The skirl of the bagpipes signaled a dire warning to the terrified women, children, and elderly people, telling them to run to the tiny church in the heart of the island and ask for assistance.
Contin Parish Church (Image: HES)
The ladies and kids of Contin village in the picturesque Strathconon countryside were easy prey for the irate MacDonalds while the village men were abroad.
The attackers stormed towards the church and closed its entrances after becoming enraged over the treatment of one of their own by the son of the Chief of the Mackenzie clan. They ignited torches, sealed the inhabitants inside, who were screaming, and torched the building and them to the ground.
The horrible massacre that occurred at Contin's Kirk in Rossshire in the fifteenth century was only one of many bloody assaults that happened at a location so rich in religious history that it has been termed "the holy isle of the north."
Although St. Maelrubha, an Irish Christian monk who founded a monastery in Applecross and used it as his base for about six centuries, started construction on the structure in the eighth century, little is known about the various churches that have since stood there and the surrounding area.
With an archaeological survey to find medieval and pre-medieval relics in the fields surrounding Contin Parish Church, it is now hoped that this might change.
The region overlooked by today's austere grey harled box-like kirk, which still has remnants of the 15th-century church attacked by the MacDonald clan, will be surveyed by specialists ORCA Archaeology during a geophysical survey next week.
A magnetic survey, which aids in locating charred remains and midden sites, will be conducted as part of the study, which is being organized by the local community as part of their Contin's Hidden History project. Additionally, a focused Earth Resistance survey will be conducted to help locate any buried structures.
A pre-medieval stone found in the kirkyard (Image: Phil Baarda)
The three-day study is anticipated to reveal traces of historic building foundations and indications of earlier settlements, potentially sparking additional archaeological investigations that may help reveal more about the long history of the kirk.
It's great to be doing this now, according to Phil Baarda of the local community council, who almost accidentally uncovered two pre-medieval carved stones in the kirkyard two years ago. "There has been very little archaeological work done at Contin, so it’s quite exciting to be doing this now. I’m pretty convinced we will find something. This is a fascinating place, but its history has been fairly neglected over the years with other sites seeming to take precedence. Yet the signs are that this must have been a well-known centre for many centuries," he adds.
The remnants of a chambered cairn, which is located inside the family tomb of the Mackenzie of Coul, and the Bronze Age Contin Henge, also known as Achilty Henge, are both nearby.
The monk's body is claimed to have been transferred there after he was ambushed and killed by robbers at Urquhart on the Black Isle, then taken to his monastery at Applecross for burial. The area is now overgrown and known as Preas Mairi, which means "the thicket of Maelrubha."
He was a descendant of Niall, King of Ireland, and originally from Bangour, County Down. In 671, he traveled to Scotland with a group of other monks as part of the second wave of missionaries that followed St. Columba.
The monk who founded the monastery and founded at least 22 churches while traveling from Applecross, in Pictish territory, via Skye, Lewis, and farther east to Forres and Keith, did so in 673. He was the man who gave Loch Maree its name.
Irish chronicles mention both his journey to Scotland and the founding of the monastery, indicating that his mission was thought to be particularly important in the spread of Christianity and Gaelic culture among norther Scottish Picts.
While a variety of traditions and customs were formed in his honor as a result of his influence, some of them persisted for generations after his passing.
The people of Contin continued to sacrifice bulls to honor the saint on his feast day, August 25, according to research presented in publications by the Ross and Cromarty Heritage Society, which was based on minutes of the Presbytery of Dingwall written in 1656.
The "mentally disturbed," also known as St. Mourie's afflicted ones, received the sacrificed flesh.
It continues that 22 years later, more sacrifices were made in an effort to help a sick woman, and that at the beginning of the 19th century, a fair day held in his honor, Feill Moire, involved "several days of drinking and fighting," prompting the local Laird, Sir George Mackenzie of Coul, to order the celebrations to be moved to Dingwall instead.
The burial cemetery of the Contin Kirk would have been safe from the attention of wild animals because it is located on an island in the Blackwater (Abhainn Dubh). An overpass over the road connects it to the remainder of the community.
A series of violent incidents have occurred there over the years, including an invasion on the saint's feast day in the ninth century that resulted in the massacre of some 100 men and women by either Danes or people from the Western Isle.
Contin Parish Church (Image: HES)
When word got out, the men of Ross came together to exact retribution, killing all but 30 of the 500 invaders.
After Kenneth of Kinellen, son of the Mackenzie clan chief and husband to a MacDonald woman, had a disagreement with his in-laws, the MacDonald clansmen brutally massacred women and children in 1477.
After the argument, he sent his one-eyed wife back to her family with a one-eyed servant, a one-eyed horse, and a one-eyed dog, further escalating the tension between the two households.
The kirk became the center of a religious dispute in the 18th century when its final Episcopalian pastor refused to become a Presbyterian.
Aeneas Morrison, sometimes known as "Black Angus," was preaching when someone attempted to have him removed from the pulpit after he had previously been charged with aiding in the Jacobite uprising of 1715.
He cursed the men who were dragging him down the aisle as the church bell rung out of the blue and immediately cracked from top to bottom.
The two fields that border the church that are the subject of the archaeological study scheduled for next week are believed to have never been tilled, which has led to expectations that fascinating details may be hiding just beneath the surface.
The results of the survey, which is a component of the Highland Archaeology Festival and is part of a larger community initiative supported by Historic Environment Scotland and EDF Renewables Corriemoillie Wind Farm Community Fund, will be presented to the locals in early October.
