The Coffin Roads: Journeys to the West

by Ian Bradley

'Coffin roads' along which bodies were carried for burial are a marked feature of the landscape of the Scottish Highlands and islands – many are now popular walking and cycling routes. This book journeys along eight coffin roads to discover and explore the distinctive traditions, beliefs and practices around dying, death and mourning in the communities which created and used them.

The result is a fascinating snapshot into place and culture. After more than a century when death was very much a taboo subject, this book argues that aspects of the distinctive West Highland and Hebridean way of death and approach to dying and mourning may have something helpful and important to offer to us today.

Routes covered in this book are:

The Kilmartin Valley – the archetypal coffin road in this ritual landscape of the dead.

The Street of the Dead on Iona – perhaps the best known coffin road in Scotland.

Kilearnadil Graveyard, Jura – a perfect example of a Hebridean graveyard.

The coffin road through Morvern to Keil Church, Lochaline - among the best defined and most evocative coffin roads today.

The Green Isle, Loch Shiel, Ardnamurchan - the oldest continuously used burial place anywhere in Europe.

The coffin road on Eigg – with its distinctive ‘piper’s cairn’ where the coffin of Donald MacQuarrie, the 'Great Piper of Eigg', was rested.

The coffin road from Traigh Losgaintir to Loch Stocinis on Harris - popular with walkers and taken as the title for a best-selling thriller by Peter May.

The coffin road on Barra – A detailed study of burial practices on Barra in the early 1950s provides a fascinating record of Hebridean attitudes to dying, death and mourning.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

192 pages, Paperback

First published July 7, 2022

About the author

Ian Bradley is a Church of Scotland minister, academic, broadcaster, journalist and lecturer. He has written over 40 books. He is currently Principal of St Mary's College and Reader in Church History and Practical Theology at the University of St. Andrews.

Reviews

[Kate M · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really interesting pukapuka about highland / island practises & rituals around death. Really enjoyed it & felt like a doorway into understanding my tūpuna more !!!! Tho I did dream lots of death when I was reading it haha

[Nina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable/informative read. It's always interesting to see how different people/countries/cultures deal with death and mourning. It's also a surprisingly light read, despite its topic, due to the way it's written and the inclusion of descriptions of somewhat funny funeral occasions (usually involving whisky).

My only gripe is with the last chapter. I don't disagree with the idea that traditional or past ways of handling death can be informative or even useful today, but it felt like a shallow chapter that painted those past traditions in too much of a bright light while condemning the modern ways (atl in UK). Random statistics of how high the % of people dying in hospital rather than at home is, or what % of people would rather die at home, tell me nothing. Ideally we'd all want to die at home, but in how many of those hospital cases would that have been a possibility? I feel like the epilogue needed more depth and a slightly more fair investigation of traditional vs modern treatment of death.

[Sarah OMahony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read on the culture around death and funerals in Scotland. Pretty niche, not a huge page turner, but made me want to go for long walks in the west coast.

[Wendy Wuyts · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well-researched. I learned some new things about Scottish death practices and rituals - and the link with water. For some reason I thought it was going to be more a travelogue (perhaps becauseI picked it up from a stand between the section nature and the section travelogues in the bookshop) and had expected some more engagement with the landscapes; descriptions of walks.

Often I thought that there are some overlaps with Flemish traditions. A paragraph about the second sight let me recall a Flemish/French folktale called the Nettle Spinner which is also about a girl making “death clothes” for a duke. And once I also heard a history expert talking about coffin/burial roads in Flanders, but almost erased from memory. We have also a child song about “shipper, can I pass over?”. It is interesting for me to realise / “remember” (almost) forgotten/erased practices and traditions from Flanders by exploring stories and history of the other Celtic lands that were less altered by the Roman Empire and the inquisition.

