Stone Circle (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – NG 552 172
Also Known as:
- Cille Mhaire
Folklore
Omitted from Burl’s (2000) magnum opus, the great Scottish folklorists Otta Swire (1961) is the singular reference to the forgotten stone circle that once existed here. She wrote:
“The site of the old church of Kilmarie and of the stone circle whose proximity no doubt originally called it into being are now no longer to be seen. The ruins of the old church, I am told, were swept away by the sea during that great storm in the 1920s which also blew down the Dunvegan woods. The storm followed not long after the burial near the old church of an unknown sailor taken from the sea, and there were those who believed this to be the cause of the church’s disappearance, for, as the old Gaelic rhyme says: “The sea will search the four russet divisions of the universe to find her children,” and Kenneth MacLeod advises that a body taken from the sea should always be buried near the water’s edge, or the sea, desiring to recover her own, will flood much land in search of it.
“This church is said to have stood on the site of an older church of St. Maelrhuba (Servant of Peace) who was the patron saint of south-eastern Skye.”
References:
- Burl, Aubrey, The Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany, Yale University Press 2000.
- Swire, Otta F., Skye: The Island and its Legends, Blackie & Son: Glasgow 1961.
© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian
