Why “Rock of Peace”?

“The word is ‘perfect’!  Beautiful room!”

IH, The Netherlands

The Gaelic language is a window into an ancient culture, alive with magic and myth. At the heart of this mythology are the fair folk, the little people, the faeries or sithean. Strontian itself comes from "Sron an t-Sitheinn", the nose or point of the fairies. All over the Highlands you will see other references; above the village itself is the small conical summit of Tom an t-Sithein, the fairy hill.

But the fairies who inhabit this culture aren't made in the image of the Victorian ideal - dainty, winged Tinkerbells playing among the flowers of a cottage garden. On the contrary, they are portents of evil, harbingers of doom. The banshee, that awful hag whose howl presages death, carries a Gaelic name: "Ban sithean" means simply Woman of the Fairies. These creatures were feared; the labels given by the Gaels and Irish so many years ago which became the little people, or the fair folk, carries no sense of irony or humour. Rather than name them at all, these titles truly are euphemisms, perhaps with the hope that to describe them as peaceful might somehow encourage them to act as such.

And that brings us through the darkness of this mythology to emerge blinking into the light of present day Gaelic, for by describing the fairies as peaceful has given us "sith" as meaning both fairy and peace, quietness, tranquillity. This interpretation sits better with our values as a Christian family too, so Craig na Shee, while no doubt meaning the Rock of the Fairies, also means Rock of Peace, which is how we truly see our little home.