PANALBA

A friend of mine is inclined to remark from time to time that you know that it is summer in Scotland when the rain gets warmer. She has a point, but when you are out-and-about at any time of year, it is the rain and the mist and the wind that makes the landscape so undeniably spectacular.

And when the purple heather is in bloom and the sun reveals itself against an azure backdrop replete with racing clouds, there is nowhere else on earth that can compete. At least that is how I feel about it.

At this time of year I usually travel north to stay with friends on the island of Lewis. Their home is on the shores of Loch Seaforth, which divides the treeless, peat-bog landscape of Lewis, from the emerald undulating forests of Harris. This has to be God's own country, although I do have some sympathy for the inhabitants across the Minch on the isle of Skye who last year reported fifty days of continuous wet weather. On one occasion, I climbed up onto Ben Mor and watched the weather fronts literally travelling towards me, one moment soaking me with cold, clear water, the next, baking my face and waterproofs. With distant views of the Shiant islands, and the distant Scottish mainland clearly in sight, I have never felt so much at peace with the world as I did on that occasion.

Long ago, in the seventeenth century, Coinneach Odhar, better known in the Highlands of Scotland as Kenneth of Kintail, the Brahan Seer, prophesied that the island of Lewis would one day sink beneath the sea without a trace. Given the accuracy of some of his more bizarre predictions, not to mention our twenty-first century obsession with climate change, this might explain why the islanders are currently so preoccupied with the pros and cons of wind farms and renewable energy.

Kenneth of Kintail was born at Baile-na-Cille, on the northern arm of Uig Bay. Taken up by the third Earl of Seaforth, he foretold the Highland Clearances of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the building of the Caledonian Canal in the nineteenth century, the discovery of North Sea oil in the 1960s, and he even predicted the demise of the Seaforth dynasty in 1783. Whether or not his prophecy that "the day will come when the hills of Ross will be strewed with ribbons" has anything to do with wind farms is certainly open to debate.

Island life on Lewis, however, has moved on apace since Kenneth's day. At the last count, the town of Stornoway had a population of 6,000, with a mixed economy relating to tourism, fishing, Harris Tweed and IT skills. And of course, in Kenneth's lifetime there would certainly not have been ferry sailings and flights on the Sabbath, but I suspect that he would have identified himself with the Old Religion, not the Reformation

However, there are some things on Lewis that never change. For example, the Standing Stones at Callanish,on the island's West Coast, smooth and defiant against the wind. A Visitor Centre now stands guardian over this extraordinary five thousand year old wonder of the world. Who were these people who raised these iconic stones, some of the pillars standing five metres in height? And what did they get up to here among these ranks and circles thought, like the Ring of Brodgar on Orkney, to form a calendar system based on the position of the moon? Will we ever know?

There are always more questions than answers. Looking south from Callanish, the mountain range over Loch Seaforth is clearly discerned, and takes the form of a sleeping woman, her hair cascading over her shoulders. From this location, it is said by New Age travellers that on the night of the summer solstice, the moon catapults into the heavens from her thighs, symbolising fertility.

I revel in such flights of fantasy, and under such a big sky there is nowhere more conducive to allowing the imagination to run riot.

Highlands and Islands legend is punctuated with curses and mythology. A single Cormorant, owl or raven is considered to be a harbinger of imminent doom. A crow alighting on the roof of a croft presages a death therein. The direction in which a bird chooses to fly can be of vital significance. The way in which the wind catches the flame or smoke from an open fire, reveals all to those who know what to look for. Shape-shifting, the transition of a human being into a bird or a beast, is an everyday occurrence. Superstition has been rife in the Hebrides for generations, and who among us dares to belittle it?

Inhabiting the inland lochans are selkies (water horses), and off the east coast of Lewis is the Sound of Shiant, sometimes known as the Stream of the Blue Men, strange semi-human creatures who prey upon passing boats. Writing on the subject, the author Adam Nicolson reflected that the deep past is more urgently naked here than in any other place he knows, particularly in the Shiants, the three small uninhabited off-shore islands he was gifted by his father when he reached the age of twenty-one, and which he has now passed on to his own son.

Sailing in his boat and above all when out at sea late in the evening, he had only to look to the other end of the vessel "for some other figure to be there, sorting out the ropes, wrapping the plaid around them."

I too expect to be sailing in the Sound of Shiant in the not too distant future and will report back to you on what occurs. However, if you don't hear from me again, look out for that eagle soaring over Ben Mor.