Crofters, Flora, and Kilt Rock

To continue on with this really full day, I took a slight detour on my way to Kilt Rock. I saw a sign for the Skye Museum of Island Life and as I had seen the same on the map, I thought "Why Not?" As you can see from the map, I followed the road right along the coast (beautiful, beautiful country).  I believe that these pictures are of Loch Snizord, on my way up to Uig and then to Kilmuir where the Skye Museum of Island Life is located.  The Museum was opened in 1965 and it showed the ingenuity of the people because they not afford to import materials and were limited to that which was available in the area and  more importantly, was free. "Many corfters were able to buld their own house and the work could take from a few weeks to a year or more. In most communities in the past, neighbours helped one another in their seasonal work and it is said that when a house was being built neighbours joined in, often to the extent of forming a human chain passing stones from hand to hand. They thus put into practice the time-honoured adage - 'many hands make light work'.  The type of cottage to be found on Skye was built with walls of up to three feet in width and beating a hip-ended roof with over-hanging eaves of thatch which formed a fringe around the wall top. The roof is constructed on the couple and purlin system with rafters of rough round timber. Light branches laid neatly over the purlins carry the 'divots'or turf squares which are neatly tiled to form a bed for the thatch. The thatch used in Skye was common rush or locally-grown reeds. Thatching is a dying art and it is now becoming very difficult to obtain the services of an experienced thatcher." http://www.skyemuseum.co.uk/construction-layout.html

 

The Old Smithy





I believe this is the Weaver's cottage
 







The idea behind the museum was to preserve an actual township of thatched cottages, each one showing the actual way of life of a "Crofter" at the close of the nineteenth century. 









I took this picture before I learned that I wasn't to take pictures, oops.





 






Real life roof being thatched, and unfortunately it is a dying art.



                    View from the "village".                                                            

 

 I was able to view the cottage with its bedroom and kitchen, the "weavers cottage" , the "old smithy", the barn and the The Ceilidh House.  Interesting thing about the Ceilidh House is that this is the place where the village would gather to together in the long winter evenings and sing song and gossip about what was going on in the world.  It is where the sense of community was born on the Isle.



 

I am throwing this in because it is interesting and if I had known before I left what it was, I would have taken a closer look.  This is the monument of Flora MacDonald (yes a member of the clan from the first castle that I talked about when I got to the Isle of Skye).  She lived an amazing life that started with hearing stories as a little girl of the desire that her countrymen had to have a Scottish King on the throne, the last having been King James II.  His son, James Francis Edward Stuart's attempt failed, so the hope lay with his son,  Bonnie Prince Charlie.  In 1745 the  Bonnie Prince arrived in Scotland and after a few successful battles Prince Charles and his followers, the Jacobites, suffered a horrible defeat in a bloody battle at Culloden. After the battle, King George II of England issued orders to torture and punish any who had helped in the rebellion.  Prince Charlie's supporters realized that they needed to get the prince out of Scotland before he was killed.

According to legend, Flora and several other clanswomen "secretly created a woman’s costume for the prince. Then, Flora traveled with Prince Charlie, whom she disguised as her maid, Betty Burke, through the Highland country and across the sea to the Isle of Skye.

The English king’s men followed them closely and gave them no rest. The trip was dangerous, and they spent many days tired, hungry, and soaking wet from the Scottish rains. Flora could have left the prince and returned home, but she refused. After several weeks, the prince continued on his own and found a ship that took him to France. Flora returned home to her clan. Once home, Flora was arrested by the English and taken on a long sea journey to London, where she awaited trial. Conditions on the ship were horrible, and Flora must have been very frightened and homesick. On board, however, she charmed the crew, and the captain of the ship wrote a letter requesting that Flora be kept out of jail, since she was such a nice and charming girl. The letter worked, and Flora was kept in a private home with several other clanspeople, rather than in a jail.

In London, Flora charmed those who cared for her and made many friends among English Jacobites, who came to visit her regularly. The English Jacobites knew Flora’s story and felt privileged to spend time with such a brave young woman. Flora returned home two years later with many friends and a sizable fortune raised for her by the English Jacobites. She never stood trial." http://ncmuseumofhistory.org/workshops/womenshistory/flora.html

After that, I traveled around the horn, traveling on road that were barely big enough for my car, past Staffin to Kilt Rock.  Just a side note, the barely big enough roads where built by the women who where left during World War I.  After the men left, the women needed ways to get to where they needed to go, so they built the windy roads so that they could get to one another.  They were later paved and now used as road ways.  They have created small places to pull over so that when you need to pass, you use them to allow the cars coming your way to get by.  It was a very intense driving experience.

 Kilt Rock is a 200 foot high sea cliff that is named after the similarity between the cliff face and a kilt, with vertical basalt columns forming the pleats and intruded sills of dolerite forming the pattern.

A cute Oriental man took my picture in exchange for me taking one of him and his wife.  This was a really good prelude into my next stop, Old Man of Storr.