Non-Scot seeking insight on everyday Hebridean details

Hi Evelyn,

I grew up in Portland and know Seattle well. Beautiful place, one day I'll drag my husband out to see it.

I know Mull and Iona, I've been there several times. I will admit I know Skye better.

I'll see if I can help.

Heather is very course and hard to walk through if it hasn't been burned off. It isn't really slippery, even in snow. The houses over here are made of stone and have very thick walls. It is very possible to get one warm with only a coal or peat fire, but can be miserable in the morning to get warmed up. The old black houses were built with the livestock in one room and the people in the next, which could help heating but be rotten for smell.

Peat is the most common fuel, historicly for heating. The process of getting the peats is very labour intensive. They have to be cut, stacked to drain and then carried off the moor in baskets to be stacked near homes. Peat has a very distinctive smell when it burns and doesn't get real hot.

Forget everything you know about trees, especially on the isles. It is very windy here, it is pretty rare the wind isn't blowing so the trees tend to be small. Unless they've been planted as tax shelters. Even those trees are never really what we would call big. Scots pine trees can get pretty big. They have red bark and the underground is fairly clear. They have a really pleasant smell in the wind.

The mud here varies a great deal. Geologically Scotland is old. There is a vast amount of different kinds of stone. Some of the earth is red from iron ore, some is clay with fossils in it. There aren't many places with bare dirt, lots of low grasses. Some of the hills have shale which can make for an interesting and terrifying trip down. My husband likes to shale run, which scares the daylights out of me.

Fishing is a major industry, even now. It isn't unusual for folks to have a croft for livestock and what few crops grow and to fish as well.

I don't know if that helped at all, but feel free to email me if you have more questions: nanoskye@gmail.com

----------

Important things to remember during NaNoWriMo:

You can still do this! Trust me, I know you can.
You don’t have to spell check
Grammar is optional
Editing comes later
And a plot is used for gardening

Thank you so much, Marie - that is indeed a great help!

I lived in Salem for 11 years and know Portland reasonably well. Let me know if I can ever send you something like a leaf from a Bigleaf Maple, or a postcard of Rooster Rock. ;)

I hadn't asked about peat and stone houses because I didn't want to give the impression that I thought you were all living in blackhouses, sharing your kitchens with your cows, eating haggis three times a day, and continually reciting Robert Burns poems to each other. But since you mentioned it... :)

How long does take the peat to drain before its carried off the moor (a day, a week, all summer)?
Does the dry peat have much of a smell to it before it's put on the fire?
What happens if you drop a (is "turf" the right word?) of dried peat on a hard floor? Does it shatter, bounce, crumble, or maybe just lie there?
Does clothing tend to pick up a noticeable residue from peat smoke?

How do you hang a picture or a coat-peg on a stone wall?

If you're wearing a wool-something-or-other while you're out on a heathery moor, does it get all sort of little heather-buds stuck to it?

What the heck is shale-running?
(And, if it's what I think it is, do you have really good health, disability, and life insurance polices out on your husband? :)

Thanks again,

- Evelyn

PS. This question's a little weird (or maybe "uncouth" is the word), but I just can't seem to get it out of my mind:
If you've been out and about the croft all day doing important crofty things, and after you get back into the house and cleaned up a bit you find there's something under your fingernail and it's driving you crazy, is it likely to be a splinter, or would it be something else?

My husband is reading over my shoulder and correcting me. The first question he has is what time period you are using. If it is 1400-ish you are talking pretty much Vikings. Roughly equally split between Gaelic and Viking culture. Mostly peaceful however. Almost independant from mainland Scotland. See "Lordship of the Isles"

If you are talking current time, we still live in stone houses. Few black houses remain and are generally tourist things or barns. Our house is stone with 2 ft thick walls, which is very nice in a strong gale. No new houses are built with stone, now concrete blocks are used. Personally I'd never eat haggis, but my highlander mate loves it. He's cute, but strange.

Peat is generally cut in May or June and dries for 6 weeks or so, depending on the weather. Then it it carried off in basket loads. It has little smell before it is burnt. No it is just called a peat. The Irish call it turf. It will crumble a little if dropped. Everything smells like peat smoke if you are near it. The water that runs through peat is picks up a good brown color and is especially nice in single malts.

