Meall Gorm - the entrance to the Celtic underworld

 All images COPYRIGHT asserted - David Geddes at The Open Sky

By Easter the sun is setting to the north of the Trotternish peninsula on Skye. In the previous post from Meall Gorm the setting sun slide behind the Island of Rum. Each May I devote 2 weeks to straivaiging Wester Ross with my cameras and a close friend who has shared climbing and photography since we were students. Its a pleasant reunion we both look forward to. 

Here above the Sea of Raasay looking west the profile of Skye is particularly well observed, but the view extend over the Small Isles and to the Outer Hebrides with the hills of Harris often quite clear. From close by and through the binoculars I recently watched for 20 minutes two schools of basking shark numbering over 50  lazing up the coast, some occasional broaching and turning, plunging back with a huge splash.

Until quite recently I had an old friend who continually talked to the 'Little People' when he was outdoors working his croft. He had an unshakable belief, that at one time would have been universal, that every rock, tree, stream, bush and field had its own spirit, and some of these spirits were quite mischievous. When looking at a map of any part of the Gaelic speaking highlands, the naming of features is prolific, and stems from these old beliefs. Being able to translate these names removes a veil from our eyes, as to what their importance - seasonal, agricultural, aesthetic or spiritual once was. 

At Samhain, close to the autumn equinox, in Celtic pre Christian times, bonfires and sacrifices would have been made to keep the spirits of the dead away from mingling with the living. Close to here at Applecross, Maelrubha was possibly the first Irish Christian to proselytise in this part of the West Highlands. Recent archaeology confirms this.

So I stand up for the renaming of all the old anglicisations made by lazy and patronising map makers devoid of an appreciation of history or culture. Their meanings should not be lost but carried forward. One look at an OS map of the 1960s and the current version will reveal that the modern mapmakers share this reality.  But before those in whose oral tradition the names reside, do die - some increased effort should be made to collect local and colloquial place names to enrich our future.

Above the lochans on Meall Gorm,  the reflected sunset, increases the colours upon the eye many fold. One might easily be lulled into that old way of believing the entrance to the Celtic underworld, from where come the water horses and kelpies, and all manner of disturbance, lies directly before us.