Land of the Fae

The Isle of Skye is an enchanting place of wild seas and sheltered glens. It is a place of legend, a liminal place of faeries and tales of the good folk. In the old stories, The Isle of Skye is the location of Dún Scáith, or Tokavaig, meaning Fortress of Shadows, which belonged to Scáthach, meaning “The Shadowy One” in Gaelic, who taught the hero Cú Chulainn the arts of war. Her sister Aiofe was also a battle-hardened warrior, and some have proposed that she was, in fact, a daughter of the King of Scythia, a fearsome nomadic warrior people who lived in what is now Southern Siberia.

The fairy race lingers on in many places names, two famous ones being Fairy Glen (pictured) and Fairy Pools, a magical succession of turquoise falls which flow away beneath high mountains. Stories embedded in the local land tell of a fairy flag which is an heirloom of the MacLeod clan, of Dunvegan Castle. There are various tales of its origin, from a gift to an infant chieftain, a reward for defeating an evil spirit, as well as the most enduring, a gift to a chief from a departing fairy lover. There are also various powers attributed to it, from protection and military prowess to the ability to cure a plague on cattle, and the ability to bring herring into the loch at Dunvegan.

All over the Celtic lands, we hear that fairies love music, from fine singers to fiddlers. One such fiddler was taken into a grassy knoll in Broadford. As with many other such tales, he entered into the Otherworld, and played for the fairies gathered there, when he left, 100 years had passed, and some say you can still hear music coming from the knoll.