Easily the best known and most popular of Highland prophets is Kenneth Mackenzie, The Brahan Seer; who may (or may not) have lived around 400 years ago to the north and west of Inverness. The story goes that his mother cut a deal with the spirit of a Danish princess, and in return for letting the wraith return to her grave the power of second sight would be gifted upon her child. In the morning Kenneth awoke to find a stone with a hole cut through the middle next to his bed. On looking through the stone he was engulfed with visions, good and bad, of a future yet to come. In time he would learn to control this gift and make numerous predictions for his own people and for the Highlands as a whole.

The Brahan Seer

Although he is most famous for predicting the downfall of his own clan, the Mackenzies of Seaforth, with a dramatic vision of deaf chiefs, white-hooded lassies and tragedy; he also foresaw the destinies of many other clans as well, for example – “When the big-thumbed sheriff officer and the blind man of the twenty-four fingers shall meet, then MacNeil of Barra shall prepare for a flitting“. It is known that this prophecy came true in 1838 when the last of the MacNeils of Barra left Kisimul Castle behind bankrupt (a ‘flitting’ in Scotland is to move house). Most of his predictions follow this vein, with many being very specific. Many of the prophecies are about battles or hardship ahead, and often a little macabre: “The day will come when the raven will drink its three fills of the blood of Clan Donald on top of the Hills of Minaraidh in Lewis“; ravens drinking the blood is a recurring theme. He would also foresee the changes that ravaged the Highlands during the Clearances of the 18^th and 19^th century that began in Ross-shire.

“The day will come when there will be a road through the hills of Ross-shire from sea to sea, and a bridge on every stream. Then the people of the land will degenerate and grow weak as their country improves . . . and the clansmen will flee from their native country before an army of sheep” Anyone who knows something of the history of the Highlands will know just how much that sadly came to pass, with sheep replacing men, and whole glens emptied of their people by a brutal aristocracy and their agents. Still, the seer goes on in another vision: “the people will emigrate to islands now unknown in the boundless oceans, after which the deer and other wild animals shall be exterminated by horrid Black Rains. The people will then return and take undisturbed possession of the lands of their ancestors.” This is a reference to the mass emigration from Scotland in the 19^th century; but we still await the horrid black rain, and this is one of the most feared predictions in the Highlands still to be fulfilled.

The Brahan Seer wasn’t the only prophet to foretell the Clearances, and considering the social and personal upheavals it caused it’s no wonder. In the 1640s on the shores of Loch Tay in Highland Perthshire lived a seer known as the ‘Lady of Lawers’. It is likely she was Mary Campbell who married John Stewart of Appin, and lived at the big house in the now deserted village of Lawers. She too saw the coming of the sheep and the evicting of the people: “The land will first be sifted and then riddled of its people, and the jaw of the sheep will drive the plough from the ground. The homes on Loch Tay shall become so scarce that a cock crowing will not be heard from one to the other.” Today, the once heavily cultivated slopes of Loch Tay are now almost exclusively put over to sheep grazing.

The landlord was the Marquess of Breadalbane, who’s estate in the 19^th century was nearly half a million acres; and he was instrumental in evicting at least 3000 people from Lochtayside during the worst excesses of the Clearances. Not that his family would be spared from the foresight of the Lady of Lawers either: “The day will come when the Campbells of Breadalbane will have a thousand rents, then one rent, then no rents at all; what was put together in hides shall be rent asunder in laces. The last laird will pass over Glenogle with a grey pony leaving nothing behind.” In the 1920s the estate fell into a sharp decline with mounting debts and by the 30s it was bust. Countess Breadalbane sold the last of the estate in 1948 and left the area in a trap pulled by a grey pony.

Breadalbane – Hard hit by the Clearances

Sometimes landowners made the mistake of evicting seers as well, and one such soothsayer forcibly removed from Jura in the early 1700s left her Campbell landlord with an ominous prediction: “The last Campbell laird of Jura will be blind in one eye, and will leave the island with all of his belongings tied to a cart pulled by a lone white horse.” This was well known to the islanders, and finally came true in 1938 when Charles Campbell, who’d been blinded in the First World War fell on hard times, sold up and left the island behind with nothing but a cart and horse. Today, the Isle of Jura distillery produces a whisky commemorating the story, called “Prophecy”

Not all prophecies are doom and gloom; some have a more positive aspect. For example it is well known to the Clan Cameron that “As long as there’s snow on Ben Nevis the Camerons will command Locheil“. At 4409ft, Ben Nevis is the highest mountain in the British isles and looms high and large over the Cameron estates of Locheil; being so high the snow has only melted six times in the last 120 years, only to remain the next year. The Camerons I think are safe. But, eventually we may all be doomed by the famous words of the Border prophet known as ‘Thomas the Rhymer’: “When the Cows of Gowrie come to land, the Judgement Day is near at hand.” The Cows of Gowrie are two boulders sitting in the sands of the Firth of Tay near Dundee, and it is said they move landward at about an inch a year.

