The Legacy of the MacGregors

It was only happenstance that Kevin and I were in the Auchnabreac that weekend. Kevin had booked the hotel as a romantic getaway with his wife, but his wife, something big in financial services, had to cancel at a fortnight's notice in favour of a work engagement and, the room being non-refundable, and nobody else in his circle of friends being able or willing to take it, he begged and cajoled them to swap the luxury double for a standard twin, and the two of us went for very unromantic weekend of walking and whisky.

'It's not a golfing place is it?' I had checked before I finally acquiesced. My own wife, not as enamoured by windswept mountains of heather as I, had finally balked at the travel arrangements necessary to get us both there.

'First thing I checked,' Kevin had replied. 'Luxury spa but the nearest links is reckoned rather average. I expect our fellow guests to be exclusively second honeymooners and rich widows. No cheque trousers in sight.'

I knocked off work early on Friday to catch the train to Glasgow where Kevin picked me up and drove the rest of the way to arrive for a late check-in. Not so late that the bar wasn't still open though.

Four drams of local specialities not withstanding, we rose early (one of us woke the other by snoring, and the the other woke the one by using the en-suite) and for half an hour had the breakfast room to ourselves. Then the MacGregors arrived.

In the vanguard was Tami-Jo B 'for Bobette' MacGregor, a wide, china-doll faced, Cincinnati woman with a voice like an ambulance siren iced with fondant. Displaying the inexhaustible energy and organisational zeal of a champion sheepdog, Tami-Jo directed each group of MacGregors to their tables and explained to them the mechanics of a Scottish hotel breakfast. We were to learn over the next fifteen minutes, as we snorted back the sort of puerile sniggering which is the curse of hungover ex-schoolfriends - no matter how old, that she was not even nearly the widest MacGregor.

The MacGregors were The Annual International Clan Gregor Reunion Weekend. Over the weekend we met only one MacGregor with a Scottish accent, a wee barmaid who swore us to secrecy less she be co-opted into events. In fact precious few MacGregors were actually named MacGregor (even Tami-Jo had apparently changed her name by deed-poll, a conspiratorial MacGregor whispered to us in the bar on Saturday night. 'She was born DePoisset and married Sink'). But it is of the Belmonts that I must tell.

The Belmonts, Hal and June, neither especially wide nor loud in the grand scheme of MacGregors, had sat on the table next to ours and, mindful of Tami-Jo's warnings, tried the porridge, indulged healthily in bacon and tatty scones, and treated the haggis with wary but game caution. When we had all eaten but were still sipping at our coffees they leaned over and introduced themselves. Kevin had brought his collection of ordnance survey maps down with him and we had one of these spread out on the table as we tried to chose between bagging a munro or experiencing a bit of Atlantic coast.

Hal Belmont was a MacGregor on his father's mother's side, removed to America in the highland clearances. He remembered stories his grandmother told him that her grandmother had told her of living in a croft in the foothills of, an apologetic gesture in advance of the pronunciation, 'More Gooey'. But where was More Gooey? Hal had been unable to find it. Was it on our map?

'Wait,' Kevin said. 'I think I might know it.' With a display of origami he fitted part of the coastline of Argyll onto the breakfast table and stabbed a finger onto it. 'Gaoith Mor! Look, there are some structures marked.'

Hal and June gazed awestruck at the spelling. 'Grandma, or great great grandma, said it was in the foothills of,' again he approached the name with trepidation, 'Gaoith Mor, in a depression so it was sheltered from the wind off the sea, and near a little natural harbour of rock so perfectly square her father told her it had been carved by giants.'

'Well that decides it then,' Kevin said. 'We shall do this walk and we shall look for your croft.'

'Would you!' The delight in Hal's voice would have been impossible to disappoint even if I'd disagreed with Kevin's plan. 'What else can I remember? She said it was a long way from the village, and that you could see the island from there, though I've never known which island, and she said the water was as clear as glass and you could look down and watch the seals swim through the kelp.'

'And it was a tiny stone building,' June added. 'With a compacted earth floor and no bigger than a shed in the US, and with no windows.' 

'Aye, it would be,' Kevin said.

