there are no secure anchorages round Colonsay or Oronsay and we’ve spent uncomfortable nights on several different occasions off the ferry pier at Scalasaig.
Oronsay’s American owner runs a trim farm on the island and it is pleasant to see well-repaired dykes and fences. The flat area to the south is used as an airstrip but landing must be hazardous as ponies wander across it and thousands of excavating rabbits are hard at work. Beyond the airstrip is a long reef ending with the ruin of an old kelp-gatherer’s cottage on Eilean nan Ron – ‘seal island’ – which is well-named and a nature reserve. A thousand or more grey Atlantic seals converge here every autumn and the roar of battling bulls can be heard for miles.
EILEACH AN NAOIMH
. . . In the ninth year of Meilochen, son to Pridius, King of Picts, a most powerful king, Columbus, by his preaching and example, converted that nation to the faith of Christ. Upon this account, they gave him Iona to erect a monastery in. . . and where he was buried in the 77th year of his age. . .
He built a noble monastery in Ireland before his coming to Britain, from both which monasteries he and his disciples founded several other monasteries in Britain and Ireland, among all which the monastery of the island in which his body is interred has the pre-eminence. . .
If the madding crowd of tourists on Iona get you down then why not escape, like St Columba, to his private island paradise? He would slip away for a rest cure on tranquil Eileach an Naoimh, the southernmost of the chain of small islands known today as the Garvellachs. It was here that his uncle, St Brendan of Clonfert, had founded a small rural monastery in AD542 – twenty-one years before Columba himself founded Iona – and it offered him a blessed place of peace.
Eileach an Naoimh is early Gaelic for the ‘rocky place of the saint’ and when Adomnan, Abbot of Iona, wrote about his predecessor he mentioned Columba’s great love of ‘Hinba’ – the ‘Isles of the Sea’. It is almost certain that this refers to the Garvellachs. The early Celtic monks tried to emulate the devotion of St John the Baptist by looking for spiritual uplift in the wilderness, and what better place in the Scottish context than a small island in the ocean wastes?
But although this island is a ‘rocky place’ much of the rock is limestone, so the soil is fertile and the grass green. As the strata tilt upwards, ending in steep cliffs, the south-facing slopes and rocky crevices are sheltered from the prevailing winds and covered with a riot of scarlet pimpernel, primrose, yellow iris, meadow-sweet and honeysuckle. A splendid natural sandstone arch, An Chlàrsach – ‘the harp’, at the north end of the island can be reached by an interesting but rough walk along the shore, or on the springy turf along the top of the ridge with the sea frothing at the foot of the cliffs below you.
The anchorage is in a lagoon formed by a line of skerries where a tiny creek with a shingle beach is called the ‘port for Columba’s church’. Beside it a fresh-water spring runs into a stone basin overgrown with watercress and beyond can be seen the low broken ruin of the monastery and a church with a chancel and mortared walls. These are thought to date from the 9th century (St Brendan’s original structures would almost certainly have been of wood) but the settlement was destroyed in the 10th century, probably by Norsemen. Just north is a small cell and beyond it a chapel with walls nearly one metre thick and an indecipherable carved slab inside. There is open space around the chapel with a low vallum or rampart at the foot of the hillside and, further to the north, the remains of a stone kiln in which the monks baked bread, or maybe dried corn, and a structure that may have been a winnowing barn.
A natural rock ‘pulpit’ stands by the landing place near the shore and on the slope above it there are two partly reconstructed semi-detached beehive cells – the finest examples of these ancient structures in all Scotland. One of the cells of this clochain – as the double cell is called – could have been an oratory with an underground cell beside it, like a Pictish souterrain, which may have been a wine cellar.
There is also a burial ground with a number of upended slabs. Many carved tombs, ornamented stones and crosses were reported in 1824, when the ruins were ‘discovered’, but through the years these have been stolen.
Columba’s mother, Eithne, Princess of Leinster, is supposed to be buried here and a small upright slate slab roughly incised with a cross marks the spot. His uncle, Brendan, is said to be buried on the next-door islet, A’ Chuli. St Columba’s remains were moved from Iona to an unknown destination in the 9th century during the Norse raids and his grave has never been located. Is it possible that he had originally asked to be buried on his beloved Eileach an Naoimh and that the monks belatedly carried out his wish?
Beehive cells on Eileach an Naoimh
In the Corryvreckan
SCARBA
. . . the famous and dangerous gulf, called Cory Vrekan. . . yields an impetuous current, not to be matched anywhere about the isle of Britain. The sea begins to boil and ferment with the tide of flood, and resembles the boiling of a pot; and then increases gradually, until it appears in many whirlpools, which form themselves in sort of pyramids, and immediately after spout up as high as the mast of a little vessel, and at the same time make a loud report. These white waves run two leagues with the wind before they break. . . This boiling of the sea is not above a pistol-shot distant from the coast of Scarba Isle, where the white waves meet and spout up: they call it the Kaillach, i.e., an old hag; and they say that when she puts on her kerchief i.e., the whitest waves, it is then reckoned fatal to approach her. . .
Once upon a time a handsome young prince sailed over from Scandinavia and fell in love with the beautiful daughter of a Jura chieftain. He asked for her hand in marriage, but her father had other plans. ‘No problem.’ he said. ‘Take your boat and anchor it for three consecutive days in the middle of the Gulf between Jura and Scarba and then you can marry my daughter.’
Prince Breacan agreed but he smelt a rat and asked the local sailors for their advice. The waters are dangerous and there is only one way to survive, they told him. You must use three ropes for your anchor, one made of wool, one of hemp, and one of virgins’ hair. So the prince travelled round Jura and Scarba collecting the materials and at last the ropes were made to his satisfaction. He then sailed his boat out to the middle of the Gulf and dropped anchor.
At the end of the first day the wool rope parted, and by the end of the second day the hemp rope had broken. Then on the third day it became clear that the island girls had not been entirely honest because the hair rope also broke and the prince was drowned. And the chieftain’s daughter lived unhappily ever after and the Gulf became known as the Corryvreckan (Breacan’s cauldron).
This sad little story is, of course, entirely untrue.
The flood tides from the Irish Sea run up the Sound of Jura building up a huge head of water which forces itself westwards out through the Gulf of Coire Bhreacain (‘the speckled cauldron’) and runs headlong into
