Meeting our cousin at Eilean Donan

By Jerry Bellune
August 30, 2013

MacLeod and Jerry Bellune are spending their children’s inheritance and enjoying every minute of it. What follows is an account of their travels in Liechtenstein, Scotland and Switzerland, three countries no larger than our small but magnificent state.

Eilean Donan Castle, Scotland
The Eilean Donan docents dressed in clan colors stand quietly by in the castle.
Tours are self-conducted and the docents are there to answer questions. Most of the tourists just seemed to walk and gap and asked no questions. Not us.
In an upstairs room, we stopped to talk with a dark-haired woman in clan cress.
Her name is Shona (show-na) MacLeod.
We were asked not to take photos because electronic flash is destructive to historic tapestries and other relics.
But Shona agreed to pose with MacLeod for a photo for an American newspaper because they share the clan MacLeod name and family heritage.

Tourist junk? No thanks
We stopped in the castle gift shop looking for gifts to take home. Unfortunately, it was all touristy junk that did not tempt us.
We found the same at gift shops at other historic places. Plastic swords and bag pipes for kids and the kind of junk you see in shops in Myrtle Beach.
It was still cold and drizzling rain outside bout we walked around outside the castle walls until we couldn’t stand it, then headed for the warmth of our rented car.
Fortunately it had a good heater.
We headed west for Dunvegan Castle on the romantic Isle of Skye, ancestral home of the clan MacLeod, a destination we have dreamed of visiting for years.
We drove for more than an hours through wild Highland country, the road following valleys created over the centuries but rivers and lochs. Much of this country is unihabitable as the bogs are too soft and squizzy to support houses.
In the meadows, we saw sheep grazing contentedly but few cattle.

Eilean Donan Castle, Scotland

The home of the MacLeods
You used to have to take a ferry from the mainland to Skye, hence the sweet, melancholy song, Over the Sea to Skye.
Now a great causeway makes the passage over the water a matter of minutes.
We drove on through the rain to Dunvegan, the oldest continuously inhabited castle in Scotland and the stronghold of the chiefs of the clan for 800 years.
It is the only castle which has been continuously owned and occupied by the same family, with the exception of the 80 years after the Potato Famine.
Within Dunvegan’s stately halls are priceless heirlooms, some of which have been passed down since medieval times through generations of MacLeod.
The Clan MacLeod has survived the extremes of feast and famine, wars with neighboring clans and immense changes of social, political and economic life.
Three can chiefs in the last seven generations have been ruined by the difficulties caused by hostile bureaucrats, the current chief does not hesitate to say.
In 1956, Queen Elizabeth met with delegates of Clan MacLeod Societies from every part of the English speaking world for a banquet in Dunvegan Castle to celebrate the coming-of-age of the present Chief.
The next day, they met in the ancient banquet hall for a Clan Parliament’
 Clan chief, Dame Flora MacLeod, said they met to discuss our common interests and to find out how best to promote and develop our world fellowship so that we can uphold our motto Hold Fast.
Clan Parliaments have been held every four years at Dunvegan Castle ever since and clan folk return from all over the world to this special family gathering.
We walked through the castle, stopping in the kitchen where life-like cooks and other servants were preparing meals with wax replicas of produce and meats.
The nearby dungeon was little more than a deep hole into which clan enemies were thrown. Their torture was to starve to death while the smells of cooking food drifted to them.
Another example of man’s inhumanity.

© 2013 Lexington Publishing Co., Inc. All rights reserved.

Jerry Bellune’s travel adventures appear weekly in the Lexington County Chronicle and The Lake Murray Fish Wrapper. If you missed last week’s installment, email him at [email protected]

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