Deforestation is a global problem. One caused by human action – a tiny fraction of our native forests remain in Scotland. Human connection to the history of deforestation in Scotland is complex.
Every now and again, when you saunter amongst the peat you may come across a great stump of gnarled oak or pine, buried deep in the bog. Bog wood. The ghost of a forest once was.
Bog wood is used in a few of our folk magic practices but not many. Sometimes the Bog wood will be charred and burnt black when found and begs the question how did it become like this?
Our ancestral Memories
I often ask myself why there is hierarchy of knowledge.
Yet we don’t need science to tell us the Highlands and Islands were once covered in a blanket of trees.
Deforestation is real – we can see it in our landscape.
For example, the late “Rev. Tom Murchison used to point out in his boyhood in Kylerhea they still spoke of a time when from Kyleakin to the Point of Sleat, some thirty to forty miles, the trees were so thick that a white horse which entered at one end of the forest could not be seen again until it emerged at the other.”
It is also well-known stands of Scots pine in such places as Glenfeshie or Mar Lodge are but a precious remnant of a ‘Great Caledonian Forest’ which covered the mainland from coast to coast, and the deer of the hills are forest creatures who have adapted to a changed environment.
But how did the forest die? Why is so little of it left, what are we to make of the burnt fragments we find?
Science and history tell us one story.
Science is devoid of the politics of a people. Facts are what we are told. Changing climate, civilization growth and industrialisation leading to plantations and eventually evictions.
History is written by the victors and gain speaks of the need to “educate and industrialise the barbarians of the north” (the Geals).
Traditional story tells us another.
In story we are told of mythic time, invasions and war and the deforestation and ecocidal acts of the ruling classes to our habitats once available for all. Looking at these Ghost Pines our forebears must have wondered why as they carried out peat-cutting in the summer and why whilst watching a crackling ceilidh house fire in the winter. Appealing to traditional story, to the ancestral memory, we find our explanations from the no ruling classes.
The stories of deforestation come from the Highlands and Islands, but they do not vary a great deal. They point the finger of guilt at two women. The king of Norway’s Daughter and Mary Queen of Scots.
Scotland’s Ancient Forest
Ghost Pines
According to Trees for life:
“Around 6000 years ago our wildlife flourished in a mosaic of tress, heath, grassland, scrub and bog. Wild cats like Lynx roamed the dense woodland and packs of wolves hunted deer. Aurochs grazed savannah grassland and wild board rooted through the leaf litter, salmon swam rivers and scooped salmon form rivers and elk grazed in the willow meadows created by beaver damns and many different birds sung abundantly.”
The arrival of humans changed this we know as we began farming, they grazed cattle, goats and sheep and burned areas of heath and pinewoods to encourage fresh growth of heather for their stock. This began the deforestation, then the change of climate to a wetter colder one helped the peat bogs spread”
“Roman accounts speak of a vast ‘Caledonian Forest’, but their accounts are exaggerated. By the time the Romans arrived, over half of our native forests had been lost. It was not a dense blanket of pine woodland (as was once thought), although native pinewoods were a key part of this forest.
We now use the term Caledonian Forest to evoke the wilderness that spread across 1.5 million hectares of the Highlands in prehistoric times.
In the Medieval times Norse and Celtic people felled trees for ships, houses and more. The Little Ice Age in the 14th Century sped up the decline. From the 17th Century the demands of wars and industry, and a growing Highland population all took their toll. But the worst was still to come.
By the 18th century, woodland cover reached its all-time low. Some pinewood fragments were protected from overgrazing because timber had value, but cheap timber imports later changed all that.
The Highland Clearances were a devastating blow for Highland people and culture. They also made way for large scale sheep farming, which was an ecological disaster. And has led to the current ecological dessert we have in Scotland today.
In Victorian times sheep farming declined and landlords turned to sport shooting for income. Deer stalking encouraged unnaturally high numbers of deer and grouse moors were burned. Regenerating trees stood little chance.”
I personally find this such a dry take on things. Forestry Scotland I know are trying to change the tide of the plantation years, but they are still part of a structure profiting from the land use that is exploitative and extractive. Hats off to those within the organisation seeking radical reform. But land use question still remains to be answered in Scotland.
Storied approaches to our “history”
As a writer and researcher, and somone who cares deeply around alternative histories and histories of resistance, I’ve been exploring links between land use, heritage and culture and politics. This led me to the wonderful work of Mairi McFadyen. In her article “Just Listen to the Birdsong Now” Mairi mentions in passing a story called the Dubh a’ Ghiuthais / Black Fir in relation to deforestation and “rewilding”.
