Clan Macneil Scotland's Clans

A chain of distant islands on a blue horizon,

a tranquil image that disguises a violent and bloody past.

400 years ago, seafarers navigated these often treacherous waters

at their peril, fearing sudden attack and plunder by Clan MacNeil.

On an autumn day in 1596, an English merchant ship was making her

way north, sailing between the Outer Hebrides and the Scottish mainland.

The captain was anxious - on the horizon lay the island of Barra,

home to clan Chief Rory MacNeil,

the most notorious pirate in Scottish waters.

In this series, I'm going on a personal journey to reveal

the extraordinary stories behind the great clan names of history.

And of all the clans in the Hebrides there can be few whose fate has been

so shaped by the sea as Clan MacNeil, the last of the Vikings.

On that day in 1596, the English captain watched

as a single square sail approached at speed across the sea...

..the telltale sign that MacNeil and his men had been scrambled into action.

The end for the captain and his crew was as swift as it was bloody.

MacNeil and his pirates fought their way on board, butchered everyone in sight and looted the cargo.

Their work done, the MacNeils left the ship to drift with its corpses

until the wind and the tide drove it to destruction on the coast.

400 years on and I'm crossing the Minch, the same

ancient Hebridean seaway where Rory MacNeil plied his nefarious trade.

With me on board is writer and historian John Sadler.

John, can you tell me why you think that the MacNeils became such notorious pirates?

What was the secret of their piratical success?

I suppose one would have to say that the MacNeils were a continuation of

the great Viking tradition of sea roving and sea raiding.

They probably didn't even regard themselves as pirates as such.

They continued, on a maritime basis, the kind of Celtic raiding tradition

on land which the other clans carried out with each other.

The mainland clans, of course, practised cattle raiding, which was an ancient Celtic tradition,

as a form of Homeric manliness, as a kind of...

As a macho activity, almost like a sport - for glory as much as for gain.

Whereas the MacNeils continued that same type of activity but using their sea legs,

rather than practising on land. And their great seamanship, their fleets

of swift galleys meant that they could do it on an industrial scale.

And how serious a threat were the MacNeils to shipping in the Minch?

Unquestionably, they were a very significant threat, perhaps as...

Almost a threat on the scale of modern, say, Somali pirates

are in their part of the globe, and they were just as ruthless.

We shouldn't be too blinded by the kind of Errol Flynn, swashbuckling

legend that attaches to the MacNeils, or the fact that there's a peacefully rather romantic form of piracy -

it was a ruthless commercial activity and they would not hesitate to kill if they were offered any resistance.

And kill they did.

When Rory MacNeil attacked the English merchant ship in 1596, there were no survivors.

Loaded to the gunnels with booty, MacNeil turned his galley towards

home, the island of Barra and Kisimul Castle, the Castle of the Sea,

where for generations, MacNeil Chiefs had held sway over the islands

of the southernmost Hebrides.

From any vantage point, the view of Kisimul Castle is impressive.

Occupying the most sheltered natural harbour in the Hebrides, it gave the MacNeils the perfect base

from which to attack shipping in one of the world's major trade routes, the great Northway of the Sea,

connecting Western sea-boardered Europe to Scandinavia and the Baltic.

Barra lies plumb bang in some of the major

sea routes, European sea routes. Lots of very interesting,

very curious, valuable objects being carried backwards and forwards

around Barra,

especially during the early modern period, 400 or 500 years ago.

Barra's remoteness from the centre of power in Edinburgh

not only made it an ideal place to launch attacks on shipping - it also encouraged the MacNeil Chief to feel

untouchable in his island castle and master of all he surveyed.

Kisimul was the centre of MacNeil power for at least six centuries,

perhaps much longer if the legendary accounts of their origins can be believed.

To find out how this island fortress fits into the wider story

of MacNeil occupation on Barra,

I've come to meet Tom McNeill, from Queen's University, Belfast.

Tom, have you got any idea of how long this place has been occupied?

I would have thought it would have been occupied

from certainly about the 10th, 11th century. The buildings we see

are almost certainly later - quite possibly quite a bit later.

