Archaeology - Arceòlais

Craggan Pots by Finlay MacLeod - Cnagain le Fionnlagh Macleòid

"When I visited the Island of Lewis in 1863, I had the advantage of the company of Capt. F W L Thomas. In driving from Uig to the village of Barvas on the west coast, we passed a stone-breaker sitting at the roadside eating his dinner (of meal) out of a vessel which struck us as remarkable. We found it, on closer examination, to be even a stranger thing than it seemed to us, as we first caught sight of it. We waited until the stone-breaker had eaten its contents, and then we carried it off; but we had acquired little information regarding its history, because the stone-breaker and we had no common language."

This was written by Arthur Mitchell in his book 'Past and Present' (1880).

This 'vessel' -- 4 inches high -- is in the National Museums of Scotland in Edinburgh. The finding of the stone-breaker's simple 'vessel' opens a most interesting chapter in the history of the Hebrides' material culture.

Mitchell's 1863 day continued thus: "When we got there (Barvas), we found that our acquaintance of the roadside had preceded us. He had hurried home to tell of the profitable sale he had made, and while our horse was feeding, we were visited by many people carrying vessels like the one we had bought, and offering them for sale." At least four of the craggans bought by Arthur Mitchell that day still exist, one of them with a straight handle. "They are called craggans, and we learned that, at a period by no means remote, they had been made in many of the villages of the Lewis, though at the time of our visit their manufacture was chiefly, if not entirely, confined to Barvas." Two days later Mitchell returned to Barvas and was shown how these craggans were made: this was usually done by women and in their own homes. This is Mitchell's description of what he saw: "The clay she used underwent no careful or special preparation. She chose the best she could get, and picked out of it the larger stones, leaving the sand and the finer gravel which it contained. With her hands alone she gave to the clay its desired shape. She had no aid from anything of the nature of a potter's wheel. In making the smaller craggans, with narrow necks, she used a stick with a curve on it to give form to the inside. All that her fingers could reach was done with them. Having shaped the craggan, she let it stand for a day to dry, then took it to the fire in the centre of the floor of her hut, filled it with burning peats, and built burning peats all round it. When sufficiently baked, she withdrew it from the fire, emptied the ashes out, and then poured slowly into it and over it about a pint of milk, in order to make it less porous."

So, the craggans were these simple clay pots; more or less spherical, sometimes decorated with marks made with a small stick, fingernail or finger-tip, hand-thrown without the use of a potter's wheel, fired on the domestic hearth, and bathed in warm milk. The potter first made her circular base and then built up the body in coils of about 1" thick; the craggan could take up to two hours to make.

As with the creel -- a larger container, made of willow or docken stalks, also with a history ranging from the Iron Age to modern times, and used for carrying diverse materials such as grain, peats, potatoes, seaweed and peats -- so with the craggan and its many uses.

It had a neck around which a sheepskin lid was placed and tied with a thong. In this way craggans could be carried in a creel, in a bed of heather or moss. The craggan itself was used for carrying different produce such as milk, cream, butter, whey and buttermilk, and was used extensively when part of the year was spent out on sheilings on the moor. Both sheiling life and the making of craggans, as well as the most traditional of thatched houses, continued to a later time in Lewis than anywhere else.

At home the craggan was used as a general container, for materials such as foodstuffs, beer and water.

Martin Martin, writing around 1695, was the first writer to refer to craggans: "The soil is generally sandy... and is in other places a fine red clay as appears by the many vessels made of it by the native women, some for boiling meat, others for preserving their ale, for which purpose they are better than barrels of wood."

A century later, in 1793, John Lane Buchanan describes the making of craggans in the Hebrides and refers to their being used, "... for boiling water and dressing victuals."

In 1901 a writer in the journal 'Brick' says, "A native of Harris who is over 80 years of age states that in his younger days these home-made earthen vessels were much used for holding oil extracted from fish livers. This oil in those ancient times was the only source of illumination used in the houses of the Western Isles."

