The Lady of Lawers () is a figure in Scottish folklore, remembered as a reputed 17th-century prophetess associated with Lawers, on the north shore of Loch Tay in Perthshire. Her historical identity has not been securely established. Surviving accounts generally describe her as a woman from the Appin district of the Scottish Highlands who married into the local Campbell family around 1650, but disagree over her name, ancestry, and her husband's position within the family. Later tradition placed her alongside Thomas the Rhymer, the Brahan Seer, and other Scottish prophetic figures.
The Lawers family into which she is said to have married had fallen into poverty. Its castle was destroyed in 1644 by the army of James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose, and the local Campbells later lived as tenants on land held against debts to Stirling merchants. Their holdings were transferred around 1672 to the Glenorchy branch of the family, later the earls of Breadalbane. A church was built beside the rebuilt House of Lawers in 1669 and served the communities on the north shore of Loch Tay. The Lady is said to have planted an ash tree beside the church and, by later tradition, was buried beneath it with her servant, .
Numerous prophecies are attributed to the Lady of Lawers. Transmitted orally in Gaelic and first recorded in writing in the late 19th century, they concern chiefly the fortunes of the house and lands of Breadalbane, the Lawers church and its ash tree, changes in Highland agriculture and society, and disasters on Loch Tay. Some sayings attributed to her were also associated with other seers. One prediction, that sheep skulls would make the plough useless, circulated in several Gaelic songs and was later interpreted as a response to the agricultural and social disruption of the Highland Clearances.
Her prophecies were recorded in antiquarian and folkloric works, including those of John Gregorson Campbell, and local versions were still being collected by the School of Scottish Studies in the 1960s. She remains one of the figures most closely associated with Old Lawers and the prophetic traditions of Perthshire.
History The identity of the historical woman associated with the Lady of Lawers tradition has not been securely established. Surviving accounts generally place her arrival at Lawers around 1650 through marriage into the local Campbell family, but disagree over her origins and her husband's position within the Lawers branch. She became one of the figures most closely associated with the old village and with Perthshire's regional traditions of prophecy.
From Appin to Loch Tay Historic Environment Scotland describes the Lady of Lawers as "one of the most well-known inhabitants of Old Lawers Village", and states that she is said to have been the wife of one of the lairds of Lawers in the 17th century. The Lady of Lawers was Mary, likely of the Colquhoun or MacCombaich families, and came from the Appin district in the Scottish Highlands. Her accurate real name is now believed lost to history, according to The Scots Magazine. In Gaelic tradition, the Lady of Lawers was known as Baintighearna Labhair. The Lady was a notable Scottish prophet. She was renowned in Perthshire, and the prophecies associated with her and comparable regional seers were generally local in nature. Prophecies attributed to the Lady include a variety of expressions handed down as Gaelic traditions.
Circa 1650, Mary wed a son or brother of Sir James Campbell of Lawers, described in records as the 4th or 6th laird of Lawers, of the Campbell of Lawers family, and moved southeast to Perthshire, to live on a Loch Tay farm. According to the Kirk Session historical records kept by the Church of Scotland from Kenmore, Perth and Kinross, a retinue accompanied the Lady figure to Lochtayside around the center of Loch Tay. The Lady's accompanying group was known locally as Na Combaich, the Companions, and were identified as originating from the Stewart family in the Appin district in Argyll county. The Lochtayside lands the Lady moved to when joining the Lawers Campbells had been granted to Clan Campbell of Glenorchy (later the Campbell baronetcy in the County of Perth) in 1473 and afterwards formally feued to a cadet branch of that family, who held their own formal royal crown charter by 1513.
Time in Lawers The local Castle of Lawers was destroyed in 1644 by the Highlander army of James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose, who opposed the Campbells, during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The main host of the Campbells took up Fordew, today known as Fordie near Crieff as part of the Monzievaird estate as their seat. It is probable that the Lady and her Campbell husband took up residence on the Loch Tay farm after the house had been reportedly rebuilt, circa 1645. Their home was a rented thatched house at the time; the local Lochtayside Campbells were then impoverished at the time the Lady joined them. Due to the losses of the Campbells and the local estate being held to secure debts with Stirling merchants, the Lady and her husband were forced to live as tenants on their family's own land. By then, the remainder of the Campbell branch that the Lady had joined took up residence to the east in Strathearn. While the broader Campbell family was wealthy and held lands from Loch Tay to the western coasts, the local Campbells of Lochtayside lived in a land described by historian A.C. McKerracher as being in "abject poverty".
At the time, old Lawers was a busy and growing port across Loch Tay from Ardtalnaig, Perth and Kinross, with sufficient growth and wealth to sustain the construction of a new church. The new church was raised in 1669 next door to the rebuilt House of Lawers, which stood on the same site on the prior laird's that had been previously destroyed. The Lady is said to have planted a large and long-lived ash tree beside the church on its northern side, which would feature later in various prophecies attributed to her. The new Lawers church at the Campbell home was the only such institution at the time on the north shores of Loch Tay, and served all of the local Lochtayside communities at the time. The Lawers Campbells continued over time to struggle in their time at the rental home by the church, in poverty and with financial problems. The ruined home of the Lady remains near to the banks of the north side of Loch Tay, between Killin and Kenmore, southeast of the modern Lawers village on the A827 roadway.