[Marika · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is not a travelogue, and descriptions of the roads themselves are brief. This is more of a cultural and theological history of funeral practices which is interesting in its own right. I just wish there were more detailed maps of the places the book talks about as it was hard to constantly keep looking them up on my phone. As someone that lives in Scotland but is not native to it, I often found myself lost in the lists of unfamiliar place names.

What irked me the most about this book were the long quotations from historical texts. I appreciate how well researched everything was, but there is an art in summarising takeaways from old texts rather than dedicating pages and pages to direct passages taken from them.

It took me about a month to read this book as it is quite dry.

[Caroline Rochford · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book purely because I saw someone reading it on the Mull to Oban ferry earlier this year. It did not disappoint -perhaps because I have visited so many of the places mentioned but also because I got to read it whilst island-hopping on holiday from Barra to the Uists and then on to Skye. Therefore the descriptions of the history, culture and traditions really absorbed me and I could see it all around. Not least whilst on North Uist where we learned of a funeral at the nearby cemetery with over 300 attending. It was well written and very informative and peeked my interest on things under my nose as I travelled around these beautiful Highlands and Islands. Thank you Ian Bradley.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

This short, well researched book is a must read for those interested in Scottish - particularly Highlands and Islands - history, how end of life and funeral practices have changed, and how we have become distanced from death and dying.
Bradley traces the existence and use of coffin roads, with the associated beliefs and practices, from prehistoric times through the arrival of Christianity to the recent past, touching on keening, wakes and full community involvement such that death was a normal component of community life.

[Fee · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent read, absolutely packed with facts about the fascinating histories of coffin roads across Scotland, as well as stories of the folklore and traditions surrounding death across the country. My biggest takeaway from this book was that we should definitely be making efforts to move back towards a way of life where death is not something to be shied away from, and also that the copious consumption of whisky is an important part of the grieving process.

[John Boyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book but not quite what it says on the tin. Some interesting stuff about the rituals and practices of death and dying in western Scotland, especially the Highlands and Islands. Each chapter is notionally about a specific coffin road but is usually more about graves, graveyards and monument and the practices surrounding death in various local religious communities. There is much of interest although the chapter on second sight is somewhat too credulous for my tastes.

[Mark Latchford · Rating 3 out of 5]

A well researched book about death and funeral rituals in Western Scotland especially the repatriating of the dead along ‘coffin roads’ to their final resting place at home. When I picked it up in a small general store in the magical north west of Scotland I thought I was picking up a travelogue rather than a sociology book but nevertheless a good read, neither turgid nor morbid that helps the reader unpack a little more about Celtic society.

[Alex Stuart · Rating 3 out of 5]

I became interested in this book when the first paragraph of the introduction briefly talked about the one of the few coffin roads I knew (Stoneymollan from Balloch to Cardross) and then said it was going to describe several other ones in the West of Scotland.

It's a social and religious history of coffin roads. No grid references but plenty of information that will locate the roads on a map. Lots of historical detail, and quotes from earlier books.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really informative and well researched work on the death rituals and culture of the western Highlands and the Western Isles of Scotland.
I've just spent another hugely enjoyable visit to this part of the world (my third visit), so when I saw this book in a bookshop I grabbed it.
Having recently been to many of the regions in the book made it that much more alive for me (pardon the pun).

[Adeptus Fringilla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really excellent book about the coffin roads of the west highlands and the hebridean islands. Most of the focus is on the (mostly christian) burial traditions which is really fascinating. There is not much walking in this book but most of the places that are described seem absolutely special places, and some are now on my "to-visit" list.

[Grand Nerd · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you are interested in the burial practices along these Coffin Roads then this book is for you. I thought I was one of those people, but this book is just so dry. I've given it a 2 because it does give plenty of information about the roads, even if it is delivered as if a man cornered you on the street and followed you home whilst explaining burial traditions that you are not interested in.

[Roger Morgan-Grenville · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating glimpse into how the coffin roads of western Scotland inform us of the unhealthy distance that most of us have put between ourselves and death in recent times.