Hon President: Mrs Frances Hood. FSA Scot
Hon Vice-resident: Mr Murdo MacDonald
President Mr Michael Peacock
Vice-President Mr Colin 'Les' Oman
Secretary: Mr Angus Marlin
Minutes Secretary:Mr Angus Marlin
Treasurer: Mrs Elisabeth Marrison, FSA Scot
Committee: Mrs Eunice Crook, Mrs Frances Hood. Mr lain McAlister, Mr Murdo Dr Sandy McMillan, Mr George McSporran, Mrs Judy Martin, Mrs Elle,. Ms. Christine Ritchie.

The Society's Winter Programme, 2023-24

2023
11 Oct Kate Phillips: 'What role did Campbellton play in the time of slavery?'
8 Nov Murdo MacDonald. 'Clachan to Southend in the Argyll Synod Papers - Poor Widows and Ruinous Kirks.'
6 Dec Duncan Beaton: 'My Kintyre Ancestors.'
2024
17 Jan Angus Martin: 'A Memorial Evening for Agnes Stewart (1936-2021)', with presentation of her Kintyre slides and local songs from Anne Leith and Les Oman.
14 Feb Neil Brown: 'Kintyre Barn Owl Project: A Year in the Life Of …'
27 Mar Annual General Meeting, followed by two short presentations (to be announced).

Meetings are held on Wednesdays in the Ardshiel Hotel, starting at 7.30 p.m.

Non-members welcome - £3 at door.

A Pauper 's Story	Alan R. Harrow	p2
Poorhouse Festivals	Campbeltown Courier	p6
The Portrigh Shark Tragedy (1937)	Les Oman	p8
Craigaig: A History	Angus Martin	p12
Some place-Names in Campbeltown OPRs	Angus Martin	p16
'Boys o' Calliburn' Uncovered	Angus Martin	p22
Lily Cregeen: An Appreciation	Frances Hood	p24
Edward 'Teddy' Lafferty: A Tribute	Angus Martin	p25
Charlie McMillan: A Tribute	Iain Duncan	p26
By Hill and Shore	Angus Martin	P28
The Maclagan MSS. and two Kintyre Tales	-	p32
Editorial Miscellany	-	p33

Copyright, unless expired, belongs the authors.

Correspondence	Subscriptions & Distribution
Angus Martin	Angus Martin
13 Saddell St	13 Saddell Street
Campbeltown	Campbeltown
Argyll PA28 6DN	Argyll PA28 6DN

Editor's e-mail address: judymartin733@btinternet.com
Treasurer's e-mail address: elit.abeth.marrison@yahoo.co.uk
Society website is at kintyreantiquarians.uk

Annual Postal Subscription Rates

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The Maclagan MSS. and two Kintyre Tales

The Maclagan manuscripts, which constitute a vast collection of Highland folklore, were compiled by an Edinburgh physician, R. C, Maclagan, from material supplied by collectors between 1893 and 1909. The most productive of these collectors was a remarkable Kintyre woman, Elizabeth 'Elspeth' Kerr, who contributed more than a thousand items, in Gaelic, English and Scots. During the first half of that period, she kept house for her maternal uncle, the Rev James McMillan, who was United Free Church minister of Kilchoman parish, Islay. When he retired in 1900, she moved with him to Edinburgh and died there in 1940. Her brother Archibald, who died in 1928, was also a U. F. Church minister, at Enzie in Banffshire. She was born in 1854 at Drumlemble, and, when five years old, her father, Donald Kerr, was killed in a mining accident, leaving her mother, Margaret McMillan, with seven children. I was unaware of her existence until Ronald Black told me of her outstanding role in the Maclagan enterprise, and she is clearly worthy of a biographical study in a future issue of this magazine. Two samples of Kintyre lore are reproduced below, with my own notes, and a more substantial selection should appear in the next issue. The Maclagan MSS. are held in the of Scottish Studies, Edinburgh - to which due acknowledgement is given - and may be part-sourced online.
Editor

