Avoch – women carrying men on their backs, the Spanish Armada, Scottish Wars of Independence – and so much more

Avoch was famous back in 1951. In its quest for curiosities to entertain the public the BBC broadcast a radio programme about this Black Isle village on the Moray Firth. So, what was so interesting about wee Avoch? First of all, its name which trips up many an unwary tourist. Avoch is pronounced as Och (as in loch not couch) and is thought to be a corruption of the Gaelic word Abhach meaning mouth of the stream (the Killen burn). If this is correct then Avoch might once have been pronounced Avach for the letters bh together make the sound v in Gaelic, as in Beinn a’ Bhuird. But it isn’t, certainly not now and the v is silent as in Milngavie. A very long time ago my uncle, a soft southerner, was driving through the village when he stopped to ask where he was. “Och” came a helpful reply. “Och, aye,” replied my uncle, “but where is this?” It amused him, and possibly the Auchie.

Once it got beyond the village’s name BBC listeners heard that Avoch’s roots, or some of them, could be traced back to England’s war with Spain in the sixteenth century when scores of vessels from the Spanish Armada were wrecked in Scottish waters while trying to evade England’s navy. One of those Spanish ships foundered off the coast near Avoch in 1588 and because it would have been hazardous for survivors to try to return to their homeland some Spaniards settled in the area marrying local women. This international population was later supplemented in the 19^th century by more unfortunate folk when fellow-Scots were driven out of their homes and off their land during the Clearances, forcing them to adapt to a very different way of life on the coast, as fishers.  

Given the amount of different folk settling here it might have struck 1951 wireless listeners as odd that the majority of Avoch dollies – yes, that’s their nickname – shared just three last names: Patience, Jack and MacLeman. Rival football teams could comprise either all Patiences or all Jacks. With so many folk sharing the same name in such a small community a practical solution to identity confusion meant additional names were given – nicknames or tee-names or by-names. Tee-names might relate to someone’s job, the name of their boat, in much the same way as farmers are known as, for example, John farm name, or their physical appearance and so on.  

Avoch dollies – let me try to sort this one out. Dollies has nothing to do with dolls but is an old Scots word (also dowy or dowie) for someone who is melancholy or full of woe and fisherfolk with their hazardous occupation might sometimes fit that description. Where were we? Ah, dollies and names had an easy/uneasy relationship. Despite the village’s reputation for comprising just Jacks, Patiences and MacLemans there were hundreds of people in Avoch and its surrounding district with different names – a lot of Mackenzies because of the Clearances. One famous son left the village as plain James Jack and returned years later as a wealthy Liverpool merchant and big noise around Avoch, as James Fletcher. He purchased a large and lovely piece of land just west of the village called Rosehaugh (its name came from the little sweet scented wild Scottish rose, the Burnet, that flourished there).

Not all had smelled as sweet as the Burnet rose in Avoch. During the 1800s the Fishery Boards Supervision Inspectorate reported –

“The effect of the present arrangement is that the village of Avoch, from having been one of the most slovenly and filthy, has now been transformed into one of the most tidy and clean fishing villages to be found anywhere. . . Instead of dirty lanes, tenanted by pigs – instead of dung-pits, dung-heaps, and scattered domestic refuse, ashes &c., being found throughout the village, every lane and street will be found to be in good condition, and clean and free from all these things.”

Transforming the village must have been achieved by sheer hard slog, something the folk of Avoch were familiar with. Not that hard work always pays off. It wasn’t only in Ireland that the failure of the potato harvests resulted in terrible suffering. Scots underwent awful hardships in the mid-19^th century when blight destroyed the potato harvest. In Avoch in 1847 emergency measures were put in place to create what today would be called a foodbank except back then those starving had to pay for the emergency supplies of basic essentials, oatmeal and barleymeal. Help came in that prices were controlled and no meal was allowed to be exported from the district until those in desperate need had bought up enough to prevent their starvation.

Arguably the most famous person associated with Avoch is Andrew Murray. No, not that one – Andrew de Moray of Ormond Castle raised a force of fighting men at Avoch during the First Scottish War of Independence, as the Scottish army’s northern leader with William Wallace the campaign leader in the south. Moray was badly wounded at the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297 and died later that year as a result. His castle was destroyed several centuries later during another English invasion, when Cromwell’s forces pulled it down, transporting the stone to Inverness to reinforce the castle there where the invaders were ensconced.  Another contender for its most famous inhabitant is Sir Alexander Mackenzie of Avoch. Born in Stornoway this explorer became the first European to cross North America while searching for a route to the Pacific Ocean, an achievement recognised in the naming of the Mackenzie River. He returned to Scotland and at the age of 48 married a wealthy 14-year-old heiress to the Avoch estate, Geddes Mackenzie and a few short years later was buried at Avoch.

Gaelic was widely spoken around Avoch though not so much within the village where English predominated, as might be expected since it and not Gaelic were taught in schools in the drive to anglicise Scotland. Boys were also taught Greek, Latin, arithmetic, book-keeping and reflecting Avoch’s predominant occupation, navigation. Church music was taught for a time but disappeared from schools by the middle of the 19^th century. On the other hand, by this time bibles were as common then as they had been scarce a hundred years earlier when barely one could be found in Avoch.

