Skye Self Catering Cottages - luxury self catering on Isle of Skye

Architect-designed Tigh Roisin has been furnished throughout to meet the exacting standards of VisitScotland. Oak furniture, Egyptian cotton linen, state of the art wood-burning stove and up to the minute TV technology. No expense has been spared to make your holiday a memorable one.

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My Aunt told me this story from long ago in Breakish.

A little boy, a toddler, went missing, as little ones sometimes do. This caused no great concern at first as in these far-off days the crofter-folk of Breakish were accustomed to going in and out of each other’s houses and there was every chance the tot had wandered into someone else’s kitchen and was at that moment sitting among the fire-ash munching on an oatcake and crowdie (the habit of free access still happens in some communities; a friend told me of buying a whole bunch of parsnips, last seen in her kitchen, but the next day attracted by the wonderful aroma of parsnip soup wafting from the village hall during a jumble sale, she wandered in to be thanked for her donation of the vegetable!).

Alas such a happy ending was not to be. After 2 days the distraught mother went to a local Buidseachd or white witch for help. This was a time when families still had peat cuttings high up on the moor which rises behind the houses that line the coast, and in the summer months there was much activity with cutting the peat, laying and stacking it out to dry and eventually carting (or if you had a strong wife who was good on the croft) creeling it to the house.

The Buidseachd  predicted that if the searchers looked again in a certain area, they would find the child, and the location would be one from which they would be able to see the child’s home (although this wouldn’t be true for a wee one with the undulating moorland that lay between).

The good people of Breakish again sallied forth and duly found the child lying dead from exposure and clutching in his hand a wooden spoon with which he was in the habit of playing.

It was later surmised that he must have followed after his mother on the way to the peats, unseen by her either going or returning. It is reported that there is a cairn on Breakish moor to mark the spot although I myself have never found it.

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The Past

Skye, variously known as the Winged Isle (An t-Eilean Sgitheanach), or Isle of the Mist (Eilean a’ Cheo)
is where I was born. As far back as I can remember, my mind has been imprinted with the dark, jagged peaks
of the Red Cuillin, the unexpected green beauty of croftlands, the white horses of the wind-lashed sea.

My people were from Suisnish in the south-west of the island. Cleared from their houses by Lord MacDonald’s factors for sheep in the early part of the 19th century, they had little choice but to let themselves be re-settled on the unyielding stone and bog of the north-eastern coast.

Little is left of Suisnish now save for a few tumbled stones, but further along the coast as you approach the village of Boreraig via the high track from Kilchrist, your breath is taken away as you reach the final crest and see what lies below. Laid out in the casual pattern with which the people added their houses through the years, the homes of Boreraig still stand.
The walls of stone are long without roofs, but round their curved corners you can still see tracks to and from the homes, ghostly memorials to old patterns of friendship and dependence.

“As I was returning from my ramble a strange wailing sound reached my ears at intervals on the breeze from the west. On gaining the top of a hill on the south side of the valley, I could see a long and motley procession wending along the road that led from Suisnish. It halted at the point in the road opposite Kilbride, and there the lamentation became long and loud … Every one was in tears; … and it seemed as if they could not tear themselves away. When they set off once more, a cry of grief went up to heaven; the long plaintive wail, like a funeral coronach, was resumed; and, after the last of the emigrants had disappeared behind the hill, the sound seemed to re-echo through the whole wide valley of Strath in one prolonged note of desolation”.

(Archibald Geikie – Geologist 1853)

Legend has it that the men of Suisnish and Boreraig had to take part in a foot-race in order to get the best of the new crofts. Whether they got them or not, most families eaked out an existence with a single cow, a share in a rowing-boat, the chance of a good potato harvest and seasonal work on the boats with the merchant marine. This broadly describes the subsistence of my people until for the second time in the 20th century dark war-clouds rearing up from the East took our young men away and this particular way of living began to pass into history.

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Agitation – “The people are mightier than a Lord!”

(slogan of the Highland Land League in 1880s)

In the years following the ‘Clearances’ such as occurred in Suisnish and Boreraig, life continued to be hard for the crofters of Skye. Some had gone on the emigrant ships to Canada, to America or Australia, which in these days must have been like seeing your friends and relatives leaving for the moon, so little was the prospect of their return.

“Mrs M’Kinnon told me, that last year when a ship sailed from Portree for America, the people on
shore were almost distracted when they saw their relations go off; they lay down on the ground, tumbled, and tore the grass with their
teeth.” (Boswell – Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides)

Those remaining found themselves on the poorest land. Some wages were to be had from gathering and burning seaweed from the sea-shore to make soda-ash for the land-owners to sell as an ingredient in the making of soap and other products, but when import duties were removed this industry collapsed. Throughout the century potato harvests were subject to blight and as this was a staple of the highlanders’ diet, famine occurred in some areas. Adding to these hardships there was a steady upward pressure by landlords on rents.

It seems appropriate that at this time help should come from the West. Only 12 miles of the “Straits of Moyle” (Sruth na Maoile) seperate Kintyre from Antrim in the north of Ireland and since the Gaelic colonisation of the west of scotland in the 5th century there had been a strong tradition of alliance and exchange in trade, music and war. I do not know which group of inspired crofters invited Michael Davitt,
the famous Irish land league orator to come and speak to the people of Skye, but it indicates that the struggle which had been carried on against landlordism in Ireland had important lessons for the Skye crofters.

The story of the struggle for their rights by the crofters of the highlands is one that is still not told in Scottish schoolrooms to this day. The land raids in the outer isles, the rent strikes and attacks on policemen in Skye culminated in the sending of a gunboat with a regiment of marines to Portree to impose order.
At the same time the government of the day, nervous that the violence in Ireland might be paralleled in the highlands, set up the Napier Commission to investigate and act on the crofters’ grievances.

Finally the Crofters’ Act of 1886 gave the tenants of highland estates security of tenure which included being able to pass on their tenancy to
their descendants. Rents were also severely curtailed; until very recently the rent on our croft was 5.00 pounds per year.

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Skye Self Catering Cottages - luxury self catering on Isle of Skye

Architect-designed Tigh Roisin has been furnished throughout to meet the exacting standards of VisitScotland. Oak furniture, Egyptian cotton linen, state of the art wood-burning stove and up to the minute TV technology. No expense has been spared to make your holiday a memorable one.

elbowpipe

Skye Self Catering Cottages - luxury self catering on Isle of Skye

This bedroom has an oak king-sized bed, with en-suite power shower. The Egyptian cotton linen and luxury mattress will ensure your nights are restful.

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Skye Self Catering Cottages - luxury self catering on Isle of Skye

Tigh Eachainn is a large croft house suitable for large groups or families. A ‘home from home’ to echo a number of visitors, it is designed and furnished with comfort in mind.

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Skye Self Catering Cottages - luxury self catering on Isle of Skye

elbowpipe

Skye Self Catering Cottages - luxury self catering on Isle of Skye

elbowpipe

Skye Self Catering Cottages - luxury self catering on Isle of Skye

Sit out at the picnic table with your morning coffee and look out at the Red Cuillins and the islands of Scalpay and Pabay in the Minch.

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