Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

It might be said that writing about EIGG is a hopeless project – because what does it actually mean to write about ‘Eigg’. Surely, it mainly means writing about the people of Eigg. This is the crux of the problem. There is no such thing as an Eiggach, an inhabitant of Eigg, and also a rightful member of the Eigg ‘nation’. Most nations like to concoct mythical histories to defend land rights, such as the ‘Rus’ and the Zionists. On the basis of their mythologies, they feel they have the legitimate right to plunder the lands of other peoples.

This comparison is not quite as absurd as it seems. The people of the islands and highlands have been engaged for centuries in disputes to claim their ‘right to the land’. But the fact of the matter is that although some populations throughout the history of Eigg have been relatively stable for historically short periods of time of 100 years and more, the populations of Eigg have been characterized by flux and movement rather than stability. Not least, the entire population of Eigg has been wiped out on at least two occasions. One was due to clan warfare, also discussed in this book, such as the “Cave Massacre”.

In this book, I discuss the extended family of my great grandparents, Roderick Campbell and Morag MacKinnon. Many of the MacKinnons descended from the neighbouring isle of Muck. Let’s face it. A good swimmer, like myself, could swim from Muck to Eigg on a calm day, although I am no Olympian swimmer; the distance being about 3 miles. For anyone with a sturdy rowboat this crossing is hardly a Herculean task.

Moreover, the mainland is not a great distance away, neither is the isle of Rhum. But of course, the writer and researcher in some way has to delimit the object of his/her study. Thus, if I had included the Isle of Muck in this book, the task would have been even more difficult; although the result would have perhaps been more valid. Similarly, if I had included other neighbouring districts.

So, of the families I mention here, the men and women often had spouses with family roots in neighbouring districts. Thus, to sum up, the book has been mainly limited to Eigg as a matter of convenience. Having said this, I will also briefly mention neighbouring regions. We have Acharacle; there’s also the MacGillivarys of this village, the birthplace of the husband of Morag Campbell.   

The Campbells and the Isle of Eigg

As mentioned above, I ‘promised’ my mother to write the ‘Family History’. I think my mother really expected me to write about the ‘MacGillivrays’. That is, her father’s family, Hector MacGillivray, as the MacGillivrays are associated with perhaps one of the most important events in Scottish history, the Battle of Culloden (1745). There, the MacGillivrays played a crucial role.

I won’t attempt here to give a long historical account of Culloden, nor the events before and after the battle. I believe that is something beyond the scope of this book. Instead, I will adopt a perspective of my mother and many other Scots; this battle was an attempt to defend the culture and rights of the Scottish Highlands in the face of an oppressive British government. Although this perspective may be viewed as romantic or simplistic, it is not that simplistic if one considers how the highlanders and islanders were treated after the battle.

In this context, the leader of the British forces, the Duke of Cumberland, was given the sobriquet “Butcher”. Following the battle, efforts were made to further oppress the peoples of the Scottish Highlands by introducing civil penalties that had the aim of undermining the Scottish clan system.

Moreover, my mother’s father’s family had proud trade and business traditions. They were stonemasons and built several impressive houses in the county of Argyll.  Hector MacGillivray was from Acharacle, a village in Ardnamurchan, Lochaber, within the county of Argyll. 

I later discovered that my cousin Iain MacGillivary had a family tree of the MacGillivrays. I published it on the family website. The family tree was made by my second cousin, Ted Moyes; his mother, Flora Moyes (nee Cameron); and daughter of Flora Anne Cameron (nee MacGillivray). Ted’s email: 12 February 2024:

2024 02 12

Hello Ian,
“Thanks for the information, very interesting. (…) As I said, I started the family tree with the help of my mother Flora in 1989/90 with her naming all her MacGillivray cousins and I expanded it using ancestry and Scotland’s People. I traced the MacGillivray’s back to Camus nan Gael, Ardnamurchan prior to the 1841 census. The land was cleared for sheep farming and they were moved to the North coast of Ardnamurchan.”

The Well of the Dead

As this book is mainly about the Campbells of Eigg, I won’t focus that much on the MacGillivrays. I will, however, mention the “The Well of the Dead”. I found a good description of this on the Internet (see footnote for link); Below is a description and a picture of “The Well of the Dead”:

The MacGillivrays at Culloden

As you walk the battlefield here at Culloden you pass the memorial cairn and many clan graves, but you  also pass the ‘Well of the Dead’. This small spot on the battlefield stands at the point where the Chief of the MacGillivray clan supposedly fell during the battle and, as we are often asked about this spot, we thought we’d take this chance to look a little at the MacGillivray’s during the time of Culloden.

My Ancestors at Culloden

As mentioned, I haven’t researched the MacGillivrays that much. However, the MacGillivray family tree mentioned above, composed by my second cousin, Ted Moyes and his mother Flora, reaches back as far to just after Culloden (1746), that is, 1760, when Archibald MacGillivray was born. The http://www.clanmacgillivray.net/culloden.html website reports that an “Archibald MacGillivray, of Dunmaglass surrendered 1746”.

In a conversation with my cousin Iain MacGillivray (at my mother’s wake in 2010), he told me that our MacGillivray ancestors were also involved in the Battle of Culloden, but I forgot to ask him for the proof. However, the fact my ancestor Archibald MacGillivray was born in 1760, and an Archibald MacGillivray surrendered in 1746, perhaps suggests a close family relationship, as Archibald doesn’t seem to be such a common name.   

My Mother’s Memories of Eigg

Since I was a small boy, my mother was always talking about the island where her mother Morag was born, and where she spent her summer vacations as a child, that is, on the Isle of Eigg. Apart from this, she had collected numerous documents, newspaper extracts, and other artefacts relating to the Isle of Eigg. Consequently, I decided to first focus the ‘Family History’ on the Campbells and the Isle of Eigg, rather than the MacGillivarys of Archaracle.

It also followed from this that it seemed natural to also present a ‘mini-history and story’ of the Isle of Eigg, with a main focus on the Campbell family, based on my mother’s oral accounts, as well as other sources. But the idea here is only to focus on the more well-known aspects of the island’s history and culture.