To get to Iona you take a short 9 minute ferry ride, passengers only, no cars. So we left our car in the car park and walked on. You can pretty much see all of Iona from the ferry and the water was amazing! It looked like the Mediterranean, turquoise blue and clear near the shoreline. What was so interesting is that the island really is bilingual, Gaelic and English. Our ferry operator even spoke in Gaelic!
After we disembarked from the ferry, we went to the convent ruins. The Iona convent was founded around 1200 AD and operated for more than 350 years. This convent was for Iona's nuns. Many came from noble families, others were widows, unmarried daughters, illegitimate daughters and estranged wives. They continued to remain in contact with the outside world and supported themselves off the nunnery lands. The convent was shut down as a result of the Reformation but until the 1600s the south shore of Mull's Loch na Keal was known as "Leirnacalloch", "hillside of the nuns". Interestingly, over the refectory window there is a carving of a naked woman with her legs open, called Sheela Na Gig. These figures are actually symbols to ward off evil spirits, which is why they are placed around doors and windows. The convent never recovered after the Reformation and was left to ruins. Next door is a medieval church called St. Ronan's or Teampull Rònain. This is where the Iona islanders worshiped between 1200 and 1560, although archaeological excavations have revealed traces of an earlier chapel possibly dating to the 700s. Beneath this early chapel were burials that dated even earlier, and they all belonged to women.
After touring the convent ruins we went to the Abbey. St. Columba founded this monastery when he arrived on Iona around 1,450 years ago and was buried there. He turned this place into a vibrant center of Christianity and even after his death, the Abbey continued to be a center of artistic Christian creations. The current abbey church was built on the site of St. Columba's church by Benedictine monks in the 1200s. Perhaps Iona's Abbey is most famous for producing the Book of Kells which currently resides in Dublin. Viking invasions became common and to protect the sacred treasures of the monastery, many items were taken to sister monasteries, including the Book of Kells. Along the road to the Abbey are high crosses, pilgrimage points for the pilgrims to pause and pray, to prepare themselves for their final destination of St. Columba's shrine. Some of the crosses, while engraved with Celtic design, also have Biblical images such as the St. Martin's Cross. At the top there are lions symbolizing Christ, at the intersection of the cross is the Virgin Mary holding Christ and surrounded by angels, below them is Daniel and his lions, then Abraham preparing to sacrifice Isaac, below them David and his harp, then David and Goliath, and finally at the bottom the Celtic snake and boss motifs. Snakes are not necessarily evil, they are often depicted as swallowing each other, creating a never ending circle which symbolizes eternity.
A little ways away from the Abbey is a hill called Tòrr an Aba or Hill of the Abbot. It is on this hill that St. Columba had his writing hut.
In front of the Abbey church is a well which would have been used for religious rituals and bottled for pilgrims to take home. Around the well are stones called clachan bráth or prayer stones. They are hollowed and once held marble globes which pilgrims would rotate as they said their prayers. Supposedly, once the stone was worn through, the world would end.
Running in front of the Abbey are the remains of a cobbled road known as Sràid Nam Marbh, Street of the Dead. This road is thought to be about 1000 years old and links the abbey with the burial ground and the landing point at Martyr's Bay. Abbots, lords, warriors, and even kings were carried along this road before being put to rest.
Directly in front of the Abbey church is a trough which the pilgrims used to wash their feet before entering the church. According to tradition, if you throw three handfuls of water into the trough, you can ask St. Columba for a favorable wind before setting sail. Since it was Good Friday, the baptismal font, altar and Christ on the cross were shrouded in black inside the Abbey church.
The cloisters section is beautiful and the pillars around the courtyard have been restored to include carvings of plants that appear on Iona.
