Gaelic Ring: Tiree to Oban

by Donald Meek

Tiree is the most westerly of the islands of the Inner Hebrides, lying some thirty miles south-west of Ardnamurchan Point. For those who have little immediate sense of geographical direction, its position may be simplified a little by noting that, when a traveller takes the modern car-ferry from Oban to Tiree, the ship will sail in a north-westerly direction, going through the Sound of Mull as far as Tobermory, before turning westwards towards Coll and Tiree. Ardnamurchan Point will be seen to the north-east. Normally she will stop first at Coll, and then proceed to Tiree. In all, the journey will take about four hours, with the sail from Coll, to Tiree lasting just under an hour.

It is a route that I know very well, since I have travelled it at least annually over fifty years and more. I was brought up on a croft at the east end of Tiree, in the township of Caolas, looking directly across to the island of Coll. My first language was Gaelic and Gaelic was the normal day-to-day language of the croft and the community. My parents and I lived with an extended family of elderly relatives, all of whom were born in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and had wonderful Gaelic. They were my natural playmates and I was not aware of any age gap. As I worked and played with them, I heard an abundance of Gaelic stories, snatches of poems and songs, witty idioms and wise proverbs. Indeed, my great-uncle Charles, who was a shipwright to trade, made a fine collection of the Gaelic proverbs of Tiree. Until the age of sixteen, I received my formal schooling in Tiree, first at Ruaig Primary School (now converted into dwellings) and then at Cornaigmore Junior Secondary School (now Tiree High School). In 1965 I went to Oban High School and from there to Glasgow University and to Cambridge, but the best education I ever received was what was imparted to me by my elderly Tiree relatives, who were steeped in Gaelic tradition.

My first expeditions from Tiree to the mainland were made about the age of two, when my mother discovered that I had a ‘squint’ in my left eye. For that reason I had to visit the Eye Infirmary in Glasgow on a regular basis until the age of twelve or so. As part of my treatment, I had to match tigers with their cages, and cars with their garages by means of a machine which allowed me to steer the frames into alignment with one another. I also had to get used to very early rises, cold mornings and sea-sickness, but the ships themselves compensated for all of that. I cannot remember my earliest voyages on the steamship Lochness, but by the time I first became aware of the journey, I was absorbing the details of the ships on which I travelled. They were far better than cars and tigers and well worth the ‘squint’!

My initial memories are linked to David MacBrayne’s Lochearn, a ponderously slow motorship built in 1930 which wallowed her weary way from Oban to Tiree, and might take as long as six hours on the outward trip. However, as my relatives in ‘Coll View’ used to tell me, she was infinitely better than the Plover and the Dirk of earlier days. Sometimes my mother and I were forced to sleep overnight on the Lochearn and I can still feel the hot, claustrophobic atmosphere of her tiny cabins – and I will not easily forget my mother’s terror of resident rodents!   

In 1955 the Lochearn was replaced by the Denny-built Claymore, a much more up-to-date vessel capable of twelve knots but with a distinctive and unnerving vibration which made it hard to sleep or rest in her saloons. Her vibration would ‘wind up’ gradually to an all-embracing crescendo, and then sink back into a quiet phase, which lulled passengers into a false sense of relaxation. For all that, the Claymore was a very handsome ship and a good sea-boat, infinitely better than the ungainly Lochearn, and she could usually reach Tiree in about five hours. The Claymore maintained the service to Tiree and the Outer Isles from Oban until about 1973. She became my favourite vessel, and, despite her many idiosyncrasies, remains so. Visits to the bridge of the Claymore, courtesy of Captain John C. MacKinnon, MBE, a Tiree man who was my maritime hero, filled those early voyages with great excitement. John MacKinnon was a fine Gaelic story-teller, and when I was up on the bridge with him, I heard several tales which I can still recall vividly. One of these was about his visit to a certain man in Earnal, Tiree, who had the ability to cure the effects of the Evil Eye when they had been detected in cattle. Gaelic and storytelling were riveted into the plates of the Claymore. She was the Tiree boat – and, above all, my boat, my incomparable Gaelic boat, a detached chunk of my island.

Travel to and from the mainland on the Claymore implanted in me a sense of Tiree’s position and distinctive features relative to the other islands of the Hebrides. As our home, ‘Coll View’, Caolas, looked across Gunna Sound to the island of Coll, we could see the Claymore every Monday, Wednesday and Friday as she sailed north through the sound to Barra and Lochboisdale.