You don't hang pictures on a stone wall. You might shove a peg in between stones for a coat. But generally some walls had wood cladding up to picture rail height.

Wool is especially good clothing for this climate. Woven tweed is very sturdy, will repel water quite well and breaths. Yes if you walk through heather you will pick up all manner of debris. Running through it can risk a twisted or broken ankle, especially if it is above knee height. Generally it is burned at the end of April to keep it down. Let me tell you that the first time I came around the corner and saw a hillside burning I was in a panic. I did some fire fighting in Oregon. But here the skill is not only getting it started but keeping it going. The ground is very wet.

I had it wrong. It is not shale running, it is scree running. He says it is a good way to get off a hill quickly. I am a coward and have old bones.

Yes you can get splinters under a finger nail or gravel. Comment from the peanut gallery "If you are on Mull it could be the skin of a Campbell."

He recommends the book by Neil Gunn "Silver Darlings" to give you a good idea of living in an old stone house as a crofter/fisherman. From about 1800.

Hope this helps. Let us know if you need more. I'll keep feeding him single malt and picking his brain, well till it is pickled anyway. *grin*

Cheers

----------

Important things to remember during NaNoWriMo:

You can still do this! Trust me, I know you can.
You don’t have to spell check
Grammar is optional
Editing comes later
And a plot is used for gardening

On Shetland we cut peat with big tractor things, and then kids get payed a couple quid a bag to pick it up and stick it in bags, ready to sell.

Random useless info which is probably useless to your purposes, but I find fascinating.

Highlight of the three months I lived there, I tells ye.

Thanks, Aratos :)
Tractors do post-date my late 1400's-early 1550's time period; but the bit about the peats being collected by the, um, least skilled labor available might come in very handy.

So you didn't spend you time on Shetland romping over the fields and moors, reveling in the wildflowers and adding copiously to your Birdwatcher's Lifetime List, then heading down to the beach to gather a large handful of local mollusks to stew with butter and oatmeal* for your supper? ;)

(I wouldn't either - I'd be far too busy grousing about the lack of a proper bookstore, coffee merchant and/or greengrocer to serve my most basic life support needs. :)

Perhaps you can also help me with a question more general to the whole UK: what's the difference between a 'quid' and a 'bob'?
(Not related to my novel, but I've wondered for years :)

Ta,

- Evelyn

A quid's a pound, a bob's a shilling. And shilling's went out of currency years ago, which is why the word's sorta deprecated.

And to be fair to Shetland, theyy do have decent bookstores, grocers, and coffee merchants. But on the other hand my mobile phone doesn't get a signal, they wouldn't let me on their climbing wall unless I signed up for an induction that happens randomly a few times a year and never materialised and it's sorta cut off from "the real world" as I tend to put it. So y'know.

My apologies to any Shetlanders I may have offended: my brain seems to be halfway stuck in 1498, when very few places in the world could have properly supplied my reading, coffee-drinking, and fresh-foodie needs (certainly not here - this place wouldn't even think about becoming Seattle for another 300-some years).

But now that I've pulled myself back to the present -
Oh, man, I'd have a great time in Shetland. I'd hang around all the bars and chat up all the oil workers until they realized that I actually did want to know all sorts of technical stuff about off-shore oil rigs (really now, who doesn't? :) ) and that I would still be interested after they had bored their own selves silly.

(I'm a mechanical engineer, and part of my dream/fantasy all-stops-pulled damn-the-torpedoes-and-Katy-bar-the-door Scotland vacation had been to do this to the poor unsuspecting oil workers in Aberdeen. But I expect Shetland would be even more fun. :)

(And thanks for resolving my "quid vs. bob" question :)

Just adding a little bit about peat cutting - though I am far from an expert. Where my granddad came from, the isle of Harris, peat is cut as is needed. Though nowadays in Harris a lot of traditional things are just done by habit rather than necessity. Peat, in my experience anyway, is very wet. It is essentially mud with a bit of backbone. As I have seen it, it is cut out of the earth by long flat-bladed spade-things (stop me if I'm getting too technical) into brick shapes. It is cut out of the walls of parallel trenches called runrigs (hence the name of the internationally reknowned band from Skye) and as I see it - though I am just thinking aloud here - it is done like that so that the peat can dry before it is cut, and is very nearly ready to use straight from the cutting.