Second Sight (page 6758)

A native of Kintyre said that an ancestor of his own, Who went under the name of lain Og ['Young John,] was said to have the gift of second sight. The reciter heard the following instance of it related by Neil O' May.
One time Iain Og had a vision which he told at the time. He said that he had seen a funeral coming from the direction of Glenbreackerie to the burying place at Keils [recte, Keil] but, he said, I have seen a stranger thing than that. I have seen a funeral going front Keils graveyard up Glenbreackerie.
This was considered to be very droll, but it was soon explained, for in a little while a person in the glen died and was buried in Keils. On the day of the bunal, when the funeral party were in the graveyard, one of their number dropped down dead, and the party that had come with the coffin to the graveyard, had also to carry the other corpse back to his former home in Glenbreackerie.
From Lachlan MacNeill, Amod, Glenbreackerie. Amod was associated with that MacNeill family from at least 1776. Lachlan, the last tenant there, farmed in partnership with his brother, Malcolm, until the latter's death, aged 62, in 1903. Lachlan himself died in 1921, aged 72. Elizabeth Kerr's grandparents, Alexander McMillan and Mary McConachy, were at Amod - presumably as farm servants - when they married in 1816.

Christenings and luck (p 6793)

A native of the parish of Campbeltown says that it used to be a regular custom in Kintyre to have a Christening party; when the party were at the feast which followed the ceremony, there was always a dram, and the child's health was drank. The reciter says this was so common that it gave rise to the belief that where the dram was awanting, good luck could hardly be expected to follow. This found an illustration on one occasion when there was a baptism, and shortly thereafter the child died. An old man who had been present at the baptism, referring to the child's death, remarked, 'Nae better could happen tae't, for there wasna one drap o deoram (whisky) at its Christening.
From Elizbeth Kerr's sister, Mary. She married a shepherd, John Mcpherson, in 1879. and in 1891 and 1901 Campbeltown censuses they were at Glecknahavil, which is now known as Lochorodale. In the 1891 census, Mary is recorded as speaking Gaelic and English. Which is likely, but ten years later she has no Gaelic! She died in the Collage Hospital, Campbeltow,. in 1932, aged 85.

Editorial Miscellany

CHANGES TO COUNCIL. At the Society AGM on 29 March, for the first time in many years there were changes to the composition of the council. Dr Sandy McMillan resigned as president and was replaced by Mr Michael Peacock; Mr Murdo MacDonald resigned as vice-president and was replaced by Mr Les Oman. Both retiring office-bearers will remain on the council. Two new members were elected to the council, Mr Iain McAlister, manager of Glen Scotia Distillery, and Mrs Eunice Crook (né McCallum) who has retired to her native Campbeltown. Mr MacDonald has become honorary vice-president following the death of Mrs Lily Cregeen. Finally, Mr Harry McIver, who was a council member from 1994 until his resignation last year, died on 30 March, aged 90. At the AGM, a proposal to increase the Society membership fee to £10 for individuals and £15 for families was passed and will take effect this year.

