Township: Cornaigmore

Map Reference: Cornaigmore 37

Name Type: house

Meaning: Shieling of the one night

Other Forms: Am Bothag Cruinn - AMcL

Related Places:

Information:This shieling was originally part of Kilmoluaig. The herdboy was frightened by a ghost on his first night there and would not return. The house became known as Taigh Alasdair mac Dhòmhnaill Ruaidh - AMcL.

The herdboy only stayed one night because it was haunted by fairies. He thinks it might have been the flashing of the Skerryvore lighthouse on the wall - IMcK.
Extract from 'The Gaelic Otherworld' by John Gregorson Campbell, Edited with commentary by Ronald Black, Edinburgh; Birlinn, 2005, p 115 and p 371:

Not far from the south end of the same loch there is a place called Fhuaire na h-Aon Oidhch the One Night’s Watch’), said to derive its name from an incident of which the water-horse was the hero, similar to that told of the urisk of Gleann Màili (see page 106).

Footnote 368: This is a curiosity. Since JGC describes the water-horse as the ‘hero’ of the incident, it must be a simple story of how it recognised a man dressed in woman’s clothes, as at p.106 above (SHIS 197). However, Fhaire na h-Aon Oidhch’ is hard to dissociate from Àirigh na h-Aon Oidhche (‘the One Night’s Sheiling’), the location of a vampire tale similar to ‘MacPhie’s Black Dog’ (pp.58-64 above); indeed a version from Benbecula published by Bruford and MacDonald (1994, pp. 318-19, 470) consists of the vampire story with the dog as an additional character, while JCG himself once remarked as ‘MacPhie’s Black Dog’ (‘Campbell 1885b, p. 263): “It is known in the Western Islands as the ‘One Night’s Watch’ (Aire na h-aon oidhche).”


Local Form:

Languages : Gaelic

Informants: Alasdair MacDonald, Kilmoluaig, 1990

Informant 2: Alec MacLean, Cornaigbeg, 3/1998

Informant 3: Iain Chaluim MacKinnon, Kilmoluaig, 1/1994