Well, some of them, I know, have been, restored in the 20th century, but basically,

what have we got here, Tom?

What we have got is the Great Hall range down here, you've got the religious side here with the chapel,

and you've got the lord's accommodation up here in the tower.

So you've got three elements of classic lordship. Now, is that common for this part of the world?

It's not what the traditional view of the Gaelic world is.

It's based on a European idea of hierarchy and ceremony.

Ceremony and public display form the currency of medieval lordship

and the Chief of Clan MacNeil was no slouch when it came to impressing guests and members of the clan

with his lordly status, here in the great hall.

Tom, can you paint a picture of what life

might have been like when the great MacNeil was at dinner here?

The Chief and whoever he chose to ask to come to sit with him, at the table running across here.

The clansmen and the lesser guests, down the body of the hall.

So this is all about display, and a display that is designed to enhance the power and prestige of MacNeil.

Absolutely. It shows who is the boss, whose guest you are, whose favour you need.

The great hall was MacNeil's stage, the place from where he made his proclamations, but the important

decisions of politics and power were made in the impressive castle tower.

This is where the Chief's private life was played out behind closed doors.

This is really a fantastic view and we are quite privileged to enjoy it.

Yes, and we would have been to enjoy it in the Middle Ages, because the stair up to these

battlements comes from the private apartments of the lord, so only the

MacNeil and his private guests would have been invited up here.

Do you think MacNeil of Barra, with such an emphasis on display,

might have been a boastful, vainglorious man?

We have the 17th century story

that he sent a herald up every day to announce that the great MacNeil

had had his dinner and therefore the princes of the world might now dine.

Now, that's modesty.

To maintain himself in the style that matched his boastful claims,

MacNeil had to look beyond the shores of his barren island empire

to fill his table and stock his cellars.

Ships in the open sea were both key to survival

and to maintaining the loyalty of his clan.

Now, the stones you can see behind me, just sticking out of the water,

are all that's left of a low harbour wall.

Now, this is where MacNeil of Barra would have berthed his birlinn,

his highland galley, after he'd attacked the English merchantmen.

The feature is known as a naust,

an old Norse Viking word for a place where you berth

your boat, and it's also a feature that directly connects the MacNeils to the Vikings who once

dominated these islands, because before the MacNeils, the Vikings were the pirates of the Hebrides.

The MacNeils of Barra are direct heirs

of a tradition that was both Viking and Gaelic.

They come from a group known as the Norse-Gaels,

that were people who intermarried between the Vikings and the Gaels,

and the MacNeils are a living embodiment of this tradition

and continued the seafaring tradition that moved from the Viking galleys

and longships into the birlinns of the clans.

The birlinn, or West Highland galley,

used by the pirate MacNeils was almost identical in design

to the infamous longships of their Viking predecessors.

These boats symbolised the cultural and technological fusion of the Norse and Gaelic worlds.

The birlinn was the Rolls Royce of ships in medieval Scotland

and a sure sign that its owner

was a man of great social standing, which is why so many were carved on

the gravestones of the mighty,

as a visual reminder of the Vikings' technological legacy.

And uniquely on Barra, in the ancient graveyard of the ruined Celtic church of Cille Bharra,

is another gravestone that perfectly demonstrates the fusion of the Celtic and Norse cultures.

Now, this is a replica of a 10th-century Celtic cross

found on Barra. The original's actually in Edinburgh.

Now, you can see it's a very fine example of the stonemason's art,

but it's on the other side

that things get really interesting from my point of view, because here,

you've got these quite bizarre-looking markings.

Now, these markings are Norse runes -

runes being the written language of the Vikings - and it says here,

"This stone was raised to the memory of Thorgeth by her father, Steinar."

And we don't know who Thorgeth was,

but this stone shows how the two cultures - the Celtic culture and

the Viking culture - had fused together, because by now, the pagan Vikings had become Christian.

But converting to Christianity didn't make any difference to

the Vikings' violent and piratical ways,

which are neatly described in the story of how they arrived on Barra.