The legend goes that Thomas the Rhymer, who lived in the 13^th century in the village of Earlston near Melrose, was enchanted by a fairy queen dwelling deep within the Eildon Hills. He was allowed to return to the mortal world for a short time, and was granted the gift of second sight; before eventually spending eternity in the world of the fairies. The story is similar in theme to the ‘gifting’ of the power to the Brahan Seer; and the sidhe, or fairy people play a large part in old superstitions and legends in Scotland. It may be a folk-memory of an older, lost culture that had certain shamanic ritual, and thus lots of prophecies. Many people across the globe, through their own natural shrewdness and perhaps with the help of hallucinogens have been venerated in their culture as being able to divine the future. The seers are our version of this, and many people have claimed the gift, or curse, right down to the present day – it may well have its origins in our very ancient past. It certainly makes for great storytelling.

This article was written by David McNicoll, who runs Vacation Scotland – a travel company specialising in tours and vacation packages to Scotland. For more info – www.vacationscotland.biz

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The Scottish Reformation of the 17^th century was at times brutal, destructive and reactionary; and yet, for the most part it was liberating and enlightening. The new church, the Kirk, established poorhouses in every parish, engaged the local population in clerical affairs and brought the Bible and Sermon down to serve the people. The Church of Scotland has a Calvinist doctrine, and at the heart of this theology is the belief that faith is a personal covenant with the Almighty and an understanding of the gospels and laws of the Old Testament. Thus, education stood as a central pillar of the Kirk. It would have unforeseen consequences.

John Knox – Father of the Scottish Reformation

It was a key principal of the new regime that everyone could read the Bible, and so a school was established in virtually every parish in Scotland. As a result, children in Scotland would throughout the 18^th and 19^th centuries receive a full education until the age of 14; something that was completely unheard off across Europe at that time. By 1800 over 75% of all Scots were literate, the highest rate on earth. What the Church hadn’t taken into account was that people would read books other than the Bible; they did, and they ate up literature, mathematics, philosophy, classical texts and humanities with a voracious appetite. Our unique universal education policy laid the foundation for the Scottish Enlightenment.

It took more than education to change Scotland though, it took money as well. Scotland was historically one of the poorest nations in Europe; a problem compounded by an unfavourable climate, and a dearth of good agricultural land. Yet, the Scots are hard working, and following the Treaty of Union with England in 1707 new agricultural techniques arrived into the country, and Lowland Scotland went through a rapid agrarian revolution. Like the Highland Clearances that followed a century later, there was a large population shift, as farming became less labour intensive and smaller units were merged into larger ones. But, for the farmers and the markets they served, it was boom time; and a new middle class began to emerge.

The money being generated, and the wealth flowing across the border also helped to finance new innovation and entrepreneurship. Opportunities in England’s overseas colonies was also breeding a burgeoning merchant class; slowly at first, but then like a hare out of the trap Scotland’s economy blossomed like the heathland being converted to farms across the nation. However, many of these farmers, especially in Ayrshire, around Glasgow and in Fife never realised the untapped wealth their fields covered – a new revolution was coming and like the Reformation before it, it would change the country forever.

The City of Glasgow was well placed on the Clyde to trade with the colonies of North America; and by the mid 1700s was the key tobacco and sugar port in the British Isles. This made the mercantile class very rich indeed, but more was to come. As well as trading with the world, it would be here on the Clyde the world’s shipping would be built. In addition huge coal reserves and iron deposits were discovered across the Central Belt. Forges, steelworks, factories, mills and all sorts of industries sprung up and thrived from Ayr in the south to Dundee in the east. By 1850 Scotland had become the Engine Room of the British Empire. It was a remarkable transformation.

The cities also provided a home for the many in the countryside who couldn’t find work at home, but conditions were grim. Places like the Gorbals in Glasgow or the Hilltown area of Dundee were among the worst slums in Europe – the Gorbals would be forever etched in the national psyche as the epitome of horrific housing and poverty. Still, they poured in, fuelling the Industrial Revolution as much as the coal, steel, ships or jute they were working with. Edinburgh too had its slums and industrial heart, but nothing like Glasgow; and the Scottish capital has long since drawn its wealth and employment opportunities from the service industry.

