A short while ago, I was in touch with Chelsey MacPherson, a budding Gaelic scholar and avid history buff. I reached out to her for confirmation that bocan was the Gaelic word for ghost. This she did and kindly corrected my spelling while she was at it. “Yes, bòcan is the Gaelic for ghost,” Ms. MacPherson emailed me. In 2017, she transcribed an interview on Glengarry folklore with Ewan Ross. As Mr. Ross told it with “… we have ghosts, but we still refer to them under their old Gaelic name of bòcans. But a bòcan isn’t really a ghost, perhaps he’s more like a hobgoblin. The kind that scares you to death and then laughs at you.”
Bòcan isn’t a word that one bumps into all that often. However, Ken McEwen (a regular contributor) mentioned it when he commented on a recent column of mine in which it was suggested that the Scottish were a rather superstitious people. “I thought this was the purview of the Irish,” Mr. McEwen teased me, “but… it brought to mind a story, apparently based on an incident that actually occurred, which my Dad related when I was young.” Mr. McEwen’s wife Chris also recalls hearing the same tale around her family’s kitchen table when she was growing up on Skye Road, north of Dunvegan.
The gist of the story was that a man had died by his own hand when he hanged himself from a tree, near where a road passed over a hill. While not one hundred percent certain, Mr. McEwen is under the impression this unfortunate incident occurred somewhere along the 8thof Kenyon, east of Greenfield Road. And, as if the untimely demise of this tormented man wasn’t enough to kick-start a ghost story, the suicide apparently took place in winter. As a consequence, by the time it was discovered, the corpse’s head was topped with a cone of snow that was reminiscent of a white witch’s hat. In time, the infamous site became known as Bòcan Hill. However, it would appear that Kenyon faces challenges to any claim to being the one and only Bòcan Hill. According to Ewan Ross, there are two other locations in Glengarry with the same moniker.
The first is on Old Military Road between Blind Road and Crooked Road. As Ewan Ross describes it, “back near Kirkhill at Duncan the Hook’s place.” As the spot was featured in one of the Glengarry Pioneer Museum’s Historical Driving Tours, I asked Harold MacMillan, a former co-organizer of the event, for the story behind Lochiel’s haunted hill. While unsure of the exact year, Mr. MacMillan believes the story’s origin dates back to the mid 1800s. Apparently a young ne’er-do-well by the name of MacLeod was partying with his mates. They ran out of liquid refreshments, so Mr. MacLeod volunteered to hoof it to the tavern at Quigley’s Corners. The problem was he failed to return. Although he did turn up the next day, I believe. However, he was a changed man. His hair had turned white overnight and he flatly refused to speak about what had transpired as he travelled through the thick, dark forest that bordered both sides of the knoll that came to be known as Bòcan Hill. He also gave up his sinful ways, renounced the demon rum and became a pillar of the church. For generations after, travellers would urge their horse to speed up as they passed over the haunted hillock.
The second Ghost Hill is located in Charlottenburgh. “On the north bank of the valley of the Beaudette between Glen Roy and Green Valley, and especially that part toward the Military Road (Highway 34),” recounts Mr. Ross. According to Ms. MacPherson, Angus MacDonald of St. Raphael’s refers to the site as Cnoc Mór a’ Bhòcain or Big Hill of the Ghost in English. As for how it came to have this supernatural association, I’ll let Mr. Ross tell the story.
“One nice summer night there had been a bit of a céilidh at the tavern and one Irishman in particular had all he could handle and a bit more perhaps. He at last was persuaded to start for home. And the folk at the tavern door saw him started, careening from tree to tree, making progress to the south at the same time. They knew he would turn west when he got to the 8th concession trail… But by and by, screams were heard coming from the bush southwest of the tavern… And all of a sudden, the drunken Irishman… burst out of the bush and headed for the tavern door with his hair standing straight up on end. His clothes half torn off of him and blood running from his mouth and nose. Straight through the tavern door he went, in behind the bar and crawled underneath it – still screaming.”
After someone got the idea of pouring a slug of hooch into his mouth every time he opened it to scream, he finally settled down enough to tell his tale. “The lightning was flashing around and youse could smell the brimstone. Then the devil grabbed hold of me and beat the hell out of me. But I got away and took to the bush and be damned if he and his lights didn’t follow me and him all the time squealin’ like a pig. By damned boys, I ain’t gonna go down into that swamp no more!”
If you get a chance, I strongly recommend reading the transcription of the Ewan Ross’ interview. It may be available on the museum’s web site. But just in case, I plan on uploading it to my Dunvegan-Times.ca blog when I post this week’s column. (See below.). In the meantime, if you have any information on the alleged Bòcan Hill in Kenyon, please call or email me.
120 years ago…
As our little hamlet, like the rest of the country, is shuttered these days, I turned to the Dunvegan column of April 27th, 1900 to see what was going on. Two items caught my eye.
The first was that William McLeod was moving the building formerly used as a tannery westward. “The lower storey (sic) will be used as a repairing shop while the upper flat will be used as a public hall.” It would be interesting to know if this building was of log or frame construction, and if it still exits. Hard to believe the community needed another public hall. Perhaps it was for those folks who were uncomfortable using the Orange Lodge. Unfortunately, it was assumed that the reader would know what Mr. McLeod proposed repairing.
As for the second item, it is straight up weird. Here it is verbatim: “The small boy is not playing marbles in this place, but sometimes perhaps he trades bladeless jack-knives sight unseen.” I have no idea what my 1900 counterpart was getting at. Is it a clue? Is it a puzzle? Is it an in-joke? Here too, if you have any ideas, I would love to know.
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