According to the ancient Norse Grettir Saga, the first Viking

on Barra was the improbably named Onund The Wooden-Leg.

Now, like all good pirates, Onund had only one leg,

but this, it seems, didn't stop him and his followers from defeating the native Gaelic speakers on

the island and setting up a base here, from where they launched summer raids to burn and plunder.

The Vikings passed their culture of raiding onto their Gaelic-speaking successors.

By the 1600s, when Rory MacNeil was making his attacks on shipping in the Minch, Barra piracy

had changed little in 600 years, yet the reach of royal authority was now beginning to extend to the Hebrides.

Roused to anger by Rory's attacks, the king in Edinburgh

clamped down on the MacNeil Chief and piracy declined.

Despite this, MacNeil Chiefs continued to defy authority

in the mistaken belief that their isolation still guaranteed immunity from the law.

In 1723, the 39th Chief of Clan MacNeil

was presented with an opportunity to reap untold riches from the deep.

The white water breaking behind me portrays the presence of a semi-submerged reef.

Now, even in calm weather, this can be a dangerous place, but in a hurricane,

the seas around here can be whipped up into a terrifying and destructive frenzy.

To be caught out near that reef in bad weather could mean almost certain death.

One night in January 1723,

the island was hit by hurricane-force winds, driving the Adelaar,

a ship of the Dutch East India Company,

laden with rich cargo, silver and jewels, onto the reef.

Within minutes, the ship's back was broken

and the 350 passengers and crew thrown into the wild water.

There were no survivors.

Many of the bodies were washed ashore here, on the big beach to the west of the island.

Now, what had been a human tragedy for the men and women

who'd lost their lives at sea very quickly became an opportunity for the men and women of Barra.

The bodies were systematically looted and the shoreline combed for the goods that were washed ashore.

MacNeil sealed off the island, desperate to grab as much as he could.

But when news got to Edinburgh, the state reached out and claimed the treasure.

MacNeil now found himself powerless to stop government-sponsored divers

from salvaging the wreck.

Following in the wake of this early salvage operation,

a team of marine archaeologists,

led by Colin Martin, dived the dangerous wreck in the 1970s.

Incredibly, the 18th-century divers had raised

nearly all of the 500 silver ingots

and 30,000 silver coins, worth 170 million dollars in today's market.

Now, what did you find down there? Was there much left of the boat itself?

There was nothing of the ship at all. It's a very, very exposed

and dynamic site and the ship had been broken to virtually nothing,

probably in the first few seconds of the wrecking event.

Um, it was then heavily salvaged by our 18th-century predecessors, so all we found were a few

durable items scattered quite widely in the gullies around the reef.

-What kind of durable items? We've got pictures of you...

-Well...

-Was that a metal detector there?

-Yes.

That's a metal detector. We found quite a lot of lead ingots,

which were part of the ship's ballast.

-We also found a good many of the ship's guns.

-Right.

Most of which were iron, but one of the large ones was a bronze gun

-which was one of a pair of bronze guns.

-Is that this one?

That's this one here.

There were originally two guns of that size and they were the guns set

on either side of the ship's compass, so they wouldn't affect the...

-accuracy of the compass.

-But presumably, they would have been

-more interested in raising the gold and silver?

-Absolutely.

-And what kind of machine did they have to take them down?

-Well...

Was it a diving bell, or...?

No, it was a kind of barrel, and this was patented

by an Englishman called Jacob Rowe, and he was the leader of

-the team that recovered the Adelaar's treasure.

-It looks like a saxophone!

-It does a bit.

-I can't see how it works.

-Yes, this is actually

a copper version, but I think the version they used mainly was made like a barrel

out of wooden staves.

And it had a little porthole that you could look through.

It must have been terrifying to go down in one of these,

but they successfully managed to recover pretty well all the Adelaar's treasure.

So he would have been able to attach one end of a...

like a line to whatever he's discovered on the seabed.

To a box of coins, or whatever, and if it was loose coins...

They list their equipment and one of the items is called the money shovel.

Right.

-And you found some money, I believe?

-We did indeed, yes. These, these are silver coins from the Adelaar.

-So these are 18th century?

