8: Social Life: Conception to Death

Conception
Burt noted of Highland girls that ‘if they have no pretensions to family (as many of them have, though in rags), they are vain of being with child by a gentleman; and when he makes love to one of them, she will plead her excuses in saying he undervalues himself, and that she is a poor girl not worth his trouble, or something to that purpose. This easy compliance proceeds chiefly from a kind of ambition established by opinion and custom; for as gentility is of all things esteemed the most valuable in the notions of these people, so this kind of commerce renders the poor plebeian girl, in some measure, superior to her former equals.’1

The matter may go somewhat deeper. Quite apart from the gain to the gene pool represented by exogamy in an isolated area, there was no disgrace in illegitimacy among the pastoral Gaels, for the mother had proved her fertility and the child was easily raised and, as soon as it could walk and throw a stone, became useful to her family. This attitude changed when economic circumstances changed and it began to cost hard-earned cash to raise a child. Tolerance of extra-marital conception may reflect a matriarchal or at least an egalitarian society but above all it reflects a society where there was a surplus of food. The frequency of fatherless weans also offers an explanation for the use of patronyms among the Gaels. Not every child had one. They were not family names but served to identify a transient father. An example well-known in Balquhidder, Perthshire, in the eighteenth century, was Duncan McPharie, Duncan ‘son of Patrick’, so-called throughout his life because he was the son of Patrick, not of his mother’s later husband. All of them, mother, father and husband, were MacGregors so his surname did not provide an identifiant.

Birth
‘It is a commendable practice to accustom children to the cold from an early age. It is beneficial not only for reasons of health but also in view to future military service. This is why so many barbarian nations, such as the Celts, will dip their babies into cold rivers or give their children little clothing to wear.’2 ‘The moment a child is born, in these northern parts, it is immerged in cold water, be the season of the year never so rigorous.’3 ‘The cold-bath was so much in esteem by the ancient Highlanders, that, as soon as an infant was born, he was plunged into a running stream, and wrapt carefully in a blanket; and soon after he was made to swallow a small quantity of fresh butter, in order to accelerate the removal of the meconium. When an infant was christened, in order to counteract the power of evil spirits, witches, &c., he was put in a basket, with bread and cheese wrapped up in a linen cloth; and thus the basket and its contents were handed across the fire, or suspended on the pot-crook, that hung from the joist over the fireplace.’4

‘Midwives, according to Pennant’s account (18th cent.) gave new-born babies a small spoonful of earth and whisky as the first-food. In the Isle of Man salt was put in the baby’s mouth as soon as possible after birth. If the child had once partaken of any food it could not be exposed.’5 This presumably refers to the exposure of female babies other than the eldest one or two in each family which is a concommitant of matrilineal inheritance, since the property passed down undivided to the eldest daughter. Polyandry, in which she married all the sons of another family, reflects the differential risks faced by adult men and women. There is some evidence in Scotland for matriliny, but none for infant exposure or any other forms of population control. However, as we will see, population may have been effectively limited by by high child mortality, including neonatal tetanus.

Childhood
In 1624 the Laird pursued John McIntyre for letting the late Finlay McKeissik’s bairns die for hunger and having their gear to sustain them therewith. ‘The assyse findis McIntheir in ane wrang.’6

‘The young children of the ordinary Highlanders are miserable objects indeed, and are mostly overrun with that distemper which some of the old men are hardly free of since their infancy. I have often seen them come out of their huts early in a cold morning stark naked, and squat themselves down (if I might decently use the comparison) like dogs on a dunghill, upon a certain occasion after confinement. And at other times they have but little to defend them from the inclemencies of the weather in so cold a climate: nor are the children of some gentlemen in much better condition, being strangely neglected till they are six or seven years old: this one might know by a saying I have often heard, viz. “That a gentleman’s bearns are to be distinguished by their speaking English.” ' … Another English visitor ‘observed in the kitchen a parcel of dirty children half naked, whom he took to belong to some poor tenant, till at last he found they were a part of the family; but although these were so little regarded, the young laird, about the age of fourteen, was going to the university; and the eldest daughter, about sixteen, sat with us at table, clean and genteelly dressed’.7 'There then they are, the children, in every house, growing up amid nakedness and squalor into that girth of limb and frame which are to our people a marvel'8

There was a harsh logic in this treatment. Half of all children died before the age of five, and a cosseted child was more likely to die than one inured to cold and poor food. Families were in general large, with eight or ten children being normal, and such losses could be absorbed. A deprived childhood made for a hardy people, and they had every need to be hardy.

