Library Reference Number: 145
On The Trail Of The Schiehallions
(or Sh - Sh - Sh - Schiehallion)
In 1999 a Scotsman journalist Dave Hewitt ran a column 'Hill Informed' in the Outdoors Section of the paper and for a number of weeks orchestrated a search for homes which bore the name 'Schiehallion' but were located in all sorts of places quite remote from and unconnected with the iconic mountain in Perthshire. Dave's trail began with a 'Schiehallion' in Braemar, a town with plenty of local peaks whose names might have been more readily used. His curiosity got the better of him and, after a series of phone calls to present and past owners of the house, he was connected to an 87-year-old widower in Glenrothes, Jimmy Keddie. His Glenrothes house was his fourth `Schiehallion', the Braemar house had been his second. Dave was told that the name was chosen back in the late 1930's when Jimmy and his wife-to-be had `lovely picnics at a viewpoint by Loch Rannoch' and that, should he ever move again, wherever he went, he would take the name with him.
I wasn't surprised by this strong allegiance to the Gaelic name 'Schiehallion', meaning `Hill of the Fairies'. It just has a lovely ring about it, and the mountain itself doesn't carry any aura of danger like the peaks in Glencoe or the Cairngorms. It just sits there in all its grandeur, with its unmistakable conical shape isolated and with no adjacent competitors. Dave had a fascinating response to his quest to which I added this story of a how a house in a village on the EngIish/Welsh border came to be called `Schiehallion'.
In the early 1970's I was a navigator flying Whirlwind helicopters on the Search and Rescue Flight of 202 Squadron at RAF Leuchars in Fife. Many of the pilots coming on to Search and Rescue had flown in the Army Support role where they didn't always have the benefit of a navigator. They took some time to adjust to being told where to go and took any opportunity (usually only when the weather was 8/8ths blue) to do their own thing on the navigation front. We had regular rescues on Ben Nevis and, very conveniently, Schiehallion was bang on track and exactly half-way there. So on a good day the standard practice of the pilots was to climb to 1000 feet on departure, sight Schiehallion then say, `OK nav, put your maps away, my navigation'. Of course if the weather still held good en route, Ben Nevis would come into view from Schiehallion and it wasn't too difficult for the average pilot to work out the expected time of arrival there.
One day one of the Leuchars pilots said to me, `You know, when my new house is ready I'm going to call it `Schiehallion', in fact wherever 1 go that's what I'll call my house'. True to his word, when the new house near Leuchars was ready it was duly named `Schiehallion' but shortly afterwards he was posted south of the border to an instructional job at RAF Shawbury, with the consequence that his new address became `Schiehallion, Shawbury, Shrewsbury, Shropshire'!
Footnote by WebMaster: The Schiehallion Mountain was widely regarded as the 'centre of Scotland' by the Romans and relatively few Roman settlements were ever built to the north of this landmark. The oldest living thing in Europe is to be found just a few miles south of the mountain. It's a Yew Tree now protected within a walled area in the church cemetary at Fortingall. The tree is estimated to be around 5,000 years old! Just thought you'd like to know!