Sgeulachdan
Lore & stories
Shipwrecks, chapels, Jacobite landings and the tales people still tell on the machair. Short reads rooted in place — for visitors and for anyone who grew up with them.
History
Documented events and places.
Legends
Stories that grew in the telling.
Island facts
Short, sourced and a bit obscure. The full run is at /facts.
- Fact · North Uist A Viking ship burial lies beside the old Berneray ferry slipway At Otternish, where the Berneray ferry used to leave from until the causeway opened in December 1998, ancient human remains were found in 1870, and a Viking ship burial was uncovered fifty yards away in the early twentieth century.
- Fact · Benbecula A century ago every parish in Uist was over three-quarters Gaelic-speaking In the 1901 and 1921 censuses every parish in Uist was recorded as more than 75 per cent Gaelic-speaking. In 2001 Benbecula was still 56 per cent, and Uist remains one of the last strongholds of the language.
- Fact · Berneray A cult folk album was written on a Berneray croft Vashti Bunyan wrote much of Just Another Diamond Day, the 1970 folk album that became a cult classic decades later, while living on a croft on Berneray. Fish, the former Marillion singer, has a croft on the island too.
- Fact · Benbecula A grizzly bear was loose on Benbecula for 24 days In August 1980 a grizzly bear called Hercules escaped while filming a Kleenex advert on Benbecula and was loose on the island for 24 days. He would not eat the sheep. A crofter spotted him swimming and he was flown home by helicopter, having lost half his weight.
- Fact · North Uist A linen millionaire built a mansion on a tidal island and dug up its past Erskine Beveridge, head of Dunfermline's biggest linen firm, built himself a mansion on Vallay, the tidal island off North Uist's north coast, and spent his summers excavating its archaeology. The house is a ruin; he is counted among the first archaeologists of the Hebrides.
- Fact · North Uist An Iron Age broch reached by three causeways and an Island of Bad Counsel Dùn an Sticir, north of Lochmaddy, is an Iron Age broch on an islet reached by three stone causeways, one of them via Eilean na Mi-Chomhairle, the Island of Bad Counsel. A MacDonald of Sleat was still living in it in 1602.
- Fact · North Uist Baleshare's highest point is twelve metres above the sea Baleshare, the flat island off North Uist's west coast, rises to just twelve metres above sea level. Its causeway, 350 metres long, was built in 1962, and the island's name means east township because its western half was lost to the sea.
- Fact · Grimsay Before 1960 the North Ford was often too wet to walk and too dry to sail Until the North Ford causeway opened in 1960, the ferry from Carinish to Gramsdale could only run at high tide, and the ford could only be walked near low water with a guide. For hours every day it was neither.
- Fact · Benbecula Benbecula is the mountain of the fords, and the dark island Benbecula's Gaelic name, Beinn na Faoghla, means mountain of the fords, from a Norse word for ford, though its only hill is 124 metres high. In Gaelic poetry it is An t-Eilean Dorcha, the dark island, and Balivanich means town of the monk.
- Fact · Berneray Berneray's beach was used to advertise Thailand In 2009 Thailand's tourist board advertised Kai Bae beach with a photograph of white sand and turquoise water. It was West Beach, Berneray. Nobody noticed until an islander did.
- Fact · North Uist Boreray is an island with a single croft Boreray, two kilometres north of North Uist, is an island with one croft on it. Not to be confused with the other Boreray, the sea-stack of St Kilda.
- Fact · South Uist Britain's most westerly mountain has the wrong name on the map Beinn Mhòr on South Uist, 620 metres, is the most westerly mountain in Great Britain. Locals will tell you its proper Gaelic name is Gèideabhal; Beinn Mhòr just means big hill.
- Fact · South Uist Britain's only prehistoric mummies came out of a South Uist field The only prehistoric mummies ever found in Britain were dug up at Cladh Hallan on South Uist. Bronze Age islanders had preserved bodies in a peat bog and then buried them under their roundhouse floors, about 3,000 years ago.
- Fact · Eriskay Eriskay's first road was paid for by a film premiere Eriskay's first proper road, from the pier at Haun to the harbour at Acairseid, was built in 1935 with money raised at the London premiere of Werner Kissling's film about the island, the first film to feature spoken Gaelic.
- Fact · South Uist Howmore has one of Scotland's biggest clusters of thatched houses Howmore on South Uist has one of the largest collections of thatched buildings in Scotland, medieval chapel ruins that once housed a college of learning, and an 1858 church with its communion table in the middle of the room, one of very few in the country.
- Fact · South Uist Loch Bì nearly cuts South Uist in two Loch Bì on South Uist is eight kilometres long and all but cuts the island in half. The main road crosses it on a causeway first built in the 1600s; the current one dates from 1990.
- Fact · South Uist Loch Druidibeg was a UNESCO biosphere reserve for 37 years Loch Druidibeg on South Uist was named a UNESCO biosphere reserve in 1976 and a National Nature Reserve. Both titles were quietly withdrawn, in 2013 and 2012. It is still the place to see greylag geese and hear the corncrake.