Travelling women, who were natives not Romanies, carried their babies on their backs in shawls fastened with a pair of brooches linked by a chain. ‘The shawls were fastened to the woman’s belt at the back, the child was then placed pick-a-back in the small of her back and the shawl was brought over him and fastened in front with these brooches, which the women called “Skivvies”.’9 The word can be linked to G. sgian ‘knife’, E. skewer.

Fostering
‘When a son is born to the chief of a family, there generally arises a contention among the vassals, which of them shall have the fostering of the child, when it is taken from the nurse; and by this means such differences are sometimes fomented, as are hardly ever after thoroughly reconciled’.10 ‘By this singular custom, which equally prevailed among the Scoto-Irish till recent times, children were mutually given from different families, to be by strangers nursed and bred. The lower orders considered this trust as an honour rather than a service, for which an adequate reward was neither given or expected. The attachment of those who were thus educated is said to have been indissoluble.’11

‘The terms of fosterage vary in different islands. In Mull, the father sends with his child a certain number of cows, to which the same number is added by the fosterer. The father appropriates a proportionable extent of country, without rent, for their pasturage. If ever cow brings a calf, half belongs to the fosterer and half to the child; but if there be only one calf between two cows, it is the child’s; and when the child returns to his parents, it is accompanied by all the cows given both by the father and by the fosterer, with half the increase of the stock by propagation.’12

Manners
Of Shetland and the Shetlanders, George Low wrote: ‘In no part of the world will a stranger expect less from the appearance of the country, and find it more made up by the civilities of the inhabitants. Amongst all ranks this prevails in a high degree according to their ability. The gentry are famous for hospitality, which even reigns among the poorest sort. Wherever I came I found all willing to do me every service in their power, either by information or otherwise. Their horses and servants were always ready to attend me, and many gentlemen as well as clergy were so obliging as attend me in different places and to point out everything worthy the knowledge of the traveller. In a word, a sense of Schetland humanity is so firmly rooted in my mind that it is with the greatest pleasure I thus pay them my acknowledgements in the most publick manner.’ [G. Low, Reference lost.]

Religion
‘One detail about [the Macgregors] may be new to most people. Some years ago, “one of themselves, even a prophet of their own”, a clergyman of some distinction, told the present Editor that down to very recent times the clan possessed a religion of its own. He could give no details of its peculiarities, as it was just out of reach; but being asked whether they were Catholics or Protestants, he replied, “No, they were neither Catholics or Protestants; they were just Macgregors”; and from one knows of the clan one may well believe him’.13

‘As we see Scotland change from a society relatively lacking in law and organisation . . to one of systematic, structured repression, our interest must naturally lie in assessing how far this tremendous change was carried out with the active support of the people concerned. This remains a question unanswered and unanswerable, but there is one significant pointer. Protestant Scotland in the seventeenth century produced practically no religious literature. It spewed out writings on the question of church government, some diaries in which religious experience is recounted in detail … and sermons enlarging on the relationship of men’s hearts to God. None of this can be considered to have any literary value. There is not a word of it that could warm or illuminate the reader’.14

The Gaels were not religious but found great joy and consolation in their music, story-telling, poetry, dancing, sports, and all the other aspects of a rich oral culture but such activities were banned by the narrow-minded ministers of the Reformed religion, a dismal and threatening cult. Burt in Inverness noted that while the Episcopalians appeared to enjoy their religion, the members of the Non-Juring sects left Sunday service looking as though they had just been ‘convicted and sentenced by their gloomy teachers’.15 Like all Highlanders, the people of St Kilda sang to relieve the toil of their work and to coordinate their movements when rowing or fulling cloth, and were noted for their love of poetry, dancing and sports, but all of these, even swimming, were banned by Presbyterian missionaries sent by the laird.16 Abandoned by their chiefs, bereaved by the departure of neighbours and friends, bereft of the consolation of their former pastimes, and, no doubt, believing themselves in danger of hell-fire, some young people were driven to suicide, the first time this was ever recorded in the Highlands.17
‘They are generally very hospitable. Strangers may travail amongst them gratis. When a Stranger comes they direct him to an house which is designed on purpose for that use, and they send him his Victuals plentifully. Snuff is useful amongst them to make acquaintance. If the Stranger be an Acquaintance of person of Account, they send or go themselvs to attend him. When the number of Strangers is great, then the people contribute for provision to them which is called Coinaeh (Coinnmheadh). i. common. Gentlemen are very charitable to their poor: some will have 20 or moe every meal in the house’.18

The origins of this practice probably lie in the demands of communal hunting. A stranger or foreigner (G. gall) was not simply one who travelled abroad but ‘one who came in response to a beacon signal’, no doubt as a large group. G. gal ‘smoke; flame of straw’ can also mean ‘warfare, slaughter’, both synonyms for communal hunting.