-These are 18th century.

Well, actually, some of them are 17th century.

-Here's quite an old one.

-That's an enormous coin.

That's a Spanish piece of eight.

A genuine pieces of eight pieces of eight?

A genuine pieces of eight pieces of eight.

That's actually quite early, that's 1639, that one.

Uh-huh.

This one, which is exactly the same size,

-is a Dutch coin, so it doesn't have the King's head on it.

-Right.

-But it's got a horseman on it.

-Right.

So these things were always known as silver riders.

Thwarted by this extraordinary 18th-century salvage operation,

MacNeil never got his hands on any of the treasure.

This failure marks the point where the power traditionally wielded

by the MacNeil Chiefs over their islands began to weaken.

But if life was getting tough for the Chief, then spare a thought for his people.

Their daily struggle for survival is perfectly illustrated by the story of Mingulay.

Just 20 miles south of Barra, Mingulay was evacuated in 1912,

ending almost 6,000 years of human occupation.

Mingulay was often described by visitors as the "nearer St Kilda,"

because the lives of its inhabitants was, like the St Kildans, uniquely dominated by the sea.

Mingulay could be cut off for weeks at a time by storms, so the people had to be entirely self sufficient,

but the sea that separated them from the other islands also provided them with a livelihood.

My guide on the island is fisherman and local historian Calum MacNeil.

Calum is intimately acquainted with the Mingulay story.

He first came here as a 15-year-old shepherd when he spent the lambing

and shearing seasons living among the ruins.

Calum, how many people would have lived here in its heyday?

Well, up to 180, but that was excessive

in relation to what the land could support.

How did people live here? How did they sustain themselves?

Reasonably well. At one stage in the early 1800s, for example,

they were exporting even butter and feathers.

Quite often, that would help to pay, especially with the rent.

And, um...dried salt fish, salt cod and salt bream especially, cos it was more expensive.

Basically, the fish and the seabirds was the mainstay.

Calum, you say that birds were the mainstay here. How were they caught?

They would snare them with what they call a snarey - a loop

on a rod. And they would also

just climb down and catch them on the ridges, especially when...

they started to fly.

-What, on the big cliffs?

-On the cliffs, on the ledges...

They knew which ledges to operate on.

The puffins would be caught and the birds as well.

Now, to some extent, this village was a fishing village, was it not?

And there would have been boats leaving here from this beach behind us, after basking sharks.

-Is that right?

-They were harpooning the basking shark in a big way in the early 1800s.

They're docile and they're easily caught, and they would harpoon them

and they would take them inside the boat, and then they would row in and they would take them onto the beach

and they would start melting down the...

the liver especially, for oil.

In the summer of 1905, a young Scottish photographer

called Robert Adam caught the life of Mingulay on film.

These haunting images are a vivid reminder of a way of life that has gone forever.

The lure of the modern world

took the young people away and life on Mingulay became unsustainable.

In 1912, the population abandoned their island home

to the sand and the seals.

Just going back 100 years, it's hard to us to imagine today, just looking

at the ruins, but this must have been a, a really vibrant community.

It was, a lively community, because the houses

were close together. They were cheek-to-jowl.

The community would know each other so well

and they would know who were good singers, good storytellers.

You'd have weddings, marriages taking place,

wedding celebrations... And they weren't short of music and song.

They would tend to pray as well.

These things kept them going.

The fate of Mingulay highlights the pressures that had

been facing the communities and all the MacNeil islands.

These came to a head in 1830, when General Roderick MacNeil,

a veteran of Waterloo, became the 41st Chief of the clan.

He was crippled by massive inherited debts.

To survive bankruptcy, he exploited an unlikely resource.

MacNeil devised a get-rich-quick scheme,

exploiting a resource that Barra has in abundance - this stuff.

Seaweed.

From the mid-18th century onwards, the West Highland economy became

increasingly dependent upon the most unlikely crop ever,

seaweed. Certain varieties of seaweed could be burnt down to make soda ash,

which was very important at the time

for making soap and glass, among other things.

In Barra, the General went a step further.

