The Napping Massacre
A long time ago, away back in the old and yorey days of Lewis, before the days of Christianity, before even the shortlived days of Sheep Worship,* – yes, back in even yorier days than these – were the wild, waily pagan, pigtails-in-beards days.
At that time it was believed that the stars hid many portents for the Lewis people, (Us) who were a far more blessed people than their sworn enemies, the Damn Uisteachs ** (Them); just ask Us. Folk were in thrall to the heavens and believed that all of life and wisdom was written in them. Whosoever could plot a course of All The Right Decisions for the island, like some great celestial pinball wizard, was held in highest reverence and also aloft on a golden bier with just the one silver shoveller behind (see first footnote).
There we are then; there’s your background.
And so it happened one day that the most venerable star-reader of them all met the time of his killing in a way he’d wholly failed to predict in his morning auguries. Domnhaill Fios (Clever Donnie) was hit in the ceann with a flog-ball during a play-off for the ancient West-highland Flog Cup, dying instantly.
On the very same day, shortly after the funeral, the shocked Leodhaisachs (Us, remember) received a message by seagull saying that the Uisteachs (Them) had landed in Tarbert and were marching up to seize Lewis for their own. Seagulls can’t always be trusted to get their messages right but Calum, The Seagull-Whisperer, said that he’d trust Seonaig with his ex-wife’s life.
The Leodhaiseach elders gathered together at the ancient standing stones at Callanish, and summoned all of Us to hear their plan against the Them from the South. Ale and bread were brought and for 5 hours they debated what the stars were telling them to do. This was difficult at high noon but, bless them, they did their best from memory of the night-sky before. But, alas! It had been The Great Feast Of Let It All Hang Out the night before so memories were shaky and the reconstructed star-charts all looked a bit scrambled. In one chart, if you joined the dots they spelled the words shit-faced, which just goes to show how accurate the stars were back then.
But try these elders did. Iain Lag-Chridheach (Faint-Hearted John) said he thought Venus rising in Gemini meant that we should greet them as brothers and appease their war-like ways. Seamas, Am Bard (James, The Poet) said nonsense! All Venus in Gemini meant was that the Widow MacAuley (a Pisces) shouldn’t attempt to wash the curtains in her hovel for a fortnight. Nonono, he said, the planets were clearly telling them to face the enemy head-on with their new state of the art pointy-stick technology from Skye. Was there a volunteer to run back to Stornoway to get the pointy sticks? There was? Smashing, Wee Hector!! Away with you then – fast as ever you can!
Debate continued. Soon voices were raised and unkind things said about certain people’s beards and certain other people’s wives’ beards, and so it was that nobody but Seonaig the seagull saw the old, bent Cailleach NicDhomnailleach, huffing her way up the hill from the Callanish Stones gift-shop/hovel she ran with her revolting cat, Luch.
“Silence!” she roared in a terrible voice that belied her little old lady frame. “This is what we must do: we must take a nap!”
There was a short puzzled silence punctuated only by some head-scratching, and a little anxious flea-grooming amongst the women.
“Take a nap?” said Riceoird Fior (Clever Dick), at last. “But, with all due respect, Cailleach NicDoomna, NicDomin… with all due respect, Wizened Old Crone, the Them are only an hour away and seek to chop us up ’til we are nothing but sausage-meat for the seagulls.” Seonaig, sitting on an ancient standing stone nearby, looked hurt at the insinuation. O when would these out-dated stereotypes die! she thought melodramatically (your North Atlantic seagull is a very melodramatic bird). “How,” continued Riceoird, “can we be taking a nap at a time like this? It’s madness that you’re speaking!”
“Mark my words!” screeched the woman, fixing him with one intensely green eye while the other milk-cast one swivelled madly around in its socket. “For you will surely die this day if you do not take an immediate nap!”
“Squawk!!” yelled Seonaig suddenly, and sure enough, from a Squawk-Westerly direction the Leodhaisachs heard the rumble of thousands of Uisteach feet on the other side of the crest. All turned their heads squawkwards and, for a moment, the only sound among them was the sound of squirting adrenaline.
“Have your swords ready, men, women and children!” screamed the old woman. “Then lie down and take a nap. Put that teddy away, Murdigan Coille (Wee Murdo Plank), it’s not a real nap, you foolish boy! Now, wait for my signal everyone.”
Well, nobody else was saying anything in an impressive, unearthly way and nobody else was standing on a hummock where the wind streamed their hair back epicly, and so, one by one, they did as they were told. And so it was, in the year 332, that the Leodhaiseachs laid down and waited to die in the place called Calanais.