Entertainment and mental acuity
‘Mrs Grant of Laggan was stating a fact when she wrote: “In every cottage there is a musician and in every hamlet a poet.” Miss Grant of Rothiemurchus wrote that in her day every tenth Highlander at least could play tolerable well on some kind of musical instrument and Mrs Grant of Laggan also describes the charming playing of the country people… But it was the intermingling of singing with the daily work of the people that was one of the most distinctive and charming features of old Highland life. Every task had its special tunes.'19

‘When I was a boy I took great pleasure in hearing these recitations, and now reflect, with much surprise, on the ease and rapidity with which a person could continue them for hours, without hesitation and without stopping, except to give the argument or prelude to a new chapter or subject. One of the most remarkable of these reciters in my time was Duncan Macintyre, a native of Glenlyon in Perthshire, who died in September 1816, in his 93rd year. His memory was most tenacious; and the poems, songs, and tales, of which he retained a perfect remembrance to the last, would fill a volume. [He was] one of the last who retained any resemblance to the ancient race of Bards. When any surprise was expressed at his strength of memory, and his great store of ancient poetry, he said that, in his early years, he knew numbers whose superior stores of poetry would have made his own appear as nothing’.20

‘The proofs concerning Ossian’s poetry are clearly and most learnedly stated in the Highland Society Report on it, comprising, besides, with it, a most valuable appendix of documents, engravings of ancient Gaelic MSS., the original of the poems, etc., etc., with most numerous letters from parish clergymen of the Highland districts, and others from magistrates, gentlemen of rank and of large property, the whole of them declaring that the poems of Ossian, and partly printed by McPherson, they had heard and known from their youth in the original Gaelic; and they stated the reciters of these poems to have, in numerous instances, known them before McPherson was born; and again, many of the reciters could neither read or write, and so could not have learned them in any other way than they were in the remote ages, from which they had been handed down, from one generation to another – here are reasons to believe in Ossian’s poetry that surely should make it perfectly satisfactory to do so’.21

At Gairloch in the early part of the nineteenth century, the bard, Alastair Buidhe Maciamhair, was sometimes invited up to the dining-room after dinner to entertain the gentry. ‘He would stand up, and with really grand action and eloquence, give us poem after poem of Ossian in Gaelic, word for word, exactly as translated by Macpherson not long before then, and stupidly believed by many to be Macpherson’s own composition, though had Alasdair heard anyone hinting such nonsense, his stick would soon have made the heretic sensible. Alasdair could not read or write and only understood Gaelic, and these poems came down to him through generations numberless as repeated by his ancestors round their winter evening fires; and I have known persons as uneducated, who could not only repeat from memory interesting poems like Ossian, but could work out uninteresting complicated sums in arithmetic’.22

Donald Cameron gives an example of such a sum. 'The sheep were sold by repute and by the ‘clad score’ (21) and this entailed some rather difficult arithmetic. A typical example could be 292 wedder lambs at £12.5s per clad score for tops less 3½ per clad score at ¼ less per clad score for seconds. Such a calculation had no difficulties for the men of that generation who were really at home with the three Rs’23

Music.
James Robertson of Lude took it as self-evident that there had never been a radical change of race or customs in the Highlands, and that the Great Highland Bagpipe showed this, for it is ‘peculiarly a national instrument of the Gael of Alban. It is evidently of the most remote antiquity, and though the Irish have pipes, they are but a very feeble imitation of that of the Highlanders, and not, like it, suited for the battle-field, or suited to inspire a clan on the line of march’.24 There is an impressive body of ancient narrative music, known as ceòl mór or ‘great music’, composed solely for this instrument, fitted only for interpretation by it, and unknown in Ireland.25 The heroic character of the pieces – alarms, gathering summons, marches, and celebrations of battles and great leaders – and its association with ‘fairies’ point to an original role as method of sending messages and signals over a very great distance, more appropriate in the hunting forest than in the relatively small-scale of early battles.