'She said it had two rooms,' Hal continued, trying to recall every detail. 'I think that was unusual. It would be great if you could find it. We hired a researcher before taking this trip and she can't find any record of them being forced off the croft but grandma always said they were. If we could identify it she said that might help.'

---

We found it at lunchtime. Three other candidates we had already dismissed, being either not in any sort of depression or near no natural harbour, and we had the peak of Gaoith Mor well behind us when our route, a coastal walk south to north, turned and revealed as neat and square-sided a little rock inlet as you could ever imagine. Immediately we knew it had to be the place and, leaving the path, climbed up the bank of earth to our right and there it was, a tiny stone building in a small depression that would shield it from the worst of the westerlies.

The weather, after a couple of early rainstorms to let us know it wasn't to be trifled with, had turned into that sort of bright blustery summer day that only Scotland can really pull off. The sun sparkled on the waves, the paps of Jura rose off to our left from fields of shining gold, and the heather everywhere hummed with life. Nevertheless the croft conspired to be a gloomy place. It squatted lowly in the middle of a scrubby field of gorse and brambles which piled up in a mound around it. It was a thing of two halves, a rowan tree had grown so snugly against the wall of one that it had pushed the unmortared stone over and the roof had collapsed. The other half, held up by an internal wall, was in better condition and the roof, made of slate and hipped at a low angle, still remained.

There was a gate chained shut with a rusted padlock. A single strand of barbed wire ran over the top and a sign, so faded we could barely read it, claimed the field was both strictly private property and the residence of a bull. The second claim was so patently untrue that we elected to ignore the first and, careful of the barbed wire, climbed over.

'It must have been fenced in till quite recently,' Kevin said. 'Or the deer would have kept down the plants.' Indeed, there seemed to a be a radius, about a meter beyond the croft,within which the scrub grew higher than the rest of the field. The original doorway was inaccessible behind a dense gorse bush but we ducked under the rowan and found a way in where the wall had collapsed.

Inside was as overgrown as outside, and littered with broken roof slates which slid and snapped beneath our feet. Something that had once been a table squatted in the corner. The rusted remains of two small bed frames poked out from a mass of brambles which has grown up through them. Anything else that was there had long since been destroyed beyond recognition by the elements. In the far wall though, toward the half of the building which still had a roof, the door looked solid. We picked our way through the debris toward it.

'Can you hear something?' Kevin asked.

I stopped and heard a faint scratching sound. 'Mice?' I suggested.

'Maybe.'

We reached the far door and very gingerly, for it looked likely to fall off its hinges if we spoke harshly at it, Kevin pushed it open and we both ducked down to look in.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dark but when they did I saw a damp, mouldering place thick with grimy cobwebs. I turned on the torch on my phone and scanned it around.

'My God!' Kevin said. 'They must have left everything behind.'

Two armchairs faced the fireplace, the upholstery looking like it would crumble to dust if you touched it. A wardrobe stood in the far corner, paint peeling from it in thick curled ribbons. There was a pile of powder dry firewood in an enamelled bucket by the fire and a clock on the mantelpiece above. On a shelf sat what was probably once a bible next to an oil lamp. A half complete embroidered Virgin Mary was propped up in a frame against the far wall.

I pointed the torch upward and the roof, which had looked sound enough from the direction we had approached, was bowing inward alarmingly on the other side. Neither of us dared take a step beyond the doorway in case it should come down on our heads.

'It must be a hundred years old,' Kevin said. 'More.'

'Whatever is making that noise is making it in here I think.'

'Doesn't smell of mice. Smells nasty, but not of mice.'

I took some photos with my phone and we closed the door up again and hurried back to the path to sit overlooking the little inlet and eat our packed lunch (pastries and fruit liberated from the breakfast buffet), thankful for the sunlight and sea air.

'Grim place to live,' I said. 'They were fishermen I suppose.'

“They farmed seaweed,' Kevin said. 'For the potassium. That was the clearances, they were turned off the land their forefathers had farmed to do this. Then later when the bottom fell out of the potassium market they were encouraged to bugger off to America.'

'And now their descendants come back and spend money in spa hotels.'