I hope that makes some sense. In trying to learn a bit of Dutch I think I am forgetting how to speak English.

Harris is a bit different to Mull, being in the Outer Hebrides as opposed to the inner. Harris has on average 14 days a year that it does not rain. My Aunt used to say that it was so strange to see washing hanging vertically from washing lines when she came down to Edinburgh as she was used to seeing it being blown out horizontally at all times.

A few other little titbits of island life that I can think of. Crofters would probably have kept black cattle and probably used seaweed to feed it. The nearly complete sheep farming of Scotland I think dates from the clearances in the erm 17th or 18th centuries.

When the inhabitants of St. Kilda were shown a group photograph of themselves for the first time they were unable to recognise their own faces as they had no mirrors. They also had a rather barbaric tradition of plucking the first Puffin of the year alive, so that all the other Puffins would come to look at this odd bird and end up in the cooking pot.

Iona, an island just off Mull, is where the Kings of Scotland were buried until the Scottish church moved from Columbine doctrine to Roman Catholicism. The last King to be buried there was Lulach, the son of the infamous MacBeth, in 1158.

I'm afraid that my brain has ceased to work and the many things I thought of to put down have been reduced to this meagre collection of data. Hope it maybe helps a bit

Actually, the run rig system is used for fielding, and involves croft rotation, as well as the crofters being let out a strip (or run) of land in each field rather than a field to themselves. So they had lots of runs in each field, with crop rotation in place over however many years. It was a fascinating system, actually.

Wow I still rememeber standard grade hsitory.

Ah well, I'll take that advisedly and shut up:-)

Really did think it was peat cutting:-(

(Everyone makes the odd mistake, Orcie. I'm just dying for Aratos to explain that "croft rotation" system to me :) :) :)

Hi, Marie (or should I be calling you Anastasia?),

Thanks so much for all your answers and ideas - this is truly invaluble to me.

"Silver Darlings" is winging its way to me from the online-used-book-store even as we speak. :)

If "scree running" is that thing you do when you need to go down a scree-covered slope; and you sort of start a land/rock/scree-slide and then more-or-less ride the falling scree to the bottom (in what would be shoe-surfing if there were such a thing as shoe-surfing*) ; then yes, I've done it, but for expedience rather than for fun, and not always on purpose.
(*Body-surfing may also sometimes occur, but is not recommended.)

And, for your Handsome* Highland Hubster, one answer and (assuming I may further impose) three questions:
(*All Highlanders are handsome and/or beautiful unlessl proven otherwise, right? :)

Answer:
My time period is the very *late* 1400's, with the vast majority of the plot taking place in 1496-1498. My FMC was born circa 1460, and the plot doesn't fully play itself out until 1538 or so; so there will be some flashbacks and epilogue extending 40 years on either side of the main 1496-1498 window.

I'm still trying to figure out what the Lord of the Isles, the King of Scotland, and the MacLayne* of Duart were up to with Mull during that period. As near as I can tell, the island seems to have switched hands almost as much as if it were a ferret the three of them were juggling.

(*Note: I am hoping to avoid hate mail from MacLeans of Duart and MacLaines of Lochbuie by using this spelling. Spelling had not yet been stabilized, and "MacLayne" is one of many(!) spellings documented as having been used during the relevant period by both Duarts and Lochbuies.)

I've got some info on period language (gaelic), clothing (half-norse, semi-celtic, with the odd bit of pre-tartan check creeping in), etc., but am still working on it, especially on trying to gauge how much Perth/Edinburgh/Sterling-type Scots culture would have made its way from east to west.

Question 1:

Are there that many MacDonalds on Mull? Or do the MacLeans (and/or MacLaines) have something going against the Campbells as well?

Question B:
My novel is based on a semi-legendary historical incident that (seems to have) occurred during a feud between the Duarts and Lochbuies. The only son of Iain, the Laird of Lochbuie, was killed in a battle; and Lachlan, the Laird of Duart promptly took Iain of Lochbuie prisoner and sent him off to Cairn na Burgh in the Treshnish Isles.