There was also an Irish piob mhor designed for outdoor use but information about it is sketchy. It was probably brought from Scotland with the mercenaries or gallowglasses who, from 1300 to 1600 helped the Irish fight against the English or against each other. After 1594, these gallowglasses merged with the Irish militia, but at that time retained ‘the diversity of their arms, their armour, their mode, manners and speech.’26 Northumbria also had a ‘war-pipe’27 which might well date back to the period when it was as much part of Gaelic Scotland as of Saxon England. Bag-pipes of one kind or another are found in every corner of Europe as well as in North Africa and India. This and the folkloric quality of the instrument suggest a considerable age for the invention. Collinson notes the use of bagpipes in Algeria, Armenia, Austria, Auvergne, the Balearic Islands, Belgium, Britanny, Bulgaria, Byelorussia, Central Russia, Czechoslovakia, Crete, Egypt, Finland, Georgia, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Hungary, India, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Italy, Lancashire, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malta, Northumberland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Rumania, the Ukraine, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, Wales and Yugoslavia.28 This, and their use by hunters and herders, establishes a pretty good case for some form of pipe existing already in the Palaeolithic. If the Highland version is larger and louder than most, this could be due to the need in the Highlands for a signal that was audible over a very long distance. Archaic survival in this area no doubt extends to dance rhythms and much else.

Cattle
Cattle impinged on every aspect of the life of the Gael. A portion of cattle was settled on a new-born boy, so that when he came of age he already had a little herd which had grown up with him. They were his wealth as well as his identity and a source of food. Native breeds of hill cattle, now perhaps extinct, had the ability to fend for themselves through the Scottish winter, and were capably of digesting fodder which is much too rough for later breeds. ‘The insulating properties of a Galloway’s coat and skin are such that they are quite comfortable with snow on their backs, and it is often still lying there when it has started to thaw on the ground.’ D. Mackenzie 1954, 93. Cattle on the hill were positively benign compared with sheep, having had a much longer time to adapt to the northern climate and vegetation. ‘The management of beef cattle is a very much less complicated and controversial matter than is the case with hill sheep. Beef cattle live their lives under almost entirely natural conditions on a natural diet. Their troubles are very much the same as those which affect the local red deer population – liver fluke, warbles and malnutrition.’ D. Mackenzie 1954, 96.

The clash of Lowland and Highland culture in the matter of cattle ownership has been mentioned in the Hunting chapter. In the Highlands cattle were seen as wild animals which were there for the taking. Like Highland ponies, they were fair game. Sheep, which are not native to Western Europe, were excluded from this category, as the Gaelic proverb warns: ‘No sheep without an owner’. A local herd was apparently seen as tribal property, to be protected and driven back if possible but one cannot steal something that is seen by everyone as common property. It was a daring game to round up cattle from your neighbour’s patch while keeping your own stock intact. There was a general rule that one was entitled to take an animal in need, that one should never leave one’s neighbour in want, and that one should, if possible, steal from the Lowlands rather than from a Highland neighbour. Lowlanders were believed to be incomers who had displaced the original Gaels, and so the farmers of Lennox and Moray, ‘where all men take their prey’, were prime targets.

To prevent raiding and other abuses, private security schemes were created, with official approval. One of the earliest was set up in the Lennox about 1650, which suggests that at that date Lowland agriculture was not much in advance of Highland agriculture. Many such schemes were run by members of Clan Gregor, including Donald Glas Macgregor of Glengyle and his younger son, Rob Roy, because they were expert stalkers and trackers, had a good reputation despite being officially outlawed, but mainly because of their geographical location within the Highlands but on the Lowland border. In a similar way Cluny Macpherson guaranteed the watch in Strathdearn and Laggan. These agents were personally liable for any losses that they could not recover, but their tracking abilities were superb and their success rate appears to have been high. The most persistent raiders were from the poorest places, Glencoe and Keppoch.

‘Where the cows did not go to the shieling in the summer, they grazed on the tether, as they still do in islands like North Ronaldsay in Orkney. A tether peg of wood or iron was used, called a baikie in North-East Scotland and backie in Caithness, from Gaelic bacan, a tethering stake. Sheep were also tethered, sometimes three at a time on an iron ring… Besides protecting crops in unfenced fields, this also allowed controlled grazing in later days’.29

The minutes of Dingwall Presbytery testify that as late as the seventeenth century, a bull was sacrificed on 15 August to St Mælrubha or Mourie by being drowned in Loch Maree, in Ross and Cromarty, while oblations of milk were poured upon the hills. The original ritual was evidently connected with the fertility of the herds of wild cattle. The 15 August is now celebrated as the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, and but the conflation of Mary with Mourie and Maree suggests that this was a cattle festival of some kind.

