Isle of Lismore

This is the ferry Eigg that Kristy and I caught on Tuesday for Lismore, an island northwest of Oban. As we arrived a farmer driving a green tractor was unloading trailers full of sheep. We waited for the sheep to be pulled off and then boarded the little boat.


It was about a 45 minute sail up the Lynn of Lorn to the ferry dock at Achnacroish. On the way, nice views of Oban and Dunollie Castle from the water. The sea was incredibly still.




At Achnacroish, we headed up the hill to the main road that runs the length of the island. Here's a map of Lismore. We hopped on our bikes and rode north toward Clachan. On the way, we stopped at the old parish church and looked around at the old gravestones.


Here lies the remains of John McKeith... farmer... who departed this life the 2 of may 1799 aged 43 years placed here by Duncan McKeith his son.


We stopped in at the Lismore Museum to see the exhibit and the replica of the Book of Kells on loan from Ireland. It turns out the original Book of Kells was made by Columban monks on Iona in the time between when the monastery was founded there in the late 6th century and when the island had to be evacuated in the 9th century because of continued Viking attack. The Book was sent to Ireland for safekeeping and is now housed in Dublin. I always thought it was Irish.

After tea and soup for lunch (passing up the opportunity to have an HLT: haggis, lettuce and tomato panini) we headed down a small road that took us to the ruined Broch at Tirefour. Double walls, ten feet thick, about fifteen feet high are what remains of this Pictish fort, about 2000 years old. I've been reading a lot of Scottish history this past month (working at the museum exhibition is a perfect opportunity to read) and I've been very interested in learning more about the Picts and Scotland's early history.


There were people here before the Picts, who were a Celtic tribe. But little is known of them. I don't know if they have a name. The Picts had a kingdom here called Alba and ruled most of Scotland for a thousand years or so. Scots arrived from Ireland around 500 and founded a kingdom called Dalriada in Argyll, but the Scots were a small minority apparently. Several hundred years later the kingdoms were united and became Scotland. The name Alba is still in common usage here though.

Lismore is a limestone island and therefore is much more fertile than the acid-bog mainland. There are farms and livestock, trees, and rocky outcrops. The population now is maybe one-third what it had been for hundreds and hundreds of years previously.


Americans, Canadians, Australians, etc. come to Lismore looking for their family roots. There can be some surprises in that--one woman who came to Lismore to find her family history discovered that her ancestor had been a landowner who had evicted hundreds of other islanders from their homes during the Clearances (early 1800s to 1840s mostly).

The Highland Clearances occurred when a combination of overpopulation and a changing economy led debt-heavy landowners to evict their tenants by the tens of thousands, making way for large scale sheep farming. Hundreds of thousands of Highlanders were suddenly homeless and landless and most made their way to America or Canada. Entire villages were abandoned.

These events still affect life here today and patterns of population and settlement have been permanently altered.