The Seven Men of Moidart

Moidart, Lochaber, Highland, Scotland

When Bonnie Prince Charlie landed at Loch nan Uamh with only seven companions to begin the 1745 rising, locals saw it as a fulfilment of a specific prophecy. The seven rowan trees they planted still stand.

On 25 July 1745, Charles Edward Stuart — Bonnie Prince Charlie — stepped ashore at Loch nan Uamh in Moidart with a party of only seven companions, the famous Seven Men of Moidart. The Highland chiefs who met him were largely incredulous and urged him to go home. His response — 'I am home' — became one of the most quoted phrases in Highland history. The prophecy dimension comes from the Gaelic oral tradition of the area. Several generations before the landing, a seer in Moidart had predicted that seven men would come from the sea to the bay and that when they came, the old order would stir in its sleep. The prophecy was loose enough to be applicable to almost anything, but its specificity about seven men and the landing place was remembered when the event occurred. The seven rowan trees — one for each companion — were planted near the landing site and have been maintained by the community. Rowan was the specific tree of Highland protection against supernatural forces, a detail that the story has always emphasised. The legend has acquired a secondary element over time: that one of the seven companions was not a man but a spirit in human form — a representative of the old powers of the land that had come to see whether the cause was real. This companion is never named in the historical record. The legend says he knew the outcome before the rising began, and wept.