Women’s Work
Women were excluded from the deer forest, probably to avoid jealousy on the part of the Cailleach or Maiden. They were responsible for dairy work. Women were probably responsible for the processing of skins for clothing but very little evidence remains for this in Scotland. Latterly they wove woollen and linen cloth. Early woollen garments were simply lengths of woven fabric folded and fastened with pins and belts.

‘Surviving customs in the crofting districts, especially in the west, indicate that women engaged to a large extent in agricultural operations, tilling the soil and reaping the harvest while the men occupied themselves at some distance from home. When cattle and sheep were driven to the summer grazings, they were looked after by young women who lived in those temporary habitations known nowadays as shielings.’30 ‘M. de Cubieres, writing on the services rendered to agriculture by females, shows that in all primitive nations, while the men were employed in hunting, fishing, and in war, the women attended to agriculture, the dairy, and their domestic avocations – an onerous accumulation of duties’.31

These duties only appeared onerous when men became underemployed, when the need to hunt and to protect herds from predators had gone, and when arable farming became more intensive. In earlier and perhaps happier days, herders and hunters had only to keep themselves fed, and this was simplified by their separate lives. Women, children and old men occupied themselves with the cattle and lived on milk and milk products such as butter, cheese and whey. Younger men ‘at some distance from home’ were once hunters living in the deer forest. In later times such men joined the Army or the Merchant Navy or the whaling fleet, or emigrated.

Sanitation
Inside a bedroom a hole dug in the earth floor served as a chamber-pot.32 Inside a long-house there was generally a drain to serve the cattle byre which normally (but not invariably) sloped downhill from the family quarters and served it too. Outside, conveniently placed near the door, there was a midden: ‘There was but one door; and a few yards, or it might be a few feet only, in front of it lay the midden, in a deep hole half filled with water – the sewage of the kitchen and the farm buildings – green as grass – the green brees.’33 Urine for bleaching clothes and for processing indigo was saved in a wooden tub. The lit-pot or dye-pot containing fermented urine and indigo was normally kept beside the fire ‘giving forth, when the wool was turned, a very strong smell of ammonia.’34

Lazy-beds
The lazy-bed, G. feannag, is a gardening technique rather than a farming technique and may be of considerable age. Barley seed or seed potatoes were laid directly on a piece of sloping ground in strips of up to a metre wide. They were covered with manure, typically seaweed, then turf and earth were dug by hand from either side and piled on top, leaving a ditch separating the strips. Lazy-beds were typically used in rough, boggy or moorland ground. ‘This technique, essentially, belongs to smaller-scale farming and to poorer folk who had no equipment beyond the basic hand tools.’35 But it also avoids many of the problems such as podsolisation caused by ploughing in unsuitable soil conditions.

Transhumance
The Wordsworths walked one day from Glengyle across Loch Lomond, to return by way of Glenfalloch. Their guide paused at a spot on the heights above Inverarnan at ‘a heap of scattered stones round which was a belt of green grass – green, and as it seemed rich, where all else was either poor heather and coarse grass, or unprofitable rushes and spongy moss… The heap of stones had been a hut where a family was then living, who had their winter habitation in the valley, and brought their goats thither in the summer to feed on the mountains, and that they were used to gather them together at night and morning to be milked close to the door, and that was why the grass was yet so green near the stones.’36 Had Dorothy and William turned east at the high pass above Inverarnan and descended into the western end of Balquhidder Glen, they would have found many more similar sites marked by rich green turf and by round, oval and sub-rectangular stone settings, marking the former shielings of the Braes of Balquhidder.

