Women of the Highlands by Katharine Stewart sampler

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women of the highlands known as Saint Bride. Her ‘day’ in the calendar is 1 February, the ‘birthday’ of the year, the time when ewes come into milk, that valued sustenance of the people. So St Bride keeps contact with the essential reality of the world. In the Highlands of Scotland many wells, sources of healing and many churches are dedicated to her. In myth she became known as the midwife of the Virgin Mary and even the foster-mother of Christ. Women in Celtic society certainly had a higher status than their counterparts in Rome or Athens where repressive male dominance kept them in subordinate roles. Norse women coming into the Highlands and the islands during Viking times, i.e. the 8th and 9th centuries ad, also had less freedom than their Celtic contemporaries, their role being more specifically a domestic one. Several did however acquire fame for their seamanship on voyages of exploration. With gradual integration through inter-marriage they soon adopted the status of the women around them. In his book The Ancient World of the Celts Peter Beresford Ellis tells us: ‘a unique piece of feminist literature’ emerges from 12th century Ireland in the form of Bauschenaus – a book on the genealogies of leading women. In fact this could be claimed as the first European book about women in their own right. 26
chapter 2 Mediaeval Times – Women of the Castles in mediaeval times, the pattern of life began to change. Power was now vested in the king rather than shared among the kins or tribes, with charters of land granted to the chiefs of what were to become clans. The structure of the erstwhile tribe had become hierarchical. As the demand for land became competitive the chief required military support from the lower orders as a form of rental for their holdings. As he was frequently feuding with other equally pugnacious or territorial chiefs, his followers were often on active service. At these times work on the land and the handling of stock were all done by women. Many were widowed, for clan battles were fierce, but some provision was made for women thus left. Meanwhile other ways of acquiring territory were being exploited by some chiefs – the marrying-off, often at a very early age, of their daughters to the sons of other chiefs. Euphemia of Duffus Castle Euphemia, daughter of Farquhar MacTaggart, the lay Abbot of Applecross, on the north-west coast, had an ‘arranged marriage’ to Walter, grandson of Freskin the Fleming, an incoming feudal knight who had been given the lands of Duffus in Moray by King David i. She was baptised Eighrig, Gaelic being the tongue of all her people in Applecross. Her upbringing had been that of the daughter 27
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Women of the Highlands by Katharine Stewart sampler

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