The Claymore returned from the Outer Isles in the very early morning of Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Only when we needed to sail to Oban did we see her coming south. From our skylight window, we would look out anxiously for her lights as they came into view from the north about 4.30am, and by the time she was in the southern approaches of the sound we could set off for Scarinish pier, knowing that we would arrive about ten minutes or so before the Claymore. As we rattled our way to Scarinish in our van, I was filled with the tingling anticipation of being on her again.

The bridge of the Claymore gave me a splendid view of the natural panorama formed by islands and mainland. As we headed out of Scarinish, particularly on summer mornings, I could view my native part of Tiree from a different angle. Tiree is a low-lying, fertile island, punctuated by small hills, and three higher hills which Tiree people regard as ‘bens’, Beinn Ghot near the centre, and Beinn Hogh and Beinn Haoidhnis at the west end of the island.

The east end, to which I belonged, had no significant hills, but its sloping machairs, cultivated fields, and rough coastline, with its rugged little islands of Creachasdal and Lithibrig to the south-east, gave it a warm and friendly look. These place-names all contain Norse elements, and, as I sail on the contemporary Clansman or the Lord of the Isles, I sometimes try to imagine the days before 1200 when Norse longships with their great square sails cut through these same waters. I  learned to identify all the houses as we sailed past and to this day I look out for ‘Coll View’ as it appears over the green slopes as we return or depart. I watch it until it slips into the flat machairs of the island or is lost behind another landmark. Tiree houses, firmly built of stone and larger than the average croft house, stand high above the island’s coastline, like the sails of approaching ships.

It was then, and still is, a pleasure for me to see the houses of Caolas from the sea, and to realise in the process that, for this islander at least, knowledge and experience of the place itself take precedence over natural beauty. As the Claymore passed Milton, on the southern shore of Caolas, I could see the very rocks where my father and I had gone shooting cormorants early in the morning, as a pink dawn dragged itself over the sea, and those black, heavy birds were lured into the shoreline, believing that a cap being waved by a young boy behind a rock was the wing of one of their own species. A steady aim, a pull of the trigger on a 12-bore shotgun ... and there was our dog, leaping into the heaving sea to retrieve the dead bird.

As I passed the familiar coastline, a verse of Gaelic song often came to mind, composed by a Milton man, Ailig MacDonald, who had experienced the same sense of ‘leave-taking’:

“On the morning of Thursday, I turned my back on Caolas,
and my beloved island which I keep always in mind;
there was little joy in my heart as I sailed past the township
which reared me as a lad, without sorrow or gloom.”

To the north-west, I could see Dùn Mòr a’ Chaolais, the Great Fort of Caolas, where I would sometimes go on a Sunday-afternoon excursion, and view the neighbouring townships, letting my eye stray across Ruaig and as far as the curve of glorious Gott Bay. Each feature of sea and land reflected something of human experience and formed a point of contact between me and my people, and between me and the island. I could be captivated by the beauty of the bigger, broader vistas which opened before me on the bridge of the Claymore, but these vistas were neutral in terms of human experience and they never won my heart in quite the same way.

As the Claymore reached Roisigil (another Norse name), I could see those waters where, in summer evenings, we had fished for saithe and lythe. I could feel again the tug of the successful line, and see the fish gasping on the wooden floorboards. By the time the Claymore passed the southern approach to Gunna Sound, I was in relatively unknown territory. The first port of call on the voyage from Tiree to Oban was Coll, the island which gave my home its name, ‘Coll View’, and which I could see on the other side of the sound every time I looked out of a front window. Yet Coll never became more than an island in the distance and I did not set foot on it until the late 1980s. It was very different from Tiree in its complexion; it seemed much more rocky and rugged, though it had fine white sands at its western end.

Gaelic was not as strong there as in Tiree, and large farms, noted for their dairy products and especially their cheese, had taken the place of crofts long since. The farmers were of mainly Lowland extraction. Even so, there was a fair bit of traffic between Tiree and Coll in earlier days. The ‘Coll View’ folk fished for lobsters and took their lobsters regularly to Arinagour, the main village in Coll where they were sold to an appropriately named fish-merchant called Sturgeon. One Caolas family, who were blacksmiths as well as fishermen, used to run a small boat across the sound to Coll, as required.

In my early days, Coll was (for me) synonymous with Gaelic poetry. One of my distant relatives, John MacLean, was poet to the Laird of Coll in the early nineteenth century. MacLean was a shoemaker to trade and lived in my native village of Caolas, Tiree, but he must have crossed to Coll many times to visit his patron. He is best known today for a song which he composed soon after he emigrated to Nova Scotia in 1819, and viewed the ‘gloomy wood’ which was to become his home. The last verse says much about his sense of having left his native community:

“… a subconscious sorrow has filled my being
since I must submit here all my life long,
with little pleasure in this constricting forest,
and no one asking if I’ll sing a song.

