The hill called
Cathair Mhic Dhiarmaid, where we walked yesterday, is a roughly two kilometre long ridge in the shape of an upturned boat. The Gaelic word
cathair, according to the OS mappers of the feature, means seat, bench or fortified place, but there's no sign of any of these.
The rocks of which the ridge is formed are mainly quartz dolerites and granophyres which were intruded as concentric sheets deep beneath one of the Ardnamurchan volcanoes some 60 million years ago. In places, eroded outcrops protrude to form vantage points which, at this time of year, are much favoured by the wheatear males which are busy staking out their territories.
However, over most of the ridge summit the rocks are covered with a layer of peat which, where there were once depressions in the rock....
....developed into considerable thicknesses.
These thick accumulations occur elsewhere on the tops of hills, for example around the big wind turbine at
Beinn Bhuidhe. Presumably they formed at a time when the climate was warmer and wetter, but today they are being eroded, in places at an alarming rate - the hoodoo-like formation in the middle of the picture is over two metres tall, and the underlying rock isn't exposed at its base. If this continues, the bare rock bones of the ridge will increasingly be exposed.
Hi Jon,
ReplyDeleteExcellent blog as always; I am intrigued to see that "cathair" seems to share a root with the Welsh word "cadair", which also means chair or seat. Cadair Idris is so-called because legend has it that Idris, a famous Welsh giant, used the peak to sit on. Do you know who the Mhic Dhiarmaid was who may have sat on the mountain named after him?
Diarmid was one of the Lord of the Isles. Righ Innes Gall.
ReplyDeleteI have my suspicion that 'cathair', 'seat', is the origin of cathedral, the seat of the bishop.
ReplyDeleteDerryck, you're right. In Welsh, the term for a cathedral is "eglwys gadeiriol", meaning the church of the seat.
ReplyDeleteMany thanks for all the comments. So Diarmid, Lord of the Isles, had a favourite seat on that ben. What a great idea! Jon
ReplyDeleteThinking a bit further along the shared roots of words line, The Welsh word for head is "pen", and peaks of mountains have names with that prefix (Pen-Y-Gadair in the case of the aforementioned Cadair Idris). Surely there's a shared root there with the Scots "Ben"?
ReplyDelete... and a shared root, no doubt, with your Welsh 'eglwys' and the Gaelic 'eaglais' for church.
ReplyDeleteAnd the Portuguese for chair is "cadeira" ...
ReplyDelete