Chanonry Point

[smokingboot]

I had reason for visiting Chanonry Point, beyond trying to spot dolphins and delighting at the lighthouse (why is that, I wonder? What is it about lighthouses that makes them so magical?) Here it is said, Kenneth MacKenzie, or in his native gaelic, Coinneach Odhar called Kenneth the Dark or Kenneth the Mottled or Kenneth the Sallow, the Brahan Seer, prophet extraordinaire and Nostradamus of the Highlands, met his tragic end on account of a distinct failure to read the room.

He was credited with all sorts of visions that came true; the creation of the Caledonian Canal, the Highland Clearances, the Battle of Culloden, World War II. But there is a point at which a seer should stay decorously quiet, and when Lady Isobel MacKenzie of Seaforth demanded to know what her husband was doing in Paris, Kenneth really should have known better. Indeed he did; for he put his hagstone to his eye, looked through its hole and laughed, saying nothing more. But Lady Seaforth pressed him, and eventually he gave way, telling what he saw; Lord Seaforth was in excellent health, having himself a fine old time with two ladies of that city.

Now, Isobel's earlier anger at being disobeyed was nothing compared to her fury in mortified pride. She demanded that the seer take back his words. When he would not, she had him tortured and then killed, burned in a spiked barrel of tar. But before he died, he prophesied the ruin of her family: a well known curse documented as The Doom of the Seaforths, translated from presumably 17th century Gaelic into distinctly 19th century English.

'I see into the far future, and I read the doom of the race of my oppressor. The long-descended line of Seaforth will, ere many generations have passed, end in extinction and in sorrow. I see a chief, the last of his house, both deaf and dumb. He will be the father of four fair sons, all of whom he will follow to the tomb. He will live careworn and die mourning, knowing that the honours of his line are to be extinguished for ever, and that no future chief of the Mackenzies shall bear rule at Brahan or in Kintail. After lamenting over the last and most promising of his sons, he himself shall sink into the grave, and the remnant of his possessions shall be inherited by a white-coifed lassie from the East, and she is to kill her sister.

And as a sign by which it may be known that these things are coming to pass, there shall be four great lairds in the days of the last deaf and dumb Seaforth--Gairloch, Chisholm, Grant, and Raasay--of whom one shall be buck-toothed, another hare-lipped, another half-witted, and the fourth a stammerer. Chiefs distinguished by these personal marks shall be the allies and neighbours of the last Seaforth; and when he looks around him and sees them, he may know that his sons are doomed to death, that his broad lands shall pass away to the stranger, and that his race shall come to an end."

Then he faced the flames. Whatever else may be said of this legend, be it entire fabrication or partial truth, there deserves a moment's sorrow for anyone anywhere who faces torture simply for saying something another person doesn't like. So I came to this place to pay my respects. But on with the tale: For who tells of curses that don't come true?

There came a time when the heir to the Seaforth Mackenzie line and lands  was a man struck deaf and dumb by scarlet fever in childhood (he later recovered his speech). Francis  Humberstone MacKenzie was his name, and ominously, his neighbours were buck-toothed MacKenzie of Gairloch, hare-lipped Chisholm of Chisholm, half witted Grant of Grant, and the stammerer, MacLeod of Raasay. The last Seaforth had four sons, and each of them died without leaving an heir, their father outliving them all.  Mismanagement of land and wealth meant that more and more had to be sold away... So it happened that  the male line was extinct, and what was left passed to his daughter, who lived  in India with her husband and became a widow (hence the 'white coif.') She had to sell even more of the lands. The final end  came when the last Seaforth's daughter took her younger sister for a ride in a carriage; the carriage overturned, and the younger sister died of her injuries. This then, was the end of the Brahan seer's curse.

Of the hagstone, it is said Kenneth threw it into a nearby loch, but there's no such place close to the point. It would be more likely that he threw it out into the Moray Firth, right in front of us. Some say it was a white stone, others that it was mottled black and blue, and perhaps waits to be rediscovered somewhere on the beach, a gift returned by the tides of centuries. But Kenneth himself would warn that a gift is not always a boon, that some things are not worth the search. And meanwhile the sea rolls on, fresh and beautiful, as though nothing other than the play of dolphins ever happened or ever will at Chanonry Point.