The Macaulays of Lewis are generally held to be of Norse descent, from an eponymous Olafr. Here’s Rev W Matheson on the subject, from his Families of Lewis series of the 1950s: Most West Highland clans have to go back some seven hundred years to find their eponymous ancestor. If the Macaulays of Lewis conform [...]
Read more →From the Stornoway Gazette, 29 March 1957. Iain Macleod was born in Skipton, Yorkshire in 1913 and was educated at Fettes and Cambridge. He earned his living from playing bridge for a time, before wartime service. After the war he became a Conservative politician, serving as Colonial Secretary and Party Chairman; a significant legacy was [...]
Read more →[singlepic id=1167 w=200 float=left] We’ve looked before at the remarkable Angus of the Mountain. The little stories surrounding his life and faith are numberous – here are a few more abridged from Macfarlane’s Men of the Lews (1924): His mental constitution was not of gun-metal. It was weak and of the wool-gathering order. People said [...]
Read more →[singlepic id=1174 w=600] From the People’s Journal, 27 September 1958. It’s a while now since Dr Donald Macdonald [Dolly Doctor] of Gisla in Lewis practised at his profession. But the jovial, big-hearted doctor is still a cure and a tonic for many folk not only in his native island, but in many other circles. Take [...]
Read more →Angus nam Beann was a well-known figure in Uig at the time of the Revivals, and ever since. The following is from John Macleod’s History of the Church in Uig. Angus MacLeod’s father was a shepherd in the hills of Uig towards the border with Harris, and this is where Angus was born. So it [...]
Read more →Another grisly story about our Uig hero, Dòmhnall Càm, who has a much less heroic reputation in other parts of the island. This is from Capt FWL Thomas’s Traditions of the Macaulays (1880) and he notes that “this tale is certainly mythical”. We ought in our own day to be very thankful to that Divine [...]
Read more →[singlepic=1119,827] From the Stornoway Gazette supplement, 18 December 1959. Wedding bells have been ringing in Mangersta for the past year. Cupid started at one end of the village leaving a spate of marriages in his trail. The most recent of these was solemnised in the East Church, Inverness, on the 10th November when Mary Morrison, [...]
Read more →The Reverend Aulay Macaulay was born in Brenish in 1669, son of Dugald, grandson of Angus Beag Macaulay, he of the big stone and the critical wife, and brother of Donald Òg. Aulay started his career in Tiree and Coll and was minister at Scarista, Harris from 1712 until his death in 1758. He [...]
Read more →[singlepic=1077,280,left]Dr Duncan Maclennan served as the doctor in West Uig from 1935 to 1945. A native of Stornoway, he studied at Aberdeen and Uig was his first post. He was greatly liked throughout the district, as this piece from the Stornoway Gazette on the occasion of his leaving demonstrates: 20 July 1945 On Tuesday, 3rd July, in Crowlista [...]
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A photo of the Rev Norman Morrison, with his wife, sister (behind him) and children. Rev Morrison was minister at Baile na Cille from 1931 to 1950. He wasn’t the first of that name in Uig; the third known minister in Uig was also Norman Morrison, 1742 to 1777, who was a grandson of John Morrison, tacksman at Bragar – known in the archives as Indweller.
Read more →Cha robh cam, nach robh crosda. The following is an account of a familiar tale of the island – perhaps the most famous told of Donald Cam, the chief of the Macaulays in Uig, as given by Capt FWL Thomas in his Traditions of the Macaulays of Lewis (1880). In 1597 some degree of peace [...]
Read more →We’ve mentioned before the story of William “Big Bear” Maclean, who was born in Scaliscro in 1837 and, after his family moved to Gisla, went on to an eventful career with the Hudson’s Bay Company in Canada. His HBC record has recently come to light (thanks to Donald Macaulay, Stornoway) and it gives much more [...]
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Read more →Another item from the endlessly entertaining Lewsiana, by W Anderson Smith (1874/1886). From the fact that every crofter owns a few sheep, wool is naturally the first and most important article in use [in clothing]. This is often torn from the animal, Shetland fashion, in place of being clipped. More wretched looking creatures than these [...]
Read more →Fearchar (Farquhar) Macdonald, son of Angus, was about born about 1809 at Capadal, roughly on the site of 3 Ardroil. In 1832 he joined the Hudson’s Bay Company, as a “slooper” – a crewman on HBC decked vessels. According to the Company’s personal records, he boarded the Prince Rupert IV on 23 June 1832 for [...]
Read more →From the Inverness Courier of 25 March 1846: A correspondent has favoured us with some further particulars relative to the late patriarchal Celt, John Martin, who died at Urgay [Urgha], Island of Harris, at the ripe age of 112. The old man was able to walk about till within twenty-four hours of his death. When [...]
Read more →[singlepic=620,390] Ciorstaidh Mhòr, Christina Matheson, was born in 1861 in Enaclete, a daughter of William Ruadh and a sister of William Dearg. Her father came with his family to Geshader in the late 19th century and built this house at 2 Geshader, on the hillside overlooking the loch on the right as you drive into [...]
Read more →[singlepic=614,332] Calum Macaskill (Calum Iain ‘ic Asgaill) was a postman and lived at Luachair. Latterly he would walk into Morsgail every day, take a cup of tea there, collect the mails which had come in from Kinloch, and return to Luachair. John Macdonald of Ard Bheag would come to Luachair every other day to get [...]
Read more →James Shaw Grant, in one of his many books about the folk and tales of the Islands, reckoned that the evidence available does not support the idea that Mac an t-Srònaich was the vicious murderer of popular legend. Mac an t-Srònaich was a native of Garve on the mainland, and is reckoned to have killed [...]
Read more →[singlepic=611,474] Piper Lorne Cousin with Sir Sean Connery at the US Library of Congress. Lorne is an Uigeach, grandson to Murdo Macleod 17 Uigen (Murchadh a Ghobha), himself a piper, and nephew to Murdo Beag. In 2004 he toured with Madonna (Lorne, not Murdo) and has played many high-profile events. On the night of Barack Obama’s [...]
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