Rev. MacGregor, from Skye, wrote on this in 1880: "The oil was dark, like port wine, but thin and good. It was procured from the livers of the different kinds of fish which they caught for family use. On coming home from the sea-beach with creels of fish of all descriptions, the females commenced immediately to date them, and to throw the livers into an old pot or into a craggan, until they melted them down into a partially liquid state; then they set the decayed livers on a slow fire to dissolve them completely. In this state, they poured off the pure liquid oil, put into a craggan and threw away the refuse."

A young man living in Barvas has a large craggan which was handed over to him by an older man who is no longer alive. The older man knew of this craggan being carried to the village of Sgiogarstaigh in Ness, some 8 miles away, to collect fish livers for oil.

Mitchell's observations catch the co-existence of tradition and change: "The house in which the woman lived (in Barvas, in 1863) who made this pottery for our instruction was squalid and wretched enough; but still we saw in it cottons from Manchester, crockery from Staffordshire, cutlery from Sheffield, sugar from West Indies, tea from China, and tobacco from Virginia. In that house, nevertheless, these rude craggans were made for sale. They were abundant in it, and were largely in actual use, as indeed they were also in many of the houses of the townships round about... When Capt Thomas and I reached Stornoway with our treasure, and exhibited them in the hotel, we found that the Craggan was nearly as great a curiously there as it afterwards turned out to be in the south. Yet the woman who fashioned the Cow and the Craggans was full of shrewdness, a theologian in her way... and quite able to become well versed in a score of other things if the need and opportunity had arisen."

No-one made a sustained study of craggans in the decades following Mitchell's work of the 1880s. Even by that time, the production and extensive and natural use of craggans would have been in decline, and their use would have been very limited by the turn of the century.

Craggans had been easy to make wherever there were local sources of clay, and they could be readily replaced if broken. Many of them broke when they were being fires. Altogether they suited the subsistance economy of the Hebrides at that time. By the late 19 century other containers such as enamel pails became available, and local groups of tinkers began producing tin utensils of all kinds.

From the late 19 century, the interested students of artifacts and the occasional tourists were the only ones to draw attention to them. Pygmies Isles, or An Luchraban, near the Butt of Lewis is a remarkable place and has the remains of a very old building. The Lewis historian W. C. Mackenzie writes in 1904 of how shards of pottery were found in the ground within this building. MacKenzie writes that these pieces from this ancient site were of a form and colour, "somewhat resembling the old croggans."

At least one craggan exists which was made by Fionnghal Bheag (Flora Macdonald) of Barvas in 1877. Mr D. I. Nicolson of Bragar had this made and sent it to a Professor Duns, who lodged it with the National Museums of Scotland. A note goes with it: "By whom made? Widow Flora McDonald. Name place and parish: Barvas in the parish of Barvas. When made? August 1877. How hardened? When dried in the sun put in the fire till red hot, then dipped in milk." (Fionnghal Bheag was a well-known local seer; she is most renowned for having 'seen' when two Nessmen had died in isolation on North Rona, and she walked to Ness to warn their relatives, who ignored her claim).

An early National Trust black house museum was set up in Calanais in the 1930s and two craggans taken from there when it closed have been lodged in the National Museums of Scotland -- the larger of these has vertical scratch-mark decorations and a piece of thong, and the other, smaller one with the collar has became known as the 'potato pot'. There is a further collection of Lewis craggans in the Highland Folk Museum started by Dr Isobel Grant in Kingussie. In Lewis, antiquarians such as Dr Donald Macdonald and Duncan 'Major' Morison and Angus 'Ease' Macleod collected local artifacts, including interesting examples of craggans. A fine, large craggan from Cross, Ness was given to 'Major' by a Ness aunt and it is now part of the display of craggans in Museum nan Eilean.

Mr A. D. Lacaille, from the museum of the Wellcome Institute in London, visited Lewis in 1935 and obtained a craggan which had been made by Fionnghal Bheag's daughter Mairi Ruadh (Mary Murray); it is now with the National Museums of Scotland. Cecil Curwen visited in 1937 and photographed craggans in the Calanais Museum, including the one with the vertical scratch-markings. In 1920 Curwen had met a middle-aged woman in Skye 'who in her younger days used to make these craggans'.

