In the 17th century in Kilmartin, Skye, “melancholy and low spirits” were treated by the blacksmith. The patient was held face up on the anvil while the smith wound up with his biggest hammer. He’d swing it down and deliberately miss as close as he could. Spirits lifted! It was said of the blacksmith “he ends in a Faint, else he Cure the Patient of all diseases…”
Skye crofter, Jonathan MacLeod (d.1874) was shot in the leg at Waterloo and lived with the bullet in his calf for ~60 years. When his son Angus was interred with him at Kilmartin, his grandchildren found the bullet in the earth, 72 years after it had been shot.
Dundee Evening Telegraph. 24th March 1887. pg. 2
1887 MACLEOD, ANGUS (Statutory registers Deaths 112/2 7)
From 21st-23rd August 1872, a large unidentified animal was seen in the Sound of Sleat. Estimates of its length varied between 45 and 80 feet but was described as a “serpent”. Two church ministers published a report in ‘The Zoologist’ with these diagrams.
At least 13 people reported seeing the same thing, including fishermen who said it was “no seal or porpoise”. This map shows where it was seen over those three days. The colours indicate independent observations. (It was also seen off Eigg.)
In Jan 1881 after mistaking a satirical article for news, a Free Church minister on Skye warned that Britain was at war with Russia and that Gladstone had been arrested as a spy. Fishermen kept off the sea for fear of Russian warships. The rest of Skye laughed.
Though their name was kept out the papers, enough hints were dropped that I think the minister was Joseph Lamont, whose congregation was at Snizort.
