Cladh Dabhi

NN53SE 3 59826 34658.

Cladh Dabhi, thy-Bi's Graveyard, is on the farm of Morenish (NN 597 351) close to the shore of Loch Tay. It has been the burial place of a branch of the MacDiarmids known as Rioghal, Royal. A hillock a little to the N once bore the name Tom-a-chluig, the "Knoll of the Bell".

W A Gillies 1938

The name Da-Bhi is a variant of Mo-Bhi or of Mo-Bhiu. Two saints of the former name are among the twelve apostles of Ireland ... Mo-Bhiu was abbot of Inis Cuscraid. It is just possible that the Scottish commemoration Da-Bhi is a short form of Berach , abbot of Cluain Coirpthi who was a contemporary of St Columba (d 597).

W J Watson 1926

NN 5982 3462. This disused burial ground is situated in a flat arable field and is enclosed by a modern dry stone wall 1.3m high. The interior is overgrown and only one grave stone is standing, although grassed-over mounds may indicate the presence of others.

On a natural ridge to the N are three knolls, one of which may be the hillock mentioned. There is no local knowledge regarding this hillock. The graveyard is still known as "Cladh Dabhi".

Visited by OS (SFS) 9 September 1975

In a solitary nettle-covered graveyard below Mornish, called Cladh Davi, where only members of the Macdiarmid family have been interred for the last two hundred years or more, there is one comparatively recent tombstone standing upright, indeed the only one in the enclosure. On the top of this tombstone there are two white quartz stones of a rough, roundish shape. One, the smaller of the two, has a single hole drilled on its upper surface, with polished and linear markings, which show that something has revolved in it; and the other has a hole of the same kind on both its upper and lower surfaces. These stones are said to cure pectoral inflammation when the water is applied to the nipples; and not long since a woman, who was thus afflicted, came a considerable distance, from the head of Glen Lochay, to make use of this remedy. A slight examination of the stones is sufficient to show that they were originally used as the sockets, in which the lower end of the spindles or vertical axles of millstones were turned. When the hole was worn too deep, the same stone, for economic reasons, was turned upside down, and a new hole was worn into the new surface. This will account for the two holes in one of the stones. In all likelihood the stones belong to the same series which is carefully preserved in the modern mill at Killin, as relics of St Fillan (see NN53SE 6). These stones have the same holes in them ... They have also the same miraculous powers of healing attached to them. It is said that some of the stones in the collection at the mill were lost. In all likelihood the stones in Cladh Davi are the missing ones.

H MacMillan 1884

This rectangular burial-ground stands on a grass-grown ridge in the centre of a pasture field. It measures 16.7m from ENE to WSW by 13.4m transversely within a drystone rubble wall 0.95m thick and up to 1.7m high. There is an entrance on the SSE side, beside which lies a wrought iron gate. The wall remains in good condition for much of its circuit, though stretches of it on the NNW and SSE sides have partly collapsed. The interior is choked with bracken, nettles and thistles, but at least one late18th-century headstone can be identified in the NE quadrant, among a group of possibly earlier slabs lying flush with the ground.

The enclosure is shown on John Farquharson's 1769 Survey of the North Side of Loch Tay (National Archives of Scotland RHP 973/1, Plan 3) on which it is annotated 'Burial Place'. It is also depicted upon the first edition of the OS 6-inch map (Perthshire 1867, sheet LXVIII).

(BL00 946)

Visited by RCAHMS (ATW) 22 June 2000