- Fact · North Uist Lochmaddy's first mention in the record is a complaint about pirates The first written mention of Lochmaddy, in 1616, is a report of 'piracie and murder' calling it 'a rendezvous for pirates'. The name means loch of the hounds, after the rocks at its mouth.
- Fact · North Uist No loch in Britain has a more complicated shoreline than Loch Sgadabhagh Loch Sgadabhagh on North Uist is so riddled with bays, arms and islands that it has been said 'there is probably no other loch in Britain which approaches it in irregularity and complexity of outline'. Loch Obisary nearby holds twice as much water.
- Fact · Grimsay One Grimsay family built a thousand boats Three generations of the Stewart family built as many as a thousand boats from three sheds on Grimsay. The island's boatshed at Kallin still employs a full-time boatbuilder to keep the skills alive.
- Fact · North Uist Pobull Fhinn is Fionn's tent The stone circle above Loch Langais on North Uist is called Pobull Fhinn, usually translated as Fionn's people. It may really be Pùball Fhinn, Fionn's tent, the camp of the giant hero of Gaelic legend.
- Fact · South Uist South Uist is the largest community-owned estate in Scotland In 2006 the people of South Uist, Eriskay and Benbecula bought their own estate, 93,000 acres, the largest community land buyout in Scotland. It is run today as Stòras Uibhist.
- Fact · North Uist Ten thousand grey seals come ashore on the Monach Isles each autumn Every autumn around 10,000 grey seals haul out on the Monach Isles, west of North Uist, to pup and mate. It is one of the largest grey seal colonies in the world, on islands that have had no people since 1942.
- Fact · Berneray The Berneray ferry may only sail if it can see the next two buoys The Sound of Harris between Berneray and Leverburgh is so full of reefs and islands that the ferry, running since 1996, is only allowed to proceed if the crew can see the next two marker buoys ahead.
- Fact · Eriskay The Eriskay Love Lilt was collected on the island in 1905 The Eriskay Love Lilt, sung around the world, was collected on Eriskay by Marjory Kennedy-Fraser with the help of the island priest and poet Father Allan MacDonald, and published in Songs of the Hebrides in 1909. The original Gaelic lament is Gràdh Geal Mo Chridhe.
- Fact · Eriskay The Eriskay pony carried the whisky, and is now rarer than the giant panda When the SS Politician's whisky came ashore in 1941, it was Eriskay ponies that carried it up the beach. The breed is now on the Rare Breeds Survival Trust's critical list, with fewer than 300 breeding females in the world.
- Fact · Benbecula The Home Guard was ordered to recapture Benbecula airport from imaginary Germans During the Second World War a Home Guard platoon from North Uist was ordered to simulate retaking Benbecula airfield from invading Germans. The war poet Dòmhnall Ruadh Chorùna was in it, and wrote a song taking the mickey.
- Fact · Berneray The King spent a week on Berneray as an anonymous crofter In 1987 the world's press discovered that Prince Charles had been living on Berneray as an ordinary crofter, lifting potatoes and dipping sheep under the name of the family who hosted him. He came back in 1999 to open the causeway.
- Fact · North Uist The Monach lighthouse was replaced, then un-replaced The Stevensons' Monach lighthouse of 1864 was switched off in 1942. After the Braer oil spill a smaller light was built beside it in 1997. That one was not bright enough, so in 2008 they turned the Victorian one back on.
- Fact · North Uist The ground under your feet is the oldest in Britain The rock under Uist is the oldest in Britain. Lewisian gneiss formed up to three billion years ago, before anything complex lived on land. The Natural History Museum flew to the Outer Hebrides to fetch a lump for its London garden.
- Fact · North Uist The last battle fought with bows and arrows in Britain was at Carinish The Battle of Carinish on North Uist in 1601, MacLeods of Harris against MacDonalds of Uist, is said to be the last engagement in the British Isles fought with bows and arrows.
- Fact · South Uist The statue on Rueval was the islands' answer to the rocket range Our Lady of the Isles, the granite Madonna on the hill above Iochdar, was commissioned by the priest Canon John Morrison when the Ministry of Defence proposed a missile testing range on South Uist in the 1950s. Rockets are still fired past her.
- Fact · Eriskay The whisky ship was also carrying three million pounds in banknotes Everyone knows the SS Politician ran aground off Eriskay in 1941 with 264,000 bottles of whisky. Fewer know she was also carrying three million pounds in Jamaican banknotes, and that 19 islanders went to Inverness prison for helping themselves.
- Fact · South Uist There is an Old Tom Morris golf course on the South Uist machair Askernish on South Uist has a golf course laid out by Old Tom Morris of St Andrews in 1891. It was lost under the grass for most of a century and brought back into play in the 2000s, greens where he left them.
- Fact · North Uist Uist was Norwegian until it was sold for 4,000 marks Uist was part of Norway for about two centuries. The Treaty of Perth in 1266 handed the Hebrides and the Isle of Man to Scotland in exchange for 4,000 marks, three years after the Battle of Largs.