STOP PRESS - CINEMA COMING TO COLONSAY!
The "Screen Machine" is coming to Colonsay to show major films on 30 September. This state-of-the-art machine is a fullscale mobile cinema which can be assembled to provide seating for over 200 people (the real mcCoy, red plush fabric etc.). On a recent visit to Stornoway it proved so popular that police assistance was required in marshalling the crowds that wanted to attend. If it is well supported in Colonsay, there is hope that the island will become part of the regular circuit. The programme is as follows:
A Bug's
Saturday 30 September
Chicken Run
(U) 84mins 2.30pm
The Perfect Storm
(12) 129mins 5pm
Gone In Sixty Seconds
(15) 118mins 8pm
Pier
Car Park, Colonsay
Tickets: Adults £4.50 Concessions £3.50 Children (under 16) £3.00
Tickets on sale 30mins before each show at the Screen Machine
Memorial to the late Richard Prior
In the last issue of "The Corncrake" it was reported that no memorial stone was ever erected to commemorate Master Gunner Richard Prior, whose death in 1912 was followed by a full scale naval funeral to Kilchattan, attended by the First Lord of the Admiralty. In response to that article, a most generous offer has been received - a correspondent has agreed to take a lead in the matter and suggests that the details of his brothers should be included "to let future generations see the enormous sacrifice paid by individual families."
The original article was edited slightly because some aspects seemed to be too harrowing; the loss of Richard's five brothers was enumerated but no mention was made of the fact that only one of them has a grave. Under these circumstances, our reader's suggestion has added validity.
A letter has been sent to Richard Prior's kin, seeking their assent. In the meantime, any reader who would wish to be associated with the provision of an appropriate memorial is invited to contact the editor.
The New Hall - Extension?
There is a proposal to extend the new hall, so as to be able to house the library and an office for the new Community Company; there would also be a video link to council services and facilities for council surgeries, educational purposes etc. The proposal would be funded from external sources and has been welcomed by the Hall Committee, which met to consider a presentation on the subject. The project is subject to approval by the Modernising Government fund.
New Workshop Units
A meeting of the IaaO was held on 5th to discuss a wide range of topics, including the tenure of these units. It was reportedly decided that no hard and fast rule would be appropriate and to accept an assurance that AIE would deal with the situation as it developed, whilst striving to "reflect Colonsay's interests at all stages".
The Future of the Shop
As will be known, changing regulations mean that substantial capital investment will be required before long to protect the future of the shop and petrol pump. Keith Rutherford, the existing shopkeeper, is reviewing all options and has indicated that he would be prepared to consider a "community buyout"; it is understood that this would permit access to development funds which would not normally be available to a private entrepreneur. With a view to pursuing this and other opportunities, a Community Company has now been formed; directors will shortly be appointed or confirmed in office, before the company is activated in a commercial sense.
Meantime, the mechanics of any new operation have come to the fore. Various proposals have been made, including a suggestion of a non-profit undertaking to be run entirely by volunteers. After some discussion, a referendum is now under way, in which islanders are invited to select one of three options:
· The shop to remain a private business
· The shop to be owned and equipped by the community and leased to a tenant
· The shop to be owned and equipped by the community and run by a manager
Nature Notes
The folk in Maggie Thomson's reported a splendid day at Port Mor on Friday 8th, devoted entirely to watching an otter at work and play.
Other wildlife activity included a dramatic battle between Billy goats near High Tor; they drew back about eight paces, then threw themselves at each other head first and repeatedly - with horns locked they seemed likely to do each other a mischief, but resisted attempts to frighten them away. As Caitlin opined: "they are probably fighting over some female."
Between Bruthach Chomhl-airigh and Torr an Tuirc a male Hen Harrier is very active; he was chased away by a pair of Ravens one morning, but nearly went to glory when he dived within a hair's breadth of a vehicle in pursuit of a blackbird.
Snippets
There was a very poor tide on Wednesday 7th, so guests departing from Oransay had to be transported by boat and then use shanks' mare from the remaining halfmile across the rocks and sand … but they entered into the spirit of the thing; Donald MacAllister is 40 (and Hamish Grant is almost 11); "Barbel" is away to her winter moorings; embarrasing foul-up on pier with six-wheel lorry on a bump (it turns out only the two wheels at the very back have traction!); work has started on Angela's founds, # 1 Glassard's extension is fully framed, Black's of Oban are demolishing and rebuilding the gable walls of the four houses at Glen Odhran to modify the flues; over an inch of rain on 11 September has brought Loch Fada back to a normal level; work is planned to tackle damp problems at the Parish Church, Scalasaig; most of the pier is without lights, due to a cable fault (but work is underway to repair it.
