Stones in a Haystack

Gaelic Strength Culture Across The Atlantic Relevant geography update if you're like me and relatively unfamiliar with Canada other than that Toronto is in the east and Vancouver in the west. Nova Scotia is a province (equivalent of county if you're also from the U.K) and covers all the yellow bits in the image from Wikipedia. Cape Breton is part of that, and is the bit on the upper right corner of the image - shaped a bit like a leaf split in two. Right now I had planned to be finishing off the final installment on Skye, as my trip to the Misty Isle looms. I was researching further for Clach Mhor Na Saothraich, and came across a website called "Cape Breton's Magazine"  and a scanned image from page 26 of "D.N. MacLennan's History of Grand River", which seems to be an ongoing (I think? by that I mean, was ongoing too) published article in a newspaper. The date on the page suggests the article is from 1977.   Grand River is a town on the s...

NB: I'm fully aware this kind of conjecture is largely pointless without any hard facts to back it up.  So if you're not into that kind of thing then sorry! But I find it fun, and it helps build my own excitement about a stone trip, not to mention means I'm more prepared when I arrive and start looking for these stones. Flag is pretty much the location of An Sithean, just north of the road heading south out of Broadford. Co-ordinates from  megalithic website   The above series of screenshots were taken from the "Streetview" function of Google maps at the An Sithean location. Starting from the west (side), the image series continues as if one is travelling currently moving east, heading towards Broadford. I've made the following "assumptions" here: 1. The lifting stones of An Sithean still exist.    - They've not been lost, destroyed, damaged by road construction, etc 2. They're on the north side of the road.    - P...

  The Isle of Skye Part Four - Fairies I'm sure this isn't the kind of fairies Gaelic folklore talks about Today we're going to take a look at An Sithean on Skye, using things from Peter Martin and hoping to find further information to add to this, or at least some sort of supporting information in our ongoing look at the stone lifting culture on the Misty Isle. Under the contents page of Twixt the Stones and Turf it is listed as "The Stones of An Sithean". "Place Names of Skye" explains further; sith being both a hill and fairy, with sithich being a male fairy and ban-sith a female fairy. He goes onto describe the female fairies of Skye were always dressed in green, males in a lichen dyed red and brown. Below is a description of the place from "Skye: The Island it's Legends". "Aant Sithe, a green mound close to the roadway on the right-hand side. This, as its name implies, is a fairy place. On clear moonlight n...

  Skye Part Three Having already covered Clach Mhor Mhic Crimmion and the potential for a stone at Dunscaith castle, it's time to move onto the rest of Skye - much like North Uist, we've got quite a few stones on this relativley small place, I'll insert the list from the content's of Peter Martin's book for you once again for a refresher.  Add Dunscaith to this list, and potentially more soon So left there is An Sithean, Clach Chraboithbh I'c Thearlaich, Ultach Gillean a' Bealaich and Clach Mhor na Saothraich. This post looks at the second and third from that list. A few of these have really trumped me thus far I'll be honest, so I'll share what I have here and there and when hopefully I find more we can add to the knowledge. We'll start with the most and work our way down the knowledge list. Ultach Gillean a' Bealaich , or Lift of the Martin's Boys, first made it's appearance in the seminal text "Of Stones and St...

Taransay Why did the ocean floor blush? Because it saw the sea-weed. As I got bogged down into details of the further Skye stones and try get things into some sort of comprehensible readable, (or even useful) order, I thought I'd take a break from scouring for obscure references and tidbits of information on those stones, and write about some others on my list. 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 tour...

Isle of Skye Part 2  A village in Aberdeenshire, and what I hope to try avoid getting. I've been lulled into a false sense of security by Scottish (or Gaelic? or a mix?) of variation in spelling. Ultach is sometimes written as Ultaich, Dultum ( a place on Skye,) is sometimes Duntuilm. The source I referred to in my last post that translated Clach Mhor Mhic Criommain for me (written by a man who was born on Skye I might add), listed it at Boraraig, the home of the pipping college. Wikipedia lists the village of Boreraig as being the one that was cleared during the Highland Clearances in 1850, and was situated on the southern end of Skye. Wikipedia also lists the Gaelic spelling of this place as Boraraig. Still following? The article on a piping website that provided me with the photo of the stone, writes about the piping college being across the loch from the castle - Dunvegan Castle that is, the hereditary home of the MacLeods. I was re-reading things last ni...

The Isle of Skye Part 1 Skye seemed a good a place as any to start - and looked like it would be an amazing place to go visit aside! Peter Martin's book was to cover five stones here, which also makes it tempting due to the amount - hopefully trying to locate five would provide more potential for success than one or two. Below is a screenshot from the contents page of his book, for the stones of the Islands:  As any stone lifter would tell you, Clach is Gaelic of stone, and whatever comes after it is the name of the stone, or sometimes the style of how it was lifted if it was a lifting stone - clach-neart are "putting" stones, stones that were "putt" or thrown over something - however this is debtable due to language uses and it's possible that clach-neart could also have been a generic term for a stone of strength. However one thing that makes finding information on these stones difficult, is that a control-f for stone or clach on any...