This piece began to form when I found a
story, 'Great fight'
in the records of the Carmichael Watson Project. The gist of the
story is that, during the reign of King Charles II (1630-1685), there was a
'Great fight' between men aboard competing herring fishing boats from
Leith and Campbeltown. The ensuing battle, which the Campbeltown men
won, apparently took place following the delivery of some 'drink'
from Uist.
Many men from all over Britain (and
Ireland) were killed and their bodies then buried (some secretly at
night) in several islands in the Sound of Harris, as well as in
Cheesebay in North Uist. These islands included
Hermetray/Thermatraigh on which Martin Martin, in 1695, had seen:
“the foundation of a house built
by the English in the reign of King Charles the First's time, for one
of their magazines to lay up the cask, salt etc, for carrying on the
fishery, which was then begun in the Western Islands; but this design
miscarried because of the civil wars which then broke out.”
I wrote of John Lanne Buchanan's
opinion of this, and other fishing developments, when discussing his 'General View...' and it is clear that the building that Martin Martin saw
is believed to have been
built in 1633 by Charles I as an element in his attempt to foster the
fishing industry in Scotland.
What intrigues me, however, is that
when one looks at the image of the entry
in Alexander Carmichael notebook, it appears that he may have
originally ascribed the 'Great fight' as having occurred during the
reign of Charles I (1600-1649) ,for the second 'I' looks very much to be an
afterthought.
I wonder if Carmichael, who would have
been familiar with Martin's account of having seen the building on
Hermetray, had assumed that his informant (John Morrison, a Ground
Officer from Lingerbay, Harris) was talking about an event that had
occurred during the time when the fishing station was in use, and
that John Morrison had then clarified that it was in fact during the
reign of Charles II?
It is unfortunate that we have no date
for the event, but the islands where the casualties were buried are
Nàrstaigh, Sàrstaigh, Suarsaigh, Bhòtarsaigh, Hermetray and
Taghaigh.
And it is said that the herring never
came back to these waters after the 'Great fight'...
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