Spring flowers on the Isle of Skye.

This morning our friends took us to Loch Shianta on the Trotternish Peninsula. We had the place to ourselves as all the Easter Sunday traffic was parked at the Old Mar of Stoer. The birchwoods at Loch Shianta were a mass of primroses with a few violets just peeking through. The  loch is  the site of an ancient holy well or spring.

Holy Well or Sacred Spring in Isle of Skye

Sacred spring in the parish of Kilmuir in Skye (NG471699). Martin Martin (A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland, 1695) notes that ‘the most celebrated well in Skye is Loch Siant Well. It is much frequented by strangers, as well as by the inhabitants of the isle, who generally believe it to be a specific for several diseases – such as stitches, stone, consumptions, megrim.’ The invalids circled the spring three times ‘dessil’ (ie clockwise or sun-wise) after drinking the water, and made an offering of scraps of clothing, coloured threads, pins or coins. Martin notes that although the lochan into which the spring drains is full of trout, none of the natives would take one; nor would they cut any wood from the copse near the spring ‘for fear of some signal judgement to follow upon it’.


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