The Grey Dog of Meoble

No part of the Highlands and Islands seems to have a shortage of supernatural legends, some of which have a connection with animals. The following story was recorded from John MacLeod, Glenfinnan, and transcribed shortly afterwards by Calum Maclean on the 15th of May 1951.

Cù Glas Mheòbail

Ann an làithean m’ òige gu sònraichte agus gus an latha a-diugh is minig a dh’airich mi feadhainn a’ bruidhinn air Cù Glas Mheòbail. A-nise b’ aithne dhomh-sa gràinne dhaoine, daoine tùrail ’s daoine sgilear is daoine foghainteach a bha glan-chinnteach gum faca iad fhèin an cù glas. Seo agaibh mar a dh’airich mis’ a thòisich an eachdraidh seo. Bha chionn iomadh bliadhna bha duine ann am Meòbal, taobh Loch Mòrair. Agus bha gràinne mhial-choin aige. Thuit dà gun d’fhalbh e fairis agus dh’fhàg e as a dheaghaidh gala dhe na mial-choin nach b’ urrainn da greim fhaighinn oirre mun d’fhalbh e, leis chuir e as do chàch air fad. As deaghaidh dhi falbh, dh’fhalbh a’ ghala a bha seo agus shnàmh i a-nunn do dh’ eilean a th’ ann an loch fos cionn Taigh Cheann Loch Beòraid their iad ris an lochan sin Lochan a’ Choin Ghlais. A-nise bha cuain chuileinean aice anns an eilean. Cha robh iad a’ cur mòran dragh air duine na beothach airson bhliadhnaichean. Ach thuit dhan duine a bha seo gun do thill e nall, agus nuair a thàinig e a Mheòbal, dh’innis iad dà gu robh a’ ghala is a’ chuain aice anns an eilean. Cha dèanadh nitheann an gnothach ach gu rachadh esan a choimhead. Ràinig e an lochan agus rinn e an fhead a b’ àbhaist dà a dhèanadh ris a’ ghala. Shnàmh ise air tìr is rinn i sog is mearag ris an duine a bha mòr. Ach coma lìbh-se, an ceann tacain thàinig a dhà na trì dhen chuain air tìr. Agus is duilich leam a ghràdhainn gur a h-ann a stiall iad an duine as a chèile. Agus mharbh iad ann an sin e taobh an eilein. Tha an seann-sluagh a’ gràdhainn.

Feumas e a bhith gur h-e sin is coireach Cù Glas Mheòbail a bhith a’ leanailt Cloinn ’ic Dhùghaill gus an latha an-diugh, leis ’s e Mac ’ic Dhùghaill a bh’ anns an duine a thug iad as a chèile taobh an loch.

And the translation goes something like the following:

The Grey Dog of Meoble

In the days of my youth especially even up to this day I’ve often heard folk speak about the Grey Dog of Meoble. Now I knew a great deal of intelligent, skilful and brave folk who believed implicitly that they had seen the grey dog. Well, this is how I first heard of the beginning to this historical narrative. Many years ago there was a man in Meoble, besides Loch Morar. He owned a great many greyhounds. It so happened that he went overseas and he left behind him a greyhound bitch that he couldn’t get hold off before he went off, which then killed all the others. After he went off, the bitch swam over to an island in a loch above the house at the head of Loch Beoraid which they call the Little Loch of the Grey Dog. Now she gave birth to a litter of puppies on the island. They didn’t harm any man or beast for many years. But it so happened that this man returned and when he arrived at Meoble they told him about the bitch and her litter on the island. There was nothing for it but for him to go over and take a look. He got the loch and whistled as usual to the bitch. She swam over to him and greatly delighted and happy to see him. But never mind that, in a while two or three of the litter came to the shore. And I’m sorry to say that they tore this man to pieces. And they killed him there near the island. That’s what the old folks say. It must be that this is why the Grey Dog of Meoble follows Clan Dugald (MacDonalds) to this very day, as this man was a MacDugald that was torn to pieces by the lochside.

