Tigh na Cailleach: Long, hot search for shrine to Celtic goddess Cailleach and a surprise or two in Scottish glen

To see it there, cradled by the mountains and decorated with recent offerings of fruits, nuts and flowers, was more than worth the walk, which I had daftly extended due to a mishap on the map. By the shrine, the clock on the long, hot day suddenly stopped as hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years of belief and respect for this mythological figure made their presence felt.

Tigh Na Cailleach, or House of the Old Woman, is where the giantess of Celtic folklore is remembered in the place she is said to have lived, bringing great prosperity.

Every May Day, in a tradition to ensure good fortune for the summer ahead, gamekeepers open up Taigh Na Cailleach and bring out a set of stone figures, which represent the woman, her husband and children. They are brought indoors again on Halloween, or Samhain, the other great Celtic fire festival that marks the shifting seasons.

The annual show of the Cailleach and her kin has been maintained here since at least the 18th century among the people of the west of this glen. Both a creator and protector, it is said she formed the landscape of Scotland from rocks carried over from Norway, with the Hebrides created when some fell from her creel and Ailsa Craig emerging when another dropped from her apron.

She was also regarded as a harbinger of winter who gamekeepers would fear meeting on the hill. Cailleach could transform them into a hind and lead them to the otherworld. Sightings were made in the late 1800s in Lochaber and Corrour as beliefs held firm, according to accounts.

In Glen Lyon, the story of how the Cailleach and her husband dropped down from the hill during a snow storm in Glen Lyon and took up residence with the help of helpful neighbours has long been passed down.

The presence of Cailleach opened up a period of good weather, strong crops and healthy animals. When she left, her parting message to neighbours was to look after their house and it would look after them. Today the shrine, which is opened twice a year, continues to honour her word.

By the time I had reached Tigh na Cailleach, I’d passed only three people – a walking guide in a kilt, his companion and then, later, an estate worker maintaining the rocky track in a digger. The glint of the sun on his wing mirror in the far distance was the first sign of someone else in the glen, which has been described as both the loneliest and the loveliest in Scotland.

The workman waved me on to Tigh na Bodach – House of the Old Man – the alternative name for Tigh na Cailleach, which appears on the Ordnance Survey map.

Given the very solitary nature of this place, it was an added thrill to see the colours of flowers and fruits against the little stone and turf enclosure. They must have been left on the day the figures emerged, given that barely a soul had crossed my path on the way out of the glen that morning of May 2, giving life to this old place once more.

Among the fruit and nuts appeared to be a piece of Beltane cake, decorated with distinctive little knobs on top, which was used in rituals to bless crops and animals and push back malevolent forces. I left my last piece of cheese and bread.

I first became aware of Tigh na Cailleach after reading James Crawford’s excellent Wild History, which takes readers to Scotland’s lesser-known historic attractions deep in the landscape, where stories of the past build like strata in these often now empty places.

Crawford suggested if I visited any site in his book, it should be Taigh na Caillaich, but advised it was a commitment to get to. He was not wrong.

I entered Glen Lyon at Fortingall with the long road tightly clinging to the the course of River Lyon before sightlines lengthen on this stretch of deep country, which was radically altered in the 1950s with the arrival of Breadalbane Hydro Electric Scheme and its series of dams and power stations.

Unfortunately, I parked my car up at the wrong dam – it should have been Lubreoch – to begin my walk and added pretty much an extra ten miles to the round trip. I knew there was something not quite stacking up and it was confirmed when Lubreoch, built with giant buttresses at the head of the loch, emerged like something out of Gotham.

After several words with myself, I pressed on given there was no end in sight to the daylight or fine weather – or sun-cream or water – and climbed the single, rocky track that rises up above Lubreoch and down the side of Loch Lyon. The lunchtime sun sat high.

Crawford, writing of the Cailleach in Wild History, said folklorist Dr Anne Ross had done much to illuminate the story following her research with farming communities in the 1970s.

The author said: "During a fierce snowstorm, it was said, a man and a woman – with grey hair and eerie blue skin – had walked down from the high mountainside. The two strangers asked for shelter and, grateful for the hospitality they received, decided to stay for good, living in a thatched house that was built for them. Immediately, the weather in the glen improved, bringing mild winters and warm, dry summers. Crops and animals thrived.”

After years, they left and asked their house was kept in good order to secure the climate and keep ‘peace and prosperity’ with ‘the people who had been so generous to them’.”

On this blinding spring day, the last of the snow in the glen sparkled as it slipped down the side of the mountain in the sun, the Caelliach facing down the glen as the new season unfolded ahead of her.