What the Uisteachs (Them) found, as they crested the hill and looked at the plain below, appeared at first to be a wholesale slaughter. The great mass of Lewis society lay, as if already dead, at their feet, around their own sacred standing stones. It was amazing! They’d heard about Coowil Ayde cults before but hadn’t noticed the Lewisfolk were particularly depressed lately or anything. Stunned, they stood in disbelief at the sight. Then, from off to the left, came the sound of gentle snoring (Murdigan) and, as the warm sun shone on the scene, a few bumble-bees buzzed sleepily about their business.
But can it really be? They’re sleeping? … They’re sleeping! Ruaidhreadh Caora (Sheep-faced Rory), the Chief of The Them could hardly believe his luck. He was going to fire that bloody star-gazer tomorrow, the one that’d told him over his morning porridge that the charts all said to wait for tomorrow to strike or Doom would be their’s.
Hoho! This will be easy, I’ll be back in time for Bailivanich vs. Portree, he thought, as he raised his hand. So filled with hubris was he that he hardly noticed the birds had now confined their singing to a few nervous twitters and the taking of bets on which side would win; or that the bees had buggered right off to watch from the fence. Sheep-face Rory, High Chieftain of The Them, let his hand fall like the hammer of Fate itself, signalling his warriors to fall on the nappers.
The Uisteachs descended the hill, their horrible hairy faces gurning with wicked blood-lust. They were going to get to kill, maybe rape some of those fine Lewis sheep a little, and get back for the match!
“Now!” shrieked the Cailleach, and, like a single beast the dozing, The Us came alive with a great howl of rage. Swords flashed and skirts whirled around manly ankles. The Us were slightly down hill from The Them but we had the element of surprise. It was over almost as soon as it had begun.
That day the peat turned red with the blood of Uistmen and, when it was all over, grown men groaned and wept to see the carnage before tripping off to watch Bailivanich vs. Portree. A hundred or so Uisteachs were left alive and were allowed to escape South to tell their kin of Callanish, The Place Of 1000 Them Tears. Mention Callanish to a Uisteach today and he will still blanche and offer to buy the first round.
The Cailleach NicDhomnailleach was anointed head of the Lewisfolk and, as she had to move to the big town of Stornoway (popn. 103), she sold her gift-hovel to Peigi Plank, Murdigan’s mam, for two and a half cows.
Wee Hector made it to Stornoway before collapsing and dying, and it was this famous run that gave the name to the stornathon, a race of 15ish miles still run all over the world today.
And all lived happily ever after ’til some silly Gall (Lowlander) decided the stars were telling him to go and build wind-farms in the Hebrides, but that’s another story.
The moral of the tale is Let sleeping Lewismen lie but, if you can’t, ensure that Venus isn’t anywhere near Gemini at the time.
* This was a loony religion. There’s something just so unworshipable about a sheep. C’mon, don’t try to be all PC and culturally sensitive – just say it: What a crappy religion! There are no holidays with it either so nobody put up much of a fight when the Christians came and taught us to slit our former Gods’ throats and eat them instead of carrying them around on golden biers. It’s true, we carried the crown-ed sheep on golden biers with attendants behind scooping up their business on silver shovels to turn into medicine for the sick and mad. There are still a few practitioners of Sheepism in the more inbred glens of Harris. They’re not using a golden bier any more though because times are medium hard and they have to pay for the satellite telly now too. It’s Mrs. MacKenzie’s Coronation tea-tray they’re using these days.)
** Damn Uisteachs = Damn people from the Southern Isles, damn them.
April 3rd, 2007 at 11:21 pm
Damn celestial pinball wizards and their supple wrists.
April 4th, 2007 at 12:22 am
I’m enjoying these stories about your relatives. Sure, Pat’s are nice, and she does have better babe photos. (You could learn a thing about that, I think.) But your biographical entries have just the right about of blood-shed. Gives your whole blog a certain je ne c’est pas.
Cheers.
April 4th, 2007 at 2:00 am
I often feign sleep when on the plane to get away from annoying-passenger-who-inevitably-gets-the-seat-next-to-me-and-is-likely-wearing-running-shorts-and-spreading-his-legs. I didn’t know it was such an age-old tradition. Thanks for the history lesson!
April 4th, 2007 at 6:46 am
Kara, it’s their ankles I fear. I mean do you want your future to be at the, um, hands? or the whims of your ankles? I didn’t think so.
Randall, nobody does je ne sais pas like I do. Or je ne c’est pas.
I don’t know anything and I am, indeed, noone 
Carolyn, you know, for me, my travel happiness depends very much on the nonchalance of the spreading of the legs. Some men mean it, some don’t. I prefer to sit next to the ones that don’t. Life’s a lottery…
April 4th, 2007 at 8:55 am
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe Portree won that match and got promoted to the Premiership at the end of that season.