I was instantly fascinated by the suggestion of a radical story of deforestation. I have tracked the story down and felt the need to share it with others. These are our stories and where I can I have recorded who told them with links to the original tale.
There are several renditions and reasons this story has been recorded. Each of the different telling’s of the tale speaks to the deforestation of Scotland at the hands of incomers or the ruling classes and how they were outwitted by farmers or everyday folk who operationalised the power of empathy against the wanton destruction. Which is the part I like.
The Vikings as Villains – Deforestation by the Norse
Every era has its villains. Let’s start with the Vikings.
Claish Moss at the west end of Loch Shiel were said to have been burnt by ‘the Danes’, and Norse tradition as related in Heimskringla makes scorched earth a strategy of attack. Specifically, all over the Highlands and Islands the burning of the forests is ascribed to a daughter of the King of Norway called Dubh a’Ghiuthais (the Black One of the Pine Tree) or Dona (Evil One) or sometimes Donan (Little Evil One?) or Donnan (Little Brown One?).
Below is the story in both Gaelic and its English Translation
Dubh a’ Ghiuthais [Scottish Gaelic]
“’S e seo sgeul a chuala mi bho mo sheanmhair mun deach mi riamh don sgoil. Nuair a ruiginn i gun mi a bhith glè ghlan, theireadh i le fiamh a’ ghàire: “Thàinig Dubh a’ Ghiuthais,” agus dh’fheumainn-sa faighinn a-mach cò bh’ ann an Dubh a’ Ghiuthais.
Mar tha fios aig neach, tha mòinteach na..na dùthcha seo làn giubhais. Chì sinn stuic…stuic nan craobh anns an talamh, le ’m friamhaichean a’ sìneadh a-null ’s a-nall timcheall orra…timcheall orra. Chì sinn uairean a’ chraobh na laighe anns a’ mhòintich mar a thuit i, agus chunnaic mi uairean coltas air na craobhan sin gun robh pàirt dhiubh air an losgadh. Mar sin feumaidh e bhith gun robh an dùthaich seo air a chòmhdachadh le coille mhòr bhon chionn iomadh ceud bliadhna.
Nise, bha eud mòr air Rìgh Lochlainn airson a’ choille bhrèagha leis an robh Albainn air a còmhdachadh, agus bu mhiann leis cur às dhi. Bha e latha cho tùirseach iomagaineach is gun d’fheòraich e nighean dheth dè bha cur dragh air. Fhreagair e gum b’ fheàrr leis gum faigheadh e rian air sgrios a’ choille Albannaich…a’ choille Albannaich seo.
“Nì mise sin,” ars’ a’ bhana-phrionnsa, “ma gheibh sibhse bana-bhuidseach a chuireas mi ann an cruth eòin.”
Gun tuilleadh dàil, chuir an rìgh fios air bana-bhuidseach ainmeil, agus thionndaidh i a’ bhana-phrionnsa gu eun mòr brèagh geal. Dh’èirich i air iteag, agus cha b’ fhada bha ise a’ ruighinn taobh siar Albainn. Thàinig i a-bhàn an siud ’s an seo, agus an uair a bhean i ri craobh le slataig a bh’ aice fo a sgèith, ghabh a’ chraobh teine. Cha b’ fhada gus an robh an t-eun brèagh geal na h-eun grannda dubh le ceò a’ ghiubhais, agus thug muinntir na tìre seo Dubh a’ Ghiuthais mar ainm oirre.
Cha robh e furasda grèim a dhèanamh oirre, agus bha i dèanamh mòran calla. Ach fhuaireadh a-mach gun robh cridhe teòm aic’, aig Dubh a’ Ghiuthais, gu h-àraidh mu thimcheall bheathaichean. Dh’amais duine aig Loch Bhraoin air innleachd a chuireadh an sàs i. Chaidh an àl a thoirt bho gach sprèidh – na laoigh bho na mairt, na h-uain bho na caoraich, na searraich bho na lair, na minn bho na gobhair, na h-uirceinean bho na muncan, na cuileinean bho na coin, agus eadhon na h-eòin bheaga bho na cearan. Chaidh na màthraichean a chur ann an aon bhuaile, agus an àl ann am buaile eile. Nuair a thàinig am feasgar b’ e sin a’ mhèilich, an geumraich, an sìtrich, a’ chothartaich agus an sgreudail a bu tiamhaidhe chualas le cluais duine riamh.
