A Ghost in the Castle

We're all ghosts. 

We all carry, inside us, 

people who came before us.

~ Liam Callanan, from The Cloud Atlas

Eilean Donan Castle*

It's a kind of fiction we learned - rebuilt castles and kilts and Highland games and all. I'll let you do the research. But sometimes our ancestors can reach through the woolens and the whitewash.

We arrived at Eilean Nonan Castle and toured as do many, walking across the bridge that links the castle's island to the mainland. It is a stunningly lovely place. We were able to climb up and down the stairs from a gathering room down to the kitchen. One could take photos outside, but in most of the castle photography was not allowed.

Much of my focus was on NOT falling on the stairs. What can I say?**

Wandering about the exterior of the castle.

Some of the many external stairways. Fortunately it was always possible to steady oneself.

A view from the courtyard of the castle.

One of the stairs inside the castle. They were steep and narrow and uneven.

At one point I climbed up the stars to a room where there were a couple of gentlemen in kilts - clearly staff of the castle. As one kilted fellow finished talking to a tourist he turned to me and asked if I had any questions. I was probably still catching my breath from the climb and really had nothing to ask, but I commented that I had recently discovered my heritage was primarily Scot (in spite of my Irish last name I'm apparently over 50% Scot). He inquired about my Scottish family names and I rattled them off the best I remembered at the moment. 

He focused on the "Stewart" (or Stuart) and "McMullen" ("MacMillan," he said). As I waited, the staffer walked over to a bureau, opened a drawer and removed a small pamphlet/booket and began to search for names. Then he nodded and motioned for me to follow him. We walked through a door and down a hall. He entered a room and told me to come in. 

[Now, I am wondering - should I be following this guy, a complete stranger, into a closet in what is clearly the "staff only" part of the castle?]

The Scot began to point at the wall and only then did I realized he was looking at a map of Scotland. He was searching the tiny notations of family names on the map. 

"Here is MacMillan and Stuart is near them here. And here we have Stuart and, yes, MacMillan again."

Then he motioned for me to wait, turned, and walked further into the closet and began to look at another poster on the wall. He stopped and pointed two fingers at the poster. "Here," he said. "Here are your family tartans. You may take a photograph." And I did.

As we left the closet, I said that I had always assumed my Irish ancestors left Ireland "just ahead of the sheriff" (as I knew whenever they got together someone was going to lose a tooth). But the Scots had been in the US since before the revolution (some of them anyway). Why did they leave Scotland? Poverty? Land? 

"They would have left after Culloden," he stated. And he may very well have been right.

The MacMillan tartans

Later a few of the people I traveled with asked me if I had seen the kitchen (it was apparently very interesting. Well, after my moment with my ancestors, I had forgotten all about the kitchen. I had headed out of the castle. It was as if my quest was completed.

As I was talking photos of wildflowers, a man (French, I believe) mentioned he had an app on his phone that would identify wildflowers. We compared apps*** and spoke for a few minutes, connecting over the flora.

NOTES:

* Eilean Donan Castle

https://www.eileandonancastle.com

https://www.visitscotland.com/info/see-do/clan-macrae-p1475071

**So much of my memory of this trip is stairs...up and down at the airports, in and out of planes, in hotels (32 steps up to one room, but then who's counting?), on the streets...one day I climbed 44 floors and another 37 (according to my highly inaccurate phone).

*** I have used iNaturalist for a number of years to identify and document living things in the states and abroad. 

FINAL NOTE: 

While in the Culloden visitor center I found an area where some genealogical firm operates (no one there that day). The desktop was occupied by a few alphabetized books of last names. I was quite pleased to locate all of the Scottish names I'd tried to memorize from the family tree - Burr, McMullen, Stewart, and probably a few more that escape me at this moment. Yes, I know I need to write all this down.