Published in Scotland Magazine Issue 26 on 21/04/2006.

This article is 27 months old and some information provided may be time sensitive. Please check all details of events, tours, opening times and other information before travelling or making arrangements.

The Lady of Lawers

James Irvine Robertson on a prophet with a pretty good track record

The Brahan Seer is the best known of the Highland prophets, those folk who often considered themselves cursed by having the power of foretelling the future.

This is strange because one would have expected him to lose most of his glen cred when he failed to predict that Lady Seaforth would burn him in a barrel of tar when he told her that her husband was misbehaving with a woman in Paris.

The other great seer, the Lady of Lawers, had, perhaps, a better track record.

The village of Lawers lies on the north shore of Loch Tay at the base of the eponymous munro, one of an exclusive clutch of 284 peaks higher than 3,000 feet and the highest point in Perthshire.

The remains of the village are down a mile long track from the Lawers Hotel. Only the dead remain – in the still-used burial ground of Machuim.

The last living inhabitant was Duncan McLellan, the peirmaster, who moved out in 1927 when cargo ceased to be carried by the Steam Boat Company. The last passengercarrying boat on Loch Tay was broken up in 1949. Before the steam boats Lawers had been the ferry port from Ardtalnaig and the route south towards Crieff.

The tumbled ruins of the cottages and mills are rapidly degenerating. Within the last two years, a gable of the mansion house, there since 1650, has collapsed; the kirk dates from 1669 and its ruins are going the same way.

The dates are significant, because the old village of Lawers was destroyed in December 1644. That was during the famous Marquis of Montrose’s ye.....

To read the rest of this article you can buy this issue or subscribe to Scotland Magazine to have every issue delivered direct to your door.

By James Irvine Robertson

Section : Scottish History

Page number : 20