Creag an Airgid

The road between Kilchoan and Sanna crosses a desert. When we walked it on Sunday morning we saw no humans, no mammals, no insects, just a small partridge, a stonechat and a chaffinch. A mile short of the village of Achnaha lies a bleak stretch of moorland surrounded by forbidding hills. By the side of the road stands a rock, almost a cube in shape, on top of which stones have been placed.

When our youngest daughter was small we used to stop by this rock, even when we were in the car, so she could add another stone: we told her that it brought good luck, like placing a stone on a cairn at the summit of a hill. We now know that this place is called Creag an Airgid and that it was the site of a bitter battle between, on the one hand, the MacIains, the Lairds of Ardnamurchan, and, on the other, the MacDonalds of Donnyveg and the MacLeods of Lewis and Raasay.

The year was 1518, shortly after the disastrous battle of Flodden when the Scots army was destroyed by the English, and Scotland was in turmoil. Invasions by the MacDonalds had laid Ardnamurchan waste. But in this battle Iain MacIain, chief of Clan MacIain, with his two oldest sons, was killed. It was a further step towards the ultimate destruction of the MacIain clan.

Creag an Airgid is a lonely, eerie place. Perhaps someone can tell me whether there is a connection between the rock with its pile of stones and the battle that took place there five hundred years ago.

JH