During the mid-1950s, Calum Maclean visited Morar and the surrounding area and took the opportunity to record many traditions then still current including the story about the Grey Dog of Meoble. Included is a summary of the above narrative:

The district of Morar is extremely pretty with its white sands and hill clad with birch. Loch Morar is reputed to be the deepest fresh-water loch in the British Isles. The loch is now a North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board reservoir, and although there is a dam and power-station at its western end, the beauty of it remains unaffected. Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat of the ’Forty-five was captured on one of the wooded islands on the loch and from there made his way to his execution in London. There is a roadway up for a couple of miles on the northern shore of the loch, while there are only one or two scattered houses on the southern shore. I met a young shepherd who lived alone at Meoble miles away from anyone. He never felt lonely and seemed to enjoy life very much. He was accustomed to walking long distances to Morar and Arisaig. He laughed heartily on being asked if he were afraid that he might encounter the legendary Grey Dog of Meoble. The Grey Dog of Meoble makes its appearance when any one of the MacDonalds of Morar, the seed of Dugald, is about to die. There are several people still living who maintain that they have really seen the mysterious dog. It appears only before the death of members of that particular branch of the MacDonalds. Over two hundred years ago a MacDonald of Meoble had a greyhound. He had to leave home to take part in some campaign and at the time of his leaving, the hound was in pup. When he left, the bitch swam out to an island on Loch Morar and there gave birth to a litter. Months went by and MacDonald returned home again, but his greyhound was missing. He happened to go to the very island where the bitch had her litter. The pups had now grown up into huge dogs, and not recognising their master, attacked and killed him before the mother appeared on the scene. Ever since that time the Grey Dog has appeared as an omen of death.

Writing in an article about the Grey Dog of Meoble, Iain Thornber took the opportunity to collect as much material from knowledgeable locals as Charlie MacFarlane of the Glenfinnan House Hotel:

It was he that told me the following tale concerning an old Highland lady who lived in Glasgow in the early 1900’s and whose family were closely related to the MacDonalds of Meoble.

She lived alone and had been confined to her room for many years but a friend who lived across the street was in the habit of calling each day to attend her needs. On once occasion as the friend was leaving the flat, a large dog, of a type she had never seen before, passed her on the stairs. She thought no more about it until the following day when much to her surprise she saw it again, this time lying on the old lady’s doorstep. With difficulty she pushed it aside and went in. In the course of conversation she happened to mention the dog. Her friend sat bolt upright, her eyes alight. “Describe it to me,” she said in a low voice. “Well,” replied the other, “It was very big―about the size of a Shetland pony, grey in colour with a long curly tail.” “Ah!” exclaimed the old lady with a contented smile on her lips, “The faithful friend ― she came at last,” and with that sank and passed peacefully away.

Other instances of the Grey Dog have been noted some as far afield as Cape Breton where many of the MacDonalds of Meoble settled after first arriving in Prince Edward Island. It would seem also that a sighting of the Grey Dog portended a major family event such as a birth or a death although the latter connection seems well entrenched in this particular legend. A slightly similar legend that contains a death portent is also associated with the Clan Donald of Keppoch in which a grey bird appears. It may be added that the late Alistair MacLeod, a hugely talented writer from Cape Breton, was influenced by the legend which he reworked into a short story entitled “As Birds Bring Forth the Son.”

References:

Calum I. Maclean, The Highlands (London: Batsfords, 1959), p. 67

SSS, NB 8, pp. 766–67

Iain Thornber, ‘The Legend of the Grey Dog’, The Scots Magazine, vol. 117, no. 2 (1982), pp 133–40

¾¾¾. ‘An Cù Glas Mheobail – The Grey Dog of Meobale’, in Sàr Ghàidheal: Essays in Memory of Rory Mackay (Inverness: An Comunn Gàidhealach and The Gaelic Society of Inverness, 1986), pp. 106–12

Images:

A Scottish wolfhound

Lochan Mhic Dhùghaill from Meith Bheinn, Morar

The Miraculous Footprints of Finlay Munro

At Torgyle, Glenmoriston, is a set of footprints on which no grass grows. The story behind them was told to Calum Maclean from James ‘Jimmy’ Warren, a farmer then aged around sixty, which he later transcribed on the 8th of September 1952:

Well, my grandmother, she was a little girl. She wasn’t there at this service, but she remembered him. It is not so very long ago, you know. He was the Rev. Mr. Finlay Munro. Well, of course, at that time there was no churches, nothing, not Bibles or anything else. Well, it was outside. Well, there was a tree growing there, a birch tree.
There was three branches out of this tree. And he took that as his text, the Trinity, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost in one. That was his text. So he preached. And there were scoffs there. And he turned round and told them that none of them would die a natural death. And none of them did die a natural death. They all died a violent death. And he finished off his sermon by saying:

“To show,” he says, “a testimony,” he says, “that I am speaking the truth, these footprints will remain forever. And there’s never been a blade of grass there. Now in 1907. I think we had an awful storm of wind, a terrible storm it was. And the top was blown o! this tree. The top was just blown right off. Now, strange to say that one of the roots was going through the instep of the step, one of the steps. Well, if the tree was uprooted, it would have uprooted the footprints. It was just the point that broke off. So it shows you there must have been something in it. Of course, I heard ministers saying they were sceptical of it, but you can’t get away. There’s not a blade of grass. And they are there since. I remember them. And my grandmother remembered him. She was a little girl at the time, Rev. Finlay Munro. I have heard stories about graves on which grass would not grow. It is something like that factor in Sutherlandshire. I think it was at that great clearances. Well, they buried him and he wouldn’t stay down. And at last they put a stake through him to keep him down. That was at that great Sutherland Clearances, you know. The keeper that was here not long ago, he was telling me it was quite true. They put a stake through his body. That was the only thing that would keep him down. The earth wouldn’t take him. He was that wicked, I suppose. They weren’t very good, some of the factors. It wasn’t bad here at all. The Grants weren’t bad at all. Glenmoriston wasn’t a glen for clearances at all. In Invergarry it was bad, yes, very bad. Well, there was a lot of the Glenmoriston people went over to Invergarry. And  every one of them they used to send them back to be buried up here. They all sent them back.
They called that “tìodhlacadh a-measg nan cairdean, còmhla ris na caìrdean.”

There was one not so many years ago from Glengarry. And she was as poor she hadn’t what would take her across, you see, And she was forever praying to get back, that she would be buried at.Clachan Mairicheard with her own people. Well, she got her wish. A few friends collected together and they collected the money and brought her here.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Calum Maclean mentions the very same tradition in The Highlands (1959):

No less mysterious but of a later date are the ‘Miraculous Footprints’ of Glenmoriston. It was towards the end of last century that a noted lay-preacher of the Free Church was conducting an open-air service one Sunday at Torgyle. His name, I am told, was Finlay Munro. He was a huge and powerful man. In the course of his preaching he noticed that a couple of his listeners appeared to scoff at his teaching. He turned angrily to them and predicted that they would come to a violent and untimely end, an end such as all scoffers merited. As a testimony to the truth of his prediction he said that the print of his two feet would remain for ever in the ground on which he stood. The footprints are still there, deeply imprinted in the black soil. They are to be seen about fifty yards north of the roadway as it turns to the west nearing Torgyle. I went to see them one morning in early September. They are huge footprints, three or four inches into the dark soil, and all around there was lush, green grass. The footprints are miraculous without the slightest doubt.

Finlay Munro was, by all accounts, a strange yet charismatic figure. A native of Tain, he became famous for tramping the byways of the Highlands and Islands preaching an evangelical gospel to anyone who would listen. After a productive ministry on the Isle of Lewis, he made a tour of the mainland Highlands during which he preached in Glenmoriston in 1827. His sermon, on the text ‘Prepare to meet thy God, O Israel’ (Amos 4:12), was generally well received but some Catholics from Glengarry heckled him, calling him ‘a cheat and a liar.’ Munro is supposed to have closed his Bible and retorted that the ground on which he stood would bear witness to the truth of what he said until the Day of Judgement comes. Thus the marks on the ground are said to be his footprints, where nothing will grow.