Nooks and Crannies: The Barn at Balavetchy
This building once stood in Pairc Bhaile Mhaide and was removed many years ago; Dugie McGilvary remembers using some of the stone to build the loggia at Colonsay House. It had proportions very like those of the Prior's House in Oransay, but RCAHMS say that it was probably built at much the same time as the (listed) archway at the entrance to Kiloran Farmyard. When the field is being ploughed traces of the roof slates and other materials can easily be found.
What's On in Colonsay
As usual, it is best to look out for the notices at shop and elsewhere:
The September Shoot - clay pigeon shooting at 22nd September weekend, Machrins.
The Young Farmers Dinner is arranged for 7 October - application form at shop.
An exhibition of work by Colonsay and Oransay artists is open before the arrival of each ferry, and is mounted in the Pier Waiting Room.
The Colonsay and Oronsay Heritage Trust is running a series of exhibitions in the Old Waiting Room, times as advertised (usually around boat time; going by past experience, these are absolutely first class and the last one in the present series is as follows:
11th - 22nd September Kilchattan Primary School
Colonsay House Gardens are open to the public every Wednesday, and the woodland gardens are open every day.Light lunches are available on Wednesdays, with an emphasis on organic ingredients. Please note that fresh vegetables are available for sale.
There are regular BBQ's at the hotel - see notices for details; also Malt Whisky tasting weekend.
Quiz night - every Wednesday at the hotel.
Religious Services each Sunday are at 11.00 in Church of Scotland and 12.00 in the Baptist Church. All are welcome.
The Magazine Section
Building a House in Colonsay Chapter 7
Progress! We now have a chimney complete with pot at top. Block work continues and the whole of the NE gable end is complete, everywhere else the blockwork is complete to first floor level and at the front it is right up to the top of one dormer window. Mickey, aka Donald Brown, goes away for a spell on Wednesday but should have completed the SW gable end by then. This will mean that other jobs can now go ahead.
The big problem for Nigel has been finding a slater who is free to do the roof. He seems to have found one now and this new discovery is due from Islay on Wednesday's ferry. Now the chimney is there he can get to work and the roof should be completed quite soon.
Meanwhile Bruno has been at work inside running pipes all round the kitchen/bathroom end of the house and has also started on the central heating pipes.
So progress is being made. However I can't see completion being at the end of this month as originally anticipated, after all there are only 3 weeks to go and a lot of work is needed yet. The end of October is more realistic so I don't anticipate moving before early November. Materials should not be a problem as the only major outstanding items are the kitchen units, due any time, and the bathroom fittings. But I must not be too optimistic.
Anyway this time I have got an update photo so here it is. That's Mickey on the staging and Tommy below. This was taken while they were putting up the staging to do the blockwork on the SW gable end.
Register of Colonsay Emigrants
The new Register can be accessed from the genealogy page; a number of additions have been notified and will be posted up as soon as possible.
Colonsay Gravestones
It can be very difficult to read the ordinary inscriptions under certain conditions. In the case of stones weighing three cwt. and lying facedown it is even worse. Readers are reminded that all inscriptions in Colonsay and Oransay were transcribed a few years ago and that a printed version of the record can be examined at Homefield by arrangement (white house, green front door, next to the graveyard at Kilchattan). If you are a visitor to Colonsay, please telephone 200320 after you have arrived in the island.
Colonsay's Family Origins Part 1 of 3
From correspondence, it is clear that some readers are very interested in the family history of the island. With a view to subsequent attempts to trace the story of the McNeill dynasty c. 1680 - 1904, an short review of events prior to that date will be published over the next three issues. Criticism and correction is invited - just contact
the Editor - byrne@colonsay.org.uk
The Hebridean island of Colonsay has a long and interesting history and, although its community is now the most isolated in Great Britain, the island was at various times a very hub of economic and even political activities. Going back to the earliest times, some 8,700 years ago, it was inhabited by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers whose shell-middens are a prominent landscape feature in Oransay and whose dwelling sites beside Loch Staosnaig in Colonsay are evidence of a sophisticated and pragmatic lifestyle. The Mesolithic occupation of Colonsay and Oransay may have been just part of a pattern of seasonal exploitation, one in which the nomadic tribal community spent only a part of each year in any given location, but it lasted for perhaps three thousand years.
