Qualla: Wiay, Inner Hebrides

Wiay, Inner Hebrides: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John Allan, CC BY-SA 2.0. On 22 September 1773, James Boswell rowed across Loch Bracadale with Samuel Johnson and a local laird called Ullinish to look at a cave. Boswell measured it. He noted it was 180 feet long, 30 feet wide and at least 30 feet high. Their guide promised them a remarkable echo, but the cave that day was damp and the echo did not perform. Johnson, characteristically, blamed the exaggerations of Highland storytellers. The cave was on Wiay, a 148-hectare uninhabited island in Loch Bracadale off the western coast of Skye, and you can still find it. The island has gone by many names - Buyamoire, Buia, Vinay, Vuiay, Wia, Via Moir - and once held six people. Tuberculosis ended them.

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Image: John Allan | CC BY-SA 2.0

Wiay, Inner Hebrides: An Island of Cliffs

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John Allan, CC BY-SA 2.0. Wiay is roughly 1.3 km wide by 2.1 km long, lying 1.3 km west of Ullinish in Loch Bracadale on Skye's western coast. Most of the coastline is cliff, up to 60 metres high, and the southern bluff is a striking overhanging wall that drops 59 metres straight into the water. The high ...

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Image: John Allan | CC BY-SA 2.0

Wiay, Inner Hebrides: Six People in 1841

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit derek menzies, CC BY-SA 2.0. The 1841 census, the first to count individuals, recorded six inhabitants of Wiay: three men and three women, four of them under twenty, all born in Inverness-shire. They lived in one building. The 1851 census found five. The 1861 census, one family of six. By 1871 there were fiv...

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Image: derek menzies | CC BY-SA 2.0

Wiay, Inner Hebrides: The Harmonia's Long Drift

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Minginish, CC BY-SA 4.0. On 5 July 1869 a 643-tonne Aberdeen barque called Harmonia left Quebec with fifteen crew and a cargo of timber, bound home across the Atlantic. Two days out, near the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, a gale broke her mast and she sprung a leak. At 23:30 on 6 July she rolled onto her ...

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Image: Minginish | CC BY-SA 4.0

Wiay, Inner Hebrides: Dougald's Beacon

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mihael Grmek, CC BY-SA 3.0. It was the shepherd Dougald MacDonald who saw her. He found his coastline strewn with oak logs, deals and staves marked with the names of merchants in Aberdeen. On the following Monday, 27 September, he climbed a small hillock on the island, piled together what heather, wood and ...

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Image: Mihael Grmek | CC BY-SA 3.0

Wiay, Inner Hebrides: The Many Names of Wiay

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit derek menzies, CC BY-SA 2.0. Maps and gazetteers have called this island many things. Sir Donald Monro in 1549 wrote it down as Buyamoire, with mòr being the Gaelic for big. Martin Martin in 1703 called it Buia. The 1654 Blaeu atlas, the first proper atlas of Scotland, shows it as Via Moir. The 1856 topograp...

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Image: derek menzies | CC BY-SA 2.0