Barra
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Barra is an island in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland, and the second southernmost inhabited island there, after the adjacent island of Vatersay to which it is connected by the Vatersay Causeway.
The Village of Castlebay from the sea with Kisimul Castle in the foreground and the heights of Heaval beyond
Neolithic "work platform", near Vatersay
Standing stone at Borve
Iron Age wheelhouse near Vatersay
Clann Ruaidhrí
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Clann Ruaidhrí was a leading medieval clan in the Hebrides and the western seaboard of Scotland. The eponymous ancestor of the family was Ruaidhrí mac Raghnaill, a principal member of Clann Somhairle
Now-ruinous Castle Tioram may well have been a Clann Ruaidhrí stronghold. The island the fortress sits upon is first recorded in a charter of Cairistíona Nic Ruaidhrí. According to early modern tradition, the castle was erected in the fourteenth century by her niece, Áine Nic Ruaidhrí. The castle served as the seat of the latter's Clann Domhnaill descendants for the next four hundred years.
The title of the apparent Clann Ruaidhrí wife of Rǫgnvaldr Guðrøðarson as it appears on folio 42v of British Library Cotton Julius A VII (the Chronicle of Mann): "regina Insularum" ("Queen of the Isles").
The name of Mac Somhairle, a man who may be identical to Ruaidhrí himself, as it appears on folio 67r of Oxford Bodleian Library Rawlinson B 489.
One of the rook gaming pieces of the so-called Lewis chessmen. The Scandinavian connections of leading members of the Isles may have been reflected in their military armament, and could have resembled that depicted upon such gaming pieces.