The Longest, The Loveliest & The Loneliest

Mysterious Glen Lyon had huge significance for the pagan Celts

IT was Sir Walter Scott who first described Glen Lyon in the above terms and Tom Weir was fond of using the same adjectives to describe this 40km (25-mile-long) glen of Highland Perthshire. He often told me it was his favourite glen.

Glen Lyon is indeed a magnificent place, from its heavily wooded lower glen where the River Lyon crashes through its deep, shadowed gorge, all the way to the bare upper slopes – a place of desolation and remote mountain grandeur despite the hydro works that have dammed the loch, created a stony tideline around the shores, and laced the upper glen with power lines.

Notwithstanding the hand of man, Glen Lyon is famed for something else. It is Scotland’s most mysterious glen, a place of myth and legend and very possibly, home to the Creator Goddess of the ancient Celtic world.

Years ago I met an old friend of mine here. Lawrence Main has a penchant for New Age thinking, describes himself as a druid and has a longstanding fascination with the mysteries and legends of our wild places. He had come to Glen Lyon to visit Fortingall, which he believed might have been the birthplace of Pontius Pilate, the Roman judge of Christ.

He was also searching for the Praying Hands of Mary, a large split rock that stands in Gleinn Dà-Eigg, close to Bridge of Balgie. Lawrence believed that Glen Lyon was the home of the Creator Goddess, and was itself a sacred place.

Although megalithic remains are found just outside the Glen, in Fortingall and near Loch Tay, the Glen itself is curiously devoid of megalithic monuments – as the home of the Creator Goddess, the glen itself was sacred by its own nature and such special sites were normally left untouched by the ancient Celts.