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John Morison, who was a Lewisman himself, also expressed scepticism. Despite Mor-
ison having written about being confronted by a supernatural being when his fire was
in danger of going out on Eilean Mor, he dismisses the idea of the bones being human
in an account he wrote of Lewis and the islands in 1680. He believed the bones to be
those of small fowl.
The authoritative account of the Western Isles by Martin Martin also refers to the
small bones which had been dug up. He stated: 'This gave ground to a tradition which
the natives have, of a very low-statured people living once here, called 'lusbirdan' or
pigmies.'
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The word lusbirdan is considered to equate to the modern word
luspardan
, which,
both in Gaelic and Scots, means pigmy. There were a number of variations of the word
with the Gaelic academic Dr Alexander MacBain believing the word (included in his
dictionary) to be derived from
lugh-spiorad
, or 'little spirit', though other scholars give
the word other derivations, including as the Rev. John Jamieson in his dictionary of the
Scottish language.
In a map drawn by Dutch cartographer Willem Blaeu, the name of the Isle is given
as
Y
len Dunibeg, or Island of the Little Men. A visitor to the isle in 1630, Captain John
Dymes,drewaroughsketchofLewisandonthismaptheisleisdescribedastheIsleof
Pigmies. The same name is also used by Martin Martin although he states in his book
that the natives of the area (like Blaeu) described it as the 'Island of Little Men,' a dis-
tinction with a slight difference. In the earliest Ordnance Survey maps, the Isle appears
as Luchruban, which is almost identical with Luchorpain, or Luchrupain, who were di-
minutive people of Irish legend. The full name of the Isle was probably Eilean na Lu-
chrupáin, or Island of the Luchrupain, the dwarfs who were complementary to the Irish
Fomhoraiqh (Fomorians) or giants. It is not known when this name supplanted that of
the 'Pigmie Isle', but not improbably, it was given to the Isle by Irish antiquaries, who
thought they had discovered in the small bones, relics of their legendary race of small
men known as Luchrupdin. Captain Dymes believed that the bones had often been dug
up, especially by the Irish who came to the area for that purpose. The context seems to
show that he meant natives of Ireland, and not merely Gaelic speakers.
ThereisoccasionallyconfusionastowherethepigmieslivedonLewisandtheexact
location of the 'Pigmie Isle' itself. Sometimes the 'Pigmie Isle' is taken to mean Eilean
Mor itself, but this is not the case.
mostrecentreferencetoitwasinanodepublishedin1749bythepoetWilliamCollins,
entitled 'An Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland'. Collins
had been a firm believer in the 'Pigmie Isle' and the folklore that went with it.
