• Posts Tagged ‘flannans’

    Landing at the Flannans

    by  • 25 March 2011 • Church, Featured Notes, Health & Food, Tales & Traditions • 0 Comments

    Martin Martin, in his Description of the Western Isles of Scotland (1695) gives an account of the use made of the Flannan Isles at the time and the superstitions that attended a visit: “The inhabitants of the adjacent lands of the Lewis, having a right to these islands, visit them once every summer, and there make a great purchase of fowls, eggs, down, feathers, and quills…”

    Read more →

    Murchadh Ban

    by  • 22 August 2010 • Tales & Traditions, Vikings • 0 Comments

    This story comes from the end of the 18th century, but seems to hark back to an earlier time.  However it is likely that the Viking element was grafted on later – did Vikings pick up local pilots? And potatoes didn’t arrive in the islands until the middle of the 18th century, and even by [...]

    Read more →

    Lighthouse Disaster in the Lews

    by  • 21 January 2010 • Fishing, Tales & Traditions, Weather • 0 Comments

    In December 1900, the lighthouse on Eilean Mor in the Flannan Isles, which had only been lit for the first time a year previously, was discovered deserted by its three keepers; their dinner table had been set with cold meat, pickles and potatoes, and a chair was overturned in an obvious urgent departure.  Two sets of oilskins and seaboots were missing, and otherwise the quarters and lamp were in perfect order. 

    Read more →

    Exile to the Flannan Isles

    by  • 1 February 2009 • Tales & Traditions • 0 Comments

    [singlepic=439,383] From Sanais,1988. There lived in Uig, before the advent of the policeman, a man of great physical powers and a wild, lawless nature, who robbed and plundered his neighbours with impunity.  To remove him, the crew of a boat to visit the Flannan Isles evolved a plan to maroon him on one of the [...]

    Read more →

    Macpherson the Wheelwright

    by  • 13 August 2008 • Tales & Traditions • 0 Comments

    Photo by rojabro. This isn’t strictly an Uig tale, though one episode takes place on the Flannans, and there is a suggestion that Macpherson may be the grandfather of Kenneth Macpherson the catechist from Bayhead, who married Ann Smith from Strome and Valtos and lived in Ness.   It’s offered in the hope that someone may be [...]

    Read more →

    Dòmhnall Càm at Dun Carloway

    by  • 7 July 2008 • History, Tales & Traditions • 0 Comments

    A tale from Donald Macdonald’s Tales and Traditions of the Lews: Dòmhnall Càm and the big smith went one summer to the Flannan Isles, and the Morrisons of Ness, hearing the Macaulays were from home, came and drove the cows from the moor, for they met with no opposition.  When Dòmhnall and his party returned the womenfolk [...]

    Read more →