Qualla: Raasay https://qualla.com/raasay en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:24 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/5/w/raasay-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Raasay https://qualla.com/raasay Raasay: Introduction https://qualla.com/raasay/ Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Imamon~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0. Calum MacLeod spent ten years building a road with hand tools. Two miles of tarmac between Brochel Castle and the village of Arnish, carved from rock and heather by one man with a pick, a shovel, and a wheelbarrow. By the time the local council agreed to surface it, Calum and his wife were Arnish's last inhabitants. The story is pure Raasay -- an island where stubbornness and beauty exist in equal measure, where depopulation and devotion have been locked in a centuries-long struggle, and where the landscape carries the marks of every human hand that has worked it, from Mesolithic hunter-gatherers to the poet Sorley MacLean.

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Imamon~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/5/w/raasay-wp/gf5w-raasay-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Raasay: Between Skye and the Mainland https://qualla.com/raasay/ Photo credit Paul K. Strother, CC BY 3.0. Raasay stretches fourteen miles long and four miles wide in the Inner Sound, separated from Skye by a narrow strait. The flat-topped summit of Dun Caan -- where James Boswell famously danced a Highland reel in 1773 -- offers views across to the Cuillin and the mainland. The islan...

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Image: Paul K. Strother | CC BY 3.0

]]> Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/5/w/raasay-wp/gf5w-raasay-between-skye-and-the-mainland.mp3 0:06 2 full Raasay: The MacLeods and the Prince https://qualla.com/raasay/ Photo credit Vincent van Zeijst, CC BY-SA 4.0. The MacLeods held Raasay from 1518, when Gillecallum, a younger son of the MacLeod chief of Lewis, was granted title. Although Protestant, the MacLeods of Raasay supported Bonnie Prince Charlie during the 1745 Jacobite rising. After Culloden, the Prince spent two days hiding on t...

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Image: Vincent van Zeijst | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/5/w/raasay-wp/gf5w-raasay-the-macleods-and-the-prince.mp3 0:06 3 full Raasay: Cleared and Emptied https://qualla.com/raasay/ Photo credit David Tyers, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1843, the last MacLeod laird, deep in debt, sold Raasay for 35,000 guineas to George Rainy. After the Highland Potato Famine, Rainy decided to convert arable land to sheep farming. His method of removing the tenants was to ban marriage. Townships along the east coast were empt...

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Image: David Tyers | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/5/w/raasay-wp/gf5w-raasay-cleared-and-emptied.mp3 0:06 4 full Raasay: Time, the Deer, Is in the Wood https://qualla.com/raasay/ Photo credit Dominic Moore, CC BY-SA 2.0. The poet Sorley MacLean was born in Osgaig on Raasay's west coast. His most famous poem, Hallaig, transforms the emptied township into a landscape where the dead return as birch trees and the living are shadows. "Time, the deer, is in the Wood of Hallaig" -- a line that captures ...

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Image: Dominic Moore | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/f/5/w/raasay-wp/gf5w-raasay-time-the-deer-is-in-the-wood.mp3 0:06 5 full