The act of cursing your enemies

Cursing your enemies used to be a popular pastime in the Highlands and Islands.

 

In Gaelic it was called ‘Cur buidseachd air’ – to put a spell on. A similar word, ‘buidseachas’ was used on the Island of Mull for the sort of curse that travelling people, or tinkers as they were known, were reputed to cast. The Celtic saints were good at it, too, but in their case, and if God was involved, it was called ‘mallachd’. Another method was to cast the ‘drochd shuil’ (the evil eye) on them.

 

Although this form of revenge is largely a thing of the past it is not altogether dead.

 

A few years ago a tourist was giving a Highland Council ferryman such a hard time about the cost of taking a car across the Corran Narrows, over which, of course, the man had no control, that the visitor drove away with the ‘curse of the double puncture’ over him. One flat tyre you can cope with – assuming the vehicle has a spare wheel; two simultaneously in these parts means a very long wait in an area where garages are few and far between.

 

Not long ago ,when I was standing behind some awkward customers in a shop on Tobermory’s Main Street, I was intrigued to hear the woman at the checkout muttering under her breath one of Mull’s oldest curses, ‘Doideagan Muileach’, in their direction as they left.

 

Local tradition has it that the island was famous for its numerous, powerful witches, or ‘doideagan’. Their greatest day came in 1588 when, summoned by Lady Maclean of Duart, whose husband Sir Lachlan was eyeing-up a Spanish beauty aboard the famous Armada treasure ship at anchor in Tobermory Bay, they combined forces, sinking it and her.

 

I have no idea what befell the modern-day tourists after they left the shop but, having arrived in Tobermory by boat, I was relieved to find myself back in Lochaline without catching some of the shop assistant’s spell!

 

According to no less an authority than The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, Lochnell House near Benderloch has been rebuilt several times. Thereby hangs a tale involving another curse.

 

This one, uttered over a thousand years ago by the potential mischief-maker and Dalriadan activist St Columba, was about a magnificent yew which flourished on Bernera, a tidal island off the south end of Lismore. It seems St Columba blessed a large congregation under its spreading branches and then prophesied that a proud and greedy man would cut it down to furnish his house with its timber. His crime, and here comes the ‘mallachd’, would be paid for by water, blood and three fires, and that a son would never succeed a father as long as any wood from the Bernera yew remained in his house.

 

The culprit in this case was the local laird, Sir Duncan Campbell of Lochnell (1763-1837) who, in an act of wanton vandalism, had the sacred yew of Bernera cut down and sawn into planks for a staircase in Lochnell House.

 

When the tree fell a workman was crushed to death so that the trunk and the ground below were soaked in blood. When the six-oared boat carrying the timber back to Ardmucknish Bay was swamped by a sudden squall, a number of men were drowned.

 

Even though he would have known about the curse from the local community stunned by the loss of such an ancient landmark, Campbell had his staircase. On three occasions the house went on fire and had to be rebuilt; but each time the Bernera yew escaped, until January 29, 1853 when it was destroyed in the worst blaze of all.

 

The present chief, Alexander Campbell 17th of Lochnell, who was born in 1961, is the first son to have inherited the title from his father since that day. Thus, St Columba’s prophesy and curse was completely fulfilled.

 

The local people never forgave Sir Duncan for cutting down the great yew. Although his heir ordered a 15 per cent reduction on the rents on Lochnell Estate in 1851, when the house went on fire two years later a contemporary account recorded; ‘the blaze of light issuing from the two or three hundred windows of the castle, and the lurid glare of the fire shedding its reflection over the expanse of Lochnell’s deep waters, tendered the scene one never to be forgotten by the hundreds of Lochnell’s tenantry, who crowded to every hill top to witness the destruction of their proprietor’s mansion by an agent whose approach could not be foreseen, nor yet could its destroying influence be now either mitigated, or controlled’.

 

Clearly there was a reason why the tenants preferred to stand back and watch the pile burn. We may guess why.

 

Yew roots can lie dormant in the ground for generations, a fact borne out by the large number of saplings I saw on a recent expedition to Bernera. I was delighted to find others growing opposite, on the Morvern cliffs, between Rubha an Ridrie and Eignaig. Their seeds had obviously been borne across Loch Linnhe on the breeze or by birds.

 

Although St Columba was able to look into the future, he apparently was not able to see everything.