If the Lochbuie were to die without an heir, then the Duart could claim the Lochbuie lands & title. To prevent any such thing from taking place, Lachlan of Duart allowed no women any where near Iain, except for an old maidservant Duart described as "the ugliest woman on the Island of Mull."

So what else could possibly happen? The maid gets pregnant and succesfully gives birth to a boy, the child is whisked off to a remote glen to be raised; and, forty years later, kicks the Duart vassal out of Lochbuie by force of arms and wins back his father's lands and title.

(I'm trying not to belabor you with too many details here, but lots of excessive detail can be found on my Novel Info page if you'd like to be thus belabored. :)

My question is whether this incident is well-known in the area (taught in History lessons at school or something), or is it the kind of thing that only tour guides and history wonks bother themselves with?
(And am I likely to cause a Highland uprising, or even some bad feeling, by messing around with it?)

Question III:
(This one's really for both of you, and I hope I've saved the easiest for last.)
One of my NaNoWriMo preparations is going to be to buy a bottle of single malt to, er, help create the proper internal atmosphere for writing about Mull and Treshnish. :)
My budget, however, is only going to allow for the one bottle (the American Empire truly is in decline, I tell ya), so it's important that I choose well. I was planning to go for the Tobermory, but would love to hear your recommendations. :)

Thanks again for all of your (and Hubster's) help.

- Evelyn

Basically: different crops require different nutrients and levels of acidity in the soil, and have different effects on them. So you have a rota of crops, and each year you put a different crop in each field, with a year where the field isn't being used at the end. This ensures that a good balance is kept in the soil, allowing the best crop produce each year.

As for single malts, I highly reccomend Jura.

(My apologies in advance, Aratos....)

I guess different households must require different layouts and amounts of interior floor space in the croft-houses, and have different effects on them. So you have a rota of crofting householders; and each year everyone moves, say, one croft house to the left; with one croft house being left empty to lie fallow each year. This ensures that each croft-house sees similar amounts and types of use, and that nobody accumulates more household goods than they care to carry next door every year on St. Switchin's Day. :) :) :)

(I really ought to be much better behaved than this. :)

ROFLMAO LOL

Yes, yes I compeltely failed to notice that. Also LOL.

Actually I answer to either, as well as Mom.

I will admit a bias to highlanders, the men aren't so much traditionally handsome as durable and dependable.

Your time period info helps.

The politics in Scotland are an interesting bucket of fish. As Lord of the Isles the MacDonalds held power til 1493. The king of Scotland at that time was James IV. There is a very good book about the history of Mull called. Most of it is 1600's on, but there is some info about the time you are looking at.

Mull The Island & Its People by Jo Currie ISBN 1841581771

www.birlinn.co.uk

Property disputes are legend in Scotland.

The Campbells were really starting to make trouble on Mull at this time. They were rather dirty political types.

Tartan wasn't widely used before the 1745. Then it was outlawed, which just gave it appeal. Now it is a major industry.

I'm not sure you can make the idea work that Scottish culture came from those areas. Even now. You are more likely to be told that the only true Scottish Culture is on the isles away from the cities in the central belt.

There is some info on that battle in the above mentioned book. It was really not pretty at all. As in all places some folks know a lot of history, some know very little. I wouldn't worry about causing an uprising. Scottish water is more likely to be the cause of that. At least here. The nice thing about writing a novel is you get to play with history any way you want.

Choosing a single malt is a serious quest. My husband is fond of Islay malts. Especially the 15 year old Bowmore. Islay malts are smoky flavored. Talisker from Skye is nice as well. Personally I rather like Glenmorangie as it is a bit smoother. Picking a proper single malt could be a challenge in itself.

I hope this helps.

----------

Important things to remember during NaNoWriMo:

You can still do this! Trust me, I know you can.
You don’t have to spell check
Grammar is optional
Editing comes later
And a plot is used for gardening

As a Scottish "Laird" I'll chip in with my tuppence worth.

"The Campbells were really starting to make trouble on Mull at this time. They were rather dirty political types."

