It was the desire to know more about my grandmother that brought me to Scotland in the first place. Her name was Inez McClure, and he was a small blue-haired elegant woman who shuffled around in stockings and heels every day, clutching her purse to her and asking where her keys were (they were usually pinned to her bra strap). She didn’t recognize me or call me by name ever, and in fact, after my sister and I visited her, we often heard he say loudly to her roommate, “Who the hell were they?” She had whiskers like a cat, and in her more lucid moments, she read poetry aloud from the books I brought her. I wanted to know more about her.
In my family, I am the keeper of the stories, and the stories are my “keep,” my safe place.
In medieval castle architecture, the “keep” is the inner stronghold, fortified tower, and safest place to be when under attack. The “keep” is also called the “heart” of the castle. Stories are the heart of who I am, the narratives that remind me of my magic. When life starts to feel like being lost in a dark forest without a path, fairy tales, myths, and legends are the golden threads that weave through the trees, like dancing fireflies, lighting my path, guiding me to the deepest, richest experiences for my soul.
As a child, I was spellbound listening to my Grandma Lupe tell me stories of the gold hidden in the hills of Mexico; fascinated by her tales of treasure maps, and how her grandmother was a Mayan Indian princess with blue eyes, and how her own mother ran away with a band of Mayans who came through their town. On my father’s side, I never heard any stories about my grandmother, so in the 90’s, I decided to visit Scotland and learn more about the McClures.
Back then, you couldn’t just google your family name or go on ancestry.com. You had to physically go to the place of your heritage and start talking to the locals. Kim was with me on this journey, and as we walked down a curving street in Edinburgh, we saw a tartan shop with a sign on the window stating that they could find your family tartan pattern for you. A “tartan” pattern is a piece of wool woven in specific colors and patterns, and they are often associated with different “clans” or family structures. I told the woman standing behind the counter that my grandmother was a McClure, and she ran one finger down several pages of the large book in front of her, before telling me the McClures are from the Harris-McLeod clan. She told me our family castle was called Dunvegan, and it was still standing on a remote faraway Scottish island called Skye. Later that day, Kim and I met a boy in a coffee shop and we asked him for a ride to Skye. The boy, who’ s name was Cameron, drove us to his home in Inverness, and then let us take his car over on the ferry to Skye. I returned from this experience transformed, and I told my family about the legends and the castle, but no one seemed interested.
Flash Forward: 27 years full of bedtimes stories, many of them about the things I saw on that trip to the Isle of Skye. My two magical children who were quickly growing into adults, and I had long dreamed of taking them to see the castle for themselves, to walk the stone pathways around the Fairy Tower and to see the mythical Fairy Flag. With my daughter about to leave for college, I booked our trip.
In A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson writes, “Every atom you possess has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms on its way to becoming you… a significant number of our atoms …probably once belonged to Shakespeare… When we die, our atoms will disassemble and move off to find new uses elsewhere – as part of a leaf or other human being or drop of dew.”
According to Bryson, my children and I not just made up of the DNA of our ancestors, but we are also made of stardust and Shakespeare.
For our visit to Dunvegan, our castle, I carefully planned my outfit to align with what a Fairy Queen might wear: a colorful silk dress and big flowers in my hair. I reverently walked through the Fairy Tower and the different rooms of the castle, stopping to gaze at an oil painting of a McLeod wearing a Flapper dress back in the 1920’s. I imagined her dancing the Charleston, swinging her fringe, tossing back champagne, and dancing the Grizzly Bear to a Jazz band in a speakeasy.
I laughed when I read the description of Sir Rory Mor’s drinking horn in the glass case. Apparently, college fraternities aren’t the only ones who have excessive drinking traditions. The horn is from the 16th century and clan custom dictated that each successive chief was to drink the entire horn’s worth of wine to prove his manhood. There were many other treasures around the castle, like the MacCrimmon Pipes, a set of bagpipes that have been in the family for 13 generations. There is a story (of course!) that the excellent bagpiping skills was bestowed on a young MacCrimmon piper by a fairy. To this day, there are still stellar bagpiping concerts at the castle. The glass cases also hold a lock of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s hair and a garment worn by Flora MacDonald who travelled with him by boat, over the sea to Skye.
Of course my favorite treasure at the castle is the Fairy Flag, and this was the main reason I brought the kids to Skye. More than 1500 years old, the Fairy Flag spills over with myths and legends about its magical powers that have changed the course of history more than once. Woven from silk originating in the Middle East in the 4th century, here is the story of the Fairy Flag:
The 4th Chief of MacLeod, Iain Ciar, was walking around his lands when he came across a fairy dwelling. Inside, he found a fairy princess, a bean sidhe, pronounced ‘ban shee,’ and they instantly fell in love.
