DISBELIEF is not the only thing suspended at Loch an Eich Uisge, the Loch of the Water-Horse.
Its very waters seem to balance at the edge of the hilltop it trickles down from, like an infinity pool overlooking, from a hidden vantage, the heavenly beaches of northern Barra.
This is a strange place and stranger things have happened here. John MacPherson (1876-1955), known to many in Barra as The Coddy, was a singular storyteller in Gaelic first and English second who collected and shared tales both ancient and recent.
In fact, he was much more than that. An innovator who owned the first car on the island, he was also the first station manager of the now-iconic Barra Airport. One of his stories, recounted in the book Tales From Barra: Told by The Coddy and originating from an unknown point in the past, tells of the eponymous water-horse of Loch an Eich Uisge.
It begins as many others do, with a “bonnie lassie” herding her cows by the banks of the loch. Thinking herself to be alone, she saw with surprise a very handsome young man sleeping at the point where the waters lapped the grass.
His hair was so beautiful that she felt compelled to brush it, and so she sat next to the snoozing stranger and took his head in her lap. That is when she noticed something strange – the very same reeds that sprouted from the surface of the loch were woven through his hair.
A bolt of fear coursed through her. She knew the warning signs and there could be no doubt – this was no man but a water-horse in the shape of one. In a ploy worthy of Indiana Jones when he stole the golden idol in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the girl slipped out of her skirt and left it under the creature’s head so as not to wake it.
She flung her plaid around herself and ran as fast as she could down the moor path to home. Hearing her feet pound the stones and splash in the pools around the loch, the water-horse awoke in a fury. Its meal had escaped!
The beast unleashed its rage on nearby boulders, shattering them into piles which still stand there today. Never again was a water-horse seen at Loch an Eich Uisge, or anywhere else in Barra.
Intrigued by this legendary near-miss, I decided to make my way to the upland loch to see if any evidence of it might yet linger. The Coddy even provided instructions, telling story-seekers to go the small bridge along the road at Loch an Dùin and to follow the burn uphill from there.
This route maintains a steady yet modest incline for about a mile. However, studying a mobile version of the local OS map, a different, more challenging – yet more rewarding – option presented itself. Leaving my bike behind at the glorious beach at Cleit, I aimed for a narrow pass between the craggy shoreline and the tumbling slopes of Beinn Chliaid.
Though few modern walkers follow or even know of the existence of this route, this was clearly not always so. Some signs were subtle – a stone overhang shaped into the perfect shelter in which to escape a sudden downpour, for instance.
Others were less so, a boulder-lined path which immediately evoked the word “monumental” led ever upwards, sporadically flanked by the ruins of shielings and other unknown structures.
Just where the shore path turns steeply upwards towards the loch is a Neolithic or Early Bronze Age cairn, its rectangular ruins punctuated by a perfectly triangular stone facing towards the vastness of the open Atlantic. This place had its people – I wonder, when did the last one leave it?
A final trudge following a trickling burn felt orchestrated, almost architectural, with an abrupt stone face to the right and a boulder-strewn rise to the left funnelling me towards the still-invisible loch.
I briefly looked down, wary of soaking my feet in the porous ground. When I looked up again, a whole new, sudden realm had unfolded. Like a surfer on the crest of a wave, Loch an Eich Uisge appeared to float above the sharp descents in front of and behind it, balanced on the shoulder of its world.
It felt wrong to rush straight for its waters. Instead I edged around it and became, for at least an hour, blissfully lost along its liminal hinterland.
Here the moor is broken by small humps of soil and stone and speckled with countless black, peated pools. Large stones half-drowned by these shallow pools balance upon much smaller ones, an act of nature which effortlessly humbles our own cairns and artful stacks.
Some of the pools were shallow as a flattened hand, while others brooded with such intensity that it seemed they might reach down to the deepest bowels of the Earth.
Imagination, and a little knowledge about how such places were sometimes used in prehistory, transformed each rocky rise into a pulpit and each pool into a receptacle for treasured offerings.
The ancient cairn below, the rock shelters, and the scattered ruins testify to this being an important place for thousands of years before the first words intelligible to us were spoken. After wandering here a little while, the prospect of a water-horse seemed entirely within reason.
Loch an Eich Uisge, shaped like a giant tadpole, all the while rippled gently under the steady wind.
At last I broached its surface, plunging my hands into the surprisingly temperate waters to wash my face.
Kneeling at the loch’s quivering edge, I placed my glasses in the damp grass beside me. The taste of earth touched my lips, accented with a slight acidity.
It occurred to me that, if a water horse did reside here, this would be the perfect moment for it to strike.
I imagined some other walker, perhaps weeks or months later, finding only my glasses half-buried in the mud.
Chuckling at the prospect, I dried my face, regained my sight, and took three paces before stopping dead in my tracks. Lying in the mud just beyond the water’s reach and dented on all sides was a pair of glasses.
There was nothing else around them, not even footprints. I searched all around but their wearer was long gone. Perhaps a water-horse still dwells in Loch an Eich Uisge after all – luckily for me, it seemed it had already had its fill.
