Tomnashangan: Captain Ban and the Hollow Hill
While doing genealogy research years ago, long before I began writing Rootstock, I ran across the Scottish legend of Captain Ban and the Hollow Hill of Tomnashangan.
A woman goes missing. Nearly a year passes and rumors swirl. The fairies of the hollow hill are holding her captive. Magic candles are the only way to steal her back. The dashing Captain Ban eventually rescues her. When she returns to her family, she is convinced she was only away for a few hours.
About the beginning of the 18th century the wife of one of the tenants in Druim-a-ghadha, upon the estate of Dunmaglass, had been carried away by the fairies, and was said to have been taken by them into a small hillock in that neighborhood, called Tomnashangan, or the Ants’ Hill, and had been absent from her family for nearly a year.
No person, however, could tell exactly where she was, although their suspicions fell upon the fairies, and that she must be with them in the hill now mentioned. Several attempts were made to discover her, but none were bold enough to encounter the residence of the fairies.
The Genealogist’s Craft
The Celtic Monthly: A Magazine for Highlanders
The McGillivray and McIntosh Traders
At last Captain William MacGillivray, alias the Captain Ban, (i.e. “White”), son of Farquhar MacGillivray of Dunmaglass, who was resident at the spot, volunteered his services to endeavour to get the woman released from her long captivity in the Fairy Hill, if it was possible that she could be there.
The Captain being informed that John Dubh (M’Chuile) M’Queen of Pollochaik was familiar and on good terms with the fairies, and that he had wax candles in which there was a particular virtue, he despatched a messenger who got particular instructions never to look behind him until he reached home, otherwise something might happen to him, and he would lose the candle.
This person heard so much noise like that of horses and carriages, accompanied with music and loud cries of ‘catch him, catch him’ at Craiganuain, near Moy Hall, that he was so frightened that he could not help looking behind him, although he saw nothing.
On coming to the river Findhorn, it was so large that he could not cross, so that he was obliged to go back to the laird of Pollochaik for his advice, who, upon coming down to the bank of the river, desired the man to throw a stone upon the opposite side of the river, and no sooner was this done than, much to his astonishment, he found himself also there.
The Captain being now possessed of Pollochaik’s wax candle, he one evening approached the hillock, and having discovered where the entry was, he entered the passage to the fairy habitation.
Passing a press in the entrance, it is said the candle immediately lighted of its own accord, and he discovered that the good lady, the object of his mission, was busily engaged in a reel.
Upon obtaining the open air, he told her how unhappy her husband and friends were at the length of time she had been absent from them, but the woman had been so enchanted and enraptured with the society she had been in that she seemed to think she had only been absent one night, instead of a year, from her own house.
When the Captain brought her off with him the fairies were so enraged that they said, ‘they would keep him in view.’
The woman was brought to her disconsolate husband, and the candle was faithfully preserved in the family for successive generations in order to keep off all fairies, witches, brownies and water kelpies in all time to come.
The retelling from 1853 reads awkwardly these days, but a few intriguing scenes stayed with me. The hollow hill became Twelvestones. Captain Ban became Gaven Buchanan and his wife Rosalee‘s forgetfulness was brought on by Firstborn memory tea.
Although I liked and incorporated several elements of the story into Roostock, it was the hollow hill that captured my imagination and came to play such an important setting for much of the story.
Read more in my upcoming post about the ancient hillforts of Britain.