People didn't just harvest kelp in Barra - they were expected to process it as well.

This is a massive undertaking.

Perhaps as many as 500 people - a quarter of the population of

the island - were involved in the kelp industry at this time.

But work in the kelp industry was one of back-breaking toil,

where Barra men and women spent days standing in freezing cold water, bent double, cutting the kelp

before dragging it up the shore to be burnt.

Because the work was so unappealing,

Chief Roderick MacNeil resorted to bullying tactics to recruit his

workforce - threatening eviction and clearance if his will was defied.

This was not a happy time for the ordinary members of the clan.

A visiting priest to Barra was so shocked by what he saw that he wrote,

"The feeble looks and meagre bodies of the belaboured people, without the necessary hours of sleep

"and altogether dressed in rags, would melt the heart of any but a tyrant into compassion."

The implication was quite clear - MacNeil had no heart.

MacNeil was that tyrant.

But despite his desperate bullying tactics,

financial ruin was MacNeil's only reward.

As his debts increased, the price of soda ash collapsed.

These walls are all that's left of the grand house and gardens that General MacNeil's father

had built, here at Eoligarry, at the north end of Barra.

It's hard for us to imagine today, but this was once a beautifully furnished home fit for a clan Chief,

but MacNeil's bankruptcy sounded its death knell.

General MacNeil began his reign as MacNeil of Barra £30,000 in debt.

By the time he finished it, he was £115,000 in debt -

a huge amount of money, an unthinkable amount of money.

The only solution,

with his creditors knocking on the door, was to sell up -

sell the island, sell his belongings.

Unfortunately, at the time as well for him,

a Hebridean estate wasn't really a marketable commodity.

Ironically, the man who'd evicted his tenants and had threatened

to clear the entire island was himself cleared from his ancestral lands by bankruptcy.

In 1845, Roderick MacNeil, the 41st Chief of the clan, fled the island

with the family's silver, and went into hiding.

After the general's death in 1863,

the title of Chief passed to a cousin

whose ancestors had emigrated to North America a generation earlier.

Today, this transatlantic connection continues.

Back at Kisimul Castle, I'm met by Rory MacNeil, the son of the present clan Chief.

Rory was born in the USA, but his heart has always been Barra's.

Now, Rory, for almost a century, there was no MacNeil Chief on Barra.

What happened to change that?

Well, it was really my grandfather.

He was aware of the heritage, and his own family heritage.

He was born in 1889 and he came here for the first time

in 1909, with his mother, a strong-willed mother, and I think

it was really that visit which...

stimulated him to make it his life's mission, if you will,

to find a way to come back to Barra and to re-establish the position of

the Chief and to rebuild and restore Kisimul Castle, which at the time was in ruins.

Now, you're the son of the present Chief, and what made you think things had changed?

Well, my father became Chief in 1970, when my grandfather died,

and I think by inclination, he was more of an egalitarian than my grandfather, perhaps.

In the community here, there's an incredibly strong community in Barra,

and it's a very egalitarian community, and I think my father quickly, quite quickly,

began to perceive that. And of course, landlords are not held in great fondness

in Scotland, as everybody knows, and he began to perceive that as well.

In an enlightened move, Rory's father

returned the ownership of the Barra estate to the community,

a decision that changed the old hierarchical position of the Chief

as the first amongst equals.

Now, Rory, what do you think

the role of a 21st-century Chief is today?

What's very special about Barra is that the Chief

has a living relationship with the traditional Gaelic community, a modernising Gaelic community,

nevertheless, one which has roots which go back hundreds of years.

And I think that...

my grandfather, in his own way, and then my father, bringing it into the 21st century, we're now able to have

a relationship with the community which is focused more on social things, on economic development,

and on helping the community to continue to thrive.

The old model of Chief has been changed forever and Kisimul Castle

is no longer the home of warriors, pirates or even landlords.

The modern Chiefs of Clan MacNeil have discovered new ways to support

the island community in its ongoing struggle to wrest a living from the sea.

Today, Barra remains at the heart of Clan MacNeil, an island and a people

whose past and present are bound up with the sea.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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