Ruarhidh MacLeoid examines the first grass of another Spring. 

It is time to begin again, the certainties nested in uncertainty like birds’ eggs prone to break.  The bones of the beasts in the house that have survived the winter shiver through their hides.  Ruaridh tugs his plaid tighter around himself, his bare feet pressed into the moist sward. His son and daughter watch and wait and learn.

“Tha an t-àm ann,” ^[1] he says.

After scant rations for half the winter, their six sheep and two surviving cows are too weak to stand.  As Caistriona and Iain carry the sheep, one by one, out of the house and onto the grass on the in-by field, he seeks out Calum Bann from the next cott to help him drag Flora and Sine out through the doorway. In the darkness, at the wicker end of the black-house, the short black cows stagger as they are lifted from the heather mats, their wasted muscles struggling to support what weight is left on them.  Knelt on the sward, they crop at the new grass.

Ruarhidh and Calum Bann drag first one and then the other cow out into the fresh air.

“Cunnt agus na leig leotha cus ithe,” he tells the boy.  “Chan eil sin uile aig an aon àm.” ^[2]

Son turned cowherd, the boy nods though how he can persuade the starving beasts not to gorge on the fresh grass is unclear to him.

Ruaridh returns to the cott where Ishbeal stirs broth in an iron pot suspended above the glowing peats.

“Thèid sinn agus cuidichidh sinn càch,” he says.^[3]

It is a bright Spring morning, blue sky and a warming sun though there is still snow on the upper slopes of An Tealach.  Smoke from the eternal hearths seeps up through the heather and turf that roof the low blackhouses of the baile.  Already ferns and willowherb are sprouting along the rooflines where the sunshine lingers longest.  At least Spring has come earlier this year.

But not for Domhnal, his son.  Domhnal was minding cattle on the higher pasture two years ago when he was overtaken by a gang of Leòdhasaich.  His throat was cut.  This is another year he will not see.

The Leòdhasaich were McLeoids.  Domhnal was a McLeoid. The Leòdhasaich followed Torquil Dubh McLeoid. Ruaridh and his neighbours are tenants of Torquil Dubh’s half-brother, Torquil Conachan McLeoid. 

It doesn’t take long to free the remaining beasts from the winter quarters for the baile’s stock has not recovered from Torquil Dubh’s raid.

When Calum Bann warned them of Torquil Dubh’s birlin sailing up An Lochan Beag, Rhuaridh and his neighbours took to the heather with their weapons. Judging themselves unable to successfully resist so many fighting men and too far away from help, they could only watch from above as their goods were stolen and their houses burned. From their vantage point, Ruarhidh watched as a second party, landed sooner, drove off the cattle from the higher pasture, driving the stirks down towards Badralloch.  He found his boy face down in a peat-hag, stripped naked by the Leòdhasaichan.

The death of a child can be God’s judgement but Domhnal was a young man, almost, and this was murder.  They killed something in Ruaridh too that day. Some inkling of compassion.

When word came that Sassenach the King in Edinburgh had granted Coinneach MacCoinnich of Cinn Tàile a commission of fire and sword on behalf of Torquil Cononach, Rhuaridh joined  MacCoinnich‘s raid on Leodhais.  Six months later, Torquil Dubh was a head shorter.  Perhaps the boy’s murderers are also dead.  Ruaridh did his share of butchery and burning on the Long Island that summer but Domhnal is still dead and Ruaridh’s herd is still depleted.

With Ruaridh’s  beasts set on the grass, he and Calum go to help the widow, Alasais, move her three ewes out of the house.   As they place the last of Alasais’ sheep on the grass, a curlew rises beyond the head-dyke, its call sweet and sad.

In a month of so, with good grass and warm weather, their kine will come into season.  Covered, the cows will have calves.  The sheep will have lambs. There will be milk and crowdie and perhaps a few more stirks fattening on the slopes of An Teallach.  With any luck, the herring will come and corn will be planted.  There will be hazelnuts and chanterelles, smoked cod and seal-meat and venison, bannocks and ale, wild strawberries and honey.

And Domhnal will be missing.

There will be dancing and music and story-telling on summer evenings and feasting at Beltane and Lughnasdagh.

And Domhnal will be missing.

They will meet.  They will drink.  They will love. There will be heroic funerals and joyful hand-fastings. 

And Domhnal will be missing.

Since his raid on Leodhais, they say MacCoinnich of Cinn Tàile thinks all of An t-Eilean Siar, Coigach and Loch Bhraoin are his.  And there is some virtue in that for the McLeoids of Achadh Dà Dhòmhnail, for McCoinneach is a fierce cheiftan, stronger than Torquil Conachan and well in with the Scottish King.  Well in for a Highland lord at least. 

Though not so well in as the Lowland gentlemen from Fife the King sent as undertakers to “plant policy and civilisation in the hitherto most barren Isle of Lewis, and to develop the extraordinary rich resources of the same for the public good and the King’s profit’.

Those Lowlanders arrived on Leodhais last summer with six hundred fighting men, claiming they have the King’s warrant to slaughter, mutilate and burn to further their business.  If they prevail, there will be others for they say the King’s new law states that ‘no part of the Highlands or Isles should hereafter, at any time, be disponed in feu, tack or otherwise except to Lowland men.’ 

Word filters across the Minch that, despite their allleged ‘civilisation’, the Lowlanders were ill-prepared for the winter past or the temper of the Leòdhasaichan.  Now Torquil Dubh’s sons, Murchadh and Niall McLeoid, harrass and harry the planters. The Fifers emissary to Edinburgh has been intercepted in the Minch.

Torquil Cononach is Rhuaridh’s chieftan, not MacCoinnich of Cinn Tàile, but the MacLeoid’s here are subservient to the stronger man.  Ruaridh and his neighbours will do his bidding if the time comes…when the time comes. Meanwhile, it seems, MacCoinnich plays a waiting game, unwilling to confront the Fife Adventurers directly.

There is nothing to do but wait, as the sheep and cattle warm themselves in Spring sunshine. Wait until the time comes – when the time comes – for claymore and dirk, target and bow.

© John Bolland 2026

[1] “It’s time,”

[2] “Mind and not let them eat too much,” he tells the boy.  “Not all at once.”

[3] “We’ll go and help the others,” he says.