A report published in The Telegraph on the 22nd of September 1976 carried the story that the footprints had been stolen:

A resident of Glen Moriston in Scotland, Hugh Gordon, said, “It must have been tourists who did this terrible thing. We pity them.”

The Sunday People newspaper said, “It is an eerie story,” and offered a case of whisky as a reward for information leading to the return of the cursed footprints.

The story concerns Finlay Munro, a fiery evangelist who preached outdoor sermons some 150 years ago.

At one service, because he was heckled, he put a curse on the spot where he stood. He promised the wrath of heaven would descend upon anyone who desecrated the spot and no grass would ever grow on his footprints.

For those 150 odd years nothing did grow on the spot and people in Glen Moriston, awed by the story, put a fence around the footprints.

But last week the fence was found broken down and the earth dug up. Somebody had stolen the footprints!

The reward offered by the newspaper was accompanied by a statement that, “the winner must not be afraid to face the Curse of Preacher Finlay.”

They seemingly reappeared at some point as Finlay Munro’s footprints can still be seen at Torgyle, Glenmoriston. A protective cairn surrounds them and marks the place where they have been imprinted in the clay since 1827 as ‘a muddy testament to the religious truths proclaimed by an itinerant evangelical preacher.’

Illustrations:
The Footprints from ‘A Highland Evangelist’, 1940s

Jimmy Warren Snr and Jimmy Warren Jnr, 1950s, Dulchreichart, Glenmoriston

Protective cairn surrounding the footprints

Close-up of the footprints

References:

Anon., ‘Scottish Legend’, The Telegraph (22 Sep., 1976), 24

Rev. Murdo Macaulay. Aspects of the Religious History of Lewis: Up to the Disruption of 1843 (S.l.: s.n., 1986)

Fraser MacDonald, ‘A Muddy Testimony: Finlay Munro’s Footprints and other Calvinist Landscapes’, [http://www.frasermacdonald.com/a-muddy-testament-finlay-munros-footprints-and-other-calvinist-landscapes] <posted: 03 Dec 2012>

Calum Maclean, The Highlands (London: B. T. Batsford, 1959)

John Macleod, ‘A Highland Evangelist’ in Rev. G.N. M. Collins (ed.), Principal John Macleod D.D. (Edinburgh: Free Church Publications Committee, 1951)

SSS CIM NB 18, ‘Glenmoriston Footprints’, 1584–86. Transcribed by Calum Maclean on the 8th of September 1952 from James ‘Jimmy’ Warren (Dulchreichart, Glenmoriston)

Neil Gunn Takes a Look at The Highlands

By the age of forty-six Neil Gunn quit his job as a Civil Servant in the Customs and Excise Service, sold his house Larachan in Inverness, and purchased a converted lifeboat the Thistle to embark upon a sailing tour of the Hebrides in 1937 along with his wife. The result inspired his classic book Off in a Boat (1938) – the ‘simple record of a holiday in a boat’ – heralded a successful writing career.

A fisherman’s son from a large family of nine to James Gunn and his second wife Isabella Miller, Neil Miller Gunn (1891–1973) was born in the fishing and crofting village of Dunbeath in the county of Caithness. Early in his boyhood he went to Galloway, and then to the Edwardian streets of London and Edinburgh. At only fifteen years of age he became a clerk in the Civil Service, and at nineteen was promoted to an officer in the Customs and Excise. From 1923 until 1937 – when he resigned to devote his time to becoming a full-time writer – he supervised a Highland distillery, and became an authority on whisky.

Neil Gunn was a prolific and distinguished twentieth-century novelist and dramatist, a leading writer of the Scottish Renaissance. His novels such as The Silver Darlings (1941) and The Atom of Delight are set in the Highlands but are philosophical in tone and allegorical in nature, reflecting wider contemporary issues. Gunn entered the Civil Service in 1911 and spent time in London and Edinburgh before returning to the North as a customs and excise officer based in Inverness.

