The Lordship of the Isles

The Gael told its history by word of mouth between father and son. When I thought that I'd find out a lot more by asking people about their family history than I would looking at architecture and proverbs, I was right.

I have some amazing descriptions of the past from across western Scotland, from Kintyre to Na Gearrannan.

I have put many of the accounts of people who I asked about their family history. I have not done anything besides translating them into English, as I wrote them down as the person I'd asked was talking.

Account: The story that I know the best is about some man called Tiernan. He was a gallogladh, who fought at Harlaw and a few other battles, but he was married to a foreign girl called Devi, and one day he wanted to go back to her homeland. Apparently he went to a local tacksman, and asked to borrow a galley for a small fee. He was given it, so he and Devi left and went to wherever her homeland was. Tiernan didn't actually make it back, although Devi did after she was picked up by someone else who had a curach. She had Tiernan's son on the Isle of Lewis, and that's where his descendants have stayed.

Notes: The name Devi is Brezhoneg, the language of Brittany, or Sanskrit. As the latter seems rather too bizarre, I assume that Tiernan had visited Brittany and had married Devi. He also borrowed a tacksman's galley - perhaps this was a public service? He also had no galley of his own, which would mean he would have been with traders or a raiding party when he visited Brittany. Perhaps Devi was stolen in a raid? Does this mean that the slave raids of the Gael did not stop, as many people claim, in the 12th century? Was there also tourism between the Highlands and Brittany? The curach was not a trading or military craft.