HOW and where the hoard was discovered has always been a subject of interest. It has long been believed that Malcolm MacLeod, a resident of the settlement of Peighinn Dhomhnuill (Penny Donald – since cleared) in the Parish of Uig on the west coast of the island, discovered it in a sandbank in the Mains of Uig. This locates the find-spot in an area of sand dunes at Ardroil on the south side of Tràighe Ùige (Uig Strand) [Fig. 1]. Lewis is a part of the world where there is a strong tradition of storytelling, and it is not surprising that the hoard’s discovery was no sooner public knowledge than an explanation for its loss was found.
1. MAP OF LEWIS This map shows possible find-spots for the Lewis hoard.
According to the most well-known story, sometime in the seventeenth-century a servant of the MacKenzie tacksman (tenant) of Baile na Cille, known as ‘An Gille Ruadh’ (the Red Gillie), spied a young sailor fleeing his ship with a bundle, which turned out to contain the Lewis chessmen. The gillie at first befriended the youth, but then murdered him for the sake of his treasure and buried it for recovery at a later date. That he never managed to do, and his crime was only uncovered when he himself confessed it some time later on the scaffold at Stornoway as he was about to be executed for other misdemeanours.
Needless to say, there is no record of this tale being told prior to 1831. As a story it no doubt satisfied and amused countless Lèodhasaich (natives of Lewis) as it was recounted over the years, but it had the unfortunate effect of reinforcing a belief that somehow the hoard did not belong in Lewis but only got there by accident. The story’s origin can be traced to Donald Morrison, known as An Sgoilear Bàn, a noted local storyteller. Morrison died in 1834, but left a manuscript of his stories for others to use. It is now preserved in Stornoway Public Library and was fully published in 1975.
Very little is known about Malcolm MacLeod, the hoard’s finder. Indeed, the first time his name is actually recorded is in 1863, and none of the nineteenth-century experts who wrote on the hoard seem to have had the opportunity to meet or to discuss his discovery with him. Morrison the storyteller appears to be the source for the hoard being found in the sands at Uig Strand, but, remarkably, the earliest accounts of the hoard give a completely different find-spot.
On 29 June 1831 The Scotsman newspaper reported that the chessmen had recently been acquired by an Edinburgh dealer, Mr J. A. Forrest (listed in contemporary records as a watchmaker, jeweller and medallist). They had been found some months previously by a ‘peasant of Uig’ near the ruins of a nunnery in Uig, known as Taigh nan Cailleachan Dubha (the house of the black women). Ririe, the man who had brought the pieces to Edinburgh, had apparently sold them to Forrest, but not before he had allowed an Edinburgh collector, Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, to purchase ten of them. It is these ten, plus an eleventh later acquired by Sharpe from Lewis, that are now in National Museums Scotland. Forrest sold the rest to the British Museum.
Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe [Fig. 2] is our source for yet more detailed information on the chessmen’s find-spot. According to him, they were found in a vaulted room about six feet (1.83 metres) long. They were partially buried in sand and the floor was covered with ash. The chamber was located near ‘the house of the black women’, where tradition affirmed a nunnery once stood. Sharpe also described the chamber as similar to a small subterranean stone building, like an oven. It was at some depth below the surface and some distance from the shore, and was only exposed after a sudden and very considerable inroad by the sea. ‘The peasant’ discoverer had to break into this structure to find the hoard.
2. CHARLES KIRKPATRICK SHARPE (Source: The Walter Scott Digital Archive, Edinburgh University Library)
Sharpe is a particularly important witness since he dealt directly with Roderick Ririe. Indeed, Ririe may have been ‘the gentleman from Stornoway’ that, according to a late nineteenth century source, dug out pieces which were not recovered by Malcolm MacLeod himself. So where was this underground chamber? The answer is very easy, since its location can be identified by its proximity to the alleged nunnery, at Mèalasta on the west coast of Lewis, still within the Parish of Uig but about six miles south of Uig Strand [Fig. 3]. There are no traces now of any structure that could be identified as a nunnery, and indeed this appears to be a red herring. There are no documentary sources suggesting that there was a nunnery here in medieval times, only the opinion of the minister of Uig, writing in the 1790s, that its remains could be identified.
The underground chamber is much more plausible. From the descriptions supplied by Sharpe it might be identified as a souterrain, an underground structure dating to the Iron Age or Early Medieval Period, perhaps used for storage. These are fairly widespread throughout Scotland, and from other sources one is known to have existed at Mèalasta. It was described in 1870 as consisting of a gallery terminating in a bee-hive chamber, but by that time its stones had been removed for building purposes. Intriguingly, a circular stone chamber, about two metres in diameter and accessed by a passageway, lies under the medieval house at Jarlshof in Shetland, a complex site with occupation extending back to the Bronze Age. The excavators could not be sure of its age, but the wind-blown sand that accumulated within it contained a slate inscribed with a Viking age interlace pattern.*
Whereas the sand dunes at Uig Strand now appear a desolate and secluded spot, Mèalasta has evidently been an important local settlement with relatively good soil and access from the sea. There is the site of a medieval church with a burial ground and, adjacent to the spot marked on Ordnance Survey maps as the site of the nunnery, the sea is weathering out midden deposits from which a bronze finger ring was recovered a number of years ago and awarded as Treasure Trove to Museum nan Eilean in Stornoway. The ring is engraved with crosses and dates to the twelfth or thirteenth century.
All this suggests that Mèalasta is to be preferred to the sands of Uig Strand as the hoard’s find-spot. However, there is one further source that backs this up. When the Ordnance Survey mapped the Parish of Uig in 1852-53 for the first time, they noted in their ‘Name Book’ that chessmen, which were sold to ‘a society of antiquaries in Edinburgh’, were found in the ruins of a nunnery about seventy years previously. Nothing then remained of it but the site. Not only does this appear to verify the information supplied through Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, it also raises the interesting possibility that some or all of the chessmen could originally have been discovered in the 1780s. It is not beyond the bounds of likelihood that pieces from the hoard could have remained in a local house or barn for fifty years, their value and interest unappreciated until a travelling merchant – Roderick Ririe even? – saw them and spotted a chance to make some money. Might it even be the case that the story of the nunnery was created on the back of the discovery of the chessmen? That, of course, is speculation, but Mèalasta may yet have a lot to tell us.
3. MÈALASTA (Source: © Stuart Campbell)
* J. R. C. Hamilton: Excavations at Jarlshof, Shetland (Edinburgh: HMSO, 1956), p. 76 and pl. XIIIb.