Spoken like a true islander..... :)

I'm a Lagavullan man myself but Bowmore and Isle of Jura are acceptable alternatives.

As far as I'm aware tartan wasn't tied to any particular clan. We have Sir Walter Scott to thank for that. Prior to his codifications the weavers just used whatever dyes they had to hand. Don't say that near anyone in the kilt or tourist industries though!

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The trouble with the world is everyone is a few drinks behind

So much useful information here about the islands. I've only ever managed to visit Skye, though we're often staying somewhere along the west coast. Love the rugged landscapes, especially around Glencoe. I don't even mind the winds out there that tend annoy me in Edinburgh when I'm trying to keep my pot plants from toppling over! *g*

A visit to Mull is definitely on the cards in the next year.

I love the smell of peat. When we visit my other half's parents near Inverness we take back bags of peat with us. Haven't got outdoors storage so can't buy in bulk and the petrol stations in Edinburgh don't sell peat. When I lived in Aberdeen I got it from a friend whose hubby cut it on the private estate they were living on (not theirs, I must add). The whole room smells of peat, it's a very strong scent that clings to you. But I love it!

Yummm Talisker. One of my favourites. No surprise there... :-)

Oh, man, I can't believe I've neglected this thread for so long. It must have slipped through one of the (many) cracks in my brain. My apologies to all.

Hmmm... so my "Family Feud: Scots Medieval Edition - Duarts vs. Lochbuies" would have been one of the ebbs and flurries caused by the greater changes in the flow of power. That helps me begin to figure out what sort of larger context all this ties into...

You know I have that book - I was looking at it just a week or two ago - and now I can't find it anywhere. :(
(The cat must have hidden it somewhere - I'm sure that's what happened. :)

Er, as opposed to the MacLeans/MacLaines?
(Or would it be quite safe for you to comment on that while still on the uphill side of the Highland line? ;) :) :)

Hunh.

It was my understanding that as far back as the turn-of-the-first-millenium Vikings, stripes were popular and checked fabric was sometimes used, and that over the years more and more checks were being woven in the Highlands and Islands.

Not the modern-day tartans, with the setts being registered with the (Lion Herald, I think it is?) and barfights breaking out over whether your aunt's marriage to a MacWhatsit entitles you to wear their tartan; just weavers setting up looms with the yarns & dyes they had and arranging them into patterns with eye-pleasing quadrilateral symmetry.

If the cliffs around where the MacX's lived had a lichen that made a lovely russet-red dye, but the heather-dyed greens weren't that great; a lot of the MacX's would wear a lot of russet-red. Conversely, if the MacY's lands didn't have much of the right lichen for russet-red, but their heather-dyes turned out really nice greens, you'd get used to seeing MacY's wearing green.

And then if Angus MacY, and most of those who'd learned to weave and/or dye from him, always used black in their thread patterns; while Gormla MacY's weaving always had some blue threads; people would get used to knowing whether someone was from Angus's or Gormla's end of the MacY holdings just by looking at their clothes.

So after a while, if you saw Roy MacX wearing a green-&-blue brechan like you'd expect to see on Gormla MacY's family & neighbors, it might make you wonder what was up.

Kind of like how each Ukrainian village used to use its own unique embroidery pattern on the sleeves of women's festival dresses: it wasn't that someone from Village A couldn't use the pattern from Village B on her sleeves; but that the Village A pattern was the one she had, and the one that her mother and her grandmother and her aunts and her sisters used, and it would be unlikely to occur to her to use anything else.

I think the first time a tartan was codified was in 1725, when General Wade was setting up the Black Watch after the first Jacobite rebellion; and I guess that what with his being a military guy, he just wanted all the men under his command dressed alike.

(And then, a hundred years after that, the '45 and then the Clearances had made the Highlands safe enough that someone like Queen Victoria could declare them fashionable, and the rest is pseudo-history. [insert bitter grin here])

See now, this is one of the confusions I wind up in.

There seems to be the stuff with the Clans & Lairdies and "hearts in the highland's a-chasin' the deer" (and possibly also a-liftin' the cattle :) -

- and then there are all the bits with Kenneth MacAlpin being crowned King of Scotland upon the Stone of Scone, and a series of factions trying to kill a series of King Jameses (Kings James?), and another series of famous battles whose outcome seems to have depended largely on which side could make better use of boggy ground -

- and so where do I fit in things like whoever-it-was killing the Earl of Huntly "and Lady Mondegreen" :) ?