Transhumance, a method of managing pasture which follows the natural instincts of the beasts, (Corse Herding ref) is nown to have been practised in the Highlands and Islands, in Lowland Scotland, in Northern England, in Corsica, Italy, France, Switzerland and Norway. This spread points to origins in the Palaeolithic when a community camped near the herds it exploited. In Perthshire, Sutherland and probably in many other places, early shieling huts were beehive structure with corbelled stone roofs. What appears to be an even earlier variety noted by Pennant in Jura was like an Indian tepee covered in turf. Most communities migrated up into the hills but the population of Balquhidder migrated to the western end of their long glen, a pattern of horizontal movement also found on the coast. After the time of Rob Roy (d.1735) the Braes were given over to the commercial trade in black cattle but for a century or more transhumance appears to have coexisted with the commercial cattle trade within what was, after all, a formidable expanse of grassland, for the parish of Balquhidder extends to almost 22.000 hectares (55,000 acres).

Old parents
‘A story of cave-life, which became attached to the memory of the Fenian hunters, affords us an arresting and somewhat amusing vision of archaic manners and customs. It is told that the group included the mother of the one-eyed hero Goll. She was very old, and being toothless, the biggest bones were reserved for her because her sole food was the marrow.’ But in an argument over a bone, Goll accidentally killed his mother; giving rise to the saying: ‘Thanks to Goll: he has killed his mother!’37

Elsewhere it has been noted that milk was good for children and old men, meaning that they survived on milk when they could eat nothing else.

Old parents might also be exposed.38

Death
In the north-east ‘at the very moment of death, all the doors and windows that were capable of being opened were thrown wide open, to give the departing spirit full and free egress, lest the evil spirits might intercept it in its heavenward flight. The Eskimo have the same custom.’ W. Gregor 1881, 206. Candles were kept burning beside the body but accidental burning of a body was considered to show that the deceased had belonged to the devil. This suggests that cremation was the pre-Christian rite. W. Gregor 1881, 208. So does the association of the Hallowe'en bonfire with burning bones and the dead. The drinking, feasting and dancing associated with a death, which foreigners found so incomprehensible, would correspond to the celebration of a dead hunter’s translation to Tir nan Og and his renewed youth and immortality.

The end of October was celebrated everywhere in Scotland up to the 1950s with a profusion of local bonfires. Every farm and hamlet had a bonfire in a prominent place. The date marked the end of summer, the return of the women and children to the winter camp with their butter and cheese, and the start of the hunting season. When the Church took over Hallowe'en it kept it as a Feast of the Dead. Perhaps once Hallowe’en was a cremation festival, when the dead, or their bones were burnt in the bonfire, and their souls rose to heaven in the smoke, a joyous occasion for the relatives.

Many sources tell of how the Gaels danced and sang at a funeral. ‘In some parts of the country the funeral dances are still kept up: they commence on the evening of the death. All the neighbours attend the summons; and the dance, accompanied by a solemn melancholy strain called a lament, is begun by the nearest relatives, who are joined by most of those present; and this is repeated every evening until the interment’39

‘They dance as if it were at a wedding, till the next morning, though all the time the corpse lies before them in the same room.’ E. Burt 1728 II, edition of 1815, 189-90. The corpse was dressed in his best clothes and arranged sitting up in the box-bed, equipped with his weapons - and so presumably equipped for his journey. Rob Roy is said to have died in this posture but the story of his confronting an enemy minutes before he died, wearing his best clothes and brandishing his weapons, is more probably a recollection of his corpse set out for the wake. ‘The upper class hire women to moan and lament at the funeral of their nearest relations. These women cover their heads with a small piece of cloth, mostly green, and every now and then break out into a hideous howl … This part of the ceremony is called a coronoch, and generally speaking, is the cause of much drunkenness.’40

The novelty among the Gaels was burial. As late as the seventeenth century it was only certain evolved members of the elite who protected their corpses and their eternal future in this way. Grave slabs survive at Balquhidder, at Dalmally, and at many places in the West Highlands the churchyards are literally paved with them. This protection was increased by burying within stone buildings, to the point where some churches were reduced to charnel houses, and locating churches and graveyards on islands wherever possible. The church at Dalmally is on an island in the Orchy and the Macnab burial site was on Inch Buidhe in the Dochart at Killin.

The absence of native burial suggests that bodies were exposed, probably within the walled enclosures that accommodated later parish churches, as at Kilmallie and Fortingall. There is also evidence from folklore that the remains were then cremated in a pagan religious rite which liberated the soul. Among the native population the wake was important but the actual burial was a casual affair. Burial in graveyards was enforced in the sixteenth century by an edict of the Reformed Church but it was not popular. ‘A mysterious dreaded sort of animal, called “the yird swine” (earth pig) was believed to live in graveyards, burrowing among the dead bodies and devouring them.’41

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