exceptions to this, especially in the case of the MacNeils of Vatersay, a family which certainly maintained itself all through the eighteenth century. This family may well have had a claim to the estate, as descended from the dispossessed legal heir Niall Uibhisteach.

  The Deed of Entail executed by Colonel Roderick MacNeil of Barra in 1806 sought to limit such tacks to nineteen years or the life of the tacksman, rent to be fixed by auction, but without any grassum.

  All the Barra tacksmen emigrated to North America between 1780 and 1830, except the MacNeils of Vatersay, whose last representatives lived in Oban during the latter part of the nineteenth century. At various times there were tacksmen in Brevig, Earsary, Vaslan, Allasdale, Greian, Sandray and Fuday, and perhaps in other places. The list of Hebridean Catholics drawn up in 1703 shows tacksmen, MacNeils in Vatersay, Tangusdale, Greian and Vaslan, and Shaws at Craigstone.]

  ________

  1 A rock off Bruernish.

  Tales of local characters

  Alexander Ferguson the drover

  Back in 1905 I came across a man by the name of Ferguson in Greenock. His daughter was married to a publican, and I was in the public house with a friend of mine. And he would not allow me to stay anywhere else while I was on drill in the naval barracks at Greenock but with himself. In the said house I met the famous man Alexander Ferguson, a big man who stood over six feet, and in his younger days was a cattle dealer. Those were the days when all the cattle were driven to Falkirk and to all the markets by foot. On hearing I was a Barraman, Alastair got into the news with me very much.

  He said he bought cattle at Loch an Dùin and he ferried them at Northbay and took them over to Uist. And he didn’t fail to tell me that he called in the North Bay Inn, a little inn on the road from the Loch an Dùin to North Bay. ‘At the time,’ he says, ‘it was owned by a man of the name of William Sinclair.’ I heard a lot about William from several people who lived before me, and I listened to Alexander’s story very well.

  Now, putting his cattle aboard at Northbay, he ferried them across the Barra Sound – not a comfortable sea journey in bad weather – and he landed them on Polacharra, South Uist. After buying some more at South Uist he carried on north to Benbecula, and after buying some at Benbecula he went across the North Ford and bought some at the market stances in North Uist. As it so happens there were two market stances in North Uist and Alastair bought at both the markets, with the result that he had a ‘nice puckle,’ as he would say, of good Highlanders landing on the mainland.

  Well, every night, when the toil of the day was over, Alastair would stay in an old inn and he would leave a little boy to whom he gave a shilling to look after the cattle at night, and they would graze at the roadside. And at that inn he bought a bottle of whisky – in those days it cost about two shillings – and half a stone of oatmeal, which cost about a shilling, and that was his food the whole day until he would reach the next stage house, which was Glenfinnan.

  And Alexander followed this routine until one day he found himself in the famous Falkirk – plenty Gaelic there in those days, plenty dealers from the north and plenty beasts in transaction, some selling and some not selling. Well, Alastair said to himself that he was not pleased with the prices and so he decided not to sell and he kept them on hand, along with many others, and they walked to Dumfries. Well, Alastair was not pleased with the prices at Dumfries and so he decided to carry on to Carlisle. All the way from Loch an Dùin, Barra, to Carlisle he went, and Alastair sold there. When he had sold, he got the money in pounds and there was a long way to travel from Carlisle to Muirlagan, Lochaber.

  ‘There were a lot of robbers in them days, and,’ Alastair said, ‘I had to line all the money and sew it in my jacket, except what I would use on the road. Well, I set off for Lochaber with a good stick and with a good bundle of pounds, from being very successful in Carlisle. And I was taking care of myself and being very careful that no one would take me out of the way, or that I would be drinking with anyone, and I avoided all bad company on the road home in case anything would happen to myself or the money.’ So Alastair arrived at Lochaber and no one challenged him.

  * * *

  Alastair was there and his wife, staying with the daughter, and it was most interesting to hear them talking over their younger days. And at this stage the wife said, ‘You took care of the money that day, Alastair, but there were many days you didn’t do it.’ And Alastair replied, ‘Whatever I did,’ he said, ‘you were never hungry since I married you!’

  I was very pleased indeed to meet Alastair and Alastair was very pleased to meet myself, and next year when I went to drill in the same place and went to the same house Alastair was very much alive but unfortunately his wife was dead. Before embarking in the steamer in Castlebay I bought a ling from a fisherman I knew, and the ling was six foot four inches. So that I would have it packed properly one of the boys opened it, took the bone out, took the head off and left me just with the fish, and when I arrived in Greenock I stretched the fish out on the table – and the table just could do it and a little more – and Alastair, who was blind, had to feel it with his hands. And he passed a remark that the fish was the biggest ever he had seen – and he was not seeing it at all!

  Well, very much enjoying Alastair’s company every time I had an opportunity to hear his old news and grand stories, to me very interesting, I was exceedingly sorry the day I parted with Alastair, and not to see him any more.

  [Many stories used to be told in the Highlands and Islands of adventures in the old droving days when cattle were taken south to the big markets a
t Falkirk.]

  John’s sail to Mingulay

  John was a very notable person in the Island of Barra and we were both in school together. Then the day came when we parted, and John was to learn to be what was called in those days a pupil teacher and I went to sea. John followed this education and his brains were the best I knew, of superior quality, and he got an opportunity to develop them and he continued being a pupil teacher until he went to college. And then when he got to college he had a lot of interest in navigation; when he was in school with myself he had a lot of interest in it.

  One fine day John passed out his exams and he went to teach down Newcastle way, at Gateshead, and he spent a lot of time there as a teacher and then he joined night classes, taking lessons in navigation, still in the hope that he would get to sea some day. Now the time passed and one day he took an exam and got an Extra Master’s, as far as navigation was concerned. And now he had to go to sea and learn the seamanship part of the job.

  Now what happened but he got schoolmaster, first in the Island of Eigg and then Rum and then Canna, and after that got an appointment and came home to Mingulay. Mingulay is the second last island to Barra Head, where the lighthouse stands, and there are some tremendous cliffs there. And it was John’s habit to be climbing the cliffs and getting into marvellous places – one would close his eyes to see the places where John went to the cliffs and stood out on top of them!

  Now he had a small boat of his own and he used to go to Castlebay with it all the way from Mingulay, and if he was not going to be back on Mingulay for a day or so, he used to put up a notice at school saying, ‘This school will be closed this week-end till Monday’ – giving himself plenty of time.

  One day he was coming across from Castlebay on a Saturday. There was not a breath of wind in the whole horizon – in the area in which he was, anyway – and he said to himself, ‘There is nothing for it, boy. Just take off your jacket and row to Mingulay.’ He put off his boots and made himself as light as possible, and then something happened in the interval – and unfortunately what happened was, he fell over the side. Fine and sunny it was and John caught hold of the gunwale but, although he did that, he could not take himself out of the water and into the boat.