Beinn Iadain – an unusual Argyll mountain

In the days when Morvern was well populated by folk versed in its stories and traditions, Beinn Iadain was associated with the otherworld of spirits, ghosts and the second sight. 

Tales have come down to us from Rev James MacDougall, Lord Archibald Campbell and other well-known Argyll collectors, about people being taken into an underground cavern through a ‘black door’ and never seen again.

 Others speak of the Feinn holding long-jump competitions over Lochan Uaine “the Green Loch”, now Lochan na Carnaich on some OS maps, below its southern foothills, and hunting in the nearby White Glen.

A feature of Beinn Iadain are its numerous wells and springs, producing the coldest and clearest water imaginable. So well-known were they that they appear in a lovely Gaelic song composed by the bard Duncan Macpherson (c1830s-1931) from Rahoy, which he wrote after emigrating to Otago in New Zealand.

He recalled: “Uisge fallain glan Beinn Iadain,a’ ruith do loch nam bradan lionmhor, bith ‘sa Ghearr-abhainn; gan iasgach suas mu chriochan Acha-rainich.”

Translated it reads: “The healthy pure water of Beinn Iadain running down to the loch of numerous salmon; fine it was to fish for them in Gearr-Abhain [the River Aline] up by the bounds of Achranich.”

At one time there was a small settlement with a horizontal mill, situated in a hollow below Beinn Iadain occupied by two families called McKenlaich and MacMillan. 

Two sons and a daughter, Dugald, John and Elizabeth, were born in this lonely spot to Alan McKenlaich and Janet Cameron between 1820 and 1826. 

Both families left shortly afterwards, probably following the death of a number of their children who died in a snow storm on their way back from Lochaline where they had gone to get food. Their graves are still to be seen and it is said the sound of their anxious parents whistling in the darkness to guide them home, can still be heard in the locality.

The MacMillans, an ancient Lochaber tribe, probably came into Morvern in the 1690s when Cameron of Lochiel rented Kinlochteacuis, Glencripesdale [including  Beinn Iadain] from Maclean of Duart. A few returned to Beinn Iadain a year or so later. A descendent was head shepherd to Gerard Craig Sellar of Ardtornish and lived at Acharn. Some of his progeny still live on the estate.

At 900 feet above sea level, their living must have been precarious and means of transport difficult at times. Evidence of this appeared when the MacMillans decided they could no longer continue living there and moved down to Glencripesdale on the shores of Loch Sunart. 

When an old lady belonging originally to the Ben wanted to return to her old haunts for the last time, but was too weak and infirm to manage the trackless moors on foot, she was placed in a large peat creel and carried from Glencripesdale on the back of her eldest son.

The inhabitants of Beinn Iadain had the reputation of not being among Morvern’s most sociable people. Who could blame them?