Saturday, April 27, 2013

Afoot on Kerrera 7

At the end of chapter 22 (book 1) I mention not having seen the Children's Graves near Cnoc na Faire, the hill of watching. Just after the book was published I returned to Kerrera to find them. It took some doing, for dense bracken cloaked the terrain.

It is a circular enclosure of stone, barely visible under the bracken in the photo below. I had a hint to it's location after spotting it on Google Earth. If you enter these coordinates you will see it: 56°22'59.15"N, 5°34'50.51"W. Here's one version of the story behind the graves as recounted on the Kerrera website.

"A group of stones is found here although it is uncertain what they mark. One legend says that a family from Mull who had been forced to go to Glasgow for work had the misfortune to lose their children to typhoid or cholera. The heartbroken parents decided to bring the children back to Mull for burial. In those days the main route to Mull crossed the island to Barr nam Boc, the boat then sailed to Grass Point on Loch Don on Mull. It was autumn and the weather was particularly severe. After a week of waiting the parents carried the children to a sheltered spot as close to Mull as they could get and buried them there using the stones to mark the children's graves."

Tomorrow we'll visit Barr nam Boc.

Bracken covers the children's graves - Mull in the distance

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