An ideal community? At least now.

We recently spent a week in the island of Skye, an island off the coast of Scotland, although technically no more an island, thanks to a majestic bridge that connects it to the mainland. The owner of the cottage that we had rented told us that Skye was a crime-free community, where people left their front doors unlocked and the ignition keys in their cars.  As an added bonus, it rarely snows on Skye, thanks to the close proximity of the Gulf Stream, which also makes it also generally frost-free.

Interestingly, only half of the people who live on Skye were born there, the rest being ‘newcomers”, yet the ancient language of Gaelic still flourishes. There appear to be no tensions within the community, such a huge difference between so many other places in this world.

But it wasn’t always like that.

The picture shows the remains of Trumpan Church located on the Vaternish peninsula. A plaque tells the story of a particularly brutal massacre, when the Clan MacDonald of Uist travelled to Trumpan in eight boats and under cover of a thick mist, barred the doors of the church, set fire to the thatched roof and burnt alive all the MacLeods who had come to worship there, with only a young girl able to escape.

She managed to get out of the one narrow window in the church, and sounded the alarm. This led to instant retribution by Clan MacLeod who killed all the invaders, before they had time to flee the island. This skirmish is known as the Battle of the Spoiling Dyke, named after the Dyke in which all the bodies were buried.

But Clan MacDonald themselves were only repaying in kind a massacre that Clan MacLeod had visited on them when in the winter of 1577, a band of MacLeods, intent on causing trouble, landed on the island of Eigg. The Clan members took refuge in a large cave, but one that had a narrow entrance. The tight opening of the cave made it hard to find but was also to be the clan’s downfall as the same constricted cave mouth stopped anyone from escaping.

The MacLeods were able to cover the cave mouth with straw and set it alight, suffocating all inside. History says that 395 members of Clan MacDonalds died that day.

And perhaps the lesson to be drawn from Skye? Times do change, sometimes for the better.