In a recent article dedicated to the Scottish explorer Olive MacLeod, we mentioned the existence of a curious relic that was somewhat like the talisman of the clan to which she belonged. This object is kept in Dunvegan Castle and is a banner that, according to tradition, was made by a fairy who married a MacLeod chief and gave it to him to protect him and his people. According to the writer Walter Scott, it increased the number of troops in battle, boosted the fertility of its members, cured cattle plagues, and attracted herring to the lake on their lands on the Isle of Skye. We are talking about the Am Bratach Sìth or Fairy Flag.
Skye is the largest island in Scotland, the biggest and northernmost of the Inner Hebrides archipelago; a piece of land of just over one and a half thousand square kilometers inhabited by about ten thousand people, half of whom speak Gaelic. Famous because the Jacobite claimant Charles Edward Stuart, better known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, took refuge there in 1746, it is the historic territory of the MacLeod clan, whose origins date back to the Middle Ages; specifically to the 13th century.
It is not clear whether its founder, Leoid, was a son of Olaf the Black, King of Mann, or a third cousin of Magnus, also King of Mann (and the last one). In any case, Leoid, who owned half of the neighboring island of Lewis and Harris, married a daughter of MacArailt, the Norwegian steward of Skye, and his sons Tormod and Torquil gave rise to the two branches of the clan (actually, Torquil was a grandson). Four centuries later, an alliance between the MacLeods descended from Tormod, the Mackenzies, and the Morrisons engaged in a war with the MacLeods of Torquil to control that area of Scotland.

In the 18th century, as we saw, they initially sided with the Jacobite cause, although later, in the 1745 uprising, they switched sides. It was after the conflict ended, still in that century, that the existence of the Am Bratach Sìth was documented. It was in 1772 when the Welsh naturalist and antiquarian Thomas Pennant, who had just published with great success A Tour in Scotland, 1769, a book in which he recounted his visit to Scottish lands, decided to undertake a second trip that included the Hebrides.
Although his main interest was fauna, he was also interested in local customs and traditions, and on the Isle of Skye he visited Dunvegan Castle, which had a surprise in store for him. Located on a promontory overlooking the lake of the same name (which is actually an inlet), in the west of the island, a couple of kilometers from the town of Dunvegan, it belongs to the MacLeod of MacLeod family and was the historic stronghold of the clan for seven hundred years, since its construction in the 13th century (it later underwent renovations and expansions, with its current appearance being the result of a 19th-century medievalist rehabilitation).
The castle has been open to visitors since 1933 and also offers overnight stays. Its interest lies, apart from its architecture, in the relics it preserves. Among them are the Dunvegan Cup, a ceremonial wooden and silver cup made in 1493 that is wrapped in fairy and witchcraft legends, and the Sir Rory Mor’s Horn, an ox horn capped in silver that tradition says came from a wild bull that terrorized the locals and was killed by Malcolm, the third chief of the MacLeod clan; whenever there is a new leader, he has to drink from it in one gulp to prove his manhood.

But the most important relic is the one Pennant named Braolauch shi. In his work A Tour in Scotland, and Voyage to the Hebrides 1772, he explains that the flag was given to the MacLeods by Titania, the banshee (a female spirit in Gaelic folklore who appears wailing and crying to announce an imminent death) who was married to Oberon, the king of the fairies according to British medieval and Renaissance literature (immortalized, like his wife, by Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night’s Dream). The clan, Titania said, should put itself at her service and in return would receive two gifts.
One, the free lands of Bracadale (a western area of Skye). The other, the flag in question, which was endowed with magical powers that manifested when waved three times, the third being special because its bearer would become invisible and disappear forever. According to Pennant, it was recorded that these three occasions had already occurred: the first in a battle between two branches of the MacLeod clan, which one side won because their troops multiplied tenfold; the second, to save a clan lady who was pregnant and who, having fallen ill, was in danger of death for herself and her child.
The third occasion is truly curious; it was raised to save the flag itself, which was in tatters; but Titania decided that, in such poor condition, it was not worth recovering. However, a manuscript we will talk about next gives a different version: the flag’s spell would be exhausted the third time, which could mean either the ultimate victory over the clan’s enemies or its extinction. Therefore, they always tried to avoid using it again, and the object remained stored, progressively deteriorating over the centuries.

