Corrieshalloch Gorge National Nature Reserve
Gaelic and the landscape at Corrieshalloch
You may be familiar with the possibly apocryphal story about the Inuit languages having 50 or more words for snow. Or you may have heard that Japanese has at least 70 words for cherry blossom and activities related to admiring it. But did you also know that Gaelic has dozens and dozens of words for ‘hill’ or ‘mountain’? Some estimates put the count at over 100.
If you look at a map of Corrieshalloch National Nature Reserve (NNR) and Wester Ross, you are likely to spot a number of these – including beinn, meall, cnoc, sgùrr, càrn and creag (or other spellings of them). That’s because ‘this entire landscape was named by Gaels: every rock, every valley, every hill, every inlet, every river,’ says Gaelic teacher Lisa MacDonald, who recently helped the Trust create new interpretation at Corrieshalloch Gorge.
Honouring the area’s heritage
When our charity created the Corrieshalloch Gateway to Nature, we were determined to put the area’s Gaelic heritage at the heart of the project. Visitors get an immediate sense of this from the use of Gaelic names for the viewing points around the reserve: An t-Eas Creagach (The Rocky Falls), An t-Eas Stapach (The Stepped Falls), An Sruhan (The Streamlet) and Na Leacan (The Slabs).
And then in 2024 we developed this further, when we added a new path, viewing platform and interpretation that explores how Gaelic can help us understand the landscape. Visitors to the spectacular gorge can now listen to Lisa’s insights about Corrieshalloch’s Gaelic heritage as they walk around the paths, accessing them via QR codes.
You may know more Gaelic than you think
The richness of Gaelic applies not just to the hills or the scenery at Corrieshalloch, but to other landscape features. You may already be familiar with some Gaelic terms – or the English or Scots words derived from them – thanks to the crofters, stalkers, shepherds, drovers, fishers and others who named the places where they lived and worked.
Did you know?
The English crag and corrie derive from creag and coire, that ben and glen come from beinn and gleann, and bog comes from Gaelic bog, meaning soft?
The vividness and detail of this vocabulary means you can often learn much more from a Gaelic place name than its English translation – the shape and steepness of a hill, the breadth of a ridge, the mood of a place, or even a sense of its history and the people and wildlife that lived there.
On a practical level, this makes Gaelic place names a useful aid for hillwalkers, climbers, wild swimmers, nature lovers and anyone interested in conservation or heritage.
Let’s say you’re planning a day in the hills. It might be interesting to know, when deciding your route, that meall is a rounded lumpy hill, cnoc is a smaller rounded hillock, and sgùrr is likely to be higher and more jagged. Stob comes from the word for stake, so is likely to be a sharp peak or pinnacle.
A lunch spot with uaine (light green or yellow-green) in its name may be more uplifting and less forbidding than one that’s dubh (black or dark).
Other useful indicators of what you’re about to take on could be mhòir, mhòr or mòr (meaning big) and beag or bhig (meaning small).
Lisa MacDonald’s interpretation materials at Corrieshalloch provide another example of the power and usefulness of Gaelic place names: ‘All of these names that look like a collection of letters on the map, they’re actually incredibly evocative of that area around Corrieshalloch.
‘There’s a tiny little loch here [on the Ordnance Survey map]. It’s quite a curious round little loch, and it’s called Loch an Fhuar Thuill Mhòir, the Loch of the Big Freezing Cold Hole. I can just imagine, without ever having been there, what it would be like to swim in that water!’
Wildlife
Wildlife is another common theme in Gaelic place names around Wester Ross.
Not surprisingly, bird-themed names feature widely across the Highlands. For example, Cnoc na h-Iolaire means Hill of the Eagle, perhaps a useful clue for birders as well as helping you visualise what the landscape might look like.
As for the area’s mammals, there are plentiful references to stags – look out for the word damh in a place name. And if you spot madaidh in a place name, it’s possibly a reference to wolves (or perhaps just foxes).
Once you know Loch nan Eun means the Loch of the Birds, it becomes even more evocative and inviting.
In search of ancient clues
Finally, for anyone involved in conservation and landscape restoration, another fascinating aspect of Gaelic in the landscape is what it tells us about trees.
In Lisa’s interpretation at Corrieshalloch, you’ll hear her talk about part of a village near Ullapool, called Morefield. In English, that doesn’t tell you a huge amount; but in Gaelic, it’s called Mòr-Choille, meaning a big forest – a forest that is no longer there. For Lisa, that name offers a gateway into the history of how the land came to be deforested.
Names like Mòr-Choille, and other wood-linked words like doire (copse), fiodh (timber) and craohb (tree), allow us to understand Scotland’s ecology, how it has changed over the centuries, and where perhaps woodland could be restored and regenerated in future.
As all these examples show, behind each Gaelic name there’s a rich history of people and places waiting to be unlocked. Why not visit Corrieshalloch Gateway to Nature and start exploring this history for yourself?
The development of the new interpretation at Corrieshalloch, along with the new footpaths and viewing platform added in 2024, were made possible by the generosity of Trust members and supporters, alongside the funding raised by players of the People’s Postcode Lottery, and other organisations.