It was here that the new finance available was sown into something very different, and the ‘Athens of the North’ would become the fulcrum of the Enlightenment. Throughout the late 18^th and all of the 19^th centuries, it would be greatest intellectual seat in Europe; and as the money poured in on the back of all the philosophical advancements so a strong banking sector developed. It was here that Scotland’s special education system perhaps shone the brightest. Yet, across the nation, that great gift of learning was paying dividends: from Watt’s steam engine, and Adam Smith’s economic theories; from the poems of Robert Burns to the medical advancements pioneered by the likes of Joseph Lister. These were gifts that Scotland would export around the world as the British Empire grew to cover a quarter of the globe.

The River Clyde crashes over the Bonnington and Corra Linn waterfalls with an incredible force, a power that industrialists had long coveted. In 1786, one of them, David Dale and his son-in-law Robert Owen took the strength of the river and built a set of new mills in the valley bellow the old medieval town of Lanark. Unlike the slave drivers in Glasgow, these two had a more utopian vision of how a workforce should be treated. New Lanark was, from the very beginning, meant to be something different and more socially enlightened. Owen was the real driving force in this project, a man of real philanthropic ideals. He would take hundreds of families from the slums and bring them to the leafy Clyde valley, and give them a proper life, and from that good, hard workers. It was, and is a fantastic concept. The craziest part is that it worked. Owen even bought out his less enlightened partners to pursue his welfare programmes.

The Mills and Houses of New Lanark

It became a model village, and enterprise; and the great and good from rags to royalty came to see it in action. It was more often than not an eye-opening experience. When the Mills finally shut in 1968, a number of ventures worked to keep the essence of the site intact; and today both the village and the falls are among Scotland’s best kept secret attractions. It remains a fantastic testament to our nation’s industrial spirit and enlightened zeal.

Written by David McNicoll, owner of Highland Experience USA – and for anyone interested in our heritage. www.highlandexperience-usa.com

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Glen Roy is a narrow, steep-sided valley branching off from the wider Glen Spean about 15 miles north of Fort William and the high peaks of the Ben Nevis Range. Glen Spean in turn opens into the broad, straight and imposing Glen Mòr, or Great Glen. This geographical arrangement would have a significant bearing on the story. Curiously, Glen Roy has a ring of terraces or ‘roads’ running the entire length of the valley on one side which is then mirrored at the exact same altitude on the other. They look man-made, but are so precise in keeping their height and remain parallel to each other that some other-worldly influence seems present in the formation. There are three distinct terraces ringing the valley, one at 850ft, the next at 1066ft and the highest at 1150ft above sea-level. This uniformity and curious nature of their existence in this one valley spawned countless myths and stories.

Legend had it, they were built by the Romans to race their chariots; or perhaps by our Pictish ancestors as a running track to prove one’s manliness. Others suggested they were constructed by the legendary Fionn MacCuimhaill as an aid to hunting some mysterious beast in the mountains of Lochaber. The fairies built them as part of their ancient magic, or the Gods for us to worship; and, religion would be a major player when the real investigation started.

The Scottish Highlands are littered with large mounds; boulders in the wrong places, knows as erratics; and high terraces lining many of the straths and glens. There didn’t seem to be any natural reason or cause for this, or indeed why the landscape should be the shape it is. Until the middle of the 19^th century the only plausible explanation was Noah’s Flood – and that these phenomena were thus created by the receding waters; and, this simplistic biblical mindset was stubbornly resistant. However, in-roads and alternatives were being espoused. Scottish geologists James Hutton and Charles Lyell had begun to explain the processes of how the earth was formed over huge eons of time, and that these processes are on-going. This was of course a direct challenge to the 7 Day Creation story, and it took a lot of persuading for it to become mainstream.

Thus, they said, geological action over vast periods of time, and weathering could account for many of the features found in the Highlands; but, the Parallel Roads of Glen Roy had them stumped. These were clearly not river terraces, nor laid down in geological sequence. Lyell, and even Charles Darwin looked to explain the mystery. In the 1830s both men became convinced that what they were looking at were ancient coastlines, beaches formed when the sea was much higher (or the land much lower) than today. This kind of correlated with the Flood proposal, and many stuck to the older theory. They would all be proved wrong; and when the answer finally came, it would revolutionise the story of the planet, and rock the scientific world to its core.

