Qualla: Battle of Tuiteam Tarbhach

Battle of Tuiteam Tarbhach: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Le Deluge, CC BY-SA 3.0. One MacLeod made it home. That is the part of the story everyone remembers. He crossed the Highlands wounded, reached Lewis, reported the disaster to his clan, and died of his injuries. Behind him on the slopes above the Tutim Burn lay the bodies of every man who had ridden out with him from MacLeod country to settle a family quarrel by force. The Battle of Tuiteam Tarbhach is one of those small, savage clan engagements that left no monuments and barely a footnote in larger histories, but in 1406 it was the kind of day that decided who would rule a region for the next two centuries.

Image: Le Deluge | CC BY-SA 3.0

Battle of Tuiteam Tarbhach: A Quarrel Across the Highlands

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Le Deluge, CC BY-SA 3.0. The dispute began as a domestic matter. Sidheag, sister of Roderick MacLeod, chief of the MacLeods of Lewis, had been married to Angus Mackay. When Angus died, he left his brother Hugh - known as Black Hugh, Uistean Dow - as tutor for his two young sons. By 1406 Sidheag was at od...

Image: Le Deluge | CC BY-SA 3.0

Battle of Tuiteam Tarbhach: The Tutim Burn

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Le Deluge, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Oykel and the Kyle of Sutherland together form one of the great east-west arteries of the northern Highlands, slicing across from Dornoch on the east coast almost to Ullapool in the west. The river was the traditional boundary between Sutherland to the north and Ross to the s...

Image: Le Deluge | CC BY-SA 3.0

Battle of Tuiteam Tarbhach: What Came After

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Le Deluge, CC BY-SA 3.0. Hugh Mackay died two years later, and the chieftainship passed to his nephew Angus Dow - one of the sons he had been tutor to - and Angus Dow proved to be exactly the sort of leader a clan needs after a fight like this. He survived defeat by Donald, Lord of the Isles, at the Batt...

Image: Le Deluge | CC BY-SA 3.0

Battle of Tuiteam Tarbhach: What Remains

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Le Deluge, CC BY-SA 3.0. There is not much to see now. Cairns once marked the battlefield, piles of stones set up by survivors and successors in the way Highland dead were memorialised long before grave-slabs reached this country. The stones were carried off over the years to build dry-stone walls in the...

Image: Le Deluge | CC BY-SA 3.0