The spoiling of the dykes

North of Dunvegan Castle today on the Waternish Peninsula. This is MacLeod and MacDonald country: the MacLeods are part of my father’s mother’s heritage (I as given the second name ‘MacLeod’) and Dunvegan the home castle of MacLeods.

I could not come to Scotland without visiting Dunvegan, although its gardens – in this temperater climate they might be found on the Sunshine Coast – were more memorable than the castle. While we come strictly as tourists (the castle is now among the most visited of any in Scotland), when my parents first visited in 1963, they had arranged to stay three nights in the castle, hosted by the then chief of the clan Dame Flora MacDonald. In her journal, my mother refers to the daily afternoon ‘arrival of the tourists’ (she doesn't see herself among them)and their hostess's need to be available to greet them. Forty-six years later, we tourists form a continuing stream all day, hand over our £7 ticket, are ushered one way along the hallways and rooms, then beckoned into gift shops. All very friendly, but this is a business, even industrialized.

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North of Dunvegan, on the Waternish Peninsula, high on the bluffs overlooking the sea with Harris Isle to the north, we arrive at Trumpan Church ... and come upon a plaque that touches on my use of the word ‘gangsterism’ in relation to clan history. What we read:

This is the scene of one of the bloodiest episodes in Scottish history. In winter 1577 the MacLeods of Dunvegan massacred some 395 MacDonalds who became trapped in St Francis Cave on the Isle of Eigg. The MacLeods lit a fire at the cave mouth, suffocating all those inside. Clanranald, chief of the MacDonalds of Uist starting planning revenge.

The first Sunday of May the following year, a foggy day, the MacLeods from nearby lands had gathered for worship in Trumpan Church. The MacDonalds sailed around the point of Dunvegan Head mooring their galleys nearby below the cliffs. As the MacLeods sang hymns, the MacDonalds barred the doors and set fire to the church’s thatched roof. Everyone burned to death with the exception of one girl who escaped through a small window, severing one of her breasts.

The girl ran back to Dunvegan Castle to raise the alarm. An ‘army’ of MacLeods rushed down upon the MacDonalds and slaughtered all of them. The bodies were buried in a dyke which has given the incident is name: ‘the spoiling of the dyke’.

Several days later we came upon a similar example of this, evident in scorch marks of the stones of a church in Tarbat, north of Inverness where in 1481, following a long-running feud between the Rosses and MacKays, a marauding band of MacKays was rounded up and herded into the Tarbat church by the Rosses, who then set the church afire.