During the 1830s the revolutionary Swiss geologist Louis Agassiz proposed that his Alpine homeland had once been covered by a massive ice sheet similar to that of Greenland, rather than the network of sinuous glaciers snaking down from peaks as now. This had been brought about by detailed work examining rocks, terraces and deposits; and, in 1837 he published the idea that the world had once been subject to an enhanced glacial episode. So, armed with the know-how he came to Scotland in 1840. Here, where no glaciers existed, Agassiz and his colleague William Buckland showed substantial and evidential proof that the mountains and glens had been in the past subjected to intense glaciation – the same mounds, deposits, scratches (known as striations) and erratics found in the Alps were all over the Highland landscape. It was empirical confirmation that Scotland too had once been under the action of an ice sheet and multiple glaciers. But, what of Glen Roy and those pesky roads?

In a moment of clarity, Agassiz, who dedicated much of his research in this area concluded that the terraces were shorelines formed by fresh-water lakes dammed by ice in the main valley. In 1863 Thomas Jamieson published a paper on the ice-age origins of the parallel roads: his conclusions settled the debate once and for all.

Towards the end of the last Ice Age, around 11,000 years ago, ice once again thickened and spread to fill the wide basin of the Great Glen in Lochaber; which as it grew spilled into Glen Spean. This then blocked off the potential for meltwater in Glen Roy (and also in Glen Gloy) to escape to the sea. So, what are known as ‘ice-dammed lakes’ formed, leaving the tell-tale shorelines. As the ice continued to thicken, the lake level rose: marked out by the three terraces. Eventually, the water level reached the point where it exceeded the altitude of the watershed at the head of the glen, and over-spilled into the River Spey catchment and flowed to the North Sea.

Around 10,000 years ago the climate warmed dramatically and the ice melted quickly away; and, with the blockage gone the lake could drain down into the Atlantic – it may have been quite an explosive event, and the valley all the way to Fort William is littered with gravels from the disgorging of the lake. Understanding the processes involved in the formation of the parallel roads completely re-wrote our understanding of the earth’s glacial past; revolutionised the study of ancient landform creation (evidence of enormous ice-dammed lakes would be found in North America for example); and, without the mystery of the Parallel Roads of Glen Roy those discoveries may have been decades in the finding. Figuring out this enduring mystery was the Eureka moment in the study of the world’s landscape history; and aught not to be forgotten.

This blog was written by David McNicoll, owner of Highland Experience USA; who specialise in Scottish Travel Packages. Tours to explore Scotland’s incredible geography and scenery can be arranged.

Link – www.highlandexperience-usa.com

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Over the years there have been some very notable Scottish-Argentinians. These include

• Cecilia Grierson -  Cecilia was the first Argentine woman to earn a Doctor in Medicine degree, and had Scottish ancestry.
• Alexander Watson Hutton – a Glasgow schoolteacher, Hutton emigrated to Argentina in his late twenties. He taught for a few years in Buenos Aries, before going on to found the Argentine Association Football League, now known as the Asociación del Fútbol Argentino, in 1893. It was the first football league outwith the the UK. He is known as the ‘father of Argentinian football’.
• Duncan Antonio Stewart Agell – Born in Buenos Aries in 1833 to a Scottish father and Uruguayan mother, Duncan Stewart was for a very brief time the President of Uruguay.

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AVIEMORE TRADESHOW

This is the third year ScotClans has attended the tradeshow at Aviemore. Unlike the Scottish tradeshow in Glasgow here each exhibitor has to guarantee that at least 90% of their goods are designed and made here in Scotland. Because we try to sell only Scottish made products at http://www.scotclans.com it’s refreshing to not have to ask the question “where are your products made?”
This year our highlights were; a great conversation with Wallis Hunter who’s opening question was “how can we make things better for you?” now that’s customer service! They have some beautiful new designs we are looking forward to getting on the site. It was also good to see Art Pewter’s stand there, again more great products we need to add.
Apart from our existing suppliers we had some interesting talks with some new companies we are looking forward to working with. Jewellery and kilt pins by Lava Design, his work uses the Scottish landscape as an inspiration, the shapes of Lochs, pathways are used in this stunning modern, cleanly designed jewellery. Lava designs have also produced a range of Jewellery using the writing of Robert Burns. It was lovely to see modern jewellery entwined with Scottish nature and history.
We also will be getting some rather wonderful hats on our site from ‘The Frilly Ghillie’ and Tulloch Designs.
Also Saltire designs – beautiful cashmere, gorgous colours , some fantastic bags. We are in talks about using their products in a photoshoot. They have knitted for Captain Corellis Mandolin and Doctor Who!
Shana exhibited a collection of Shetland wool and traditional Fair Isle designs which we’d love to get on our site.
So all in all a good show – we have be honoured to support.

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