And to make things even worse (and as you pointed out), a hundred years or so before the period I'm writing in, the Hebrides were darned near Norse. I can probably forget about runes and dragon-headed longboats, but I certainly can't do away with things like small bands of determined warriors waging pitched battles against just about anyone willing to give them one.

Er, "Scottish water" being that Stuff of Life that comes in tax-sealed glass bottles and is labeled for proof? :)

Yeah, I just don't want to be mistaken for Mel Gibson. :)

My original goal was to stick to any facts I could find in the historical record, and make up all the rest.

The darned historical record, however, is making itself difficult by being wildly scattered, incomplete, and self-contradictory; and my sense of loyalty to it is beginning to waver. I am now seriously considering moving one minor character back 30 years in time (from such timing as alleged by the historical record, that is) just for my narrative convenience.

I'm a great fan of the Glenmorangie, and it is one of my old reliable malts; but I want a bit of that peaty flavor this time around. One of my lacks is that I have no idea what peat or peat smoke smells like, and I was once advised that slowly sipping a peaty malt might be a superior way to remedy this.
(I'm also considering buying a sack of peat moss at the garden nursery and lighting it on fire, but that carries a great many more potential problems and a great deal less panache. :)

Talisker or Bowmore. Hmm...

Thanks again for all your great help,

- Evelyn

Really? [I'm afraid there's something about some Americans that makes us go all googly-eyed over this sort of thing. I hope you'll bear with me.] You're really an honest-to-gosh Laird?

(Please don't tell me whether your holdings consist of six square meters of land occupied by a dilapidated dovecote, or are second only to the Royal Family's (and that only because you sold off a few hectares to be polite). And don't tell me whether your following consists of one great-uncle currently living an Alzheimer's care facility, and three distant cousins who seldom return your calls; or the great and historic MacAlairduk regiments are renowned among those who fight for Queen and country.
Those sorts of things are rather beside this particular point.)

But you really are the hereditary umpty-somethingth Laird of Somewhere-or-Other? And people might address you as legitimately by the place-name of your holdings as by your surname or given name? And all that other associated Laird-ly stuff?

...Dude! I mean, like, that is just so majorly cool. Like, totally serious wow, Dude. :) :) :)

[Okay, end of both googly-eyed gushing-ism and outdated California-surfer-cool-speak. We now return you to whatever degree of rationality was previously in effect.]

Okay, I think I'm beginning to understand things a little better here... :)

You know, I've heard some very good things about the Lagavullan....

- Evelyn, off to ponder which State Liquor Control Commission outlet has a decent selection of single malts...

That's one British-ism that still always brings me up short for a moment -

The plants in pots on my balcony are "potted plants."
But, one of our most common terms for marijuana is "pot," so I could easily get arrested if I had a bunch of "pot plants" out there. :)

Petrol stations sell peat? Wow.
(Gosh, Toto, I don't think they're in Kansas anymore... :)

Kind of in the same way that woodsmoke does, only much more so...?

So that's one mention each for Bowmore and Lagavullan; two for Talisker; and no one yet rushing to herald the glories of the Tobermory...

Maybe I'll just (skip half the groceries next month and) buy *three* single-malts. :)

- Evelyn (who isn't really quite that dumb :)

The idea of 'tartan' is a fairly modern idea. All clothing was made pretty much of wool, died with whatever was locally available at the time. Thus different regions had different colors. I'm sure it is more interesting to weave a pattern than plain cloth, if nothing else just for visual distraction. Weaving is very hard work. It is still done with treadle driven looms on Harris. Interesting place to wander.

At the time you are writing there is a much stronger Norse population than Scottish.

No I wasn't referring to the "water of life" but the stupid water company. A local pet peave for sure.

The problem with 'historical record' is who wrote it, when and where their bias laid. You could spend your life in study of Scottish history and still have as many questions or more than what you started with. I know because I've studied Mary Queen of Scots for close to 15 years now. Which is a pretty limited topic and still a ton of dispute about.