Archaeologists have been able to produce detailed information about these earliest inhabitants and they have been able to carry the story forward to a mysterious lacuna. A long and narrow loch almost bisects Colonsay today (Loch Fada = "Long Loch") and it is itself bisected by An Deabhach (= "apt to dry up"), a marshy place which carries the modern road. In recent years, a core sample was extracted from the thick layer of ancient peats at An Deabhach, more than thirty feet deep, and scientists were able to examine pollen and other microscopic evidence which had been deposited over the millennia. From this evidence they were able to show that the Mesolithic occupation of the island was followed by a period of about two thousand years during which it lay uninhabited. That the island itself remained fertile and afforested has been demonstrated by the enormous tree stumps which are preserved below the waters of Loch Fada; these are often exposed and a few years ago samples taken by John and Pamela Clarke were shown to be about 4,700 years old. Pollen analysis is ongoing - samples from the area of Loch Cholla were being studied by Ms. Solomon in 1999 and await publication.
In due course, people returned to Colonsay and became permanent residents - they probably came from the area of the Rhine and will have been pioneering types, equipped with simple but effective technology. By now it was nearing the end of the Neolithic period and the beginning of the Bronze age and these early people seem to have lived in caves and rude shelters (sguiden = "sheds"). Evidence of their habitations can be found in the caves at either end of Kiloran Bay and also in the rock shelters in which the island abounds (e.g. beside Loch Sguid). It was not long before they began to work the easiest of the land and their centres of population are revealed by their stone-built cist graves (cist = "chest" (Scots)), typically at Balnahard, Kiloran, Scalasaig and Drumclach. These and other gravesites were of course key locations to these early settlers and they retained their significance through time, so that thousands of years later they became associated with the centres of Christian worship on the island. Evidence of a sophisticated society exists in the archaeological legacy - there are standing stones, accurately aligned east-west; souterrains; stone circles; field systems; worked flints; and numerous examples of simple rock art. Axes, arrow heads and fishing hooks have been found, crannogs (artificial islands) can be seen in Loch Fada, imposing burial cairns are almost as impressive in their eroded state as they will have been when newly erected and covered with massive earthen mounds.
The Bronze Age merged almost seamlessly into the Iron Age and during this latter period, from about 500 AD , the first Scots will have arrived in Colonsay, adventurers from Ireland. Their influence was never to wane and they are the first people for whom written and oral tradition survives - the student of Colonsay's earliest modern inhabitants would do well to refer to the stories of Cuchalain and the Children of Lir, the saga tales of Ulster. That written tradition survives only in the great library collections; specific early references to Colonsay are few and far between, but Colonsay was at the heart of Dalriada and her inhabitants were familiar with the epic tales.
Some of these stories remained in the Colonsay oral tradition until the nineteenth century. They were well known to those pioneers and adventurers who left these shores to seek a new and better life in their own "New World", the modern equivalent of ancient "Argyll" (Earraghaidheal = "The Gael's Portion" i.e. the portion taken from the Picts and native inhabitants). One such story is that of Murachadh Mac Brian ( = "Murdoch, son of Brian" (Buru)), a vigorous and quite racy tale collected in Gaelic by J.F. Campbell (although toned-down somewhat in his translation into the English language). He notes that "This tale was taken down in May 1859, from the recitation of Donald Shaw, then aged sixty-eight, who was in the 42nd Highlanders at Waterloo. He served in the army about three years. He said that he had learned it from one Duncan MacMillan, a Colonsay man, well advanced in years, about fifty years ago."
So Donald got the story about 1810, from Duncan MacMillan who was then probably something over fifty years of age, born soon after the '45. One can imagine the scene in which a young man of eighteen, in some period of leisure, listens with interest to this tale of ancient and heroic days, a tale which has been handed down for thirty generations and more. Importantly, the young man did not just listen, he actually learned the story, adding it to his own repertoire. He must have listened more than once, and paid attention - it is an interesting insight into a lost lifestyle, a window across two hundred years.
