In my last dawn letter I shared my adventure to the kelpie loch of Sleat, on the Isle of Skye. This week we’re back on Skye to visit a haunted ruin by the sea and the mysterious remains of a prehistoric pagan temple.
I hope that visiting these eerie places will fill my creative well and provide plenty of inspiration for my next book Fireside Ghosts.
Grab a cup of tea and make yourself comfortable — it’s a long one!
The north end of Skye is a wild, moody place. At its tip, before the road bends sharply down to Uig and safety, lies the broken ruin of Duntulm Castle. My copy of Otta Swire’s Skye: The Island and its Legends lay in my rucksack dog-eared at this page:
Duntulm itself appears on its cliff, silhouetted against sky and sea, still black and forbidding, its ruins defying the Hebridean storms with the same grim determination with which the ancient castle once defied men. It stands lonely, a place of ghosts and bloodshed and unhappy memories.
Her description suggests that the stones themselves repel warmth and kindness. I can attest to its prickly nature; I left the island without a tick or midge bite (miraculous given all our scrambling through bracken and heather) but the nettles of Duntulm saw that I left with a burning rash on my hand.
I hate to acknowledge the mass tourism that spoils the atmosphere of these intriguing places but must warn you that the roadside here is busy and the road itself narrow and steep. However, if you wait long enough for people to tick a landmark off their bucket list you’ll get Duntulm to yourself for a spell.
Just remember that when the tourists get bored of the wind and cold and head back to their campervans, you’re not alone.
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Stand in the crumbling window that faces the grey sea. Can you hear the dying rasp of Hugh MacDonald, fed on salt meat until he died of thirst? Or the wail of the One Eyed Woman? The screams of a nameless nursemaid also echo around the cliff; she accidentally dropped her infant charge from the nursery window (perhaps this very one) onto the sharp rocks below. As punishment the child’s father, a MacDonald chief who ruled Duntulm, put her out to sea in a leaky boat.
Otta Swire’s book also mentions a ghostly host of kilted warriors who assemble near the castle on misty nights and another chief — Donald Gorm Mòr — who caused such a drunken, violent racket with his cronies that the castle had to be exorcised with sacred torches of flaming pine.
Disappointingly, I didn’t experience any supernatural activity though it wasn’t for want of trying. Alone among the ruins, I couldn’t resist playing ‘Duntulm’ by Olde Throne to wind and stone and even into the crevice of what was perhaps Hugh MacDonald’s cell. Maybe not the wisest idea given some of these ghosts’ reputations, but at least they’ll know their stories haven’t been lost in the mists of time.
Not that many folk mourned Hugh MacDonald’s grim end. An old Gaelic waulking song curses his foster mother for not killing him as a child:
Ùisdein 'ic 'IllEasba' Chlèirich,
Far an laigh thu slàn na èirich.Mìle marbhphaisg air do mhuime.
Hugh MacDonald,
Where you lie down don’t get up
A thousand death-shrouds on your stepmother.
Hugh MacDonald had an evil reputation as a backstabbing murderer, but his ambitious scheming proved his undoing. He planned to seize Duntulm by murdering its current chief Donald Gorm Mòr. He sent two letters, one to his accomplice telling him of his evil plans and one to Donald Gorm Mòr, inviting him to his castle in the guise of friendship. Unfortunately for Hugh MacDonald, he mixed up the two letters. With prior warning of his murder Donald Gorm Mòr foiled Hugh MacDonald’s plan, imprisoning him in Duntulm’s dungeon where his parched groaning can be heard to this day.
Year by year, Duntulm crumbles into the sea. When it finally disappears I wonder if the ghosts will go with the stones, or will their shrieks and bellows still be heard on the fierce winds?
The next place I’d like to share with you from my trip to Skye is a special one. Due to its sacred nature, I’ve kept its location behind a paywall to strike a balance between sharing my love for the beauty and lore of my homeland and preserving the peace of these sacred places.
This place left a deep impression on me. A little like Hallaig (a cleared town on Raasay, made famous by Sorley McLean’s haunting poem), its significance only dawned on me when I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And like Hallaig it required a sacrifice of comfort and humbling of the ego to get there.
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