Township: West Hynish

Map Reference: West Hynish 32

Name Type: fort

Meaning: See Siader 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), p75:

At the foot of Heynish Hill, in the extreme south-west of Tiree, there is one of those small forts to be found in great-numbers in the Hebrides (and said to have been intended, by fires lighted upon them, to give warning of the approach of the Danes), called Shiadar Fort. In former days a family resided, or was out at the summer shielings, near this fort. The byre in which the milch cows were kept was some distance from the dwelling-house, and two boys of the family slept there to take care of the cows. One night a voice came to the mother of the family that the two best calves in the byre were at the point of death, and as proof of the warning, she would find the big yellow cow dead at the end of the house. This proved to be the case, and on reaching the byre the anxious woman found her two boys nearly frightened to death. They said they heard Fairy dogs trampling and baying on the top of the house.

Fragment of poem related to Dun Shiadair:

Tha mo bhata-sa gun iarain
'S bidh i bliadhna gun dòigh,
O nach maireann nan Fiantach
A dh' fhag an fhead air an òir.
[My boat is without iron, and it will be out of commission for a year. The Fenians, that were, that kept guard on the gold]
SA 1968/31.

'[Duncan] MacLean had the gold...and everybody knew that he had the gold, because he was searching for the gold here and there and getting hold of it...but what has he done with the gold? When he was dead, there was no gold there, whatever he's done with it!' Donald Sinclair, West Hynish, talking to Eric Cregeen on SA 1968.240

Local Form:

Languages : Norse, Gaelic

Informants: OS

Informant 2: multiple