The Scuir of Eigg

Cameron, David Young, Sir, 1865-1945 · 1931

The Hebridean island of Eigg, some seven miles west of the mainland of Inverness-shire, is remarkable for the columnar rocks at the south end which rising four hundred feet above their high-lying base, culminate in the Scuir of Eigg. On Eigg in A.D. 617 St. Donnan and fifty other monks from Iona were killed by order of the queen, albeit her people objected that "that would not be a religious act"; and here towards the end of the sixteenth century, in a narrow-mouthed cave near the shore, two hundred Macdonalds, men, women and children, were in an act of retaliation suffocated by the neighbouring chief, Macleod of Skye. Scott alludes to this vengeful event in "The Lord of the Isles," and records that in 1814 he "bought off a skull from among the numerous specimens of mortality the cavern afforded."