Finlarig Castle to today By 1672, their financial challenges led to the Lawers Campbells being forced to transfer and sell their local Lawers holdings to their northern Glen Orchy Campbell kin. The Lady and the Loch Tay Campbells moved to the southwest end of the loch and lived in Finlarig Castle, on a peninsula on the southwest end of Loch Tay at Killin. The Lady reportedly had a notable dislike of and antipathy towards the branch of their Campbell family from Glen Orchy to the northeast. The local Campbell branches had been in feuds with one another since the era of Duncan Campbell of Glenorchy (1545-1631). The Glenorchy kin of the Lady's Lochsaytide Campbells would later be installed under the Peerage of Scotland as Earl of Breadalbane and Holland. The Book of the Dean of Lismore, a 16th-century manuscript, contained the poem "Is fuath liom". In the manuscript, the poem is a list of hated things, including in Gaelic the term "Is fuath liom baintigerna labha", which Danielle Fatzinger of the University of Glasgow translated to English as "I hate a speaking (i.e., an outspoken) lady", and used it as an example of misogynistic tone in such ancient poetry. Fatzinger wrote that "Baintigerna labhar" may have been an explicit contemporaneous reference to the Lady of Lawers.
In 1892, local historian John Christie wrote that the last occupant of the Lawers family residence was known in Scottish Gaelic as Baintighearna Lauthair (Lady of Lawers) and that local histories identified her as a Stewart of the Appin branch who possessed a gift of prophecy. In 1900, the Lady was identified as being of the Breadalbane family. Despite documented surrounding histories, lore, records, and traditions, William A. Gillies reported in his 1938 work In Famed Breadalbane that there remained no definitive identification of the possible woman such as Mary Stewart of Appin in the Loch Tay area, but that the evidence supported that such a person existed. The Lady, at her request, was buried at the old Lawers church, and her loyal servant, identified as An Combach Ruadh (the Red Fox) was later buried with her. The burial site was reportedly beneath the Lady's ash tree. Through the late 19th and into the 20th century, the ruins of the original Ladies house in old Lawer was called Tigh Ban-tighearna Labhuir, "the House of the Lady of Lawers."
The remains of the Lady of Lawers's homes and the old original Lawers village was recorded as being in disrepair by the early 19th century, and the settlement it served was largely abandoned, though part of the village remained occupied into the early 20th century. In 2016, the property and land on which the old Lawers village and the ruins of the church, including the area where the Lady may be buried with her Red Fox servant, was placed on sale for offers beginning at £100,000. It was believed that any future owners of the lands would be unable to build new structures, as previous owners had been denied by local authorities due to the historic nature of the site. Local lore and myth holds that the Lady haunts the ruins of old Lawers as a ghost. The Lady of Lawers today is the most notable and known former resident of Lawers in Scotland.
Lady of Lawers's well A spring near the summit of Ben Lawers was known in Gaelic as Fuaran Bhaintighearna Labhair, the Lady of Lawers's Well. Writing in the Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, the Breadalbane antiquarian James MacDiarmid recorded that in his grandfather's youth the young men and maidens of Lawers climbed the mountain at Beltane to watch the sun rise, and that the young men raced to be first to reach the spring and drink from it. MacDiarmid described the custom as belonging to a former generation rather than to his own time, noting it was still a custom in his "grandfather's youth". The Celtic scholar George Henderson, citing MacDiarmid, instead reported that children were dipped in the waters of the Lady of Lawers's Well at Beltane and ritually sprayed by the waters at sunrise. MacDiarmid attributes that rite to a different spring, a tobar on the farm of Claggan on the opposite shore of Loch Tay, which was said to hold curative virtues for children.
Prophecies The Lady's 17th century predictions and prophecies were at first only passed forward as oral Gaelic tradition and myth; their first known commitment in writing was in the late 19th century. The prophecies were believed to have been preserved in the "Red Book of Balloch", a claimed part of the Books of Clanranald; a barrel-shaped book secured by twelve iron hoops or clasps and kept in the charter room of Taymouth Castle in Kenmore, Perth and Kinross. The Scottish folklorist John Gregorson Campbell wrote that it was believed the prophecies of the Lady were written in the volume.
Boar stone
One of the Lady of Lawers's prophecies concerned what was called the Boar Stone, which Campbell described as a boulder weighing approximately two or three hundred tons in a meadow near Loch Tay. It was predicted to topple when a "strange heir" came to Taymouth. The house of Breadalbane was also said to reach the height of its honour when the face of an unidentified rock became concealed by wood.
Breadalbane