Bha Dubh a’ Ghiuthais a’ gabhail air a turas sgriosail, agus bha a cridhe cho goirt airson nam beathaichean bochd gum b’ fheudar dhi teàrnadh gu talamh. Cha bu luaithe air an talamh i na chuir fear dhe daoine na dùthcha saighead na cridhe, agus thuit i marbh.
Fhuair Rìgh Lochlainn sgeul air mar thachair, agus chuir e bìrlinn le sgioba chalma a thoirt a’ chuirp dhachaigh gu Lochlann. Ach an uair a sheòl iad a-mach gu doras an locha – gu doras an Locha Bhig – thàinig stoirm uamhasach a thug oirre tilleadh. Thug iad trì oidhirpean air falbh leis a’ ghiùlan, ach mu dheireadh chunnaic iad gum feumadh Dubh a’ Ghiuthais a bhith air a tìodhlacadh far an do thuit i, aig Cill Donnain, aig cheann shuas an Locha Bhig. Tha tolman bòidheach uaine air ainmeachadh ann an sin mar h-àite tàimh.”
She came with fire
Black Fir [ Dubh a’ Ghiuthais – Translation]
“I heard from my grandmother before I ever went to school. If I came to her in not a very clean state, she would say, smiling, “Here’s Dubh a’ Ghiuthais,” and I had to find out who this Dubh a’ Ghiuthais was.
As everybody knows the peat bogs in this region are full of fir. We see the stumps of the trees in the ground, with the roots running to and fro among them. We can sometimes see the tree lying in the bog as it fell, and I’ve sometimes seen these trees look as if part of them had been burnt. So it must be that this region was covered with a great forest many hundreds of years ago.
Now the King of Lochlann[1] was very envious of the fine wood with which Scotland was covered, and he wanted to destroy it. One day he was so gloomy and worried that his daughter asked him what was troubling him. He answered that he wished he could find a way to destroy this Scottish forest.
“I’ll do that,” said the princess, “if you get a witch to change me into the shape of a bird.”
Without further delay the king sent for a famous witch, and she turned the princess into a beautiful great white bird. She flew away, and she wasn’t long in reaching the west coast of Scotland. She came down here and there, and when she struck a tree with a wand, she had under her wing the tree would catch fire. It wasn’t long before the beautiful white bird had become and ugly black bird with the smoke of the pinewood, and the folk of this country gave her the name of Dubh a’ Ghiuthais [Black Fir].
It wasn’t easy to catch her, and she was going a lot of damage. But word got out that Dubh a’ Ghiuthais had a tender heart, especially for animals. A man at Loch Broom hit on a scheme to capture her.
The young were taken away from all the farm animals – the calves from the cows, the lambs the sheep, and the foals from the mares, the kids from the goats, the piglets from the sows, the puppies from the dogs, and even the little chickens from the hens. The mothers were put in one fold and their young in another. When evening came there was the most dismal bleating, lowing, whinnying, barking and screeching that human ear had ever heard.
Dubh a’ Ghiuthais was passing on her course of destruction, and her heart was so sore for the poor creatures that he had to come down to earth. No sooner was she on the ground than one of the local folk sent and arrow through her heart, and she fell dead.
The King of Lochlann heard what had happened, and he sent a galley with a hardy crew to bring the body home to Lochlann. But when they had sailed out as far as the mouth of Little Loch [Broom] there came a fearful gale which forced them to turn back. They made three attempts to leave with the bier, but at last they saw that Dubh a’ Ghiuthais would have to be buried where he had fallen, at Kildonon, at the head of Little Loch [Broom].
A beautiful green hillock is pointed out there as her resting place.
Recorded by Calum Maclean on 15 September 1955 from Anne Munro (1901–2001) from Badluachrach, Wester Ross. She was a primary school teacher and spent many years at Laide School.
The original tape recording is catalogued as SA1955/164/B7 and which is available to listen to on Tobar an Dualchais
Other version of Dubh a’ Ghiuthais and deforestation
Different version of the tales say different things. I share the below as we have such a beautiful link into the belief of the people at the time of the story. Practices we have a testament for in many other sources.
Raghnall MacilleDhuibh writing for the West Highland Free Press suggests:
“In Macbain’s version she starts in Sutherland and burns as far as Badenoch. A different Badenoch version has her starting in Gallaibh (Caithness) and finishing at Ceann a’Ghiuthais, Kingussie. In the Lochaber version she is finally stopped at Crò Chinn t-Sàile in Kintail. But in many ways the most circumstantial version of how she was stopped is one that comes from Wester Ross and has her meeting her end at Little Loch Broom.
