Taransay
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| Why did the ocean floor blush? Because it saw the sea-weed. |
Taransay is the largest uninhabited island in Scotland, which makes you think it'd be pretty big, but no - a whopping 5.7sq miles in area. Home to the Celts since at least 300 AD, later invaded by Vikings, and then later a farming island, it was abandoned in 1941 for a short while, by 1961 there was one family living there who moved out in 1974. An 1841 census had 120~ people living on the island - so it's always been pretty quiet! Other than a brief stint in 2000 when the UK tv channel 4 filmed "Castaway" there there has been no real human habitation to speak of since - beside the odd tourist probably who slept over in a tent or at the bothy. This is what gave Peter Martin hope of finding the stone we're going to talk about, as you can see in a forum post from him on IronMind forum where he mentions this stone, found here . If you don't fancy following the link, the relevant sentences are: " a Clach Ultach, Clach Ultach Mol Na Mircein - the lifting stone of the shingly bay of the badderlock (seaweed). I am quite excited about this stone as firstly there is a great chance it still might exist... It is located at Mol Na Mircein on the island of Taransay which is uninhabited and secondly from its description, it is a long granite cylinder and being island based has more of a Icelandic flavour."
The internet informs me this is what Badderlock looks like - seaweed identification and stone history all in one handy place!
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I've only been able to find one reference to this stone, the same as Peter Martin - an excerpt from the work of Alexander Carmichael, a Scottish folklorist who was born in 1832, a man that spent a lot of time all over Scotland, writing and detailing all manner of things Gaelic. Here is where my research differs to what Peter had (at least by that forum post in 2012) found out, but we'll return to that.
A long granite cylinder, sounds like it would be fairly easily found, especially on a beach - then again we have to contend with different tides, but one assumes it wasn't left too near the sea - maybe way up the beach towards the area where the grass met the sand? It's baseless speculation but an option.
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The above extract is from a thirty-six page word document I found online entitled "Paible/Pabelil (Taransay/Tarasaigh) (H7) Place-Name Inventory, Parish of Harris", by Anke-Beate Stahl. The author appears to be a Scottish historian/artist. The Lawson mind map referenced at the bottom is an unpublished map, drawn from memories of it's author (or cartographer probably is a better term) and interviews with residents of the island, so that's a bit of a dead end start sadly, as enticing as it sounds! But this is a second confirmation of our beach being a thing that is still known about at least recently, as the original reference from Carmichael dates back to 1870. The second reference, Dwelly, refers to an English writer who wrote a dictionary of Scottish Gaelic, first printed in 1920 and still published today, the latest edition being in 2011. I haven't chased this line of inquiry, as to me it is more likely to be about the language used with the words, given the authorship.
Paible/Pabelil as the document title starts, is the name of one of the three settlements that used to exist on Taransay - if there was to be a stone that people lifted, having it near a settlement would have had made sense!
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| Google maps' contribution to the fray. Location of Paible on the southerly end of the larger part of the island. |
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| Paible harbour image one, image two is of a sandspit beach which I think is nearby to Paible too, images from the Borve Estate.
There's certainly seaweed in image one... Is it badderlock? If we're hoping our source materials still hold true today, we'd be looking for a shingly beach (so not that sandy one!), with some seaweed - if it's low tide we'd probably be likely to find some on the beach, otherwise less so, all in a location near Paible. And a long granite cylinder of course!
Or what was once a long granite cylinder. As far as I can tell, sitting in the comfort of my chair tapping away (I hope to be able to sometime not too far off tell for real), the stone is no more as it once was. If we return to the works of Carmicheal, which Peter mentions he read by virtue of going to the University of Edinburgh and donning white gloves to read the actual book itself.
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| A scanned image from the Watson-Carmicheal project website, the page that mentions the Clach Ultach Mol Na Mircein.
Because I sadly live nowhere near Edinburgh, and can't read the handwriting of Carmichael, here's an edited version from the project website, with the abbreviations written out.
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| The University of Edinburgh online archives website also has this entry on there, and it's translation as it were comes out much the same - a granite pillar that used to be lifted by people of old that sadly met it's demise when a strong young man from Harris tried to lift it.
It's a sad reminder of the recent news that the Wallace Putting stone has now been broken in two, and the first thing I thought of when James Grahame broke the news, was this stone. I'm not quite sure why Peter Martin never mentioned this fact in his post - we've used the same source material, and that fact was on the very same page. Bluntly, if he had mentioned it, I wouldn't have been as excited as I was when trawling through old IronMind posts for stone snippets, and would never have done the research that resulted in me finding that it is broken. There's every chance that Peter did later learn of it's demise, on another trip to the University of Edinburgh, and the publishing of his book would've included that information. As to why he didn't know at the time, if he was reading the source directly, it's certainly not easy and maybe he had not read/translated (you know what I mean) yet.
I'm not put off a trip to Taransay to find this Clach Ultach however. Even to be able to find the (presumably?) two parts would be something, and elsewise it'd be a beautiful place to spend some time. If the two parts are still together and existant, I do wonder if they would be worthy lifts in their own rights? Our strong lad from earlier lifted the pillar from one end - like one would a telephone pole I suppose, as that is all he was able to accomplish with it. As I'm no engineer or geologist, the dimensions given alongside the granite fact say nothing to me, so I went to use trusty google to learn more.
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| Oof.
No wonder the strong fellow could only up end it. The density of granite the website chose for me, so please don't go telling me off for using that figure if you know more and it's wildly wrong! The Brynjolfstak stone in Iceland is another pillar lifting stone, where an acceptable lift is up ending it from it's position on the earth, wrapping your arms around it and standing up to clear it from the ground, bear hugging like your life depends on it - which it probably does when you're trying to clear 281kg from gravity's embrace.
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Icelandic Strongman,Stefán Sölvi Pétursson, lifting Brynjolfstak for the Rogue documentary Fullsterkur |
Bit of a tangent there I'll admit from the weight discussions, but if 291kg is a rough estimate for the original weight of the stone, then it must've been some brute, even if we allow for that figure to be too large. Assuming it broke into two, either fragment would likely still be of considerable weight, and for that alone I see no reason why Taransay shouldn't make an addition to the roster of stones lifted if it's very own Clach Ultach can be found. Just take care as ever.
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