While English was widely spoken in the locality each of the villages of the Black Isle had their own distinctive dialect and vocabulary. Avoch English was combined with distinctly Avoch vocabulary.  Words such as kyout for child, damiki for a girl, schielickie for a boy, leam for a food plate and prunnels were crumbs that might be left on a leam. Damiki is easily understood as women were often referred to as dames in the Highlands and adding a diminutive such as iki gives damiki in the same vein as a wee lamb (and small child) was a lamiki when I was growing up in the Black Isle.

Avochies were also very superstitious as I think all fishing communities tended to be because of the hazards of life at sea. No point in taking chances. For example, they regarded anyone called Ross as unlucky which in a district of Ross and Cromarty must have given a complex to quite a number of innocent souls. Rosses were lumped in with pigs and rabbits as kaulironies or caul iron(cold iron) and if an Avochie stumbled across anyone or anything they suspected was an ill-omen an item of cold iron had to be found to touch to cancel misfortune – in much the same way as folk cross their fingers when walking under a ladder – and who can blame them for in June 1871 fourteen died, including many women. Early one morning a small boat packed with men and women pushed away from the shore to prepare a catch for selling in Inverness which had been stored overnight in a fishing boat anchored just offshore.  A sudden stiff breeze swept the boat out into the firth creating panic. In no time it capsized throwing everyone into the sea. The catastrophe that left a large number of children motherless could be seen happening from the village.   

But Avoch was not solely a fishing village. Crofting was the mainstay of most Black Islers. From the land came food other than fish as well as wool. Local wool was prepared and woven into cloth and tweed for a time. Everything grown and manufactured that wasn’t consumed locally was exported. Linen was another crop grown around Avoch which had its own lint mill. Avoch hemp was manufactured into rope and canvas which provided sails for Moray Firth boats. But for the majority in Avoch the sea provided their income with hundreds employed directly or indirectly – sometimes without caution. For example once bountiful oyster beds were destroyed by overfishing. Catches of sprats, herring, salmon, whiting and haddock were sold around the Black Isle by wives and daughters of fishermen and in Inverness’s markets.

Age and infirmity were no barriers to work. As there were no old age pensions until the 20^th century if you didn’t work you didn’t eat. The elderly and sick were forced to work their entire lives changing from what had been their occupation to easier and more menial tasks such as making and baiting fishing hooks and mending fishing nets. This didn’t mean the community did not pull together to provide extra assistance when needed such as when fishermen were lost at sea and their widows and children found themselves without their main breadwinner. This happened in 1792 following the loss of several fishers including the husband of a nineteen-year-old lassie, pregnant with her first baby who also lost her father and brother in the same accident. As well as receiving help from her fellow-villagers money flooded in from miles around; from Nairn to Fort George.  

Only the wealthy escaped a lifetime of unrelenting back-breaking toil but all work and no play make Jacks a bunch of dull boys, to misquote the proverb. Play included village football and another ball game enjoyed over Hogmanay which involved carrying a four-pound ball for some distance before seeing who could chuck it farthest. Whether women and girls participated I’ve no idea but don’t run away with the idea that ordeals of strength were confined to the male sex. Avoch’s women were renowned for being robust and hardy souls. It was a village custom for wives to carry their men on their backs out to their boats to keep the fishermen’s boots and clothing dry before setting out to sea. And in common with fisherwomen all around Scotland, Avoch women shouldered very heavy baskets packed with wet fish for miles across country when selling catches at inland farms and cottages.

So there you have it – Avoch distilled. The village of three family names – Patience, Jack and MacLeman – those names have been taken across the world. It is astonishing the number of folk with the name Patience who live in Africa; the British Empire was a vehicle for more than wars and trade. Patience sometimes said to derive from England or France may also be traced to the Gaelic Páidín – a diminutive of Pádraig. Jacks there are in plenty. Several notorious. MacLeman or McLeman and innumerable variations certainly has roots in Ireland. One man whose name incorporated both Jack and a variation of McLeman was the late actor, Jack Lemon, whose family were Irish. And the only thing to beat that for being cool is that there is a font called MacLemon.

None of this has much to do with Avoch and I’ll end with something else that’s only tangentially connected with Avoch but a good story. Around the turn of the 20^th century Avoch was on the circuit for a sheriff called Thoms. The poor man had issues, as they say. I don’t know what she served up to him but Sheriff Thoms insisted on giving his Avoch cook cooking lessons when he stayed in the village. Neither do I know if he travelled with his pet cat – the one he fined up to a penny for misbehaving. Thoms was a celebrated flirt but perversely he kept unpleasant smelling camphor in what he referred to as his laughing waistcoat to deter women who might take his advances seriously. And finally, he arranged that he be buried in a wicker coffin so that when Christ returned to earth at the resurrection, he would be ready for a fast escape to beat the crowd to witness it – but then he changed his mind, deciding to be cremated instead and his ashes kept in the ladies’ room in St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh. And on that note, perhaps it’s time to stop.