Highland Insider

The Clootie Well at Munlochy

May Day has past and again I’ve missed the chance of visiting a Clootie Well on the most traditional day of the year. Originally, Beltane was the auspicious time to visit a well, but when the Christian church took over the old Celtic festivals, it was attached to the less alarming May Day. It’s a shame – the old Beltane rituals of fire and purification seem much more in tune with life in the Highlands. By the end of winter I certainly feel the need for some light, warmth and good clean.

Clootie wells are sacred springs which the Celts saw as sources of healing. A cloth or ‘cloot’ is dipped in the water, applied to the body then hung from the branches of the trees around the well. The idea was that as the cloth disintegrates, the ailment or problem disintegrates too. The cloth can also be seen as an offering to the spirit of the well and one legend about the Munlochy well is that a fairy who lived there was once given a cloth in exchange for a drink of water. Sadder tales are also told of ailing babies being left at the well overnight, presumably on the old principal of ‘kill or cure’.

The Munlochy well on the Black Isle is the best known and biggest clootie well in the area, but I would say St Mary’s Well, deep in the woods by Culloden Moor, is far more atmospheric. You have to walk to it, through some lovely woodland maintained by the Forestry Commission, and it’s in a damp, secluded dell where you can easily imagine fairies lurking. There are only a few cloots hanging from the trees, more modest offerings than the football shirts and shoes that you see at Munlochy. It’s well worth the effort of looking it out. Maybe next May Day… or even Beltane.

I blame Chris Packham.

The Pack Leader has always been an interesting companion on country walks; he has the gift of noticing things that most people miss. So, over the years I’ve seen countless birds, tracks, squashed down bits of undergrowth where wild things have recently lurked… all things I would have missed on my own. I’ve also had the chance to examine close up an empty adder skin, the carcass of a hare hanging inexplicably from a tree branch, fossils on beaches and prehistoric bones in a cave. The PL always liked to get down and dirty – within limits – and this has been fine with me for years. His own favourite find was always an owl pellet to dissect. What a treat.

But now this is no longer enough. Over the past couple of years he has started to poke about, not only in pellets but in poo. Pass a bit of black pine marten poo on the path and he’s off finding a stick to prod it apart. No pile of otter spraint is passed without being sniffed and the cat-like offering by the forestry track (is it a wildcat?) is pondered over each time it appears. As I say, I blame that arch poo-prodder Chris Packham. It’s only since he joined Springwatch that this has started to be a habit.

Yesterday it was a rounded blob of black, grey and white on the forest floor. It looked very like the bigger of the parcels our old cockerel used to leave around the hen run. But bigger. ‘Definitely a big fowl,’ I diagnosed. ‘Big enough for a penalty,’ agreed the PL. He, of course, found a stick and had a good nosy at it but there was nothing obvious in the contents. We’re hoping it might have been left by a capercaillie. Neighbours tell us they have seen one in these woods, scoffing the bilberries, but so far we’ve never had the privelige. I saw one in Perthshire when I was a wee girl (it looked as big as a pony from my three foot tall vantage point) and I’d love to see another. But somehow I get the feeling that the PL would be just as happy with another bit of poo.

Sometimes I long for more variety in the woodlands around here. Most of the hillside is covered in regular, over-crowded pine plantations which, in their denser parts, seem almost dead with dry earth, little light and an eerie lack of noise.

It’s improving though. Four years ago the Estate sent the foresters in and great swathes have been cleared, letting in the light and opening up possibilities. They left wood to decay on the ground, providing homes and shelter for insects and burrowers. The ground was badly churned up by the lorries and tractors, but the damage was soon covered with new growth. The bigger cleared patches are already well covered in bracken and ferns, and some even had a miraculous flowering of foxgloves after the foresters left; the seeds must have been dormant in the ground, and the clearings were awash with purple the season after the trees were cut.

In the clearing nearest us, which I can see from the window as I write, the Estate replaced the pines with saplings of oak and cherry, which will eventually form a patch of the sort of woodland I crave. If they keep doing that as new patches are cleared, Nairnshire might eventually have some woods to be proud of again. The remnants of the old native flora cling on even now, round the edges of the plantations where bluebells and dog violets appear in spring. Given the right conditions they could re-establish themselves like the foxgloves.

In the meantime, we’re noticing more birdsong when we walk up to the loch, which is at the end of a track that used to go through a particularly dark, dense area. Five years ago you could pass through it and barely hear a squeak; just the occasional wren in the undergrowth or a chaffinch or great-tit right up in the treetops. We were there the other day and the difference was audible as well as visible. A flock of coal-tits, a pair of bull-finches, general chattering from the treetops. A nice bonus was a wee gathering of crossbills, although they always did favour the pinewoods.

So, hope springs. But it takes a long time to grow.