It was got by the Rev. Charles Robertson and read to the Gaelic Society of Inverness in 1905. A man who lived at Kildonan, on the north side of the loch, reckoned that Dubh a’Ghiuthais would have been familiar with flocks and herds, and devised a plan using animals to stop her.
The Lochaber version in fact makes much of her veterinary credentials right at the start of the story.
The point is, I think, that the sgoil dhubh (this is the famous Black school in Sweden – where folk went to go and learn the “black arts” a list of which follows -ed) had much to do with cattle — stealing the substance from a neighbour’s milk, placing the evil eye on her cows, causing and healing all sorts of specific bovine ailments for malice or for money.
So we are told of the young Dubh a’Ghiuthais that there was no sian (charm) or sùil (evil eye) that might land on any living creature in the fold that she could not lift, nor any tuaineal (dizziness) or ceangal (trap?) they got into that she could not resolve, so that it was said that the sweetest of all music for putting her to sleep was geumnaich cruidh (the lowing of cattle), blaomannaich laogh (the crying of calves) and ràcaireachd ghamhna (the calling of stirks), and that she would respond to the voice of cattle even if she were asleep in the middle of her father’s black forest when their lowing came from the bottom end of the edge of the world (’s an geum o cheann ìochdar iomall an domhain).
Shot
dead with silver
So the man from Little Loch Broom had guessed right.
He had all the horses, cattle, sheep and goats, with their young, brought from miles around and assembled at Achadh Bad a’Chruiteir above Kildonan. When her great black cloud was seen passing overhead between a’Bheinn Ghobhlach and Beinn nam Ban, he ordered every mare to be separated from her foal, every cow from her calf, every ewe from her lamb, every nanny- goat from her kid. What a cacophony!
It is marvellously described in a Lochbroom version sent by a John Morrison to the magazine An Gaidheal in 1872. Gach bò a’geumraich, gach làir a’sitirich, gach caora a’méilich, gach gobhar a’meigeadaich, ’s gach seòrsa beathaich eile a’sireadh an gnè féin. “Every cow lowing, every mare neighing, every sheep baaing, every goat bleating, and every other species seeking their own kind.” So Dubh a’Ghiuthais comes out of her cloud to investigate, and is promptly shot dead with an arrow, or in other versions with a silver bullet or a silver sixpence, or else she comes crashing dead to the ground when a woman at a shieling above Kildonan blesses her in the name of the Trinity.
Speyside versions of the story have some interesting touches. As told in Affleck Grey’s “Legends of the Cairngorms”, for example, the ewes, cows and mares are put on the east side of the Spey, the lambs, calves and foals on the west.
Elsewhere there are one or two quite different traditions about the burning of the forests. In Gairloch, according to Robertson, it was said to have been done by a witch called a’Chuilisg who was eventually surrounded and done to death in Fèith Chuilisg, the Cuilisg’s Bog near Melvaig.
In his book “Norse Influence on Celtic Scotland”, George Henderson told a very peculiar tale in which the King of Lochlann’s Daughter comes every year to Scotland in a glass apparatus to set fire to the forests. Instead of gathering animals, this story tells of gathering pipers — eighteen of them in couples, “arrayed circularly so as always to be moving round”. Attracted by the noise, she also begins to go around until she falls in her glass gear in the middle of the pipers and is dashed to pieces. I take it that this story belongs to an era before pipe bands were common (it has been claimed that they were invented in 1783) and that the pipers were playing against each other like bees in a hive, thus driving this music-loving girl to distraction.
And she watched
them burn
Ruling Class Villains – Queen Mary of Deforestation
In another version of the story, we have Queen Mary as the villain.
This is a story as told again by Raghnall MacilleDhuibh (Ronnie Black) from his series the Quern Dust Calander. I have copied his words below and they are in italics. You can find more of his writing .
“It was Alexander Macbain, a Badenoch man, who told the Queen Mary version of the story to the Gaelic Society of Inverness in 1890. There is a touch of humour in it, and it may stem from the fact that Mary’s men ravaged the Earl of Huntly’s lands and burnt his woods, or possibly from the great deer drive which the Earl of Atholl made in 1563 for the Queen. In addition, as Hugh Cheape has pointed out in an article on woodlands on the Clanranald estate in Christopher Smout’s recent book “Scotland Since Prehistory”, woods in the Central Highlands were variously said to have been burnt on Mary’s orders to eliminate the hiding places of robbers, political enemies, or wolves. In Strathglass, too, it was said that the woods were burnt in the time of Queen Mary.
