Reverend Donald Macfarlane
In July 2011, the Applecross Heritage Centre Curator was kindly invited by Dr Alexander Gillies of Culduie to visit the Reverend Donald Macfarlane, a native of Portree on the Isle of Skye. Reverend Macfarlane was one of the very few remaining people who had experienced pre-World War II Applecross as an adult .
Sadly, it was the only time the Curator got to meet him as the Reverend Macfarlane passed away on 30 October 2011 at the Ballifeary Nursing Home in Inverness, aged 96.
He had been a minister in the Church of Scotland from 1940 onwards, and spent 25 years as minister of the Inverness East Church. Having begun as a divinity student in 1936, he had been too late to put his name down for an autumn term so it wouldn’t be counted towards his studies.
It was then the done thing to put your name in to be sent wherever the Church chose - the Reverend Macfarlane, brought up in a Gaelic-speaking household, recalled during our conversation receiving a telegram when he returned home to Portree one evening to the effect that he had to be in Camusterrach, Applecross, the next day, so he had to pack his bags immediately and sail on the early morning steamer. “The man in charge was Rory MacLeod, Dr Roderick MacLeod, and he dealt in telegrams. You got short notice, you know ... you might be out visiting and when you came home there might be a telegram saying: ‘Proceed immediately!’ to wherever it happened to be. I remember one of the times, I didn’t even know where the place was. There was this fellow who was employed by MacBraynes down at the pier in Portree .. . so I remember going down to the pier, and asking ‘How do I get to Applecross’? ... Students were kept in their place!”
He spent four months here, between June and September 1938. “You had to do it .. it wasn’t a matter of asking did you want to. If you put your name down to be available to go wherever they wished to send you, well, that’s how it was. Applecross was nice ... A’ Chomraich!” He also spent time in Ardnamurchan, Torridon and Kingairloch in Morvern.
His Applecross patch then covered almost the entire length of the peninsula from Toscaig in the south as far as Arrina, with much of his travel being done on a bicycle – provided by, and very much the property of, the Church HQ in Edinburgh! “Well, what was very common in these days was that the congregations that had missionaries ... had a pushbike which belonged to them. Well, it really belonged to the Board in Edinburgh. I cycled all around Applecross. You went round Fearnamore, Reaulay, Fearnabeag, Arrinacrinnachd (Arrina) and they were very nice people on the coast.”
As part of his placement, he had to spend periods on the north coast, where he lived with the missionary Angus MacBeath and his wife in Fearnamore, who were very kind to him.
Reverend Macfarlane stayed the rest of the time with Mr & Mrs Hardy at the Temperance Hotel (now the Applecross Inn). Mrs Hardy was the auntie of one of our our Directors, Ian Mackenzie. At that time there were few motor cars in Applecross but according to the Reverend Macfarlane: “The car he [Mr Hardy] had was a V8! Just think of it. Ho-ho, you didn’t want to be roaming around changing gear too much in that car!” He also spoke very kindly of Mrs Hardy’s brother, John, the estate carpenter, who was sometimes a precentor in the church.
“I think I enjoyed being in Applecross more than any other place, although they were all very nice to me when I was in Ardnamurchan. I enjoyed my days in Applecross very much.” The minister at the time was the Reverend Donald MacLeod. “He was a very nice man, but he believed in getting his money’s worth out of the Gaelic student! Certain congregations had assistance from the Home Board in the summer. See the minister got the idea that in the summer, there were a lot of English-speaking people, and he much preferred to have the student take the service. The student may have been more fluent in English, but I don’t know if he was more fluent in the reality of the Gaelic!”
Sadly, Reverend Macfarlane’s wife of 66 years, Anne, passed away less than a week later. Our sympathies to the family.
Thank you to the Reverend Professor Andrew McGowan, the current incumbent at the Inverness East Church, and Professor of Theology at the University of the Highlands and Islands, for tracking down this photograph from a book on the history of the East Church.
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