Gunn was obviously no stranger to the Highlands and stayed in various locations just to the north of Inverness for the remainder of his life. He was born and bred a Caithness Highlander and therefore would be better placed than many to review Calum Maclean’s The Highlands. The review was transmitted on the Scottish Home Service on the 24th of June, 1959, and is here reproduced from the BBC transcript:

I hadn’t got through the introduction to this book before I knew exactly where I was, and so settled down to enjoy myself. But let me quote the remark that did it, thrown off by the author in a way that would have brought a laugh at any ceilidh. It refers to one of the three great poets of Scottish Gaeldom. Here it is: “Duncan Ban MacIntyre, a Presbyterian and tenant on the Campbell Breadalbane estates, fought in the Hanoverian ranks at the battle of Falkirk. He ran away as fast as he could, chuckling inwardly over the discomfiture of the Hanoverians or, as he called them, ‘the English-speaking folk’.”

The touch of exaggeration, the humour, is a characteristic way of saying that for the true Gael, whatever side he may have found himself fighting on, there was always finally one side, and in his heart he knew it. Chiefs were brutal for their own ends, religious zealots thundered away, Westminster could divide and destroy, but the folk themselves cared finally for their own way of life, their own tongue, for that warmth of human relations which their poets and their story-tellers and their composers made memorable.

This then, is what the author, Calum Maclean, never forgets as he wanders about the Highlands. As a Celtic scholar and member of Edinburgh University’s School of Scottish Studies, he rarely misses what he is looking for. In the process he displays the gorgeous spectacle of the Highlands: Lochaber, Morar and Moidart, northward through the glens to Wester Ross and Sutherland. Over a score of full-page photographs do their wonderful best to bear him out. But scenery is not what he is really after, nor is he much concerned to discuss Highland economics today, and once or twice I caught myself disputing the accuracy of some historical point; but all that is, in a real sense, by the way, for that the author is searching for, with his recording gear, is the hidden Highlands, for the men and women who can still tell the ancient stories for nights on end or sing hundreds of Gaelic songs, and the truly astonishing thing is the quantity of the essential spirit of the old Gaelic culture that still survives. This, I feel, is what gives the book its permanent value, over against so many books published in our day about the Highlands. For, after all, unless the Highlands had a distinctive way of life, that would enrich the human spirit today, why bother with a Crofters’ Commission or other bodies concerned to keep the old Highland stock on their own land and sea?

If I appear to commend the spirit of this book highly, let me add that, as a Caithness man, I failed to find the word Caithness in the index, though the book’s title is THE HIGHLANDS. But then they always were a tolerant and active folk up in Caithness – today, in fact, the only radio-active folk in Scotland, –  and it may be that the School of Scottish Studies had it in mind to devote a whole volume to this remarkable county.

The review is short and sweet as well as being extremely positive. Perhaps because of illness that first struck in 1956, and consequently disrupted the writing process of The Highlands, left Maclean in an invidious position where he had to rein in his ambition to cover the whole of the Highlands. Caithness which Maclean must have visited is all but absent and other areas such as Kintyre, Braemar are barely mentioned. Nevertheless, Gunn obviously sympathised with a kindred spirit and a writer who explored the Highlands from an insiders’s perspective. In short, Gunn recoginsed all that was good about Maclean’s book – the humour, the emphasis upon Highland folk and, more importantly, their stories and songs that were ignored by conventional books, just as popular it would seem then as now, about the Highlands. If Calum Maclean heard the broadcast then, rest assured, he would have been pleased indeed.

Illustrations:
Neil Gunn.

Calum Maclean. Photograph by Dr Werner Kissling taken in Kirk Yetholm in 1956.

Dustjacket of the first edition of The Highlands, showing Glencoe.

References:

Calum Maclean, The Highlands (London: B. T. Batsford, 1959)

NLS, ‘Neil M. Gunn reviews “The Highlands” by Calm I. Maclean, published by B. T. Batsford Ltd., Dep.209/Box 10/1(d)

Neil Gunn Truast [www.neilgunn.org.uk]