The Lady Rock Casting

Lady Rock, Sound of Mull, Scotland

Lachlan Cattanach left his wife Catherine Campbell on a tidal rock to drown — she was rescued, returned, and watched him buried alive in Edinburgh by her brother.

Lady Rock is a flat tidal skerry in the Sound of Mull between Duart and the mainland, a brown shelf visible at low tide and entirely submerged at high. The story attached to it is one of the best-known in Mull's traditional repertoire and is broadly historically true, though the details vary between sources. Lachlan Cattanach Maclean of Duart — 'the Shaggy', for his temper rather than his hair — married Catherine Campbell, sister of the Earl of Argyll, around 1510. The marriage was wretched. She failed to produce an heir; he had political reasons to want her gone. One night in 1523 he had her bound and left on the Lady Rock to drown in the rising tide, sending word to Argyll that she had died of a sudden illness. She was rescued. A fishing-boat saw her and took her off the rock before the water reached her, and brought her secretly back to her brother at Inveraray. The Macleans then arrived in state to deliver the news of her death and to claim what was due. Argyll greeted them politely. He gave them a feast. At the end of the feast he produced his sister from behind a curtain, unharmed, and told Maclean that he would not be returning to Mull. The rest is folklore-shaped fact. Some years later Sir John Campbell of Cawdor, Catherine's other brother, found Maclean in Edinburgh and stabbed him to death in his bed. No charges were brought. The Lady Rock is visible from Duart and Inveraray both, and is unmarked. The folklore says that if the rock is photographed at low water in evening light, a thin pale figure can sometimes be seen bound to it — not as Catherine was, but as Catherine should have been, had the boat not come.