April 4th, 2007 at 9:08 am
I think you should write a Samwise Book of History and Folklore. It would be superb.
April 4th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
I’m an idiot; but then beer does that to me.
April 4th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
Ha ha gift shop/hovel – love it. That will be beside the teashop/midden!
BTW here a farmer has dyed his sheep red. See here
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/07/africa_enl_1175603481/html/1.stm
April 4th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
Ah Sam, that’s a great story. Poor old D?mhnaill Fios, buailte sa chloiginn le chloig?n agus ? marbh anois. Sad as fuck.
That’s a great name for a cat: Luch. I laughed my arse off.
April 4th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
Kav, only because the ref was a filthy Skianach!
birchsprite, I dunno, there are big gaps in the family history around the Jacobean period and I wouldn’t want to go making anything up. Nobody would believe a word of the rest of our storied history of it if I did.
Ah Rand’, I was only being a pedantic, pompous fool, hun. I was just back from an evening at the bar myself when I commented up there. Beer apparantly does that to me.
Apprentice, red sheep! We paint the backs of ours in Lewis so we can distinguish them from our neighbours’ but noone has yet taken the imaginative leap and painted the whole animal. I love it – they should put one in the Tate Modern! I wonder how many “it can’t be, red sheep? aaaaaaaaaaaagh!” accidents these sheep have caused so far.
Bock, marbh mar dodo. Some people say it was the Cubans, some say the Russians; and there’s no shortage of grassy knolls in Lewis. Personally, I think it was Mairi-Linn Monroe, the busty bombshell from Garyvard. She was unstable, that one.
April 4th, 2007 at 7:18 pm
So the people of Lewis only found out their gods were livestock when the Christians came and told them? They must have felt a bit sheepish.
April 4th, 2007 at 7:55 pm
Nanas, our dumbnity in the yorey days was truly bahahahahathetic. Thank the big bearded guy in the sky for progress, I say.
One of the major joys immediately following these culturally stagnant sheep-worshipping days was being able to write things like umbrella rather than oeambrella. Use of the letter U was outlawed, you see, on account of it’s being a sacred sheep letter. Only a female sheep could write it although this turned out to be a purely academic stipulation – given the famous illiteracy of sheep as a whole.
April 5th, 2007 at 5:30 am
I disagree that sheep are illiterate. Once, while shooting a documentary in Scotland for Canal Plus, I had to interview three eminent sheep in the world of genetic research: Drs. Dolly, Dolly and Dolly. I found them to be highly intelligent and very well read. Unfortunately only 30seconds of the 4hours footage made it to production – The director felt that Drs. Dolly and Dolly were repeating the views of Dr. Dolly verbatim.
April 5th, 2007 at 8:22 am
A beautiful and witty turn of phrase.
I’m less with you on the cultural stagnation of sheep worship. It was a culture and more important it was yours. While, there is nothing quite like explaining that where many see a circle of stones, what they are really seeing is 5000 year old Keck. The brolly thing though, Ahhhhh. Here insular minuscule, where ET was written rather than agus.
BTW. do you lot still gesture towards the water carafe with the full wine glass at dinner.
April 5th, 2007 at 8:26 am
Everyone is turning so ethnic here, might I be the first to say that my Venus is rising in Uranus not bad for a Bodach.
April 5th, 2007 at 11:56 am
Jesus Mary and Joseph! No time right now. I’ll be back.
April 5th, 2007 at 6:12 pm
Sneezy, your director was right. Once you have one Dr Dolly opinion, it’s a waste of time to ask the udder two. However, I’ve heard it said that on the subjects of Kirkegaard’s existentialist ideas and trade with China, Dolly # 3 is a bit of a maverick.
Vin, welcome, pleased to make your aquaintance. While I have only a passing idea of what you are saying in your comment, it is true that I may indeed be one glass short of the full carafe. You’re a very perceptive person.
Old Knudsen, I’m not ethnic! To be ethnic you have to eat strange foods nobody else will touch; you have to have strange rituals involving potent liquors and you must always be singing of the injustices done you by the nearest virtually indistinguishable-from-yourselves peoples. … Oh. Right. I see what you mean…
April 5th, 2007 at 6:13 pm
Docs, we’re all slaves to time. Slaves!
April 5th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
I, or is that we, think you meant elder not udder. Bovines have udders – Ovines have elders.
April 5th, 2007 at 6:28 pm
Told you they were smart fekers. Too smart if you ask me. I wouldn’t be sheepish about telling them to fek off.