This manuscript recounts that the flag was kept in Dunvegan Castle, in an iron chest whose key remained in the hands of a guardian and passed from father to son. Upon Tormod’s death, the last legitimate heir, the clan leadership fell to the MacLeods of Talisker (another locality in Skye located to the northwest, famous today for its castle and for hosting several whisky distilleries). But the young widow refused to hand over the castle because she was pregnant and expected her son to succeed his father posthumously, as happened in 1706.
Thus, we see that Pennant’s narrative is expanded and detailed with other later sources, as he himself echoes oral and written traditions on the subject. Of these, the most important is the one we have just reviewed: the Bannatyne Manuscript, a chronicle of the history of the MacLeods written in 1829, which owes its name to one of the candidates attributed with its uncertain authorship: the nobleman and historian Sir William MacLeod Bannatyne and Bannatyne William MacLeod.
According to this work, the honor and very existence of the clan depended on the Fairy Flag, hence a guard of twelve men of the “highest and purest blood of the race” was selected to guard it. They came from the Tormad Vic Vurichie family, to whom the MacLeods had granted lands near Bracadale for their loyalty and who, as the folklorist Alasdair Alpin recounts, were buried in a grave with a horizontal grid so that when a new body was interred, the remains of the previous one would fall to the bottom through it.

The manuscript narrates that the banner was raised in the naval battle of Bloody Bay, fought by several branches of the MacDonald clan around 1480. The MacLeods were allied with the ultimately defeated side, but the truly interesting part is that they themselves were divided and united when they saw the twelve bearers raising the Am Bratach Sìth. Since they ultimately chose the losing side, they suffered a massacre, and among the fallen were the twelve guardians. But this would not be the last time the Fairy Flag was seen in battle.
Approximately a decade later (in 1513, according to recent studies), in the battle of Glendale, the MacLeods of Harris and Lewis fought against the MacDonalds, who were trying to seize the Isle of Skye and ultimately had to retreat because the relic helped the two branches of the clan unite and increase their strength. However, at the cost of so many casualties that they were never the same again. Among the dead was Paul Dubh, the standard-bearer, who was buried in a tomb in St. Clement’s Church, which later served to house the mortal remains of his successors in the position until the lineage’s extinction.
The Bannatyne Manuscript also provides a rational explanation for the origin of the banner, although probably as legendary as the others. It says that a member of the MacLeods who had fought in the Crusades and was returning from the Holy Land was sheltered by a hermit who warned him of a demon that prevented travelers from crossing a mountain pass. To overcome it, he gave him a lignum crucis with which he indeed defeated the evil one. The demon had to surrender his sash and spear, with which the knight made a flag and its pole, which he took to Scotland: the Am Bratach Sìth.

The truth is there is no way to corroborate it, and in fact, another tradition identifies the Fairy Flag with a banner used by the Vikings in some of their raids on the British Isles; we will see this in more detail later. We mentioned at the beginning that the writer Walter Scott, who visited Dunvegan Castle in 1814, echoed several legends related to the three magical properties conferred by the fairies to the item: increasing military forces, enhancing the fertility of the clan members by spreading it over the nuptial bed, and attracting herring to Dunvegan Loch for the fishermen.
This brings us back to those mythical beings, who apparently are linked to this story through a Gaelic lullaby collected by Neil MacLeod, then the clan’s bard during the second half of the 19th century. The lyrics tell of how a fairy entered Dunvegan Castle and found a baby who was the heir of the MacLeod clan in his cradle, lulling him with a song. The nanny, immobilized by a spell, memorized the tune and sang it to the child herself, passing the custom down through generations.
In a variant of the tale, a clan chief and a fairy fell in love and married, but the fairy king considered such a union contra natura, agreeing that the marriage would last only a year and a day, at the end of which she had to return to her fantastic land. They parted at the Fairy Bridge, near Dunvegan. During that time, they had a child and both promised never to let him cry because although she could hear his cries, she would be forbidden from coming to comfort him. Therefore, she ensured that the baby did not cry and assigned a nanny to care for him twenty-four hours a day.

However, one time the nanny left him alone while he slept to curiously peek at a party in the hall. The child was left uncovered and woke up cold, his cries heard only by the mother, who hurried back to warm him and wrapped him in a shawl that would later become the famous Am Bratach Sìth. Then, he was presented to the guests, who were amazed by the object and a magical song that played, whose lyrics referred to the three mentioned properties that it would confer upon the clan.
Now then, in other legends, there wouldn’t be just three. We already mentioned at the beginning that there was also the ability to heal sick cattle, and the same would happen with clan members in that situation. On the other hand, the banner itself would be susceptible to exhausting its powers—and even disappearing forever—if it was hoisted more than three times. This would contradict another tradition linking its existence to that of the MacLeods, including a prophecy predicting their fall and subsequent recovery.
Norman MacLeod, chaplain to Queen Victoria who was also a poet and author of an English-Gaelic dictionary, wrote down one of these prophecies he had heard in his youth, related to a famous nineteenth-century seer named Brahan: the MacLeod clan would fall when a series of omens occurred, among them the accidental death of the third Norman (‘Tormaid nan’ tri Tormaid’), the Campbells taking over the Maidens (coastal rock formations), and the Fairy Flag being hoisted for the third and last time.
According to the testimony of Norman MacLeod himself, collected by his son Donald, as a child he accompanied a blacksmith who opened the chest where the piece was kept, which was a square cloth with crosses sewn in gold thread. It was the year 1800, and around the same time, the clan’s heir died in the accidental explosion and fire of the HMS Queen Charlotte in the Mediterranean, a 110-gun ship of the line in which he was an officer. Coincidentally or not, the Campbells bought the Maidens. However, the prophecy was not fulfilled because the MacLeods continued to own their lands.

