The MacKinnons of Strathaird

‘An Srath Fhionnghain gheal,
‘S an grinne beus gun smal’

The MacKinnons arrived on Skye in the early 14th century. The clan chief followed about two hundred years later after some local difficulty on Mull where the MacKinnon chiefs had been hereditary Abbots of Iona and Standard Bearers to the Lords of the Isles

A MacKinnon from Canada was in the ancient clan lands on Skye with her husband and family on Tuesday.

We went to Kilmarie and so out to Dun Ringill, a dramatic cliff-top ruin and the clan's principal castle until the later 15th century. Rory got stung by nettles in the 2000 year old doorway, Mark discovered how they barred the door, Deanna found white heather and Denise learnt a little more Gaelic: Dùn ruabh mòr-ghil, the fort at the point of the ravine.

On the way we saw the the burial place of the MacKinnons of Strathaird at Cill Chriosd....


Sadly the clan has not been a presence on Skye for 250 years. In 1746 the chief, Iain Og (that's 'Young Iain', Denise) helped Prince Charles Edward escape to the mainland. For his pains he was apparently given exclusive access to the recipe for Drambuie , but also spent four years on a prison ship in the Thames. His son sold the MacKinnon lands to pay off debts in 1765.

I'll leave the last word to Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull who used to own the land at Kilmarie:

..We'll wait in stone circles 'til the force comes through
lines joint in faint discord and the stormwatch brews
a concert of kings as the white sea snaps
at the heels of a soft prayer whispered
In the wee hours I'll meet you down by Dun Ringill...

Auld Wat of Harden

Cattle graze peacefully in this picture I took last Sunday of Kirkhope Tower in the Ettrick Valley. But it was not always thus. Kirkhope was the home of 'Auld Wat of Harden' one of the most notorious and colourful of the Border Reivers. In 1597 he led a raid on Bellingham in Northumberland with three hundred men and came back with four hundred head of cattle. The Scotts have always dominated the Ettrick and Yarrow valleys and Bowhill, residence of the (Scott) Duke of Buccleuch lies just a few miles down the valley, not far from Abbotsford House, famously home of Auld Wat's descendant, the novelist Sir Walter Scott.

'Not really a castle though, is it?', someone said. In fact these tower houses were the style of the time for landowners throughout Scotland: economical to build, one big room on each floor and high enough so that a fire on the battlements could be seen by the next tower up the valley and so pass the warning if a raid was coming up from the other direction.

Ironically it may be Auld Wat's wife that has left us the best story from Kirkhope. She was Mary Scott of Dryhope (below) known as the 'Flower of Yarrow', and when the larder was bare, she would just put Auld Wat's spurs on a plate and set it in front of him at dinner time!

Can we book a haunted castle please!

Sometimes people ask to spend a night in a haunted castle - prompting a thought as to whether, in this litigious age, they have any recourse if they book a 'haunted castle' and neither see nor hear anything!

But last month a group from Pennsylvania innocently celebrating a fiftieth birthday in one of our Aberdeenshire castles experienced the unexpected...

"Our Ghost was first seen when my friend Ed was putting wood in the fireplace in the basement room ... [He] swears there was a man sitting in the chair, dressed in tweed-like clothing - patches on the elbows, arms on either armrest staring straight ahead. He vanished very quickly.

The second sighting was when my friend Nancy and I were in the room watching the Stanley Cup playoff hockey game .... I was sitting in the chair closest to the door and Nancy was on the couch. Nancy saw a person sitting on the other chair. She was scared, didn't want to scare me so she left to go to bed. The next day she related the story, and she and Ed started comparing the look of the ghost and described him wearing the same exact thing, sitting in the exact same pose, etc.

Nancy is an artist and is going to draw "Angus."We felt no animosity from him, talked to him every time we went into that room - but no one else saw him. We figured he liked hockey and just wanted to hang out for a while!

Nancy also said in her room (the 4-poster which would have been the master bedroom at one time) she heard as clear as a bell a child saying "ma ma," in a whiny distressed kind of way, and when she looked out the window she thought she saw someone in the field above the house, however figured it was a tree. The next day when she looked there were no trees in that particular place.