April 5th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
Drs. Dolly. 1000 apologies. I bow to your knowledge of elders being as how you’ve got ‘em and all. Come to think of it I should have worked it out for myself. I know a few Free church elders who do indeed resemble great raw, pink ti… um… teetotallers. You never know what surprises etymology will throw up but I can see clearly now the common roots for the different types of elder.
Sneezy, mild as a lamb, me – telling people to fek off gives me nose-bleeds. I tell them to bugger off instead.
April 5th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
A little known fact about young sheep is that you can flatten them to enclose a sheet of paper and thereby protect it from wear and tear. Lambination, it’s called.
I’m sorry, I’m a bit out of sorts.
April 5th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
Dia duith,
April 5th, 2007 at 8:56 pm
I didn’t graduate from college since I refused to accept a sheepskin at the end of four years. I believe in sheep.
April 5th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
‘Hit in the ceann’ has me wondrin’. Where is it? The ceann?
I thought Carolyn said ‘I often feign sheep’ which opens up a whole new can of worms. Lncidentally on our last walk ‘Coleridge Way’ took a photo of some sheep shut up in a pen maybe for lambing . Is it going to make you distraught if I post it anon?
April 6th, 2007 at 4:13 am
Often, a glass short is a good thing, allows the wine to breathe. Did you hear that they are closing the black watch.
April 6th, 2007 at 5:27 am
Hmm, Foots, I think that joke just went and died in the wool. It was shearingly painful, in any case. Wool you please not make any more sheep jokes. I’m asking ewe nicely, now. I don’t want to have to ram it home.
Jali, No! Don’t let them suck you in! Sheep are for dinner and sweaters. We were never meant to idolize domesticated farm animals! I’ll admit there was that one golden-calf worshiping incident in the Old Testament but look how that turned out? Moses went right off his head at these Israelites. He was not happy prophet that day. At all! Don’t believe in sheep, Jali! If you must, out your money into goat futures but never rely on the sheep market; all they have is pasts. And don’t look in their eyes!
Pat, never let it be said that I am a woman to interfere with the sheep postings of another! Post what you must! My distress is neither here nor there! The sheep must be going mad with all the erratic British weather lately. Madder. A ceann is a roundish protrusion containing one of the largest sex organs in the body – the brain. A ceann is a Gaelic head.
Vin, my wine doesn’t just have room to breathe; it could puff and pant and do aerobics, I’m afraid. I keep trying to top it up with the real stuff, but you know, I don’t think that’s working. I didn’t know that about the Black Watch. I thought they were serving in Iraq.
April 6th, 2007 at 7:49 am
It’s always nice to have work, re. the wine thing. And what a lovely place to work, expanding all the time too, what with the warming an all. It really was kind of them to keep you in mind.
And the bw is merging or “folded in”, egg whites like, to 4/5 others, soon. Anyhoos, will more than likely be named something bland and politically correct.
April 6th, 2007 at 8:11 am
That was a seminal meisterwerk. I think you should develop the theme into a film script, Mel Gibson would snap it up. As an Aussie he would know a thing or two about sheep worship.
April 6th, 2007 at 10:40 am
Good Lord, I think you need to start posting pronunciation guides for all of us sassenaches out here.
April 6th, 2007 at 8:35 pm
Happy Easter darling to you and the family. I have just now installed Firefox but no improvement so far. At least I can still get here.
April 8th, 2007 at 9:51 am
Even when I grew my beard quite long, I still couldn’t plait it. I tried several times, but the nature of my chin hair meant it was like trying to plait pubes. Shame really, as I’d been thinking of cultivating a pirate captain look for some time.
April 8th, 2007 at 9:53 am
I have some grasses in the garden which I plait. No daughters you see. Awwwww!
April 9th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
Vin, I like The Dark Timepiece as an alternative.
Daphne, there’s enough blood and hair in it to keep Mr. Mel happy, certainly, but I’d insist on talking bees and seagulls and seagulls, as everyone knows are Jewish. We might fall out over that.
Sparrow, just remember that 50% more letters appear in written Gaelic that are actually pronounced. Profligate with letters is the Celt.
Pat, moving to Firefox was a good move for me. IE cut out on me a lot. It’s a hassle at first but worth it, I think, in the log run.
Kim, have you thought about faux pigtails? A modern solution for the busy modern wildman, they can be applied without anesthetic during your lunch-hour so no resting or down-time is needed.
Pat, the girls went back to preschool this morning after their Easter holidays and days of carefree loose locks. Putting 4 pigtails on two squirmy wee girls was not as relaxing as it ought to have been. Despite being 4, they have a very developed sense of where tails belong – I know, I am proud – and have decided during this past week that they don’t belong on heads but on bums. They have no hair on their bums to braid but this is a mere academic point to them.
July 29th, 2007 at 2:36 am
Alternative Medicine…
Alternative Medicine…