The Lady Of Lawers

Although half a century or more had elapsed since the death of the Lady of Lawers, some of her prophecies were beginning to come true. The Lady of Lawers was connected with the Campbells of Lawers but she was
probably a Stuart from Argyllshire. She had little love for the Campbells of Glenorchy and prophesied the downfall of all their estates. The tradition of her sayings has been strong on the lochside over the last three centuries.
Some of her prophecies are remarkable in their fulfilment and often give an indication of the changing social life.

Two of the Lady’s prophecies were of a more particular nature. At the close of the seventeenth century the Campbells of Glenorchy were gathering huge possessions in lands and dowries, It must have appeared to most people that they could only become stronger and greater. The Lady, however, thought differently. She prophesied that the day would come when all the possessions of the House of Balloch could be carried on the back of a horse. In effect this prophecy came true in the latter half of the twentieth century.

The Lady foretold that a tree would grow near the Church at Lawers, and, that various things would happen at different stages of its growth. When the tree would be as high as the gable, the Church of Scotland would be
split. When the disruption happened in 1843, people noticed that the tree had just reached gable height. The Lady also said that the man who interfered with the tree would die a violent death. The fact is that the man who cut it down was gored to death by his own bull. In 1950, the present minister was told by an old woman who was over ninety, that her mother had been in the boat which carried the dead man to his burial on the other side of the loch. When going over it appeared to those who were in the boat that they would all be drowned so fierce was the storm which had suddenly sprung up. Yet, when they
reached Ardtalnaig and placed the coffin on the shore, the loch became calm and still.

Regarding changes in social life, there was her prophecy, that the population of the Lochside would increase until, “there was a mill on every stream and a plough in the hand of every lad”. While this may have been overstating the case, the fact is, that at the end of the eighteenth century there were some fourteen meal mills around Loch Tay. The land, although fertile, was cultivated in the inefficient run-rig, in-field and outfield system. This could only survive in a society which was rich in man and woman power, but the returns from it were woefully small. The poverty and low level of subsistence in the Highlands of Scotland during the eighteenth century is beyond present-day belief. It was quite a regular custom for the cattle to be “bled” and the blood mixed with a bowl of meal to give sustenance to the humans.

The cattle were so weak at the end of the winte~ when there was hardly any fodder for them that there were annual “lifting days” when the neighbours gathered to carry the animals to the pasture because they were too weak to walk. The basic diet was meal in various forms. Few vegetables were grown except for kale, and meat or mutton was in short supply.

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