Fairy Pools

Interesting facts

The battle fought here in 1601 closed a feud nicknamed the War of the One-Eyed Woman, sparked by an insult to a MacLeod chief's sister.

Donald Gorm Mòr MacDonald ended his trial marriage to Margaret MacLeod, who had lost an eye, by sending her home on a one-eyed horse with a one-eyed servant and dog.

The couple had been handfasted, a Highland arrangement in which partners lived together for a year and a day and married only if an heir was born.

Fighting in the corrie began late in the day and carried on into the night, ending with the MacLeod commander Alasdair and some thirty kinsmen taken prisoner.

After the Privy Council intervened, the rival clans made peace with three weeks of feasting at Dunvegan Castle, and violence between them all but stopped.

The Glasgow folk singer Matt McGinn turned the whole feud into a comic song, The One-Eyed Woman.

Glen Brittle's name probably comes from Old Norse words for a broad valley, with the Gaelic word for glen added in front much later.

In 2024 forestry clearance in Glen Brittle exposed the remains of Brunell, a lost farming township abandoned in the 19th century as small farms were merged.

Why it is worth it

Below the black, jagged wall of the Cuillin on the Isle of Skye, a mountain burn tumbles down a rocky corrie in a chain of small waterfalls, each spilling into a pool of startlingly clear, blue-green water. These are the Fairy Pools, in Gaelic Glumagan nan Sithichean, strung along the Allt Coir' a' Mhadaidh, a name that means the burn of the corrie of the wolf or dog, in Coire na Creiche at the head of Glen Brittle.

The colour comes from the clarity of cold water fed straight off the mountains and running over bare rock, and it makes the pools look tropical in a landscape that is anything but: rocky ground, patches of bog and the steep gabbro peaks of the Black Cuillin, the highest mountains on Skye, closing the view. Wild swimmers come to dip in the pools despite the chill. Red deer graze in the glen, and the birdlife ranges from ravens, crows and gulls to meadow pipits; along the shore of Loch Brittle at the foot of the glen there are herons, curlews, dunlins and ringed plovers.

The romantic name is fairly recent. The earliest known use of "the Fairy Pools" is in a guidebook of 1931, and no particular fairy story is attached to the place. The older name of the corrie, the corrie of the spoils, is the more telling one: in 1601 it was the scene of the Battle of Coire na Creiche, the last clan battle on Skye, in which the MacDonalds of Sleat defeated the MacLeods of Dunvegan after driving their seized cattle into this corrie, a traditional refuge for raiders. For most of the twentieth century the pools were little known, but from the 2000s they became one of the best-known walks on the island, with visitor numbers rising from about 13,000 in 2006 to around 180,000 by 2019. In 2013 a widely shared set of pictures claimed to show the pools lined with purple flowers; the images were in fact of the Shotover River in New Zealand.

Getting there

The Fairy Pools lie in Glen Brittle in the south of the Isle of Skye, reached by a single-track road that leaves the Sligachan–Carbost road shortly before Carbost. Portree, the island's main town, is about 34 km away by road. The nearest airport in a straight line is Stornoway (SYY) on Lewis, about 108 km away across the Minch; by road the usual approach is from the mainland over the Skye Bridge, with Inverness Airport (INV) as the nearest mainland airport and the railway terminating at Kyle of Lochalsh.

From the encyclopaedia

The Fairy Pools (Scottish Gaelic: Glumagan nan Sithichean) are a series of natural pools and waterfalls in Glen Brittle on the Isle of Skye, Scotland. They are in Coire na Creiche, on the Allt Coir' a' Mhadaidh, at the foot of the Cuillin mountains. The pools are a vivid aqua blue and are a popular place for wild swimmers who brave the frigid waters.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Fairy Pools

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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From the encyclopaedia