After touring the Abbey we walked around the island, ending up on top if a hill overlooking Iona, out onto the water and to Mull. After spending the day on Iona (and getting a little sunburned and a bunch of freckles), we got back on the ferry, headed back to Mull, finished our drive around the island and got on another ferry to the mainland. When we got to mainland Scotland the ferry operator informed us that due to the ramp was not working and we would have to back out. That was interesting but as far as I know, nobody ended up in the water. We headed back to Fort William for the night and found a quaint B&B on the loch.
Saturday was a fairly quiet day. I had somehow contracted a nasty cold and simply wanted to curl up and sleep all day but you can't do that when you're traveling! We stopped by a viewpoint to look at Ben Nevis and then drove towards Loch Ness, crossing Loch Lochey. Yes, that is the name of the Loch. I wonder if they ran out of names. There is also a lock on loch Lochey so I imagine it can get confusing when talking about whether the Loch Lochey lock is locked (or not)! Moving on, we didn't see Nessie unfortunately, so traveled forward to Culloden Battlefield, the site of a Jacobite vs. English battle on April 16, 1746. Within the first three minutes, 700 Jacobites were killed. I don't think I need to say how it ended. In a nutshell, the two sides were fighting over control of Scotland...Bonnie Prince Charlie (a Stuart and son of the exiled King James) vs. the Hanoverians, King George. In all honesty the Scottish people got caught in the middle of a political game where no one would win. The highlanders sided with the Jacobites, including my ancestral clans, and most were at the battle of Culloden. The English wanted to wipe out the highlanders anyway, so the Jacobite uprisings were a great excuse to end the highlander way of life...the tartans, clan system, bagpipes, etc. When we arrived at the site, there were numerous people in kilts carrying flags and playing bagpipes. It looked like some commemoration of the event had just ended. We toured the museum and took a walk around the battlefield. There are grave markers for each clan as well as one large cairn for all the Scots who were killed. When the battle ended, the Jacobites were hunted down and killed, they were not allowed to surrender. Many civilians were also killed just because they were wearing a tartan.
Culloden Battlefield
After Culloden we went to the Clava Cairns, prehistoric burial mounds. They had passageways into the center and it is believed they were built so at a certain time of the day, the sun would shine down the passageway. It was very interesting.
We headed to Dunblane and found a hotel for the night. It was interesting. The staff was very friendly but we couldn't understand a single thing they were saying. They really were speaking Scottish, and I am not talking Gaelic! Ironically, two old men sitting at the bar were talking and one said how Americans don't speak "good" English.
Today (Sunday), was another easy day as I was still feeling under the weather. We mostly spent driving to possible ancestral locations, looking for our Robertson, Buchan and Russell ancestors. Kinross, Portmoak and Bo'Ness. We went to the old Kinross cemetery which in itself is interesting since there is an old watchtower overlooking it. The purpose was to scare away grave robbers. We didn't find any Russell's but we did find Glass and Whyte families. The Glass and Whyte families married into the Buchans. Portmoak was difficult to find because it doesn't exist as a town, like Kilmaronok. We drove around for awhile but after coming up empty handed, went back to the Kinross police station. They were closed, but a map indicated a Portmoak Primary School so off we went and lo and behold, we found the Portmoak church! We also found Buchans, Whytes and Glasses in the cemetery. What was interesting about the Portmoak cemetery was that symbols of occupation were carved on the back and the actual occupation was often mentioned in the epitaph. The stones were also remarkably well preserved. There were some stones dating back to the early 1700s. Many, however, had sunk down into the earth so far that only the top showed. Bo'Ness is where Jane Robertson, my fourth great grandmother and the wife of John MacGregor, was born. Bo'Ness is huge compared to the places we have been. It even had two very old and still operating churches of Scotland. We walked through their cemetery but found no graves older than 1850. It may be that because of the large size of the town, they follow the same practice as much of Europe, removing the bodies to make room for new ones. Bo'Ness isn't far from Edinburgh so we headed towards that lovely city to spend our last few days in Scotland, which includes (hopefully) going to the archives to see what we can find!
Cheers!
Elizabeth
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