THE NATURAL HISTORY AND ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY OF MID-ARGYLL is now, sadly, itself history. At a special general meeting in Lochgilphead on 3 August, the decision was taken that the society should be dissolved. Eighteen members attended and 14 apologies were received. In 1971, when the first issue of the Society's magazine, The Kist, was published, membership stood at 124 and a year later exceeded 170. Although there were no formal ties between our Society and NHASMA - perhaps, with hindsight, there should have been - the birth in 1977 of The Kintyre Magazine was overseen by Dr F. S. Mackenna, who was then editor of The Kist, a role he performed with distinction from its fourth issue (1972) until its 41st (1991) after which Adeline Clark took over. Perhaps the most significant factor in the Society's decline, and its failure to attract new committee members, was - I quote from the minutes of that last meeting - 'societal change, including the growth of social media'.
The NHASMA was founded in 1955, some 34 years after our own Society. Seventy-two members signed up, and the elected office-bearers comprised: Hon. President, the Duke of Argyll; President, Marion Campbell of Kilberry; Joint Hon. Secretaries, E.R. Cregeen MA, University of Glasgow and 'Hawthorn', Ardrishaig, and Dr Lamont McNab, 'Aros', Lochgilphead; Hon. Treasurer, J.M. Rattray, Bank of Scotland, Lochgilphead. Annual membership cost 7s 6d, and, when The Kist was launched in 1971, it was priced -according to the new decimal system - at 15p but was free to members.
Among the Society's outstanding contributions to the archaeology. history and natural history of Mid-Argyll, aside from its magazine and associated publications, were the recording of pre-1855 gravestones, which commenced in 1971, and the establishment of Auchindrain Museum (p 24). As Marion Campbell stated in her editorial in the second issue of The Kist in 1971: ' ...[I]t may be said here that Auchindrain is very much your Society's "baby"; the Society took the initiative in raising funds to preserve this group of houses and their outbuildings and is still closely linked with its development through the two trustees it appoints to the governing body of the Museum.'

A SENSE OF PLACE KINTYRE'S REMARKABLE DIASPORA, by Ronald J. Roberts, was published on 1 June by Campbeltown Heritage Centre and is priced at £17.50. The back cover promises 'a serendipitous set of fascinating biographies of some of the most interesting and famous of these international "achievers" from the past two hundred years'. There are 63 potted biographies, which occupy 302 pages of the text; the compilation, however. would have been completed by the addition of the author's sources, a bibliography and an index. That said, the book is a handsome production, printed on high quality paper and well-illustrated. It is hoped to publish a review in the next issue of this magazine.

GERTRUDE HERMES. Apropos the late Lily Gemmill's marriage in 1958 (p 24), one of the wedding gifts she and Eric Cregeen received was from Naomi Mitchison in Carradale. It is a linocut print on Japanese paper titled 'Ring Net Fishers' and is dated 1955. The image appears almost abstract at first sight, hut the details reveal fishermen hauling a great circular net into a boat, with a line of hills on a distant horizon. It was made by the printmaker and sculptor Gertrude Hermes (1901-83) whom Naomi had befriended in London and brought to Carradale to illustrate her long, gossipy poem The Alban Goes Out, which she published in a 12-page limited edition in 1939 and subsequently included in her collection The Cleansing of the Knife in 1978. The Alban (CN 242) was built at Fraserburgh in 1932 for Robert Galbraith and fished from Carradale until 1947, when sold to Helmsdale, The Alban Goes Out was illustrated by two wood engravings by Hermes, who went to sea on a Carradale ring-netter and sketched the nocturnal action; and the cover illustration, also by her, is of a gannet underwater with a fish in its beak. Lily donated the print to Campbeltown Museum before she left Kintyre, and it is on display there.

ERRATUM. In NO. 93, p 19, Margaret Train, who married James Hair, shepherd at Ifferdale, in 1813, was a daughter of Thomas Train and Janet McKillop, not Janet Campbell. Thanks to Juliet Wright for pointing out my error.

To visit some of my index pages,
choose from this drop down list, and click GO:
Saga of our Kintyre Kin Kintyre in the 17th Century Kintyre Place Names Kintyre; Norman S. Newton Saddell Place Names Southend Parish Place Names Argyll Ancestor Place Names Kilcolmkeil Churchyard, Southend Argyle Settlement in History and Story Scottish Cemetery of Willow Creek Boone County Then and Now 1835 1976 Burlington, Wisconsin First 150+ Years J I Case, 1st Hundred Years Hunter, A Genealogical History of the Area Story of Roscoe The Picture Story of Roscoe Roscoe Twp., Winnebago Co., Ill., 1877 Rockton, Illinois History

Published with permission of The Kintyre Antiquarian & Natural History Society.
2025, Harold A. Ralston, Wisconsin, USA.
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