As for burning peat moss, it won't give you the same smell. A good Islay malt is a better choice.

Cheers
Anastasia

----------

Important things to remember during NaNoWriMo:

You can still do this! Trust me, I know you can.
You don’t have to spell check
Grammar is optional
Editing comes later
And a plot is used for gardening

I love Mull, it is a magical place.

The Treshnish Isles seem to have had few mentions so far. I have to confess that I'm not clued up on the history side, but in terms of location I can help a little. The Treshnish Isles are really small. As they are currently uninhabited, boat trips go out here for tourists in the Summer to have a look at the wildlife. You will find: huge kittiwake and gannet populations nesting on the cliffs. Puffins live in burrows along the edge of the cliff top. They are very nosy and will come running out of their burrows to see what you are doing, and as you walk along the path you have to watch your footing in case you put your foot in the burrow (I guess this means that in times past this would have made them extra easy to catch and eat!). They are brilliant to watch as they come flapping madly from the sky and do a running landing with a beak full of little silver fish and dart into their burrow. Around the shore (dark grey/black rocks) you will find populations of both grey and common seals, basking sharks, porpoise, dolphins, minke whales and occasionally orca. The tops of the islands are grass, ferns in the summer, which in October suddenly turn brown (almost over night), and then die back in the winter. The green in the summer as they grow again is light and fresh. I didn't see heather while I was visiting, but that's not to say there isn't any on the islands. There are a few clumps of trees if I remember correctly. The Treshnish Isles are also interesting shapes. They are quite distinctive and recognisable from Mull by their shapes. There is one known as the Dutchman's Cap, as it looks like one (could also be called the Sombrero as its the same shape). Landing on the islands by boat is hard. In modern times you find that the tourist boats won't land except in the calmest weather as the swell makes things very difficult. There are no natural harbours, no jetties or anywhere to land. I don't know how they would have managed it in the past, and imagine that they would have gine for weeks without contact with the outside world in the winter. The modern boats have a floating pontoon attached to a buoy on the sheltered side of one of the bigger islands, which they attach to their boat and push in to the shore. They have to keep the engine running to keep it in place while the tourists get on and off. The weather systems come in off the Atlantic, so there is a lot of wet weather, though to be honest, a lot of it stays as cloud until it hits the higher land of Mull, so the Treshnish Isles may be let off.

Mull is still, even now that motor transport has opened it up, a land that is more wild than tame. Again, the wildlife is stunning. Loch na keal on the West side is a large sea loch which looks out to the Treshnish Isles and Staffa and sees some awesome sunsets as well as pods of dolphins. There are large rugged cliffs. Mull is quite well forested, particularly the central bit around Salen and Loch Frisa. There are tons of deer. The highest hills and mountains Ben More is just over 3000 feet and Ben Buie is just under, really catch the atlantic weather. Ben More can have a coating of snow as late as April. Being Scotland the weather can be very unpredictable at any time of year. The screech of Golden Eagles and Sea Eagles can be heard in many parts of the Island. Duart Castle is on the Eastern side of the Island looking towards the mainland. There are often otters playing in the surf nearby. You can see Ben Nevis from here. The other branch of the McLean family lived at Moy Castle (I'm assuming this fits your time frame but am not sure) at Loch Buie, which is a small and open sea loch on the south western corner of Mull. Moy Castle is very much your traditional keep. Laggan sands are beautiful white beaches running along the shore of this loch, where cattle roam, eating sea weed and laying down on the sand. There is a mausoleum at the far end of the beach above the dunes, of the MacLean family (I know I've got the Duart spelling here, but can't be bothered to look up the Lochbuie spelling), but I'm sure it's later than 1500.

Hope this helps, I love Mull so am happy to spout endlessly about it instead of planning my own novel, which is also set on the west coast of Scotland, but on the mainland, and in the present day.

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Keep typing - some of it might make some sense!

Thanks alot, Smilymel. What a fountain of local knowledge you are! :-)

Your description of Mull comes in very very handy as it's a more personal impression than I could get from various websites. It gives me ideas of what's going on there.

Must add Mull to the top of my list of places to see up here. Maybe next year...

Cheers,
Steph