As with other examples of indigenous material culture, interested individuals in the islands have singular examples of craggans in their possession but most of the remaining examples are in Museum nan Eilean, the Highland Folk Museum and the National Museums of Scotland. In recent years, the most comprehensive study of craggans has been made by Hugh Cheape (1988, 1993). A number of Gaelic phrases still in use refer back to the time when craggans were in common use. Young people were often walking between their township and the sheiling. If one group overtook another, the latter would shout, 'Briseadh chragain oirbh' (breaking of craggans on you). This was related by the folklorist Aonghas Phadraig (Angus Macleod), Bragar. Because of its porous nature, milk and other foodstuffs tended to go 'off' rather quickly if kept in the craggan for any length of time, and this would have a characteristic taste. 'Blas a' chragain' (taste of the cragan) still refers to anything one has had enough of. 'Cho glan ri iomaidil' (as clean as a craggan cover) is a telling phrase from North Uist. The iomaidil was the sheepskin lid of the craggan, held in place by the iall (thong). The iomaidil had to be kept immaculately clean: accounts tell of how it was scrubbed with cold water and scraped on a flat stone with a blunt knife and then soaked in salt water.

Interestingly, the story has to return to Arthur Mitchell for its final and rather unique episode. This is one of the most poignant and telling examples of an ancient culture in the throes of dramatic change, where the natural, indigenous skills developed over centuries could now be applied only in crude imitation of mass-produced crockery from the south.

"Expecting a visit from curious strangers (Mitchell and Thomas had returned two days after their first visit), proud of her skill, and anxious to display it, our Barvas potter had prepared for us, in addition to the craggans, some imitations of Staffordshire ware, and some models of animals." (Mitchell 1880).

Barvas Ware had hit the market: probably a unique ending for any ancient tradition of native material production. The pieces were sold as curios and were not bought for use; items such as teapots, cups & saucers, milk and sugar bowls and vases were produced. Barvas Ware is to be distinguished from the ancient tradition of craggan production and use.

Into the present century (and up until that time of signifcant change -- the First World War), this grotesgue pottery continued to be produced, at least by one woman. It was advertised in newpapers in Edinburgh and London and sold in local shops, and found its way to some of the national exhibitions. Barvas Ware was advertised in the 'Scottish Leader' of 5 August 1893: Cups, 6d.; saucers, 6d.; Egg Cups, 6d.; Cream Jugs, 6d.; Sugar Bowls, 6d.; teapots, 2s.; Craggans, 1s.; Vases, 1s. 6d.

In 1907, Edmund Quiggen, on his honeymoon in Lewis, photographed Barvas Ware being fired on an open hearth in Barvas. As late as 1935, on his visit to Lewis, A. D. Lacaille of the Wellcome Institute in London was able to commission a set of Barvas Ware from Catriona Mhurchaidh (Catherine MacLean) of Bru, Barvas. (This was the daughter of Mairi Ruadh, the last woman who had made Barvas pottery on a large scale). The set has 2 small craggans, a dish, a flower pot, a vase and a sugar bowl. In 1982, the collections in this London museum were dispersed and the set of Barvas Ware purchased by Lacaille turned up in the Birmingham City Museum from where it has been transferred to the National Museums of Scotland. "The cream-coloured milk glaze is still prominent on these unused pieces." (Cheape 1993). This set is currently on display in Museum nan Eilean. Lacaille had done rather well, given the late date: he collected a craggan and Barvas Ware made by Mairi Ruadh in Barvas and well as the cream-coloured set of Barvas Ware made for him by Catriona Mhurchaidh in Brue.

Bibliography

Hugh Cheape. 1988. Food and Liquid Containers in the Hebrides: A Window on the Iron Age. In Alexander Fenton and Janken Myrdal (eds) Food and Drink and Travelling Accessories. John Donald: Edinburgh.

Hugh Cheape. 1993. Crogans and Barvas Ware: Handmade Pottery in the Hebrides. Scottish Studies, 31, 109-128.

Arthur Mitchell. 1880. The Past in the Present. David Douglas: Edinburgh.