On a cold and frosty morning, the fates seemed to have aligned themselves, the trains were running, I replaced the laces on my walking boots and my four companions (two dogs and two humans) were all up for an adventure.
We planned to walk the five-mile route of the Stoneymollen Road, which runs from Balloch, at the southern end of Loch Lomond over to Cardross, on the banks of the River Clyde.
The Stoneymollen is a coffin road on which the dead would have taken their last earth-bound journey over to clachan of Kirkton and St Mahews Church, near Cardross.
Have rucksack - will travel (from a summer ramble)
It was the first proper walk of the new year and we all felt a bit out of shape - and so we reminded each other that we weren’t carrying a coffin - although an aging Chihuahua required carried in a rucksack.
A cold start to the day
Coming down the hill towards Cardross and the light of the sun on the River Clyde
Towards the Setting Sun
It was a cold day with frost still lying in the shadows, and so I was glad to be travelling towards the low winter sun, grateful for its light and weak warmth.
We were following the road in the direction the dead would have been carried, east to west, for the deceased would have been buried in the west, towards Tír na nÓg (the Land of Eternal Youth, and Tir Tairngire (the Promised Land) those next worlds lying just beyond the setting sun.
Superstition
There were many traditions adhering to a person's last journey. They were carried with their feet in the direction of travel, so their spirit couldn’t return home.
Many streams cross the path - stopping spirits from following
Spirits were thought to travel across the landscape in straight lines so coffin roads took meandering routes, lessening the likelihood that the procession would be followed. Many streams cross over the Stoneymollen route, as spirts cannot pass running water.
Peace to thy soul, and a stone to thy cairn
Many coffin routes traversed rough ground and travelled long distances, and the coffin was never to touch the ground.
While some Highland routes took days to travel those able bodied men would have been paid well in food and drink, the emphasis being on the drink. This procession would need a lot of men, so those doing the carrying could be relieved.
Some coffin routes have stone markers so the coffin could be laid to allow folks to rest.
When the body, on the day of the funeral, is carried a considerable distance, a cairn of stones is always raised on the spots where the coffin has rested, and this cairn is from time to time renewed by friends and relatives. Hence the Gaelic saying or prayer with reference to the departed, ‘Peace to thy soul, and a stone to thy cairn!’ thus expressing the wish that the remembrance of the dead may be cherished by the living. - Ian Bradley quoting Norman MacLeod.
Garbh Bealach, Piper's Cairn, Isle of Eigg
The above photo is of the Piper’s Cairn on the Isle of Eigg, which sits on an unusual Coffin Road in that it runs East to West. It was the route that the beloved dead from the Township of Grulin, whose successors would be forcibly removed in the Highland clearances, traveled the few miles West to Kildonan churchyard.
The Piper’s Cairn marks the place where the bearers of the coffin of Donald MacQuarrie, the great piper of Eigg, rested on the way to Kildonnnan churchyard. It was a route he would have journeyed, accompanying the dead while playing the pipes for the deceased’s last journey.
Back on the Stoneymollen, I thought of those people following a coffin as they walked this road. They weren’t separate from the land, not even in death, and their belief in what happened to their souls after death.
‘The point to death as being something natural and part of the rhythm and cycle of life. The bodies of the dead return to the earth after their last journey over the hills and across lochs and seas. Their souls perhaps escape down the streams that are almost invariably found beside graveyards to merge in the great ocean of divine love and find rest in the islands of the blessed far out in the west beyond the setting sun’.
- A reflection on how Hebrideans and Highlanders viewed death as being something natural and part of the rhythm and cycle of life (Ian Bradley).
The Second Sight
In the Highlands and Islands the gift (or curse as some may say) of the second-sight ran in families. These individuals often saw past or future events, and a chance passing with someone might bring a vision of their death.
Yet the second-sight wasn’t required to view events which had happened on coffin road routes for many people throughout the country have reported seeing past visions of what took place on that soil, such as bloody battles.
Here is a story from Wales on strange lights appearing on coffin roads:
‘The Welsh call them canwyllau cyrff – corpse candles. They burn in a straight line. And they lead to graveyards.
Corpse candles are bright yellow and blue orbs. They glow along funeral procession routes – the roads by which dead bodies were carried to churchyard. It’s thought the lights are the souls of the recently departed.
If no-one had died recently, a cluster of corpse candles hanging in the air, meant that a person in a house near the lights or the person witnessing the candles, would die. The candles lit a direct route to the burial ground – travelling over mountain, stream and marsh to reach the grave. Illuminating the path the body would soon take.
The canwyllau cyrff were often accompanied by the cyhyraeth – a wailing or sobbing, or even the shuffling of passing feet.
These ghostly lights were often seen by water. The Victorian writer James Motley wrote about his experience of the corpse candles…
On the river near Llandeilo, a coracle capsized. The three men inside drowned. It was reported locally that just a few days before, passengers on the Carmarthen-Llandeilo coach had seen three corpse candles hanging over the water at the exact spot where the men drowned.
There is an origin for the corpse candle myth. Apparently, one of St David’s dying prayers was to ask God to send a sign to his followers in Pembrokeshire, to let them know that their spirits were watched over in death. From that day on, the Holy Spirit lit the path of spirits of the dead in Wales.
- Friends of Friendless Churches - Click for source
Omens of Lights
The Corpse Candles remind me of descriptions of lights in the Highlands, called death-lights which travelled the funeral road - there’s even reports of people encountering the lights up close and both seeing shadowy figures held within the light.
We had discussed perhaps rewalking this road at dusk, under long lingering summer twilights, but on reading of all the spirit activity I’m not quite so sure!
St Mahews Church (built in 1467 and restored in 1955)
Some of the information for this post was taken from Ian Bradley’s ‘The Coffin Roads’, published by Birlinn. Click on the image to view on Amazon
The drawing in the main image comes from a Glasgow Herald article - click here for source
Walking the Path of the Ancestral Mothers of Scotland
Next up on my paid series ‘Walking the Path of the Ancestral Mothers of Scotland’ the upcoming posts for Imbolc are:
Exploring Who is Brighid - Triple Goddess, Saint and Mary of the Gael
Imbolc Traditions
Brighid & the Hebrides. A guided meditation and a journey to a Hebridean beach
