Township: Scarinish

Map Reference: Scarinish 300

Name Type: township

Meaning: See Scarinish in Longships on the Sand.

Other Forms:

Related Places:

Information:Extracts from 'The Gaelic Otherworld' by John Gregorson Campbell, Edited with commentary by Ronald Black, (Edinburgh; Birlinn, 2005), p 251-2:

When a person strongly wishes to be anywhere (as for instance when a person on a journey at night wishes to be at home), his footsteps coming to the house or the sounds of his lifting the door-latch are heard, or a glimpse of his appearance is seen, at the time of his conceiving or expressing the wish; and even without any wish being present to the absent person’s mind, sights or sounds indicative of his coming may be seen or heard. This previous intimation is called his tàradh, and his double or shade which is the cause of it, his tàslach
….
A feeling of oppression at night, and the sound of footsteps through the hosue and the noise of furnitutre being moved about, is the omen of a change of tenants, and the tàradh of the incoming tenant.
A young man, sleeping alone in a house in which a shop was kept by his father at Scarinish, Tiree, one night felt such an oppression on his chest that he could not sleep, and heard noises as if there were people in the house. He got up and made a thorough search, but found no-one. Before long there was a change in the occupancy of the house.

p 260:
A fishing boat or skiff belonging to the people of Gortendonald, in the west end of Tiree, was sold because ‘things’ were said to have been seen about it till no one belonging to the village would venture to sea in it. It waqs brought by some persons in Scarinish (in the east end of the island) who professed not to believe in taibhsearachd, or second sight. They gave the loan of it to people in Vaul, on the north side of the island. Here sights began again to be seen about it, and it was even said that at a time when it was hauled up on dry land, six men were seen rowing in it and one steering.
At last no one at all would venture to sea in the boat, and it was sent back to Scarinish. So strong was the feeling that the Vaul men would not venture with it through the Black Water (am Bun Dubh), as the sound between Coll and Tiree is called, but drew it across the land to Gott Loch, whence the Scarinish people took it home. After this its odour in the east end of Tiree became so bad that it was sold again to villagers in the west end, at some distance from the place it originally came from. Here it terminated its career in Tiree by drowning six men. (Footnote 873)
Footnote 873: Gortendonald, Goirtean Dòmhnaill (‘Donald’s Field’) is the Gaelic name for Barrapol (Norse bara ‘burial-ground’, bol ‘town’) in the south-western part of Tiree. Vaul is in Gaelic Bhalla, from Norse fiall ‘hill’. ‘Gott Loch’, Loch Ghot, is Gott Bay. See p. 262.

"A small hamlet consisting of some scattered houses, Post Office and Post Office Savings Bank, Temperance Hotel and General Merchants" - ONB p174.

Local Form:

Languages : Norse