---

In the restaurant that evening the Belmont's were whisked past us by Tami-Jo on their way to the reunion weekend's private room, but we caught up with them afterwards in the bar and showed them the photos.

'I'm sorry,' Tami-Jo interrupted. 'But this area is reserved for the Clan Gregor Reunion Weekend.'

'These gentlemen think they've found the family croft,' June said.

'Really? Are you going to visit?'

'I wouldn't recommend it,' Kevin said. 'It's a ruin. Surprising amount of stuff in it but all rotten.'

'So they really did leave in a hurry then,' Hal said.

'Y'all have to visit though. When are you going to get another chance.'

'I told our researcher where you thought it was,' Hal said, 'and she got back to me this afternoon and said it would make sense, apparently there was trouble with a rival clan in the area at the time, and maybe my ancestors had to flee.'

'You must visit. Think about the piece it would make for the email newsletter.'

Hal gave us a look and Kevin took out his phone to work out where we might park while I did the maths regarding my train from Glasgow. If the Belmont's could make an early start and manage a forty-five minute walk each way, it could be done. 

Tami-Jo squeaked with excitement. 'I'll bring my camera. Just imagine, you two outside your croft like proper Scotsmen.'

---

The second walk to the croft, along the same coastal path, was done in a misty drizzle that obscured both Jura and the peak of Gaoith Mor behind a wall of grey nothingness.

'Did your woman tell you much about this trouble?' I asked Hal.

'Apparently a man disappeared and it was thought a MacGregor killed him. Clan rivalries ran deep back then I think.'

'Still can,' Kevin said, and he proceeded to tell a story I had heard him tell before of how, when he and his future wife were courting, they'd gone camping on Mull and were walking in the hills, him enjoying the scenery, her picking wild flowers, both of them plotting what they were going to do to the other when they got back to their tent, when they knocked on the door of a cottage to beg a glass of water.

The woman who answered the door replied, Kevin's impression of her rising in pitch and indignation with every sentence, 'You come here! To my house! Asking for water! And holding Campbell flowers!'

I explained the significance of bog myrtle and pine to June.

At the gate, despite pointing out that there definitely was no bull, June refused to enter the field. I laid my waterproof, which was seen enough years that a few scratches would be no great sacrifice, over the barbed wire to allow Tami-Jo to climb over. Tami-Jo had Hal pose for photos. Rather bleak photos in my opinion but I don't think she could have been happier if there had been a kitchen garden, woodsmoke rising from the chimney, and a cat sunning itself on the threshold.

'Can we see inside?' Hal asked.

We led the way, trampling down the vegetation to allow Tami-Jo, in her not so sensible shoes, to pass.

'Sounds like something's digging down there,' she said, and it occurred to me that Americans, who share their country with larger and wilder beasts than we do, would have more acute sensibilities to things digging beneath houses, and she was probably right. 

'Groundhog most likely,' she added.

I moved to the interior door and waited for Hal and Tami-Jo to follow before doing the dramatic opening.

I had not expected a great reaction, after all it was dark and unpleasant in there, but the look of confusion, and then disgust, and then horror that crossed their faces as they peered through the doorway surprised me. Then Tami-Jo screamed and ran, and Hal simply fainted and fell backwards like a toppled statue. Kevin caught him and then his eyes, too, widened, and he pointed and, with a strangled croak, told me to close the door.

I looked. I wish I had not looked but I looked. One of the chairs was moving. Underneath it the bones of an arm, mud caked and filthy, was reaching out from a hole in the floor and pulling a whole skeleton up behind it. A skull lolled atop the shoulders, hanging limply forward so its forehead scraped the ground, its jaw loose and only attached on one side. The back of the skull was smashed open like a broken pot.

I slammed the door shut and went to help Kevin drag Hal away. Just as we got clear there was a crash and the remaining roof of the croft fell inwards. June was running toward us and Hal, by now roused from his faint, shouted for her to go back but she ignored him. Tami-Jo had apparently, without a word, sprinted back down the path at a pace June never would have imagined she had in her.

'Did you see the roof coming down?' she asked. 'Is that why she ran? Is that what happened?' 

Hurrying along as fast as we could manage back to the car we all agreed that yes, that was definitely what happened.