Others who stayed in the castle said they felt cold breezes and "felt" a presence, never angry or mean - just peaceful and curious."

Out of consideration for Angus, future tenants will be asked to leave a hockey game showing on the TV where possible when they retire to bed!

Iona - pilgrimage site or holiday destination?

Iona has an ancient and a sacred ring to it: burial place of Scottish kings; monastery founded by St Columba in 563; heart of the Celtic church for 500 years; pilgrimage site and home to the Iona Community.

Happily Iona is not easily accessible; it is still a bit of a pilgrimage involving two ferries. But inevitably in summer it attracts plenty tourists like the couple from New York whom I was guiding.

Geographically similar to many other Hebridean islands, Iona is different. Even from the ferry port on Mull you can see the impressive abbey on the other side, and once you approach it along the pilgrims' route, studded by massive Celtic Crosses like St Martin's Cros (above), you come to the 12th Century Chapel of St Odhrán (right) and Reilig Odhrán containing the unmarked graves of some 48 Scottish kings. From there sràid nam marbha, 'the street of the dead', an ancient cobbled track, leads to the abbey, a holy place which straddles the millennia, now home to the (ecumenical) Christian Iona Community.

It was lovely being there in the summer, but on this island chosen for its remoteness, there were too many people. I am going back when there is snow in the air and may perhaps come closer to the long-lived spirit of St Columba.

The Clans in Paris

No, you're right. Edinburgh is indeed the setting for the The Gathering of the Clans in 2009, but last week I was exploring those places in Paris and its environs where Scottish history was played out, guiding six American ladies, previous clients of ours in Scotland.

I have written that the 'Auld Alliance' was a rather one way affair, with the Scots giving the French help that was rarely reciprocated. But for for selected Scots, French kings were exceptionally hospitable. In 1418, suspicious of his countrymen, the future King Charles VII of France formed a personal bodyguard, 'La Garde Écossaise', from the 6000 Scots fighting for him at the time. The guard gave invaluable service, was well rewarded and was finally disbanded in 1830.

Pausing only briefly at 'Le Loch Ness' (!), we walked across the Seine to the Rue St Antoine, scene of a low point in the history of La Garde Écossaise: in 1559 its Captain, Gabriel de Montgomery, riding in a tournament there, accidentally delivered a fatal blow in the eye to King Henri II (incidentally brother-in-law to Mary Queen of Scots). The unfortunate Scot was later executed.

Beyond lies the wonderful Place des Vosges, the heart of fashionable Paris in the 17th century. We visited No. 6, not because it is the MuséeVictor Hugo but because this was the home of Marie-Louise de Rohan, Prince Charles Edward's mistress in the two years following the 1745 Rising. Nothing of that period survives except the official address: Hôtel de Rohan-Guéménée. To the right is the front door, one that Prince Charles Edward rarely took, since Louise was his first cousin and her husband one of his best friends. His visits, well documented by the Paris police, were via the nearby alleyway.

Next day we visited Versailles: breathtakingly extravagant and so strikingly different to courtly life in Scotland at the time (even taking on board Charles McKean's excellent book on The Scottish Chateau). It was also odd to be there with coach loads of Italians and scores of french school children when Prince Charles Edward who so longed for and so needed Louis XV's help with his forthcoming attempt to win the throne, was never allowed inside the place!

Time did not however allow us to go to St Germain-en-Laye, birthplace of Louis XIV, home to the exiled Jacobite Court from 1689 and base for thousands of impoverished, rootless, exiled Jacobites for the next two generations. Our King James VII is entombed in the church there. Next time.

Finally, herewith a shot of the Tuileries Gardens where old George Keith the last Earl Marischal of Scotland met secretly with Prince Charles Edward in 1752. George was by then Prussian ambassador to Paris . Scotland was by then part of the United Kingdom. This was probably, then, the last play in 400 years of Scottish political intrigue and involvement on French soil.


I am returning to Paris in the autumn to revisit these places and more. I would be delighted if you could join me.