One written account of the deer drive claims that two thousand men took two months to drive a herd of two thousand red deer from the woods and hills of Atholl, Badenoch, Mar and Moray to the place of slaughter, and that in one single day the dogs, guns and arrows of the hunting party killed “360 deer with five wolves and some roes”. What the people of Badenoch remembered, however, was that Queen Mary caused their forests to be burned, and I would guess from this that one of the less scrupulous stratagems used by the Earl’s men to bring such a mass of deer together may have been simply to burn them out.
According to Macbain’s story, the Queen had visited the Highlands and when she returned home the first thing that her husband (or, in another version, the Marquis of Huntly) asked her was not how she was, but how his forests were. They were, after all, a treasured resource for boatbuilding and iron-smelting, to name but two of their most precious economic functions.
So, Macbain says, the Queen travelled north again, took up a vantage point at a place ever afterwards called Sròn na Bàrainn (Banrighinn) or the Queen’s Ness, overlooking Glenfeshie, and gave orders to set the woods on fire. I must say this offers a new twist to what tourists are told about places like the ‘Queen’s View’ above Loch Tummel, namely that she liked the scenery. Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t; but the people who would have passed on the traditions of the place weren’t very interested in scenery, and if tradition put Queen Mary on Queen’s View, it was more likely to be a tradition about hunting or fires than about scenery.
To put it in modern terms, if the Queen came along and privatised the people’s deer or the people’s trees they would have remembered it; if she had come along and just looked, it wouldn’t have bothered them one way or the other.
Anyway, as Macbain concludes, the Queen’s orders were obeyed. “The Badenoch forest was set burning, and the Queen, Nero-like, enjoyed the blaze from her point of vantage. But many glens and nooks escaped, and Rothiemurchus was left practically intact.”
Deforestation – Folklore Sciencefact
“If the Queen privatises the peoples deer they remember it” of course we remember it. Of course in our traditional stories we have a memory of the harm done by the invading Vikings and Norseman and the ruling classes.
The story of the Norse Dubh a’ Ghiuthais, is so fascinating for many other links to our folk heritage So much in the story of the folk magic of our selves. It is also complex. On one hand she is a destructive force but cares for the animals so much their discomfort is what stops her from destroying all. Another way of looking at it is she is also a woman under the compulsion of a man. In Queens Mary story a similar arc is presented. A woman under compulsion of man but she has her own volition here. In fact she destroys the animals with pleasure.
Both women encouraged to destruction because of the envy of a man. Driven to destruction because of the greed of progress and capitalism. Be it fact or metaphor it tells a story very poignant to today and the deforestation we will suffer and continue to suffer as once again science tells us, and we can see with our won eyes, the climate is changing.
Who will we blame now? Who is being driven to destruction because of the will of the man? What song of animal or music of man will stop the destruction this time?
We tell the stories, so we don’t forget.
The people and the land remember least we ever forget.
For more reading please see:
Alan J. Bruford and Donald A. MacDonald (eds), Scottish Traditional Tales (Edinburgh: Polygon, 1994), pp. 297–98, 466–67;
Mìchael Newton, ‘Coille Mhòr Chaillean ann am Beul-aithris nan Gàidheal’, in Wilson McLeod and Máire Ní Annracháin (eds.), Cruth na Tìre(Baile Àtha Cliath: Coiscéim, 2003), pp. 180–91.
Footnotes
[1] In the modern Gaelic languages, Lochlann signifies Scandinavia or, more specifically, Norway.
As such it is cognate with the Welsh name for Scandinavia, Llychlyn In both old Gaelic and old Welsh, such names literally mean ‘land of lakes’ or ‘land of swamps’.
It may initially have referred to the mythical, undersea otherworldly abode of the Fomorians of Irish mythology. At times it may have referred to an early Norse settlement in Scotland.
Classical Gaelic literature and other sources from early medieval Ireland first featured the name, in earlier forms like Laithlind and Lothlend.
All uses of the word Lochlann relate it to Nordic realms of Europe. While the traditional view has identified Laithlind with Norway, some have preferred to locate it in a Norse-dominated part of Scotland, perhaps the Hebrides or the Northern Isles.
Donnchadh Ó Corráin states that Laithlinn was the name of Viking Scotland, and that a substantial part of Scotland—the Northern and Western Isles and large areas of the coastal mainland from Caithness and Sutherland to Argyll—was conquered by the Vikings in the first quarter of the ninth century and a Viking kingdom was set up there earlier than the middle of the century.