Of course fairies aren’t allowed to marry mortals, but this princess found a way to marry her true love, but she could only stay for a year and a day, but at the end of that time she must return to the spirit realm. The couple had a fairy baby, and when it came time for the couple to part, she held the baby in her arms and warned her husband never to leave the baby unattended, as she dreaded hearing his cries.
The Laird was overcome with sadness, and his family arranged a feast in an attempt to lighten his heart. In the midst of the music and dancing, the MacLeod Chief noticed that the baby’s nursemaid had temporarily left her charge and had come to watch the revelry in the Great Hall. Seized with dread, he ran to check on the child: he heard a lovely voice lifted in song, and saw his fairy wife bending over the cradle, wrapping the baby in a glittering silk shawl. Some say she took the baby back to her Fairy kingdom, leaving behind the fairy flag with a promise that, if it were flown in times of peril, it would save the MacLeod clan from doom, but the flag’s magic could only be called upon three times, following which it will be summoned back to the spirit world.
In 1580, the flag was waved in the face of an opposing army and turned the tide of a battle in the MacLeods’ favour. On another occasion, it cured a herd of cattle that were stricken with disease, saving the local community from famine. During the Second World War, the 28th Chief (Dame Flora MacLeod) even offered to brandish the flag from the cliffs of Dover, but this was never put into practice.
Nowadays, after 18 centuries, the flag is a tattered piece of silk, crudely mended over many times, framed on the wall of the castle. People walk by it, smiling at the charming legend but when Kim and I stood in front of it back in the 90’s, our arms around each other, we were more than charmed — we were deeply enchanted. The legend of the Fairy Flag resonated with us. We had met each other while playing fairies in Midsummer Night’s Dream, and we had created our own Fairy Kingdom in Hollywood, where dancing, feasting, merrymaking, handcrafting, parades and weaving flowers through our hair was part of our everyday lives. I collected fairy wings and hung them around my bedroom, and Kim and I made (and wore) fairy wings for my baby shower when I was pregnant with my daughter.
Before I had children, I told the story of the Fairy Flag to my nieces and nephews, and I loved it when they would pull me aside at family gatherings to tell me their magic stories. Janessa and Alek once told me they had stumbled into a Fairy kingdom and been given crowns and made King and Queen. Alek had a quilt on his bed that would shoot off sparks in the dry winter air of Utah, looking suspiciously like flying creatures made of light. And once a sunbeam came through the window and I held out my hand to hold the tiny winged creatures I saw floating in the air. My little sister said, “Oh great, don’t tell me I have to call the men in white coats to come get you? Why are you trying to get dust motes to land on your hand?”
And now I had pilgrimaged to Skye to share the magic with my children.
Except they weren’t impressed.
I led them to the flag, excitedly hopping up and down in front of it. “This is it! This is the Fairy Flag from the story I’ve been telling you since you were little!”
Annabelle rolled her eyes and moved on. Henry said, “Mom, it looks like a torn old rag.”
“What?” I looked closely at the tattered fabric. He had a point. “Okay, yes, it looks like a torn old rag, but it’s an ancient piece of magic. Can you imagine the things this flag has witnessed? The battles, the love, the loss… ” He shook his head and walked on.
I sighed and slumped my shoulders, reading the historical plaques around the room until I heard,“Mom!” I looked up, thrilled they were finally acting interested in something. They were standing in the stately office overlooking the ocean, holding up their phones.
“Mom, Look.” I looked where they were pointing, through their phones, and saw the chandeliers were robustly flickering on an off. Ghosts. They were thrilled about the possibility of ghosts, and so was I. We continued our tour, walking down the narrow stone steps, with trepidation on my part as I’m not particularly fond of stone basements, and the kids were thrilled when I jumped after seeing the wax dummy dressed like a maid. Wax dummies seem to fit better in horror movies than out in the real world, and I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised if this one had suddenly sprung to life and stabbed me.
I walked quickly through the basement and met up with the kids outside. They were taking pictures of the glittering ocean. We walked through the castle gardens with its lilting pink fairy bell flowers, rushing waterfalls, blue hydrangeas, and hidden doorways in the hedges.
Do I wish my teens had been as excited as I was about the Fairy Flag? Yes I do, but as Floating Eagle Feather said, “Some say the world is made up of atoms, I believe the world is made up of stories.” If Bill Bryson is right, and all the atoms of our ancestors and maybe even the fairies are now potentially hopping around our bodies and bloodstreams, then I would like to add that our family stories make up our world as well, weaving themselves through our bodies, bones, and bloodstream, like Zardozi, the art of embroidering royal tents with golden thread.
Maybe as they grow older, the children will remember the fairy stories and they will bring them warmth on cold nights. Or maybe they will only remember their exuberant mother hopping around a castle on a mystical island, brimming with stories with flowers in her hair, and isn’t that the truest magic?