Another such tale was entitled Ridire na Sgiatha Deirge (= "The Knight of the Red Shield"), with the following credit: "From John M'Gilvray, labourer, Baile Raomainn, Colonsay, aged 72 years. Says he learned it from his father, Farquhar M'Gilvray, and that he heard him tell it since he remembers anything.
"Farquhar M'Gilvray, his father, was a native of Mull, and there learned this tale in his boyhood. He served nine years in the army, in North America, and subsequently settled in Colonsay. He died near about forty years ago, about seventy-five years of age." - Ballygrant, Islay, July 7 1860. Interestingly, although Farquhar is a native of Mull, another and fuller version of the same story was recorded as given by a Colonsay native, "written down by the desire of the late Captain Stewart of Colonsay".
These stories from the distant past form a vital, living bridge into the dawn of our society. They are not the only ones to survive - Colonsay's history was epic, and so were the stories. Tradition has preserved some remarkable and coherent details - small vignettes from the time of St. Columba, or concerning the Vikings, the Lords of the Isles, the struggles of the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Most of these older stories have been recorded and published, but others of more recent date are in danger of being lost and one purpose of any current study must be to try to record them. All such stories must be taken with a grain of salt, but the mere fact of their existence helps one to understand the society that produced and valued them.
Amongst the early Scots who colonised Scotland some 1500 years ago there came a powerful nobleman from Ireland, Colla Uais, one of the descendants of Neill of the Nine Hostages. He is said to have established himself at Dun Cholla in Colonsay, overlooking An Faoghail ( = "The Strand") and Oransay. Before long, one of his kinsmen is said to have arrived, seeking his help in an important project - this was the man from Derry, St. Columba. As tradition has it, St. Columba established his first church in Scotland in the shadow of Dun Cholla and, through the intercession of his cousin, reached agreement with the Picts to establish a missionary church at Iona, on the very boundary between the two territories. As is described by St. Adomnan, St. Columba retained a great affection for Colonsay and he established a private sanctuary for himself at "Hinba" ( = "Inlet island"), now known as Oransay. Adomnan mentions that Hinba was distinguished by "a bag-shaped arm of the sea" (An Faoghaol), and that it lay upon the direct sea route to Ireland.
Because of its location Colonsay was at the heart of St. Columba's mission and in due course, for similar strategic reasons, it was an early target for the Vikings and quickly became a major centre for the "Gallic" (foreign) invaders. Colonsay and Oransay have more Viking burials per hectare than any other location and Dun Eibhin ("Eyvind's fort") was the centre of administration and taxation. Archaeological excavation has revealed extensive economic and domestic activity, centred particularly upon Machrins. Dun Gallain ( = "Fort of the Strangers") overlooks a perfect natural harbour (Viking = "men of the inlets") and an ancient battle between the native inhabitants and the ferocious invaders is remembered as "Latha cath na sguab air Traigh an Tobair Fhuair, ri taobh tuath Dhun Ghallain" (tr. "The day of the battle fought with staves upon the strand of the Cold Well, to the north side of the Foreigners' Fortress").
Perhaps the most remarkable legacy of the Viking period lies in the name of the island itself. As has been seen, it is now accepted that the ancient name of Oransay was probably Hinba, but the name of Colonsay is uncertain - almost certainly it sounded similar to the present name, perhaps the Gaelic for "Columba's Isle" or even "Hazel Isle". In distant Scandinavia, there was (and yet remains) an isle called Kolso, on the shores of a vast freshwater lake, Lake Vanern. Close beside it is the isle of Orso, surrounded by marshy ground and therefore not always readily approached on foot; far out into the lake, some miles from Kolso, is the remote and rugged isle of Juro ( = "wild-animal island"). A famous Viking leader, active both in the Southern Hebrides and in Scandinavia, was Magnus Barelegs (allegedly so-named because he went native in Scotland and adopted the kilt!); it is certain that he was familiar with Kolso, as it was the site of his final military engagement in Scandinavia. He subsequently remained in Scotland, possibly basing himself in Colonsay but certainly sufficiently at home to recognise the coincidence in name; it is hardly surprising that it became "Colbhasa" (pron. Kolso) and that the neighbouring islands came to be known as Orasa and Diura.
To be continued...
Website to explore: Iwon
Nothing special to report in this issue, but a new portal portal site is said to have excellent search facilities. No first hand knowledge yet, but it would be nice to know what readers think of http://www.iwon.com. Let us know how you get on.
Regulars
