Eilean Liubhaird or Eilean Iubhard is an island in the
Outer Hebrides
The Outer Hebrides () or Western Isles ( gd, Na h-Eileanan Siar or or ("islands of the strangers"); sco, Waster Isles), sometimes known as the Long Isle/Long Island ( gd, An t-Eilean Fada, links=no), is an island chain off the west coast ...
, to the east of
Lewis
Lewis may refer to:
Names
* Lewis (given name), including a list of people with the given name
* Lewis (surname), including a list of people with the surname
Music
* Lewis (musician), Canadian singer
* "Lewis (Mistreated)", a song by Radiohead ...
.
Geography and geology
The rock is "
gneiss
Gneiss ( ) is a common and widely distributed type of metamorphic rock. It is formed by high-temperature and high-pressure metamorphic processes acting on formations composed of igneous or sedimentary rocks. Gneiss forms at higher temperatures an ...
bedrock with some
basalt
Basalt (; ) is an aphanite, aphanitic (fine-grained) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron (mafic lava) exposed at or very near the planetary surface, surface of a terrestrial ...
ic intrusion".
The island is oblong in shape with several inlets on its south coast, lying on an east–west axis in Loch Sealg (Loch Shell), and shelters the harbour of
Lemreway on the "mainland" of Lewis nearby.
There are two peaks at either end of the island, with the low ground in the middle. There are two
loch
''Loch'' () is the Scottish Gaelic, Scots language, Scots and Irish language, Irish word for a lake or sea inlet. It is Cognate, cognate with the Manx language, Manx lough, Cornish language, Cornish logh, and one of the Welsh language, Welsh w ...
ans in the west, and three in the east as well as a number of
burns Burns may refer to:
* Burn, an injury (plural)
People:
* Burns (surname), includes list of people and characters
Business:
* Burns London, a British guitar maker
Places:
;In the United States
* Burns, Colorado, unincorporated community in Eagle ...
.
History
The placename Dùnan on the south coast may be a reference to a little fort of some antiquity.
Although Haswell-Smith suggests that the name means "
yew
Yew is a common name given to various species of trees.
It is most prominently given to any of various coniferous trees and shrubs in the genus ''Taxus'':
* European yew or common yew (''Taxus baccata'')
* Pacific yew or western yew (''Taxus br ...
island",
the preponderance of
Norse names in the Outer Hebrides suggests that the second element of "Iubhard" may be a corruption of ''
fjord
In physical geography, a fjord or fiord () is a long, narrow inlet with steep sides or cliffs, created by a glacier. Fjords exist on the coasts of Alaska, Antarctica, British Columbia, Chile, Denmark, Germany, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, Ice ...
''/
firth
Firth is a word in the English and Scots languages used to denote various coastal waters in the United Kingdom, predominantly within Scotland. In the Northern Isles, it more usually refers to a smaller inlet. It is linguistically cognate to ''fj ...
.
Dean Munro visited the island in 1549, and reported "pasture and
schielling of store, with faire hunting of
ottars out of their
bouries".
On 4 May 1746,
Bonnie Prince Charlie
Bonnie, is a Scottish given name and is sometimes used as a descriptive reference, as in the Scottish folk song, My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean. It comes from the Scots language word "bonnie" (pretty, attractive), or the French bonne (good). That ...
hid on the island with some of his men for four days.
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...
vessels were patrolling in the Minch at the time. They camped under a sail stretched over a "low pitiful hut" while it rained torrentially.
In the early 19th century, five families were living here. Presumably they had moved there in the past few decades, as the story of the
Jacobite visit mentions no inhabitants. Seanna-Bhaile (meaning the "old town") was the main settlement, and there was also the lone house known as Taigh a' Gheumpaill.
Notes and references
Islands off Lewis and Harris
Uninhabited islands of the Outer Hebrides
{{WesternIsles-geo-stub