That was not my custom when I was youthful –
at every table I loved to chat,
in jovial company, in hearty spirits,
in carefree style, as our time ran fast.

When I turned my back to you, I missed you greatly,
and my eyes wept tears in copious floods,
early on Thursday as we passed Caolas,
the ship under sail, and the wind off the coast.”

Coll was also synonymous with small boats. For most of the time when I travelled regularly on the Claymore, from 1955 to 1973, Coll lacked a pier, and for that reason passengers, mail and cargo were transferred from the ship to the island and vice versa by one of MacBrayne’s little ‘red boats’. In those days, such vessels were called ‘ferries’, as there were no car-ferries of the modern type in the Hebrides. There was always an element of excitement in the encounter between the Coll ferry and the Claymore. The little vessel was manned by kenspeckle figures, most notably Neilly John, who was always to be seen in the forecastle, where he acted as the human capstan, hauling at the rope which was thrown from the Claymore. As iron-handed Neilly John heaved, the open-decked ferry rose and fell on the swell, her diesel engine puttering and spluttering, her cooling-system pumping water into the sea in pugnacious, white spoutings. Her straggly red ensign, fixed to a staff on top of the helm, fluttered in a confused manner in sympathy with the anxious look on passengers’ faces. The Coll ferry and her gallant crew have now gained immortality in the sketches and stories of Katie Morag, whose authorial mother, artist Mairi Hedderwick, lived in Coll for many years.

On leaving Coll, the Claymore sailed eastwards towards Ardnamurchan. The passage from Coll to Ardnamurchan and the northern approaches to the Sound of Mull could be very rough in windy weather and I often stood with legs well apart at the stern, beside the jackstaff, to keep myself steady and free of seasickness as the vessel rolled in the heavy seas.

On a good morning, however, it was often unimaginably glorious. I recollect particularly clearly one morning in the late 1960s, when travelling to Glasgow University. The sun was rising in a soft, red glow over the mountains of the mainland, throwing Ben Shianta into a dark silhouette. To starboard lay the beautiful silhouette of Mull, with Ben More bold against the skyline and the volcanic plugs of the Treshnish Islands, looking dark and angular, like gigantic building blocks that had fallen into the sea, with a large dollop of concrete topping off the appropriately-named Dutchman’s Cap.

By my late teenage years the land and landscape had become very meaningful to me in terms of history and story. Ben Shiant reminded me, as it continues to do whenever I see it, of the clearances which had been carried out ruthlessly on its slopes in 1828. The removal of the communities around its foot had roused the local medical doctor, John MacLachlan of Rahoy, to compose a song in which he expressed his deep sadness at the desolation which had been inflicted by the policies of James Riddell, the landlord, on that part of his estate. Families had vanished, driven out by the local farmer and only the rubble of houses remained, with rushes sprouting from their broken hearths. Few parts of Scotland have had a more tragic experience of population displacement than Ardnamurchan and the adjoining district of Morvern, and MacLachlan was shocked by what he saw on his own patch:

“As I climb up towards Ben Shiant,
my thoughts are filled with sadness,

seeing the mountain as a wilderness,
with no cultivation on its surface.

As I look down over the pass,
what a chilling view I have!
So many poor cottages in disarray,
in green ruins on each side,

and houses without a roof,
in heaps by the water-spring!

Where the fire and children once were,
that’s where the rushes have grown tallest.”

Morvern is a beautiful stretch of country and the fecundity of the landscape now disguises its history. As we passed Ardnamurchan and then Morvern to port, I in my boyhood innocence imagined that they must represent some land of delight, with their wooded slopes, castles and resonant place-names like Kilchoan and Lochaline and Ardtornish, which still linger on my tongue and tease my brain with their arcadian rhythms, in Gaelic and English. I loved to see Kilchoan in the distance and to count its houses.

As the Claymore swung past Ardnamurchan to the north-east, she entered the Sound of Mull, and called briefly at one of the most beautiful harbours in the whole of the Highlands and Islands – Tobermory. Its boxy but picturesque houses, dating back to its early days as a fishing port founded by the British Fisheries Society in the late eighteenth century, fringed the bay. The harbour was usually thronged with small boats and all sorts of interesting larger vessels, including naval craft, and even (for a period) a diving-support ship, which had come to aid the Duke of Argyll as he tried to improve his bank balance by recovering treasure from a Spanish warship – part of the great Armada – which had sunk in the bay many centuries ago. My uncle Charles had a splendid Gaelic story about her.

