Isabella MacGillivray and the poisonous bird!

Every so often, while digging through archives, a small story surfaces that makes you stop and wonder about the lives of those who came before us. One such tale appeared in the Greenock Telegraph and Clyde Shipping Gazette on 20 May 1910, under the curious headline: Highland Tragedy Recalled.

The poisonous bird!

I have transcribed the article below:

The death last week in the Ross of Mull of Mrs Isobella (sic) Campbell MacGillivray, one of Mull’s oldest inhabitants, recalls a tragic incident which occurred in the Island Of Iona over 70 years ago, resulting in the death by poisoning of a whole family. When in her teens Mrs MacGillivray was employed as a domestic servant in a crofter’s house in Iona, when one day in winter a member of the family  shot a wild fowl, which was cooked for dinner the following day. Sometime after the meal the family were seized with a violent illness, and within the space of a few hours all died in great agony. The bird was not one of the usual migrants that visit the island’s shores in winter, and suspicious of the rara avis as an article of diet, the servant lassie declined to be served with the soup. She alone of the whole household survived. A dog and a cat which rummaged the dunghill for garbage , and had eaten the remnants of the dinner dumped there, also died. The tragic incident occasionally crops up in the island talk whenever recalled by a connecting event. Perhaps some ornithologist could throw a little light on the class of bird to which this poisonous migrant belonged.

So what do we know about Isabella MacGillivray?

She died in Kintra on Friday May 13th 1910 (spookier and spookier!)  aged 88 years, and was the widower of Duncan MacGillivray. She was the daughter of a crofter, Dugald Campbell and his wife Janet McCormick. Her grandson was Donald McCallum. We know this as he was listed as the informant on the death certificate.

Does anyone know more about Isabella MacGillivray? Do you know which household she may have been serving in, or how her story fits into the wider MacGillivray family history?

If you do, please share—it may help us bring Isabella’s story back into the light, and give her the place she deserves in our shared history.

Now for the sake of perhaps exonerating Mrs MacGillivray, details of the rara avis and the extent of the family's death may have become exaggerated over time. An article in the Perthshire Advertiser written by a “Correspondent of Glasgow Paper” on Thursday December 9th 1841 describes the incident thus;

A few weeks ago, the renowned island of Iona had been visited by a bird of considerable size and rarity, the like of which was never seen in these parts. It was as large as a goose, but undoubtedly exotic. Two or three children belonging to the island took a walk down to the shore, on the forenoon of the Sabbath day, when they were met by this rare visitor, which had been regaling itself on the shore, and no sooner saw the children than it ran after them, with its bill open, as if to devour and swallow them up. One of the boys had a stick in his hand, who levelled at the fowl such a blow on the head as proved mortal. He carried home his prize in triumph, when the family immediately set to work and prepared a feast which the gods might envy, and of which the whole family partook, with a very keen appetite, except the maidservant. No sooner were the cravings of nature satisfied, than the whole family grew sick and vomited. Fortunately a medical gentleman happened at the time to reside on the island, who was sent for, and applied the usual remedies; but alas, the head of the family died, and the rest were for a considerable time in a dangerous state, but now they are out of danger. What is most singular, a cow (perhaps the only one they had) which got the peelings of the potatoes, which must have been touched with part of the fowl, died in a few hours after eating them, and the carcase (sic) was as brittle as if it had been touched by lightning. Of course, by advice of the sages of the island, the carcase of the cow, and what was left of the fowl, were buried eight feet deep in the earth, in that sanctified dust where a great many Kings of Scotland and other Kings and great warriors are at rest. The natives think, and it is a consolation to those who agree with them in thinking, that the bird was nothing less than the devil. If this be the case, it must be gratifying to believe, that the devil at last has been murdered, boiled, masticated and digested.

Now that is a great relief to us all!