At least for the moment, since in a less credulous century like the twentieth, it happened that Dunvegan Castle was left empty, as the only heir had to go to the front due to the outbreak of the First World War. In 1938, there was an accidental fire in one wing of the castle, although it was brought under control; but, just in case, the relics were secured during the firefighting efforts. Someone suggested that it was the magical intervention of the Am Bratach Sìth that allowed the flames to be extinguished.
Finally, during the Second World War, Flora MacLeod of MacLeod, who had held the twenty-eighth chieftainship of the clan since 1929 and was the sister of Olivia (the explorer we already talked about), received a letter from a clan member who was stationed in the RAF and had carried out several bombing missions over Germany, always returning unscathed. The man attributed this luck to a photo of the Fairy Flag that he always carried with him aboard his plane. Widowed, Flora herself offered to wave it over the cliffs of Dover when the Luftwaffe squadrons were detected arriving.
The question that more than one person might ask after all this is, where did the Am Bratach Sìth really come from? It has been analyzed many times, but there are no definitive or clear results. It is made of raw yellow silk decorated with red floral motifs embroidered and what are described as elf spots. According to a measurement made in 1927, it is about forty-six square centimeters, although it is estimated that this is what remains today and originally it must have been larger, as each time it was examined, a piece was removed.
The archaeologist Alan Wace, one of those who worked on translating the Linear B tablets (Mycenaean script) and at the time curator of textiles at the Victoria and Albert Museum between 1924 and 1934, published several articles on this subject, including the flag. According to him, the silk seems to come from Syria or Rhodes, while the embroidery corresponds to the Near East, dating it to the fourth century AD. However, it was originally a garment, perhaps a shirt. Also, it would not have belonged to an ordinary person, given the richness of the fabric, and it could have come from a saint’s relic.

Here, an alternative comes into play, as at the time Wace conducted that study, it was believed that the MacLeods descended from the Vikings. To be exact, from Harald III Hardrada, the Norwegian king who, in his adolescence, had to flee from a rebellion supported by Denmark and in 1035 arrived in Constantinople. There he joined the Varangian Guard of the Byzantine Empire, thanks to which he participated in about twenty battles in the Near East and the Mediterranean. Harald returned to Norway in 1043, and the MacLeods believed he brought the relic with him. With it, he made the Land Ravager, a standard said to have magical properties and to grant victory to its holder.
In fact, in 1066 the Viking tried to conquer the British Isles allied with Tostig, Earl of Northumbria and brother of the English king Harold II. But an arrow killed Hardrada while he was fighting in a state of berserkergang (naked and in a sort of warrior trance) in the Battle of Stamford Bridge, leaving the door open for the Norman William the Conqueror to conquer England. In the heat of the battle, the Land Ravager was lost, but its peculiarity made it identified with the Fairy Flag, though without specifying when it was found and how it arrived in Scotland.
According to the official clan website, experts have dated the Am Bratach Sìth between the fourth and seventh centuries AD, which means it would be much earlier than the Crusades, but it is impossible to know much more. Of course, who needs it when you have the wonderful fairy tale?
This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on July 10, 2024: La leyenda de la Bandera de las Hadas, enigmática reliquia protectora del clan escocés MacLeod que puede proceder de Constantinopla
SOURCES
Robin Wickens, Mystical Britain. Exploring the legends and folklore of the UK
Roderick Charles MacLeod, The Macleods of Dunvegan from the time of Leod to the end of the seventeenth century
Donald MacLeod, Memoir of Norman MacLeod
Thomas Pennant, A tour in Scotland, and voyage to the Hebrides 1772
Ben Johnson, The Fairy Flag of the MacLeods
Scotclans, The Fairy Flag of Dunvegan
The Associated Clan MacLeod Societies
Wikipedia, Fairy Flag
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