As soon as the Claymore had berthed, cargo would be heaved on and off as passengers clattered down the gangway. The Mishnish Hotel looked so close that I could almost put my hand through the door, while, up on the hillside, the palatial Western Isles Hotel stood guard. Off the port side, the motor-launch Lochbuie would glide into view, her elegant wake fanning astern and tie up on the far side of Tobermory pier. She seemed fragile and tiny, compared with the mighty Claymore.

And then we were off again ... the gangway would hit the pier with a flat bang ... the derrick would be aligned amidships and its hook secured above the Morris Minors and Ford Cortinas and Pickfords containers. When the mooring ropes had been cast off, the Claymore went briefly astern, but ‘Full Ahead’ on both engines would soon clang out impatiently on the telegraph. I would rush down to the stern to watch as the engines were restarted ahead, causing the wake to curdle to the most magnificent, rainbow-spangled froth that I had ever seen as the screws, suddenly halted in their reverse motion, bit the brine angrily in the opposite direction, stopped stern-way and pushed the bulky ship forward.

The Claymore would throb and shake and heave, like a floating earthquake, her distinctive, domed funnel coughing and spewing out clouds of spotty, oily smoke. Gradually the good ship would settle down to her customary twelve knots, rounding Calve Island, while her escort of seagulls had a shot at repainting her masts and her green canvas lifeboat covers, and delivering a ‘surprise packet’ to unsuspecting passengers. Who would have thought that this vibrating, rugged, seagull-tormented mailboat would end her days sailing like a yacht  in the tranquil waters of Greece, far from Tobermory?

The Sound of Mull was, and remains, a joy of joys to me, particularly in fine weather. I have travelled through it in both directions, north and south, hundreds of times, and there is little that can surpass it for natural beauty in my estimation.

As I sail through, I hear a Gaelic song in my head, composed by the Rev. Dr John MacLeod of Morvern:

“Although I’ve travelled far, the Sound of Mull is my desire;
The sun has never risen on finer;
That is my beloved Sound to which I gave affection
From the days of my childhood and youth. “

Amen to that! I still search for Dr MacLeod’s home, the Manse of Fiunary, as I go through the Sound.  John MacLeod’s brother Norman, ‘The Highlanders’ Friend’, made a foundationally important contribution to Gaelic literature in the early nineteenth century. Curiously, Norman MacLeod wrote his famous Gaelic essays because he was aware that many who had become literate in the churches’ Gaelic schools did not have a healthy variety of reading material. He would be surprised to know that even today, when there is a Gaelic medium stream in Tiree High School, the challenge to produce attractive Gaelic literature remains the same.

I took so many things for granted in those far-off days – Gaelic itself which I learned effortlessly as a child, the distinctive lifestyle of crofting, the beauty of the islands – but in recent years I have come to realise how immensely privileged I was to have had such a rich tapestry of natural and cultural features all around me as I sailed to and from Tiree. Every landmark was woven unconsciously into my Gaelic soul and formed part of my deepest being. Ardtornish Castle lay to port and to starboard at the ‘bend’ of the Sound, that magnificent mountain, Beinn Taladh. Duart Castle, stronghold of the Macleans of Mull, rose powerfully on its dark headland, reminding me of the gloomy tensions that had existed between the Macleans and the Campbells of Inveraray. 

Despite these echoes of ancient strife, the Sound of Mull was always calm, tranquil, peaceful and the Claymore seemed to speed along, her vibrations less aggressive. The bridge relaxed too. I was permitted to hold the wheel with my ‘pal’ Angus Morrison, the Chief Engineer came up for a chat with the Officer of the Watch, and Charlie Hunter would emerge from his radio room. Coasters of all kinds would pass and other MacBrayne ships such as the Lochinvar or one of the cargo-boats. Sometimes we would ‘race’ the Lochinvar, a bizarre little veteran built in 1908, with her Meccano-like crane hovering over her stumpy funnel. Then Lismore Lighthouse would appear and it would be half an hour to Oban … and the end of another delightful trip. Oh dear! But I could anticipate doing it all over again, travelling in the opposite direction from Oban to Tiree. Later, when I was a pupil at Oban High School and then a student at Glasgow University studying Celtic languages, I had many opportunities to sail home on the Claymore.