Iona, the Lords of the Isles and a mystery in stone
10 December 2023
St Columba’s monastery on magical Iona is one of the great sites of the West Highlands. As Samuel Johnson put it in 1773: “That man is little to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona”. I could have stayed for days to explore the little white beaches and rocky hills. But a few hours is just enough to visit the ruins and church that so moved Johnson. These date from much later than Columba - there is almost nothing to be seen of his original foundation. Instead, we must thank the family of Somerled, first Lord of the Isles, for refounding Iona around the year 1200. His son Ranald gave the monastery to the Benedictine order and his daughter Bethoc’s priory was Augustinian. The familiar medieval buildings that grace the site today date from this reinvention some 600 years after the great saint died.Somerled was the heroic progenitor of the Macdonald clan as well as founder of the Lordship of the Isles. That strange state-within-a state stamped its mark on Iona. The cloisters and museum are full of the wonderful sculptured grave slabs and effigies that characterise the Western seaboard. Once paving graveyards with their beautiful swirling motifs, to prevent further wear and tear they are now usually propped upright against the crumbling wall of numerous chapels along the west coast. Oddly, hardly any of these marvellous stones record the resting place of well-known historical figures. Of the hundred or so that still carry inscriptions, there are no Somerleds, Ranalds or any other of the Lords. An exception is the stone marking the burial place of a certain ‘Angus, son of Lord Angus Macdonald of Islay’. For years it was assumed to belong to Angus Og, Robert the Bruce’s mighty champion (and great-great-grandson of Somerled). But historians now think it more likely to belong to another of the great warriors of the age. This Angus came five generations after his more famous namesake. He was the bastard son of John II, the last Lord of the Isles, and father of Donald Dubh, the final claimant to the Lordship.Returning from Iona on a choppy October morning I passed Bloody Bay sailing from Tobermory to Ardnamurchan. This was the site of Scotland’s greatest naval battle. A great curve of cliffs off the north coast of Mull, exposed as the Atlantic meets the Sound of Mull, on the strategic waterway that linked the islands and peninsular provinces of the Lordship. Its castles still line the coast here today: Mingarry, Aros, Ardtornish, Duart.I’m often struck not by how much we know about this period, but how little. The battle of Bloody Bay took place almost in the modern era: just a few years before a latter-day Columba’s famous voyage to America. And yet we’re not even sure of its date and why it was fought. It took place at some point between 1480 and 1484. Angus Og had taken up arms against his father. A civil conflict, then. Most of his backers appear to have been Macdonalds, whereas his father was supported by other vassals of the Lordship such as the Macleans and Macleods.
